So, at an early victory celebration lunch yesterday where the sharks' fin soup was flowing freely, Mr Chim was happy to talk with reporters about who he thinks will win in the coming Legislative Council election.

One bold prediction is that despite the decisions of Bernard Chan and Albert Cheng King-hon not to stand for re-election, the Chiu Chow faction in the 60-seat Legco will remain strong.

He is tipping Paul Chan Mo-po (accounting) and Choy Chung-foo (insurance) to win their functional constituency seats, while Democrats Andrew Cheng Kar-foo and Lee Cheuk-yan, DAB's Chan Kam-lam and the Liberal Party's Sophie Lau Yau-fun are expected to be returned in their directly elected geographical constituencies.

Along with Mr Chim and fellow dead certainty Lam Tai-fai who is unopposed in the industrial functional constituency, that should keep up the faction's eight-strong representation.

If they all decided to get angry at the same time it could cause quite a scene in the council chamber.

Mature student

Earlier this week, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing censured Argos Enterprise (Holdings) chairman Wong Wah-sang, his son Ronnie Wong Man-chiu and a former director for breaching rules by failing to disclose six connected transactions and delaying the publication of financial information.

For their sins, the chairman and his son were ordered to undertake 24 hours of training in compliance and corporate governance from the Hong Kong Institute of Directors within the next six months.

They say you're never too old to learn, which is just as well because Mr Wong senior, at 83, is likely to be the most mature student the institute has had.

Points of interest

JP Morgan is making a point with its new identity. Well, two points actually.

The investment bank unveiled its new 'J.P. Morgan' trademark this week at the US Tennis Open, which it sponsors.

It's really the old trademark, complete with those two full stops the financial services giant used for a century before it merged with Chase Manhattan Bank in 2000.

The new logo does away with the eight-sided Chase doughnut at the start and the word 'Chase' at the end.

As yet there are no plans to change the company's advertising hoarding on top of Chater House.

Politeness pays off

It could have had something to do with it being the first time he had to present PetroChina's interim results since being appointed president in May, but Zhou Jiping was in magnanimous form yesterday.

He seemed to go out of his way to make a good first impression, sprinkling his responses during the press conference with several polite 'thank-yous' to the gathered hacks.

In fact, so eager was he to answer questions that the press conference overran for more than 30 minutes, causing much grumbling among the analysts waiting for their briefing.

It could also have had something to do with the 'be nice to the media' example set an hour earlier at the CNOOC results press conference where chairman Fu Chengyu was heard calling out at the end of his question and answer session: 'Who doesn't have my business card? Please come over.'

But in the end, it probably had more to do with both oil companies turning in huge first-half profits.

Sweetening the deal

Property developers certainly can be creative when trying to sell their flats in a bad market.

It sort of figures. The average price of the development (above) is about HK$15,000 per square foot which mirrors the price of a decent laptop which would fit nicely into that space.