Dongfeng Motor Group Co (東風汽車), China’s third-largest automaker, said it had received proposals from investment banks to buy assets from General Motors Corp (GM) as the US carmaker tries to avoid running out of cash.
“We’ve gotten e-mails and investment materials asking us whether we would be interested in buying some of GM’s assets,” Hu Xindong (胡信東), head of investor relations, said by telephone yesterday. “So far, our management has not yet reviewed the issues and we have not yet responded.”
He declined to name the investment banks or the assets. GM said it was not in talks with Dongfeng.
GM is seeking a buyer for its Hummer unit and has said it will consider options for Saab and Saturn as it asks Congress for US$18 billion in aid. Dongfeng and SAIC Motor Corp (上海汽車), the country’s largest automaker, aim to add overseas brands to help boost sales outside of their home market.
“To get enough capital to invest overseas is not a problem for Chinese companies including automakers,” said Yu Bing (餘兵), an analyst at Pingan Securities Co (平安證券) in Shanghai. “But they are more and more aware of possible risks involving overseas acquisition, including issues about local legal regulation and labor union.”
“There are no grounds to these rumors” about Dongfeng looking at assets, said Henry Wong, GM’s Shanghai-based spokesman. “We do not comment on speculation in the press.”
GM, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC, are seeking US$34 billion from the US government to stave off an industry collapse. Ford is exploring the sale of its Volvo unit as it focuses on its namesake brand.
Western financial companies have turned to Chinese investors for money as they seek to shore up capital eroded by almost US$1 trillion in writedown and losses triggered by the collapse of the US subprime mortgage market.
Blackstone Group LP, manager of the world’s largest buyout fund, agreed last month to allow China Investment Corp (中國投資公司), its second-largest outside shareholder, to raise its stake to as much as 12.5 percent.
SAIC paid US$116 million for the design rights of MG Rover Group Ltd’s Rover 25 and 75 models in 2005. The Shanghai-based company also owns 51 percent of South Korea’s Ssangyong Motor Co.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts