Singfor Life Insurance Co (幸福人壽) yesterday won an auction for a plot of land in Xinyi District with a bid of NT$2.818 billion (US$83.3 million) — 54 percent higher than the floor price — with analysts saying upscale housing units remained commercially viable amid the recession.
Singfor, which was fined in December by the Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) for acquiring an adjacent plot with excess capital, said in a statement that it had joined the bid on behalf of Jinxiang Construction Co (金享建設) in China and had transferred the first plot to the firm the previous day.
The transfer earned Singfor a profit of NT$200 million, the statement said.
After consulting Jinxiang, the insurance company agreed to pay NT$985 million more than the floor price of NT$1.83 billion for the D3 plot, the statement said.
“Singfor is a nominal buyer only,” the statement said. “The arrangement enabled the company to comply with the FSC ban on property deals and to honor its pledge to join the auction.”
Singfor promised Citibank Taiwan (花旗銀行) in July that it would seek to win the bid for the 911 ping (3,012m²) plot of land after securing the unit next to it. Both pieces are located across from the Taipei 101 building and cost Singfor an average of NT$900,000 per ping.
Singfor said the real buyer, Chen Chung-ming (陳忠明), was a low-key Taiwanese businessman who has run successful land development businesses in different parts of China for the past two decades. Chen, a vice chairman of the Taiwan Businessmen Association in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, was attracted to the profit potential of the area following improvements in cross-strait ties, the statement said.
“Chen shares the emerging confidence that the economy will start to revive in the second half,” the statement said.
Property analysts said that in light of its size, the buyer was likely to turn D3 into luxurious housing units.
“Though expensive, the land is the last chance to secure a foothold in the upscale Xinyi District,” Victor Chang (張欣民), a marketing consultant at Era Real Estate Taiwan (易而安不動產), said by telephone. “An upscale residential complex promises the best investment option as office buildings are less profitable and there are already several department stores in the district.”
Jeffrey Huang (黃增福), a researcher at Evertrust Rehouse Group (永慶房仲集團), agreed and said the builder would have to charge NT$1.3 million per ping after putting the complex on the market.
“Although the market is sluggish at present, it will definitely have recovered in three years’ time,” Huang said. “The district has a distinct and unique appeal that cannot be found in other areas. That explains why real estate there has remained so expensive despite the recession.”
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
INDUSTRY LEADER: INDUSTRY LEADER: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS