Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology Co (中聯重科) of China on Friday said that it would drop its pursuit of US crane and heavy equipment maker Terex Corp.
Terex and Konecranes Oyj of Finland announced in August last year that they would merge in an all-stock deal, but Zoomlion swooped in with a competing bid in January to acquire Terex for US$30 per share in cash, or about US$3.3 billion. Zoomlion raised its bid to US$31 per share in March.
This month, Terex terminated its merger agreement with Konecranes and said it would instead sell its material handling and port solutions business to the Finnish company for about US$1.3 billion.
Terex said at the time that the port deal would allow it to continue discussions with Zoomlion and would eliminate perceived regulatory concerns about a transaction with the Chinese company. Analysts had suggested that the US authorities might raise objections over the ports business.
On Friday, Zoomlion said that no agreement could be reached “on the crucial terms,” and that it had ended negotiations with Terex.
“The company will continue to seek strategic opportunities for its long-term development, and further procure its strategic transformation and industrial upgrading,” Zoomlion said in a regulatory filing in Hong Kong.
Terex, based in Westport, Connecticut, manufactures cranes and other heavy equipment for a number of industries, including construction, manufacturing, shipping, energy and mining. It posted revenue of US$6.5 billion last year and has about 20,400 employees.
The company said its board had “worked diligently” to determine whether a transaction with Zoomlion was achievable.
“After many months of discussions, Zoomlion was unable to provide a fully-financed, binding proposal for the purchase of Terex” with or without the material handling and port services business, Terex chairman David Sachs said. “The board is confident in our global management team and with Terex’s prospects for the future.”
Terex said that it would proceed with its plans to sell the material handling and port services business to Konecranes, a deal that is expected to close in January next year.
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