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World Business Quick Take

■ China
Bankruptcy rules changing
Beijing will close 2,000 money-losing state com-panies and phase out special bankruptcy rules that allowed laid-off workers to be paid before creditors, state media reported yesterday. The shutdowns, expected over the next three to five years, will be the last in China's drive to streamline its state-run sector, and the last time it invokes its policy of giving workers priority when disbursing funds from the sale of assets, newspapers and the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The announcement comes as China's legislature prepares to review a draft law on corporate bankruptcy that would remove differences in treatment for state-owned, private and foreign-invested companies. That law would ensure that all 8 million companies in the country follow standard international practice of using recovered funds to first pay back creditors, the reports said.

■ Economy
Rising oil prices cause risk
Sharp increases in oil prices in recent months pose a risk, although a manageable one, for Asian economies as long as governments use the right policies, the Asian Development Bank said yesterday. "Asia remains particularly vulnerable to an oil shock because of its high dependence on oil imports," said the report by bank economist Park Cyn-young. Asia produces 10 percent of world crude supply but consumes 24 percent, with consumption in China and India rising, adding to the pressure on prices. Asia's increased appetite for oil "is not a temporary phenome-non," it said. It said GDP of 10 Asian nations would suffer a 0.1 percentage point reduction this year and a 0.5 to 0.6 percentage point reduction next year if oil prices remain at about US$40 a barrel. Inflation would also be higher in many of these countries particularly India, Indo-nesia, Malaysia, the Philip-pines, Singapore and Thailand.

■ Automobiles
BMW adapts to iPod
Apple Computer and BMW Group on Monday intro-duced an adapter that allows iPod and BMW customers to plug their music collections directly into their car sound sys-tems. The two companies worked for a year to jointly develop the system that will work in BMW's newer model 3 Series, Z4 Roadster, X3 and X5 sports utility vehicles and the Mini Cooper. Apple chief execu-tive Steve Jobs called the product a groundbreaking move -- one he hopes will lead to more integrated products between the auto industry and Apple's hot-selling iPod portable music player. Owners of iPods usually resort to third-party products to use their iPods in their cars. The BMW iPod Adapter will be available starting July 12 for 2002 to 2004 models. The Mini Cooper iPod adapters will be available later.

■ Telecoms
French, Motorola ink pact
France Telecom and US equipment maker Motorola have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop and deploy inte-grated wireless services, they said in a statement on Monday. The companies will set up joint research and development teams, share research funding and intel-lectual property resulting from the collaboration."This collaboration aims at devel-oping and deploying new and innovative, integrated services, using a wide range of wireless access networks and technologies, for the home, office, car and on the move," the statement said.

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