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Intel Corp Chief Executive Paul Otellini said IBM’s discussions to acquire Sun Microsystems Inc are likely to succeed for one ringing reason: Money Talks.

IBM is offering to pay as much as $8 billion, or $10 to $11 per share, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. That compared with Sun’s share price of $4.97 before the IBM talks were reported. The stock closed at $7.85 on Wednesday.

Sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters IBM was in exclusive talks with Sun and IBM was examining Sun’s businesses as part of a due diligence process.

Sun has long been cited as a takeover target for IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Inc or Cisco Systems Inc, which introduced a comprehensive set of data center products early last week.

During a chat with Intel employees on Monday, Otellini said it is no surprise International Business Machines Corp’s interest in the high-end computer maker comes in the wake of a plunge in Sun’s stock price.

“I can tell you that Sun was shopped around the valley and around the world in the last few months,” Otellini said in comments detailed on Wednesday in a filing with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission.

“A lot of companies got calls or visits on buying some or all the assets of the company. It looks like IBM is in the hunt now. And at a hundred-and-some-odd-percent-premium, I suspect they’ll get it.”

Asked if Cisco’s entrance might have spurred IBM to make a move on Sun, Otellini said: “I don’t think it had anything to do with Cisco.

“I think cheap Sun price — a low price — spurred a lot of interest,” he said, according to the filing.

Before the reports of IBM’s interest, Sun’s shares were down more than 70 percent in the previous year.

Still, Intel’s CEO said he could see how IBM could benefit from the deal.

“I think IBM is trying to consolidate architectures,” he told Intel employees. “IBM has the strongest Java license in the industry. By picking up Sun — which is the creator of Java — they really consolidate their position not just in Linux, but also in Java.”

In the end, Otellini remained unsure how he felt about a potential marriage of IBM and Sun, a deal that would combine the world’s No. 1 and No. 4 makers of computer servers. Intel counts both IBM and Sun as customers. – Reuters

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Bank of East Asia has acquired the Taiwan securities arm of American International Group, the Economic Daily reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources.

The acquisition indicates Bank of East Asia, Hong Kong’s fifth-largest lender, is interested in tapping the wealth management markets in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong, the paper said. It said the deal was worth “millions of dollars”.

AIG Wealth Management Services Ltd, the U.S. insurer’s securities arm in Taiwan, declined to comment on the report. Bank of East Asia was not immediately available for comment.

The acquisition, subject to regulatory approval by Taiwan, comes as troubled AIG is trying to shed its assets to help shore up its financial position. – Reuters

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China rejected Coca-Cola’s bid to buy top local juice maker Huiyuan because it feared the U.S. multinational could abuse its position across the whole soft drinks market, an official said in remarks published on Wednesday.

China rejected the proposed deal under an anti-monopoly law enacted last year, stating that the combined concentration of the two companies would have hurt competition in the juice business.

Huiyuan controls over a tenth of the Chinese fruit and vegetable juice market, which grew 15 percent last year to $2 billion. Coca-Cola has a 9.7 percent market share. Huiyuan is listed in Hong Kong and registered in the Cayman Islands.

The decision to block the deal drew criticism from trade lawyers and economists who said China appeared willing to wield its anti-monopoly law to fend off foreign attempts to buy promising domestic firms, even when resulting market concentration would not be excessive.

Ministry of Commerce spokesman Yao Jian said regulators treated carbonated soft drinks and juice beverages as a conjoined sector — one, he said, in which Coca-Cola could deter competitors to the detriment of consumers.

Yao fleshed out the ministry’s rationale for rejecting the bid last week in an interview in the official People’s Daily.

“Potential competitors would find it very difficult to enter this market and grow into substantive competitors against Coca-Cola and thereby eradicate or restrict the possibility of Coca-Cola engaging in abusive conduct,” Yao said.

Fan Gang, a member of the People’s Bank of China’s monetary policy advisory committee, also said the rejection of the deal was based on monopoly concerns, not nationalism.

“For some people it’s too easy to blame nationalism. That’s unfair,” Fan told Reuters during a conference in Hong Kong on Wednesday. “The monopoly is the issue. That’s why we introduced an anti-monopoly law. Now we can use it (and create) diversification in the market.”

Yao said multinational investment could be a boon for China’s economy, adding a broad caveat.

“If mergers and acquisitions lead to multinational companies gaining or enhancing dominant status, producing exclusionary and competition-restricting outcomes, this will hinder economic development,” he said.

But Yao said “nationalist sentiment” was not a factor.

He said Coca-Cola already had market dominance in the carbonated drinks sector, citing local industry association estimates that it holds 60.6 percent of the market. It could have leveraged that influence in the juice sector, he added.

“Although there is not strong substitutability between the carbonated beverage and juice beverage markets,” Yao said, “both are non-alcoholic drinks and belong to two closely intertwined markets.”

Coca-Cola, he said, could have used its position to “transfer its dominance of the carbonate beverage market to the juice beverage market”. (Reporting by Chris Buckley and Susan Fenton; Editing by Nick Macfie and Jonathan Hopfner). – Reuters

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