Technology

HTC anticipates big challenges ahead

Taiwan smartphone maker HTC Co, which posted its first-ever quarterly loss last week, has said that the next two months would be its "biggest challenge" as it tries to convince customers its products are as innovative as those from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co.

"We really have the best technology and the best product," Chairwoman Cher Wang said in an Oct 5 interview with Bloomberg TV while attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in Bali, Indonesia. "When we actually communicate better, the consumer will know it because they can feel our product is the best." HTC, once the biggest seller of smartphones in the US, reported its first quarterly net loss, NT$2.97 billion ($101.2 million) for the three months ending September.

HTC will debut redesigned smartphones in the first half of next year, Arthur Liao, an analyst at Fubon Financial Holding Co in Taipei, said on Oct 4.

Investment

CRE eyeing HK meat distribution unit sale

Beer-to-retail conglomerate China Resources Enterprise Ltd is evaluating options for its meat distribution unit in Hong Kong that could include a sale, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

The State-backed company may start a strategic review of the business as early as this year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. China Resources snapped up the then Hong Kong-listed Ng Fung Hong Ltd in 2001 in a deal that valued it at HK$5.1 billion ($658 million). Ng Fung Hong commenced operations in 1951 in Hong Kong and handles all imports of live cattle from the mainland.

The Hong Kong government said in May that it was considering requests to open the import market to competition, citing concerns that "frequent" price increases by Ng Fung Hong was hurting demand for fresh beef. The company raised wholesale beef prices six times last year, the South China Morning Post reported in December.

Economy

World Bank lowers East Asia forecast

The World Bank has lowered its forecast for East Asia's developing nations this year and next, saying the region must boost efforts to ensure financial stability ahead of interest-rate increases in advanced economies. Developing East Asia will probably expand 7.1 percent in 2013 and 7.2 percent in 2014, the Washington-based lender said in a report on Monday, down from April predictions of 7.8 percent and 7.6 percent respectively.

China may grow 7.5 percent in 2013, lower than an April forecast of 8.3 percent, it said. "The risks to the global recovery from the uncertainty surrounding the fiscal deadlock in the United States, the impact of the withdrawal of monetary stimulus from the advanced economies, an abrupt slowdown of investment in China and unrest in the Middle-East remain prominent," the World Bank said in its East Asia and Pacific Economic Update on Oct 7.

New policies unveiled to aid economic revamp

China's financial reform accelerated after a package of policies was unveiled to offer guidance to facilitate economic restructuring. The success of the reform may rely on big data technology, experts said. Big data technology has contributed to the development of Internet finance, easing financing difficulties, boosting information consumption, aiding private capital to support the real economy and controlling financial risks. "Big-data-based financial practice means recognizing information value and improving the insight of customer's needs by production, exchange, management and application of data," said Tian Guichang, a big-data scientist with Beijing JinLongCai Tech & Trading Co Ltd.

Resources

Coal gasification project coming up in Xinjiang

A large coal gasification project will be built in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the regional authorities said on Oct 5. The demonstration project in the Zhundong area, Changji Hui autonomous prefecture, will be the country's largest with a designed capacity of 30 billion cubic meters annually, said the region's development and reform commission. With a total investment of 183 billion yuan ($29.7 billion), the project will be jointly built by Sinopec, Huaneng Xinjiang Energy Development Co Ltd and other energy companies in Xinjiang and eastern Zhejiang province. The industrial project will need 90 million metric tons of coal annually. It will provide at least 18,000 jobs. The coal gas will be transported to the booming provinces of Zhejiang in East China and Guangdong in the south through pipelines.

Finance

Traders fear merger will not bring big benefits

Options traders are paying more to protect against swings in Sohu.com Inc relative to rival Qihoo 360 Technology Co for the first time since July on concerns a merger will fail to boost its search engine market share. Implied volatility, the key gauge of options prices, for one-month contracts closest to Sohu's shares exceeded that for Qihoo recently for the first time since July 18, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Sohu shares have rallied 34 percent since Tencent Holdings Ltd invested in Sohu's search unit on Sept 16. The Bloomberg China-US Equity Index of the most-traded Chinese shares in the US rallied 2.6 percent last week. Sohu, a Beijing-based Internet company, sold a 36.5 percent stake in its subsidiary Sogou to Tencent for $448 million in order to boost traffic for the third-biggest search engine in the country. Sogou accounted for 5.5 percent of online queries in China in the first quarter, lagging behind Baidu Inc's 82 percent market share and Qihoo 360 Technology Co's 9 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Banking

Regulators facilitate bank expansion in UK

Regulators in Britain and China can help more Chinese banks open branches in the United Kingdom, City of London Lord Mayor Roger Gifford said. "We would like the regulators to be comfortable with each other so that we can have branches here as well as subsidiaries, because we would like to see more banks opening here," Gifford said.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the Financial Services Authority, Britain's financial services regulator, has made it more difficult for some foreign banks to set up branches in the country. Branches are offshore arms of foreign banks that the authority has less control over. Subsidiaries, in contrast, are subject to the capital requirements that apply to Britain's local banks.

Bank of China is the only Chinese bank to have a branch in the UK. Discussions became heated a year ago when the Financial Times reported that China's largest state-owned banks are moving chunks of their European business to Luxembourg to escape tougher regulations in the City of London. It was brought up again during the second Hong Kong-London Forum in December, when regulators from Beijing, Hong Kong and London met to discuss further cooperation between China and the UK in financial services.

Floats

HK listings may rebound this year

Activity in Hong Kong's new offering market will pick up in the remainder of the year, with 12 initial public offerings set to raise 72.1 billion yuan ($11.77 billion), according to local media. Assuming all these IPOs proceed, they will make up for some of the action that Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd might have lost recently by possibly losing Alibaba Group Holdings' massive offering estimated at more than $75 billion. The Hong Kong Economic Journal reported on Oct 7 that among the 12 companies are Bank of Chongqing Co Ltd, Huishang Bank Co Ltd, Jingrui Properties Group, Fu Shou Yuan Group and Hong Kong Electric Co. Hong Kong's stock market began a rally in mid-July, and it's risen about 12 percent since. Many new shares floated earlier this year have recovered some of their losses, improving market sentiment for more debuts.

China Daily Agencies

Taiwan smartphone maker HTC Co said that in the next two months it will try to convince customers its products are as innovative as its competitors. Provided to China Daily

( China Daily European Weekly 10/11/2013 page18)