MINING
Rusal refuses to sell stake
United Co Rusal rejected OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel’s offer to buy a US$12.8 billion stake it holds in the Russian nickel mining company, saying it wouldn’t be in the best interests of its shareholders. The board “approved the committee’s recommendation to reject the proposal to sell the company’s 20 percent stake,” Rusal said in a statement. Billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who owns 47 percent of Rusal, has rejected three offers since October to sell out of Norilsk, the world’s largest nickel producer, even as Rusal investors Mikhail Prokhorov and Viktor Vekselberg push for a sale.
FOOD
Bright Food promotes bid
China’s Bright Food Group (光明食品) has said a tie-up with France’s Yoplait would bring expansion opportunities in the massive Chinese market, as it promotes a bid for a stake in the French company. Switzerland’s Nestle and General Mills of the US are also among those interested in buying a 50 percent stake in Yoplait, which is owned by private equity firm PAI Partners, a person familiar with the situation said last month. Last year, the Chinese company failed in a bid for the sugar and biofuels unit of Australia’s CSR. It also reportedly abruptly ended acquisition discussions with US nutritional product retailer GNC and Britain’s United Biscuits.
BANKING
Goldman CEO may testify
Goldman Sachs Group Inc chief executive Lloyd Blankfein has agreed to testify for the prosecution at Galleon Group LLC co-founder Raj Rajaratnam’s insider-trading trial set to begin next week, according to a person briefed on the matter. Blankfein, 56, may end up not testifying because prosecutors often line up potential witnesses before a trial who are not called to testify, the person said. Rajaratnam is accused of earning US$45 million in illicit profits from information leaked by corporate insiders, hedge fund traders and others. He denies wrongdoing and said his trades were based on Galleon research.
ADVERTISING
WPP posts strong results
A rebound in the US advertising market allowed WPP, the world’s largest ad group, to follow its peers and post strong full-year results yesterday and a solid outlook for this year. WPP, whose ad agencies include JWT and Ogilvy & Mather, posted fourth-quarter organic revenue growth of 8.5 percent and said the solid performance had continued into January, with revenue up more than 8 percent. The strong finish to the year helped WPP to post a full-year figure of 5.3 percent, with both the fourth quarter and full-year figures ahead of forecasts. This year, it expects the key industry metric of like-for-like growth of 5 percent and operating margins to rise 0.5 margin points to 13.7 percent.
AVIATION
Bombardier, ICBC seal deal
Canada’s Bombardier, the third-largest aircraft maker in the world behind Airbus and Boeing, says it has secured an US$8 billion financing deal from a Chinese leasing firm. Under a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by the two firms, ICBC Leasing will provide customers of Bombardier with advance payment financing, delivery financing and leasing solutions for some commercial and business jets. “This MOU provides mutual benefits to Bombardier and ICBC Leasing, since it addresses both parties’ objectives of providing optimized aircraft solutions to operators in China and elsewhere,” Bombardier Aerospace president Guy Hachey said in a statement on Thursday.
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
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