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World Business Quick Take

■ BANKING
JP Morgan gets green light
US investment bank JPMorgan Chase and Co has received the green light from Chinese authorities to set up a futures trading joint venture, state media said yesterday. JPMorgan Chase's local partner will be Zhongshan Futures Co (中山期貨), a futures brokerage company with a registered capital of 30 million yuan (US$4 million), the China Daily reported. The joint venture will provide trading and clearing brokerage services in both commodity futures and, when they become available, financial futures, according to the paper.

■ ENTERTAINMENT
Warner Bros reveal deal
Warner Bros Entertainment will develop a theme park and hotel in Abu Dhabi as well as co-finance films and video games as part of a multibillion-dollar alliance. The deal with real estate developer Aldar and the newly formed Abu Dhabi Media Co also involves jointly owned movie theaters in the United Arab Emirates and a separate deal to produce Arabic-language movies. The US$500 million film fund will produce broad appeal films, with Warner Bros retaining worldwide distribution rights, the company said on Wednesday. Each side will contribute half of the investment. Warner Bros and the Abu Dhabi Media will also create another US$500 million fund to finance the production of video games.

■ CURRENCY
Euro climbs to all-time high
The euro rose to an all-time high of US$1.4166 yesterday, its sixth record in as many trading days against the sagging US dollar. The euro rose from its level of US$1.4136 in New York late the previous day and broke through its previous peak of US$1.4162, which it had reached early on Wednesday. The US dollar has hit a series of new lows against the euro over recent days since the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a larger-than-expected half percentage point.

■ STOCK MARKET
Chinese IPO sets record
China Shenhua Energy Co (神華能源), the country's biggest coal miner, has raised 66.6 billion yuan (US$8.9 billion) in its Shanghai initial public offering, a record for a Chinese IPO. The 1.8 billion yuan-denominated shares were priced at 36.99 yuan each, the top of their indicative range, Shenhua said in a notice issued late on Wednesday. The shares constitute 9 percent of Shenhua's capital. The IPO topped China Construction Bank's (中國建設銀行) share offering earlier this week as the largest ever on a mainland Chinese bourse. The Construction Bank, which began trading on Tuesday in Shanghai, raised 58.05 billion yuan (US$7.7 billion).

■ FOOD
`Adult Milk' set for launch
A Japanese dairy company yesterday announced the launch of super-premium milk for stressed-out adults -- at the price of US$43 for a bottle of 900ml, or one quart. Tokyo-based Nakazawa Foods will launch the "Adult Milk" line of products next month targeting "adults who live in a stressful society," the company said in a statement. The price of ?5,000 a bottle is nearly 30 times as expensive as ordinary milk. The milk is taken from cows once a week at the break of dawn as they discharge a lot of a stress-relieving hormone called melatonin during the night, the company said. The milk is bottled within six hours of milking at a farm north of Tokyo.


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