China Cinda Asset Management (中國信達資產管理公司) is leading a Chinese consortium bidding for a stake in American International Group’s (AIG) Asian arm, AIA, a report said yesterday.
The state-run investment firm is in talks with the US insurance giant to buy into AIA, either before its initial public offering in Hong Kong in October or during the IPO process as a strategic investor, the South China Morning Post said, citing unnamed bankers with knowledge of the talks.
The report did not say which other firms were involved or how much of AIA they planned to buy, but it did say a major state-owned bank was believed to be involved.
Cinda’s press office said it was not aware of any new development on AIA, adding that the Post had not contacted Cinda before running the story.
Earlier this month, China’s 21st Century Business Herald, a Chinese-language newspaper, reported that a consortium formed by the nation’s largest life insurer, China Life Insurance Co (中國人壽), China Cinda, and the Fosun Group (復星集團), had temporarily dropped a bid for AIA on concerns that it could be priced too high.
At least four consortia made up of private Chinese investors have approached AIG about its Asian business, the Post reported.
AIA reportedly plans to list in Hong Kong in the fourth quarter of this year and hopes to raise as much as US$23 billion.
Sovereign wealth funds from Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar have also expressed an interest in AIA, according to the Financial Times.
Seeking to repay billions of dollars in bailout funds, AIG says it will “proceed as soon as practicable” with the listing of AIA.
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