# Grab Calls Taiwan's Block on Its $600 Million Foodpanda Deal a Blow to Expansion Plans > A day after Taiwan's antitrust regulator blocked Grab's $600 million bid for foodpanda's local business, Grab broke its silence with a statement calling the outcome a setback, saying it was disappointed to be shut out of serving Taiwanese consumers. - Source: South East Money - Canonical URL: https://southeastmoney.id/article/grab-calls-taiwan-s-block-on-its-600-million-foodpanda-deal-a-blow-to-expansion-plans - Author: Tim - Section: Business - Published: 2026-10-24T00:06:21.350Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T00:06:21.350Z - Tags: Grab, foodpanda, Delivery Hero, Uber, Taiwan, Fair Trade Commission, antitrust --- Grab has issued its first public response to Taiwan's decision blocking its $600 million acquisition of foodpanda's local business, saying it is disappointed at being unable to serve Taiwanese consumers through the deal. The statement, Grab's clearest comment yet on the ruling, lands as the most direct sign so far of how seriously the company is treating the loss of what would have been its first market outside Southeast Asia. ## A measured response, not a retreat Notably, the statement stops short of announcing an appeal, a renegotiated structure, or an outright withdrawal from Taiwan. That restraint is its own kind of signal: Grab is not treating the block as the final word, but it also is not yet committing publicly to a specific next step. Companies in this position typically use a carefully worded statement like this to register disappointment for investors and the public while leaving room to negotiate quietly with regulators or restructure the deal behind the scenes. ## The underlying objection hasn't gone away Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission blocked the deal on competition grounds tied not to Grab's standalone market position but to its relationship with Uber: Uber holds a 13.1% stake in Grab, and Uber's chief executive sat on Grab's board until stepping down in July 2026. Because Uber Eats is one of Taiwan's two dominant food delivery platforms alongside foodpanda, regulators concluded that Grab owning both the foodpanda Taiwan business and those Uber ties would dull its incentive to compete hard against Uber Eats. Nothing in Grab's statement addresses that structural issue directly, which means whatever Grab does next will likely have to grapple with the same equity-and-board-overlap objection rather than simply resubmitting the same deal. ## An echo of 2024 This is the second time in two years that Taiwan's regulator has stopped an acquisition of foodpanda's local operations, after blocking Uber's own attempt to buy the unit in 2024 on similar grounds. Two blocked deals for the same asset, tied to the same underlying corporate relationship, suggests Taiwanese regulators have effectively drawn a line around the Grab-Uber shareholding structure that neither company has yet found a way around. ## What's still unresolved Delivery Hero, the seller, has not issued a public statement of its own, and it remains unclear whether it will keep the Taiwan unit, seek a different buyer, or wait to see if Grab finds a path back to the table. For Grab, the bigger question extends beyond Taiwan: if its Uber ties are enough to sink a deal there, similar scrutiny could follow Grab into other markets as it tries to expand for the first time beyond the Southeast Asian footprint it built its business on. --- Originally published by South East Money. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://southeastmoney.id/article/grab-calls-taiwan-s-block-on-its-600-million-foodpanda-deal-a-blow-to-expansion-plans.