Bright Food mulls listing options

Shanghai-based Bright Food Group Co Ltd, China's second-largest food producer, is contemplating whether to list all of its newly acquired foreign assets as the company continues to internationalize its businesses and raise brand awareness overseas.

These businesses include Australia's Manassen Foods, British cereal maker Weetabix Ltd and New Zealand's Synlait Milk Ltd, Pan Jianjun, Bright Food's spokesman, told China Daily on Nov 25.

The listings are held as part of the company's "mid-to-long-term" plans, which translate into three years from now, said Pan, who declined to reveal the detailed time frame or the value of any prospective offer.

"When we acquired those companies, we already had plans to list them overseas," Pan said in a telephone interview. "It is a steady step being taken by the firm."

Pan said listing could take place in the United States, the United Kingdom or Hong Kong, but not necessarily in the assets' country of origin.

Resources

Coal firms join hands for private bank

Several Chinese coal companies are jointly establishing a bank as the nation moves to allow more private capital into the financial sector. The China Coal Bank was co-founded by the Jinben Investment Group and 15 other companies, mostly from the coal industry, including state-owned giants Datong Coal Mine Group, the Jincheng Anthracite Mining Group and Shenhua Group. It is the first bank in the world with coal as the core focus, the bank said on its website.

Energy

Diesel imports decline 86% in Oct

Diesel imports fell by 86 percent from a year earlier to 5,003 metric tons in October, the General Administration of Customs said in an e-mailed statement on Nov 21. Exports of diesel rose 74 percent to 250,241 tons and those of gasoline by 45 percent to 323,826 tons. Liquefied natural gas imports were 1.36 million tons, up 2.7 percent, while coal imports, including lignite, climbed 14 percent to 24.37 million tons.

Energy trade focuses on efficiency

The 2nd China International Oil and Gas Trade Congress in Shanghai offered opportunities for business leaders and senior executives to discuss and exchange views on the hot issues in the oil trade market. "China will speed up the focus on the reform in energy development to meet the global trend of being clean, diverse, intensive and highly efficient and expand the cooperation with global partners gradually," said Gao Hucheng, Commerce Minister.

Power

Nuclear power 'to fall short of demand'

Demand for nuclear power is likely to exceed its long-term development target as China strives to lower its reliance on coal-fired power and cut air pollution, industry insiders said on Nov 25.

"As demand for energy has outstripped domestic sources of supply, China's nuclear power industry will expand more quickly than anticipated in the next two decades to better manage the nation's energy structure and deal with environmental problems," said Zheng Mingguang, head of the Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute.

After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan, China reduced its installed nuclear power capacity target for 2020 to 58 gigawatts from the original target of 80 to 90 gW. The current installed capacity is 12.6 gW.

Finance

Smaller banks cut home credit

More small and medium-sized commercial banks are suspending mortgage loans in the fourth quarter, according to an industrial report.

Housing loan suspensions have been reported in 17 out of 32 cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai, said the report by rong360.com, an Internet search platform for loan resources, which surveyed more than 500 banks.

A rapid increase in loans in the first half of the year resulted in a lack of loan quotas for the next half, said the report. The overdraft of credit drained the fund for mortgages in the latter half of the year, particularly the fourth quarter.

The real estate market has been showing a warming trend this year. The People's Bank of China reported that for the third quarter, the real estate outstanding loans in major financial institutions stood at 14.17 trillion yuan ($2.33 trillion) by the end of September, increasing 19 percent year-on-year. The growth rate was 4.7 percentage points higher than that of all banking loans.

Crackdown on illegal fundraising intensified

Police have vowed to crack down on illegal fundraising in China after dealing with an increasing number of cases in recent years.

An average of more than 2,000 cases have been handled by the police each year since 2005, involving about 20 billion yuan ($3.26 billion) annually, Xinhua learned on Nov 25 from a meeting of an inter-agency task force leading crackdowns on illegal fundraising.

More than 16,000 cases have been cracked since 2008, saving economic losses of nearly 50 billion yuan, according to a statement released after the meeting, which said that the number of illegal fundraising cases handled in 2012 was 79 percent higher than that of 2011, and that both years saw more than 30 percent of suspects tried for illegal fundraising sentenced to severe penalties.

Auto

BAIC takes majority stake in Changhe Auto

Beijing Automotive Group, China's fifth-largest auto maker by sales, signed an agreement on Nov 25 to pay about 80 million yuan ($13 million) for a 70-percent stake in Jiangxi Changhe Automobile Co.

The Jiangxi Provincial state-owned Enterprise Assets Operation (Holdings) Co owns the remaining 30-percent stake, under the strategic cooperation agreement signed by the BAIC and the Jiangxi provincial government.

The move aims to help revive the manufacturer of small vehicles after four years' cooperation with another auto giant, Chang'an Automobile Group, failed to boost its growth.

The BAIC and the provincial government plan to invest 13 billion yuan in the four years to 2017 to nearly double the annual vehicle production capacity to 500,000 units and to raise annual revenues to 50 billion yuan, according to the agreement.

Between 2018 and 2020, they plan to further invest 14 billion yuan to expand the annual capacity to 1 million units and to increase the annual revenues to 100 billion yuan.

Changhe Auto, with two manufacturing plants in the cities of Jingdezhen and Jiujiang, currently has an annual capacity of 270,000 vehicles. It was incorporated into Chang'an Automobile Group in 2009.

Automakers see sharp rise in output value

The output value of four original equipment manufacturers of vehicles hit 85.46 billion yuan ($14 billion) in the first 10 months of 2013, a year-on-year increase of 24.5 percent, according to the administration commission of production base Shenyang Motown, Liaoning province. In the same period, 657,973 vehicles were produced, up 15.65 percent. Brilliance Jinbei produced 112,554 vehicles; Brilliance produced 158,572; Shanghai GM (Shenyang) Norsom Motors produced 282,183 and BMW Brilliance produced 104,664.

China Daily Agencies