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World Business Quick Take

■ FINANCE

British bank to raise capital

Royal Bank of Scotland investors on Thursday backed plans to raise £20 billion (US$29.5 billion) in fresh capital as part of a state rescue deal for Britain’s banking sector. RBS shareholders, holding an extraordinary general meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, voted by more than 99 percent in favor of the plan, the bank said in a statement. Under the recapitalization plan, RBS will ask for £5 billion from the British government in return for preference shares. The embattled group will also seek £15 billion from shareholders in a share placing underwritten by the Treasury. That means that the British government could end up owning a 60 percent stake in the bank. Three major British banks — HBOS, Lloyds TSB and RBS — were bailed out last month after they were hit by the global credit crunch and resulting financial crisis.

■ TECHNOLOGY

Zune offers subscription

Microsoft, seeking to boost the popularity of its Zune music player, announced a new subscription offer on Thursday that will allow users to keep 10 tracks a month permanently. A Zune Pass subscription currently gives Zune owners access to millions of tracks for US$14.99 a month but they are not allowed to keep them. The new offer would allow them to keep 10 tracks a month, a US$10 value, at no extra cost. The tracks can be burned to a CD or moved to other devices even if the Zune Pass subscription expires. The offer is aimed at boosting interest in music subscription.

■ AUTOMOBILES

Opel ‘not for sale’: GM

General Motors (GM) said on Thursday its German Opel nameplate is “not for sale” despite the perilous situation of the US auto giant. Tom Wilkinson, a GM spokesman said that some global brands like Opel “are so integrated into GM’s global operations, we would not or could not sell them. Opel is not for sale.” Any talk of a sale of the German unit “is just purely speculative,” he added. The comments came after a news report in Germany that car dealers could make an offer to buy the company. The regional parliament in the German state of Hesse voted unanimously to provide Opel with up to 500 million euros (US$626 million) in loan guarantees in the event that GM declared bankruptcy.

■ SINGAPORE

Bail-out plan unveiled

Singapore announced a US$1.5 billion package yesterday to help businesses gain access to credit amid a recession in the city-state and a global financial crisis. The government “is enhancing its business financing schemes to support an additional US$1.5 billion in loans to help local firms gain access to credit in this current economic slowdown,” the Ministry of Trade and Industry said. Up to 124,000 local companies will be eligible to benefit from the various schemes, which take effect on Dec. 1, it said.

■ TECHNOLOGY

Google chooses site

Google has bought a 75 hectare property in the north of Austria to erect a new European server farm within two years, the US Internet search engine giant said on Thursday. In a statement, Google spokeswoman Kay Oberbeck said the company looked at sites in a dozen European countries before settling on Kronstorf — population 3,000 — near the city of Linz. Still in the design stage, the server farm will employ 50 to 100 people, in an area chosen for its economic environment, qualified manpower, and ample electricity and water. Server farms house powerful computers that handle Internet requests for data.
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