Print

Mail

wiki links

World Business Quick Take

■ Semiconductors
Fujitsu seeks plant partners
Fujitsu Ltd, Japan's biggest supplier of computer servers, is seeking investments from chipmakers in Europe and the US to help finance its newest semiconductor plant, Chairman Naoyuki Akikusa said. Partners "investing in the plant will be European and North American companies needing chips with circuit features 90 nanometers in size," Akikusa said in a television interview with Bloomberg in Beijing where he's attending the World Economic Forum. He declined to name prospective investors. Tokyo-based Fujitsu is spending ¥160 billion (US$1.46 billion) on a new semiconductor factory in Mie Prefecture in western Japan to make programmable logic chips on 12-inch wafers.

■ Advertising
WPP details ad firm deal
WPP Group PLC, the London-based advertising giant, said yesterday it was paying US$1.309 billion -- half in cash and half in WPP equity -- for the entire share capital of US-based Grey Global. WPP said the merger valued the fully diluted share capital of Grey at US$1.520 billion, and that Grey had net cash of US$172 million. Grey shareholders were being offered US$1,005 per share under the deal. WPP, the world's second-largest advertising company, said it expected to issue some 82.2 million new ordinary shares, representing 6.5 percent of the enlarged issued share capital of WPP. Grey's clients include Procter & Gamble, 3M, Mars and Warner Bros. WPP represents Nokia, Pfizer, Diageo and British American Tobacco.

■ Voice over IP
Cisco releases new routers
Cisco Systems Inc, the world's largest maker of computer networking equipment, introduced routers that let businesses send telephone calls over Internet. Cisco is adding faster microprocessors to routers that connect office computer and phone networks, letting the equipment handle more tasks. Routers transmit phone calls over those networks as packets of data, using voice over Internet protocol or IP telephony. Chief Executive John Chambers has said Cisco's sales of Internet telephone gear may reach US$1 billion a year. Cisco was second in sales of IP telephony equipment in the second quarter, with 23.4 percent of the US$726 million in sales, according to Synergy Research Group Inc Avaya Inc, based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, led with 24 percent.

■ Movie business
Sony raises bid for MGM
A group of investors led by Sony Corp raised its offer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. to close to US$5 billion to thwart a bid for the film studio from Time-Warner Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported. The group, whose offer includes assuming US$2 billion in debt, raised its bid by US$0.75 a share to around US$12 from US$11.25 a share, the report said, without saying where it got the information. Movies account for about 10 percent of sales at Sony, producer of Spider-Man. Sony and its fellow investors, Texas Pacific Group and Providence Equity Partners, are struggling to reach an agreement on the financing and shape of the offer, the Journal said. The purchase would follow the merger of Sony's recorded music business earlier this year with Bertelsmann AG. Sony's US$3.4 billion purchase of Columbia Pictures in 1989 is the company's biggest acquisition, spokeswoman Mami Imada said last week.

This story has been viewed 1839 times.