TAIWAN Trends and Developments Contributed by: Eddie Chan, Derrick Yang, Winnie Lin and Yuan-Yuan Lo, Lee and Li Attorneys-at-Law
industry market restructuring and technological changes, Taiwan’s role is becoming increasingly crucial. M&A Activities Globally and in Taiwan Recent global trends In 2023 and 2024, although the global economy is gradually recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, M&A activities remain stagnant due to factors such as high inflation, high interest rates, and the tightening of mon- etary policies by central banks worldwide. Addi- tionally, export controls, high-tech barriers, war conflicts, and global geopolitical developments continue to affect the global M&A market. More- over, due to stricter national security issues and antitrust regulations, the number of large-scale global M&A transactions has decreased, shift- ing towards small to medium-sized investment cases. Also, stock markets in many regions have seen more rises than falls during this period, with capital flowing into the stock market, which has dampened many companies’ interest in expan- sion through acquisitions and raised the expect- ed transaction amounts for M&A deals. Many of these factors may remain to exert pressure on M&A activities in 2025. Notwithstanding the foregoing, according to the statistics, deals maintained a steady pace in vol- ume and value growth that began in the second half of 2023, showing a gradual recovery to be rebounded from the previous declines. Recent developments in Taiwan M&A activities in Taiwan are similarly influenced by the aforementioned global economic, finan- cial and political situations, showing trends consistent with global M&A activities, includ- ing a lack of large-scale mergers, leading to a decrease in the overall transaction value.
Research reports indicate that the M&A activities in Taiwan’s technology sector are largely con- centrated in the fields of semiconductors, elec- tronic components, and AI applications. Looking at the top ten M&A transactions in Taiwan for the past ten years, it can be observed that the TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecommunications) industry is a primary focus for M&A, with nearly half of the transaction value involving Taiwanese companies acquiring overseas. From the second half of 2023, Taiwan’s M&A market gradually warmed up, with the technol- ogy industry engaging in several large-scale cross-border M&A deals to facilitate industrial upgrading and transformation. This demon- strates that Taiwanese enterprises are actively expanding overseas to acquire key technologies or production bases, undertaking a global trans- formation, which is one of the key growth strate- gies for Taiwan’s technology industry. Additionally, with the rise of regional economies and the reshaping of global supply chains in recent years, Taiwanese companies are active- ly expanding their business footprint through cross-border M&A. Investments and seeking co-operation in Europe and Southeast Asia are becoming popular. Notably, one of the driving forces for Taiwan’s outbound investments and M&A transactions in the first half of 2024 also related to the influence of TSMC’s establishment of factories in Japan, Germany and the United States. The influence is expected to continue in 2025. On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that Taiwan’s regulations related to carbon reduction provide a clearer path by introducing the regu- lations for carbon fee pricing which took effect on 29 August 2024, leading to a more urgent demand for green electricity from corporate
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