MINING
Merger to create gold giant
Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold Corp has bought Africa-focused rival Randgold Resources Ltd to create a global industry champion worth US$18.3 billion, the pair said yesterday. The blockbuster all-share deal was described as a merger, but is effectively a takeover, because Barrick investors are to own a majority 66.6-percent stake. Randgold shareholders will hold the rest. The enlarged company, keeping the Barrick name, is to be traded in New York and Toronto. Randgold’s London listing is to be canceled. The group would have total annual revenues of about US$9.7 billion.
MINING
Australia to see mega-IPO
Coronado Global Resources Inc, a miner backed by private equity firm Energy & Minerals Group, and current investors are seeking to raise as much as A$1.4 billion (US$1.02 billion) in what would be Australia’s largest coal initial public offering (IPO). The company and existing holders are offering Chess Depository Interests at A$4 to A$4.80 each, a prospectus lodged with the nation’s regulator yesterday said. That would give Coronado, the biggest US metallurgical coal producer, an enterprise value of as much as A$4.4 billion. Trading is scheduled to start on Oct. 23 on the Australian Securities Exchange, it said in a statement.
METALS
UAE firm pulls initial listing
A planned share sale in the United Arab Emirates might be the latest casualty of US President Donald Trump’s trade policies. US tariffs on aluminum imports have prompted Emirates Global Aluminium, which produces about 4 percent of the metal globally, to delay an initial public offering, people with knowledge of the matter said. The company confirmed the decision, but said it had canceled the listing due to unfavorable market conditions. The company exports about 90 percent of its output and considers the US a “key market,” it said. The company reiterated its plans to sell shares publicly, but said that market conditions “may not improve until later” next year.
AUTOMAKERS
Porsche touts end of diesel
Porsche chief executive Oliver Blume said the sports car maker would not produce any new diesel models in the wake of parent company Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal. Blume told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that, although Porsche itself never developed and produced diesel engines, its image has suffered from the scandal that erupted in 2015. He said the company wants to concentrate on “what we can do particularly well,” citing high-performance gasoline models, hybrids and, from next year, electric cars. “That also means that there will be no more diesels from Porsche in the future,” Blume added.
TECHNOLOGY
Firms to help UN halt famine
Technology giants Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google are joining forces with international organizations to help identify and head off famines in developing nations by using data analysis and artificial intelligence, as part of a new initiative unveiled on Sunday. Rather than waiting to respond to a famine after many lives have been lost, the tech companies “will use the predictive power of data to trigger funding” to take action before situations fevelop into to a crisis, the World Bank and UN said in a joint statement.
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