IN BRIEF (Page 14)

Retail

Adidas plans to expand footprint in China

Adidas Group says it will continue to open new stores in China, but will not open many discount stores this year.

Colin Currie, managing director of Adidas Group Greater China, said its focus will be stores that sell new and seasonal products.

Nike, the US sportswear giant, said it will open 40 to 50 factory stores in China this year with discounts of up to 70 percent, and some discount stores will be opened in lower-tier cities. Industry insiders said the move may hurt smaller players targeting lower-tier cities.

Adidas China did not say how many stores it will be open this year, but said most new stores will be in lower-tier cities. The company opened 800 new stores in China last year.

Finance

Brokerage gets banks' help with IPO

China Galaxy Securities Co, a brokerage backed by China's sovereign wealth fund, picked Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co to help manage its initial public offering in Hong Kong, informed sources said. The Beijing firm may raise as much as $1.5 billion (1.15 billion euros) in the second quarter, the two sources said. The two New York banks, along with Galaxy Securities' Hong Kong unit, will act as sponsors and global coordinators for the offering, they said.

Investment

MGPA buys office building in Shanghai

MGPA, a private equity real estate investment advisory company managing assets in Europe and Asia, has bought a newly completed Grade A office building, j-Tower, in Shanghai for 263.5 million yuan ($42.4 million; 32.5 million euros). The deal was concluded by MGPA Asia Fund III, which focuses on real estate investments in the Asia-Pacific region, and features equity commitments of $3.9 billion. Its portfolio in China includes a half interest in Galleria Chengdu, a retail mall in that city.

Trade

China sets anti-dumping duties on EU

China's Ministry of Commerce said it would impose anti-dumping duties ranging between 6.6 percent and 37.7 percent on imported toluene diisocyanate (TDI), a main raw material of polyurethane products, from the European Union, from Mar 13.

The duties will last for five years, the ministry said. Its ruling came after a one-year investigation in which it found that the domestic industry had been "substantially" harmed by EU dumping of TDI, widely used in rubber surface coating, textile processing, petroleum, mining, automobiles and rail transport.

European patent filings on the rise

Chinese companies are the main driving force behind the increasing number of patent filings in the European Patent Office, the People's Daily reported on March 7. The office received 258,000 patent filings from all over the world last year, a 5.2 percent increase year-on-year and a record. Patent filings from Chinese companies accounted for 7.3 percent among the top five countries, up 11.1 percent year-on-year, making it the fastest-growing country in terms of filings.

Scrutiny of gold deals stepped up

China National Gold Group Corp, the nation's biggest producer of the precious metal, said the government has tightened scrutiny of overseas deals. The government is asking for risk-assessment reports for overseas projects, the company president Sun Zhaoxue said in an interview during the National People's Congress session in Beijing.

China Daily-Agencies

(China Daily 03/15/2013 page14)