Japan’s Itochu Corp yesterday said the Investment Commission has approved its application to acquire Ting Hsin International Group’s (頂新集團) entire stake in Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓), which operates the Taipei 101 skyscraper.
At the same time, the Japanese trading house has decided to sell its remaining shares in Ting Hsin, it said in a Japanese-language statement posted on its Web site.
Itochu’s statement came after the commission on Wednesday approved its bid for Ting Hsin’s 37.17 percent stake in TFCC for NT$19.3 billion (US$658 million), making the Japanese firm the first foreign shareholder of TFCC.
Photo: David Chang, EPA
Itochu is to buy the TFCC shares from several Ting Hsin affiliates, including Ting Ji Development Co (頂基開發), Ting Li Development Co (頂立開發實業), Ting Gu Development Corp (頂固開發) and Ting An Ltd (頂安開發), through its wholly owned Taiwanese subsidiary Itochu Taiwan Investment Corp (台灣伊藤忠投資).
The company said it is interested in the TFCC share deal because of its experience in the real-estate business.
Ting Hsin, which has been plagued by a domestic food scandal that erupted in 2013, has been trying to sell its TFCC shares since 2014 in an attempt to exit the Taiwanese market.
Malaysian investment company IOI Properties Group Bhd had expressed an interest in buying Ting Hsin’s shares in TFCC, but the deal fell apart after allegations that Chinese capital might have been involved.
Blackstone Group LP, the world’s largest private equity firm, also entered talks to buy the shares, but to no avail.
Itochu is expected to close the deal next month and take over the food conglomerate’s five director seats on TFCC’s board before June, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (sister publication of the Taipei Times) reported yesterday.
Government-controlled entities own about 52 percent of TFCC and hold seven of the company’s 13 board seats, according to the Ministry of Finance.
Ting Hsin is expected to rake in about NT$10 billion in profit after the share sale, the newspaper said.
Itochu said it has also reached an agreement to offload its 17.8 percent of shares in Ting Hsin to British Virgin Islands-based Rich Gold Capital Inc.
Itochu bought a 20 percent stake in Ting Hsin in 2009 and sold some of the shares back to the Taiwanese firm in 2015.
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