The Fair Trade Commission yesterday approved with conditions the acquisition of Kbro Co (凱擘), the nation’s largest cable TV operator, by Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and his brother Richard Tsai (蔡明興), members of one of the nation’s richest families.
Granting the conditional approval, the commission said it does not oppose the Tsai family’s acquisition of Kbro via recently established Da-fu Media (大富媒體), but that the buyout would be restricted by 13 conditions to assuage monopoly concerns.
Topping the list of strings attached is that Da-fu Media cannot hold or acquire, directly or indirectly, shares in any other cable TV company or of Taiwan Mobile Co (台灣大哥大), which is also controlled by the Tsai family, without prior approval from the Fair Trade Commission.
Daniel Tsai, chairman of Fubon Financial Holding Co (富邦金控), and his brother, who is chairman of Taiwan Mobile, are buying Kbro from the Carlyle Group for a reported NT$65.3 billion (US$2.13 billion), which will hand them the most influential cable TV group in the nation.
Da-fu Media was created to allow the Tsai family to get around a law banning public ownership of media groups. Since Da-fu Media does not have any government shareholders, it does not contravene the law, the National Communications Commission (NCC), the government’s media regulator, said in September.
The Tsai brothers previously attempted to acquire Kbro through Taiwan Mobile, but the NCC blocked the deal because the Taipei City Government holds a 15 percent stake in Taiwan Mobile’s majority shareholder, Fubon Financial, which is also controlled by the Tsai family.
Fair Trade Commission spokeswoman Shih Hui-fen (施惠芬) said that once the acquisition goes through, the number of households to which the Tsai family could provide cable TV services cannot exceed 33 percent of the nation’s total number of cable TV subscribers, while the number of channels they own cannot exceed 25 percent of the total number of available cable TV channels.
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