A report by the official China Securities Journal forecasts China’s GDP growth rate in 2008 at 9.8%. The forecast growth rate is lower than the 9.9% growth rate posted in the first nine months of the year. Full-year consumer price growth is expected to hit 6.3%, up from 4.5% in the first three quarters, and [...]
Air China may take advantage of record industry losses and a falling market to expand its presence in Shanghai. Air China President Cai Jianjiang has said he is interested in a stake in Shanghai Airlines, which controls 17% of air traffic out of Shanghai. Yesterday, Shanghai Airlines reported its largest-ever quarterly loss, of US$64 million, [...]
China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) said it expects the global economic downturn to decrease demand for chemicals. Speaking after the company released its third-quarter results – the company earlier posted a 38.7% decline in profits from the year-ago quarter – the company’s Chief Financial Officer Dai Houliang said Beijing’s plans to stimulate the economy [...]
Third-quarter profits at China Citic Bank Corp. rose 98%, as China’s seventh-largest bank by assets enjoyed a wider interest margin and lower taxes. The bank’s net profit for the quarter reached US$589.1 million, up from US$298.2 in the year-ago quarter, giving Citic Bank the sharpest third-quarter profit growth among major Chinese banks. Net interest income [...]
China has been detaining officials involved in the licensing of foreign business to operate in China. The actions are reportedly part of a probe by Beijing into direct-selling firms, and come as Avon Products, a US-based direct seller, investigates suspected bribery by its own representatives in China under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. However, [...]
Shares in Shanghai and Shenzhen rose on Thursday in response to the latest round of interest rate cuts and market rallies around the region. The Shanghai Composite Index closed up 2.6%, at 1,763.61, while the Shenzhen Composite Index was up 1.2% to 477.77. Financial stocks and oil refiners were among the better performers, and shares [...]
The chemical melamine, at the center of a scandal in China’s dairy industry, is frequently added to animal feed in China. The news came as four brands of Chinese eggs were found in the past week to contain illegal levels of melamine. The Nanfang Daily newspaper reported that the practice is an “open secret” in [...]
Beijing Yanjing Brewery, China’s third-largest brewer, said it would lower its asking price on a planned private share placement for the second time to help persuade uneasy investors. Yanjing dropped the per-share price to RMB10 (US$1.46) from the RMB17.88 (US$2.61) it was asking for in May. The company is aiming to sell as many as [...]
Bank of China (BOC) has set aside US$832 million to cover bad debts in the third quarter, a move that cut its profit gains to 3.21%. BOC has been the mainland lender hardest hit by the global financial crisis, with impairment losses for the first nine months totaling US$3.8 billion, which exceeds the money it [...]
Beijing ordered the country’s largest insurance companies to buy more publicly traded shares earlier this month to help support the flagging stock market. On October 17, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission summoned the leaders of China’s largest state-controlled insurance groups and told them to play a stabilizing role in the stock market, according to people [...]
