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World Business Quick Take

■ Computers
HP chairwoman to resign
Hewlett-Packard (HP) said yesterday that chairwoman Patricia Dunn would step down after the company become embroiled in an wiretapping scandal that has sparked legal investigations. Dunn, who will resign in January, apologized after private detectives that she had hired to investigate boardroom leaks to the media "went beyond" their mandate. HP said that its chief executive officer and president, Mark Hurd, would succeed Dunn as chairman at a board meeting on Jan. 18. California and federal prosecutors are investigating whether the private eyes hired by HP broke the law to get private telephone records. Dunn, 53, has denied authorizing illicit tactics.

■ China
Growth cooling slightly
The growth in China's spending on factories, real estate and other urban fixed assets slowed marginally last month as official efforts to cool off an investment boom finally began to take effect, the government said yesterday. Spending on fixed assets last month was up 21.5 percent from the year-earlier period, but down 5.9 percentage points from the growth rate in August last year, the National Bureau of Statistics announced. Beijing has been trying to rein in a boom in construction and bank lending, warning that runaway investment could trigger inflation or lead to a financial crisis.

■ Oil
Glitch may benefit oil firms
Chevron Corp and two other oil companies may avoid paying royalties to the government on at least some of the oil pumped from a massive newly discovered field in the Gulf of Mexico because of a mistake by federal officials, according to a congressional inquiry. Chevron in a statement late on Monday said that while the test well and "the majority of the discovered resource" in the new field will be subject to federal royalty payments, it said oil that might be found in two blocks of the field could be exempt from such payments.

■ Electronics
Daewoo backs takeover bid
South Korea's Daewoo Electronics expressed strong support yesterday for a proposed takeover led by India's VideoCon Industries but appealed for greater investment. The takeover is the "only realistic option" to save the country's third-largest electronics group which is now in the seventh year of a debt workout program, the company said in a statement. "The reason for our active push for a merger and acquisition is the company's desperate need for investment in technology development," Daewoo president Lee Seung-chang told reporters. "It has no meaning at all to have a new owner without any business investment coming along. We want a bigger level of investment than now."

■ Semiconductors
Intel sells component firm
Intel Corp has sold a business that manufactures optical network components to Cortina Systems Inc for US$115 million in cash and stock, the companies announced on Monday. The sale comes a week after Intel announced a major restructuring in which the semiconductor producer plans to cut 10,500 jobs, or about 10 percent of its work force, through layoffs, attrition and the sale of underperforming business units. Intel declined to indicate whether the sold business is profitable. Cortina said the acquisition will make it "immediately profitable" but declined to elaborate.

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