Activist Carronade pushes Viasat breakup, says valuation could jump 500%, FT reports
Carronade, which holds a 2.3 per cent stake in the satellite communications firm, plans to issue an open letter to the shareholders calling for defense unit to be spun off — a move it says could unlock as much as $11 billion in value for both businesses, the report said.
The investment firm estimates Viasat's total valuation could rise more than 500 per cent if the defense unit is separated, according to the report.
Carronade continues to build its stake in Viasat and also holds $30 million of the company's debt, FT said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNA
19 hours ago
- CNA
Trump fires BLS commissioner, raising concerns about economic data quality
WASHINGTON: United States President Donald Trump fired the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday (Aug 1) after data showed weaker-than-expected employment growth in July and massive downward revisions to the prior two months' job counts. Trump accused McEntarfer, who was appointed by former president Joe Biden, of faking the jobs numbers. There is no evidence to back Trump's claims of data manipulation by the BLS, the statistical agency that compiles the closely watched employment report, as well as consumer and producer price data. The US economy created only 73,000 jobs in July. Data for May and June were revised sharply down to show 258,000 fewer jobs created than had been previously reported. "We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. The BLS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. William Wiatrowski, the deputy commissioner, will serve as acting commissioner. The Trump administration's recent mass layoffs of federal government workers have raised concerns about the quality of US economic data, long seen as the gold standard. Economists, labour unions and Democratic Party leaders criticised the firing as an attempt by the Trump administration to manipulate data and warned of lasting damage to the economy. "The civil servants at BLS are not political actors. They are professionals committed to producing accurate, independent data, regardless of who is in power," said American Federation of Government Employees national president Everett Kelley. McEntarfer had worked in the federal government for more than two decades under multiple administrations, Kelley said. Trump-aligned Republicans were supportive of the BLS firing, calling McEntarfer a "Biden holdover". DATA CREDIBILITY NOW IN QUESTION "Politicising economic statistics is a self-defeating act," said Michael Madowitz, principal economist at the Roosevelt Institute's Roosevelt Forward. "Credibility is far easier to lose than rebuild, and the credibility of America's economic data is the foundation on which we've built the strongest economy in the world. Blinding the public about the state of the economy has a long track record, and it never ends well." Earlier this year, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick disbanded two expert committees that worked with the government to produce economic statistics. Lutnick has also floated the idea of stripping out government spending from the gross domestic product report, claiming "governments historically have messed with GDP". The BLS has already reduced the sample collection for consumer price data as well as the producer price report, citing resource constraints. The government surveys about 121,000 businesses and government agencies, representing approximately 631,000 individual worksites for the employment report. The response rate has declined from 80.3 per cent in October 2020 to about 67.1 per cent in July. "In my opinion, today's Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad," Trump wrote in another Truth Social post, without offering any evidence. Economists attributed the near-stall in job growth to Trump's trade and immigration policies. They said uncertainty about where Trump's tariff level would settle had made it difficult for businesses to plan long-term. More clarity has emerged as the White House has announced trade deals, but economists said the effective tariff rate was still the highest since the 1930s. Trump slapped dozens of trading partners with steep tariffs on Thursday, including a 35 per cent duty on many goods from Canada.
Business Times
a day ago
- Business Times
China state media asks Nvidia to prove H20 chips are secure
[HONG KONG] China state media is calling for Nvidia to prove that its H20 chip is secure, saying it cannot allow flawed chips into the country. China's top Internet watchdog summoned Nvidia representatives earlier this week to discuss what Chinese officials called significant security vulnerabilities in the H20. The Cyberspace Administration of China said that Nvidia would need to explain potential security risks and provide documents as needed, citing comments by US lawmakers about the need to install tracking capabilities on advanced chips being exported. 'As soon as 'backdoors' in chips are triggered, we can encounter a 'nightmare',' the People's Daily, a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, said in a commentary on Friday (Aug 1). 'We need to maintain the security of the cyberspace and we cannot allow 'infected' chips to be put to work.' More scrutiny of the artificial intelligence (AI) chip would throw a wrench China's already-contentious trade talks with the US. Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia had designed the H20 to comply with US export controls on its technology, and the company was hoping to start sales after the US granted a license. 'Cybersecurity is critically important to us,' Nvidia said on Thursday. 'Nvidia does not have 'backdoors' in our chips that would give anyone a remote way to access or control them.' US and Chinese officials met in Stockholm this week to discuss trade terms in talks that Chinese state media said that 'deepened mutual trust', though the two sides still have several disagreements over the potential new tariffs. The warning in People's Daily may signal that Chinese officials don't find H20s, which are less powerful than Nvidia's most high-end chips, to be worthy offerings. The Trump administration in April barred Nvidia from selling H20s to China in an escalation of the ongoing tech war between the world's two largest economies. Trump officials then pledged to lift those restrictions in July as part of a trade deal for China to allow more sales of rare-earth magnets needed to make a range of high-tech products. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had touted the resumption of sales of the H20 as a breakthrough that came from bilateral discussions in London, framing it as a concession to China. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, meanwhile, said earlier this week that the magnet issue has been 'solved'. However, it is unclear whether Nvidia has received licenses to resume shipping those semiconductors. Nvidia boss Jensen Huang himself recently concluded a high-profile visit to Beijing, where he feted national Chinese champions such as DeepSeek and celebrated the country's rising prowess in AI. The billionaire had denied Nvidia installed backdoors in its product, saying that would not make business sense. BLOOMBERG
CNA
a day ago
- CNA
Meta to share AI infrastructure costs via $2 billion asset sale
Meta Platforms is pressing ahead with efforts to bring in outside partners to help fund the massive infrastructure needed to power artificial intelligence, disclosing plans in a filing on Thursday to offload $2 billion in data center assets as part of that strategy. The strategy reflects a broader shift among tech giants — long known for self-funding growth — as they grapple with the soaring cost of building and powering data centers to support generative AI. The social media giant said earlier this week that it was exploring ways to work with financial partners to co-develop data centers to help finance its massive capital outlay for next year. 'We're exploring ways to work with financial partners to co-develop data centers,' Meta Chief Finance Officer Susan Li said on a post-earnings conference call on Wednesday. While the company still expects to fund much of its capital spending internally, some projects could attract 'significant external financing' and offer more flexibility if infrastructure needs shift over time, Li said. The company did not have any finalized transactions to announce, she said. The disclosure in Meta's quarterly filing, however, signals that plans are firming up. In its quarterly filing on Thursday, Meta said it had approved a plan in June to dispose of certain data center assets and reclassified $2.04 billion worth of land and construction-in-progress as "held-for-sale". These assets were expected to be contributed to a third party within the next twelve months for co-developing data centers. Meta did not record a loss on the reclassification, which values the assets at the lower of their carrying amounts or fair value less costs to sell. As of June 30, total held-for-sale assets stood at $3.26 billion, according to the filing. Meta declined to comment for this story. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has laid out plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into constructing AI data center 'superclusters' for superintelligence. 'Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan,' he said. The Instagram and WhatsApp owner on Wednesday raised the bottom end of its annual capital expenditures forecast by $2 billion, to $66 billion to $72 billion.
