Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC) is expected to complete its acquisition of Taoyuan’s Taimall Family Entertainment Shopping Mall (台茂購物中心) late next month, a Taimall executive said yesterday.
“If both parties follow up the deal’s procedures smoothly, we can expect to close it in mid or late October,” Taimall general manager David Kuo (郭大睿) said yesterday by telephone.
Kuo declined to divulge more details, citing confidentiality.
He was tight-lipped about whether the deal was worth NT$6.6 billion (US$204.85 million) as media outlets reported yesterday.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported yesterday that GIC plans to spend another NT$6.6 billion to take over the shopping mall’s ownership after having a 10 percent stake.
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported on Sunday that Taimall was “satisfied with the offer” since the mall has an estimated net worth of NT$7 billion including its seven-story building and 15,125 ping (5 hectares) of land.
Launched in 1997 with a working capital of NT$3.356 billion, Taimall began to turn a profit in 2004, reaching NT$2.8 billion in revenues last year, the report said, adding that the deal would be GIC’s first acquisition of a shopping mall in Taiwan after having acquired shopping centers in Australia and England.
Once GIC completes its acquisition of Taimall, the mall’s employees would be retained although their seniority would be recalculated, the paper said.
As of press time, GIC had not returned calls for further confirmation.
Established in 1981, GIC is a global investment management firm that manages Singapore’s foreign reserves and invests internationally in equities, commodities, money markets, real estate and private equity, the company says on its Web site. Since its inception, GIC has grown from managing a few billion dollars to more than US$100 billion today.
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