Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) yesterday said it is in talks with multiple potential buyers to sell its full holdings in Taipei Financial Center Corp (TFCC, 台北金融大樓), although the food conglomerate declined to confirm if Japan’s Itochu Corp is among those participating in the negotiation.
Ting Hsin owns a 37.2 percent stake in TFCC, which operates the Taipei 101 skyscraper.
Speculations yesterday surfaced that Ting Hsin was planning to sell its TFCC shares to Itochu, a major shareholder in the food conglomerate, and was considering proposing to the board of directors to allow the Japanese retailer to complete due diligence by the end of next month at the earliest, local media reported yesterday.
Ting Hsin declined to comment on the speculation, saying only that a number of potential buyers at home and from abroad are interested in the share sale. The company has been seeking potential buyers of the TFCC shares, but nothing substantial has been reached, the company said.
In 2014, Ting Hsin had planned to sell its TFCC holdings in an attempt to entirely exit the Taiwanese market following a major food scandal over the use of substandard oil and a subsequent boycott of its products by consumers.
However, Ting Hsin has had difficulty off-loading its TFCC shares since then.
In 2015, Blackstone Group, one of the world’s largest private equity funds, approached Ting Hsin to buy all of its shares in TFCC for NT$16.4 billion (US$546 million), or NT$30 a share. The talks ended without results.
Before that, Malaysian investment company IOI Properties Group Bhd in 2014 had bid to buy all of Ting Hsin’s TFCC shares for NT$25.14 billion, or NT$45 each, but that transaction was thwarted by the Ministry of Finance, which holds the biggest stake of TFCC at 52 percent.
The ministry voted against the deal as it suspected Chinese investors were behind IOI Properties.
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