IBF Financial Holdings Co (國票金控) is to acquire all EnTie Commercial Bank (安泰銀行) shares through a cash-and-share swap to secure a bigger space in the banking market, IBF said yesterday.
Under the deal, which was approved by IBF’s board of directors earlier yesterday, each EnTie shareholder is to receive NT$9.46673 in cash and 0.493344 class A preferred shares in IBF for each EnTie share, it said.
The class A shares could be converted into IBF common shares after one year, it said.
Photo: CNA
The offer is valued at NT$17.21 per share, a premium of 1.2 percent over EnTie’s closing share price on Wednesday and 6.4 percent above its average price for the past 20 trading sessions, IBF said.
However, the offer is 1 percent lower than EnTie’s net worth of NT$17.44 per share as of June 30, it said.
The total value of the deal would be NT$33.7 billion (US$1.2 billion), IBF said.
Photo: CNA
“We think that it is a reasonable buyout price,” IBF executive vice president Andrew Chiu (邱銘恩) told a news conference in Taipei.
His company would raise fresh capital of NT$18.5 billion and issue new preferred shares at NT$15.7 each to finance the deal, if it is approved by its shareholders at a special meeting on Dec. 2 and separately by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), Chiu said.
Longreach Group, which has about a 50 percent stake in EnTie, would have about a 9 percent stake in IBF after the share swap, but the private equity firm would not intervene in IBF’s management and would sell the shares within a year, IBF said.
After the deal, EnTie shareholders would hold a combined 18 percent stake in IBF, it said.
The commission does not bar financial conglomerates from having more than one banking unit, but as operating a bank requires significant capital, it would examine whether IBF Financial, which operates Web-only Rakuten International Commercial Bank Co (樂天國際銀行), has a financial profile solid enough to support twin operations, Banking Bureau Chief Secretary Phil Tong (童政彰) said yesterday.
“There has been a consensus in IBF Financial’s board of directors for long time that we need to buy a bank or a life insurer, as IBF, which has mainly focused on bills finance, lacks a long-term platform managing money flow,” IBF chairman Wea Chi-lin (魏啟林) said.
Even though IBF has launched a virtual bank, regulations prohibit it from corporate banking and it would take a while before regulators could amend those rules, Wea said.
The acquisition of EnTie is expected to create synergy, he added.
The company would redirect EnTie’s operations to focus on wealth management and corporate lending, especially loans to small and medium-sized enterprises, and it would transfer its bill finance clients to the new unit, Wea said, adding that the Internet bank would focus on young consumers and inclusive finance.
The IBF-EnTie deal would be the latest in which a foreign private equity firm sells a local bank, after SAC Private Capital Group in 2014 sold Cosmos Bank Taiwan (萬泰銀行) to China Development Financial Holding Corp (中華開發金控) and Carlyle Group LP in 2016 sold Ta Chong Bank (大眾銀行) to Yuanta Financial Holding Co (元大金控), FSC data showed.
UNPRECEDENTED PACE: Micron Technology has announced plans to expand manufacturing capabilities with the acquisition of a new chip plant in Miaoli Micron Technology Inc unveiled a newly acquired chip plant in Miaoli County yesterday, as the company expands capacity to meet growing demand for advanced DRAM chips, including high-bandwidth memory chips amid the artificial intelligence boom. The plant in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), which Micron acquired from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電) for US$1.8 billion, is expected to make a sizeable capacity contribution to the company from fiscal 2028, the company said in a statement. It would be an extended production site of Micron’s large-scale manufacturing hub in Taichung, the company said. As the global semiconductor industry is racing to reach US$1 trillion
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings Ltd has applied for regulatory approval to acquire the Taiwan operations of Germany-based Delivery Hero SE's Foodpanda in a deal valued at about US$600 million. Grab submitted the filing to the Fair Trade Commission on Friday last week, with the transaction subject to regulatory review and approval, the company said in a statement yesterday. Its independent governance structure would help foster a healthy and competitive market in Taiwan if the deal is approved, Grab said. Grab, which is listed on the NASDAQ, said in the filing that US-based Uber Technologies Inc holds about 13 percent of
Taiwan’s food delivery market could undergo a major shift if Singapore-based Grab Holdings Ltd completes its planned acquisition of Delivery Hero SE’s Foodpanda business in Taiwan, industry experts said. Grab on Monday last week announced it would acquire Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations for US$600 million. The deal is expected to be finalized in the second half of this year, with Grab aiming to complete user migration to its platform by the first half of next year. A duopoly between Uber Eats and Foodpanda dominates Taiwan’s delivery market, a structure that has remained intact since the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) blocked Uber Technologies Inc’s
Memory chip stocks extended their losses yesterday after Alphabet Inc’s Google publicized research that could allow more efficient use of the storage needed for artificial intelligence (AI) development. SK Hynix Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, South Korean leaders in the market, fell more than 6 percent and about 5 percent respectively in Seoul. In the US, Micron Technology Inc, Western Digital Corp and Sandisk Corp slid more than 2 percent in pre-market trading, after they all closed lower on Wednesday. Memory companies have been on a tear in recent months as the rapid development of AI infrastructure triggered a spike in chip
RSS