World Business Quick Take

■ Factory closures

Japan experiences rise

The number of factories in Japan that have been shut down or temporarily closed so far this year surged by more than 50 percent from the same period last year, a newspaper poll published yesterday showed. A total of 187 factories have been closed between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, by 105 companies, as Japan's domestic manufacturing industry continues to struggle, the Nihon Keizai said. "The number reflects a shift to China by makers of electronics and information and technology, who have been facing severe global price competition," the Nihon Keizai said.

■ US economy

War fears impact sales

US retail sales fell in September, and the threat of war and concern over a slowing economy pushed consumer confidence to a nine-year low, government and private reports showed. "We are on the cusp of a slowdown in spending," said Kevin Logan, senior market economist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein Securities LLC in New York, one of 22 banks and securities firms that deal directly with the Federal Reserve. "Growth in the fourth quarter will be anemic." Sales fell 1.2 percent last month, as car, clothing and electronics purchases dropped, the biggest decline since November, the Commerce Department said. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index for October fell to 80.4, the lowest since September 1993, from 86.1 last month, people with access to the report said.

■ Automakers

Shanghai Auto expands

Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp said it will pay US$59.7 million to buy 10 percent of a South Korean venture between General Motors Corp and Daewoo Motor Co, becoming the first Chinese carmaker to expand abroad. The investment by Shanghai Auto, which already shares a US$1.5 billion car-making venture with General Motors in China, will mark the fourth venture between China's second-biggest vehicle maker and the Detroit-based automaker. "This is a very meaningful step by Shanghai Auto to go abroad," said Zhang Yu, who tracks China's car industry at Automotive Resources Asia Ltd in Beijing. "The investment will bring benefits in the long run." China's government has picked three companies, including Shanghai Auto, to be "pillars" of the country's auto industry to concentrate efforts to become competitive with bigger foreign rivals. Lower import tariffs, agreed by China when it entered the WTO last year, are also prompting Chinese carmakers to consider investing abroad as competition intensifies at home.

Charoen Pokphand Group has leased four-fifths of the space at China's largest mall three months after it opened in Shanghai, an executive said. The group in July opened the US$400 million shopping and entertainment complex to tap shoppers in Shanghai, China's largest city. The 73,500m2 mall spans 13 floors on a 100-acre site in the Lujiazui financial district on the east bank of Shanghai's Huangpu River. "Demand for good shopping places is very high in China as higher economic growth gives Chinese more money to spend," Weeraphol Chokwitayarat, vice president of MallAsia Ltd, said . MallAsia, a unit of Charoen Group, is a distributor of goods from Thailand for the shopping mall.

Agencies