General Electric Co, seeking France’s approval for its US$17 billion bid to buy Alstom SA’s energy division, said it plans to keep the power-equipment maker’s nuclear operations in its home country.
“We will answer the government’s legitimate demands that the nuclear unit remain French, that intellectual property stay French and that exports be protected,” Clara Gaymard, head of GE’s business in the country, said on Saturday in a France Info radio interview.
Gaymard’s comments, made a day after the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company agreed to a three-week extension for the purchase, underlined GE chief executive officer’s Jeffrey Immelt’s pledge to respect “the sovereign character” of France’s nuclear industry.
The US manufacturer is in early stage talks with state-controlled nuclear group Areva SA and other French firms about asset sales or partnerships, people familiar with the matter said earlier this month.
French Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg signed a decree this month allowing authorities to block some foreign takeovers, including in the energy industry.
Munich-based Siemens AG, Europe’s largest engineering company, may decide by the end of this month on a formal offer, people familiar with the situation said last week.
The German manufacturer has proposed swapping most of its trainmaking business for Alstom’s energy assets, forming two European leaders in the fields. Siemens would become one of the world’s largest producers of equipment for power plants and electric transmissions, while a top-ranked global railway business would be based in France, bringing together the German company’s ICE high-speed trains and Alstom’s iconic TGV.
Alstom chief executive Patrick Kron has called on the French government to back GE’s bid, saying the offer meets concerns about the nation’s energy independence, local decisionmaking and prevention of job cuts, as there are almost no overlaps between the operations.
Immelt said last week that he is confident the US company can complete the acquisition, which he expects to close next year.
GE’s CEO is to meet French President Francois Hollande tomorrow, the president’s office said on Saturday.
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],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
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