An investment company owned by the Abu Dhabi government has picked up an 8.1 percent stake in the second-largest maker of computer microprocessors in a move likely to raise concerns among US politicians over the increasing influence of Arab nations on the US economy.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), based in Sunnyvale, California, and listed in New York, sold the stake to help finance the building of a new plant and recent acquisitions as it competes with market leader Intel. Mubadala Development Co, set up in 2002, paid US$622 million for its 49 million new shares.
It is the latest so-called sovereign wealth fund to use the proceeds of the soaring oil price to buy into western companies. Merrill Lynch estimates that the amount of money these vehicles have to invest in shares, government bonds, property and other assets outside their home markets will rise from just under US$2 trillion this year to almost US$8 trillion in 2011.
Earlier this year Mubadala bought a 7.5 percent stake in Carlyle Group, arguably the most influential private equity firm in the US, and also has a stake in Ferrari. Investment funds backed by the government of neighboring Qatar, meanwhile, have bought into the London Stock Exchange and were behind the recent abortive bid for UK supermarket group J. Sainsbury PLC. Dubai International Capital, meanwhile, has stakes in the US hedge fund manager Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, the Indian bank ICICI and the defense firm EADS.
But the increasing influence of funds from Arab nations has raised worries among politicians in Washington, especially when it involves investment in potentially crucial intellectual property in areas such as defense and technology.
Dubai's announcement of a planned investment in the NASDAQ technology market, for instance, drew a response from US President George W. Bush that the deal's "national security implications" would be fully explored before the deal was approved.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
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