The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) on Friday said that it has approved food and retail conglomerate Uni-President Group’s (統一集團) bid to take full ownership of hypermarket operator Carrefour Taiwan (家樂福), with several conditions attached.
The commission said the acquisition was approved on Wednesday.
To protect the interests of small and medium-sized suppliers and curb monopolistic price gouging, the conglomerate must not take advantage of its dominant distribution channels to discriminate against suppliers without legitimate reasons, the commission said.
Photo: CNA
In the three years following the acquisition, Presicarre Corp (家福) should maintain its special transaction program for small and medium-sized suppliers — those with annual trading value of less than NT$1 million (US$32,636) — and ensure that any change to the program does not put those suppliers in a less favorable position, the commission added.
Presicarre, the operator of Carrefour Taiwan, was established by Carrefour SA and Uni-President in 1987 as a joint venture to introduce hypermarkets to Taiwan under the Carrefour brand.
For three years after the closing of the acquisition, Presicarre and Uni-President may not discuss “copurchasing” of goods with individual suppliers, unless requested by the latter, the commission said.
During that period, Uni-President must submit a report to the commission by June 1 every year to verify that it has complied with the conditions.
The agency also stipulated several conditions about the composition of the board of directors at Presicarre after the acquisition.
Uni-President Group in July last year announced that its two affiliates — President Chain Store Corp (統一超商) and Uni-President Enterprises Corp (統一企業), which together hold 40 percent of Carrefour Taiwan — had agreed to take full ownership of Carrefour Taiwan by acquiring the 60 percent stake owned by the hypermarket’s French parent company.
The group at the time said that Uni-President Enterprises would acquire an additional 49.5 percent share in Carrefour Taiwan for NT$23.9 billion and President Chain Store would acquire 10.5 percent for NT$5.1 billion.
The NT$29 billion valuation translates into a price of about NT$65 per share, Uni-President said.
Following the acquisition, Uni-President Enterprises would have a 70 percent stake in Carrefour Taiwan and President Chain Store would have 30 percent, it said.
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
RSS