Business

Monday March 9, 2009

News in brief


BEIJING: China’s planned trading board for start-ups will list more than eight companies when it goes into operation, said Chen Dongzheng, president of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

“There are plenty of good smaller companies qualified to go public,” Chen said at a press conference in Beijing yesterday.

Premier Wen Jiabao said last year he wanted to set up a bourse similar to the Nasdaq Stock Market for start-ups, to facilitate fund-raising by small businesses as banks focus on lending to large state-owned enterprises. The plan has been on hold since China’s stock market plunged 65% last year. — Bloomberg

SINGAPORE: The city-state has agreed to endorse the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) standard for the exchange of information through Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreements (DTAs), the Finance Ministry said.

The ministry planned to amend laws in the middle of this year before seeking a parliamentary approval, it said in a statement released late on Friday.

”The decision to endorse the OECD standard is in keeping with Singapore’s role as a trusted centre for finance and a responsible jurisdiction, with strong and consistent regulatory policies and a firm commitment to the rule of law,” it said. — Reuters

HONG KONG: PCCW Ltd chairman Richard Li said he hasn’t asked anyone to buy shares of the phone operator to gather more support for a takeover bid of the company.

“I have not asked and have not influenced anyone to buys shares,” Li said in a statement filed by PCCW with Hong Kong’s stock exchange yesterday. “PCCW’s major shareholders have been acting reasonably and fairly throughout the whole process.”

The Securities and Futures Commission seized voting records from a Feb 4 PCCW shareholder ballot and started an investigation into the buy-out plan led by Li, amid allegations some insurance agents were offered stock to support the takeover bid. The regulator must file evidence from its probe by the middle of this month, before an April 1 Hong Kong High Court hearing to sanction the buy-out. — Bloomberg

BEIJING: China’s port container volume in February fell 17% from a year earlier, the Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday, reflecting a persistent slowdown in the country’s export sector.

Nationwide container volume totalled 6.97 million 20ft equivalent units (TEUs) in February, which represented a 22.5% drop from January’s 8.99 million TEUs.

Beijing is expected to report February trade data next week, but the 21st Century Business Herald newspaper reported last week that China’s exports and imports in February both dropped by more than 20%. — Reuters

MIAMI: Cocoa output by Asian growers such as Indonesia and Malaysia may be limited by pests and competition for land from other crops such as oil palm, said Jasbir Singh, Far East manager for trader Armajaro KL.

“While some industry participants had hoped Asian production would grow to one million tonnes a year to help offset potential losses in Africa and South America, we expect Asian cocoa production to remain in the range of 500,000 to 650,000 over the next five years,” Jasbir said. — Bloomberg

Indonesia is the world’s third largest cocoa producer. Ivory Coast is the biggest grower of the beans used to make chocolate, followed by Ghana.


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