Thu, Aug 21, 2008 page10

• World Business Quick Take

  • AGENCIES
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  ■INVESTMENT

  Russia benefits on US woes

  Investments in the bonds of struggling US home-loan financers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have earned Russia more than US$1 billion in the past six months, press reports said on Tuesday. “The bonds in which we have invested have not incurred losses, but instead have made us more than a billion dollars in the last six months,” Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin was quoted as saying by Ria Novosti news agency. The report gave no further details nor an explanation of how the investment had been able to produce a return worth some 670 million euros (US$988.4 million) at a time when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares have tumbled.

  ■COMPUTERS

  IBM bets on uncertainty

  In a sign that political instability and natural disasters can fuel technology spending, IBM Corp said it would invest US$300 million building new centers that can store companies’ sensitive data and deliver it remotely in the event of a meltdown. Called “cloud computing,” the technology that Armonk, New York-based IBM is employing in 13 new facilities lets companies access backups of their critical computer files over secured Internet connections — instead of housing all the data internally. IBM says its initiative is drawing attention from customers especially concerned about severe weather and global instability, including war between Russia and Georgia, said Michael Riegel, vice president of IBM’s Business Continuity and Resiliency Services unit.

  ■RETAIL

  UK online sales up

  Online retail sales in the UK rose by 11.3 percent last month compared with the previous month, as wet weather boosted online clothing sales while electrical sales also soared, a report said yesterday. The IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index showed Britons spent more than £4.8 billion (US$8.97 billion) online last month, the equivalent of £79 for every person in the UK. The survey showed shoppers continued to shop online despite pressures on disposable income. The figures were in sharp contrast to recent data from the British Retail Consortium, showing high street sales last month were down 0.9 percent on June.

  ■OIL

  Petrobras invests in Ceara

  Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras on Tuesday announced it would invest US$11.1 billion in building a refinery in the northeast state of Ceara. The facility, which is scheduled to begin operation in 2014, would have a capacity to process 300,000 barrels of crude per day. Most of the output will be for export diesel, although gasoline and gas will also be produced for domestic consumption. Petrobras also has another refinery planned, the financial newspaper Valor said, adding that its capacity — about half of the Ceara plant — would be for export. Valor said the company is aiming to double refined output to 3.2 million barrels per day by 2020.

  ■CELLPHONES

  S Koreans love their mobiles

  South Korea now has 45 million mobile phones, equivalent to 91 percent of the total population, the Korea Communications Commission said yesterday. The data meant that each of the country’s 15.8 million households has almost three mobiles on average, it said. About 43 million of the mobile phones had an Internet connection. The number of landline phone users continued to fall, with 23 million subscribers reported last month. South Korea is one of the world’s most wired societies, with nearly all households connected to the Internet.
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