My first reaction to reading the news that mobile carrier China Mobile (HKEx: 941) had formally scrapped a 4-year-old plan to buy a stake in Taiwanese peer Far EasTone (Taipei: 4904) was: What took them so long? In fact, I wasn’t even aware that China Mobile still even considered this tie-up alive, as the deal attracted controversy from the moment the 2 sides announced it in 2009. This formal scrapping of the deal does seem to represent a milestone of sorts, as it shows that we won’t see any M&A in the sensitive telecoms sectors across the Taiwan Strait anytime soon despite ever warming ties between China and Taiwan. Read Full Post…
The ongoing thaw in relations between China and Taiwan has helped increase trust between the former pair of Cold War adversaries, but hopes for a boom in cross-strait M&A have yet to materialize as lingering suspicions remain. That reality is on display once again this week, with the announcement by Fubon (Taipei: 2881), one of Taiwan’s leading banks, that it has reached an agreement to buy 80 percent of a mid-sized Chinese bank called First Sino Bank for about $900 million. (
