Ford Motor Co, unwinding a two-decade luxury-car strategy, will provide more detailed financial data to bidders for UK-based Jaguar and Land Rover, the company's finance chief said.
"They've looked at some information," chief financial officer Don Leclair said in an interview on Thursday. Ford is sharing more materials because "there's another level of diligence" as the company pursues bids further, he said.
"We've concluded it's probable we will sell," Leclair said, declining to say how long the process might take. Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford received tentative bids last week, and hasn't disclosed the number or the bidders' identities.
Unloading Jaguar and Land Rover would free resources and management attention for returning Ford's North American automotive operations to profit. Ford sold UK-based Aston Martin in May and said on Thursday it's working on a "strategic review" of Sweden-based Volvo to be done by year's end.
Ford began its foray into European luxury brands in 1987 by buying a controlling stake in Aston Martin, which makes sports cars costing US$100,000 or more.
The US automaker bought Jaguar in 1989 for US$2.5 billion, Volvo in 1999 for US$6.45 billion and Land Rover in 2000 for US$2.73 billion. After putting Aston Martin on the block last year, Ford sold it for US$848 million to investors led by UK auto-racing champion David Richards.
On Friday, Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy raised his rating on Ford to "neutral" from "sell" after the automaker reported earnings of US$750 million for the second quarter, its first quarterly profit in two years.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last