Connecting Some Dots On A Slow Saturday Morning; A123 Becomes B456 -- Owned By The Chinese

Back on November 17, 2013, I wrote a long "whining" post on the most recent edition of Bloomberg Businessweek.

The opportunity "forced" me to actually look at the "special issue" much more closely than I otherwise might have looked. The blog has served me very, very well .... 

Here are some dots to connect, to think about.

From the Bloomberg Businessweek special edition, the lead-off story, with what to watch for in 2014. The two-page "headline" spread, which I complained about, may have been more helpful than I realized. It included five head shots of the movers and shakers for 2014. I recognized all but one. The one I did not recognize was of Chinese Premier Li. The caption was simply "LI." I thought it was the page number in Roman numbers, page 51.

Then this article linked over at Drudge: taxpayers lose $139 million on Fisker.  

Happy Thanksgiving from the Obama administration. The Energy Department has sold off its $192 million loan guarantee to Fisker Automotive to Chinese billionaire Richard Li for $25 million — the biggest taxpayer loss on a green loan since the failure of Solyndra.

The Energy Department will announce the "selling of the promissory note” to Hybrid Tech, which is owned by Chinese billionaire Richard Li, according to sources familiar with the sale. The DOE sold the loan to Li for $25 million after lending the financially troubled green automaker a total of $192 million since 2009.

But in this case, the dots probably don't connect. I am not aware that Chinese Premier Li and Mr Richard are related.

Except for the fact that they are Chinese. 

So, although the dots don't connect as well as I would like, the exercise revealed there are some new movers and shakers to watch going into 2014.

According to an undated post: 

Hybrid Tech Holdings is new investor group that was formed on October 29 in Delaware. There's no available info on the company at the time of writing and it is unknown whether or not Hybrid Tech plans to restart Fisker Karma production.

The Chinese are getting deep into American battery technology. From the Daily Caller article linked above:

It was reported last month that Li and the Obama administration were ironing out the details of the Fisker loan sale after the Energy Department had completed its auction. Li’s purchase of the government’s loan represents the second acquisition of an Obama-backed green energy company by Chinese investors. Earlier this year, the Chinese auto parts conglomerate Wanxiang Group bought the electric car battery maker A123 Systems, renaming the company B456.