Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian's investment company said yesterday its tender offer for 20 million additional shares of Ford Motor Co attracted a huge response and would easily enable it to increase its stake in the automaker to about 5.5 percent.
Tracinda Corp said in a statement its tender offer of US$8.50 a share drew offers of more than 1 billion of the company’s shares. It will buy 20 million shares for about US$170 million.
Tracinda launched a cash tender offer on May 9 for the additional shares, which was a slight premium to the stock’s May 8 closing price of US$8.20. Ford shares have since declined more than 20 percent and closed on Monday at US$6.36, up US$0.32, or 5.3 percent.
Tracinda began accumulating 100 million Ford shares, or 4.7 percent of the outstanding stock, on April 2 at an average cost of US$6.91 per share.
Ford’s board of directors had said it was neutral and would express no opinion about the offer.
The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker announced last month that it no longer expected to return to profitability by next year. Ford is cutting production in North America for the rest of this year as high gas prices and a weak economy cut into sales.
The tender offer officially expired at 5pm on Monday. Tracinda had the option not to buy the additional shares under certain circumstances.
They included: “any change or prospective change in the affairs” of Ford that has a “materially adverse effect” on the company or any event that “would adversely affect the extension of credit by banks or other financial institutions.”
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
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
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