China’s steel crisis is setting the stage for a wave of bankruptcies and speeding a much-needed consolidation of the industry, Bloomberg Intelligence (BI) said.
Almost three-quarters of the country’s steelmakers suffered losses in the first half of this year and bankruptcy is likely for many of them, Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Michelle Leung (梁穎璋) said in a note.
Xinjiang Ba Yi Iron & Steel Co (新疆八一鋼鐵), Gansu Jiu Steel Group (甘肅酒鋼集團) and Anyang Iron & Steel Group Co (安陽鋼鐵集團) face the highest risk and could be potential acquisition targets, she said.
Photo: Aly Song, Reuters
The wave of consolidation would help Beijing encourage more concentration in its steel industry, Bloomberg Intelligence said.
The government wants the top five companies to control 40 percent of the market by next year and the top 10 to account for 60 percent.
These targets look “achievable,” although China would still be well behind South Korea and Japan in this respect, Leung said.
China’s persistent property crisis and flagging economic growth are reshaping the country’s massive steel industry, with the head of its biggest producer, China Baowu Steel Group Corp (中國寶武鋼鐵集團), warning last month of a crisis worse than in 2008 and 2015.
A slump in domestic demand has meant mills have increased exports, spurring a trade backlash from countries who say the metal is being dumped at below cost.
However, China’s steel exports are not likely to decline until the end of 2026, as total production falls and more trading partners step up restrictions, Bloomberg Intelligence said.
China’s housing rescue package offers the best path for putting the country’s economy on track to expand about 5 percent, in the view of most economists, assuming it is deployed to maximum effect in the face of a real-estate crisis expected to last as long as five more years.
China’s banks might carry out a new round of mortgage rate cuts this year to help shore up flagging consumption, the Securities Daily reported, citing analysts.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) last week recorded an increase in the number of shareholders to the highest in almost eight months, despite its share price falling 3.38 percent from the previous week, Taiwan Stock Exchange data released on Saturday showed. As of Friday, TSMC had 1.88 million shareholders, the most since the week of April 25 and an increase of 31,870 from the previous week, the data showed. The number of shareholders jumped despite a drop of NT$50 (US$1.59), or 3.38 percent, in TSMC’s share price from a week earlier to NT$1,430, as investors took profits from their earlier gains
In a high-security Shenzhen laboratory, Chinese scientists have built what Washington has spent years trying to prevent: a prototype of a machine capable of producing the cutting-edge semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence (AI), smartphones and weapons central to Western military dominance, Reuters has learned. Completed early this year and undergoing testing, the prototype fills nearly an entire factory floor. It was built by a team of former engineers from Dutch semiconductor giant ASML who reverse-engineered the company’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines, according to two people with knowledge of the project. EUV machines sit at the heart of a technological Cold
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
CHINA RIVAL: The chips are positioned to compete with Nvidia’s Hopper and Blackwell products and would enable clusters connecting more than 100,000 chips Moore Threads Technology Co (摩爾線程) introduced a new generation of chips aimed at reducing artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ dependence on Nvidia Corp’s hardware, just weeks after pulling off one of the most successful Chinese initial public offerings (IPOs) in years. “These products will significantly enhance world-class computing speed and capabilities that all developers aspire to,” Moore Threads CEO Zhang Jianzhong (張建中), a former Nvidia executive, said on Saturday at a company event in Beijing. “We hope they can meet the needs of more developers in China so that you no longer need to wait for advanced foreign products.” Chinese chipmakers are in
RSS