The fate of Agora Garden (亞太會館), one of the nation's premier service apartments/hotels, remains up in the air after its owner set the minimum bid at a high NT$19.9 billion (US$654.4 million) at yesterday's auction, with only one US corporate bidder showing up.
“We were astonished at the owner’s NT$19.9 billion selling price,” Jack Qin (秦杰), president of the Los Angeles-based health-product maker EFT Biotech Holdings Inc, told a media briefing after the failed auction yesterday morning.
EFT remained confident it could close the deal after expressing a strong interest in building the company’s first luxury home project in Taiwan.
“We’d like to match the owner’s optimism and offer to pay NT$10 billion in cash right away and repay the remaining NT$9.9 billion three years later if the planned luxury home project [at the Agora Garden’s site] could be sold for NT$3.5 million to NT$4 million per ping [3.3m²],” Qin said.
The company believes Xinyi District is the best location for such a luxury home project, but it could also consider developing such a pricey project at other locations in Taiwan, he said.
Agora owner Shen Ching-ching (沈慶京) — chairman of the Core Pacific Group (威京集團), which owns two listed companies in Taiwan — has been upbeat about the nation’s emerging luxury home market in Taipei’s upscale Xinyi District since early this year.
To strengthen the group’s financial structure, Shen decided to sell Agora Garden and set the floor price at NT$6.9 billion in January. However, he delayed a proposed auction in March and raised the price to NT$14.9 billion last month as the local property market picked up. He increased the minimum bid again yesterday.
Should the deal push through, the hotel site, measuring 2,468 ping, would be worth a record NT$8 million per ping.
The deal’s auctioneer, real-estate consultant DTZ (戴德梁行), said yesterday that the hotel’s owner would make a final decision on Qin’s offer and conduct direct negotiations with other potential buyers.
DTZ general manager Billy Yen (顏炳立) stressed, however, that the hotel was unlikely to be sold below NT$19.9 billion.
The hotel’s general manager, Jessica Hsieh (謝美慶), also said that the likelihood of Shen accepting Qin’s offer was slim.
Hsieh said several multinational corporate buyers had offered more than NT$13 billion in cash for the hotel. However, those potential buyers didn’t show up at the auction yesterday.
Yen said the realtor would not rule out recommending another round of auctioning in the second half of this year when a clearer trend in the property market emerges.
Several academics have warned of an emerging asset bubble in Taipei, but Qin shrugged off those concerns, saying he was optimistic amid signs of warming relations with China.
He said that opportunities in the US market were slim as it was experiencing a slowdown.
As for China, land developers are only allowed in second-tier Chinese cities, which are not suitable for luxury home projects, he said.
A Citigroup analyst said the failed auction of Agora Garden could be negative for the property market in the short term.
“We expect the deal to be handled via private negotiations to avoid more embarrassment. Considering the response so far, no potential buyer is likely to pay more than NT$14.9 billion, not to mention NT$19.9 billion,” Andre Chang (張致竑), an analyst at Citi Investment Research in Taipei, wrote in a client note yesterday.
Chang expects the deal to be closed at a price of between NT$12.5 billion and NT$15 billion.
“Any prices in this range should be considered neutral to slightly positive for the property market, while any prices below would be negative,” the research analyst wrote.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY KEVIN CHEN
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle