Monday, December 31, 2012

China's Historical Inflation Rates Since 1994



Complete Genomics Gets Security Clearance On Deal With Chinese Company

Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal by Lisa Ward
Web contributor Date: Monday, December 31, 2012, 4:52 am PST


Photo: Vicki Thompson

Complete Genomics, founded by current CEO Clifford Reid (pictured) in 2005, got national security clearance to sell to Chinese company BGI-Shenzhen.
The $117 million sale of Complete Genomics to Chinese company BGI-Shenzhen has gotten approval from the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and now just needs antitrust clearance to be able to close.

According to the New York Times, the committee reviews "national security implications of foreign takeovers of American companies," and the sale is controversial because some consider it a "threat to American competitiveness in DNA sequencing."

The deal was announced in September and values the company at $3.15 per share. It will keep Complete Genomics operations in Mountain View, where it will continue to operate as a separate company.

Hon Hai to Keep Some Apple Production Lines Running During Chinese New Year


Chuck Jones, Forbes Contributor. Posted: 12/31/2012 @ 8:14 AM

Hon Hai to Keep Some Apple Production Lines Running During Chinese New Year



Image via CrunchBase

Another indication that demand for Apple’s iPhone 5 and iPad Mini is strong comes from a report by BrightWire translating a Taiwanese United Daily News article that Hon Hai (also known as Foxconn) and at least one other company, PCB supplier Flexium Interconnect, will not shut down during the Chinese New Year. The Chinese New Year is the longest and most important festival in China. It lasts for fifteen days and starts on February 10 in 2013.

Typically manufacturing comes pretty much to a standstill during a large portion of the Chinese New Year as workers travel back home to celebrate and visit family. It is also a huge gift giving holiday. While it does not appear a large number of manufacturing plants will be operating having some production running five months after the iPhone 5 was launched and four months after the iPad Mini was made available shows that Apple believes the March quarter could still have strong demand for these products. I do not believe that this is due to manufacturing issues.

Disclosure: My family [Chuck Jones] and I own Apple shares.

12/31/2012 @ 8:14AM 

Can China Save Silicon Valley's Struggling Solar Technology?

Todd Woody, Forbes 



It’s a loss of Solyndra proportions.

MiaSolé, the Silicon solar startup that raised close to half a billion dollars from top venture capitalists to develop advanced photovoltaic technology, is being sold to Chinese renewable energy conglomerate Hanergy for $30 million.

The fire sale, first reported by David Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle, shows that even as the Chinese solar industry struggles with its own severe financial problems China is poised to scoop up U.S. technology on the cheap.

A MiaSolé spokeswoman, Christina Stenson, declined to comment on the deal.

Over the past decade, Silicon Valley venture capitalists and other investors have poured billions of dollars into MiaSolé, Nanosolar and other startups developing thin-film photovoltaic cells with a material called copper indium gallium selenide, or CIGS.

While less efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than conventional silicon-based photovoltaic panels, the great promise was that CIGS cells could be produced cheaper and deposited on glass, flexible metal or other materials.

But as I wrote in an October 2010 New York Times article:

  ...producing CIGS cells on a mass scale has turned out to be a formidable technological challenge, requiring the invention of specialized manufacturing equipment.

While Silicon Valley companies were working on the problem, silicon prices fell and Chinese companies like JA Solar, Suntech and Yingli Green Energy rapidly expanded production of conventional solar panels, supported by tens of billions of dollars in inexpensive credit from the Chinese government as well as other subsidies like cheap land.

The then-chief executive of MiaSolé, Joseph Laia, told me at the time that, “The solar market has changed so much it’s almost enough to make you want to cry. We have spent a lot more time and energy focusing on costs a year or two before we thought we had to.”

More change was to come. The headline on the story read, “Silicon Valley’s Solar Innovators Retool to Catch Up to China,” but as it turns out China has caught CIGS bug.

While the deal effectively wipes out the investments made in MiaSolé by such A-list VC firms as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and VantagePoint Capital Partners, the acquisition is good news for the nascent CIGS industry, according to Martin Simonek, a solar analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London.

“Hanergy has deep pockets and this is what CIGS technology needs to get to scale,” he told me Monday.

“The problem in the whole of solar is that it’s very difficult to raise any money or fund any expansion,” he added. “It’s too risky so you need strong backup and if it’s coming from China, so be it.”

He pointed out that Japanese CIGS company Solar Frontier, one of the more successful CIGS companies, is backed by energy giant Shell Showa. (Solar Frontier supplies its photovoltaic panels to General Electric, for instance.)

Ironically, Suntech, Yingli and the other Chinese manufacturers of conventional solar panels that helped drive MiaSolé into Hanergy’s arms are now struggling to survive crushing debt accumulated as they expanded production and drove down prices.If some of those companies fail or the industry consolidates as is widely expected, that could create an opening for CIGS technology.

A privately held company, Hanergy has focused on wind and hydro power and has entered the CIGS solar market only recently, acquiring in June Solibro, the CIGS subsidiary of Q-Cells, the bankrupt German solar manufacturer.

Hanergy maintains its U.S. headquarters in Burlingame, Calif., not far from MiaSolé’s manufacturing plant in Silicon Valley.

Simonek says the acquisition will make it hard for remaining Silicon Valley CIGS startups like Nanosolar to remain independent.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” he says. “This is a capital intensive industry. In the end there likely will be just a handful of players.”

published 10/01/2012 @ 1:04PM


http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoody/2012/10/01/can-china-save-silicon-valleys-struggling-solar-technology/2/