FINANCE
No euro finance minister
The creation of a eurozone finance minister is not on the agenda as the bloc tackles its debt troubles, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a newspaper interview yesterday. At a meeting in Paris on Tuesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced plans to create a “true eurozone government.” Schaeuble told Die Welt that it was a government in the sense of a steering committee and not a government in the normal sense of the term. “Without a change to the European treaties, there could not be a European government like you are hearing being spoken about,” he said.
MINING
BHP buys Petrohawk Energy
Mining giant BHP Billiton said yesterday that it had secured a US$12.1 billion takeover of US energy firm Petrohawk Energy Corp and hoped to legally formalize the tie-up “as promptly as practicable.” BHP said it had acquired “and expects to promptly pay for” 97.4 percent of Petrohawk’s outstanding shares in a deal worth US$15.1 billion, including the energy company’s debt. “As the final step of the acquisition process and following payment for all shares ... BHP Billiton expects to effect a short-form merger under Delaware law as promptly as practicable,” BHP said in a statement.
SOFTWARE
Bain takes over MYOB
Bain Capital LLC agreed to buy MYOB Pty Ltd, an Australian business management software maker, for an undisclosed sum to benefit from selling products to faster-growing economies in the Asia-Pacific region. Boston-based Bain will buy a majority stake in MYOB from buyout firms Archer Capital and HarbourVest Partners LLC, the companies said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The terms of the deal were not released. MYOB was acquired by Archer in 2009 and is Australia’s largest independent software vendor, according to the statement. The acquisition gives Bain a majority stake in MYOB, alongside management who will continue to be shareholders in the company, the statement said.
ENERGY
CPI invests in Guinea
Chinese state-owned energy giant China Power Investment Corp (CPI, 中國電力投資集團) plans to invest US$6 billion to develop bauxite production in Guinea, a senior executive said on Saturday. CPI “intends to invest more than US$6 billion in bauxite production in the Boffa region over the coming years,” vice chairman Yu Dehui (餘德輝) said on Guinean state television. He said the facilities his group plans to build would produce up to 8 million tonnes of bauxite — the main source of aluminum — a year and would employ tens of thousands of Guineans.
AGRICULTURE
Guyana seeks mill help
Guyanan Minister of Agriculture Robert Persaud says he is seeking a foreign company to run a malfunctioning US$200 million Chinese-built sugar mill because the country does not have the necessary expertise. Persaud said on Saturday that the factory was supposed to nearly double Guyana’s annual average sugar production to about 500,000 tonnes, but engineering defects and other problems had limited production. The mill is owned by state-owned Guyana Sugar Corp. China’s National Technical Import and Export Corp built the factory and was threatened with fines for missing deadlines and struggling to get production up to full capacity.
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
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”
HIGH-TECH: As leading-edge process technologies become more complicated, only a handful of players are able to provide design services, the company’s CEO said Artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) yesterday said that revenue would grow significantly again in 2026 after adding a major AI chip customer, reversing moderation amid a product transition next year. The Taipei-based application-specific IC (ASIC) designer reiterated its strong revenue growth forecast for this year and 2026 after its stock plummeted about 23 percent to NT$3,145 from a peak of NT$4,085 on March 6 amid growing competition. Alchip said it has built strong partnerships with cloud service providers (CSP), denying that it had lost orders to smaller competitors such as Faraday Technology Corp (智原). Faraday said it has secured