Italian designer fashion giant Versace announced yesterday plans to make China the focus of its development with an investment of12.5 million US dollars next year, Taipei Times reported.

The arrival of Swedish ship Götheborg in Shanghai ushered in companies from Northern Europe along with banks that cater to the financial services they need.  As part of the SEB Group, a North European financial group with local presence in the Nordic and Baltic countries, and Germany, SEB Shanghai branch offers an extensive range of financial services mainly to clients from its home markets. Vice-President of SEB Merchants Banking with SEB Shanghai, Fredrik Hähnel, talks to Amy Cheung of The China Perspective about the bank’s future plans, competitive strategies, and its overall outlook on China’s banking sector.

Venezuela is expected to sign contracts worth more than 1 billion US dollars by increasing oil its sales to China by 50,000 barrels a day by the end of the year, Bloomberg reported.

Volvo hopes to take control of a mainland construction machinery maker as early as this month in a deal that may be worth at least 984.3 million yuan, marking the latest foreign advance in the fast-growing construction gear market, The Standard reported.

China Vanke, one of the biggest publicly traded developers in Mainland, has agreed to increase its equity interest in a bundle of assets from Zhongqiao Party for 1.76 billion yuan in cash, The Standard reported. Zhongqiao Party is formed by Shanghai Zhongqiao, Shanghai Nandu Industrial Investment and Nandu Group Holdings. Once the deal is complete, the co...

China Vanke Co. has first-half net profit jumped 54% due to strong sales performance, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Brilliance China Automotive Holding Ltd., a Chinese partner of BMW, sold 92200 vehicles unit in the first half of 2006, which is a 62.11% year-on-year growth, Forbes reported, citing figures released by the company.

The mobile phone value-added services market totaled 5.621 billion yuan in the fourth quarter, an increase of 15.44% from the previous quarter. During the same period, mobile subscribers increased 4.1%, to 393 billion....

The Ministry of Commerce has announced that starting on 1 January, 2006, soybean oil, palm oil, and rapeseed oil will be exempt from tariffs. Other regulations will be put into place to continue to limit oil imports, however.

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