An Australia-led consortium of investment funds from Canada and the Middle East yesterday won the bid for electricity transmission network TransGrid, beating a Chinese challenger in a deal worth A$10 billion (US$7.28 billion).
China’s State Grid Corp (國家電網) was considered a frontrunner but the New South Wales (NSW) State Government said the strongest ,bid belonged to the locally led NSW Electricity Networks consortium.
“The transaction will deliver gross proceeds of A$10.258 billion which will help fund a raft of infrastructure projects across the state,” New South Wales Premier Mike Baird said in a statement.
The winning consortium includes Canadian pension fund Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s Tawreed Investments Ltd, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kuwait Investment Authority, Wren House Infrastructure.
The consortium is led by Hastings Funds Management — as manager of Utilities Trust of Australia, while locally listed Spark Infrastructure, which owns and manages energy assets, is also part of the group.
The Chinese bid had generated concerns, given TransGrid is a critical piece of national infrastructure underpinning the New South Wales economy and a key part of the country’s electricity market.
State Grid’s loss comes just days after Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison blocked the sale of one of the world’s largest cattle estates to foreign entities, ruling it was not in the national interest.
Chinese companies Genius Link Group (匯智集團) and Shanghai Pengxin Group (上海鵬欣集團) had reportedly been in a bidding war to secure the S. Kidman and Co Ltd pastoral empire for up to A$350 million ahead of that ruling.
Last week, a decision by the Northern Territory to lease Darwin Port to a Chinese firm prompted a review of the rules that allow Australian states to sell strategic assets to foreign firms without federal scrutiny.
Morrison welcomed the awarding of the 99-year lease for TransGrid to the consortium.
“The Foreign Investment Review Board has been in extensive consultation with the NSW government for over 12 months to ensure that national interest considerations are addressed,” he said. “This consultation has also included relevant... agencies that have an interest in the acquisition of critical infrastructure.”
Once the transaction is finalized, the state government is to retain significant influence over TransGrid, including as regulator.
Morrison said he had asked for further safeguards that were “more stringent than any previous conditions imposed on acquisitions of critical infrastructure.”
These include an insistence that foreign consortium members hold no more than a 50 percent share in TransGrid and that 50 percent of TransGrid’s boards comprises Australian citizens and residents.
“Australia continues to be open for business and we welcome foreign investment when it is not contrary to the national interest,” Morrison 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],”
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
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