American International Group Inc (AIG) said the Asian unit it is going to list in Hong Kong will probably boost its pretax operating profit to at least US$2 billion for the fiscal year ending Nov. 30.
AIG is planning an initial public offering after a US$35.5 billion agreement to sell AIA Group Ltd to Prudential PLC collapsed in May. Hong Kong-based AIA had a US$1.84 billion pretax operating profit last year, Prudential said in a March filing.
“These kind of numbers make sense given the company has a longer record operating in Asia than companies like the Prudential and has a large market share,” Kenny Tang, executive director at Redford Asset Management Ltd in Hong Kong, said yesterday. “The company is targeting China and the Asia market and I think the response to a share sale here would be good.”
The US insurer is selling non-US life insurance businesses after a US$182.3 billion US bailout in September 2008. AIG disclosed the profit forecast on Saturday after providing it to certain analysts.
“We believe that, in the absence of unforeseen circumstances and, on the bases and assumptions set forth below, our consolidated operating profit for the fiscal year ending Nov. 30 2010 is unlikely to be less than US$2 billion,” the company said in a document released on Saturday.
AIG also said AIA’s annualized new premiums gained 5 percent to US$1.39 billion in the nine months ended Aug. 31, and total weighted premium income rose 11 percent to US$9.33 billion in the same period.
AIA received preliminary approval for an initial public offering from the Hong Kong exchange, paving the way for it to begin gauging investor demand for shares in the company, two people with knowledge of the matter said on Wednesday. AIG may sell more than half its stake in the offering, one of the people said.
On Aug. 6, AIG chief executive officer Robert Benmosche told employees in a memo that the company has begun talking to regulators about “the process and terms of a complete government exit.”
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
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