The UK anticipates a 50-fold increase in interventions on takeovers of British companies and assets as a result of changes ministers outlined yesterday.
The proposals widen the scope in which ministers could intervene in deals over national security, the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said.
The department expects to examine about 100 deals this year and undertake some kind of remedy in about half of those, it said in a briefing to reporters.
It intervened in just one case last year and another this year.
New rules remove the requirement that acquisition targets have a £70 million (US$92 million) turnover and for the new entity to account for a 25 percent market share before the government can intervene.
They also expand the scope to include all industries as well as assets and units of companies, rather than just whole corporations. The regulations would apply to both foreign and British purchases of UK assets.
Until now, interventions have been governed by the 2002 Enterprise Act, which allows them when a proposed merger would affect media plurality, national security or public contracts.
The department made changes earlier this year that removed thresholds on market share and turnover for some companies, but yesterday’s proposals widen that to all sectors.
The department also plans to list sectors where it anticipates having more of an interest in intervening — including energy, defense and transportation.
The government retreated from earlier plans to require companies to report proposed deals to the department. Instead, companies will be able to do so voluntarily to avoid potential intervention further down the line when a deal is more advanced. The government would then have a mandatory time period within which to respond to give certainty to the businesses.
Ministers also plan to introduce a criminal offense so that directors could face prison sentences of as long as five years if companies breach undertakings they make to secure government approval for a deal.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last