Stake sale talks end

Shaw Brothers (Hong Kong) Ltd said yesterday its controlling shareholder has terminated talks for a sale of its stake in the firm due to the tumultuous situation in the financial markets.

Shaw Holdings, controlled by entertainment tycoon Run Run Shaw, will notify the company if it resumes any such discussions.

Entertainment conglomerate Shaw Brothers' major asset is its controlling 26 percent stake in Television Broadcasts Ltd (TVB), the city's dominant terrestrial TV broadcaster.

Merger talks around the world have been falling apart amid the global financial crisis. Phone company PCCW Ltd and telecoms gear maker Huawei Technologies both recently halted planned sales of unit stakes.

Best financial advisers

Morgan Stanley, Citi Group, China International Capital Corporation and other financial institutions' Asia-Pacific operations were granted M&A Awards as best financial advisers of 2008, an inaugural prize launched jointly by Financial Times, a British business newspaper group, and its sibling company mergermarket, a London-based M&A origination intelligence provider.

The awards are in recognition of the excellence of the firms which have completed a remarkable number and size of transactions. The awards utilize both empirical M&A transaction data and independent expert opinion to identify the winners.

Honda Sept sales up 3.5%

Honda Motor's China vehicle sales climbed 3.5 percent in September from a year earlier to 46,697 units, outperforming a 1.44 percent fall in the overall market but slowing significantly from 19.4 percent growth in August.

A Honda spokesman attributed the slowdown in growth to a cut in vehicle shipments to dealers, which reported higher inventories at the end of August. But he said Honda, which competes with Toyota Motor and other major global automakers in the world's second-largest auto market, was sticking with its annual sales target of 490,000 units, up from 435,000 in 2007.

ZTE admits ethical breach

ZTE Corp, China's second largest telecoms equipment maker, said yesterday an employee had breached ethics in dealing with Telenor and stressed it hoped to maintain amicable ties, just after being shut out of tenders from the Norwegian firm for half a year.

A Telenor spokesman said it had suspended ZTE from tenders for new business for six months, after the Chinese firm breached its code of conduct.

"This situation between Telenor and ZTE has arisen because of the actions of a single employee in a ZTE subsidiary, acting on his own behalf," ZTE said in a written response to Reuters.

China Daily - Reuters

(HK Edition 10/15/2008 page2)