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Technology Stocks : Alliance Semiconductor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chi Pan who wrote (5429)	7/22/1999 10:06:00 AM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 9582

Singapore Technologies to List at Least 3 Units, CEO Ho Says Bloomberg News July 22, 1999, 1:24 a.m. PT Singapore, July 22 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore Technologies Pte. plans to list shares in at least three units, including Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd., in the not-too- distant future, looking to raise the profile of the staid group. The company -- one of the biggest state-owned entities in Singapore -- will look to sell shares on Nasdaq in Chartered, the world's third largest semiconductor foundry, between November and March, said president and chief executive Ho Ching. The company also plans to list on Nasdaq shares of ST Assembly Test Services Pte., which provides semiconductor testing and assembly services. ''Being listed on Nasdaq says something different about you as a company,'' Ho said. ''We want to make them world-class companies and one of the ways is to push them to go public.'' The spinning off of the various units will likely help Singapore Technologies -- whose businesses span everything from making artillery tanks to baking croissants -- to be better focused and more easily managed. ''Our strategy is to let them grow by letting them go,'' Ho said. Ho, the wife of Lee Hsien Loong, the head of Singapore's central bank, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, said she sees Singapore Technologies, playing the role of an ''activist shareholder'' in the units it spins off, pushing them ''to higher standards of corporate governance.'' She said her hope is for the companies under Singapore Technologies to find top-class senior managers to run strong teams that can run each unit independently. ''Eventually, we'd like to list them all,'' she said. Singapore Food Industries Pte., a unit of SembCorp. Industries Ltd. in which Singapore Technologies has a stake, may also be floating shares soon, she said. Other Singapore Technologies companies that are listed include defense engineering company, ST Engineering Ltd., Singapore Computer Systems Ltd. which provides computer services and systems integration services, and Vickers Ballas Holdings Ltd., a stock brokerage firm. The group of 300 companies directly and indirectly employs 39,000 people, making it largest private employer in Singapore. Chartered The sale of shares in Chartered Semiconductor follows an aborted attempt in Feb. 1996, Ho said. With technology stocks tumbling in the U.S. in the early part of 1996, the company decided to call off the sale, she said. The recent strong rally in the technology stocks in the U.S. has sparked an interest in the sale again. Chartered in May said it expects sales to rise by more than 40 percent this year as demand for its manufacturing services grows. Based on figures from a Deutsche Morgan Grenfell Asia Ltd. report, Chartered's 1999 sales could exceed S$893.8 million ($526.1 million), putting it closer to its goal to be a billion- dollar company by 2000. Chartered's projection points to a recovery in the semiconductor industry, which has seen a slump in the past two years as a glut pushed prices down. The company's customers include Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's second-largest computer maker, Lucent Technologies Inc., the world's No. 1 phone equipment maker, and Motorola Inc., the world's No. 3 chipmaker.