MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the nation’s biggest handset chip designer, yesterday said it had won approval from South Korean regulators to merge with smaller rival MStar Semiconductor Inc (晨星半導體).
However, the merger between the two has been postponed again as they await approval from Chinese antitrust authorities, the two companies said in separate filings to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Both companies were notified yesterday by South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) that they had secured regulatory approval for the merger.
“Considering that the deal still faces regulatory review in China, the companies propose to tentatively change the effective date for the merger to Aug. 1 from May 1,” they said in their filings.
In December last year, the companies announced pushing back the effective date for the merger from the original Jan. 1 to May 1, due to antitrust concerns in South Korea and China.
MediaTek in June last year announced that it planned to acquire LCD TV chip designer MStar in a deal estimated to be worth NT$115 billion (US$3.86 billion), as the Hsinchu-based company seeks to broaden its product portfolio to compete with rivals such as US-based Qualcomm Inc and China’s Spreadtrum Communications (展訊通信).
Taiwan’s FTC gave the green light to the deal in August last year.
MStar shares closed up 0.43 percent at NT$232, while those of MediaTek fell 0.88 percent to NT$338.5, both outpacing the benchmark TAIEX, which dropped 1.47 percent.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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