Electronics giant Philips has sold down its stake in a joint venture in South Korea to below 20 percent as part of its move to adjust business portfolios, company officials said yesterday.
Philips Electronics sold a 13 percent stake in LG.Philips LCD, the world's second largest maker of flat panel screens, to raise US$2.2 billion, the joint venture said.
"They divested the shares to international and local financial institutions in a block sale deal in the pre-opening session this morning," an LG.Philips LCD spokeswoman said.
Through the sale the Dutch company reduced its holding to 19.9 percent from 32.9 percent. Its Korean partner, LG Electronics, is the largest shareholder in LG.Philips LCD, with 37.9 percent.
Nomura Securities analyst Kim Hee-yeon said Philips was able to sell the shares more swiftly than expected at a good price because LG.Philips LCD posted surprisingly strong third-quarter results this week.
"It's disappointing that Philips failed to find a strategic investor this time, but given its willingness to exit, the rest will likely go to a strategic partner," she said.
LG.Philips LCD CEO Kwon Young-soo said Tuesday that his company was looking for a new partner.
"The prospective buyers in talks are non-Koreans and they include our major client and financial investor," he said.
LG.Philips LCD had incurred large operating losses over four straight quarters to March due to a sharp price decline caused by industry-wide oversupply of flat panels and sluggish demand.
But prices started to rebound in April thanks to increased demand for screens used in various tech products.
For the three months to last month LG.Philips LCD posted a net profit of 524 billion won (US$570.4 million) compared with a loss of 595 billion won a year earlier.
Sales jumped 42.6 percent to a record 3.95 trillion won. Operating profit reached 693 billion won, the highest since the second quarter of 2004, compared with a 382 billion won loss a year earlier.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS