Fubon Financial Holding, a leading Taiwanese financial conglomerate, has said for the first time it wants to bid for US insurance giant AIG’s Taiwan unit, Nan Shan Life, local media said Thursday.
The comments come after troubled American International Group said in September it was considering other options after the collapse of the planned 2.15 billion US dollar sale of Nan Shan Life to Hong Kong-listed China Strategic Holdings.
China Strategic Holdings and its partner Primus Financial Holdings called off the deal in September after it was rejected by Taiwan’s Investment Commission.
“Fubon is interested in Nan Shan Life Insurance…. If the price of merger is reasonable, the deal would be a plus to Fubon’s operation,” Fubon Vice Chairman Richard M. Tsai told the Taipei-based Economic Daily News.
Fubon’s major challenger would be Chinatrust Financial, another Taiwanese heavyweight financial group, which has made clear its desire to bid for Nan Shan Life.
Tsai said he expected the price to go higher, given the considerable improvement in the financial climate from last year following the global financial downturn.
Taiwanese authorities said they feared the consortium lacked the experience needed to manage an insurer and argued it had failed to provide a long-term management commitment, claims flatly rejected by the Hong Kong consortium.
The rejection of the bid came as a blow to AIG, once the world’s largest insurer, which has been selling assets to pay back US government loans since its rescue from collapse during the 2008 financial crisis.
AIG and its Hong Kong buyers struck the deal in October last year, but it had been in limbo as Taiwan authorities screened it.
Rumours surfaced late last year that mainland Chinese capital was involved in the deal, something the consortium repeatedly denied.
Taipei, Nov 11, 2010 (AFP)
