IN BRIEF (Page 9)

Consortium buys CBMM stake

China Niobium Investment Holdings Ltd, a consortium made up of five Chinese steel makers, announced on Friday that it had completed the acquisition of a 15 percent stake in Brazil's Companhia Brasileira de Metalurgia e Mineral (CBMM) for $1.95 billion.

Public information shows Brazil holds the largest proportion of total known niobium reserves in the world, and CBMM owns the best niobium reserves in Brazil. The Chinese consortium consists of CITIC Group, Anshan Iron & Steel Group Corp, Baosteel Group Corp, Shougang Corp and Taiyuan Iron & Steel (Group) Co Ltd.

CCTV-2 to kick off new service

China's largest business broadcaster, CCTV-2, will launch a financial database service in the first half of 2012, in a bid to establish an integrated business information service platform.

CCTV-2 now has a dominant 80 percent share of the domestic market for TV business news, 25 percentage points higher than when the broadcaster was relaunched as a financial and business channel two yeas ago.

CYTS heads for the Maldives

China CYTS Tours Holding Co Ltd, one of the country's largest travel agencies, has launched charter flights to the Maldives, and will provide direct flights to the Indian Ocean islands every five days until July 2012 to meet growing demand in the high-end market.

The journey time to the islands will be reduced to eight hours as opposed to the previous flight time of 14 hours for indirect flights.

CYTS currently transports the highest number of individual Chinese travelers to the Maldives.

China Daily

(China Daily 09/03/2011 page9)