The production value of Taiwan’s computer industry at home and overseas totalled $21,300m in 1995, including hardware production and sales, a 33.3% rise from a year ago, the Institute for Information Industry said: the value of hardware production rose 34.9% to $19,700m, and related services grew 17.3% to $1,600m; Taiwanese firms made 40.9m mice this year, accounting for 72% of the world market; they made 20.8m motherboards and 32.8m keyboards, 65% of international markets in each case; 57% of the world’s monitors, 31.3m units, were made by Taiwanese firms; due to expensive land and a labour shortage at home, many Taiwanese firms have moved their production centres to China and southeastern Asian countries in recent years.
Anyone got any unwanted electronic component distribution businesses? ML Holdings Plc has sold most of its operations for ú14.3m and wants to spend it on chip distributors.
France Telecom will start arbitration proceedings against Poland if the government refuses to grant its Polish joint venture, Centertel SA, licence to expand operations: its partner in the venture, Ameritech Corp, has already begun proceedings over the government’s failure to give Centertel, now Poland’s sole cellular operator, a licence to build a digital cellular network; France Telecom said it would start proceedings if it did not get agreement by the end of last month; it reckons Centertel, in which each has a 24.5% stake, should get a licence under the 1991 letter of intent agreed with the government; the government argues the letter is not binding and a new telecommunications law forces it to organise a new tender for two cellular licences; France Telecom said it would be ready to pay a licence fee, as required by the tender, expected to be about $128m; Poland’s TPSA said it would not allow Centertel to join the tender, in which applying companies must present bids to the communications ministry on January 3, because of high investment costs involved; analysts said even if Centertel entered the tender its chances would be slim because a telecommunications law envisages demonopolisation of the telephone market; Centertel has activated about 75,000 cellular phones since its creation in 1991 but its high charges brought complaints it had been using its sole operator’s position to boost profit; the government has said it will go ahead with the tender despite the complaints; France Telecom invested $50m in Poland only because it was sure Centertel would be allowed to expand but without a digital licence it will no longer be competitive.
Motorola Inc reports that Shaw Communications Inc has signed a multi-year agreement in principle to buy 100,000 CyberSURFR cable modems and Cable Router infrastructure products to enable it to provide consumers and businesses with high speed access to the Internet and a variety of on-line services: under the agreement, Motorola will provide the CyberSURFR modems plus associated infrastructure beginning in late 1996; no terms given.
India’s petrochemicals giant Reliance Industries, already embroiled in a controversy over its shares, has been sucked into a parliamentary row over telephone privatisation – newspapers have been going big on allegations of a link between Reliance and the small Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd although Reliance, whose shares are trading at half their 1994 levels, flatly denied the allegations; Himachal Futuristic, which emerged as the highest bidder in nine out of 20 zones in India’s telephone tender, is at the centre of a political row over the country’s multi-billion dollar telephone privatisation programme, with the communications minister denying allegations that he unfairly favoured a consortium led by Himachal from his home state, Himachal Pradesh; the allegations were made just days after Reliance was involved in a duplicate share controversy which hit the country’s exchanges; apparently Himachal Futuristic invested nearly $5.3m, 67% of its equity then, in two Reliance subsidiaries before they were merged with the parent on November 8 1994; it denies links with Reliance and said it had sold most of its Reliance shares and now held just 9,945 shares; Reliance reckons that it is the victim of a campaign by rival business houses.
Several major international players are involved in the teams that won Personal Communications Services licences from Industry Canada: a document from the Industry Department showed that shareholders in Clearnet PCS Inc included Nextel Communications Inc and Motorola Inc, which will provide the handsets for the venture; Montreal Trust Co of Canada is also a shareholder; the Sprint Canada unit of Call-Net Enterprises Inc, which is 25%-owned by Sprint Corp, is one of the shareholders in MicroCell Network Inc; an affiliate of Rogers Cantel Mobile Inc is L M Ericsson Telefon AB’s Ericsson Communications Canada Inc, to supoply handsets; the industry minister granted four licences for 10MHz and 30MHz Personal Communications Services.
Nokia Oy, Helsinki has won a several-year contract with US company Western Wireless Corp deliver PCS 1900 systems: the first phase involves $50m in deliveries, with an option to increase to a total of $100m over the next four years.
And there we were thinking that eruption of over a dozen acquisitions was a strategy to flood the market with so many of its shares that no-one would even thinking of making a hostile bid for it… Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois-based Platinum Technology Inc’s board adopted a shareholder rights plan.
