■ Advertising
Internet ad market up 40%
Internet advertising revenues jumped 40 percent in the first half of this year, driven largely by the growing popularity of keyword ads tied to search results. US revenues for the first six months were US$4.6 billion, compared with US$3.3 billion for the same period last year, according to a Pricewater-houseCoopers study conducted for the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Search made up 40 percent of the ad revenues in the second quarter of this year, compared with 29 percent in the year-ago period. Ad revenues from e-mail marketing dropped 29 percent in the second quarter to US$47 million as many Internet users equated legitimate pitches with spam.
■ Petroleum
China begs Yukos for oil
China's foreign ministry called on OAO Yukos Oil Co to maintain crude supplies to the country after Russia's largest oil exporter said it will cut shipments because it can't pay rail bills. "We hope Yukos will fulfill its contractual obligations with respect to China," Kong Quan (孔泉), foreign ministry spokesman, said at a regular briefing in Beijing. Yukos will suspend crude supplies to China National Petroleum Corp, the nation's biggest oil company, on Sept. 28 and will cut its exports by 1 million tonnes through to the end of this year, the Russian company said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Yukos can't pay rail bills because of a freeze on the company's bank accounts by the Russian government, which claims it's owed US$7.5 billion bill in back taxes and penalties, Sergei Pris-yazhniuk, Yukos' China representative, said.
■ Offerings
Hutchison files for IPO
Underwriters for Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd on Monday filed for an initial public offering worth around US$1 billion. Hutchison Telecommunications is a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa. It provides cellular and fixed-line telephone services in Europe, Asia and Africa. The company filed on Monday to sell 69.3 million American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), with an estimated price range of US$12.67 to US$14.67 per ADR. Some of those shares will be sold in Hong Kong instead. Each ADS will represent 15 Hong Kong shares, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The selling holder has also granted the underwriters an option to purchase up to 11,550,000 additional ADRs to cover overallotments, the filing said. For the six months ended June 30, Hutchison Telecom reported a net profit of US$69 million, the filing said.
■ Airlines
Retired pilots recalled
Delta Air Lines Inc's pilots' union agreed on Monday to allow the struggling carrier to recall retired pilots on a limited basis to help prevent the grounding of flights due to staff shortages. The move came after the company agreed not to terminate the pilots' pension plan before February even if the company files for bankruptcy in the meantime. The tentative agreement must be ratified by the 7,500 active Delta pilots. The agreement still does not resolve Delta's larger problem of getting the pilots to agree to US$1 billion in concessions. The Atlanta-based airline has also warned of the possibility of a Chapter 11 filing without the concessions.
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
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