A consortium that includes private equity firms Blackstone Group and TPG plans to offer US$5.5 billion to acquire auto supply firm Gates Global Inc, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.
The deal would be one of the largest private equity transactions so far this year, after Cerberus Capital last week announced the US$9.1 billion purchase of supermarket Safeway.
LEADER
Gates Global is a leading producer of power transmission belts and fluid power products for the automobile and other industries.
The company garnered US$2.9 billion in sales and US$25 million in profits in the year ended Sept. 28 last year, according to a US securities filing.
In December last year, Gates filed papers for an initial public offering (IPO).
CONTROL
Gates is controlled by Canadian private equity company Onex and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is weighing keeping an ownership stake in Gates, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Gates last changed hands in 2010, when Onex and Canada Pension acquired the assets as part of the purchase of UK engineering and manufacturing group Tomkins for about US$5 billion.
Gates is based in Denver and has 14,300 employees.
ARYSTA
In related news, private equity group Permira is looking to float Japanese agricultural chemicals company Arysta LifeScience on the New York Stock Exchange, the Financial Times reported, quoting people familiar with the situation.
While a sale to a trade buyer is also a possibility, London-based Permira is in talks with banks to discuss an IPO, valuing Arysta at US$4 billion including debt, the newspaper said.
Permira bought Arysta, which manufactures insecticides and veterinary medicines, in 2008 for 1.95 billion euros (US$1.32 billion).
DOMICILE
Arysta is considering whether to move its domicile from Japan to the US or a country with lower corporate tax rates, people familiar with the matter were quoted as saying by the FT.
A sale is widely expected to attract institutional investors and trade buyers, including China’s Sinochem (中國中化) and Nufarm of Australia.
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