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World Business Quick Take

■ Health
Production halt damaging
Britain halted influenza vaccine manufacturing at US-based Chiron Corp on Tuesday, wiping out a huge swathe of the world's expected supply for this flu season. British regulators suspended Chiron produc-tion for three months after uncovering unspecified sterility defects in the Liverpool plant, which makes all of the influenza vaccine, Fluvirin(R). US health authorities, who had been counting on Chiron for half of the country's flu vaccine this winter, scram-bled to patch up a plan to protect those most at risk.

■ Banking
Credit-card surge in China
China and India will lead the way in the new credit card surge in the Asia-Pacific region, a study by the London-based Lafferty Group predicted yesterday. China was expected to turn in a 47.5 percent com-pounded annual growth rate in new cards issued for the three years up to next year with India coming in at 29.4 percent, the study said. The total number of credit cards in China will likely hit 77 million next year, up from 52.2 million this year, the study said. In India, the number of cards was expected to grow to 13 million by the end of next year, up from 10 million this year.

■ Financial services
Hynix deal wrapped up
Citigroup Venture Capital Equity Partners LP, a unit of the world's largest financial service provider, completed the purchase of part of South Korea-based Hynix Semiconductor Inc's busi-ness, Hynix said in a state-ment. Citigroup made the payment to Hynix for its non-memory chip business, the statement said. The company in June agreed to purchase the Hynix busi-ness for 954 billion won (US$830 million) in cash and assumed debt. The move paves the way for Hynix, the world's second-largest maker of computer memory chips, to cut its 4.3 trillion won debt and keep up with Samsung Elec-tronics Co and Micron Tech-nology Inc on spending. The purchase allows Citigroup to invest in semiconductors.

■ Investment
FDI rises 71% in S Korea
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in South Korea stood at US$3.37 billion in the third quarter to last month, up 71 percent from a year earlier, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said yesterday. The figures mark the third consecutive quarterly rise and are the highest since the fourth quarter of 2001, the ministry said. So far this year FDI is up 81.7 percent year-on-year to US$8.42 billion. The ministry said it expected to attain its goal of attracting US$10 billion of FDI this year. Manufac-turing attracted US$1.51 billion in FDI in the third quarter, up from US$319 million a year earlier, while service industries rose to US$1.84 billion from US$1.47 billion.

■ Finance
Soros boosts sons' jobs
Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has given his sons greater responsibility in his firm as part of efforts to return the company to its roots as a hedge fund, a company memo said. Soros, who started Soros Fund Management LLC in 1973, appointed his son Robert chief investment officer on Sept. 14, said the memo, which was sent to investors on Monday. The memo said Jonathan Soros was recently appointed co-deputy chairman of Soros Fund Management. The appointments are part of organizational changes at the company.

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