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.”
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
READY TO HELP: Should TSMC require assistance, the government would fully cooperate in helping to speed up the establishment of the Chiayi plant, an official said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said its investment plans in Taiwan are “unchanged” amid speculation that the chipmaker might have suspended construction work on its second chip packaging plant in Chiayi County and plans to move equipment arranged for the plant to the US. The Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported earlier yesterday that TSMC had halted the construction of the chip packaging plant, which was scheduled to be completed next year and begin mass production in 2028. TSMC did not directly address whether construction of the plant had halted, but said its investment plans in Taiwan remain “unchanged.” The chipmaker started
MORTGAGE WORRIES: About 34% of respondents to a survey said they would approach multiple lenders to pay for a home, while 29.2% said they would ask family for help New housing projects in Taiwan’s six special municipalities, as well as Hsinchu city and county, are projected to total NT$710.65 billion (US$23.61 billion) in the upcoming fall sales season, a record 30 percent decrease from a year earlier, as tighter mortgage rules prompt developers to pull back, property listing platform 591.com (591新建案) said yesterday. The number of projects has also fallen to 312, a more than 20 percent decrease year-on-year, underscoring weakening sentiment and momentum amid lingering policy and financing headwinds. New Taipei City and Taoyuan bucked the downturn in project value, while Taipei, Hsinchu city and county, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung
RSS