■ Communication
DoCoMo withdraws bid
Japan's top cellphone carrier NTT DoCoMo has decided to withdraw from bidding for AT and T Wireless because of its hefty price tag, reports said yesterday. NTT DoCoMo made the decision at an extraordinary board meeting late Friday, Japanese dailies and news agencies said. AT and T Wireless, the third-biggest US cellphone operator which is currently controlled 16 percent by NTT DoCoMo, is on sale with a bidding deadline set for Friday, Kyodo News said. Potential buyers include Cingular Wireless LLC of the US and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain. Immediate confirmation of the reports was not available.
■ Automobiles
Mitsubishi expects loss
Japanese carmaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp is expected to post a group operating loss of US$948 million for the year to March due to poor sales in North America, a daily said yesterday. The company reported an operating profit of US$910 million a year earlier and had estimated a loss of US$450 million for the current fiscal year, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said. Its sales were hit by intense competition in North America, the business daily said. Mitsubishi Motors is showing some signs of recovery in the US market with last month's release of the new Galant sedan, but it was forced to offer deals for the older Galant models in stock.
■ Stockmarket
Chinese shares close lower
Chinese shares closed 0.32 percent lower on Friday as investors took profits on special treatment (ST) stocks following recent sharp gains, dealers said. Of the 119 special treatment stocks listed on the China A-shares markets, 105 were hit sharply, with most of them down or near their daily limits of 5 percent. The Shanghai A-share Index closed down 5.53 points at 1,738.08 on turnover of 18.42 billion yuan (US$2.2 billion dollars) and the Shenzhen A-share Index lost 4.81 points to 450.89 on 11.07 billion yuan. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, which covers both A and B-shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, closed down 5.29 points at 1,658.54 on turnover of 18.58.
■ Space
China reveals space budget
China has announced lift-off for the first phase of its lunar probe program, revealing what appears to be a shoestring budget for its plans to send an unmanned satellite to the moon. Funding for the project, which is to result in the satellite orbiting the moon in three years' time, has so far been set at a modest US$170 million, the Xinhua news agency said yesterday. This compares with the US space shuttle program which guzzles more than US$3 billion in a single year. China's lunar ambitions are divided into three stages, beginning with the satellite in 2007, followed by an unmanned vehicle landing on the moon in 2010, and another unmanned craft collecting lunar dust in 2020.
■ Forex
Currency swap framework
Japan will propose a new currency swap framework with its Asian neighbor countries to avert a financial meltdown in the region, a daily said yesterday. Japan plans to make the proposal in May, when finance ministers of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as well as China and South Korea meet, the Asahi Shimbun said. Under the system, tens of billions of dollars would be swapped to prop up the currencies of China, South Korea and ASEAN nations when they appear on the verge of plummeting, they said. The framework will complement the 2002 Chiangmai Initiative in which ASEAN, Japan, China and South Korea agreed to form a network to support each other in case of a financial crisis in the region.
RSS