IN BRIEF (Page 16)

Broadcaster slides

Premiere AG, Germany's biggest pay-television company, slumped to a nine-month low in Frankfurt trading on concern the broadcaster will pay too much for a contract to air matches from Germany's top soccer league.

Media entrepreneur Leo Kirch's Sirius agency bought the rights to market Bundesliga matches late on Tuesday, guaranteeing the clubs higher revenue.

Refiner falls short

Valero Energy Corp, the largest US refiner, had a bigger decline in third-quarter earnings than analysts expected as rising crude-oil costs and production disruptions narrowed profit margins on fuel sales.

Excluding a $91 million gain on repayment of a loan by a foreign subsidiary and the impact of a stock buyback on earnings per share, profit from continuing operations was $1.30 to $1.40 a share, San-Antonio-based Valero said yesterday in a statement.

Monsanto loss widens

Monsanto Co, the world's largest seed producer, said its fiscal fourth-quarter loss widened and 2008 earnings may rise less than analysts estimate. The shares fell the most in almost seven months.

Profit in 2008 will be $2.20 to $2.40 a share, up from $2, St. Louis-based Monsanto said yesterday in a statement. The forecast was at the low end of the average $2.40 estimate of 14 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Proposal rejected

Symbion Health Ltd, Australia's biggest healthcare company, rejected a proposal from its largest shareholder to acquire medical centers and some pathology and radiology laboratories.

Primary Health Care Ltd's offer didn't include a price and was "not in the best interests of shareholders", Melbourne- based Symbion said in a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange yesterday.

Big ship ordered

Carnival Corp, the world's biggest cruise operator, ordered a 500 million-euro vessel from Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri Cantieri Navali Italiana SpA.

The 92,000-ton ship, to be called the Queen Elizabeth, will begin operations in 2010, Miami-based Carnival said yesterday in a PR Newswire statement. The ship will be run by Carnival's Cunard line, which owns the Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mary II.

Signal venture

Balfour Beatty Plc, the United Kingdom's biggest construction company, and Alstom SA have formed a joint venture that will specialize in the design, installation and testing of railway signals.

The new company, Signalling Solutions Ltd, will be based in the UK and will handle contracts valued at more than 100 million euros, Paris-based Alstom said yesterday in a Business Wire statement. Each company will have a 50 percent share in the venture.

Windy investment

Iberdrola SA may invest 1 billion euros to build wind parks in southern Russia, newspaper El Economista said, citing the local government of the city of Krasnodar.

Iberdrola may build wind parks with an installed capacity of 1,000 megawatts by 2011 with a local partner, the newspaper said. Iberdrola, based in Bilbao, is the world's largest owner of plants to produce electricity from wind.

Sales rise

Experian Group Ltd, the Dublin-based provider of credit information on more than 300 million people worldwide, said first-half sales rose 17 percent after making acquisitions in Brazil.

Sales for Latin America for the six months ended Sept. 30 rose to $102 million from $2 million last year, Experian said yesterday in a statement distributed by the Regulatory News Service. The company didn't provide figures for total sales.

Bloomberg News

(China Daily 10/11/2007 page16)