IN BRIEF (Page 16)

Stake ruling

British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc should cut its stake in UK broadcaster ITV Plc to less than 7.5 percent to satisfy the country's antitrust authority.

John Hutton, the UK Secretary of State for Business and Enterprise, has until January 29 to consider the UK Competition Commission's proposals and make a final decision on the stake, the antitrust authority said yesterday.

Takeover talks

Recruit Co, Japan's biggest publisher of classified job advertising, plans to acquire Staff Service Holdings Co, the country's largest personnel placement agency, to expand its employment services business.

The two closely held companies are in talks and expect to announce the deal as early as this week, said a spokesman at Recruit in Tokyo.

EGM deadline

Northern Rock Plc has failed to persuade leading shareholders against demanding an extraordinary general meeting and has until Monday to fix a date for one, the Financial Times said, citing unidentified people familiar with the talks.

Chairman Bryan Sanderson has attempted to persuade the two hedge funds that jointly called the EGM, RAB Capital Plc and Jon Wood's SRM Global, against the meeting, without success, the newspaper said. The EGM is expected in the middle of January, the FT said.

Tycoons agree

Russian billionaires Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin agreed to sell part of their stake in OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel, the world's biggest nickel miner, after 10 months of wrangling.

ZAO KM Invest, the Moscow-based company that holds the shares, will sell 2 percent of Norilsk and 7.4 percent of OAO Polyus Gold, KM Invest said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. The stakes are worth 24.5 billion rubles ($990 million) and 15.1 billion rubles respectively, based on Wednesday's closing prices.

French growth

French economic growth may slow in the first half of 2008 as tighter credit curbs corporate investment and the euro's appreciation crimps exports, according to Insee, the national statistics office.

Gross domestic product in Europe's third-largest economy will grow by 0.5 percent this quarter and next, down from 0.7 percent in the third quarter, before weakening to 0.4 percent in the three months ending June 30, Insee economists said at a briefing in Paris.

Potential acquisition

US investment banks Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers are among the bidders for a stake in Japanese house builder Daito Trust Construction Co, sources familiar with the deal said, in what could stack up to be one of the biggest buyouts ever in Japan.

Goldman Sachs and investment firm Aetos Capital LLC are also interested in acquiring Daito, the sources said, and the value of the deal could ultimately exceed $10 billion.

Better offers sought

Italy wants better offers from Air France-KLM and domestic challenger Air One for its loss-making airline Alitalia, a minister told a newspaper yesterday, a day before the company chooses a buyer.

"What would seem useful to me is to work within the offers to improve them," Transport Minister Alessandro Bianchi told Il Sole 24 Ore.

Airlines gain

Korean Air Lines Co and Asiana Airlines Inc, South Korea's two biggest carriers, rose in Seoul after gaining approval to more than double jet-fuel surcharges on overseas routes starting in January.

Korean Air rose 500 won, or 0.7 percent, to 72,500 won at the close of trading while Asiana gained 50 won, or 0.6 percent, to 8,330 won. The benchmark Kospi index dropped 0.9 percent.

Agencies-Bloomberg News

(China Daily 12/21/2007 page16)