FINANCE
BOA to end buyout fund
Bank of America Corp, (BOA) the biggest US lender by assets, plans to wind down its flagship US$5 billion buyout fund as it seeks to preserve capital, said a person with knowledge of the plan. The bank has made a “strategic decision” to sell most of the Capital Partners fund’s remaining investments over time, the person said, citing an internal memo sent late on Tuesday at the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company. The team managing those assets will become an independent firm, said the person, who declined to be identified because the plan isn’t public. The memo was sent from Jim Forbes, head of the bank’s global principal investments unit.
ENERGY
AES agrees to buy DPL
AES Corp, a US power producer with operations in 29 countries, agreed to buy DPL Inc for US$3.5 billion in cash, adding more than 500,000 customers in Ohio. AES will pay US$30 a share for Dayton, Ohio-based DPL, according to a statement yesterday. That’s an 8.7 percent premium on Tuesday’s closing price of US$27.59 a share. Arlington, Virginia-based AES will also assume US$1.2 billion in net debt. “We are concentrating our growth efforts in a few key markets, including the US utility sector,” Paul Hanrahan, chief executive officer of AES, said in the statement. “The DPL acquisition is expected to be value and earnings accretive, benefiting from the regional scale provided by our nearby utility business at Indianapolis Power & Light Co.”
FINANCE
Goldman Sachs takes hit
Goldman Sachs took a hit to its first-quarter earnings after paying dividends to billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s company, which invested US$5 billion in the bank at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. The investment bank’s first--quarter income fell 72 percent to US$908 million after it paid US$1.64 billion in dividends to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Goldman Sachs Group Inc said its revenue fell 7 percent to US$11.9 billion on weakness in some of its core businesses.
AUTOMOBILES
Peugeot Citroen posts gain
PSA Peugeot Citroen, Europe’s second-biggest automaker, posted a 10 percent first-quarter revenue gain because of new models and said Japanese supply disruptions haven’t compromised its full-year earnings targets. Sales rose to 15.4 billion euros (US$22.2 billion) from 14 billion euros a year earlier, helped by the introduction of vehicles such as the upscale Citroen DS3 minicar, Paris-based Peugeot said yesterday. That compares with the 14.9 billion euro average analyst estimate.
ENERGY
Hanwha signs Saudi deal
South Korea’s Hanwha Engineering & Construction said yesterday it had signed a US$1.05 billion deal to build a power station and desalination plant in Saudi Arabia. The builder said it would complete the plant by 2014 under the deal with Marafiq, a Saudi Arabian power and water utility company. The plant will be built in the Yanbu industrial complex north of Jeddah, it said. In 2009, the builder clinched a US$750 million order from Marafiq to build a power plant in the complex by next year. Hanwha said it has completed 60 percent of the plant.
MEDICINE
US approves pap test
Roche Holding AG won US approval for a diagnostic test to detect the human papillomavirus linked to cervical cancer, the company said yesterday in a statement.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by