Biz scene

BIZ MOVES

Area GM appointed

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has appointed Christophe Lajus as area general manager of the Crowne Plaza Hotels Shanghai, and he will continue to be general manager of Crowne Plaza Fudan Shanghai.

Lajus, who graduated from the Ecole Hoteliere De Lausanne Switzerland, worked for Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts before joining IHG in 2000. His previous responsibilities were as general manager of the Holiday Inn Ti'an Wuhan and general manager of the Holiday Inn Resort Yalong Bay Sanya. In June 2006, he joined the newly opened Crowne Plaza Fudan Shanghai.

GM selected

Dieter Hofele has joined the international team of Air Berlin as general manager for China to set up the operations of the Berlin-based carrier in Beijing and Shanghai.

The 47-year-old has been working in the aviation industry for 26 years. He joined Air Canada in Germany in 1982 and moved to Delta Air Lines in 1986. For the past 22 years, his sales career with Delta took him on management assignments to Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Germany and India.

MARKET

Drilling deal

China Oilfield Services Ltd, a unit of the nation's third-largest oil producer, signed a turnkey drilling-service contract with Devon Energy Corp, the Chinese company said in a statement on its website yesterday. Devon is the biggest independent US oil and natural gas producer.

Container ships

China COSCO Holdings Co Ltd, the listed flagship of the country's top shipping conglomerate, has ordered four new container ships worth $280 million, the company said yesterday.

A unit of the company has signed a contract with an import firm and a shipyard based in Jiangsu province to purchase four vessels, each with 4,250 20-foot-equivalent units (TEU), it said in a statement. The vessels are scheduled for delivery in August and September of 2012.

China COSCO has said it would expand its fleet by ordering $2.3 billion worth of new ships.

BIZ UNUSUAL

Hatching profits

Huang Changsheng, a Hakka living in Jiangxi province, never thought the 12 eggs he happened upon in a field would bring him a fortune of more than 400 million yuan.

Huang's fellow villagers jeered when he hatched the eggs, which surprisingly yielded pheasant chicks. He raised and bred the birds until he had a flock of more than 300. The fowl are popular in Zhejiang, Guangdong and Yunnan provinces, where the poultry sells for 40 yuan per kg.

Mi casa, su casa

Temporary house swapping has become a trend among Chinese who enjoy traveling on the cheap.

People post information about their homes online in hopes of establishing contact with someone with a home where they could stay in a city they'd like to visit.

Chen Cheng, a resident in Panyu, Guangdong province, swapped houses with a man surnamed Wang, who lives in Yueyang, Hunan province, during the past May Day holiday. They both "felt good" about the experience, and decided to do it again.

LOCAL

IPR white book

Shenzhen's local government has issued its Intellectual Property Development Status White Book 2007.

The white book illustrates the development and progress of the city's IPR creation, management, utilization and protection. It also illuminates the bottlenecks of the city's IPR development, including a shortage of relevant talent.

MOU signed

Shandong province, China's second-largest province by economic output, inked a memorandum of understanding with the Washington-based private-equity firm Carlyle Group to boost foreign investment in the region.

The agreement between Shandong's department of foreign trade and economic cooperation and Carlyle will help local companies expand abroad.

(China Daily 05/15/2008 page15)