Shares in Cable & Wireless Plc were still dancing the bid hopes tango yesterday, putting on 13 pence at 425 pence in mid-morning trading on renewed talk that British Telecommunications Plc may bid: the worldwide Cables empire has been jumpy this week after Hong Kong Telecommunications Ltd was destabilised by talk that China International Trust & Investment Corp’s CITIC Pacific Ltd might sell part or all of its stake in the company where Cables has a 57.5% holding – until CITIC denied talk it was considering selling its 12.9% stake; the edgy Chinese situation is the biggest negative on a bid by British Telecom for Cable & Wireless – in order to preserve the value of what would be a very expensive acquisition, British Telecom would have to be absolutely sure that the Chinese authorities would be entirely happy with the change of ownership – and it is far from certain they would.
The European Community will resist pressure from the US to make privatising of state phone companies a key part of liberalisation, Trade Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan said: he told the Council of Telecommunications Ministers that the World Trade Organisation telecommunications talks due to end in April 1996 should not put the Community’s approach to deregulation in question, but it seems highly likely that any phone company that is still state-controlled will be at a big disadvantage if it wants to invest in a major US telecommunications firm.
As we suggested (CI No 2,682), Apple Computer Inc’s price cuts on some desktop and notebook computers, are an attempt to flush out existing products from inventory before the company introduces a new line next week, Dataquest told Reuters: the new Power Macs are expected to cost under $2,000 fully configured, and analysts hope the cuts mean that Apple is no longer supply-constrained on the Power Macs.
Acer Inc has signed a joint venture agreement with its distributor in Chile, Cientec SA, via its Acer-Computec Latino America 50-50 joint venture with Computec de Mexico SA; Acer did $29m in Chile last year and looks for $38m there this year.
Once cellular pirates have got people hooked on their stolen numbers they want you to keep coming back for more, and so according to the Chicago Tribune, if a stolen number they have sold is not spotted by the phone company within a month, they call anonymously to get counterfeited numbers turned off, so their customers will have to come back to buy a new bogus number to keep making free calls – at a cost of $250 to reprogram the phone.
