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World Business Quick Take

■ Electronics
Sony plans to slash parts
Sony Corp plans to slash the number of parts it makes for use in its products by almost 90 percent by the end of 2005 to cut costs, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said, without citing where it obtained the information. The company will reduce the number of parts it uses, many of which are very similar, to 100,000. About a fifth will be shared as standard parts throughout the company, the report said. The overlap in parts is a result of Sony's policy to let engineers design unique parts as they developed products. Some 840,000 parts are used by the company, many of them nearly identical, the report said. The move is part of an effort to boost profit at the world's No.2 consumer electronics maker, the report said.

■ Marketing
`Nazi' retailer turns antiwar
A Hong Kong fashion company that sparked outrage with its Nazi-themed clothes has put them back on the rack -- after revamping them with anti-war messages, a newspaper reported yesterday. The retailer, which goes by the Internet-style name "www.izzue.com" and has 14 stores here, withdrew the clothes and apologized in August after drawing heavy criticism from Israeli and German diplomats in the territory. Israeli Consul General Eli Avidar had denounced the company for a sales campaign that he said "totally desecrates the deaths of millions of people under the Nazi regime and legitimizes evil." But the clothes are back, after the company printed anti-war slogans atop the Nazi symbols in a bid to save its investment, the South China Morning Post reported.

■ Reconstruction
US awards Iraq contracts
Struggling with an electricity grid in Iraq that has been crippled by continuing looting and sabotage, the US Army Corps of Engineers announced on Friday that it had awarded four new contracts, worth a total of US$290 million, to US companies to help restore power. Washington Group International received a contract for US$110 million to repair the grid in northern Iraq, Fluor Intercontinental a contract for US$102 million for central Iraq, and Perini Corp a US$66 million contract for southern Iraq. The three companies are major construction concerns that were awarded contracts by the Corps of Engineers in April that provided no money up front but had them stand by for projects that might arise, like this one.

■ Behavior
Tycoons often dyslexic
Many successful self-made Britons are dyslexic, according to a survey published in the Sunday Times. The findings by Tulip Financial Research showed a huge majority of Britain's estimated 5,000 self-made millionaires performed badly at school and continue to perform poorly in aptitude tests, the newspaper reported. About 40 percent of the 300 studied had been diagnosed with the condition -- four times the rate in the general population. One reason could be that dyslexics, who tend not to be good at details, learn to excel by grasping the bigger picture and producing original ideas. They might also be more motivated because of the social exclusion many feel. Among the examples cited are Richard Branson, head of Virgin, who made his first million by the age of 18 after founding a record label. Branson admits he did not understand the differ-ence between net and gross profit until it was explained to him three years ago.

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