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World Business Quick Take

■ Chipmaking
Hynix inks SanDisk deal
South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second-largest memory chipmaker, said yesterday that it had forged a patent cross-licensing and product supply deal with US-based SanDisk. Hynix said the agreement would help it settle patent suits in the US. It follows a similar alliance announced on Tuesday between the South Korean firm and Japanese rival Toshiba, which also settled a patent dispute. It said it also agreed to set up a joint venture with SanDisk to make memory components and sell NAND memory system solutions. SanDisk is the world's largest supplier of flash data storage card products.

■ Banking
HSBC goes local in PRC
HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, Bank of East Asia and Citigroup have won approval to incorporate locally in China, making them eligible to launch full yuan services, state media reported yesterday. As locally incorporated companies, the four lenders can provide yuan and foreign exchange services for Chinese citizens after completing the commercial registration process, probably by next month, the China Daily said. They would be no longer confined to taking only deposits larger than 1 million yuan (US$128,000) per client, a limit applied to foreign banks who choose not to take on local status. All four banks said they expected to start operations soon.

■ Telephony
Skype turns to PayPal
Skype said on Tuesday that users of its Internet telephone service will soon be able to transfer money to each other using PayPal. Skype and online financial transaction service PayPal, both owned by California-based Internet auction firm eBay, expected to formally announce the new service by the end of next month. Skype was bought by eBay in October of 2004 and uses a peer-to-peer network to enable users to make free Internet telephone calls to each other on computers. Skype reportedly ended last year with more than 150 million users. Skype users will need to have PayPal accounts to transfer money to each other.

■ Publishing
Cellphone comics planned
Japanese publisher Shinchosha will soon launch what it calls the country's first digital subscription magazine, an online comic regularly transmitted to mobile phones, a news report said yesterday. Com2 will contain about 200 pages of cartoons and is geared toward cellphones so readers in tech-savvy, comic-book-crazy Japan can keep up with their favorites on the go. The new service will be launched tomorrow. It will originally have cartoons in Japanese only, but Shinchosha plans to add English and Chinese.

■ Petroleum
Police question Total boss
The head of French oil group Total, Christophe de Margerie, was called in for questioning yesterday by police probing suspected corruption in Iran and Cameroon, a source close to the matter said. Margerie was to be questioned on suspicions of corruption to win a gas contract in 1997 with the Iranian national oil company NIOC to operate a gas field called South Pars. The investigation was being conducted by the police finance squad, the source said, after a report that Margerie was to be questioned appeared in the French regional newspaper Est Republicain.

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