Telefonica SA turned down a request from Portugal Telecom SGPS SA to extend the deadline for its 7.15 billion euro (US$9.2 billion) offer for the Portuguese company’s stake in Brazil’s largest wireless operator.
“The offer, in accordance with its terms and conditions, expired on [Friday],” Telefonica told the Lisbon-based company, according to a copy of the fax published today in a regulatory filing.
Portugal Telecom had asked for an extension to July 28.
Telefonica Chairman Cesar Alierta said on Tuesday that his company would stick to the deadline of its offer for Portugal Telecom’s stake in Brasilcel NV, which controls 60 percent of Vivo Participacoes SA.
Telefonica began its takeover attempt on May 6 with a 5.7 billion euro offer that it said was “fair, full and final.”
Telefonica then raised the bid twice to win over investors.
Spain’s largest phone company won approval from 74 percent of the shareholders present at a June 30 meeting in Lisbon for its offer to buy Portugal Telecom’s stake in Brasilcel.
The Portuguese government blocked the offer as it maintained power over the former state monopoly by controlling 500 class A shares with the right to appoint a third of the board and to veto capital increases, bond sales and dividend payments. Portugal had sold its common shares in the phone company by 2000.
The European Court of Justice on July 8 said the government does not have veto rights at Portugal Telecom. Portugal said it will alter its special rights in the company to comply with the ruling.
Telefonica wants to combine Vivo’s mobile-phone network with Telecomunicacoes de Sao Paulo SA, or Telesp, the Spanish company’s fixed-line unit in Brazil.
Telefonica, which competes in Brazil with Vivendi SA and America Movil SAB, controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, is seeking to bolster Telesp, whose first-quarter sales fell 1.4 percent in local-currency terms.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day