Taiwan Merger Cancelled

The proposed merger between Taiwan's Far EasTone and KG Telecom has been cancelled. The merger, which would have created the country's second largest GSM network operator was only announced in the middle of July this year.

KG Telecom said that FarEasTone had failed to come up with a detailed plan for the merger.

FarEasTone originally hoped to complete the due diligence on KG Telecom by last week before officially taking over the latter's business. But Far EasTone apparently recently informed KG Telecom that it hoped to postpone the merger without explaining why.

"Since they failed to respond to our request on time, we decided not to continue the partnership with them," KG Telecom said in a statement.

The merged company would have had a subscriber base of around 7.7 million, following the incorporation of kg telecom's existing 3.34 million subscriber base, and would make it the country's second largest mobile phone network behind Taiwan Cellular. Taiwan Cellular has 8.73 million subscribers and Chunghwa telecom's has 7.67 million subscribers."

Posted to the site on 1st September 2003