Wu Poh-hsiung, chairman of Taiwan’s Kuomintang, met with President Hu Jintao in Beijing yesterday, where the two promised to start talks on cross-strait economic cooperation. Talks on an economic cooperation pact are expected to begin in the second half of the year. The pact could remove import tariffs on Taiwan-made products and establish more direct [...]
Central Huijin Investment said that it will take over a 9% stake in China Construction Bank (CCB) from a wholly owned unit to raise its direct ownership of the lender. Central Huijin, the investment arm of sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp (CIC), will hold 57% of CCB after the stake transfer. In a statement, [...]
[Wall Street Journal] Volkswagen may work with BYD to build hybrid and electric vehicles using the Shenzhen firm’s lithium-ion battery technology. The move would make Volkswagen BYD’s first major automotive partner; the company, founded as a maker of batteries for mobile handsets, received a US$230 million investment from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in September last [...]
Taiwan-based HTC Corp said that the firm would begin selling a smart phone based on Google’s Android operating system (OS) in China next month. The phone would be the first to be sold in China using the Android OS. HTC Chief Executive Peter Chou said the phone would be a version of its Magic model [...]
White goods manufacturer Haier will buy a 20% stake in New Zealand appliance maker Fisher & Paykel (F&P). Haier will spend between US$49.95 million and US$51.2 million to buy the stake. F&P had been struggling with a debt of US$323.5 million due in part to a weaker New Zealand dollar. The stake purchase comes as [...]
[Financial Times] Ajay Banga, Citigroup’s chief executive in the Asia-Pacific region, said the bank would not sell its stakes in Chinese and Indian banks. Banga said Citi would even expand in the region, despite recent a US government “stress test” that revealed the bank required an additional US$5.5 billion in capital to guard against potential [...]
A Beijing court found in favor of a prominent China critic who sued an internet hosting company after it closed down his website over allegedly illegal content. A verdict issued on May 20 by Daxing district court said Beijing Xin Net had failed to prove that Hu Xingdou, an economics professor who discusses topics such [...]
The State Council pledged to ease restrictions on private investment in state-controlled sectors such as oil, power and public utilities. It is thought these plans for further liberalization, which were mentioned in guidelines outlining economic restructuring for the year, are a response to fears that slow reform has undermined economic efficiency in China. “The structural [...]
(Wall Street Journal) Citic Pacific plans to spend US$2.21 billion over the next two years on developing its iron-ore mining operations. Company Chairman Chang Zhenming said this was part of ongoing efforts to divest non-core assets in order to focus more on special steel, iron-ore mining and Chinese real estate. He added that Citic Pacific [...]
(Bloomberg) China’s largest internet company Shanda Interactive Entertainment plans to spin off its online games unit through an initial public offering in the US. Shanda said Monday that it had submitted a draft registration statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for the proposed listing of Shanda Games. The company is looking to capitalize [...]
