A business conglomerate comprising Nan Fung Group (南豐集團) and Chow Sang Sang Jewellery Co Ltd (周生生珠寶金行) from Hong Kong, as well as several Taiwanese companies, has offered to buy Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽), AIG’s local life insurance unit, by offering more than the current four bidders, the Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday.
The report, citing unnamed sources, said the group had directly contacted AIG’s top management in the US via the private equity fund Blackstone Group and suggested a closing price higher than US$1.5 billion — the highest bid made by another group led by Primus Financial Holdings Ltd.
The other three bidders are Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), whose bid is estimated at between US$1.4 billion and US$1.5 billion, followed by Chinatrust Financial Holding Co (中信金) and Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), the report said.
The fifth bidder has also stated its intention to retain the domestic life insurer’s top management, with limited reshuffles to win the support of the firm’s 36,000 employees and ease possible tensions with the labor union, the report said.
The bidder said it would not use capital from Chinese businesses, which could assuage concerns by the financial regulator, it said.
Citing three sources, Bloomberg reported on Friday that four bidders for the life insurance unit had offered less than the US insurer’s US$2 billion target price.
Taiwan’s technology protection rules prohibits Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) from producing 2-nanometer chips abroad, so the company must keep its most cutting-edge technology at home, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks in response to concerns that TSMC might be forced to produce advanced 2-nanometer chips at its fabs in Arizona ahead of schedule after former US president Donald Trump was re-elected as the next US president on Tuesday. “Since Taiwan has related regulations to protect its own technologies, TSMC cannot produce 2-nanometer chips overseas currently,” Kuo said at a meeting of the legislature’s
GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES? The economics ministry said that political factors should not affect supply chains linking global satellite firms and Taiwanese manufacturers Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing out of Taiwan, leading to some relocating portions of their supply chain, according to sources employed by and close to the equipment makers and corporate documents. A source at a company that is one of the numerous subcontractors that provide components for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet products said that SpaceX asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan because of geopolitical risks, pushing at least one to move production to Vietnam. A second source who collaborates with Taiwanese satellite component makers in the nation said that suppliers were directly
Top Taiwanese officials yesterday moved to ease concern about the potential fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, making a case that the technology restrictions promised by the former US president against China would outweigh the risks to the island. The prospect of Trump’s victory in this week’s election is a worry for Taipei given the Republican nominee in the past cast doubt over the US commitment to defend it from Beijing. But other policies championed by Trump toward China hold some appeal for Taiwan. National Development Council Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) described the proposed technology curbs as potentially having
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list