Imperial Tobacco contests RI's court ruling

Imperial Tobacco contests RI's court ruling

JAKARTA: U.K.-based Imperial Tobacco Group PLC's Reemtsma unit is appealing an Indonesian court decision stopping the company from selling its Davidoff brand cigarettes in the country, a lawyer involved in the case said Tuesday.

Reemtsma, which is based in Germany, is trying through the courts to prove that PT Sumatra Tobacco Trading Company, which claims to own the Davidoff trademark in Indonesia, in fact has no right to sell the cigarettes under that brand, said Gunawan Suryomursito, Reemtsma's lawyer.

The Commercial Court last month ruled against Reemtsma's petition to cancel Sumatra Tobacco's right to the trademark. Reemtsma has lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court this week, Suryomursito said. -- Dow Jones

UBS posts 29-percent slump in '02

ZURICH: Switzerland's biggest bank UBS said on Tuesday that net profit slumped by 29 percent in 2002 from the figure a year earlier to 3.53 billion Swiss francs (2.43 billion euro).

The drop was largely due to a non-cash writedown of 953 million Swiss francs after tax, linked to the withdrawal of the PaineWebber brand, which will disappear in June after a decision to adopt the single UBS brand.

Excluding the writedown, the bank said in a statement that net profit last year fell by 12 percent from a year earlier.

The group posted a net profit in 2001 of 4.97 billion Swiss francs.

Analysts had expected a full year net profit for 2002 of between 3.407 and 3.662 billion Swiss francs.

For the fourth quarter alone, UBS posted a net loss of 101 million Swiss francs compared to a profit of 1.10 billion in the same period a year earlier. -- AFP

DBS net profit to flat, lower

SINGAPORE: DBS Group Holdings is expected to report flat to lower net profit for 2002 later this week due to higher provisions for non-performing loans (NPLs), analysts said Tuesday.

Southeast Asia's biggest lender should report between S$983 million to S$1.08 billion (US$561-$617 million) in net profit Friday, compared with S$999 million in 2001, analysts polled by financial newswire AFX-Asia showed.

In the nine months to September, DBS said its net profit fell to S$734.6 million from S$830.5 million a year earlier as provisions increased 21 percent to S$353.3 million.

The higher provision would have been partly offset by a one- time gain from the sale of DBS Group's 14.67 percent stake in steel miller NatSteel Ltd. to 98 Holdings in November. -- AFP

Nokia's 3G phone to hit the market

HELSINKI: Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, said Tuesday its first third-generation (3G) mobile phone, the Nokia 6650, would be in shops before July.

"The first commercial deliveries of the Nokia 6650 are estimated to start first half of 2003," Nokia said in a statement.

The phone features a color screen and low-resolution digital camera, and can send messages containing sound and images, including short video clips. It will be a dual-network handset, functioning on both the current second-generation GSM and future 3G networks.

Nokia said it had already delivered about 10,000 units to operators such as Orange SA, Sonera Corp, Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile and Vodafone Group PLC, as well as to infrastructure vendors Ericsson, Nortel Networks Corp and Siemens AG for "live network optimization and interoperability testing". -- AFP

Suzuki, Kawasaki team up

TOKYO: Japan's Suzuki Motor and Kawasaki Heavy Industries said Tuesday they would sell their first jointly developed motorcycles worldwide in September.

Kawasaki will produce the 250-cc off-road motorcycles and the two firms will sell the bike under their respective brands, the two said in a statement.

Details including the price and targeted sales have yet to be decided.

"It is part of our collaboration with Kawasaki," a Suzuki spokesman said, adding the two launched business tie-ups in 2001 to boost competitiveness and cut costs. -- AFP

SilkAir in no hurry to go no-frills

SINGAPORE: SilkAir, the regional wing of Singapore Airlines (SIA), is in no hurry to convert into a no-frills carrier in the absence of a competitor, its chief executive said Tuesday.

Subhas Menon said the carrier will first assess the impact of competition from any low-cost airline in Asia before making a decision.

Menon said regulations in Asia could limit no-frills airlines from their ambitions to operate international flights.

"One distinguishing feature of Asia is that aviation is regulated so freedom to operate international flights is not there," he told a news conference announcing a new marketing campaign for the carrier.

"So that being the case, it's all a case of how and when budget airlines is going to be implemented. And from there, we're going to assess the competitive impact accordingly," he said.

SIA has said it was prepared to convert SilkAir quickly into a budget carrier to meet any competition for it markets. -- AFP