BenQ Mobile to be split up and sold
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(InfoWorld) - Attempts to find an investor for bankrupt German mobile phone maker BenQ Mobile have failed, after the last potential buyer ended negotiations, the company's insolvency administrator said Sunday. "I now seeÂ no realistic chance to sell the entire companyÂ in one piece and enable a new start," Martin Prager said in an e-mailed statement. "We have to acknowledge that the market has decided against BenQ Mobile." The potential buyer wasn't disclosed. German electronics and engineering giant Siemens agreed to sell its money-losing mobile phone manufacturing business to Taiwan's BenQ Corp. in June 2005, due to disappointing world sales of its handsets and high product costs. But in August 2006, the new owner announced plans toÂ cease investmentÂ in the German sites after concluding they were uneconomic. After "intensive inquires and market analysis," the last potential buyer withdrew its interest in buying the company, conceding that a profitable continuation of the BenQ Mobile's handset business was "not realistic," Prager said. Other potential buyers, including Sentex Sensing Technologies and SF Capital, failed to deliver acceptable offers, according to Prager. They were unable to meet creditors' requirements for a convincing concept to continue the manufacturer's business, an adequate price offer and concrete evidence of secured financing, he said. Since October, Prager held talks with more than 100 potential buyers and entered into intensive negotiations with 30. In the coming weeks, the insolvency administrator plans an auction to sell BenQ Mobile's assets, including real estate, machinery, and patents. About 2,300 employees in the Munich and Kamp-Lintfort plants were moved to transfer companies at the beginning of the year. Â
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A mobile gadget with a scrollable display is due to go on sale in Italy in late 2007.
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I'm getting a new mobile phone :) In the whole spectrum of digital opportunities, mobile is where the next big battle lies and I'll be rejoining the fray. It's eight years since Western Mail & Echo bought my first mobile. Four phones later my new one will bear no resemblance to the first.
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Struggling electronics firm considers breaking itself up in a move that could reshape the mobiles industry
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BRITISH Telecom today announced the sale of its stake in one of the worldâs largest satellite companies for Â£363 million. The telecoms giant said it was offloading its 15.8 per cent holding in Paris-based
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Attempts to find an investor for bankrupt German mobile phone maker BenQ Mobile GmbH &amp; Co. OHG have failed, after the last potential buyer ended negotiations, the company's insolvency administrator said Sunday.
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Motorola needs a successor to its  successful RAZR phone to hold on to market share, and BenQ  Mobile is set to make gains when new products kick in, market  research group Gartner said in a survey on Wednesday.
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Furniture business MFI is close to finalising the sale of its loss-making retail arm to a private equity group.
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By Christopher Hope, Business Correspondent, and Harry Wallop (Filed: 22/11/2004). Phoenix Venture Holdings, the owner of loss-making MG Rover, has sold off the last remaining major piece of land at its Longbridge
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Ofcom reveals plans to auction off parts of the radio spectrum for broadband and mobile services.
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CABLE firm NTL has agreed to sell its broadcast infrastructure business to a consortium led by Australia&#39;s Macquarie Bank in a deal worth Â£1.27bn, and could return the money to shareholders through a special dividend.
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The company has decided to leave the public markets.
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(InfoWorld) - For years, two South Korean giants have dominated the LCD (liquid crystal display) panel industry, but a recent merger in Taiwan has propelled AU OptronicsÂ into the running for the top spot. Fresh competition at the top should ensure LCD makers continue to find new ways to lower prices so they can lure users to buy new LCD TVs, larger desktop displays, and laptop computers with bigger screens. In fact, the big three all continue to invest in new LCD factories designed to lower costs, and they unanimously forecast falling LCD panel prices during the first three months of this year. AU, the world's third largest maker of LCD (liquid crystal display) screens,Â merged with Quanta DisplayÂ late last year, raising its share of the global LCD panel market to nearly match that of Samsung Electronics and LG.Philips Co.Â  Although the company remains in third place, it is just a sliver of market share away from the top, and on Thursday, AU said its work to integrate the new factories acquired in the Quanta Display deal is running smoothly. The company has already turned Quanta Display's operations profitable after two money-losing quarters previously, said Max Cheng, chief financial officer at AU, at the company's fourth-quarter investor conference Thursday. The smaller LCD maker had been suffering against its larger rivals because it couldn't compete as well on cost. In general, larger makers can offer volume discounts to big customers, and gain other cost advantages through mass production. The merger helped propel AU's LCD panel shipments past Samsung Electronics for the first time ever during the fourth quarter. The Taiwanese company shipped 16.6 million large-sized LCD panels in the fourth quarter, and 24.5 million small and medium sized panels, it said. Samsung shipped 15.5 million large-sized panels and 24.8 million small and medium sized panels, according to information on its Web site. The Samsung figures do not include output from S-LCD Corp., aÂ joint venture between Sony and SamsungÂ that produces large-sized LCD panels used by both companies. Large-sized LCD panels are described as those 10 inches in size or bigger, such as panels used as the screen part of a laptop computer, desktop monitor or LCD-TV. Small and medium-sized panels are the screen parts of devices such as mobile phones, and GPS (global positioning system) navigation devices. The shipment figures don't mean AU is already number one in LCDs. The top company, LG.Philips LCD Co., does not break down panel shipments, choosing to give its figure in millions of square meters because the size of panels differs so much. LG shipped 2.3 million square meters of panels in the fourth quarter. Neither AU nor Samsung provide shipment information in square meters. According to market researcher DisplaySearch, part of the NPD Group, LG.Philips ranked first in panel shipments last year, followed closely by Samsung, and then AU Optronics. There are only a few percentage points of market share separating the three. The next competitor listed, Chi Mei Optoelectronics of Taiwan, is nearly 10 percentage points away from first place. By other popular measures used to rank companies in an industry, such as revenue, Samsung comes out on top, with LG.Philips second, and AU Optronics in third. Samsung's LCD business posted fourth quarter revenue of 3.18 trillion Korean won (US$3.48 billion as of Dec. 31, the last day of the reporting period), while LG.Philips' revenue came in at 3.06 trillion won (US$3.34 billion) and AU's was NT$94.65 billion [B] New Taiwan dollars (US$2.91 billion). The nearest competitor to the top three was Japan's Sharp Corp., which posted revenue at its LCD component business of Â¥241.4 billion (US$2.03 billion) for the three months ending Dec. 31. Going forward, Taiwanese companies appear to be more aggressive in their capital spending (capex) plans for this year. In fact, AU Optronics plans to spend more on new factory production lines this year than any other LCD maker, between NT$90 billion and NT$95 billion (US$2.92 billion). The top end of that range is nearly double Samsung's estimate of 1.41 billion won (US$1.52 billion), which excludes spending on S-LCD. Chi Mei has said it will spend NT$75 billion (US$2.30 billion), making it the next biggest spender after AU Optronics. Â
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Mobile phone giant Vodafone sells its 25% stake in Swisscom Mobile for 4.25bn Swiss francs (Â£1.8bn).
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(InfoWorld) - The head of BenQ Corp. retained his chairmanship but will lose his CEO titles at some companies in the BenQ Group, amid a management reshuffle announced just weeks before his insider stock trading case begins in Taiwan. K.Y. Lee, the long-standing chairman of the company and head of the BenQ Group, lost his CEO title at LCD (liquid crystal display) panel maker AU Optronics Corp., and at BenQ Corp., an official confirmed Monday. The announcement comes less than a year after BenQ racked up over US$1 billion in losses in a high-risk attempt to build a global name in the mobile phone business. The company opened BenQ Mobile GmbH & Co. OHG in October 2005 after taking on Siemens AG's mobile phone unit. But a year later, BenQ called it quits amid stiff competition and heavy losses. Since then, its management has faced blame for betting the company on what turned out to be a losing strategy. Financially, the company posted losses in every quarter after the handset unit acquisition, and its bottom line continues to bleed. The company's dwindling financials, fears that German creditors might go after the parent after the collapse of BenQ Mobile, and the sell-off of BenQ assets to shore up its balance sheet has sent its share price down nearly 29 percent so far this year to close at NT$12.45 (US$0.38) Friday on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. Just when it seemed BenQ's troubles couldn't get any worse, Taiwanese prosecutors raided BenQ Corp.'s offices and hauled away three executives for questioning over alleged insider stock trading related to when it revealed losses incurred by BenQ Mobile. That was in March, and in all, five executives have been formally charged. The current management reshuffle, and the announcement of a new name for BenQ Corp., comes just weeks before court proceedings are set to begin on the insider stock trading case at the Taoyuan District Court in Taiwan. Officials said procedural meetings are slated to begin July 12. BenQ has denied any wrongdoing on the part of its executives. The company name change is part of a broader reorganization. The BenQ Corp. name and all businesses related to its brand are being spun off, while the manufacturing operations will continue to operate under a new name, Qisda Corp. It's a common strategy in Taiwan. Companies that make products on behalf of overseas customers as well as under their own name brands separate the contract manufacturing operations from the name brand business in order to avoid any conflict of interest with customers. The reorganization is expected to be final by Sep. 1, 2007. K.Y. Lee will be chairman of Qisda, BenQ, and AU Optronics once the change is finished, but he will not hold the CEO title at any of the companies. Hsiung Hui, an executive vice president at AU Optronics, will become the new president of Qisda, while Conway Lee will become the president of BenQ. The CEO title will not be used at either company, a BenQ representative said. At AU Optronics, H.B. Chen will take over the CEO title, and L.J. Chen will take on dual roles of president and COO (Chief Operating Officer).
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Rank is planning to sever its last link with its celluloid heritage with the sale or demerger of its Deluxe film-making arm. The group yesterday said it would investigate &quot;separating&quot; Deluxe
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A sale of part or all of its mobile phone unit would allow Telecom Italia to focus on broadband and content.