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World Business Quick Take

■ MACROECONOMICS

US confidence drops

US consumer confidence fell to an all-time low as worries about jobs, energy bills and home foreclosures darkened people's feelings about the country's economic health and their own financial well-being. According to the RBC Cash Index, confidence tumbled to a mark of 56.3 early this month. That compares with a reading of 65.9 last month -- and a benchmark of 100 -- and was the worst since the index began in 2002. The RBC consumer confidence index was based on responses from 1,027 adults surveyed from Monday through Wednesday about their attitudes on personal finance and the economy.



■ MUSIC

Sony BMG relents on DRM

Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the last major music label holding out against selling music online without copy protection, relented on Thursday and announced Amazon.com Inc's digital music store will carry songs by its artists. Until this week, Sony BMG had resisted selling songs from its catalog without embedding Digital Rights Management (DRM) coding, which prevented them from being copied. Amazon's digital music store sells songs only in the MP3 format, which can be burned onto CDs, copied to multiple PCs and played on any number of digital media players, including Apple Inc's iPod and Microsoft Corp's Zune.



■ AVIATION

Growth may lead to curbs

China's civil aviation traffic soared 16 percent to 185 million passengers last year, triggering government plans for curbs on industry growth to ensure safety, state media reported yesterday. The booming sector was growing too fast, raising safety risks, and needs to be brought under control, the China Daily newspaper quoted state aviation chief Li Jiaxiang (李家祥) as saying. The risks looked set to rise, with volume projected to surge another 14 percent this year to 210 million passengers, the paper said, citing figures from the General Administration of Civil Aviation.



■ ENGINEERING

Report boosts JFE and IHI

Shares in Japanese engineering companies JFE Holdings Inc and IHI Corp rose sharply yesterday on a newspaper report that said the two will merge some of their operations to create Japan's largest shipbuilder. The companies separately issued statements saying they had made no decisions on any restructuring of their shipbuilding operations. The Nikkei said that based on fiscal 2007 sales projections, a combination of the two would have sales of ¥345 billion (US$3.1 billion) a year.



■ SECURITIES

Merrill losses bigger: report

Merrill Lynch & Co, the US' third-largest securities firm, may write down US$15 billion related to US mortgage losses, almost twice its original forecast, the New York Times reported, citing people briefed on the plan. Analysts had estimated the New York-based firm would announce a markdown of about US$12 billion when it reports fourth-quarter earnings next week, adding to an US$8.4 billion charge in the previous quarter. Citigroup, the biggest US bank, may post about US$14 billion of writedowns when it reports fourth-quarter earnings next week, JPMorgan Chase & Co analysts estimated yesterday. Bank of America Corp may announce writedowns linked to collateralized debt obligations of about US$5 billion, they said.
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