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World Business Quick Take

■ Production
Plasma displays in demand
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co will start making plasma display panels for TVs two months earlier than planned to meet growing demand in north America, the Nihon Keizai newspaper reported. Osaka-based Matsushita plans to start the panel production at its plant in Amagasaki in the western prefecture of Hyogo in September, the newspaper said without citing source of its information. Previously it planned to start in Novem-ber. Together with Matsu-shita's existing three plasma-panel display plants, the company plans to raise annual production to 3.3 million units later this year, from 1.8 million units now, the report said.

■ Legal Issues
Deutsche Telekom to pay
Deutsche Telekom has agreed to pay US$120 million to US plaintiffs alleging the company gave misleading information surrounding its June 2000 public share offering. The company said in a statement released late Friday it was not conceding any wrongdoing in the agreement, which still has to be approved by a US District court in New York. No one was immediately available for comment at Deutsche Telekom on Saturday. "No inference of accounting errors or disclosure viola-tions may be drawn from the fact of or terms of the agreement," the statement said. Deutsche Telekom faces similar lawsuits in German courts brought about by shareholders charging the company covered up risks and sold the stock at too high a price during the same June 2000 offering. Those proceedings are to resume in June.

■ Software
Windows XP changes in EU
Microsoft Corp has agreed to find another name for the stripped-down version of the operating system it was ordered to sell in Europe and had labeled "Windows XP Reduced Media Edition." Industry analysts thought the name would discourage sales of the antitrust-driven European version. But the company says it was simply intended to distinguish clearly between the full-fledged operating system and the version the EU's antitrust ruling requires -- without Windows Media Player and related functions. The EC asked the company to change the name, Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake said on Friday. The Reduced Media Edition name "was descriptive of the product and reduced potential confusion in the market-place," Drake said. "How-ever, in the spirit of com-promise, we have agreed to make the change." A new name has not yet been chosen.

■ Airlines
Virgin rejects takeover
British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Group yesterday rejected a A$1.99 billion (US$1.54 billion) takeover offer by ports conglomerate Patrick Corp for the no-frills Australian airline Virgin Blue. Patrick, which holds a 45.95 percent stake in the carrier esta-blished by Branson in 2000, launched a surprise take-over bid on Friday, offering A$1.90 per share in cash for the shares it does not already own. But minority stockholder Virgin Group said the offer was too low, and that its Swiss invest-ment arm, Cricket SA, bought 5.1 million more Virgin Blue shares on Friday at an average price of A$2.04 "It is Virgin Group's view that Virgin Blue Holdings has much greater value than that indicated in the price being offered by Patrick Corp," Virgin Group said in a statement. Cricket SA's purchase brought Virgin's stake in the discount carrier to 25.1 percent.

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