Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV agreed to sell its high-tech auto-parts unit, Magneti Marelli, to KKR & Co’s Calsonic Kansei in a 6.2 billion euro (US$7.15 billion) transaction, marking the first major deal for the Italian-American automaker under new chief executive officer Mike Manley.
The new merged entity would be called Magneti Marelli CK Holdings, the companies said in a statement yesterday.
Fiat Chrysler would enter into a multiyear supply agreement with its former unit that would maintain its employment levels and Marelli’s presence in Italy.
“The transaction recognizes the full strategic value of Magneti Marelli and is another important step in our relentless focus on value creation,” Manley said in the statement.
The deal creates an auto-parts maker with more than US$17 billion in annual revenue and about 65,000 workers from Tokyo to Milan. The sale is one of the first major milestones for Manley, who took over Fiat Chrysler days before the death of his predecessor Sergio Marchionne in July. It is also the first merger and acquisitions transaction overseen by chairman John Elkann since his so-called “deal maestro” passed away.
Shares in Fiat Chrysler rose 5.2 percent to 14.14 euros in Milan trading yesterday after a delayed opening.
The price for the unit is more than 1 billion euros higher than analysts’ average valuation for the business, Mediobanca said in a note.
Through Sunday, shares in the automaker had lost about 20 percent since Marchionne’s death as Italian stocks entered a bear market after the country’s new populist government failed to win investors’ confidence.
With the sale, Manley and Elkann are continuing Marchionne’s strategy of extracting value for shareholders by separating businesses from the auto division.
Under Marchionne, Fiat Chrysler’s value had risen more than 10-fold, helped by the spinoffs of supercar maker Ferrari NV and truck and tractor division CNH Industrial NV.
Simplifying the company allows Manley to focus on building and selling cars, and makes Fiat Chrysler less complex in the case of any eventual merger talks.
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
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained