
Yaskawa Electric robots are pictured at a trade show in Tokyo, Japan, November 29, 2023. REUTERS/Sam Nussey Acquire Licensing Rights
TOKYO, Nov 30 (Reuters) – Japanese robot maker Yaskawa Electric (6506.T) is considering investing around $200 million in the United States, its president said, with an eye to making its industrial robots there for the first time.
The investment would follow other manufacturers from allied nations moving to build capacity in the U.S. as Washington tries to boost high-end manufacturing and strengthen its control over supply chains amid trade tension with China.
While Japanese rival Fanuc (6954.T) is a leading maker of factory robots for the automotive industry in the U.S., Yaskawa hopes to ride a wave of automation in other sectors.
Manufacturing locally “gives our customers a sense of security and reliability,” President Masahiro Ogawa said in an interview.
The more than 100-year-old company has previously said it is looking to invest more in the U.S. The potential scope of the expansion is reported here for the first time.
Yaskawa is the world’s top maker of servo motors, a type of high-precision motor that is widely used in chipmaking tools.
The company, which already makes components in Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio, is considering expanding U.S. production to modules which incorporate its motors, Ogawa said.
The U.S. views securing access to cutting-edge semiconductors as a priority, with its leading chip equipment makers including Applied Materials (AMAT.O) and Lam Research (LRCX.O).
Foreign manufacturers building out capacity in the U.S. include automaker Toyota Motor (7203.T) and chipmakers TSMC (2330.TW) and Samsung Electronics (005930.KS).
Yaskawa, whose shares have risen by about a third year-to-date giving it a market capitalisation of around $10 billion, is looking at possible subsidies to fund some of the cost of the expansion, Ogawa said.
Reporting by Sam Nussey; Editing by Christopher Cushing
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Nov 14 (Reuters) – U.S. law firm Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney said on Tuesday it will combine with intellectual property law firm RatnerPrestia.
Pittsburgh-founded Buchanan will bring on 22 lawyers and two patent agents from RatnerPrestia in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Wilmington effective Jan. 1.
Buchanan, a law and lobbying firm, has about 450 lawyers and government relations professionals in 15 U.S. offices.
Jonathan Spadt, who was CEO and president of RatnerPrestia, will serve as a co-chair of Buchanan’s IP section. Buchanan said the combination increases its IP group by 65% and boosts its presence in the mid-Atlantic region.
While IP used to be more of a standalone practice, IP work is now “part of a much larger puzzle” and increasingly integrated with other areas, including trade, regulatory and antitrust, Spadt said.
RatnerPrestia, which was founded in 1981, wanted to find a larger firm that could offer additional areas of expertise, he said.
The two firms started talking in March, according to Joseph Dougherty, chairman and CEO of Buchanan. The tie-up brings together two already-strong IP groups and opens up opportunities to bring in new clients, he said.
There were 41 completed law firm mergers through the first three quarters of 2023, up from 37 at that point in 2022, according to figures released last month by legal consultancy Fairfax Associates.
Law firm Rimon on Tuesday also said it will acquire a small IP firm named Davidson Berquist Jackson and Gowdey.
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A Peterbilt 579 truck equipped with Aurora’s self-driving system is seen at the company’s terminal in Palmer, south of Dallas, Texas, U.S. September 23, 2021. Picture taken September 23, 2021. REUTERS/Tina Bellon/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Nov 1 (Reuters) – Aurora Innovation (AUR.O) on Wednesday opened its first lane for driverless trucks connecting Dallas and Houston, supported by its commercial trucking terminal in Houston, ahead of a launch in 2024.
“Bringing our commercial-ready terminals and services online a year ahead of our planned commercial driverless launch between Dallas and Houston enables us to focus next year on integrating our driver-ready trucks into our customers’ operations,” said Chief Product Officer Sterling Anderson.
Aurora said it would operate its terminals day and night, which will support more than 75 commercial loads for pilot customers.
The company will support its terminals with Command Centers which will include staff who monitor and guide the fleet.
Aurora’s move comes as federal investigations have been launched into General Motors’ (GM.N) autonomous vehicle unit Cruise, and the California Department of Motor Vehicles ordered Cruise’s self driving cars to be removed from state roads citing safety concerns.
