Walt Disney & Co said no agreement has been made yet with Chinese authorities on the opening of a Shanghai theme park, although it was “optimistic” as negotiations continued.
An application to build the park was submitted to the relevant government bodies after the Burbank, California-based company had completed a feasibility study, Disney managing director for Asia Bill Ernest said yesterday in an interview.
“We are optimistic both parties will have an ongoing dialogue,” said Ernest after the launch of Hong Kong Disneyland’s Lunar New Year celebrations. “Yet today even with the application project report, we don’t have a deal yet, and we don’t have anything agreed to yet. We are still waiting.”
Walt Disney announced it will build a 24.4 billion yuan (US$3.6 billion) theme park in association with the Shanghai government in the city’s Pudong District, its sixth globally, the Chinese-language Apple Daily reported on Jan. 17. The park may open as early as 2014, the report said.
Ernest declined to give any estimate for the cost of the proposal.
“It’s still in so early a stage,” he said.
Disney stressed it would continue to develop Hong Kong Disneyland. Ernest said visitor numbers at the resort had climbed since posting first-year attendance figures that missed their target.
Opened in September 2005, Hong Kong Disneyland had attracted 14.5 million visitors in its first three years, and showed an 8 percent year-on-year gain in the 12 months ended September, said the resort’s managing director, Andrew Kam (金民豪). Now more than 15 million have visited the park, he said, adding that he expected the growth trend to continue even as the global crisis deepened.
“Our business continues to go up; right now our business is double-digit growth since our year started in October,” Ernest said. “There is definitely a slowdown in the world and we are aware of that. We are continuing building plans and prepare for that.”
Meanwhile, Kam reiterated a plan announced on Dec. 23 to expand the Hong Kong resort by one-third to help attract more visitors. Walt Disney and the city’s government, which owns a 57 percent equity stake in Hong Kong Disneyland, are in talks about funding the expansion, Kam said last month.
“Expansion is very important because we probably will reach our full capacity pretty soon, so we hope the expansion could begin sometime soon,” Kam said in a seperate interview yesterday, without giving timing details.
Ernest said he hoped the work would begin in the first-half of the year.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$7.5 billion into its US subsidiary, the Department of Investment Review said in a statement. The department approved TSMC’s application of investing in TSMC Arizona Corp, which is engaged in the manufacturing, sales, testing and design of IC and other semiconductor devices, it said. The latest capital injection follows a US$5 billion investment for TSMC Arizona approved in June. The chipmaker has broken ground on two advanced fabs in Arizona with aggregated investments approved by the department totaling US$24 billion thus far. According to TSMC, the first Arizona
The lethal hack of Hezbollah’s Asian-branded pagers and walkie-talkies has sparked an intense search for the devices’ path, revealing a murky market for older technologies where buyers might have few assurances about what they are getting. While supply chains and distribution channels for higher-margin and newer products are tightly managed, that is not the case for older electronics from Asia where counterfeiting, surplus inventories and complex contract manufacturing deals can sometimes make it impossible to identify the source of a product, analysts and consultants say. The response from the companies at the center of the booby-trapped gadgets that killed 37
FRIENDLY TAKEOVER: While Qualcomm Inc’s proposal to buy some or all of Intel raises the prospect of other competitors, Broadcom Inc is staying on the sidelines Qualcomm Inc has approached Intel Corp to discuss a potential acquisition of the struggling chipmaker, people with knowledge of the matter said, raising the prospect of one of the biggest-ever merger and acquisition deals. California-based Qualcomm proposed a friendly takeover for Intel in recent days, said the sources, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information. The proposal is for all of the chipmaker, although Qualcomm has not ruled out buying some parts of Intel and selling off others. It is uncertain whether the initial approach would lead to an agreement and any deal is likely to come under close antitrust scrutiny
SECURITY CONCERNS: The proposed ban on Chinese autonomous vehicle software and hardware would go into effect with the 2027 and 2030 model years respectively The US Department of Commerce today is expected to propose prohibiting Chinese software and hardware in connected and autonomous vehicles on US roads due to national security concerns, two sources said. US President Joe Biden’s administration has raised concerns about the collection of data by Chinese companies on US drivers and infrastructure as well as the potential foreign manipulation of vehicles connected to the Internet and navigation systems. The proposed regulation would ban the import and sale of vehicles from China with key communications or automated driving system software or hardware, said the two sources, who declined to be identified because the