Citigroup yesterday announced a tie-up with Chinese securities firm Orient Securities Co Ltd (東方證券), giving the US bank a chance to compete with its foreign rivals in China’s booming capital markets.
SHAREHOLDING
Orient will have a 67 percent stake in the investment banking joint venture, which still requires Chinese regulatory approval, while Citigroup will hold the rest, the US firm said in a statement.
The joint venture will enable Citigroup, which has retail and corporate banking operations around China, to underwrite stocks and bonds for Chinese and foreign firms in the world’s second-largest economy.
It will also be able to offer domestic advisory services on mergers and acquisitions — currently conducted out of Citigroup’s Hong Kong office.
Orient and Citigroup will also explore further cooperation in other areas such as research and training, the statement added.
LATECOMER
Citigroup, which has stakes in Guangdong Development Bank (廣東發展銀行) and Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (上海浦東發展銀行), hopes the joint venture will get the regulatory green light by the end of this year and start operating in the first half of next year.
The US giant is making a late entry into the Chinese investment banking industry. Its foreign rivals — including UBS, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank — already have securities joint ventures in China.
Citigroup has 36 branches in China and expects to have 50 by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS