China announced yesterday that it wants to restrict the free flow of economic information from foreign news organisations, and it has Reuters Holdings Plc worried: the UK company says that the move could have serious implications for the company: citing national security, China wants foreign news agencies to submit to regulation by the Communist Party’s Xinhua news agency and threatened punishment for approved vendors whose information slanders China; the directive forbids Chinese customers from buying economic information directly from foreign vendors and allows Xinhua to determine the subscription rates of foreign news vendors.
Rockwell International Corp accompanied first quarter figures (page seven) with news that it plans to sell its Graphic Systems newspaper and commercial printing company to focus its resources on electronics, automotive and aerospace units.
Germany should lower taxes and other payroll withholdings to boost competitiveness and ease burdens on the business sector, Siemens AG chairman Heinrich von Pierer told Bavarian leaders of the Social Democratic Party: he welcomed proposals to separate non-insurance payouts such as pensions for war victims from the social security system, but said their success would depend on concrete financing plans; Siemens doesn’t want to reduce jobs any further in Germany, but to increase them elsewhere, he said; about 60% of the company’s business is outside Germany, but only about 40% of its workforce; Siemens took on 12,000 new employees and invested $2,348m in Germanylast year, the chairman declared.
Siebe Plc sold its British Filters operation for ú4.8m to Quinton Hazell, the European subsidiary of Echlin Inc: British Filters makes air, oil and fuel filters for the after-market and automotive industry and specialist filtration equipment for industrial uses.
A Malawi trade unionist accused the state-run telecommunications authority of cutting the phone lines of union leaders to prevent them contacting their members to plan anti-government protests: Malawi Posts & Telecommunications said it was investigating the reports but suggested the lines were down because of recent heavy rains or vandalism; the union has threatened to lead protests against the government if it fails to reverse planned price rises in essential commodities.
From April, Sony Corp will have a new corporate structure to be more responsive to external changes and make it easier to enter new business areas: Sony’s current eight companies will be reorganised to create a 10-company structure with new companies for the information technology and telecommunications businesses; it will set up a new company to oversee personal computer and information technology business, and split its consumer audio-visual firm into three; it will also set up three new research and development laboratories to reinforce new business development.
India’s Supreme Court took up a set of petitions challenging the government’s programme to end the state’s telephone monopoly and a ruling is expected by the end of the month: the court said it would not entertain challenges to the government’s economic policy but is expected to focus on petitioners’ claim that the government acted inappropriately by limiting to three the number of zones in which any winning bidder could operate basic telephone services; opposition parties claim the cap effectively favoured HFCL Bezeq Telecom Ltd, which emerged as the highest bidder in nine regions by offering $25,000m, $15,000m more than all others combined (CI No 2,820); they claim the government passed up far more money in licence fees by allowing the consortium to choose the three zones it would control; a court judgement against the government could paralyse privatisation until after the elections in April.
British Telecommunications Plc and new carrier International Telecom Japan Inc, born in the mid-1980s, will begin providing the Concert international telephone service in Japan in late July: British Telecom and MCI Communic
ations Corp launched Concert in 1994 (CI No 2,535) to provide multinational companies with a one-stop global telecommunications service; British Telecom, which owns 2.5% of Telecom Japan, said Concert was already available in Australia and a further five Asian Pacific countries would be added in the next 12 months, bringing the service’s worldwide coverage to more than 20 countries.
Having doubled its turnover in the last three years, advanced technologies specialist Ingenia SA says it will merge all its subsidiaries, reorganise and go public on Paris’s NASDAQ-like New Market by March.
From the company that sold Intel Corp and MCI Communications Corp and bought Rolm Co… while it makes very little sense for any of the usual suspects rounded up every time the subject is broached to buy Apple Computer Inc, it doesn’t mean that none of them will: five to seven years ago, it would have been a superb with one bound it was free move for IBM Corp to buy Apple, but most of the potential benefits – such as integrating the Mac tightly with the AS/400 so as to enhance the attractions of both – have trickled away down the drain, and it’s difficult to make a strong case now for why IBM should buy Apple unless it’s to defend the fast-depreciating PowerPC franchise, but given the company’s quite startling ineptness over the past couple of years, it would be just like it to bid for Apple now.
Aspirational computer users may well feel they can’t live without Irvine, California-based AST Research Inc’s latest desktop computer, which uses the Pentium Pro processor: the Bravo MS-T 6150 is a 150MHz Pentium Pro machine that comes with Windows NT, 16Mb memory with 256Kb secondary cache, PCI-based 64-bit ATI graphics controller with 2Mb graphics memory and 16-bit SoundBlaster-compatible audio and five drive bays, it costs $4,560 from the end of the month.
Syseca Inc, the US subsidiary of Thomson SA’s Syseca systems engineering group, announced that it has signed a contract for several million dollars with the Chicago Transit Authority for the design, development and installation of a subway control and data acquisition system: under the terms of the contract, Syseca Inc will manage the project and will provide the software, hardware and services necessary to install the system in the five Chicago subway lines.
Tough when you get a glowing testimonial that also takes a sideswipe at you on the way – do you pass up the opportunity, Bowdlerise it, or say what the hell and use it anyway? Kirkland, Washington-based Wall Data Inc decided on the last course when Jesse Berst, editorial director of Windows Watcher Newsletter hailed its new Salsa for the Desktop software product designed to enable Windows users to create their own desktop tracking applications to suit their unique business needs – you describe the things they want to track, such as customers, telephone numbers or invoices, directly to the computer in plain language – by saying Despite my terminal cynicism, I think Wall Data may have made one of the decade’s first real advances in application development, adding Don’t let the silly name fool you: Salsa software is worth checking out.
