UK-based Channel 11 Ltd, the interactive network, is gearing up to launch its eponymous on-line service this summer offering up-to-date information on individual market sectors. The first sector covered will be food and drink with the launch of a ra nge of information services called FoodTrader, WineTrader and DrinksTrader. These will be aimed at both business users and the consumer market and will be available via the Internet. Channel 11 is offering subscribers news on developments within the relevant markets, updated daily by its own team of journalists, in addition to time-sensitive price data. Our only real competition is the weekly trade press, said Gill Shearer, editor-in-chief at Channel 11. But business users won’t have to wait a week to find out relevant information. The service has been developed to enable businesses buying and selling products and services in this sector to keep up with the competition.
China has effectively bowed to the US and agreed to comply with demands to clamp down on more factories accused of counterfeiting films, music and software and had also made progress in opening its markets to US manufacturers, a US source close to the talks told Reuter. An agreement would avert hefty trade sanctions on China.
OTE SA, the Hellenic Telecommunications Organization, signed a $21.5m contract with the Telecommunications Organization of Lithuania to install 43,902 digital lines and a 355 mile fiber optic network.
Sounds unlikely but Bertelsmann AG declined comment on market rumors that it was considering making a bid for Carlton Communications Plc.
Texas Instruments-Acer Inc is putting expansion of its wafer fab in Taiwan on hold in the wake of slowing demand and falling prices for memory chips. The company will postpone planned December equipment installation for its second 8 wafer facility and subsequent production of 16M-bit memory chips.
UK-based Data networking specialist Fibernet Group Plc has targeted June 18 to float the company on London’s Alternative Investment Market, AIM. The company has two operating companies: Fibernet Ltd, formed in 1986 and the more recent Tanet Ltd whic h was formed in 1994. The group plan to raise 10m British pounds from the issue of 11million new shares and 350,000 shares that are being sold by chief executive Charles McGregor. The capital will be used to develop a wide area network. But instead of laying the cables itself, McGregor said the firm will lease fiber optic cables from companies such as Fibreway Ltd, the wholly-owned subsidiary of Telephone Cables Ltd, which is in turn 74.5% owned GEC Plessey Communications Ltd. Singer & Friedla nder Ltd is underwriter to the venture.
San Francisco investment bank Hambrecht & Quist LLC, closely associated with the Silicon Valley phenomenon, has opened an office in London to provide banking and broker services to emerging growth companies in Europe. It aims to concentrate on the electronic technology, health care, bio-technology and branded consumer goods sectors. Hambrecht & Quist sees Europe as the prime growth area for technology and life science stocks in the next 20 years – this trend has already been highlighted by the success of the Alternative Investment Market in the UK. said Josh Rafner, head of investment banking at the company.
Finnish metals and mining group Outokumpu Oy says its Okmetic Oy unit will invest $75m to expand its output of silicon wafers, building a new plant in Vantaa, which will initially produce 1m wafers a year.
