BUSINESS UPDATES
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Booming sales in China
Auto sales in China soared by more than 70 per cent in January, putting it on track to overtake Japan as the world’s second biggest automobile market this year. Last year 5.9 million vehicles were sold in China. Growth this year is projected at 15 per cent.
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The United Arab Emirates property company Rakeen has teamed up with India’s Trimex group to build US$5 billion worth of townships all over India.
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Baidu ventures into news service
China’s premier local search engine Baidu has secured a coveted Internet news licence on the Internet and has formed a small core team to study ways to provide news using the Web 2.0 methods to its numerous users. The listed Baidu aims to establish itself as a major player in the fast growing net advertising market.
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A look at what happened in North Asian businesses, three years to this day.
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Walk, not drive, Mazda staff are told
Employees of the Japanese carmaker are given $12 a month to encourage them to walk to the office to improve their health and protect the environment.
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US ho!
Tokyo Marine Holdings, Japan’s largest non-life insurer by sales, is buying Philadelphia Consolidated Holdings, an American non-life insurer, for US$4.7 billion.
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Please wait
Australia will make a decision "in a few months" on whether Sinosteel Corp can take a stake in Murchison Metals, after Sinosteel made a A$1.36 billion (US$1.3 billion) bid for Murchison’s rival, Midwest Corp.
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Japanese annual inflation hit 1.2% in March, the highest in a decade. This helped trigger a huge sell-off in yen bonds in late April after the figures were released. Investors feared Japan had little immunity from price increases and its central bank might be forced to raise rates, despite a weak economy.
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Back to his roots
Ratan Tata has decided to make his Nano, the world's cheapest car, in Gujarat, the state where the Tata clan, of Parsi faith, made their first home in India after their ancestors fled Persia (now Iran). If all goes well Tata Motors will be given a 1,000 acre site near Sanand, 26 km from the western fringes of Ahmedabad, to build the first Nano plant. Completed cars, which seat four, would be sold around US$2,500. Tata Motors has pulled out of a planned plant in West Bengal due to protest by farmers and other residents.
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Mittal buys Dubai firm
ArcelorMittal, the biggest steelmaker in the world, has acquired 60% of privately held Dubai Steel Trading Company for an undisclosed sum. Dubai Steel, formed in 1986, has 50 staff and sells mainly to the construction market.
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Citigroup CEO Vikram S Pandi is severely embarrassed after the bank he took control of last December had to write down US$202 million on the value of Old Lane, a hedge fund of which Pandit was a co-founder. Citi bought Old Lane for US$800 million, a purchase that brought Pandit into the group. Citi will restructure Old Lane after “substantially all” its outside investors withdrew their money.
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