Chinese construction giant Beijing Construction Engineering Group (BCEG, 北京建工集團) has signed a deal with British firms to develop a business district around Manchester Airport, the companies involved in the project announced on Sunday.
The development of Britain’s third-busiest airport — described as one of the largest construction projects in the UK since last year’s London Olympics — will cost £800 million (US$1.27 billion).
MAG, the operator of Manchester Airport; GMPF, a pension fund based in the city; and the British construction group Carillion will work alongside BCEG in the joint project, a statement released by the companies said.
A breakdown of each company’s investment in the business district, dubbed “Airport City,” was not given in the statement.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, who is currently on a trip to China hoping to boost trade ties between the two nations, wrote on his verified Twitter account that the development is “one of the largest” in Britain since the Olympics, and would eventually create 16,000 jobs for the region.
The deal comes at a time when Britain is seeking to bolster trade with the world’s second-largest economy, with both nations agreeing in 2010 to double their trade to US$100 billion by 2015.
London Mayor Boris Johnson was also in Beijing on Sunday in what Chinese state media said was a “campaign to lure Chinese sovereign funds, banks and developers to fund an overhaul of the British capital in the years to come.”
“Our mayor’s interest is about new infrastructure,” a member of the delegation was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying. “The mayor identified 33 areas across the city where we will be intensifying the density of [housing] and putting in new infrastructure.”
Kit Malthouse, the London deputy mayor for business, told Xinhua that London officials were hoping to attract “lots and lots of capital” to help the city deal with population growth.”
Once built, “Airport City” will take up 460,000m2 and will boast a mix of offices, hotels, advanced manufacturing firms, logistics and warehousing, the companies’ statement said.
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