Australia’s Sundance Resources yesterday said the country’s foreign investment watchdog had approved its A$1.65 billion (US$1.65 billion) takeover by Chinese suitor Sichuan Hanlong Group (四川漢龍集團).
In a statement to the Australian stock exchange the iron ore explorer said the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) had no objection to the Chinese company’s proposed acquisition.
Sundance chairman George Jones said FIRB approval represented “another significant step” toward the completion of the deal, which must still be approved by Chinese regulators by Saturday.
“The support shown by FIRB will assist Hanlong in obtaining the requisite approvals in China,” Sundance said in a statement.
The approval comes despite a probe into several former Hanlong executives by Australia’s corporate watchdog on claims of insider dealing related to the deal for Sundance, as well as uranium explorer Bannerman.
Hanlong vice-president Calvin Zhu (朱博施) and director Steven Hui Xiao (肖輝) had their assets frozen under a Supreme Court order sought by the Australian Securities Investments Commission.
Hanlong made a A$0.50 per share bid in July last year to take over Perth-based Sundance, an iron ore, copper and gold miner with projects in central Africa, but later sweetened its offer to A$0.57.
Under the proposal, Hanlong will buy 100 percent of Sundance shares through a scheme of arrangement.
Beijing’s interest in Australia’s mining firms has sparked intense debate in the country over whether to allow Chinese state-owned entities to increase their control over its resources.
Separately, Spanish infrastructure group Abertis said yesterday it had sold a 7 percent stake in leading European satellite operator Eutelsat to China’s sovereign wealth fund.
China Investment Corp (CIC, 中國投資公司), which manages the nation’s sovereign fund, paid 385.2 million euros (US$483 million) for the stake, Abertis said in a statement.
Abertis, which had already sold a 16 percent stake in Eutelsat in January in a private placement to investors, was left with an 8.35 percent stake in the satellite operator.
“Abertis keeps on reshuffling its holdings in the satellite infrastructure business and strengthening its commitment to growth, specifically targeting projects in which it can take an industry leadership role and a greater financial consolidation,” the Spanish firm said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day