Aurora’s portfolio of products includes Aurora Driver, its self-driving technology that can be employed across vehicle types, and driverless trucking subscription service Aurora Horizon.
Aurora has partnerships with Uber Technologies (UBER.N), Toyota (7203.T), Volvo (VOLVb.ST), and PACCAR (PCAR.O), among others.
Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Varun H K
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RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 27 (Reuters) – BlackRock-managed fund Climate Finance Partnership (CFP) will make its first foray into Latin America with the acquisition of a minority stake in Brasol, a Brazilian renewable energy firm, BlackRock announced on Friday.
The stake will be “shy of 50%,” said portfolio manager Anmay Dittman, adding the investment will be a “test case” for future transactions in the region.
“We’re really excited to get a little bit of a beachhead in Latin America and hoping that we’ll find many more great investments,” Dittman said at a press conference.
CFP, a public-private fund which partners with the French, German and Japanese governments as well as some U.S.-based organizations, targets emerging market climate infrastructure.
CFP did not disclose the amount paid for the stake, but Brasol Chief Executive Officer Ty Eldridge said the cash injection will help the firm in its one-billion-real ($200.38 million) plan to increase energy generation capacity.
Brasol operates renewable energy assets and leases them to commercial and industrial clients.
Brasol plans to boost its generation capacity by 200 megawatts in the next 18 months, Eldridge said.
While solar, the firm’s “bread and butter,” will be a key focus, Brasol is also looking into other technologies, like electric vehicle charging, Eldridge said.
“I can’t tell you where every dollar is going to go,” he said. “But certainly it’ll go into this broad portfolio of energy transition assets, and it’ll be certainly more than just solar power.”
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Reporting by Fabio Teixeira; Editing by Cynthia Osterman
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A COVID-19 treatment pill, called molnupiravir developed by Merck & Co and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP is seen in this undated handout photo released by Merck & Co Inc and obtained by Reuters May 17, 2021. Merck & Co Inc/Handout via REUTERS/File photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Oct 4 (Reuters) – The U.S. government will stop distributing free doses of Merck & Co’s (MRK.N) COVID-19 antiviral treatment molnupiravir by the middle of next month and expects it to be sold on the commercial market instead.
The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement posted on its website late last week they anticipate transition of the drug, sold under the brand name Lagevrio, from government-managed to traditional commercial distribution in November.
Merck, which developed the drug with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, said in an emailed statement on Wednesday that it needs an updated letter of authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to allow it to start selling the drug commercially.
Molnupiravir was initially hailed as a potential breakthrough when few treatment options were available but was soon eclipsed by Pfizer’s (PFE.N) rival treatment Paxlovid, which had more impressive data.
It has taken a backseat to Paxlovid in the United States and the EU regulator recommended against the Merck drug’s use in the region.
Trial data showed a roughly 30% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths from the illness in people with risk of progression for severe disease with the Merck drug, compared with a roughly 90% reduction in hospitalization for Paxlovid.
It has also been linked to potentially transmissable mutations in the COVID-19 virus, according to a study published in the journal Nature last month. Merck said the study was limited and that it is confident in the clinical profile of the drug.
Molnupiravir’s global sales have dropped sharply since last year, when the company booked nearly $5.7 billion in revenue. This year, the company expects sales of the drug to be around $1 billion, and analysts forecast a further drop going forward.
Since authorization, the U.S. government has delivered more than 3.2 million courses of molnupiravir of which more than 1.4 million have been administered, according to ASPR data. That compares with 15.4 million courses of Paxlovid delivered and nearly 10 million used.
The U.S. still has additional Paxlovid inventory, which will continue to be available for free at pharmacies around the country until it too moves to the commercial market.
Merck said it would have a patient assistance program for people who cannot afford the drug.
Reporting by Michael Erman
Editing by Bill Berkrot
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A Comac C919, China’s first large passenger jet, flies away on its first commercial flight from the Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport in Shanghai, China May 28, 2023. REUTERS/Aly Song/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
BEIJING, Sept 28 (Reuters) – China Eastern Airlines (600115.SS) said on Thursday it will buy another 100 C919 airplanes in a deal worth $10 billion at list prices, in what would be the largest ever order for the jet made by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC).
