LUXURY GOODS
Osim CEO makes cash bid
Osim International Ltd chairman and chief executive officer Ron Sim is making an unconditional cash offer of S$310 million (US$224.1 million) for the company’s shares he does not own in order to make Asia’s largest maker of massage chairs private. Sim, who controls 68.31 percent of Osim, offered to buy the shares at S$1.32 per share through his investment vehicle, Vision Three Pte Ltd, according to a statement yesterday. That is a 7.8 percent premium to the last traded at S$1.225 on Tuesday last week before shares were suspended. “The offer provides an opportunity to Osim’s minority shareholders to sell their stake at a significant premium over the prevailing share price amidst challenging market conditions,” Sim’s investment company said in the statement.
UTILITIES
RWE plans 2,500 job cuts
Germany’s second-largest utility plans to cut about 2,500 jobs at RWE npower, a source close to the matter said, as it confronts customer losses and billing issues at its struggling British subsidiary. RWE is facing the biggest crisis in its 118-year-history, faced with ultra-low wholesale power prices, large exposure to coal and gas and only a small presence in renewable energy. Its shares have more than halved over the past year. In Britain, tougher competition has caused a loss of about 200,000 customers in the first nine months of the year, compared with 100,000 for the first half. That has prompted a review of the business, which its finance chief said in November last year might trigger job cuts and even a sale.
INSURANCE
Rand Merchant costs rise
Rand Merchant Investment Holdings Ltd, a South African investor in insurance and fund-management companies, said first-half profit declined 15 percent after net finance costs increased and the domestic economy slowed. Net income for the six months ended December last year fell to 1.55 billion rand (US$101 million) from 1.8 billion rand a year earlier, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement yesterday. Earnings per share excluding one-time items dropped 17 percent to 1.01 rand from 1.22 rand last year.
AUTOMAKERs
Suzuki finds funds for India
Suzuki Motor Corp plans to sell ¥200 billion (US$1.8 billion) of convertible bonds as the Japanese automaker raises funds to help pay for its first wholly owned factory in India. The company is to sell the instruments in two tranches, primarily to fund the plant it is building in India’s western Gujarat state, according to a statement to the Tokyo stock exchange. Suzuki said it would also use some proceeds for research and development on safety technology.
FINANCE
Mizuho and Redburn to ally
Mizuho Financial Group Inc agreed to form an alliance on European equities with Redburn Europe Ltd, a UK research and trading execution house, according to people familiar with the matter. The Japanese bank’s securities unit is to start providing its customers with Redburn’s research on European stocks, and the London-based firm is to carry out transactions for those clients, said the people, who asked not to be identified. The exclusive alliance would enable Japan’s third-largest lender by market value to expand its client base by offering research on European companies like BT Group PLC, Renault SA and Volkswagen AG and executing trades through Redburn.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by