Sichuan Hongda Chemical Industry Co, China's third-largest zinc producer, and Yunnan Chihong Zinc Germanium Co will issue new shares worth up to 12.6 billion yuan in exchange for stakes in a rival.

Yunnan Chihong, China's fifth-biggest zinc producer, will issue as many as 130 million shares valued at 80.56 yuan each for a 40 percent stake in Yunnan Jinding Zinc Co, the company said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange yesterday.

Hongda also said yesterday it plans to sell 30 million shares valued at 72.05 yuan each for 9 percent of the privately owned Yunnan Jinding.

Jinding has a production capacity of 120,000 metric tons of refined zinc a year. It also owns mining rights in zinc and lead mines in Yunnan.

Yunnan railway

China Railway Group Ltd, Asia's biggest construction company, won a 1.84 billion-yuan contract from the government to build a rail line in Yunnan province.

China Railway No 8 Engineering Group, a unit of the Beijing-based company, will build 70 km of the main line and 65 km of the bridge and tunnel connecting Dali and Baoshan, the company said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange yesterday. Construction will take about five years.

Dianxi Railway Co, a venture between the Ministry of Railways and the government of Yunnan, awarded the contract.

Airline profits

China Southern Airlines on Sunday posted 796 million yuan in first-quarter earnings, up 523 percent.

The firm also said its subsidiary Xiamen Airlines had signed a contract with Boeing Co to buy 20 Boeing 737 airplanes.

The 20 planes have a list price of about $1.5 billion, but Xiamen Airlines negotiated a lower price, China Southern said.

The subsidiary would pay for the planes, due to be delivered between April 2014 and October 2015, with its own funds and bank loans.

GRAPEVINE

Stake sale

Bank of America Corp plans to sell part of its stake in China Construction Bank Corp to shore up capital, the Financial Times reported, citing an unidentified source.

Bank of America hasn't decided whether to sell the shares to a strategic investor on the open market or back to the Chinese government, the report said. The US bank might exercise options to buy more shares in the Chinese lender at "well below market rates", the report said.

CITIC plan

CITIC Resources Holdings Ltd plans to raise up to $800 million by selling shares in its manganese unit, the South China Morning Post reported, citing unidentified people.

The company might sell shares in the unit, CITIC Dameng Mining Industries, as early as the end of the year, the report said. The lower end of the fund-raising could be about $500 million.

The unit is 60-percent owned by CITIC Resources, with State-controlled Guangxi Dameng Manganese Industrial holding the remainder.

BIZ UNUSUAL

Golden eggs

Carrier pigeon raisers have offered 10,000 yuan to Yang Tianyou, a farmer in Jiangsu province, for the egg of his champion pigeon, "Little Fairy", after it won a recent competition.

Bedtime story

A special 2-ton bed engraved with images of 108 dragons and more than 1,000 cranes is on sale in an open-air market in Nanjing.

The bed's owner said it was crafted from red sandalwood more than a century ago. He bought the bed from Inner Mongolia for 350,000 yuan.

Oiling the wheels

A securities firm in Changchun, Jilin province, recently announced a promotion offering free soya oil with the purchase of mutual funds to boost sales which are lagging because of the stock market slump.

According to the deal, each investor who buys more than 20,000 yuan in mutual funds gets a complimentary 5-liter bottle of soya oil. The firm's staff said the fund with the promotion has outperformed its other fund products.

Fighting pollution with carbon carvings

With mounting concerns about indoor air pollution, carbon-made carvings are now attracting the attention of many.

Deng Hao from Xiangxiang city of Hunan province, whose daughter became seriously ill from toxic gases when the family moved into a new apartment, began to notice the disaster brought by indoor air pollution and decided to make carbon-made carvings that could get rid of various poisonous gases.

He opened a store selling carbon-made carvings late last year. In five months, sales revenues reached 1.2 million yuan, and profits hit 700,000 yuan. Deng has opened a second store with an initial investment of 40,000 yuan.

For Deng, the business is not only helping him earn big money, but also saving lives.

LOCAL

Grain production zone

Hebei province plans to set aside 811 million yuan to create a 267-hectare grain production zone to enhance grain production capacity.

Hebei is one of the 13 major grain-producing provinces, especially of wheat and corn, meaning it has an important responsibility to ensure the country's grain security. So creating Hebei's core grain production zone would be one of the local government's major tasks, the province's vice-governor Zhang He said.

Construction materials

Hong Kong-based Huizhong Investment Group would invest more than 15 billion yuan to expand the country's largest construction-material market in Tianjin's Dagang district.

The local government had signed an agreement with the Hong Kong investor. After the expansion, the market would involve diversified materials, including construction and decorative materials, such as lignum, chinaware and steel materials.

The first phase of the project will be completed soon at a cost of 3.3 billion yuan, the investor said.

Shanghai goes wireless

Shanghai is being renovated to become a "wireless city" because of closer cooperation between the Shanghai municipal information commission and Shanghai Mobile, a subsidiary of China Mobile.

The two parties recently expanded cooperation, which they first established in 2006, to enhance applications in e-governance, intelligent transportation systems and modern logistics systems.

Shanghai Mobile said the number of 3G stations would increase from the current 1,000 to 3,000 by the end of 2008.

The company also plans to offer about 10,000 handsets for the first round of the 3G-network trial.

BIZ MOVE

Chairman appointed

Cisco's former senior vice-president of global operations Jim Sherriff was appointed to the newly created position of chairman of Cisco China.

He is responsible for developing and executing Cisco's overall strategy in the country. Sherriff and his team are focused on aligning and coordinating all of Cisco's business functions in China, including sales, service, research and development, manufacturing, human resources, business development and site management.

(China Daily 04/22/2008 page15)