The state-owned carrier said it had received a “substantial discount” for the deal and that the planes will be delivered in batches from 2024 to 2031. The list price for the C919 is $99 million but aircraft can be sold at discounts of up to 50%, especially for new models.
The deal comes five months after the Chinese passenger plane, developed by state-owned COMAC to rival Airbus SE’s (AIR.PA) A320neo and Boeing Co’s (BA.N) 737 MAX single-aisle jet families, took its first flight in May with China Eastern.
The Shanghai-headquartered, state-owned carrier is the first user of the C919 and has bought five of the jets, of which three have been delivered. The other two are expected to be delivered later this year.
Boeing is still waiting to resume deliveries of its bestselling 737 MAX to Chinese airlines more than four years after they were halted following two deadly crashes. The company has been all but shut out of new orders from Chinese carriers since 2017 amid rising political and trade tensions between Beijing and Washington.
Li Hanming, an independent aviation industry analyst, said the deal stemmed from a previous order of intent.
“It is announced at the one year anniversary of C919’s receiving its type certificate,” Li said.
“COMAC has made a good start in the delivery of C919 so far. Next, the plane manufacturer will cooperate with China Eastern more closely, to show other potential users the reliability and performance of C919.”
China Eastern said that the additional planes would add to its fleet at a time when air travel is seeing a strong recovery following three years of COVID curbs, and as the airline needs to retire a large number of its narrow-body aircraft due to their age.
The airline said it would pay for the purchase in installments via its own funds, bank loans and bond issuance.
China Eastern will get delivery of five aircraft in 2024, while ten are to be delivered each year from 2025 to 2027. From 2028 to 2030, 15 C919s will be delivered each year, and the last 20 jets will be delivered in 2031.
Last week, GallopAir, a new Brunei-based airline, said it had signed a letter of intent to purchase 30 aircraft from China, worth $2 billion in total. The deal includes 15 orders of COMAC’s ARJ21 aircraft and 15 of the C919.
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Reporting by Sophie Yu, Brenda Goh
Editing by Neil Fullick and Peter Graff and Miral Fahmy
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People walk along the beach on the Suffolk coast as the Sizewell B nuclear power station can be seen on the horizon, near Southwold, Britain, January 31, 2019. REUTERS/Russell Boyce Acquire Licensing Rights
LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) – Britain on Monday opened the search for private investment in the Sizewell C nuclear project, inviting potential investors to register their interest.
The building of the plant by French energy giant EDF in southeast England, capable of producing around 3.2 gigawatts of electricity or enough to power around 6 million homes, was approved in July 2022.
“The government, the Sizewell C Company and EDF, the project’s lead developer, are looking for companies with substantial experience in the delivery of major infrastructure projects,” a statement from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said.
The British government announced last year that it would support Sizewell C with around 700 million pounds ($895 million) while taking a 50% stake during its development phase.
“The launch of the formal equity raise opens another exciting phase for the project, following a positive response from investors during market testing,” said Sizewell C Company Joint Managing Director, Julia Pyke.
Reporting by Kylie MacLellan, writing by William James
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LONDON, Sept 13 (Reuters Breakingviews) – Where is Wen Jiabao when you need him? China’s former premier is remembered for his decision to unleash a huge state spending plan after the 2008 financial crisis. Today’s leaders wish they could deploy similar fiscal firepower to kickstart their sputtering economy. The options before President Xi Jinping aren’t great. Yet letting some heavily indebted local governments’ investment arms fail would be better than keeping them on pricey life support or counting on an elusive rebound in consumption.
Wen exited the political stage a decade ago but his legacy lives on, for better and, mostly, for worse. His plan to throw 4 trillion yuan ($555 billion), or about 13% of China’s GDP in 2008, at everything from railroads to airports contributed to a debt overhang that’s still haunting Beijing today. In the 15 years since, China’s debt-to-GDP ratio has doubled to a whopping 280%, with the bulk of liabilities held by local government financial vehicles (LGFVs).
