Shin Kong Life Insurance has proposed a “reasonable” fee for terminating the contract for a plot of land chipmaker Nvidia Corp is eyeing for its headquarters in Taiwan, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) said yesterday.
Lee said the Taipei City Government had received an official document from the insurer proposing that it pay NT$4.47 billion (US$144.4 million) to terminate the contract, a price he said was reasonable.
Subtracting the NT$3.44 billion the insurer had already paid to the government for the land rights and lease, the difference of NT$1.04 billion was not far from the compensation of NT$800 million that the city government had estimated, Lee said.
Photo: Taipei Times
The gap in the estimates of reasonable compensation arose from NT$100 million in taxes that Shin Kong Life paid to the central government and different approaches to calculating capital costs, he said.
The city and the insurer would both hire accountants to review the various proposals, Lee said, expressing the hope that the amount can be finalized and the termination agreement signed by tomorrow.
Also yesterday, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) told the Taipei City Council that the termination fee would not be paid at the public’s expense, but passed on to Nvidia as a rights fee.
Taipei Department of Land Administration Director Wang Rui-yun (王瑞雲) said that Nvidia was willing to assume the extra costs to establish its headquarters on the plot of land.
The city and the insurer have been at odds over the plot of land in the Beitou Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區) ever since Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) in May announced that the company had chosen the site for its headquarters in Taiwan.
Shin Kong Life has held the land’s surface rights since 2021, after winning a public tender, but has yet to develop the land.
The city objected to allowing the insurer to directly transfer the land rights to Nvidia, citing concerns over potential profiteering. Instead, it requested that Shin Kong Life agree to a mutual contract termination.
The insurer argued that terminating the contract could be seen as a breach of trust by its board of directors because it would damage the company’s benefits, but on Oct. 22 it announced its willingness to terminate the contract, contingent upon the reimbursement of the costs it had incurred related to the land.
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