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World Business Quick Take

■CHINA

CIC invests in SouthGobi

China’s main sovereign wealth fund is investing US$500 million in a Canada-based company that mines coal in Mongolia, expanding its multibillion-dollar global shopping spree for resource assets. China Investment Corp (CIC, 中國投資公司) is investing in a 30-year secured debenture issued by SouthGobi Energy Resources Ltd, CIC said in a statement yesterday. It said the instrument is convertible to common equity. SouthGobi’s majority owner is Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. Its flagship mine, Ovoot Tolgoi, is in southern Mongolia near the Chinese border and sells coal to customers in China.



■AUTOMOBILES

Honda raises profit forecast

Honda Motor Co raised its full year profit forecast despite earnings diving by more than half last quarter with “green” car incentives and growth in markets like China expected to further boost vehicle sales. Net profit for the July-to-­September quarter fell 56.2 percent from a year earlier to ¥54.0 billion (US$587.0 million), the company said yesterday, hit by a strong yen and the weak global auto market. But Honda, Japan’s No. 2 automaker, now expects a CHINAnet profit for the fiscal year ending March of ¥155 billion, nearly four times its initial outlook for a ¥40 billion profit. The automaker also raised its forecast for sales this fiscal year to 3.4 million vehicles.



■GAMBLING

Casino sparks dispute

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI is among a number of investors embroiled in a bitter financial restructuring of a loss-making Macau casino and hotel firm, a report said yesterday. The king is one of about 20 wealthy people who were sold a US$400 million stake in Macau Legend, the South China Morning Post cited sources as saying. The investors, who bought the stake from investment bank Merrill Lynch in 2006, anticipated a quick profit from a listing of the Fisherman’s Wharf theme park on the Hong Kong stock exchange earlier this year, the report said, but the listing never happened.



■TELECOMS

Verizon income drops 9.8%

The US telecommunications firm Verizon, the country’s second largest, reported on Monday that net income had dropped 9.8 percent compared with the third quarter of last year, to US$2.89 billion. But the figures topped analysts’ estimates, Bloomberg financial news agency reported. The cost of cutting 4,000 jobs last quarter in the declining land-line business had eaten into net income, and another 4,000 jobs are to be cut in the current quarter, Verizon’s chief financial officer John Killian said. Revenues climbed 10.2 percent to US$27.26 billion, in part from the one-time boost from the takeover of Alltel. Without considering the acquisition, revenues climbed 0.6 percent.



■SOFTWARE

Wipro reports rise in profit

India’s third-largest software group Wipro yesterday reported a 19 percent rise in net profit and forecast improving demand, underscoring new optimism in the sector. In the fiscal second quarter to last month, the Bangalore-based firm said it turned a profit of 11.62 billion rupees (US$248 million) on 6 percent rise in sales to 69.17 billion rupees. “We see more stability in volumes and pricing as well as an improving demand environment,” Wipro chairman Azim Premji said in a statement.
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