Japan’s Nippon Steel Corp is seeing support for its proposal to acquire US Steel Corp in the regions of the US where steel mills are located, Nippon Steel president Tadashi Imai told reporters yesterday.
On Monday, a US inter-agency foreign investment committee referred the decision of whether to approve or block the US$15 billion deal to US President Joe Biden, who has 15 days to decide.
Biden and US president-elect Donald Trump have expressed opposition to the purchase.
Photo: Reuters
Nippon Steel has made a number of commitments to address the national security concerns of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, Imai said, adding that he believed there was “progress in understanding.”
“In the communities of the various regions where the steel mills are located, there is a considerable amount of support for this acquisition,” Imai said. “I hope that President Biden will understand ... the value of this acquisition to the US economy.”
Both companies have previously said they planned to close the deal, which has also faced opposition from the powerful United Steelworkers (USW) labor union, before the end of this year.
Nippon Steel yesterday shared a letter with Biden dated on Monday and signed by two dozen US municipality officials in areas where US Steel mills are located, asking the US president to approve the takeover deal.
“We respectfully urge you to listen to the voices of the steelworkers and everyone else whose economic security is tied to US Steel — they are speaking loudly in unison that this deal must be approved,” the letter said.
USW met Nippon Steel officials twice last week, the union said in a separate statement.
USW repeated its view that the Japanese steelmaker had no interest in the long-term security of US Steel plants or blast furnace operations, and urged Biden to keep the company domestically owned and operated, it said.
To win support for the acquisition, Nippon Steel has previously said it would not use the deal as cover to import steel and has made a series of pledges to protect jobs and invest in US facilities it sees as key to its future growth.
Shares of contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) came under pressure yesterday after a report that Apple Inc is looking to shift some orders from the Taiwanese company to Intel Corp. TSMC shares fell NT$55, or 2.4 percent, to close at NT$2,235 on the local main board, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed. Despite the losses, TSMC is expected to continue to benefit from sound fundamentals, as it maintains a lead over its peers in high-end process development, analysts said. “The selling was a knee-jerk reaction to an Intel-Apple report over the weekend,” Mega International Investment Services Corp (兆豐國際投顧) analyst Alex Huang
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to remain Apple Inc’s primary chip manufacturing partner despite reports that Apple could shift some orders to Intel Corp, industry experts said yesterday. The comments came after The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Apple and Intel had reached a preliminary agreement following more than a year of negotiations for Intel to manufacture some chips for Apple devices. Taiwan Institute of Economic Research (台灣經濟研究院) economist Arisa Liu (劉佩真) said TSMC’s advanced packaging technologies, including integrated fan-out and chip-on-wafer-on-substrate, remain critical to the performance of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips. She said Intel and Samsung
POWER BUILDUP: Powered by Nvidia’s B200 Blackwell chips, the data center would support MediaTek’s computing power demand and business growth, the company said Smartphone chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) yesterday launched a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center with a maximum capacity of 45 megawatts to meet its rising demand for computing power required to develop new advanced chips for AI applications. The company has completed the first-phase computing power buildup at the data center in Miaoli County’s Tongluo Township (銅鑼), providing 15 megawatts of capacity to support its research and development (R&D) capabilities, despite an industrywide shortage of key components, MediaTek said. Supply constraints have plagued a wide range of key components, including memory chips, solid-state drives, power supply units and central
TRANSITION: With the closure, the company would reorganize its Taiwanese unit to a sales and service-focused model, Bridgestone said Bridgestone Corp yesterday announced it would cease manufacturing operations at its tire plant in Hsinchu County’s Hukou Township (湖口), affecting more than 500 workers. Bridgestone Taiwan Co (台灣普利司通) said in a statement that the decision was based on the Tokyo-based tire maker’s adjustments to its global operational strategy and long-term market development considerations. The Taiwanese unit would be reorganized as part of the closure, effective yesterday, and all related production activities would be concluded, the statement said. Under the plan, Bridgestone would continue to deepen its presence in the Taiwanese market, while transitioning to a sales and service-focused business model, it added. The Hsinchu
RSS