Business

Editor: Sharon Li
5 Nov 2008 06:11:34 GMT

MANILA (AFP)–The Philippine electronics industry, the country’s single largest export sector, warned Wednesday it would likely see a decline in 2009 due to the worldwide financial turmoil.

“It doesn’t look like we will have positive growth this year in terms of the electronics industry. It looks like it will be negative,” said Arthur Young, president of the Semiconductors and Electronics Industries of the Philippines Inc., or Seipi.

He said Seipi the industry association, had originally forecast flat growth in exports in 2008 with 5% growth in 2009 but the projections were discarded in the face of large cancellations of orders in recent months.

“It is definitely going to be a very bad fourth quarter because of the steep decline in demand,” he said, declining to give specifics.

“In October, the orders from our customers dropped tremendously and they continue to drop,” he said.

Seipi had initially hoped exports to nontraditional markets like China, India and Eastern Europe would make up for lower demand from the U.S. or Western Europe but the fall in demand spread to those markets as well, said Young.

The first quarter of 2009 would also be tough but Young was hopeful electronics exports would improve in the second half of that year, once consumer confidence returned and credit began flowing again.

“On the medium to long term, we are fairly confident that the industry will be solid,” he said.

In the meantime, electronics companies would try to cut costs and even reduce work days to avoid laying off workers during the financial crisis.

Electronics shipments for the first eight months of 2009 slipped by 1.65% to $20.228 billion, the government earlier announced.

Electronics accounts for more than 50% of the country’s exports.

Editor: Sharon Li
6 Nov 2008 02:06:23 GMT

German electronics giant Siemens AG has finally made its decision to quit from the computer industry by selling its 50 percent computer-related shares to its joint venture partner Fujitsu for a price of 450 million Euros, or about 590 million US Dollars.

Siemens AG made the announcement in Germany on Tuesday, reported CNFOL.com, a Chinese professional business website.

Co-founded by Japanese Fujitsu and German Siemens in 1999, Fujitsu-Siemens Computer has been the largest computer producer in Europe. It enjoys a market value 1 billion Euros, or 1.3 billion US Dollars.

Siemens group will focus more on the energy industry and medical equipment following its withdrawal from the computer industry, the report said.

Fujitsu-Siemens Computers currently has 15 thousand staff, with six thousand of them in Germany.

The labor union has signaled their concern over a possible staff reduction since it was revealed the company will be completely taken over by an Asian group.

Editor: Sharon Li
5 Nov 2008 02:49:40 GMT

HANDPAY, a Shanghai-based third-party electronic payment service provider, has launched mobile phone payment services in the city.

Based on the service bundled with bank accounts, users can buy air tickets, pay utility bills and check bank accounts on their handsets. Users can also receive electronic coupons.

The company is to provide users with a memory card with the payment system, which ensures hardware-level security.

Concern over fraud and computer viruses is the major bottleneck for electronic payment services in China, especially in online payment sector, according to industry insiders.

More than 57.9 percent of users in China have had bad experiences of third party e-payment, which means that service providers need to simplify the conducting process and improve security, according to Analysys.

People can apply for Handpay’s services with ID and bank cards at nine D.Phone outlets in the city, including one in the Xujiahui area.

Editor: Bruce Meng
3 Nov 2008 01:15:49 GMT

By Kentaro Hamada and Noriyuki Hirata

TOKYO, Nov 2 - The heads of Panasonic Corp and Sanyo Electric Co Ltd have agreed in principle to a deal that would see Panasonic take over Sanyo to create Japan’s largest electronics maker, three people familiar with the matter said.

Panasonic, the world’s largest plasma TV maker, and Sanyo, the No.1 supplier of rechargeable batteries, will likely make an announcement on the agreement soon, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity as the deal is not yet public.

Reuters and other media had reported Saturday that Panasonic was in talks with Sanyo’s top three shareholders — Goldman Sachs, Daiwa Securities SMBC and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Co — to buy their shares and take control of Sanyo.

Sources on Sunday told Reuters that Panasonic President Fumio Ohtsubo and Sanyo President Seiichiro Sano met last month and agreed in principle to Sanyo becoming a subsidiary, but that there has not been any agreement on details such as price.

Osaka-based Panasonic is now expected to start the due diligence process to check Sanyo’s assets and begin full-fledged price negotiations with the three shareholders, the sources said.

Panasonic has already proposed at least one price that did not satisfy the three shareholders, sources told Reuters, underscoring the possibility that coming to a final agreement could prove difficult.

Panasonic spokesman Akira Kadota on Saturday declined to comment on whether the company was in talks with the three major Sanyo shareholders.

Sanyo spokesman Hiroyuki Okamoto said on Saturday the company has been looking into a variety of potential steps concerning the preferred shares owned by the three shareholders, but that nothing has been decided.

The three shareholders combined hold nearly 430 million Sanyo preferred shares, each of which can be exchanged for 10 common shares. That would value them at about 621 billion yen ($6.31 billion) based on Friday’s closing price for the common shares.

Panasonic and Sanyo together would have revenues of 11.22 trillion yen, according to their forecasts for the year ending March 2009, surpassing the projected 10.9 trillion yen at Hitachi Ltd, Japan’s top electronics firm in sales.

Acquiring Sanyo would put Panasonic in a leading position in the global market for rechargeable batteries, which is expected to grow strongly as the use of portable electronic devices and hybrid or electric vehicles expands.

The move would also allow Panasonic, which is sitting on cash and cash equivalents of about $10 billion, to gain a foothold into the fast-growing solar market. Sanyo is the world’s seventh-largest maker of solar cells.

Sanyo issued 300 billion yen in preferred shares to the three companies in 2006 to help it restructure after it suffered a sharp downturn in earnings, hit by fierce competition and earthquake damage to a key microchip plant.

Daiwa Securities SMBC is a joint venture between Daiwa Securities Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG), while Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp is Sanyo’s main bank and an SMFG unit.

Restrictions on converting them into common stock and selling them will be lifted next March, making it easier for the three main shareholders to make an exit on their investments.

If converted into common stock, the holdings would give them about 70 percent in the company.

Sanyo’s shares closed on Friday at 145 yen, giving the company a market value of about 271 billion yen excluding preferred shares.

Editor: Crayon Zhang
7 Nov 2008 10:11:47 GMT

Editor: Sharon Li
7 Nov 2008 02:16:59 GMT

ELPIDA Memory Inc, Japan’s largest maker of computer-memory chips, delayed the startup of its venture in China and cut capital spending this year after a glut led to four straight quarterly losses.

Operations at the chip-making venture with Suzhou Venture Group Co in east China will begin about a year after the initial schedule of early 2010, the Tokyo-based company said in a statement yesterday. Capital spending for the 12 months ending March 31 will be reduced by as much as 10 percent from a planned 100 billion yen (US$1.02 billion), Elpida said in the statement.

Editor: eveguo
31 Oct 2008 10:01:31 GMT

SHANGHAI, Oct 31 - China will announce a major
foreign order for its self-developed regional jet ARJ21 next week
valued at roughly 5 billion yuan ($731 million), an industry
executive said on Friday.

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (CACC), which
developed ARJ21, will sign the deal with a U.S. firm during the
Zhuhai airshow in south China, the executive close to the Chinese
firm told Reuters.

The executive, who asked not to be identified, did not
disclose the size of the order. But China Daily, an official
English-language daily paper, cited another domestic paper as
saying the order would total 25 jets.

In March, GE Commercial Aviation Services, General Electric’s
<GE.N> aircraft leasing arm, signed a preliminary agreement to
buy 5 ARJ21 jets with an option to buy 20 more.

The Chinese industry executive declined to say if GE
Commercial was the buyer of the 25 ARJ21 jets.

CACC was incorporated earlier this year after the merger of
China’s two state aircraft makers AVIC I and AVIC II.

Orders for the ARJ21 jet, unveiled last December and due for
commercial deliveries from the third quarter of 2009, have
already exceeded 100, mostly from domestic carriers.

General Electric and Parker Hannifin Corp <PH.N> are among
companies which supply parts for the ARJ21 jet.
($1=6.838 Yuan)

Editor: Crayon Zhang
31 Oct 2008 09:35:21 GMT

Editor: Crayon Zhang
30 Oct 2008 10:24:00 GMT

Editor: Crayon Zhang
29 Oct 2008 09:55:14 GMT