CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金), the nation’s third-largest financial service provider by assets, has won the priority rights to negotiate the acquisition of Taiwan Life Insurance Co (台壽), local media reports said.
The deal, to be carried out through a share swap scheme, may be settled as early as today, if the two sides can come to an agreement about boardroom representation, employee benefits and other details, the reports said, after CTBC agreed to allow Taiwan Life to be the surviving entity.
CTBC Financial outbid Waterland Financial Holding Co (國票金) on Monday last week by offering to pay Taiwan Life NT$27 per share, higher than the NT$25 per share offered by Waterland Financial, the reports said, without citing sources.
The winning bidder proposed trading each Taiwan Life share for about one-and-a-half CTBC Financial shares, while Waterland Financial offered to exchange individual Taiwan Life shares for two-and-a-half shares, the reports said.
Taiwan Life stands to gain an 8 percent premium by choosing CTBC, whose shares closed at NT$19.85 on Friday, compared with NT$10.1 for Waterland Financial that left virtually no premium based on Taiwan Stock Exchange data.
The figures suggest the deal would value about NT$24 billion (US$812.68 million), reports said.
Taiwan Life Insurance chairman Chu Ping-yu (朱炳昱) in June announced the plans to find a buyer, adding that the firm would prefer a financial holding company, after shareholders Long Bon International Co (龍邦), a Greater Taichung-based hotel service provider, and state-owned Bank of Taiwan (台灣銀行) expressed a preference to be investors rather than operators.
However, the insurer has insisted on retaining its moniker due to contractual obligations and other concerns, Chu said.
The prospective buyer must also be able to guarantee it will protect the rights of Taiwan Life employees and policyholders as well as demonstrate an ability to provide good returns, Chu added.
Taiwan Life employs 3,700 sales agents.
The insurer has NT$400 billion in investment funds, of which about NT$20.9 billion in real-estate properties, leaving ample room before hitting the 30 percent investment ceiling, company data showed.
The macro-environment has made it increasingly difficult for life insurers to thrive without the backing of other financial affiliates, Chu said.
If all proceeds as planned, Taiwan Life would become the third insurer CTBC Financial acquires in two years after the local unit of US Met Life Inc in 2011 and the Taiwanese branch of Canada’s Manulife International Ltd in July.
The Financial Supervisory Commission has yet to approve the Manulife buyout.
As of December last year, Taiwan Life has an embedded value of NT$44.6 per share, but its net value may have taken a hit last quarter due to uncertainty over the US quantitative easing policy, analysts said.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
RSS