Creditors of Japan’s bankrupt Skymark Airlines Inc yesterday voted in favor of a rescue plan led by All Nippon Airways Co (ANA), edging out a rival bid that included US carrier Delta Air Lines Inc.
More than half the troubled firm’s creditors chose an ¥18 billion (US$145 million) turnaround scheme that would see Skymark’s banks, ANA and a domestic asset manager take ownership, the airline said.
“At the debtors’ meeting today, the revival plan that Skymark submitted passed and received approval from the Tokyo District Court,” the airline said.
Photo: Bloomberg
Under the deal, investment fund Integral Corp would take a 50.1 percent stake, while a fund set up jointly by the Development Bank of Japan and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp would get a 33.4 percent share.
ANA Holdings Inc, parent company of All Nippon Airways, would own 16.5 percent of Skymark.
Skymark, which flies on domestic routes, filed for bankruptcy protection in late January in the face of potentially massive penalties linked to a canceled US$2.2 billion jet order with Airbus Group SE.
The still-operating airline’s efforts to turn itself around failed as it struggled against tough competition in the sector, while its troubles deepened after the deal with Airbus collapsed last summer.
Airbus, a major creditor in the bankruptcy proceedings, was leaning toward supporting the ANA-led rescue plan, the Nikkei Shimbun reported earlier yesterday.
If the competing plan — which was led by US firm Intrepid Aviation Ltd and joined by Delta — had been successful, Delta would have been the first foreign airline to get access to slots for domestic flights at Tokyo’s downtown airport.
The coveted slots are currently limited to Japanese carriers, including ANA and Japan Airlines Ltd, as well as Skymark.
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