Sina.com announced recently its board chairman Duan Yongji (left) has stepped down from the board and all other posts in the company. No reason was offered for Duan's departure.

Sina named Wang Yan, who has been vice-chairman of the board, as acting chairman, effective from Monday.

Board chairman

HiSoft Technology International Ltd, China's leading software exporter, has announced the appointment of Cheng-Yaw Sun as board chairman, effective from March.

Sun was taken as a HiSoft board member in November. Prior to that, Sun was president of Hewlett-Packard China and vice-president of Hewlett-Packard from 2000 to 2007.

Marketing boss

Unisono Fieldmarketing, a field marketing company in China and a member of Omnicom Group, has appointed Lester Kahn as general manager. Kahn was previously general manager of Momentum China in Beijing.

Kahn, a South African national, has more than 20 years of experience in brand management and experiential marketing and began his career working for major consumer goods companies in South Africa before joining Group Africa, a leading experiential marketing firm in Johannesburg. In 2002 he moved to Shanghai to launch Group Asia Marketing, Shanghai, which was later integrated into Momentum.

MARKET

Bid plan

Changsha Zoomlion Industry Science and Technology Development, a major Chinese heavy machinery maker, yesterday said it plans to bid for an Italian construction machinery producer jointly with several partners.

Zoomlion will aim to take a 60 percent stake in the target company, which it did not name, while other investors, including Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital, would hold the remaining 40 percent, it said in a statement.

It gave no figures for the amount of the bid, saying there was still uncertainty regarding the transaction and more details would be disclosed as the situation becomes clearer.

FAW investment

FAW Car, a unit of Chinese automaker FAW Group Corp, yesterday said it plans to invest 2.1 billion yuan in three projects to boost its capacity and competitiveness.

FAW Car will spend 1.4 billion yuan to revamp its assembly lines to produce Mazda Motor Corp's Mazda 6 and its own internally developed sedan, the B131, it said in a statement.

The investment would enable it to produce 60,000 Mazda 6 sedans a year by the end of this year and 80,000 B131 models annually in 2010, it said.

Oil income

China National Offshore Oil Corp, the nation's third largest oil explorer, posted a net income of 26.6 billion yuan last year, an increase of more than threefold compared with 2003, a company official said.

The profit ranked fourth among China's State-owned companies, Luo Ming, head of the company's research and development unit, said in Beijing yesterday.

BIZ UNUSUAL

Han Dynasty restaurant

A recently opened restaurant in Changchun of Jilin province has created the ambience of the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD). Pictures and scrolls on the walls showcase the literary and folk customs of that era. The rooms are named after popular names of that period, such as Situ and Sima. Waiters and waitresses wear costumes of the period, and the restaurant also features Han Dynasty music and dances. Period costumes are available on request for diners to pose in for pictures.

Wax hands

Want to try your hand at this? Jiang Xiaofeng, an intelligent entrepreneur, has opened a wax studio for hand modeling in Shenzhen which is already proving to be quite a hit across all age groups.

Hands have to be dipped into liquid wax and cooled in cold water. After repeating the process several times, one gets crystal-like waxy hands. The wax is then removed from the hands carefully and put in dyes. The whole process doesn't last long, but the unique wax hands can be a good memento that can last forever.

Colorful sanitary ware

A splash of color for those bored with the unwavering whiteness of sanitary ware. They can now have sanitary ware with hand-painted flowers, which are catching on in Guangzhou, Guangdong province. The price of these hand-painted wares is about 400 yuan higher than the common ones. If flowers don't do it for them, clients can also send in their preferred pictures to the manufacturers, which are painted on the wares. With no extra charge, the specially ordered sanitary ware is delivered within 15 days.

LOCAL

Kookmin in Harbin

Kookmin Bank, a leading bank in South Korea, has got approval from China's banking regulator to set up a branch in Harbin of Heilongjiang province.

In December 2006, a Russian bank got approval to set up a representative office in Harbin, the first foray by a foreign financial institution into the city.

Henan airports

Henan province will build three civilian airports in the coming two years, which will be located in Xinyang, Shangqiu and Dengfeng, according to the Henan development and reform commission.

There are three airports in Henan's Xinzheng, Nanyang and Luoyang. "In future, the six airports will make Henan the air hub in China's central region," an industry analyst said.

According to the national civilian airport plan recently released by the State Council, a civilian airport with annual capacity of 2 million passengers is to be built in Xinyang by 2010.

Public resources trade

Sichuan province's first trade center for public resources opened in Meishan city on Tuesday. All transactions related to public resources in Meishan city must now be conducted in the center, including land auctions, project bids, government purchases and transfer of State-owned assets.

"The center is an effective platform to unify public resources and lower transaction costs. It's also a measure to prevent corruption," said Xiao Keqiang, an official from the Sichuan provincial discipline inspection commission.

(China Daily 04/03/2008 page15)