IN BRIEF (Page 14)

Hard times for steel mills

China's steel companies will lag behind the country's other stocks this year as the industry sees excess capacity and weaker demand, JPMorgan Chase & Co said.

"We remain cautious on the near-term outlook for the Chinese steel industry, which is plagued by over-capacity and highly exposed to the slowdown in manufacturing and real estate," Jing Ulrich, head of Chinese Equities at JPMorgan, said in a report yesterday. "The industry is likely to under-perform the broader market in the remainder of the year."