PHARMACEUTICALS
Roche buys GenMark
Roche Holding AG has agreed to buy GenMark Diagnostics Inc for about US$1.8 billion to add a provider of tests for infectious diseases, including COVID-19. GenMark investors are to get US$24.05 a share in cash, the companies said yesterday. That is 30 percent more than Friday’s closing price. GenMark, based in Carlsbad, California, makes respiratory pathogen panels that help identify the most common viral and bacterial organisms linked to upper respiratory infections, including the virus that causes COVID-19, complementing Roche’s own diagnostics products. The boards of directors of both companies approved the merger, which is expected to close in the second quarter.
SINGAPORE
Home sales plummet 60%
Home sales fell last month after speculation about property curbs dampened buyer appetite. Purchases of new private apartments plunged 60 percent to 645 last month, Urban Redevelopment Authority data showed yesterday. That compares with 1,632 in January, which exceeded a two-year high. With home prices rising 2.2 percent last year, a further increase in excess of 5 percent could tip the market into “bubble territory,” DBS analysts said in January.
FOOD
Danone fires chairman
Danone yesterday said it had dismissed its chairman, a move that follows months of complaints from foreign shareholders about the French food giant’s underperforming share price. Activist investors took aim at Emmanuel Faber, who became Danone’s boss in 2017, and his management team, demanding his departure and a revamp at the top as the company struggles to plot a post-COVID-19 recovery strategy. Ahead of yesterday’s move, investors had already split Faber’s dual roles of board president and chief executive to improve accountability. While searching for a replacement “with an international profile,” Danone named a trio of top managers to head the firm.
GLOVES
Malaysia boosting output
Malaysia, the world’s biggest rubber gloves manufacturer, is racing to increase production to close a supply gap caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that it warns could last until into 2023. The Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association (Margma) yesterday said the country was in an oversold position of 160 billion gloves. “The lead time currently is about seven months for the gloves to be delivered to the end customer,” Margma president Supramaniam Shanmugam said, adding that demand would remain robust until the second quarter of next year.
TECHNOLOGY
Tencent falls a second day
Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) shares yesterday fell for a second trading day on concern regulators are now turning their sights to Pony Ma’s (馬化騰) business empire, fueling a US$62 billion wipeout that one brokerage said obliterated most of the value of its online finance business. The stock fell more than 4 percent in Hong Kong yesterday, following a 4.4. percent drop on Friday. China’s top financial regulators see Tencent as the next target for increased supervision after the clamp down on Jack Ma’s (馬雲) Ant Group Co (螞蟻集團), people with knowledge of their thinking have said. Like Ant, Tencent would probably be required to establish a financial holding company to include its banking, insurance and payments services, the people said.
CHIP HANG-UP: Surging memorychip prices would deal a blow to smartphone sales this year, potentially hindering one of MediaTek’s biggest sources of revenue MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip designer, yesterday said its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers are to account for 20 percent of its total revenue next year, as cloud service providers race to deploy AI infrastructure to meet voracious demand. MediaTek is believed to be developing tensor processing units for Google, which are used in AI applications. While it did not confirm such reports, MediaTek said its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business would be a new growth engine for the company. It again hiked its forecast for the addressable ASIC market to US$70 billion by 2028, compared
Motorists ride past a mural along a street in Varanasi, India, yesterday.
MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to double investment in data center-related technologies, including advanced packaging and high-speed interconnect technologies, to broaden the new business’ customer and service portfolios. The chip designer is redirecting its resources to data centers, mainly designing application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) with artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for cloud service providers. The data center business is forecast to lead growth in the next three years and become the company’s second-biggest revenue source, replacing chips used in smart devices, MediaTek president Joe Chen (陳冠州) told a media event in Taipei. “Three or four years
AT HIGH CAPACITY: Three-month order visibility on stable customer demand would push factory utilization to between 80 and 85 percent, Vanguard’s president said Foundry service provider Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) yesterday said it is unable to fully satisfy surging demand for chips used in artificial intelligence (AI) servers and data centers, amid an AI infrastructure investment boom that is crowding out production of less advanced chips. Vanguard is facing an “undersupply of chips” made using mature process technologies, due to strong demand for AI products and improving demand from customers in the commercial, industrial and auto sectors, which are digesting excess inventory to a healthier level, company chairman Fang Leuh (方略) told a virtual investors’ conference. However, Vanguard gave a more conservative view on
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