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World Business Quick Take

■ TELECOMS
Sony Ericcson's profits soar
Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson said yesterday that first-quarter earnings more than doubled on strong sales of its Walkman music handsets. Net profit was 254 million euros (US$346 million) in the first quarter, up from 109 million euros in the same period last year. London-based Sony Ericsson said strong sales growth in Asia, Latin America and Europe helped its market share grow 2 percentage points to 8 percent. Nokia Corp on Thursday said its first-quarter earnings dropped nearly 7 percent year-on-year to 979 million euros, but its share of the global mobile phone market was up slightly at 36 percent.

■ PHARMACEUTICALS
Boots agrees to takeover
Pharmaceutical retailer Alliance Boots PLC said yesterday it had agreed to a takeover by its deputy chairman, Stefano Pessina, and private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. The deal values Alliance Boots at ?10.90 (US$21.87) a share, or ?10.6 billion. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Pessina had made several lower offers for Alliance Boots, but raised their bid after a rival emerged in medical charity the Wellcome Trust and private equity firm Terra Firma. Pessina, an Italian billionaire, is Alliance Boots' largest shareholder, with a 15 percent stake.

■ TELECOMS
RIM blames software test
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd (RIM) said an insufficiently tested software update at the company's network data center was the cause of a service outage this week that left millions of users across North America without wireless e-mail access. In a statement late on Thursday, RIM said the outage from Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning was caused by "the introduction of a new, non-critical system routine" designed to optimize the cache, or temporary holding space, of the system that handles e-mail sent to BlackBerry users. RIM said it did not expect the update to impact on users, "but the pre-testing of the system routine proved to be insufficient."

■ AUTOMOBILES
Chrysler staff mulling bid
Chrysler employees are considering a bid for the loss-making US arm of German-US auto giant DaimlerChrysler to prevent Chrysler from falling into the hands of a private equity firm, the Wall Street Journal Europe reported yesterday. The United Auto Workers union was reviewing a proposal for employees and the union to buy 70 percent of Chrysler via an employee stock ownership plan, the report said. Daimler would hold on to the remaining stake, the newspaper said, quoting a source familiar with the matter. The purchase would be financed by workers agreeing to cuts in healthcare benefits and other concessions, it said.

■ FOOD
US beef on the way
A shipment of US beef will arrive in South Korea on Monday, the agriculture ministry said, the first imports since Seoul rejected three shipments that contained bone chips triggered a dispute. The cargo of 10 tonnes of chilled beef will be checked by quarantine officials. "We will inspect whether the shipment meets the safety conditions that Seoul and Washington agreed upon," an official at the ministry said yesterday If any bone chips are found in the shipment, Seoul will reject only those packages containing chips, not the entire shipment as Seoul had proposed during high-level agricultural talks in February, officials said.

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