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World Business Quick Take

■ Europe
German giants to cut staff
Siemens AG may cut about 4,000 jobs, about 25 percent of employees, at its Business Services unit in the coming months to reduce costs, German regional TZ newspaper reported, citing unidentified people within the company. Chief Executive Klaus Kleinfeld probably will want to start cutting jobs at the unit before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, the newspaper said, citing Siemens supervisory board member Wolfgang Mueller. Infineon Technologies AG may also cut between 60 and 470 jobs at its factory in Dresdner because of changes in production of memory chips, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported, citing an unidentified company spokesman.

■ Aviation
China opens up further
China has further opened up its tightly controlled aviation sector to foreign investment in hopes of winning more funding amid booming demand for air travel, state press said yesterday. "China opened the civil aviation sector to foreign investors in 2002, and now it is time to further open it," the Xinhua news agency quoted Yuan Yaohui, a director in the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China. Yuan said that China was seeking private capital to join in areas such as cargo, airport construction, jet fuel sales and storage, airplane maintenance, catering and computer-based air-ticketing systems. But investors cannot, for example, take majority stakes in the country's three largest airlines, Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines. Neither can private investors take dominant stakes in major domestic airports or air traffic control systems. The new regulation will take effect on Aug. 15.

■ Hong Kong
Dinosaur exhibit sets record
An exhibition of dinosaur fossils in a Hong Kong shopping mall was expecting to welcome its four millionth visitor yesterday. The exhibition of the giant fossils from two museums in China -- the Beijing Natural History Museum and the Sichuan Zigong Dinosaur Museum -- has attracted more than 100,000 visitors a day to the Cityplaza mall, making it the city's most successful exhibition ever. More than 3.8 million guests had visited by Friday morning and the four-millionth visitor was expected to pass through the turnstile before the free five-week exhibition closed yesterday evening. More than 200,000 people visited the exhibition on the July 1 public holiday, 10 times as many as took part in a pro-democracy march organized in Hong Kong on the same day.

■ Auto industry
Dispute harmless: survey
A labor dispute at an Indian unit of Honda Motor Co that led to violent clashes between workers and police won't hurt investment inflows from abroad, a survey by a business group of chief executive officers of overseas companies in the country showed. Honda had cut production of scooters by half since the workers at its factory in Manesar in the northern state of Haryana, near New Delhi, started their intermittent industrial action in May, protesting the dismissal of four colleagues for disciplinary reasons. About 80 percent of the 150 CEOs surveyed felt the violent clashes "will not have any impact on the confidence of foreign investors in India," the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India said in a statement.

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