French Minister of Finance Bruno Le Maire yesterday said that a takeover raid by French energy and water giant Veolia Environment SA against its rival Suez SA risked destabilizing both firms unless an amicable accord could be reached.
Veolia closed in on its target on Monday after securing a deal to buy 30 percent of Suez from Engie SA, an energy player in which the French state owns a 22 percent stake.
Despite voting against the sale, the French government was overruled by Engie’s board, which agreed to pocket Veolia’s offer of 3.4 billion euros (US$4 billion).
Photo: AFP
Veolia is now poised to launch a full takeover, potentially creating a global giant supplying power generation, waste management and water services to municipalities worldwide.
French officials are eyeing the deal warily, despite pledges by Veolia to maintain jobs in the strategic sectors.
Suez’s board on Tuesday denounced a “hostile” deal made under “unprecedented and irregular conditions.”
“I don’t believe in forced marriages. I don’t think they work,” Le Maire told France Info radio, urging talks to resume between the two sides quickly.
“The deal won’t work” without an accord, he added.
“We were just a few centimeters from a deal, but we ran up against intransigence on one side and hastiness on the other,” he said.
Veolia has said it would give itself six months to find common ground with Suez and allay its fears of a breakup that it says could cost up to 10,000 jobs.
Suez has already taken a series of “poison pill” moves to try to scupper any takeover, including by placing its key French water services business in an independent Dutch holding.
That could put it out of reach for Veolia, which has said it wants to sell the French operations to meet antitrust concerns.
Suez said that “it will use all the means at its disposal ... to avoid a creeping takeover or de facto control.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained