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.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the