A French commercial court yesterday ordered energy and water giant Veolia Environnement SA to suspend its bid for rival Suez SA so as to allow a review of its earlier commitments to launch a friendly offer.
Veolia on Sunday announced it would pay 7.9 billion euros (US$9.5 billion) for the 70.1 percent of Suez it does not already own.
However, the court in Nanterre ordered Veolia not to submit its latest bid to the market regulator nor to launch an offer for the Suez shares without prior approval from its board.
The court ruling is the latest twist in a long-running saga between the two emblematic French companies.
Up to now, Veolia has sought to convince the Suez board of the merits of the deal, but Sunday’s announcement suggested it had run out of patience.
HOSTILE BID
In a statement on Sunday, Veolia said it had decided on “a public takeover bid in cash” at a price of 18 euros per share.
Veolia, which in October bought 29.9 percent of Suez’s capital, “notes that its repeated attempts at friendliness, reiterated in its offer proposal of January 7, 2021, have all encountered opposition.”
It accused Suez of obstructing Veolia’s bid.
Suez responded by saying that the takeover bid would be “irregular and illegal,” with a spokeswoman saying it showed Veolia never intended to proceed in a friendly manner.
Last month, Suez received an acquisition offer from investment firms Ardian and GIP, but Veolia refused to back off.
Veolia’s takeover has the potential to create a global giant supplying power generation, waste management and water services to municipalities worldwide.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian laborer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms about 15m below. Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years. However, a vicious heat wave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiraling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry. “This year is a crisis,”