India’s largest airline IndiGo has pulled out of the race to acquire national carrier Air India Ltd, dealing a blow to the government’s privatization campaign.
Indigo, operated by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, late on Thursday told the Bombay Stock Exchange that it was interested in Air India’s international routes only, and not its domestic operations.
The government, which last week said it wants to sell a 76 percent chunk of the debt-laden carrier, wants the prospective buyer to take on all of Air India’s operations.
The government last week released bid documents on one of the country’s highest-profile asset sale in decades.
The documents said the proposed sale would include a 100 percent stake in Air India’s low-cost arm Air India Express, which operates in West Asia, and a 50 percent stake in its ground-handling SATS Airport Services.
“From day one, IndiGo has expressed its interest primarily in the acquisition of Air India’s international operations and Air India Express,” IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh said in a statement to the stock exchange.
“However, that option is not available under the government’s current divestiture plans for Air India. Also, as we have communicated before, we do not believe that we have the capability to take on the task of acquiring and successfully turning around all of Air India’s airline operations,” he said.
IndiGo publicly expressed interest in acquiring Air India’s international operating arm after the government first approved a sale in June last year.
Once the country’s monopoly airline, Air India has slowly lost market share to new low-cost private players in one of the world’s fastest-growing airline markets.
Air India ran losses for nearly a decade after a botched merger in 2007 and has debts of about US$7.67 billion, government figures showed.
It has received US$5.8 billion in bailout funds from the government, but needs even more working capital to turn it around, experts say.
India has the world’s fastest-growing passenger airline industry, expanding at an annual rate of about 20 percent.
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
Artificial intelligence (AI) giant Nvidia Corp’s most advanced chips would be reserved for US companies and kept out of China and other countries, US President Donald Trump said. During an interview that aired on Sunday on CBS’ 60 Minutes program and in comments to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said only US customers should have access to the top-end Blackwell chips offered by Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” he told CBS, echoing remarks made earlier to reporters as he returned to Washington
RSS