Thunder Tiger Corp (雷虎科技) yesterday announced plans to acquire Associated Electrics Inc, the US manufacturer of the world's top brand of radio-control race cars.
"Our board meeting approved the takeover today. President Lai Chun-lin (賴春霖) and General Manager Hsieh Tsai-yun (謝彩雲) will fly to the US in early July to seal the deal," Thunder Tiger Spokesman Liu Chao-ching (劉朝清) told a reporter by phone.
Thunder Tiger will pay US$9.5 million to acquire the Los Angeles-based Associated Electrics, and will allow the company to continue to operate under its current name.
Associated makes radio-control race cars and last year it ranked as the world top brand and came in seventh in terms of radio-control car sales. Thunder Tiger came in sixth.
The acquisition follows six years of successful cooperation between the two firms. Associated allows Thunder Tiger to make 48 percent of Associated radio-control race cars on an ODM (Original Design Basis) and has the rest made in the US. After the buyout, Thunder Tiger will take over the production of the other 52 percent of Associated race cars.
"We think it is a very good deal because we are paying US$9.5 million to buy a company whose net profits was US$1.5 million dollars last year," Liu said.
"Our short-term goal is to sell Associated model race cars to Europe, and long-term goal is to create new markets for our products and lower product price," he said.
Currently Associated, with a staff of 70 designers, sells 90 percent of its products in the US.
Thunder Tiger has factories in Taiwan and China and a distributing center in the US and Germany.
In 2004, Thunder Tiger's revenues totalled US$37.6 million and net profits hit US$6.5 million.
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
RSS