INVESTMENT
CapitaLand signs S$11b deal
Singapore’s CapitaLand Ltd yesterday said it has agreed to buy two real-estate holding firms in an S$11 billion (US$8.1 billion) deal that would create Asia’s biggest property group, with assets in dozens of countries. Under the agreement, CapitaLand would acquire two units from a subsidiary of state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte. If approved, the new entity would have assets under management of more than S$116 billion in more than 30 countries. The agreement is subject to approval by CapitaLand’s independent shareholders in the first half of this year, the group said.
SAUDI ARABIA
Aramco taps bonds for M&A
Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Aramco) could tap the bond market for about US$10 billion to help fund the acquisition of petrochemicals giant Saudi Basic Industries Corp, Minister of Energy and Industry Khalid al-Falih said. The kingdom would decide in the “next few weeks” about the size of the proposed bond, although the offering would not be “huge,” al-Falih said in Abu Dhabi. Aramco plans to tap the market in the second quarter, selling its first international bond for the first time since its nationalization about four decades ago.
CHINA
FDI last year rose only 3%
Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country last year rose by 3 percent year-on-year to US$135 billion, Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan (鍾山) said. That would mark a slowdown from growth rates of 7.9 percent in 2017 and 4.1 percent in 2016, but Zhong said that the country had maintained stable FDI growth “against a gloomy global climate,” according to a transcript of an interview posted on the ministry’s Web site on Sunday.
INVESTMENT
QIA shifts assets toward US
The Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) aims to raise investments in the US to US$45 billion in the next two years as it rebalances its portfolio of assets away from Europe, chief executive officer Mansour Ibrahim al-Mahmoud said on the sidelines of a conference on Sunday. QIA has about US$30 billion currently invested in the US, he added. In the US, QIA is looking at fundamental sectors such as real estate, technology and US exchanges, Mahmoud said.
ENERGY
PG&E crisis ousts CEO
PG&E Corp chief executive officer Geisha Williams is leaving as California’s largest utility owner nears potential bankruptcy. The San Francisco-based firm has begun a search for a new CEO following Williams’ departure, a company statement said on Sunday. PG&E general counsel John Simon is to take the helm in the meantime. Williams, 57, took over as CEO in March 2017 and is leaving after a catastrophic three months for PG&E.
TRANSPORTATION
DP World expands to Chile
Dubai-based port operator DP World said it would buy a 71.3 percent stake in Chile’s port services firm Puertos y Logistica SA. Sunday’s announcement said that DP World would pay US$502 million for the stake in the port operator, which has a long-term concession for Puerto Central in San Antonio and owns and operates Puerto Lirquen in Chile’s southern region. The statement quoted DP World chairman and chief executive officer Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem as saying that the deal would allow the firm to serve customers at five key points in South America.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
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