Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1727
Meituan’s acquisition of Light Years away, the original price will return all investment funds
Meituan announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on the 29th that it has entered into a transaction agreement to acquire all the interests of domestic and foreign entities light years away. , and RMB 1 in cash.
Light Years Beyond is a big-model company founded by Wang Huiwen 136 days ago and currently has a net cash total of approximately $285 million. After the transaction is completed, Meituan will hold 100% of the equity of Light Years Beyond Group. Its financial performance will be merged into Meituan together.
Light years away is a typical VIE company, which raises funds for overseas companies and controls the operations of domestic companies. Among them, overseas companies are located in the Cayman Islands. AI Age, the holding company of founder Wang Huiwen, accounts for 76.72% of the shares, Sequoia China accounts for 2.44%, Qimai accounts for 0.43%, and other sellers account for 20.41%.
Meituan will pay Sequoia China, Qimai (the holding company of certain investors), and other parties $28 million, $5 million, and $201 million, respectively. It is equivalent to returning the 234 million US dollars of financing completed not long ago. Its external investors have neither gains nor losses.
According to the announcement, AI Age’s shares in light years away were transferred to Meituan at “zero price”.
All of Wang Huiwen’s domestic entities light years away were also sold to Meituan for 1 yuan. However, its domestic entities still have 367 million yuan of debts that were also transferred to Meituan. According to the announcement, the debt undertaken by Meituan is actually the convertible bond financing of domestic companies light years away.
The announcement also mentioned that in April this year, Light Years Outside China completed the acquisition of 46.52% of the shares of the “first-class technology” company, which mainly develops large-scale language models.
Meituan said the acquisition will help strengthen Meituan’s competitiveness in the AI industry.
Wang Huiwen and Meituan founder Wang Xing are roommates at Tsinghua University. They founded Xiaonei together in 2005. At the end of 2010, Wang Huiwen joined Meituan as vice president, responsible for marketing and product-related work, and announced his retirement in 2020. Last Sunday, Meituan announced that Wang Huiwen resigned from the company’s non-executive director and other positions due to personal health reasons.
Light Years Beyond was established in February this year. At that time, Wang Huiwen posted in Moments that he personally invested 50 million US dollars, accounting for 25% of the shares, and invited top R&D talents to build China’s OpenAI with 75% of the shares, which attracted attention. On March 8, Wang Xing announced that he participated in the A-round investment in his personal capacity and served as a director, saying that he must “support Lao Wang”.
According to The Paper, Light Years Beyond completed the product and technology-based team building within two months, attracting many top experts and entrepreneurs in the AI field to join. The current team size is about 70 people. Liu Jiang, deputy director of Beijing Zhiyuan Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, and Ma Zhankai, who developed the “Sogou Input Method”, announced their participation successively. Light-years away also acquired “first class technology”. (Lin Guangying)
Key ingredient in diet drinks may be found to cause cancer
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) may declare aspartame a carcinogen next month.
As the most common artificial sweetener, aspartame is widely used in various sugar-free beverages and chewing gums. Products using it include Coca-Cola’s sugar-free soda Diet, Zero, Sprite Zero Calories, and Mars Wrigley’s Yida chewing gum, etc. .
Yuanqi Forest, a domestic sugar-free soda brand, quickly responded today that its entire line of products does not contain aspartame. The milk tea brand Naixue’s tea also stated that the company has announced that all products will use the natural sugar substitute “Luo Han Fructose” since November 2022.
PepsiCo has repeatedly hesitated to use aspartame: they removed it from the product ingredient list in 2015, restored it a year later, and finally canceled the use of aspartame again in 2020.
The International Sweeteners Association (ISA) responded publicly to the matter, saying that IARC is not a food safety agency and accusing it of unscientific review of aspartame. Members of the association include subsidiaries of Coca-Cola and Mars Wrigley and other stakeholders.
The main point of contention in IARC’s ruling is that it only says that a substance is likely to cause cancer, but it doesn’t take into account how much a person ingests that poses a cancer risk. Relevant standards are given by another WHO agency, the Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA).
Since 1981, JECFA has considered aspartame safe to eat within reasonable limits. For example, a 60kg adult would have to drink between 12 and 36 cans of diet soda a day (depending on the aspartame content of different drinks) to be at risk. Regulatory agencies in the United States, Europe and many other places have recognized this view and enforced the law accordingly.
JECFA is also currently reviewing the use of aspartame, and is expected to announce the latest findings on the same day as IARC (July 14), explaining how much aspartame ingested will be harmful to human health.
In addition, even in IARC’s own classification of carcinogens, aspartame is not ranked high. It belongs to the “2B carcinogens” that are less likely to cause cancer to humans, like coffee, mobile phone radiation, and kimchi. For comparison, alcohol, tobacco, betel nut, air pollution, and arsenic belong to the “Class 1 carcinogens” that are clearly carcinogenic to the human body, and red meat (pork, beef and mutton, etc.) belongs to the “Class 2A carcinogens” that are more likely to cause cancer “, their carcinogenic levels are higher than aspartame.
Still, IARC’s ruling was devastating. In 2015, the agency listed glyphosate, commonly used in herbicides, as a “category 2A carcinogen” (the same level as pork and one level higher than aspartame). In August 2018, Monsanto’s herbicide was found to have caused a school gardener in the United States to suffer from cancer, and the amount of compensation was as high as 289 million US dollars. After the news came out, the share price of Bayer, which had just completed the acquisition of Monsanto at that time, plummeted 12%. In the end, Bayer announced in June 2020 that it would pay a total of US$10.9 billion in compensation to settle more than 100,000 “herbicide-caused cancer” lawsuits. (Qiu Hao)
What is the housing pension mentioned by the Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development?
On June 27, Ni Hong, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, proposed to explore the establishment of a housing pension system to provide housing with full life cycle security. The housing pension here is actually a special maintenance fund for the property, which is used to repair and improve the living quality of the community, rather than giving people a pension.
The current maintenance fund system has been in operation for more than 30 years. In the “Shanghai Housing System Reform Implementation Plan” in 1991, Shanghai stipulated that developers should use 2%-3% of the comprehensive cost as maintenance funds and include them in the cost of housing. Then collect 1% of the house price from the house buyer as the maintenance fund.
Afterwards, various localities collected maintenance funds when selling new houses according to local actual conditions, and first managed them by the local housing management department. After the establishment of the agency owner committee, it was transferred to the property committee to exercise management power. In April of this year, the Ningbo Housing and Construction Department released a new version of the special maintenance fund management method, and used the expression “housing pension” in an article focused on answering questions.
As for why the Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development is now raising housing pensions, you can refer to a report by China Business Daily during the two sessions this year. At that time, She Caigao, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Nanjing Metro Group Co., Ltd., proposed to pilot an innovative housing pension system. One of the reasons was that 30% of the houses in Nanjing had not received maintenance funds, and 28% of the community maintenance funds had a balance of less than 100,000 yuan. , unable to meet the needs of aging maintenance of facilities and equipment in old communities at this stage.
Areas with a surplus of finance also have similar problems of insufficient collection of housing and maintenance funds. The local practice is that the municipal and district finances focus on improving the environment of the community through special projects, such as the “Beautiful Home” project in Shanghai.
Internationally, the service life of the main structure of the house is generally not less than 50 to 75 years, and China is not less than 50 years. In fact, according to this design requirement, a large number of new villages for workers across the country are already close to the lower limit of the design life.
However, the main structure is not a big problem. The main factors affecting living experience and safety are doors and windows (40 years), internal partitions (40 years), roof waterproof layer (20 years), pipes (20 years), and electrical facilities (40 years). Other components are close to or overdue. After the 1990s, the number of elevator rooms increased significantly, and the service life of elevators was shorter, generally 15 to 20 years, and there was a mandatory scrapping standard. (Gong Fangyi)
The four major central bank governors of the United States, Europe, Britain and Japan are on the same stage to discuss the continuation of tightening policies
On the 28th, the ECB Central Bank Forum was held in Sintra, Portugal, with the participation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda Policy group discussion.
Last year, the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank and Bank of England embarked on the most aggressive tightening of credit in decades in an effort to bring inflation down to their 2% target. At this meeting, they reiterated that they want to tighten policy further and believe that this will not trigger an outright recession.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell: At least two more rate hikes likely this year
Powell doesn’t think core U.S. inflation (which excludes food and energy prices) will return to 2% until 2025. As such, he reiterated the forecast of most U.S. policymakers that the Fed will raise interest rates at least two more times this year in order to cool soaring prices and a strong labor market.
The Fed has raised interest rates 10 times in a row since March 2022, which most economists believe will eventually tip the U.S. into at least a mild recession. Powell believes that “a recession is very likely, but not the most likely scenario”.
Regarding the U.S. banking industry, which experienced multiple bank failures in the spring, Powell emphasized that “the entire U.S. banking system is strong and resilient, with high levels of liquidity and capital,” but recent surveys have shown that U.S. bank standards have generally tightened and loan demand has declined. The Fed needs to pay attention to credit availability.
In addition, he also mentioned artificial intelligence, thinking that “AI obviously has huge possibilities. In the past, technological changes often take time to penetrate the economy. This time may be different.”
ECB President Christine Lagarde: ECB will hike rates again
“A person has to do what he has to do,” Lagarde told the meeting that the ECB still has a lot of work to do because there is no real evidence that inflation in Europe has stabilized and dropped. Lagarde believes that the euro zone economy is weak and may fall into recession this year, but this is not the baseline expectation of the European Central Bank.
If that benchmark remains unchanged, Lagarde predicted the ECB would “likely raise rates again in July,” but gave no indication of policy direction for September. In addition, she believes that measures to solve the new crown epidemic and the European energy crisis have generated huge public expenditures, “unless there is another major shock, it is time to withdraw these policies.”
BoE Governor Andrew Bailey: Do what’s necessary to curb inflation
The UK unexpectedly raised interest rates by 50 basis points (0.5 percentage points) last week, which Bailey believes reflects the resilience of the UK economy and continued inflation, with the Bank of England not currently forecasting a recession. He also talked about his views on policy, “the effect of raising interest rates by 50 basis points at one time will be better than raising interest rates by 25 basis points twice in a row.”
The current UK inflation rate is 8.7%, the highest among the Group of Seven (G7). Bailey said that the Bank of England will take necessary measures to curb prices, but will not increase the 2% inflation target.
BOJ’s Kazuo Ueda: Will change zero interest rate policy if inflation picks up
Compared with the above countries, Japan has maintained an ultra-loose zero interest rate policy for the past ten years. Kazuo Ueda believes that “it is up to lawmakers and the government to create a sustainable fiscal situation”, and Japan maintains loose policy because the underlying inflation rate is still below the 2% target, although the overall inflation rate is above 3%.
Wage and price growth are picking up in Japan, and the Bank of Japan is poised to change its zero-interest-rate policy if inflation shows signs of picking up next year. Before that, the central bank will still carefully consider the potential impact on the market and banks, and “has to be cautious and conduct various stress tests.” (Intern Fu Xiaoyu)
CHART OF THE DAY | Residents’ willingness to save remains unchanged, and more people increase consumption
On June 29, the People’s Bank of China released a questionnaire survey report on urban depositors, entrepreneurs, and bankers in the second quarter of this year. Among them, the urban depositor survey was conducted among 20,000 depositors in 50 cities across the country.
- Residents’ willingness to save remains unchanged (58%), but they tend to reduce investment (17.5%) and increase consumption (24.5%) in the future.
- Fewer people expect house prices to rise (15.9%) and plan to buy a house (16.2%).
- Expectations for the employment situation were less optimistic than in the previous quarter. 43.7% of the depositors surveyed think that “the situation is grim, employment is difficult” or “do not know”, an increase of 2.5 percentage points from the previous quarter. (Lin Guangying)
OTHER NEWS
In May, the growth rate of the total logistics volume dropped slightly, and the logistics of industrial products accounted for 70%.
The total amount of national social logistics in the first five months was 129.9 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%, a slight increase of 0.1 percentage points over the growth rate of the first four months. The demand for industrial product logistics accounts for 70% of the total social logistics growth. Among them, the growth rate of the total logistics of automobile, electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing has remained above 15%, which has a significant driving effect. In addition, the growth rate of people’s livelihood consumption and renewable resources has exceeded 10%, and the demand for logistics such as food delivery and instant intra-city transportation has reached a staged peak along with factors such as the May Day holiday.
National 6b was officially implemented in July, and fuel car companies have basically stopped selling non-national 6b vehicles.
From July 1, 2023, the 6b stage of the National VI emission standard will be fully implemented nationwide, and the production, import and sale of vehicles that do not meet the 6b stage of the National VI emission standard will be prohibited. A half-year sales transition period will be given to some light-duty vehicle National VI b models whose actual driving pollutant emission test report results are “monitoring only”.
After telephone inquiries, FAW-Volkswagen, Honda, and Toyota 4S stores basically do not sell non-national 6b models. Toyota sales staff said that the inventory of national 6a cars has been completely cleared, and FAW-Volkswagen said that they need to check the inventory according to the model.
WeChat intends to charge fees for some profitable scenarios on campus.
Northwestern University and other colleges and universities recently announced that because WeChat will charge a 0.6% fee for other campus fees other than tuition fees, it will suspend the use of WeChat code scanning payment.
WeChat Pay responded on June 29 that all non-profit scenarios such as campus tuition and canteen meals will continue to be exempted from handling fees, and only in profitable scenarios such as e-commerce and wine travel will charge merchants a handling fee that is lower than the market average.
Some insiders told Wanwan Finance and Economics that although schools use WeChat Pay for free, banks have been charging WeChat Pay for bank access fees, and the costs borne by WeChat Pay are constantly increasing. Since 2016, the National Development and Reform Commission no longer dominates the pricing of handling fees and other fees. WeChat generally charges ordinary merchants a 0.6% handling fee in accordance with government guidance, and exempts schools and other public welfare entities from handling fees.
China’s first drone administrative regulations are issued.
Recently, the State Council and the Central Military Commission issued the “Interim Regulations on the Management of Unmanned Aircraft Flights”, which is China’s first administrative regulation dedicated to the management of “drone” and is expected to be implemented on January 1, 2024. According to the regulations, UAV producers should set a unique product identification code for UAVs, and the owners should register their real names according to law; demarcate UAV control airspace, establish a flight activity application system, including the circumstances of flight activity applications and approval authority, Approval time limit; regulate foreign-related flight activities, and prohibit foreign drones or drones controlled by foreign personnel from conducting surveying and mapping, radio wave parameter testing and other flight activities in China.
Jikrypton 001 and Jikrypton X are pre-sold in Sweden and the Netherlands.
Geely’s electric vehicle brand Jikr announced on June 28 that the Jikr 001 and Jikr X models will start pre-sale in Sweden and the Netherlands. The starting price of Jikrypton 001 is about 59,500 euros (472,000 yuan), and the starting price of Jikrypton X is about 45,000 euros (357,000 yuan). Jikrypton plans to open direct offline stores in Stockholm, Sweden and Amsterdam, the Netherlands before the end of this year. According to Debon Securities and Minsheng Securities, the penetration rate of new energy vehicles in Sweden reached 61.4% in May this year, and the penetration rate in the Netherlands reached 40.7% in March last year. Jikrypton hopes to accumulate sales experience in these two countries first, and enter most of Western Europe in 2026 area. Chinese electric car brands such as BYD, Xpeng and NIO have all entered the European market. The starting prices of Xpeng P7 and NIO ET 5 are 50,000 and 60,000 euros respectively.
Tiger Global rejected hundreds of offers for the acquisition of equity assets, feeling that the offer was too low.
According to media reports citing people familiar with the matter, Tiger Global rejected hundreds of acquisition offers for its start-up equity assets in recent months because the bids were too low. Due to the recent cooling of the IPO market and fewer exit opportunities, Tiger Global originally planned to sell some of the shares of more mature start-up companies, withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars, and distribute them to some investors. According to a Forge Global report, as of May, start-up equity trading prices have dropped by an average of 61% from their latest round of financing valuations.
Micron says the storage industry is bottoming out.
On June 28 local time, Micron, a major US memory chip maker, released its third-quarter report as of June 1. The company’s revenue fell 56.58% year-on-year to US$3.752 billion, and its net loss for the quarter was US$1.565 billion. Company CEO Mehrotra (Sanjay Mehrotra) said on the earnings conference call that customer inventories are continuing to improve, and industry-wide production cuts are also helping. Regarding the impact of failing to pass China’s cybersecurity review, Mehrotra said that this “major resistance” is affecting the company’s expectations and delaying the company’s recovery, which is expected to bring greater fluctuations in revenue in subsequent quarters.
Self-driving company Tucson is looking to sell its U.S. operations in the future.
Founded in 2015, TuSimple is an autonomous driving company with operations and teams in China and the United States. It mainly conducts business in the United States and makes unmanned trucks. After Tucson went public in the United States in 2021, its market value once soared to 18 billion U.S. dollars. Tucson has been reviewed by CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States), who once believed that it was suspected of endangering the national security of the United States. During the period, the board members and CEO were changed many times. TuSimple’s future CEO Lv Cheng denied the claim that the US business was sold due to review pressure, and said that TuSimple will focus on the development of regional businesses such as China and Japan, which raised $1 billion last year.
PG&E loans $7 billion to reduce California fire risk.
They hope to prevent fires caused by power lines erected in the forest by burying power lines and upgrading the power grid. PG&E is one of the largest and most important utilities in the United States, but its power lines have sparked more than 20 major fires in recent years. The fire in 2018 killed 84 people, caused the company to bear at least $30 billion in liability costs due to litigation, and filed for bankruptcy in California in 2019.
Sony’s confidential data leaked, saying that if Microsoft monopolizes the game, its business will be seriously affected.
Regarding the FTC v. Microsoft antitrust case, Sony, as a third party, also submitted internal documents to explain that if Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard and monopolizes the game “Call of Duty” (CoD), its PS business will be seriously affected. Because the court did not smear key information in place when it released the documents, many confidential data were exposed. The document shows that about 1 million PS users only play CoD, and more than 6 million users spend more than 70% of their time playing CoD. Sony’s fiscal year 2021 revenue is nearly $70 billion, and the document states that CoD generated about $13.9 billion in direct and indirect revenue.
Microsoft CEO said that the acquisition of Activision Blizzard will not monopolize the game.
The heads of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard appeared at a hearing on Wednesday to defend the proposed merger. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that if the $75 billion deal is approved, Microsoft will continue to launch games on other platforms instead of relying on exclusive game strategies to influence market competition. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick also promised that games such as the “Call of Duty” series will still land on Sony’s PlayStation platform.
Last December, the US Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, arguing that the deal could stifle competition in the gaming market. Microsoft said at the hearing that if the ruling blocks the merger, it would consider abandoning the deal because of subsequent internal court proceedings that could last for years.
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