Lai See
Cathay Pacific braves storm and media to reveal results
Congratulations, Cathay Pacific Airways, for being the only blue-chip company (in fact, the only listed company) to brave Typhoon Kammuri yesterday and meet the press to announce its interim results.
The airline could so easily have called everything off because of the No8 signal and so postponed for 24 hours having to tell the world that it had slipped into the red after failing to lock in fuel costs at low prices.
Of course, Cathay's directors had little choice with parent Swire Pacific booked to take centre stage today.
Nevertheless, it didn't stop reporters from thanking chairman Christopher Pratt for making it easier for them to fill their business pages, not to mention a column.
Weather woes
Talk about differing fortunes. Standard Chartered chairman Mervyn Davies jets into Hong Kong, announces a 30 per cent increase in interim profit, then flies off for the Olympics in Beijing the next morning, well ahead of the worst of Kammuri's winds.
Meanwhile, his HSBC counterpart Stephen Green, having announced a 30 per cent drop in profit from London on Monday, jets in to officiate at the opening of his bank's new information technology centre with Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and host a post-results briefing, only to have everything cancelled because of the weather.
We hope he has better luck getting to Beijing today.
Capital flight
Talking of flights to the capital, there are plenty to be had during the Olympics.
We tried Cathay Pacific's Dragonair online booking service yesterday and found that, from August 9 onwards, half the flights to Beijing are available for a maximum booking of up to six people. We understand the airline's passenger load during the Games is far from the average 80 per cent.
There are even more seats available for the return journey to Hong Kong.
Beijing's tightening of overseas visas is one obvious reason. Another could be that it's a lot easier to stay at home and watch the events on television.
Warfraud
The US government has charged 11 people, including two Chinese, after uncovering the biggest conspiracy to steal more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers by 'wardriving'.
If you're not familiar with the term, it involves driving around business districts hacking into wireless computer systems of shops and banks.
The term originates in the 1980s movie WarGames, which featured hackers 'wardialling' into sensitive computer and fax networks. Apparently, you can also go 'warbiking', 'warjogging', or even 'warwalking', but obviously the risks of being caught are a lot higher.
However, what really spooked us was a comment from VeriSign, a firm that secures websites for e-commerce. Senior product manager Perry Tancredi said: 'Credit and debit card information is just not incredibly secure. But it is counterbalanced by the amount of fraud losses due to cheque fraud and direct debit fraud, which is much greater than credit card fraud.'
Oh, well that's okay then.
Website for sore eyes
It was a nice gesture of the Hong Kong Economic Journal, the financial paper owned by Richard Li Tzar-kai, to offer hundreds of VIP guests attending its 35th anniversary last month free access to its new website.
The only problem is, many of the guests have found that the logons don't work.
A bit embarrassing considering that Prince Richard is also chairman of Hong Kong's best-equipped information technology company, PCCW.
On the other hand, we suppose it shows that the Journal and PCCW are quite independent of each other.
Parting shot
Finally, a fond farewell to my former 'upstairs' neighbour on this page, Jake van der Kamp, although we hope he has better luck with his travel plans in future. Regular readers of his column will recall how he got burnt earlier this year after paying for tickets on the doomed Oasis Airlines. Then he chose yesterday - and in the middle of a tropical cyclone - to fly to Vancouver for his well-earned break after more than 10 years with the Post.