Most of these 3,000-plus entities were created by local governments during the 2008 crisis to skirt a central government ban on direct state borrowing. They were then contracted by regional governments to build public infrastructure, from uneconomical leisure parks and roads to slightly more cost-effective highways, subway stations and high-speed bullet trains. Many also developed land for regional governments before it was sold on to residential developers. Today those vehicles are a ticking time bomb that hampers China’s ability to spend its way out of the current economic doldrums. Economists are busy downgrading the country’s full-year growth to below the official goal of around 5%, which was already seen as modest, because an initial recovery following December’s pandemic reopening quickly faded. China is flirting with deflation as the property sector – which accounts for a quarter of GDP – has sunk and pandemic-scarred consumers and businesses hesitate to spend.
Xi’s dilemmas are compounded by his belief that the traditional stimulus playbook of boosting real estate has run its course. He has frowned at house prices that made Shanghai less affordable than New York and made an example of over-leveraged developers that disrupted the market, such as China Evergrande (3333.HK), which is struggling to restructure some $300 billion in liabilities. He has eased home purchase curbs recently to stabilise property sales, but they are still on course to decline around 10% this year, per Gavekal Dragonomics.
That leaves much of the heavy lifting to fiscal spending. Yet LGFVs’ debt stands in the way. These vehicles had already accumulated 80 trillion yuan of liabilities at the end of 2022, according to analysts at Guosheng Securities. Of that, 54 trillion yuan was interest-bearing, mostly owed to Chinese banks.
The bulk of these debts are separated from local governments’ balance sheets, but Beijing’s decade-long efforts to sever the implicit guarantee between local governments and their LGFVs have been largely unsuccessful. A third of LGFVs didn’t generate positive cash flow last year, according to Guosheng. And 60% of them, holding about 32 trillion yuan of outstanding debt, would struggle to pay interest with their own EBITDA, Citi analysts estimated. Yet local officials remain reluctant to let them default on public markets, for fear that such a shock would shut their regions’ funding access and even trigger a run on government bonds.
Beijing wants to buy time. Its latest move includes a mooted plan to allow local governments to raise 1 trillion yuan in total through bond sales to repay LGFV debt. The Ministry of Finance may also ask banks to extend loans and slash the interest. Zunyi Road and Bridge Construction, a LGFV in China’s Southwestern Guizhou province, set a precedent earlier this year, as its creditor banks agreed to roll over its loans for 20 years and halved interest on them. Xi could also help by letting local governments shuffle their debt into the state’s balance sheet since the central government has a debt-to-GDP ratio of just 20%.
The problem with these measures is that they wouldn’t reduce LGFVs’ pile of debt. A harsher medicine is needed. The shock therapy option for Beijing is to force a fire sale to raise much-needed cash. LGFVs have 133 trillion yuan in total assets, around 60% of which are in land and physical assets such as industrial parks, transport infrastructure and investment properties, according to Guosheng.
Local officials have pushed back at Beijing’s requests to sell, arguing most of these assets are illiquid, according to the Financial Times. But even if the portfolio of land and fixed assets was put up for sale at a massive 80% discount to entice vulture and bad debt investors, that would raise around 16 trillion yuan, enabling the LGFVs to pay back all their outstanding bonds. At a more optimistic 30% discount, the proceeds would jump to 55 trillion yuan, which would cover all outstanding interest-bearing debt.
Even with asset sales, it’s inevitable that some LGFVs, especially in poorer regions, will have to fail. Beijing fears that would break the banks. S&P analysts calculate that about 20 trillion yuan of LGFVs’ loans may be at risk of restructuring. Letting these loans roll over with interest slashed – as in Zunyi’s case – would result in a 5 trillion yuan hit to bank capital, and reduce banks’ average capital adequacy ratio by 2.6 percentage points to 12.6%; that’s still within regulatory requirements.
The stakes are high. Despite Xi’s distaste for propping up the economy through real estate, the danger is that a fire sale of LGFVs’ assets could spark a widespread fall in the value of collateral for bank loans and cause a deeper crisis of confidence. That, in turn, might deal a considerable blow to lenders’ balance sheets and destabilise the financial system.
That said, the banking sector is sitting on 335 trillion yuan of total assets, and bad loans, impairments and provisions will only be an issue once lenders come clean on them. So far, they are not. As of June 2023, Chinese commercial banks claimed that non-performing loans were just 1.6% of all loans. Investors have already priced in more damage and pushed the average valuation of those listed to less than half of book value.
The makeup of China’s growth makes drastic action on LGFVs even more imperative. Unlike in the United States and other Western countries, China’s growth is still driven by investment rather than consumption. Investment as a share of GDP is a lofty 40%, according to Oxford Economics, double that of the United States.
Chinese households have ample savings, having accumulated 17.8 trillion yuan of bank deposits last year alone. But darkening job prospects, a diminishing wealth effect from real estate, and scars from years of pandemic lockdowns have made them extremely reluctant to spend them.
If Xi won’t boost property wholeheartedly and is not able to count on consumers, his efforts to revive China’s growth have to focus on smashing the great wall of local debt.
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CONTEXT NEWS
Global rating agency Moody’s on Sept. 1 revised down its 2024 GDP forecast for China to 4% from 4.5%. It maintained that China’s economy will grow at the rate of 5%, the official government target, in 2023.
China’s monthly economic update for August, including that on industrial output, fixed asset investment, property investment, retail sales and others, will be released on Sept. 15.
Editing by Peter Thal Larsen, Sharon Lam and Aditya Sriwatsav
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Opinions expressed are those of the author. They do not reflect the views of Reuters News, which, under the Trust Principles, is committed to integrity, independence, and freedom from bias.
[1/3]A model of the Ford F-150 Lightning electric pickup is parked in front of the Ford Motor Company World Headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, U.S. April 26, 2022. REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/File Photo
Aug 10 (Reuters) – Ford Motor (F.N) expects to incorporate more and better software into the trucks and vans in its highly profitable Ford Pro commercial vehicle business and grow revenues by $4,000-$5,000 per vehicle by 2026, a top executive said on Thursday.
Navin Kumar, chief financial officer of Ford Pro, said the automaker would look to boost revenue with software- and data-driven fleet services, safety and security services, partial vehicle autonomy and insurance.
Kumar, speaking at a J.P. Morgan investor conference, did not give a percentage forecast for revenue or profit margin growth, but said Ford’s ability to deliver and profit from those services will be enhanced in the middle of this decade when the company introduces its next-generation electric commercial vehicles with a new digital “intelligence” platform.
That new platform will help Ford Pro meet some ambitious 2026 targets, he said, including doubling the percentage of connected vehicles to about 60% and tripling the percentage of vehicles with paid software to about 36%.
Ford Pro will continue to offer a full portfolio of combustion engine, hybrid electric and full electric vehicles, Kumar said.
Its second-generation EVs, including the successor to the F-150 Lightning pickup, will be more profitable, in terms of their ability to generation additional software and services revenue.
Kumar said the current F-150 Lightning was not “cost optimized,” but declined to say whether it was profitable.
He said Ford Pro expects to boost its commercial vehicle business in Europe with the arrival this fall of a new Transit Custom van and the introduction next year of electric versions of the Transit Courier and Transit Custom.
Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit; Editing by David Gregorio
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file photo: A logo of the autonomous driving technology startup Pony.ai is seen on a screen during an event in Beijing, China May 13, 2021. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang
BEIJING, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Autonomous vehicle technology startup Pony.Ai on Friday said it would set up a joint venture with Japan’s Toyota Motor (7203.T) with an investment of 1 billion yuan ($139 million) to mass produce robotaxis.
The new company, which will also involve Toyota’s joint venture with Chinese state-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group (GAC) (601238.SS), will be established this year and will see GAC-Toyota produce cars that will use Pony.Ai’s ride-hailing software, Pony.Ai said.
The venture marks a new development in the partnership between Pony.Ai and Toyota, which first teamed up in 2019. In the years since, the Japanese automaker has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Pony.Ai.
Pony.Ai, which has offices in China and the United States, has launched robotaxi services in Beijing and Guangzhou.
Toyota last month said it planned to accelerate local design and development of “smart cockpits” that meet the needs of the Chinese market, as part of a broad pivot to electric vehicles as it seeks to catch up with increasingly aggressive local rivals.
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Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Writing by Liz Lee; Editing by Tom Hogue and Christopher Cushing
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