The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday rejected Uni-President Enterprises Corp’s (統一企業) application to merge with Wei Lih Food Industrial Co (維力食品工業) because of concerns that it may lead to a restriction of competition.
Uni-President and Wei Lih are the No. 1 and No. 2 instant noodle manufacturers in Taiwan, with 47.4 percent and 21.2 percent market share last year, the FTC said.
Uni-President currently holds 31.84 percent of Wei Lih’s shares, and planned to increase its stake to 49.75 percent through its subsidiary.
The merger was not approved because FTC believed the competition between the two companies would have been eliminated and Uni-President would have had less reason to avoid raising prices.
Any company that plans to hold more than one-third of another company’s shares must gain approval from the FTC.
“Retail channels are the key to successful instant noodle marketing and sales, and many instant noodle makers find it is hard for them to enter,” FTC commissioner Chou Ya-shu (周雅淑) said yesterday.
Uni-President has the added advantage of 4,000 7-Eleven convenience stores nationwide, run by its subsidiary President Chain Store Corp (統一超商).
Chou said Wei Lih is not in danger of going under, and has no urgent need to raise funds to ensure the company’s survival.
Uni-President had said the merger was an attempt to exchange experience and expand overseas markets. Chou said the acquisition of additional shares in Wei Lih was not the only way to achieve these goals.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS