The government sold 21 percent of the total shares on offer on the fifth and final day of an auction of a stake in Chunghwa Telecom Co (
The government said it sold 103.9 million Chunghwa Telecom shares at an average price of NT$49.75 a share, raising NT$5.17 billion (US$149 million).
It earlier set a floor price of NT$49, NT$1 lower than the minimum NT$50 it accepted on the auction's first four days.
Dropping the floor price enabled the government to sell more shares today than in the first four days combined. Still, local investors bought only a third of the total 500 million shares on offer.
``Normally companies will offer a discount to lure investors, but government officials just haven't learned that,'' Eric Yang, who manages NT$4 billion in technology shares at Invesco Taiwan Ltd (
``Taiwan's plans to privatize Chunghwa Telecom will be very difficult unless they change their practice,'' he said.
The latest sale of shares in the phone company follows five fizzled auctions to institutional investors and two dud sales to individual investors in the past three years. The sale of a 13.5 percent stake to Cathay Life Insurance Co (
Chunghwa has been a tough sell because of competition in the world's densest mobile-phone market and a global slump in the industry. The government, which once said it would sell a third of the company by the end of 2000, is still stuck with about 80 percent.
The highest bid today was at the stock's NT$50.50 closing price, the government said. A total of 165.8 million shares were sold over the five days, equal to about a 1.7 percent stake in the company. The 500 million shares on offer represented a stake of about 5.2 percent, based on the company's 9.6 billion shares outstanding.
The government first sold Chunghwa shares at NT$104.00 a share in its 2000 initial public offering. The stock plunged 28 percent that year and another 34 percent the following year.
FALLING BEHIND: Samsung shares have declined more than 20 percent this year, as the world’s largest chipmaker struggles in key markets and plays catch-up to rival SK Hynix Samsung Electronics Co is laying off workers in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand as part of a plan to reduce its global headcount by thousands of jobs, sources familiar with the situation said. The layoffs could affect about 10 percent of its workforces in those markets, although the numbers for each subsidiary might vary, said one of the sources, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Job cuts are planned for other overseas subsidiaries and could reach 10 percent in certain markets, the source said. The South Korean company has about 147,000 in staff overseas, more than half
Taipei is today suspending its US$2.5 trillion stock market as Super Typhoon Krathon approaches Taiwan with strong winds and heavy rain. The nation is not conducting securities, currency or fixed-income trading, statements from its stock and currency exchanges said. Yesterday, schools and offices were closed in several cities and counties in southern and eastern Taiwan, including in the key industrial port city of Kaohsiung. Taiwan, which started canceling flights, ship sailings and some train services earlier this week, has wind and rain advisories in place for much of the island. It regularly experiences typhoons, and in July shut offices and schools as
An Indian factory producing iPhone components resumed work yesterday after a fire that halted production — the third blaze to disrupt Apple Inc’s local supply chain since the start of last year. Local industrial behemoth Tata Group’s plant in Tamil Nadu, which was shut down by the unexplained fire on Saturday, is a key linchpin of Apple’s nascent supply chain in the country. A spokesperson for subsidiary Tata Electronics Pvt yesterday said that the company would restart work in “many areas of the facility today.” “We’ve been working diligently since Saturday to support our team and to identify the cause of the fire,”
TECH PARTNERSHIP: The deal with Arizona-based Amkor would provide TSMC with advanced packing and test capacities, a requirement to serve US customers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is collaborating with Amkor Technology Inc to provide local advanced packaging and test capacities in Arizona to address customer requirements for geographical flexibility in chip manufacturing. As part of the agreement, TSMC, the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, would contract turnkey advanced packaging and test services from Amkor at their planned facility in Peoria, Arizona, a joint statement released yesterday said. TSMC would leverage these services to support its customers, particularly those using TSMC’s advanced wafer fabrication facilities in Phoenix, Arizona, it said. The companies would jointly define the specific packaging technologies, such as TSMC’s Integrated
RSS