World business quick take

■Music
Apple, Amazon in talks
Apple Computer Inc, the Cupertino, California-based computer maker, and Amazon.com Inc, the Seattle-based Internet retailer, are in "advanced" talks to allow Amazon to carry Apple's new online music store, the New York Post reported. An agreement would provide Apple with increased distribution for its fast-growing music service and allow Amazon to include digital music in its offerings, the paper said. Apple started up the iTunes Music Store in April, part of a bid to combating audio piracy and commercializing digital downloading. Apple said users downloaded about 1 million songs in the unit's first week of operations. An Apple spokesman didn't return calls for comment to the Post and an unidentified Amazon spokesman declined to comment.

■ Interest rates
Pressure on ECB to cut
The European Central Bank may reduce its benchmark interest rate for the third time in seven months this week as the economy stagnates and the euro's advance slows inflation, economists said. The ECB may cut its rate by half a percentage point to 2 percent when policy makers meet in Frankfurt on Thursday, according to a majority of the 32 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The Bank of England may keep its rate at 3.75 percent, a separate survey of 38 economists showed. "The pressure on the ECB is immense," said Ralph Wiechers, chief economist at Germany's VDMA engineering association, which represents 3,000 companies including Siemens AG. "Lowering rates is the only way to slow the euro's appreciation, at least for a while." French President Jacques Chirac and German Finance Minister Hans Eichel are among politicians who have called on the ECB to trim borrowing costs.

■ Music
Nokia, AOL sign deal
Nokia Oyj, the world's biggest mobile-phone maker, signed a marketing agreement with AOL Time Warner Inc's record company allowing users of its 3300 mobile phone to download and listen to music. The Nokia 3300 model, which goes on sale this month, will contain a memory card with short music clips from Warner Music International Inc artists. It will also come with a CD-ROM of full-length tracks, which users can download to their mobile phones, Nokia said in an e-mailed statement.

■ Retail
Vivendi to sell gift chain
Vivendi Universal SA, the world's second-biggest media company, agreed to sell its Spencer Gifts US retail chain for an undisclosed sum as the company seeks to reduce debt, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing a member of the group of buyers. Vivendi would sell the 700-unit gift-store chain based in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey, to a group led by Boston-based Gordon Brothers Group LLC, a closely held finance and asset-management firm, and Palladin Capital Group Inc, a New York-based merchant banking firm, it reported. Paris-based Vivendi acquired Spencer Gifts, which had sales of US$400 million last year from operations in the US, Canada and the UK, when it bought Seagram Co, then owner of Universal Studios and Universal Music Group, in 2000, the paper reported. Vivendi chief executive officer Jean-Rene Fourtou has reversed predecessor Jean-Marie Messier's plan to turn the 150- year-old water utility into an entertainment group, and is now focusing on cutting debt.

Agencies