A cloud of secrecy yesterday surrounded the expected signing in Macau of a deal between Next Media Group (壹傳媒集團) and a consortium of three Taiwanese business leaders for the acquisition of Next Media’s four outlets in Taiwan, a deal that raises the specter of increased Chinese influence over Taiwanese media.
According to reports by the Hong Kong-based Apple Daily, a consortium led by Chinatrust Charity Foundation (中信慈善基金會) chairman Jeffrey Koo Jr (辜仲諒), Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) chairman William Wong (王文淵) and Want Want China Times Group (旺旺中時集團) chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明) was to sign a contract to buy the media outlets from the Hong Kong-listed Next Media at 3pm in Macau.
The former Portuguese colony was reportedly chosen as the location for the signing because of tax incentives.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
As of press time, none of the parties involved in the acquisition had confirmed news of the signing. Reports said that as of 8pm, negotiations were still ongoing.
Next Media signed a memorandum of understanding with Koo in the middle of last month, following Hong Kong media baron Jimmy Lai’s (黎智英) announcement that he was selling the four outlets — the Chinese-language Apple Daily, Next Magazine, Sharp Daily and Next TV — for NT$17.5 billion (US$600 million).
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd (鴻海精密), which had also been tipped as a potential fourth buyer, rejected rumors of a role in the deal yesterday and declined to comment further.
There was also media speculation that Lung Yen Life Service Co (龍巖集團) could be a fourth buyer.
In Hong Kong, Next Media did not suspend trading of its shares and experienced a quiet trading session in the morning.
Following media reports in the afternoon that the deal for the Taiwanese outlets was to be finalized, the company’s shares rose 4.6 percent to HK$1.59 and closed with a trading volume of HK$15 million (US$1.9 million).
The deal will require the approval of Taiwan’s regulatory authorities — the Financial Supervisory Commission, the Fair Trade Commission and the National Communications Commission — to be valid.
Meanwhile, the unions of the four Taiwanese outlets, which staged an overnight sit-in at the company’s headquarters in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) on Monday night, issued a statement urging the new owners to sign a deal with journalists to safeguard their editorial independence.
“Today, Nov. 27, 2012, is an unfortunate day for all Next Media Group employees. It is on this day that the contract for Next Media buyout is signed and one month from now, the group will have new owners,” the statement said.
The statement added that while they were forced to accept the new owners, of whose credentials and motives the public and Next Media Group employees are skeptical, the owners should think about how to regain the trust of their employees and their readers.
“If you [the new owners] are only buying these outlets for the sake of glorifying or covering up the negative news for your flagship enterprises, or for the purpose of using the group as a bargaining chip when your corporations enter the Chinese market, you are doomed to be despised by the Taiwanese public and eventually get caught in your own traps,” the statement said.
“You [the new owners] may be able to buy the Next Media Group with NT$17.5 billion, but you can never buy our [the employees’] souls,” the statement added.
The statement also urged the new owners to make public their transaction processes via a press conference and to write in black and white their pledges not to lay off employees or change employee benefits.
Dozens of Next Media employees in Hong Kong last night held a candlelight vigil at the company’s headquarters in Kowloon in solidarity with their colleagues in Taiwan.
Additional reporting by Chris Wang
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS