American Express (Amex) Co agreed to sell a 50 percent stake in its business-travel division for US$900 million as it seeks to boost revenue from corporate bookings.
Amex will create a joint venture with an investor group formed by Certares International Bank LLC that includes Qatar Holding LLC and funds managed by BlackRock Inc and Macquarie Capital, according to a statement on Monday from Amex and the Qatari fund.
The business will use the American Express brand and be headed by Bill Glenn, formerly the New York-based firm’s president of global commercial services. The consumer-travel operation is not part of the deal.
Amex, the biggest credit-card issuer by purchases, faces a slowdown in travel revenue as customers rely more on digital technology for bookings. Travel commissions and fees — including consumer and business sales — declined about 2.9 percent since 2011 to US$1.9 billion at the end of last year. Amex said in September last year that it was considering creating the joint venture in a deal valued at US$700 million to US$1 billion.
“There’s not a joint venture in the travel industry that could raise this kind of capital,” Glenn, who is now chief executive officer of global business travel, said in a telephone interview. “If we’re focused on delivering value to our customers and our suppliers and our partners using the capital infusion to invest in technology and information and our global footprint, we’ll be very, very successful.”
Among the investors, Qatar Holding will have the largest stake, followed by funds managed by BlackRock, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. Amex said it gets a 50 percent ownership stake in the joint venture, and the others hold the remaining half in exchange for the US$900 million investment.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”