Sina Corp (新浪) has agreed to go private after an entity led by its chairman, Charles Chao (趙廣民), boosted its offer for the Chinese social media company to US$43.30 a share in cash.
The Beijing-based company said that the offer implied an equity value for the company of US$2.59 billion and represented a 7.7 percent premium to its closing price on Friday last week.
It is also an increase from a buyout proposal that Singapore-based New Wave Holdings Ltd made in July at US$41 a share.
Chinese companies that once pursued the recognition and liquidity of listing their shares in the US have shown an increasing appetite to turn instead to their home markets.
Qihoo 360 Technology Co (奇虎三六零) delisted from the New York Stock Exchange in July 2016 and then sold shares in Shanghai in 2018 as 360 Security Technology Inc (三六零安全科技).
A number of Chinese tech firms have since delisted from US exchanges or turned to other markets amid growing scrutiny by regulators.
Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) in July offered to buy out and take private search engine Sogou Inc (搜狗) in a US$2.1 billion deal, while 58.com Inc (五八同城) agreed to be bought out by a private equity consortium for US$8.7 billion.
Sina went public in 2000 on the NASDAQ during the dotcom boom, alongside other pioneers from China’s technology sector. It operates Sina Weibo (微博).
New Wave in July submitted a preliminary non-binding proposal letter to take the company private.
It said the current offer is an 18 percent premium to the closing price on July 2, the last trading day before the earlier offer.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
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
MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday said it is teaming up with Nvidia Corp to develop a new chip for artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers that uses architecture licensed from Arm Holdings PLC. The new product is targeting AI researchers, data scientists and students rather than the mass PC market, the company said. The announcement comes as MediaTek makes efforts to add AI capabilities to its Dimensity chips for smartphones and tablets, Genio family for the Internet of Things devices, Pentonic series of smart TVs, Kompanio line of Arm-based Chromebooks, along with the Dimensity auto platform for vehicles. MeidaTek, the world’s largest chip designer for smartphones
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.
RSS