Fubon Life Insurance Co (富邦人壽) announced on Friday it had paid NT$4.3 billion (US$131 million) for a commercial building in Chiayi City as part of its effort to expand its real estate investment portfolio, after the company acquired 14 floors of the 18-story AsiaWorld building for NT$10 billion on Thursday last week.
In a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange, parent Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控) said its insurance unit bought the building from Janfusun Ltd (劍湖山世界公司), which operates Janfusun Fancyworld amusement park as well as Nice Prince Hotel (耐斯王子大飯店) in Chiayi City and Janfusun Prince Hotel (劍湖山王子大飯店) Yunlin County.
The land area of the building, comprising both Nice Prince Hotel and Nice Plaza department store (耐斯松屋), is 12,198m2, while the floor space is 96,576.76 m2, the filing showed.
FURTHER INVESTMENT
On the same day, the life insurer said its board also authorized chairman Richard Tsai (蔡明興) to negotiate terms and proceed with a planned real estate purchase with a maximum investment of NT$20 billion in the Greater Taipei area within a year, according to a separate exchange filing.
Fubon has invested about NT$26.9 billion in the domestic real estate market so far this year, based on the company’s previous filings.
The sum of NT$4.3 billion compares with appraisals made by real estate agency Savills Taiwan (第一太平戴維斯台灣) of NT$4.09 billion and G-Beam Real Estate Appraisers Firm (巨秉不動產估價師) of NT$4.05 billion, the filing showed.
LEASE
Janfusun said in a statement on Friday that it would lease the building for use over the next 10 years. As the company will pay annual rental fees of around NT$200 million, its 10-year lease is likely to generate 4.7 percent of the annual rental yield rate for Fubon Financial.
Janfusun said it would book a loss of NT$390 million from the sale of the building, the statement said. However, the company said the sum of NT$4.3 billion would enable it to pay back bank loans while having enough ammunition to target other tourism-related investment.
Shares of Fubon Financial fell 1.64 percent to close at NT$30 on Friday, before the property purchase was disclosed.
The stock has risen 25.52 percent since the beginning of the year, compared with a gain of 44.95 percent on the benchmark TAIEX over the same period of time.
Janfusun, meanwhile, fell 4.5 percent to NT$10.6 on the GRETAI Securities Market. The stock has increased 35.72 percent so far this year, compared with a gain of 68.87 percent on the over-the-counter index.
A proposed 100 percent tariff on chip imports announced by US President Donald Trump could shift more of Taiwan’s semiconductor production overseas, a Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (TIER) researcher said yesterday. Trump’s tariff policy will accelerate the global semiconductor industry’s pace to establish roots in the US, leading to higher supply chain costs and ultimately raising prices of consumer electronics and creating uncertainty for future market demand, Arisa Liu (劉佩真) at the institute’s Taiwan Industry Economics Database said in a telephone interview. Trump’s move signals his intention to "restore the glory of the US semiconductor industry," Liu noted, saying that
On Ireland’s blustery western seaboard, researchers are gleefully flying giant kites — not for fun, but in the hope of generating renewable electricity and sparking a “revolution” in wind energy. “We use a kite to capture the wind and a generator at the bottom of it that captures the power,” said Padraic Doherty of Kitepower, the Dutch firm behind the venture. At its test site in operation since September 2023 near the small town of Bangor Erris, the team transports the vast 60-square-meter kite from a hangar across the lunar-like bogland to a generator. The kite is then attached by a
Foxconn Technology Co (鴻準精密), a metal casing supplier owned by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), yesterday announced plans to invest US$1 billion in the US over the next decade as part of its business transformation strategy. The Apple Inc supplier said in a statement that its board approved the investment on Thursday, as part of a transformation strategy focused on precision mold development, smart manufacturing, robotics and advanced automation. The strategy would have a strong emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), the company added. The company said it aims to build a flexible, intelligent production ecosystem to boost competitiveness and sustainability. Foxconn
STILL UNCLEAR: Several aspects of the policy still need to be clarified, such as whether the exemptions would expand to related products, PwC Taiwan warned The TAIEX surged yesterday, led by gains in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), after US President Donald Trump announced a sweeping 100 percent tariff on imported semiconductors — while exempting companies operating or building plants in the US, which includes TSMC. The benchmark index jumped 556.41 points, or 2.37 percent, to close at 24,003.77, breaching the 24,000-point level and hitting its highest close this year, Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) data showed. TSMC rose NT$55, or 4.89 percent, to close at a record NT$1,180, as the company is already investing heavily in a multibillion-dollar plant in Arizona that led investors to assume
RSS