Taiwan's main stock market held talks on selling shares to Borse Dubai Ltd, which has been expanding with its purchases of NASDAQ OMX Group Inc and the London Stock Exchange Group PLC.
Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (TSE, 證交所) plans an initial public offering (IPO) early next year, chairman Wu Rong-i (吳榮義) said in an interview yesterday in Vietnam's financial center, Ho Chi Minh City. The exchange plans to sell as much as a 25 percent holding to overseas bourses and has held initial talks with the New York Stock Exchange, Deutsche Boerse AG, the CME Group Inc, and NASDAQ OMX, it said in December.
"We have had talks with the Dubai bourse," Wu said. "I met the chairman. We want to sign a memorandum of understanding first and we both want to go further."
The discussions were held at a meeting of the World Federation of Exchanges in Cairo last month, Wu said.
Borse Dubai owns the sheikdom's two stock exchanges, is a shareholder in the London Stock Exchange and will get an almost 20 percent stake in NASDAQ OMX, the world's second-largest stock exchange by volume of shares traded, through a joint takeover of the Nordic stock market operator OMX.
"We don't deny we were in general dialogue" with the Taiwanese exchange, Borse Dubai chairman Essa Kazim said yesterday in a telephone interview from Dubai. Kazim declined to comment further.
Kazim said in August that Borse Dubai had a "general interest in expanding" and was "looking at other stock exchanges."
The Dubai exchange may bid for a stake in the Karachi Stock Exchange should the Pakistani bourse be put up for sale, he said at the time.
Borse Dubai owns 80 percent of the Dubai Financial Market. It also owns the Dubai International Financial Exchange Ltd, the Gulf's first bourse open to issuers and investors of any nationality.
The TSE is waiting for an amendment to current laws to allow it to merge with the GRETAI Securities Market for bonds and unlisted stocks, the Taiwan Futures Exchange and Taiwan Depository & Clearing Corp, Wu said. After that, shares may be sold to as many as three foreign companies, he said.
"We hope that this amendment can be quickly passed, perhaps first quarter or second quarter at the latest," he said.
After consolidating the markets, the exchange will "launch an IPO, maybe at the beginning of next year."
The TSE may be interested in buying shares in the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange when Vietnam's main bourse holds an initial public offering, Wu said.
The Taiwanese bourse and its Vietnamese counterpart signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) in Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday on cooperation in areas such as the exchange of information and in unspecified joint research projects.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
RSS