PROPERTY
Dalian raises record IPO
Chinese shopping mall developer Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co (大連萬達商業) has raised US$3.7 billion in an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, a report said yesterday, making it the biggest in the world by a real-estate firm. The company, owned by the property arm of Dalian Wanda Group (萬達集團), sold 600 million shares at HK$48 apiece — near the higher end of its indicative price range — Dow Jones Newswires said, citing people close to the matter.
ENERGY
Petrobras exec indicted
Brazilian prosecutors on Monday charged a second former head of Petrobras with massive corruption while leading the scandal-plagued state oil giant, sending its shares plummeting to a decade low. Nestor Cervero and three accomplices were charged with receiving a total of US$40 million in bribes in 2006 and 2007 to help speed up a lucrative deal on deep-water probes for offshore exploration in Africa and Mexico.
AVIATION
Boeing changes repo plan
US aerospace giant Boeing Co on Monday announced a US$12 billion share repurchase plan and a 25 percent increase in its quarterly dividend to investors. The Boeing board decided to replace last year’s buyback plan, of which about US$4.8 billion remains, the company said in a statement. For this year, buyback activity is complete at US$6 billion; repurchases were expected to resume next month. The company’s regular dividend was raised to US$0.91 per share from US$0.73, marking an 88 percent increase over the past two years.
TECHNOLOGY
Riverbed closer to deal
Private equity firm Thoma Bravo and a Canadian teacher pension say they would pay about US$3.6 billion to take Riverbed Technology Inc private a couple months after the computer networking equipment maker promised a thorough review of its business. The San Francisco company said its stockholders would receive US$21 in cash for each share from Thoma Bravo and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. That represents a 12 percent premium to the stock’s closing price on Friday. Riverbed shareholders and government regulators still need to approve the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of next year.
LOGISTICS
FedEx to acquire Genco
FedEx Corp agreed to buy closely held logistics firm Genco, a specialist in handling product returns, as e-commerce operations expand at the operator of the world’s largest cargo airline. No terms were given for the transaction. FedEx yesterday said that Pittsburgh-based Genco had annual sales of US$1.6 billion and more than 11,000 employees. Genco handles more than 600 million returned items a year, according to a FedEx statement that billed the company as a leader in “reverse logistics.”
HOTELS
IHG to enter boutique sector
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), one of the world’s largest hoteliers, said it had agreed to acquire US-focused Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants for US$430 million to boost its exposure to the boutique hotel space. IHG, home to the Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and InterContinenal brands, yesterday said that the cash acquisition would be earnings enhancing in its first full year, with Kimpton’s core earnings set to double by the end of 2017.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to