Thu, Feb 02, 2006 page6

• Business Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■ Real estate
  Housing glut worsens

  Taiwan recorded an oversupply of housing units last year, with the average housing transaction rate declining to between 50 percent and 55 percent, according to figures released yesterday by the Federation of Real Estate Development Associations (建築開發公會). The federation's statistics show that a total of 128,730 new units were placed on the market last year, representing an increase of 25.5 percent over 2004, with the total value amounting to NT$965.5 billion, showing 30.7 percent growth over 2004. Oversupply last year was most serious in northern Taiwan, with 43,465 units unsold at the end of last year worth NT$380 billion.

  ■ Banking

  Managers, wives charged

  Two former managers for the Chinese-controlled Bank of China (中國銀行) and their wives have been charged with stealing more than US$485 million and laundering money through Las Vegas casinos, US officials said on Tuesday. The Justice Department said Xu Chaofan (許超凡) and Xu Guojun (許國俊), their wives and another relative had tried to launder stolen money through Hong Kong, Canada and the US before moving to the US. The five have been charged in Las Vegas with racketeering, money laundering and fraud, Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher and Nevada US Attorney Daniel Bogden said. They were alleged to have funneled stolen money through shell corporations in Hong Kong to the other countries. They sought to launder much of the money through Las Vegas casino accounts, the department said. A third former bank manager, Yu Zhendong (餘震東), was also detained but has cooperated with the investigation and returned to China where he faces embezzlement and bribery charges.

  ■ Cellphones

  NTT DoCoMo buys up sets

  NTT DoCoMo Inc, the world's second-largest cellphone operator, will buy handsets from Fujitsu Ltd, Motorola Inc and NEC Corp for a faster wireless service that it plans to debut as early as July. DoCoMo and its cellphone suppliers helped design three prototype models geared at receiving and sending data using so-called high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) technology, Tokyo-based DoCoMo said yesterday on its Web site. Financial details were not disclosed. The phones will be able to download songs and pictures at a maximum speed of 3.6 megabits a second, which is about 10 times faster than some third-generation handsets currently, according to the statement.

  ■ Electronics

  Chi Mei eyes loan to expand

  Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp (奇美電子), Taiwan's second-largest maker of flat-panel displays used in computers and televisions, is seeking to borrow US$180 million to expand in China, said a banker involved in the loan. Chi Mei, whose sales more than doubled in December, hired Banc of America Securities Asia Ltd, Calyon and HSBC Holdings Plc to arrange the five-year loan, which will fund the expansion of an existing assembly plant in Ningbo, eastern China, said the banker, who declined to be named. Chi Mei recorded sales of NT$18.9 billion (US$591 million) in December, up from NT$7.2 billion in the same period for 2004. Chi Mei's third-quarter net income increased 0.3 percent to NT$3.38 billion from NT$3.37 billion a year earlier. The company is also raising NT$40 billion through a seven-year loan that may increase to as much as NT$70 billion to build a new plant in Tainan, said another banker involved in the loan.

  ■ Technology
  Sharp posts record profits

  Sharp Corp posted record quarterly high corporate earnings with a 25.8 percent increase in its group net profit in the October-December period to ¥26.26 billion (US$223.80 million) from the same period the previous year, the company reported yesterday. The world's biggest maker of liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs reported a sales growth of ¥731.72 billion, up 12.5 percent, while its group operating profit also climbed 20.5 percent to ¥42.75 billion. The company attributed its positive earnings results to strong sales of LCD TVs and the displays themselves. In the third quarter, Sharp sold 1.22 million LCD units, up 49 percent, raising sales by 37 percent to ¥132.5 billion from the same period a year before. Sharp also saw a better earnings result from a rise in mobile phone sales of ¥113.7 billion, up 11 percent.

  ■ Cost of living

  Oslo overtakes Tokyo

  Oslo has overtaken Tokyo as the world's most expensive city, according to a survey published on Tuesday. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said the Norwegian capital's emergence at No. 1 in its latest biannual survey ``highlights a much wider increase in the relative cost of living across Europe, driven by the long-term underperformance of the dollar.'' Tokyo had held the top spot for 14 years. The Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, saw the largest proportional rise in the cost of living last year, surpassing Osaka to place third, the survey showed. Paris placed fifth, followed by Copenhagen, London, Zurich, Geneva and Helsinki, the EIU said. In many Asian cities, economic growth has pushed up the cost of living, it said. Seoul, at No. 13, overtook Hong Kong as the most expensive city in the region after Tokyo and Osaka.

  ■ Privatization

  Airport workers picket

  Thousands of workers picketed airports across India yesterday in a strike called to protest government plans to privatize the country's two largest landing facilities at New Delhi and Mumbai. However, flight schedules in and out of the 130 airports -- manned by workers of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) -- were unaffected as air traffic controllers came in for work, officials and reports said. In New Delhi and Mumbai, workers shouted anti-government slogans as they launched a sit-in protest outside the entrances to the main terminals. "Unless and until the government heeds our demand to withdraw its decision to privatize Mumbai and Delhi airports, we will not stop our agitation," said Pramod Sharma, a union secretary, the Press Trust of India reported.

  ■ Airlines

  United leaves bankruptcy

  United Airlines finally left bankruptcy yesterday, a leaner and more cost-efficient carrier after a painful restructuring that began in 2002 and lasted a record 1,150 days. The nation's No. 2 airline was expected to make its emergence from Chapter 11 official with a morning announcement. "Now it's really time to fly, to move forward,'' Glenn Tilton, CEO of United and parent UAL Corp, said on Tuesday. Passengers are unlikely to notice an immediate difference, since United never stopped flying even when it sought protection from its creditors in federal bankruptcy court. The airline now has about 30 percent fewer employees (58,000), 20 percent fewer airplanes (460) and 20 percent lower operating costs (US$0.75 per seat per mile) than it did when the bankruptcy began on Dec. 9, 2002.
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