The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus is set to propose suspending Transglobe Life Insurance Inc’s merger with Kuo Hua Life Insurance Co tomorrow in the legislature, because it says the company’s operations and the actions of the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) are both questionable.
DPP Legislator Gao Jyh-peng (高志鵬) told a press conference that Transglobe’s winning of the auction for the insolvent Kuo Hua with a bid of NT$88.37 billion (US$3 billion) on Nov. 27 posed many questions that need to be answered.
Taiwan Life Insurance Co, a subsidiary of state-owned Taiwan Financial Holdings, was set to take over Kuo Hua until the FSC decided to hold an auction, but the commission never explained why its policy changed, Gao said, adding that the winning bid was a lot lower than the NT$200 billion Taiwan Financial estimated as being required to take over Kuo Hua.
The semi-official Taiwan Insurance Guaranty Fund (保險安定基金) is paying Transglobe the sum to cover Kuo Hua’s losses, which had increased by NT$17 billion since the FSC took over the company in 2009. Gao accused the FSC of wasting taxpayers’ money.
Gao said that the FSC is suspected to have favored Transglobe because of the connections of its two shareholders: Stiven Peng (彭騰德), son of Meifu Property Development Group chairman Tom Peng (彭誠浩); and Stiven Peng’s wife, Lin Wen-hui (林文惠), daughter of Taiwan Glass Industry Corp president Lin Por-fong (林伯豐), who has close ties to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
The DPP caucus is set to hold a special session today in the legislature’s Economics Committee on the merger and submit a proposal to suspend the deal, the lawmaker said.
FSC Insurance Bureau Deputy Director-General Chen Kai-yuan (陳開元) said the FSC had reviewed the operational status of all bidders and the bidding process was transparent and legal.
Regarding the large difference between Taiwan Financial’s initial estimate and the final bidding price, Chen said the financial assessment methodology for an insurance company varied between companies and that the FSC stood by its own assessment.
Kuo Hua’s net value as of the end of the third quarter was about NT$70 billion in the red, Chen said, adding that all information on the firm’s financial performance was on its Web site.
Chen said the commission would “respect and abide by all legally binding resolutions.”
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: