Mercuries Life Insurance Co (三商美邦人壽) shares surged to a seven-month high this week after local media reported that E.Sun Financial Holding Co (玉山金控) had outbid CTBC Financial Holding Co (中信金控) in the financially strained insurer’s ongoing sale process.
Shares of the mid-sized life insurer climbed 5.8 percent this week to NT$6.72, extending a nearly 18 percent rally over the past month, as investors bet on the likelihood of an impending takeover.
The final round of bidding closed on Thursday, marking a critical step in the 32-year-old insurer’s search for a buyer after years of struggling to meet capital adequacy requirements.
Photo: Wu Hsin-tien, Taipei Times
Local media reports said E.Sun’s offer was about NT$8.2 per share, compared with CTBC’s NT$7.6 per share, though neither of the companies have confirmed the details.
CTBC on Thursday said that its board of directors had approved an investment plan without naming the target, fueling speculation that it had submitted a formal bid.
E.Sun has not issued any statement, while Mercuries declined to comment, calling the reports “market rumors.”
If the process proceeds smoothly, the preferred bidder could be announced in the second half of next month, after the parties finalize pricing and obtain board approval, the reports said.
Mercuries Life, which manages about NT$1.5 trillion (US$48.68 billion) of assets and ranks as Taiwan’s seventh-largest life insurer, has failed to meet the statutory 200 percent risk-based capital ratio for seven consecutive reporting periods. Its net-worth ratio also remains below the 3 percent regulatory threshold, leaving it under sustained pressure from the Financial Supervisory Commission.
With Taiwan’s new insurance capital standard set to take effect next year, capital requirements are poised to tighten further and Mercuries Life risks losing operational flexibility under the new framework without a deep-pocketed backer.
The insurer has attempted multiple capital injections and bond issues with limited success, leading to the current sale process — led by Morgan Stanley — to secure a stable strategic investor.
For E.Sun, acquiring Mercuries Life would mark its first major step into the life insurance business, complementing its strength in banking and wealth management. CTBC, already one of Taiwan’s most diversified financial groups, would also benefit from broadening its insurance portfolio.
Mercuries Life is reportedly leaning toward a share-swap deal that would allow it to benefit from the buyer’s long-term growth. Its capital shortfall has depressed its market valuation, making a full cash sale less attractive.
Market watchers say the contest between E.Sun and CTBC underscores the accelerating consolidation in Taiwan’s life insurance sector, as tighter regulations, prolonged low interest rates and the coming shift to Taiwan’s new insurance capital standard push smaller insurers to seek stronger partners.
France cannot afford to ignore the third credit-rating reduction in less than a year, French Minister of Finance Roland Lescure said. “Three agencies have downgraded us and we can’t ignore this cloud,” he told Franceinfo on Saturday, speaking just hours after S&P lowered his country’s credit rating to “A+” from “AA-” in an unscheduled move. “Fundamentally, it’s an additional cloud to a weather forecast that was already pretty gray. It’s a call for lucidity and responsibility,” he said, adding that this is “a call to be serious.” The credit assessor’s move means France has lost its double-A rating at two of the
Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), founder and CEO of US-based artificial intelligence chip designer Nvidia Corp and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) on Friday celebrated the first Nvidia Blackwell wafer produced on US soil. Huang visited TSMC’s advanced wafer fab in the US state of Arizona and joined the Taiwanese chipmaker’s executives to witness the efforts to “build the infrastructure that powers the world’s AI factories, right here in America,” Nvidia said in a statement. At the event, Huang joined Y.L. Wang (王英郎), vice president of operations at TSMC, in signing their names on the Blackwell wafer to
AI BOOST: Although Taiwan’s reliance on Chinese rare earth elements is limited, it could face indirect impacts from supply issues and price volatility, an economist said DBS Bank Ltd (星展銀行) has sharply raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 5.6 percent, citing stronger-than-expected exports and investment linked to artificial intelligence (AI), as it said that the current momentum could peak soon. The acceleration of the global AI race has fueled a surge in Taiwan’s AI-related capital spending and exports of information and communications technology (ICT) products, which have been key drivers of growth this year. “We have revised our GDP forecast for Taiwan upward to 5.6 percent from 4 percent, an upgrade that mainly reflects stronger-than-expected AI-related exports and investment in the third
RARE EARTHS: The call between the US Treasury Secretary and his Chinese counterpart came as Washington sought to rally G7 partners in response to China’s export controls China and the US on Saturday agreed to conduct another round of trade negotiations in the coming week, as the world’s two biggest economies seek to avoid another damaging tit-for-tat tariff battle. Beijing last week announced sweeping controls on the critical rare earths industry, prompting US President Donald Trump to threaten 100 percent tariffs on imports from China in retaliation. Trump had also threatened to cancel his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in South Korea later this month on the sidelines of the APEC summit. In the latest indication of efforts to resolve their dispute, Chinese state media reported that
RSS