British Energy accepted a takeover offer of 15.6 billion euros (US$23 billion) by French electricity firm EDF that will build new nuclear reactors in Britain, EDF and officials said yesterday.
“For EDF, this is an historic milestone in our strategic development plans in Europe and enables the EDF Group to develop significantly in the UK, one of its key markets,” EDF chairman Pierre Gadonneix said in a statement announcing the offer.
The offer is priced at £7.74 a share. An earlier offer, unveiled in late July for £7.65 per share or 15.45 billion euros, was rejected by two of British Energy’s shareholders, the investment funds Invesco and M&G.
EDF said yesterday that Invesco had accepted the higher offer.
The British energy sector has long been privatized, and the British treasury now holds only about 35 percent of British Energy.
The French state by contrast owns about 85 percent of EDF.
The British government welcomed the announcement and said that EDF proposed to build four nuclear reactors in Britain as part of the deal.
“This deal is good value for the taxpayer and a significant step towards the construction of a new generation of nuclear stations to power the country,” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement.
“The four new reactors that EDF is proposing to build would generate clean electricity to meet more than 13 percent of forecast UK electricity demand by the early 2020s,” the text of the government statement said.
This would yield “a saving of more than 14 million tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, helping tackle climate change,” it said.
EDF has been established in Britain for 10 years and employs 13,000 people in its British subsidiary EDF Energy, the statement said. It also said that EDF’s offer promised to create new jobs.
The Labour government wanted to sell its stake in British Energy to help fund a renewal of nuclear-power generating capacity in Britain.
British Energy provides almost one-fifth of Britain’s electricity and owns and operates eight nuclear power stations.
“Nuclear is clean, secure and affordable; its expansion is crucial for Britain’s long term energy security, as we reduce our oil dependence and move towards a low carbon future,” Brown said.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS