The Taipei City Government yesterday signed a contract with Nan Shan Life Insurance Co (南山人壽) to lease one of its most valuable properties in Xinyi District (信義), Taipei, to the company, with a new landmark building expected to create about 10,000 jobs and boost the economy upon its completion in seven years.
The company won the bid for the 5,357 ping (17,709m2) property, which houses the Taipei World Trade Center’s Hall No. 2, with a record royalty of NT$26.8 billion (US$894 million). The lease of public land is a key project for the city government to speed up urban renewal and generate revenue.
Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said the “Nan Shan Plaza” would attract more than NT$40 billion in private business, while generating revenue of more than NT$220 million every year for the city government.
“The nation is still fighting the economic recession. We are concerned about the situation, but not worried. The Nan Shan Plaza project will create job opportunities and boost the economy, and the city government will continue its efforts to encourage private investments in large-scale development projects,” Hau said yesterday at a signing ceremony at Taipei City Hall.
Du Ying-tzyong (杜英宗), Nan Shan’s vice chairman, said the company aimed to make the plaza, which will house retail and entertainment facilities, as well as cultural venues including a museum, an international landmark that would attract corporations to set up their headquarters and boost reputations.
Nan Shan plans to work with Mitsubishi Estate, architect of the Omotesando in Tokyo, and Jones Lang LaSalle, a former leasing agent for Taipei 101, to construct new buildings with towers of 28 stories and 36 stories.
Du declined to comment on the company’s ambition to surpass Taipei 101 with the plaza’s architectural style and in terms of the cost of renting office space, but said the company is confident that the buildings would help boost economic value for the company.
Taipei City’s Department of Finance said yesterday that it is planning another auction — for the city’s remaining property in Xinyi District.
Department of Finance Commissioner Chiu Da-chan (邱大展) said the department would start accepting bids for the land, which is near the Taiwan Petroleum Corp building, by the end of this year.
The bidding process will be finalized next year, with the starting price at about NT$20 billion, he said.
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday said it would work with US chipmaker Intel Corp to jointly develop and deploy next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and intelligent computing platforms in a move to capture booming demand for AI computing systems. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康), said in a statement that the partnership would combine its global manufacturing scale, system integration expertise and AI data center deployment capabilities with Intel’s strengths in processor architecture, silicon technologies and software ecosystem. The companies said they plan to work on equipment used in AI data centers, including server racks powered by
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS