from the pretty-sharp-to-outfox-the-government dept.
Foxconn will take over the electronics maker Sharp for about 20% less than it was willing to pay previously.
Chinese iPhone assembler Foxconn is to swallow Japanese monitor biz Sharp for ¥389bn (£2.5bn) – around £625m less than it had previously been willing to cough up. Under the terms of the deal, Foxconn's daddy Hon Hai will gain a controlling stake of 66 per cent in Sharp.
The takeover beat a proposal by the Japanese government to bail out the ailing company with a state-backed fund. According to the Japan Times, Sharp is expected to report a loss of ¥200bn (£1.2bn) for its fiscal year 2015. Last month the long-awaited merger was put on hold after the Japanese outfit passed new info to Foxconn, reported to show a 300 billion yen ($2.7bn) liability in its accounts.
Also at BBC, NYT, and Reuters.
Related Stories
Electronics maker Sharp has accepted a $6.25 billion (700 billion Japanese yen) takeover bid from Foxconn, although the deal is now on hold. The $6.25 billion figure includes liabilities:
Ailing electronics maker Sharp has accepted a takeover bid from Foxconn, the company that assembles iPhones. After the deal was announced, Sharp's stock fell more than 14 percent. And Foxconn now says it will postpone finalizing the sale due to late-arriving information.
Thursday night local time, Foxconn issued a statement in Taiwan saying that it will now delay signing the deal, because of a document that Sharp shared with it on Wednesday, according to Focus Taiwan News, which adds that the sale was previously planned to be finalized by the end of this month.
[...] The Japan Times says the proposed deal would mean the loss of one of the country's crown jewels, calling it "the largest-ever acquisition of a Japanese electronics maker by a foreign company."
[cont..]
For years, iPhones (or their boxes) have said that they were "designed by Apple in California. Assembled in China." But thanks to an escalating trade war between the US and China, that might not be true in the coming years. Reuters reports that two of Apple's biggest manufacturing contractors, Foxconn and Pegatron, are working to expand their facilities in Mexico with an eye toward eventually building iPhones there.
[...] This isn't Foxconn's only effort to diversify away from China. Last year, Foxconn announced plans to begin manufacturing iPhones in India, and the company is now manufacturing the iPhone SE there.
Sources told Reuters that Taiwan-based iPhone contractor Pegatron is also considering a shift to Mexico, but few details about its plans are known.
Previously:
The New York Times (may be pay-walled) reports that Terry Gou, the CEO of Foxconn has confirmed rumours aired in December to the effect that the company is considering building an additional factory in the United States. Yahoo Finance UK says that the factory, if built, "could create about 30,000-50,000 jobs." The South China Morning Post reports that the facility, expected to cost more than $7 billion, would make dot-matrix displays (such as used in television sets and mobile phones) under the Sharp name. Mr. Gou remarked that:
While it is difficult to have a clear analysis of the economic outlook for this year, due to looming uncertainties, three factors can be seen as clues. First, the rise of protectionism is inevitable. Secondly, the trend of politics serving the economy is clearly defined, and thirdly, the proportion of real economy is getting increasingly bigger.
Speaking in November, Gou had called on the incoming U.S. leaders to refrain from protectionist policies, The China Post had reported.
Additional coverage:
Related:
Foxconn Plans to Replace Nearly All Human Workers With Robots in Some Factories
Foxconn Acquires Sharp at a Lower Price Than Previously Agreed
Sharp Accepts $6.25 Billion Takeover Bid from Foxconn, but Foxconn is Wary of Debt
Softbank to Invest $50 Billion in the US
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 31 2016, @12:30AM
Post Thatcher (massive sell-off of British companies - e.g Scotch whiskey is in its majority foreign owned [wordpress.com] since early 2000 - and the sel-off continues today [theguardian.com]), London became the financial capital of the world.
We'll need to invent something for Japan as well... say "greenhouse emission trading" capital of the world?
(not that this have helped the average Brits or would help the average Japanese, but anyhoo, something is better than nothing).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday March 31 2016, @12:45AM
Just reading the company-issued manga about its founder:
http://www.sharp.de/cps/rde/xchg/de/hs.xsl/-/html/sharp-history-comic.htm [sharp.de]
These Japanese companies go quite to great length to document their history. I recently came across Sony's. Quite a read. But one does get the impression that the pioneering days are gone for good.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @01:18AM
What makes you think that the pioneering days are gone?
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Thursday March 31 2016, @03:18AM
Because it's SHARP! And for such a bargain price... Who am I going to buy my TVs and Displays from now?
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @07:10AM
The Foxslaves Inc? ;-)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday March 31 2016, @12:11PM
What makes you think that the pioneering days are gone?
The fact that, over the last 20 years, they didn't come up with something that enables new activites.
If you look at the Sony history, how it spans from cooking up ferrite in frypans and attaching it to paper with rice glue to see if it can record something, over the invention of U-Matic for a cassette-protected tape, to perfecting it in miniature form in Video 8, that's pioneering and becoming masterful at it. All while cooking their own transistors and scoring Esaki's Nobel along the way.
Sharp, they've been at the forefront of LCD, enabling devices like the elegant EL-805 calculator or the PC-1210 pocket computer series; the latter dot-matrix alphanumeric (unheard of!, but still with a yellow UV shield, because they hadn't yet figured out how to UV-protect the liquid crystals...). You could have a full high-level-language programmable computer and carry it around in your POCKET!
But now? What would we expect from them? A questionable new DSP feature in their LCD-TVs? Meh. Maybe they push the limits of LCOS beamers a bit these days. But the last really interesting device they had was the Zaurus SL series 15 years ago, and that mostly not because of pioneering inventions from Sharp, but because it was so good to tinker with.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @04:30PM
It sounds like a corporate leadership that has lost their appreciation for R&D. Too little funding, too much red tape or suffocating talent.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday March 31 2016, @08:36PM
It sounds like a corporate leadership that has lost their appreciation for R&D. Too little funding, too much red tape or suffocating talent.
Red tape gone, funding by the cartload, what could they research and develop? The Japanese always were good at picking up ideas for widgets whose time had come, and then coming up with something half the size, half the price, but twice the reliability of what they saw in America or Europe. That, and the progress of semiconductors enabled a run of devices that brought recording and replaying of things to see and hear to an ever larger audience. This run is over. My favourite thing to illustrate it is the "Doogee X5" phone. 60 Dollars or so. I bought the "Pro" edition just because I was curious how good the Chinese are these days. It includes every invention the Japanese had a reputation for. Photos, Audio, Video: Recording and Playback, fits in every pocket. Can emulate every of the calculators that pushed the limits back then. The "widget" craze is past. See how desparate the companies try to peddle their smartwatches and fitness trackers to an indifferent market.
The only thing I can think of they could do, with "half the size, half the price, twice the reliabilty" would be getting into renewable energy. One idea might be delivering some battery chemistry at under $100/kWh. Nothing new, just cheaper and better what we have, to push the price/performance ratio to where it causes a mass adoption breakthrough. The other thing would be a combined generator/residential heater. Also, nothing that hasn't been done yet, but, I guess, something that would take off if it came at two grand instead of twenty.
(Score: 2) by bitstream on Thursday March 31 2016, @08:55PM
Let's see. They allegedy hasn't come up with anything good for 20 years so they could have created things like:
* An iPAQ style device.
* Digital link to screens (RCA, SCART, VGA etc.. sucks).
* A plugin card for PC:s that would enable the replacement of the RS232/Parallel/Keyboard kludge that a lot of devices used.
* Digital computer link for audio (ie S/PDIF).
* Open standard computer control of audio and video equipment for the consumer market.
Something seriously seems to be missing at that company.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @06:55AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2016, @06:35AM
I like how all these reports have to mention that Foxconn manufactures iCrap, as if there is nothing else notable about a company that has been making electronics for decades.
Now that they own Sharp, here's hoping for a release of cheap Chinese-made X68000s.