Italian automaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles on Monday slid back in its first day of Wall Street trade after shifting its main listing from Milan to attract more investment.
The newly merged Italian auto giant, formed by Fiat’s full acquisition of US automaker Chrysler, debuted on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FCAU at US$9 a share.
Shares closed at US$8.92, after hitting a peak of US$9.55.
The Wall Street market debut is not an initial public offering, rather it is the transfer of the primary listing of the company’s shares to the US.
Shares are set to continue to be traded in Milan, but on the secondary market.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, headquartered in the Netherlands with a tax domicile in Britain, became the holding company for the Fiat Chrysler Group on Oct. 12.
The company, whose brands include Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Alfa Romeo, has operations in about 40 countries and its cars and trucks are sold in more than 150 countries.
For Fiat’s chief executive officer Sergio Marchionne, the Wall Street launch of the world’s seventh-largest automaker marks a major milestone on his years-long effort to create a global automotive powerhouse.
Five years ago, Marchionne saw the opportunity to acquire ailing Chrysler, the third-largest US automaker, after it emerged from a bankruptcy reorganization under the auspices of the US government, with the aim of boosting the prospects of both Fiat and Chrysler.
Fiat methodically acquired shares in Chrysler and completed the full acquisition in January this year.
The chief executive officer’s transatlantic vision was solidly backed by Fiat chairman John Elkann, despite concerns raised by the tie-up, especially in Italy.
The main stocks listing in New York, the world’s financial capital, transfers the center of gravity of the company to the US, where markets are the most fluid and investors’ pockets are the deepest.
Marchionne said he plans to conduct an investor “roadshow” in the coming weeks in the US to ramp up interest in buying the stocks.
Marchionne suggested that the company might go to the bond market for financing the company’s growth strategy, which includes relaunching the company’s luxury brands Alfa Romeo and Maserati.
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
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
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],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts