TAIPEI: Taiwan said on Wednesday that the merger would seriously hurt market competition and denied the ride-hailing behemoth Uber’s offer to purchase Foodpanda, a division of Delivery Hero, on the island.
By the first half of 2025, the US ride-hailing behemoth planned to pay US$950 million to acquire Foodpanda Taiwan, combining the two leading companies in Taiwan’s food delivery industry.
“Uber will have no competition at all if it buys Foodpanda,” Chen Chi-ming, vice chairman of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) in Taiwan, stated at a news conference.
Chen stated that the combined companies’ market share will surpass 90 percent and that the merger’s negative effects on market competitiveness far outweigh its financial gains.
“No remedial actions could adequately guarantee the preservation of competition,” he stated.
The May announcement was referred to by Uber as one of Taiwan’s biggest foreign transactions outside of the semiconductor sector.
Chen added that in order to determine how the merger will affect competition, the FTC performed an economic analysis and got more than 600 answers from food delivery services and other pertinent organizations.
Su Po-hao, a spokesman for Taiwan’s delivery trade union, said the FTC’s ruling ensures “greater benefits for the future of the food delivery industry.”
According to the union, the combination would have resulted in a monopoly and significant losses for customers, vendors, and delivery riders.
According to May’s statement, the firms have also come to a separate deal wherein Uber would purchase US$300 million worth of freshly issued ordinary shares of Delivery Hero.
