HNA Group Co (海航集團) and SkyBridge Capital have agreed to drop the Chinese conglomerate’s plan to acquire the investment firm. Founder Anthony Scaramucci will return as a co-managing partner.
The New York-based hedge fund and the aviation-to-real estate group plan to explore a relationship to distribute SkyBridge products in China, they said on Monday in a statement.
Both sides agreed that US government approval of the acquisition would have taken too long.
Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, is to focus on strategic planning and marketing for the fund, while the senior management and investment team would remain intact, according to the statement.
HNA, which spent more than US$40 billion buying assets across six continents since 2015, has been selling off real estate and stakes in companies this year amid a liquidity crunch and rising Chinese government scrutiny of overseas deals.
US President Donald Trump’s administration has also increased scrutiny of Chinese buyers amid trade tensions between the two countries.
That push has stymied a string of planned takeovers.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, an interagency panel led by the US Department of the Treasury, began its formal review of the proposed Skybridge acquisition in February, a person familiar with the matter said at the time.
The transaction, which valued the fund of hedge funds firm at US$180 million or more, was first announced in January last year.
Scaramucci was looking to sell his share in order to take a position in the Trump administration.
A subsidiary of HNA agreed to purchase a majority stake in the firm, an investment company called RON Transatlantic would increase its share.
Analysts had said that the deal was high for a fund-of-funds manager.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the