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World Business Quick Take

■ Electronics
Berlin fair exhibitors rise
The worldwide boom in flat-screen televisions, DVD recorders and MP3 players has helped to boost the number of exhibitors at the world's biggest consumer electronics trade fair (IFA) to be held in Berlin next month. Organizers said yesterday they are expecting a 15 percent jump in exhibitors to 1,500 at the fair, which opens its doors on Sept. 2. About 37 countries are expected to be represented at the fair. In particular, this year's fair is to emphasize the convergence between different electronic media as the digital age takes hold.

■ Chemicals
Ex-Bayer staff charged
A US jury on Wednesday indicted two former executives of Bayer AG, the German chemicals producer, over an international conspiracy to fix the price of rubber chemicals, officials said. The US Justice Department said charges of conspiring with other firms and individuals "to suppress competition" and fix prices in the US and other countries were filed against Germans Jurgen Ick and Gunter Monn in the US District Court in San Francisco. Bayer and other companies have already paid US$200 million in fines for price fixing and some executives face jail terms. Ick was former head of Bayer's Rubber Business Group. Monn, who was head of marketing for the company, was said to have joined the plot from 1997.

■ Tourism
Macau woos thrill-seekers
Visitors are being offered the chance to jump 233m to the ground from the top of the Macau Tower, tourism officials in the southern Chinese enclave announced yesterday. The "Sky Jump," which opens on Wednesday, will give visitors the chance to fly through the air at 75km an hour for 20 seconds before decelerating to a safe landing speed. A spokesman for the Macau government's tourism department said yesterday that the attraction would be the highest adventure of its kind and would attract thrill-seekers from across the region. The jump will be 41m higher than the only other Sky Jump in the world, which is at the Sky Tower in Auckland, New Zealand, where the world's highest bungy jump record was created. Macau government officials are this week holding a week-long Macau Week in Las Vegas to try to attract more North American visitors to the territory.

■ Airlines
Thai suspends president
The president of Thai Airways International has been suspended for three months amid warnings that the national carrier was suffering the worst financial crisis in its history, officials said yesterday. The airline's board suspended Kanok Abhiradee late on Wednesday, and named former permanent secretary of the finance ministry Somchainuk Engtrakul as interim president to overhaul the company. Somchainuk told reporters that he would take full control of all important decision making, while Kanok would keep the title as president and focus on marketing for the three-month period. Somchainuk warned that the airline had registered huge losses in its third quarter, which ended June 30, due largely to steep world oil prices, after posting 10.4 billion baht (US$250.6 million) in profit in the two previous quarters. Kanok vowed not to quit, and said Somchainuk's leadership would help revive the airline's fortunes.

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