The Netherlands on Tuesday announced the surprise purchase of a stake in Air France-KLM, saying it needed to protect Dutch interests after a series of rows about the alliance’s management.
Paris reacted testily to the Dutch purchase of the 12.68 percent stake — which puts it on course to match France’s own holding — saying that Air France-KLM must be free of “state interference.”
The Dutch swoop threatens to reignite tensions after a bitter dispute about the fate of the chief executive of the group’s Dutch arm and concerns over a series of strikes in France last year.
“With this share purchase, the Dutch Cabinet wants to be able to directly influence the future development of Air France-KLM in order to optimally ensure the Dutch public interest,” Dutch Minister of Finance Wopke Hoekstra told a hastily arranged news conference in The Hague.
“The aim is to eventually get to a position equal to that of the French state,” which has a 14.3 percent stake, Hoekstra added.
The Dutch stake cost 680 million euros (US$771 million), Hoekstra said in a letter to parliament.
The government previously had a 5.9 percent stake in KLM, but started buying more shares in the alliance on Wednesday last week.
It would cost about a further 70 million euros to reach the French level, broadcaster NOS said.
The move stunned Paris, with French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire saying the Dutch government had not informed the French government.
“It is essential to respect the principles of good governance and for Air France-KLM to be managed ... without state interference,” Le Maire told Les Echos newspaper.
Air France and KLM merged in 2004, but continue to operate largely separately, while the French arm in particular has struggled with industrial action in recent years.
Hoekstra said that “it has become apparent that important decisions about KLM’s strategy were increasingly taken at the level of the Air France-KLM holding company,” with the Dutch government frozen out.
The Dutch government stepped into the fray when it officially backed the reappointment of KLM chief executive Pieter Elbers, after doubts arose that he would keep his job.
Elbers was reappointed earlier this month after KLM workers protested and threatened to go on strike if he was axed.
In a sign of the tensions, Air France-KLM chief executive Ben Smith rushed to the Netherlands for “intensive” talks with Hoekstra and another Dutch minister on Feb. 15 over KLM’s future in the Franco-Dutch alliance and Elbers’ position.
Canadian Smith took over Air France-KLM as its first non-French chief executive in September last year after the rapid exit of former chief executive Jean-Marc Janaillac in a bitter dispute over salaries in the French arm.
The company kept Elbers in his Dutch role, but Dutch news reports said that Elbers was seen as “difficult” and standing in the way of Smith’s plans to merge the two arms more closely.
Hoekstra brought up the issue with Le Maire at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has avoided getting directly involved, but has said that KLM is “incredibly important for the Dutch economy and it is essential that it is well operated.”
The airline’s fate is directly tied to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, one of Europe’s busiest hubs and a key economic driver for the Netherlands.
“A financially sound Air France-KLM with an extensive hub network at Schiphol for the Netherlands is of great importance,” Hoekstra said in his letter to parliament.
Air France-KLM last week reported that its annual net profit rose by 150 percent to 409 million euros.
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
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
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six