Bonjour Holdings (653 HK) has announced that its sales rose 60 per cent from last year during the Golden Week on the increasing mainland tourists visiting Hong Kong during the holiday. The company plans to further expand its retail business by opening four to five new branches within the coming three months in the mainland.
The Hong Kong-based airline Cathay Pacific (293 HK) said Monday it carried 2 per cent fewer passengers in September than a year earlier, though its passenger load factor rose 7.9 per cent on significant reduction in capacity. Cathay Pacific said it saw a seasonal upturn in demand for first and business class traffic, though overall volume and yields were well below those of previous years.
China Aoyuan (3883 HK) has purchased the rest of shares of a Panyu project from its partner for HK$293 million. The joint development contract would terminate and China Aoyuan would fully own the project upon the deal.
China Overseas Land & Investment (688 HK), the country’s leading developer, said its sales in the first nine months has surged 85 per cent to 38.47 billion yuan, compared with a year ago. The company has accumulated 4 million square metres sales in the first nine months which is a double compared with last year. Its land reserves have reached 26.38 million square metres which are adequate for the development in the future four years.
CNOOC (883 HK) is rumoured to be in advanced talks with the Ghana National Petroleum Corp (GNPC) to make a rival bid competing with Exxon Mobil Corp for shares of Jubilee oilfield in West Africa, according to Wall Street Journal. The GNPC-Cnooc bid is said to be competitive to what Exxon has offered. Cnooc has refused to comment on the rumour.
Dongfeng Motor Group (489 HK) announced that its sales jumped 71.28 per cent in September on the subsidiary measure offered by the government. The sales volume of commercial vehicle for the first nine months recorded a 5 per cent drop and the total sales volume rose 17.53 per cent to 148,000 units.
GCL-Poly Energy (3800 HK) has announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary Jiangsu Zhongneng has signed a new facility agreement, providing 65 million yuan to Golden Concord Real Estate for a further period of six months.
Geely Automobile (175 HK) announced that the total automobile sales volume of its five 91 per cent-owned subsidiaries was 32 thousand units in September, surging 101 per cent over the same period last year. The monthly sales volume in September this year was the best level achieved by the group in its history.
Glorious Property (845 HK) said it has purchased two pieces of land in Tianjin for 850 million yuan. The two land lots amount to 587,000 square meters and would be developed into residential areas. The project would be developed in two separate phrases and sales would begin in 2011.
Financials: PICC Property (2328 HK) and Casualty announced that it has successfully issued the subordinated term debts to the qualified investors. The principal amount of the issued subordinated term debts is 5 billion yuan, with a maturity of 10 years. The interest for the first five years is 4.3 per cent per annum on nominal value. The company has the right to redeem the above debts at the end of the fifth year. If the company does not exercise the redemption right, the interest will be 6.3 per cent per annum on nominal value for the last five years. Standard Chartered (2888 HK) has got the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) approval to issue Indian depositary Receipts (IDRs), according to Reuters. Yet the London-listed bank said it has not yet filed a prospectus with SEBI for its issue of India Depository Receipt (IDR) and said it is still too early to talk about the size of the IDR.
Sa Sa international (178 HK) said that it will step up the pace to open three new branches in Hong Kong which will be located in Causeway Bay, Tsim Sha Tsui and Quarry Bay in the second half this year. The company will also open two to three new branches in Beijing and Shanghai within two to three months this year. There are a total of 13 branches and 22 counters in department stores in the mainland.
Sinopec Yizheng Chemical Fibre (1033 HK) has said that it expects a net profit in the third quarter for the three months ended 30 September 2009. For the same period in 2008, the company had recorded a 247.246 million yuan net loss.
Rumour has it that Tencent (700 HK), a Chinese internet value-added services provider, has reached an agreement with SNS game developer Five Minutes to acquire its SNS game called "Happy Farm" for millions of yuan.
Lotte Shopping Company (1832 HK), South Korea’s top retailer by market share, said yesterday that it was considering purchasing a 72.3 per cent stake in the Chinese hypermarket and supermarket operator Times Ltd. Rumour has it that Lotte will acquires 72.3 per cent shares from Time’s Chairman Kenneth Fang by paying HK$4 billion in cash on its market price. Wumart previously indicated that it would offer US$600 million (HK$4.68 billion) to buy Times.
Yanzhou Coal Mining (1171 HK) said yesterday that it has resubmitted an application to the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board to seek approval of the purchase of Felix Resources for A$3.333 billion (HK$25.8 billion). This has been the third time of application to the Australian Board.
Sources: Sing Tao Finance, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Hong Kong Economic Times, The Standard
