Coca-Cola Co’s US$2.3 billion bid for China Huiyuan Juice Group Ltd (匯源果汁) was blocked by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce on monopoly concerns.
“After the merger, Coca-Cola may use its dominant position” to limit competition in China’s juice market, the agency said in a statement on its Web site yesterday.
The takeover would have been the biggest foreign takeover of a Chinese company.
The decision will cost Coca-Cola, the world’s biggest soft-drink maker, the opportunity to boost its share of China’s juice market to more than 20 percent. China’s fruit and vegetable-juice sales may rise 20 percent to 97.1 billion yuan (US$14 billion) this year, almost double the rate for carbonated drinks, according to Euromonitor International.
“Beijing wants to protect its own brands,” said Renee Tai, Hong Kong-based food and beverage analyst at CIMB-GK Securities (HK) Ltd. “Drinks are not politically sensitive products, but it’s purely political.”
An acquisition of Huiyuan would have helped Coca-Cola chief executive officer Muhtar Kent maintain the company’s lead over Pepsico Inc as US soda sales slow. Coca-Cola’s sales by volume rose 19 percent last year in China and declined by 1 percent in North America.
Coca-Cola had 15 percent of China’s packaged-beverage market in 2007 compared with Pepsi’s 6 percent, according to Euromonitor. Coca-Cola controlled 54 percent of the Chinese soda market to Pepsi’s 31 percent. Coca-Cola had 10 percent of the fruit and vegetable-juice market while Pepsi’s share was too small to be counted.
Coca-Cola proposed to purchase Huiyuan for at least US$2.3 billion in September, in what would have been the Atlanta-based company’s biggest overseas acquisition. The cost of the deal could have risen to HK$19.6 billion (US$2.5 billion) depending on whether Huiyuan bonds are converted into shares, the Hong Kong-listed juice maker said.
Coca-Cola said on March 6 it plans to invest US$2 billion in China over the next three years to win more of the country’s 1.3 billion consumers. The beverage maker said it had already spent US$1.6 billion investing in China since returning in 1979.
Apart from Coca-Cola, Sprite and Minute Maid, the Atlanta- based beverage maker also sells Yuan Ye, a green tea drink, in China. The carbonated drinks market may grow 11 percent to 74 billion yuan this year, Euromonitor said.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS