Kazakhstan is to pay US$486.3 million to buy a stake in US nuclear reactor firm Westinghouse from its majority owner, Toshiba, news reports said yesterday.
The Japanese giant will sign an agreement this month to sell a 10 percent stake in Westinghouse to state-run uranium firm Kazatomprom for slightly more than ?60 billion, the Nikkei newspaper said.
By forging ties with uranium-rich Kazakhstan Toshiba, which holds a 77 percent stake in Westinghouse, aims to secure stable supplies of the resource used by power plants, Jiji Press said.
Toshiba expects to win more orders to build power facilities from power companies in the US and elsewhere by having Kazatomprom in its alliance and securing a long-term supply of uranium, the Nikkei said.
The tie-up will also help Kazatomprom expand its sales channels worldwide and accelerate mining projects, the Nikkei said.
Toshiba and Westinghouse are also expected to transfer uranium-processing technology to Kazatomprom, it said.
International energy firms are competing to secure nuclear fuel amid growing energy demand, particularly in emerging economies such as China and India.
Japan now procures uranium mainly from Australia and Canada.
Toshiba president Atsutoshi Nishida visited Kazakhstan in April with Japanese minister of economy, trade and industry Akira Amari, the Asahi Shimbun said.
Japan and Kazakhstan have agreed to cooperate in uranium-processing technology and trade.
US government approval is required for transactions in which a foreign entity takes a stake in a US business possessing nuclear technology, the Nikkei said.
US officials have indicated that the deal poses no problems, the newspaper said.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS