Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS), one of the nation’s cable television networks, yesterday announced that 47 percent of its shares previously owned by Countless Entertainment have been purchased by three current Taiwanese shareholders, which collectively own 53 percent of the company.
“The network would become fully owned by the Taiwanese nationals. The investors have indicated that they would keep the current management team and expand the network’s business around the world,” the company said in a statement, adding that it would soon send the purchase proposal to the Investment Commission and the National Communications Commission for approval.
The Taiwanese cable network was previously owned by Hong Kong television broadcaster Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), which also made the announcement yesterday on its Web site.
Based on the information disclosed by the network’s previous owner in Hong Kong, the deal is valued at about NT$4.34 billion (US$130.58 million). TVB said in the statement that it would no longer hold shares in TVBS after the transaction, but that it would maintain ownership of the properties in Taiwan, including the TVBS buildings in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) and on Bade Road in Taipei.
The three Taiwanese shareholders were reported to be affiliated with HTC Corp Chairwoman Cher Wang (王雪紅), who owns an unspecified share in TVB.
In January last year, TVB sold TVB Investment Ltd (TVBI) and Countless Entertainment, two of its fully owned subsidiaries, to the three Taiwanese shareholders.
Countless then sold 53 percent of the shares it owned in Liann Yee Production Co, the Taiwanese firm that operates cable channels TVBS, TVBS News and TVBS Entertainment, to the three shareholders for about NT$4.69 billion.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift