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World Business Quick Take

■ BANKING
Warning given on Q3 results
Deutsche Bank said the international credit crisis would hurt its third quarter results. "Deutsche Bank also made errors during this crisis," chief executive Josef Ackermann said in an interview broadcast yesterday on ZDF television. Ackermann said the bank's third-quarter results would be weighed down by the crisis because 29 billion euros (US$40 billion) in credit agreements for large acquisitions must be re-assessed. He did not say exactly how much the errors would cost the bank, but warned it would probably not hire 4,000 staff by the end of the year as planned.

■ ENERGY
Beijing curbs use of corn
China is tightening controls on the industrial use of corn, including biofuel processing. The National Development and Reform Commission, in a notice on its Web site yesterday, said it would stop approving new projects involving use of corn for industrial purposes and would suspend those not already under construction. New projects to build plants to convert corn into fuels such as ethanol are banned, as it foreign investment in such industries.

■ TELECOMS
DoCoMo opens Hanoi office
NTT DoCoMo Inc, Japan's biggest mobile-phone operator, has set up an office in Hanoi. The office, staffed with four employees, will "strengthen relationships with government officials and corporate executives," Tokyo-based DoCoMo said yesterday in a statement. The company is seeking sources of income outside of Japan as intensifying competition contributed to a 25 percent profit decline last fiscal year. It aims to increase overseas sales to 10 percent of total revenue within a decade from less than 1 percent, chief financial officer Masayuki Hirata said in June.

■ TELECOMS
NextWave leaving Japan
US telecom firm NextWave Wireless has decided to sell its stake in IP Mobile, becoming the second foreign firm to exit Japan's mobile telephone industry, IP Mobile said yesterday. Japanese real estate group Mori Trust Co will buy back the stake and again become the largest shareholder in the Tokyo-based cellphone firm, it said. NextWave just acquired a 69.23 percent stake in IP Mobile from Mori Trust last month, becoming the top shareholder. NextWave was only the second foreign firm to enter the Japan's mobile phone market after Britain's Vodafone, which pulled out last year.

■ TRADE
EU happy with US move
The EU yesterday hailed as a "positive move" what it saw as a new US willingness to negotiate in world trade talks, raising hopes of progress in the Doha round of negotiations. It showed a "US commitment to negotiate on the basis of the Geneva text and we urge all partners to do likewise ... Unless the US is committed then there is no future," said Peter Power, the spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson. WTO chief agriculture negotiator, New Zealand Ambassador Crawford Falconer, said in Geneva on Wednesday that the US had accepted a proposal to cut subsidies in the agricultural sector.

■ BANKING
Cordes to head retail giant
Metro, the leading German retail and distribution firm, said yesterday that former Mercedes chief Eckhard Cordes will be its new chief executive, replacing Hans-Joachim Koerber, who is leaving on Oct. 31.

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