Print

Mail

wiki links

World Business Quick Take

■ Mobile Phones
Germany gets 3G services
Vodafone Group Plc, the world's biggest mobile-phone company, began offering third-generation services in Germany and Portugal yesterday. The services, which allow fast Internet access and the ability to download video to phones, will be available through two handsets, made by Samsung Electronics Co and Sony Ericsson. Vodafone is among companies that spent more than US$100 billion since 2000 for licenses to offer new mobile services using the Universal Mobile Telecommunications Standard, or UMTS.

■ Steel
Demand expected to grow
Global steel demand will increase 6.2 percent this year, led by Chinese consumption, the Brussels-based International Iron and Steel Institute said. Consumption of finished steel products will rise to 917 million tonnes from 864 million tonnes last year, the trade group said in an e-mailed statement. China will account for 263 million tonnes of that, 13 percent more than the previous year. Tighter raw material supplies may limit producers' ability to raise output enough to meet the expected demand, the institute said. Steel demand for next year is expected to rise by a further 4.5 percent to 958 million tonnes.

■ Chipmakers
Citigroup raises Hynix bid
A private equity unit of Citigroup Inc raised its bid for Hynix Semiconductor Inc's non-memory chip business by more than a fifth to about 925 billion won (US$790 million), people familiar with the offer said. Citigroup Venture Capital Equity Partners LP last week offered to pay about two-thirds in cash and the rest in assumed debt, said the people, who asked not to be identified. The company was to submit a written proposal yesterday, they said. Hynix rejected a Citigroup bid of about 750 billion won last month. A sale will help Hynix, the world's fourth-largest maker of computer memory chips, cut debt of 4.2 trillion won and fund a plant in China.

■ Chipmakers
Motorola may scrap sale
Motorola Inc may scrap plans to sell shares in Freescale Semiconductor Inc, the company's chip-making unit, the Silicon Strategies Web site reported, without saying where it obtained the information. Motorola originally planned its first public sale of the Freescale shares in the first quarter this year, the report said. The world's second-biggest mobile-phone maker, Motorola said on April 20 it may have costs of US$925 million to US$1.1 billion for Freescale. Motorola agreed in October to swap its US$1 billion chip factory in Tianjin, China, for a stake in Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manu-facturing International Corp, China's biggest chipmaker.

■ Share dealings
Gates fined US$800,000
The world's richest man must pay US$800,000 for violating federal rules by making a large investment in a pharmaceutical company. Bill Gates, the billionaire chairman of Microsoft Corp, agreed to the civil penalty for the violation arising from his 2002 acquisition of more than US$50 million in Icos Corp securities. The agreement settles a Justice Department lawsuit filed Monday in US District Court in Washington contending Gates should have complied with investment notification rules because he intended to participate in the company's business decisions.

This story has been viewed 1759 times.