Activist investors led by Shanyuan Group (三圓建設) chairman Wang Kuang-hsiang (王光祥) won seven seats on Tatung Co’s (大同) nine-member board at an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting in Taipei yesterday, ending the founding Lin (林) family’s 102-year control.
With approval from the Ministry of Economic Affairs, institutional shareholders held the special meeting to elect new board members, nearly four months after Tatung deprived 27 investors owning a combined 53 percent stake in the firm of their voting rights at a shareholders’ meeting on June 30.
Shareholders with a combined 92.34 percent stake, or 2.03 billion shares, showed up to vote or had placed their ballots via an electronic voting platform operated by Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (台灣集保), said Hsin Tung Investment Consultancy Co (欣同) chairman Lin Hung-hsin (林宏信), who chaired the meeting.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Candidates appointed by institutional investors won seven seats, including two independent director seats, with leading activist investors Wang, Lin Hung-hsin and Eastern Broadcasting Co (東森電視) chairman Lin Wen-yuan (林文淵) elected as new board directors and garnering 1.43 billion, 1.42 billion and 1.42 billion votes respectively.
Tatung-appointed candidates won two seats, with Tatung chairwoman Lin Kuo Wen-yen (林郭文艷) receiving 1.3 billion votes to stay on the board and James Wang (王金來), a former chairman of Ernst & Young Taiwan, gaining 2.29 billion votes, the highest tally, to take the third independent director seat.
The firm is to hold an extraordinary board meeting on Wednesday next week at the earliest to elect a new chair, Wang Kuang-hsiang told a news conference yesterday.
“We will support Lin Wen-yuan as the new chairman and hope to make Tatung prosperous for the next century,” Wang said.
Lin Kuo, who took over as chairwoman in February 2018 when her husband, Lin Wei-shan (林蔚山), stepped down over a corporate scandal, feared institutional investors might sell the firm’s properties, while the board election was held under unresolved suspicions of Chinese involvement.
“I will continue to protect Tatung as a matter of Taiwanese national security,” Lin Kuo said.
Stephen Wu (吳志光), a lawyer at Lee and Li Attorneys-at-Law (理律法律事務所), said that her decision to stay on the board was unusual.
Many in such a scenario would concentrate on winning the independent director seats, as they can curb bad decisions proposed by a rival party, he said.
“It seems that Lin Kuo has decided to fight until the last minute ... staying on the board might enable her to do something more if the FSC [Financial Supervisory Commission] finds signs of Chinese influence in the firm again,” Wu said.
The Securities and Futures Investors Protection Center is to continue its lawsuit against Lin Kuo, even though company shareholders elected a new board, and if the agency wins, Lin Kuo would be barred from serving on the board.
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
INTENSIFYING THREATS: Beijing’s tactics include massive attacks on the government service network, aircraft and naval vessel incursions and damaging undersea cables China is prepared to interfere in November’s nine-in-one local elections by launching massive attacks on the Taiwanese government’s service network (GSN), a report published by the National Security Bureau showed. The report was submitted to the Legislative Yuan ahead of the bureau’s scheduled briefing at the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The national security team has identified about 13,000 suspicious Internet accounts and 860,000 disputed messages, the bureau said of China’s cognitive warfare against Taiwan. The disputed messages focus on major foreign affairs, national defense and economic issues, which were produced using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and distributed through Chinese
COUNTERING HOSTILITY: The draft bill would require the US to increase diplomatic pressure on China and would impose sanctions on those who sabotage undersea cable networks US lawmakers on Thursday introduced a bipartisan bill to bolster the resilience of Taiwan’s submarine cables to counter China’s hostile activities. The proposal, titled the critical undersea infrastructure resilience initiative act, was cosponsored by Republican representatives Mike Lawler and Greg Stanton, and Democratic Representative Dave Min. US Senators John Curtis and Jacky Rosen also introduced a companion bill in the US Senate, which has passed markup at the chamber’s Committee on Foreign Relations. The House’s version of the bill would prioritize the deployment of sensors to detect disruptions or potential sabotage in real-time and enhance early warning capabilities through global intelligence sharing frameworks,
RSS