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World Business Quick Take

■BANKING

Tokyo probing BNP Paribas

French bank BNP Paribas is suspected of manipulating stock prices on the Tokyo market and may face “severe” punishment by Japan’s financial watchdog, a report said yesterday. The Tokyo branch of BNP Paribas Securities (Japan) Ltd allegedly manipulated the stock price of Internet and telecommunications giant Softbank Corp and disrupted trading on the Tokyo bourse, the Asahi Shimbun said. The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission is probing the French company and plans to ask the Financial Services Agency to take administrative action, the daily said, without naming its sources. The agency was likely to consider “severe punishment, including a possible suspension of business operations,” it said.



■ENERGY

Siemens buys Solel Solar

German conglomerate Siemens announced the acquisition yesterday of Solel Solar Systems, a maker of panels used in power plants harnessing the sun’s rays to generate electricity. Siemens said it was buying Israel-based Solel for US$418 million from current majority owners, British-based investment firm Ecofin and another unnamed shareholder. Solel is one of the world’s top two suppliers of solar receivers and also plans and constructs vast “solar fields,” posting sales of close to US$90 million in the first half of this year, Siemens said in a statement. “After the rapid and highly successful expansion of our wind power business, we now want to continue this success story in the solar sector.”



■AUTOMOBILES

No word on Hummer bid

China’s Commerce Ministry has not yet received an application from heavy machinery maker Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Co (四川騰中重工機械) for the acquisition of the Hummer brand from General Motors, an official said yesterday. “The Commerce Ministry has not received any formal application from Tengzhong,” a spokesman told a news conference. “We know no details about Tengzhong’s overseas purchase agreement.” The Chinese company last week signed a “definitive agreement” with GM to buy the sport-utility brand.



■INTERNET

Twitter inks India deal

Twitter announced a deal with India’s top mobile company Bharti Airtel on Wednesday that will allow users of the hot micro-blogging service to send “tweets” at standard SMS message rates and receive them for free. “In many parts of the world people do not have Internet access but they can text — and that means they can access Twitter,” Biz Stone, a cofounder of the San Francisco-based company said in a blog post. “Our partnership with Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile operator in India, means a huge population of people can now send tweets at standard rates and receive tweets for free.”



■FINANCE

Lazard’s CEO dies

Bruce Wasserstein, the CEO of Lazard Ltd and a prominent Wall Street dealmaker, died on Wednesday after being hospitalized earlier this week with an irregular heartbeat, a company spokeswoman said. He was 61. In a statement on Wednesday, Lazard’s board said the cause of death had not yet been determined. Wasserstein had been a Wall Street superstar since the 1980s, working on such landmark deals as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’ takeover of RJR Nabisco, and the Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter and AOL-Time Warner mergers.
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