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World business quick take

Labor: Earnings decline in Japan
Japanese workers' earnings fell at a record pace in July as companies such as Sanyo Electric Co cut pay packets and bonuses in a bid to boost profits. Cash earnings, including salary, overtime pay and bonuses, of employees at companies with five or more workers fell 5.2 percent from a year earlier. That's the biggest drop since the survey started in January 1990. Adjusted to account for falling prices, earnings fell 4.4 percent, the fastest decline since December 1998. Japan's four-year bout of falling prices is starting to hurt consumers, who had benefited from rising purchasing power. The wage decline will probably trigger a drop in consumer spending, slowing a recovery from last year's recession, economists said. "Consumers have been benefiting from the deflationary environment," said Ayako Mitsui, an economist at UBS Warburg Japan Ltd, who expected cash earnings to fall about 3 percent.

Mobile phones: Nokia prepares Net units
Nokia Oyj will supply Vodafone Group Plc's J-Phone Co unit with handsets for its new high-speed Internet service, part of a bid by the mobile-phone maker to expand a market share that stands at about 1 percent. The handsets will be capable of working on existing and advanced networks, Heikki Tenhunen, president of Nokia's Japan unit, said in an interview. Users will also be able to make and receive calls in as many as 160 countries in Europe and Asia. While Nokia is the world's largest mobile-phone maker, the company's handsets are a rarity in Japan, which is dominated by local manufacturers such as NEC Corp. At the end of last year, seven years after establishing a unit in Tokyo, the Finland-based company had just 1 percent of Japan's 40.6 million-unit handset market, according to researcher Gartner Japan Ltd.

Airlines: Dragonair seeks routes
Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Ltd, the smaller of the city's two passenger carriers, plans to apply for permission to fly to more Asian cities as it seeks to expand its international network. "We have been expanding in other parts of Asia. This is a definite trend" said company CFO Francis Wai. "There will be more information on this in the coming one or two days." The Standard newspaper reported earlier that Dragonair will apply by the end of this month for licenses to fly to Manila, Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo and Sydney. The airline will seek approval for two return flights a day to Manila, Bangkok and Seoul, and may seek daily services to Tokyo and Sydney, the report said, citing unidentified airline officials.

Public listing: Fuji delays NYSE plan
Fuji Photo Film Co, the world's No. 2 photography company, will delay its plan to apply to list on the New York Stock Exchange following a series of accounting scandals in the US. "We are not going to apply to list next year because of the spate of scandals in the US," said Kenji Sukeno, senior operations manager in the accounting division. "We are postponing plans but we still intend to list on the exchange." Fuji's plan to postpone listing has nothing to do with the rule introduced recently by the SEC requiring all companies listed in the US to confirm the accuracy of their financial data under oath, Sukeno said.

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