■ Banking
Bank of China files for IPO
Bank of China (中國銀行), China's No. 2 lender, has filed an application this week with Hong Kong's stock exchange for its initial public stock offering, a person familiar with the deal said yesterday. Bank of China's spokesman in Beijing, Wang Zhaowen (王兆文), said the bank is proceeding with preparations for its Hong Kong listing, scheduled for the first half of this year. He declined to confirm whether the state-owned bank has filed an IPO application with Hong Kong's stock exchange. Bank of China plans to raise as much as US$6 billion in Hong Kong, Dow Jones Newswires said. It will be the second of China's big four state-owned lenders to list shares overseas. China Construction Bank (中國建設銀行) raised US$9.2 billion in its Hong Kong IPO in October. China's largest lender, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (中國工商銀行), or ICBC, is also planning a Hong Kong listing by the year's end.
■ Trade
Singapore-Seoul FTA starts
Singapore's free trade agreement with South Korea will go into force today after both nations completed legal and administrative procedures for its implementation. From today, 75 percent of Singapore's exports will enter South Korea duty free. A further 14 percent will enjoy tariff-free access in South Korea over the next 10 years, the Singapore trade ministry said in a statement yesterday. In return, Singapore will remove remaining tariffs, allowing all South Korean exports to enter duty free with immediate effect. The Korea-Singapore Free Trade Agreement was signed in August last year. Singapore yesterday signed a free trade pact with Panama, its first with a Latin American nation.
■ Chemicals
Degussa sells unit to BASF
Degussa, the German maker of specialty chemicals, said yesterday that it had sold its construction chemicals activities to the world's leading chemicals maker, BASF, for more than 2.8 billion euros (US$3.3 billion). The net purchase price, the purchase price for equity, was 2.2 billion euros. But including debt, the total value of the transaction stood at "more than 2.8 billion euros," Degussa said in a statement. For its part, BASF said in a separate statement that the value of the deal was 2.7 billion euros. The transaction still had to be approved by the relevant authorities, but was expected to close "by the middle of 2006," both sides said.
■ Labor
S Korea rail workers strike
South Korean railway workers went on strike yesterday over pay and working conditions, causing the cancelation of up to 50 percent of services, a transport ministry spokesman said. Due to a holiday, there were fewer scheduled train services and lighter passenger and cargo loads, but chaos is expected if the strike continues today. The trade union of Korea Railroad (KORAIL) is demanding the reinstatement of previously dismissed workers, higher wages and better working conditions. Negotiations between the trade union and the management previously reached a stalemate in December, but a strike then was averted to continue talks. The strike is defying a National Labor Relations Commission arbitration order and is therefore illegal under South Korean laws, but more than 16,000 workers, or 65 percent of employees, walked off the job.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique