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World Business Quick Take

■ SECURITIES
China to encourage bonds
China will encourage publicly traded companies to issue bonds as a way of diversifying their corporate borrowings, the central bank said yesterday. "Our financial system is immature and one of the main reasons is our corporate bond markets are so small," the People's Bank of China said in a statement posted on its Web site. "We need more forms of corporate financing in order to create a healthy market." Most companies in China rely on bank financing, totaling 2.3 trillion yuan (US$310 billion), while listed companies have raised 1 trillion yuan from the stock markets and only 880 billion yuan from corporate bonds, the central bank said.

■ TRADE TALKS
S Korea, EU work for pact
South Korea's trade minister forecast yesterday that Seoul could agree on a free trade pact with the EU by the end of this year despite a dispute over automotive tariff concessions. Speaking ahead of a fourth round of talks scheduled in Seoul on Oct. 15, South Korean Trade Minister Kim Jong-hoon said both sides had to compromise. A deal with the EU would be the biggest ever for South Korea, surpassing an agreement signed in June with the US, which awaits ratification by the legislatures of both countries.

■ THEME PARKS
Disney in Malaysian talks
Walt Disney Co is holding talks with Malyasian investment company Khazanah Nasional about building a theme park in Johor State that would face Singapore, a business paper reported yesterday. The Edge business weekly said Walt Disney officials met officials from Khazanah last week to discuss developing a park in the Iskandar Development Region. "They [Walt Disney] met Khazanah managing director Azman Mokhtar and had discussions with other top Khazanah executives," it said. But it said Khazanah was also in negotiations with other theme park players including Warner Brothers.

■ COMMUNICATIONS
Japan seeks new standard
A research group will be established in Japan to develop optical technology that could replace the Internet Protocol as the new international standard in communications, a report said yesterday. The group will be established next month by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, which is backed by the government, and private companies such as NTT Corp, Fujitsu Ltd, KDDI Corp, Hitachi Ltd, Toshiba Corp and NEC Corp, the Nikkei Shimbun said. By 2015, it will aim to develop and commercialize a network that can transfer data at 10 gigabits per second.

■ IPR
French company fined
An court in eastern China has ordered a French electrical company to pay 330 million yuan (US$44 million) for infringing on the copyright of a Chinese firm, the Beijing News reported yesterday. In a ruling issued on Saturday, the Wenzhou intermediate court in Zhejiang Province ordered Schneider Electric to pay 330 million yuan in compensation to the Chint Group for infringing on the patent for its low-voltage electrical equipment, the newspaper reported. The amount of compensation is believed to be the highest in China in an intellectual property rights case, the paper said. "We absolutely disagree with this decision; it is absolutely unreasonable," said Guy Dufraisse, director of China operations for Schneider Electric.


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