TheChek News Flow

29-Sep-2020 11:09:39

By Arno Schuetze, Julie Zhu and Yilei Sun

FRANKFURT/HONG KONG/SHANGHAI, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Chinese state-owned car maker FAW Group SASACJ.UL held talks to acquire Italian truck group Iveco earlier this year but these have now been put on hold, two people close to the matter said.

FAW made a preliminary offer in July, valuing Iveco at a bit more than 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion), one of the sources said. The source said Iveco's parent CNH Industrial CNHI.MI rebuffed it because it considered the valuation low.

Changchun-based FAW, which makes heavy duty trucks under its own brand, is now reluctant to make international deals so as not to be seen to take advantage of troubled companies during the COVID-19 pandemic, the second source said. Some European governments have sought to shield key industries from unwanted foreign interest this year, as the coronavirus pandemic hit companies across sectors. (Full Story) (Full Story) (Full Story)

Vehicle and equipment maker CNH Industrial said last year it planned to split the company into two and list its lower-margin Iveco truck and bus business, along with the FPT engine division, in an effort to boost the group's asset values and streamline its businesses but the plans have been delayed.

FAW, which also partners with Volkswagen AG VOWG_p.DE and Toyota Motor 7203.T to make passenger vehicles in China, declined to comment. CNH Industrial also declined to comment.

Iveco, which is the smallest of Europe's traditional truck makers, competes with the likes of Volkswagen, Daimler DAIGn.DE and Volvo Group VOLVb.ST. It makes vans in China with state-owned SAIC Motor 600104.SS.

A sale of Iveco would be an alternative to the planned spin-off initially aimed to be finalised in early 2021, but which has been delayed "into next year or beyond" due to the fallout of the coronavirus crisis, CNH Industrial said. (Full Story)

CNH industrial's top shareholder Exor EXOR.MI, the holding company of Italy's Agnelli family, has said it would be a significant shareholder in both entities following completion of a spin-off process. It declined to comment on the story.

Angela Merkel and other leading politicians continued to lobby for the payments group even as the warning signs grew

European parliament wants landmark EU regulation to target power of largest online platforms

The battle to rewrite Europe’s internet rules is heating up.

The European parliament got in on the act on Monday with MEPs voting on draft proposals for reining in Big Tech. They hope these will be part of the European Commission’s landmark tech regulation, expected this year.

Discussions within the parliament on the new Digital Services Act have been going on for months, and they haven’t been smooth. Just one set of motions, by the internal market committee, saw more than 1,200 amendments (including a couple of hundred from another five committees).

The clamour from rival political groups and committees to wade in to the DSA is understandable. The act is among the most significant pieces of legislation to come out of Brussels since the dawn of the Big Tech era. It will be the first time in two decades that Brussels will overhaul online rules. Regulators are seeking to clarify crucial areas including limits on illegal content, ad transparency and disinformation.

Recent evidence suggests the commission wants to bring out the big guns, too. Earlier this month, Thierry Breton, the internal market commissioner charged with leading the digital overhaul, told the Financial Times that regulators want extra powers to break up big platforms, force them to sell divisions and even exclude them from the bloc if they misbehave. 

MEPs also smell blood. They are set to ratify recommendations that will call for tough action against giant platforms such as Facebook and Google. 

Alex Saliba, a centre-left MEP in charge of drafting recommendations for the DSA, called for proper rules to restrain the growing might of the tech giants.

“This is a golden opportunity to discuss the rules of the internet and place regulations on the services that are affecting our daily lives,” he said.

Some of the most eye-catching proposals MEPs want the commission to propose include:

He added: “We want to put users in charge of the content they see, rather than leaving them at the mercy of profit-driven algorithms that prioritise attention-grabbing content.”

ENGIE'S BOARD CHAIRMAN SAYS ENGIE IS NOT IN RUSH TO DECIDE ON VEOLIA'S BID FOR SUEZ

see attached

NTT, which already owns 66.2% of NTT Docomo, it said it would pay $36.97 per share to buy out other shareholders

TOKYO—Japan’s biggest telecommunications company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., said it would spend $40 billion to buy the portion of its mobile unit that it doesn’t already own, taking full control of its principal cash cow.

NTT already owns 66.2% of the unit, NTT Docomo Inc., and it said Tuesday it would pay 3,900 yen per share, equivalent to $36.97 to buy out Docomo’s other shareholders. In total, the acquisition will cost the equivalent of $40 billion, NTT said.

The offer price is a nearly 41% premium over NTT Docomo’s closing price Monday. Shares of the parent NTT closed down 2.85% in Tokyo trading Tuesday as investors fretted about the cost of the deal and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s plans to force Docomo and other mobile providers to cut their prices for consumers.

The deal would end a 22-year experiment that began when fixed-line telephone service was still the NTT conglomerate’s core business and mobile phones were owned by relatively few people.

By listing its mobile-phone unit in 1998, NTT allowed investors to bet on the fast-growing service.

During the turn-of-the-century internet bubble, Docomo was one of the world’s most valuable companies, briefly earning a market capitalization of more than $300 billion in early 2000 as it pioneered mobile internet services.

After the bubble burst, Docomo retreated from investments outside Japan and settled into a stable role as the biggest of three cellphone providers that serve most consumers in Japan.

The others are KDDI Corp. and SoftBank Corp. , which is partly owned by SoftBank Group Corp.

In recent years, with Docomo representing the bulk of NTT’s value, the logic of separating mobile communications from the rest of the business faded. Both the NTT parent and the Docomo subsidiary had market values of about $85 billion on Monday, meaning NTT’s 66% stake in Docomo represented 66% of the parent’s value.

Other parts of the NTT group have significant overseas business, operating data centers and selling communications systems to improve security in cities such as Las Vegas. Revenue outside Japan reached $19.5 billion in the year ended March 2020.

Formerly a Japanese government-owned telephone monopoly, NTT was privatized in the 1980s, but the government still owns nearly one-third of its shares.

Mr. Suga has pledged to reduce what he calls excessively high cellphone bills in Japan, hurting the share prices of Docomo and the other two mobile service providers.

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