General Electric Co (GE) is poised for a US$12 billion deal to sell more than half of its US private-equity lending arm to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, while Ares Management LP seeks to buy the rest of that business in a deal that is set to close imminently, people familiar with the matter said.
Ares is pursuing a deal for the US$8 billion Senior Secured Loan Program it co-manages with GE, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are not public.
The firm has lined up investors to help it acquire Senior Secured, one person said.
GE is close to an accord to sell the other US$10 billion in assets in the buyout lending unit to Canada Pension, after Ares balked at including Senior Secured, the people said. Canada Pension would pay about US$12 billion, chiefly for the GE Antares division, they said.
A deal with Canada Pension would mark the first sale of a major business since GE announced plans on April 10 to unload about US$200 billion of GE Capital assets. GE chief executive officer Jeffrey Immelt is refocusing the company on industrial operations.
If no agreement is reached between GE and Ares in the next few weeks, Senior Secured might stop making new loans and be wound down, the people said. Without an accord, Ares intends to end its GE partnership and start a similar program, one person said. GE is still studying its options, another person said.
GE spokesman Seth Martin declined to comment, as did Mei Mavin, a spokeswoman for Canada Pension. A representative of Ares, the credit and private-equity manager run by billionaire Tony Ressler, also declined to comment.
GE’s private-equity lending division, also known as the sponsor-finance unit, helps buyout firms arrange funding for takeovers. GE is selling its US$6 billion European sponsor unit separately, and could select a buyer within weeks, one person said.
GE has sought a swift sale of its US assets to avert staff defections in a drawn-out divestiture. The company has offered retention bonuses to some employees and put restrictions on the ability of bidders to hire GE bankers.
Canada Pension has said it does not expect to face any regulatory hurdles in buying GE assets, one of the people said. Canada Pension raised C$1 billion (US$803.5 million) in five-year bonds last week for general corporate purposes, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Senior Secured, the GE-Ares operation, works with companies that need fast credit, helping them refinance their junior and senior debt. Ares’ investment in the unit had a fair value of US$2.1 billion at the end of last year, according to the company’s annual report.
Ares, Apollo Global Management and Guggenheim Securities also made bids for the sponsor unit, people with knowledge of the matter said last month.
With heavy interest from prospective buyers, the disposal of GE Capital assets is going faster than anticipated, Immelt said in a presentation on May 20.
GE has begun a separate sale process for most of its US$74 billion US commercial loan and leasing unit, people familiar with the plan said last week.
The company has hired banks to find buyers for divisions including rail-car leasing, vendor finance and commercial-lending operations, the people said.
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