The HKU School of Professional and Continuing Education is offering a joint course with Bordeaux Management School aimed at training professional wine managers as the city takes strides towards becoming an international wine centre.

Billed as probably the first French master's degree programme in Hong Kong, its students would spend two sessions in Bordeaux.

The 22-month part-time programme, to be offered from January, targets wine business practitioners and executives who want to get an MBA degree.

According to director Daniel Yan Ting-kwan, the 25-student programme is expected to be popular, based on the school's experience in teaching wine appreciation and business courses in the past few years.

The idea of a wine MBA course began last year when Hong Kong lowered import tariffs on red wine in the hope of creating a wine hub in the city. The school spotted the demand for training up local personnel and quickly lined up a deal with the French faculty through the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce.

The course, taught in English, will explore the management, finance and marketing of the wine business in nine modules.

It is not designed to be a cheap course, but Dr Yan pointed out the cost was still 30 per cent below the going rate of an MBA course at the Chinese University of Hong Kong or the University of Science and Technology.

The choice seems to come down to enjoying a few cases of fine wine or spending dozens of hours studying the subject. Whatever, you can get a taste at the Hong Kong Wine Fair next month, when applications to the programme will be invited.

They're everywhere

Despite the recession and record unemployment, the MBA business keeps on getting bigger, with promotions everywhere.

Yesterday we received an e-mail that included a promotion from Priceline.com's website for a five-star Master of Business Administration programme at the University of South Australia.

Unfortunately, it did not indicate whether Priceline's famous 'name your own price' policy would apply - although we very much doubt it.

Feeble opposition

Not many Chinese Estates Holdings shareholders said no to the proposal of Joseph Lau Luen-hung (below) to acquire assets from his flagship company. Only 10 per cent, or about 6.1 million shares, opposed the chairman's plan to buy a portfolio of complicated equity-linked notes and a couple of London properties that would enable Chinese Estates to book a profit of HK$271 million.

The company promptly announced a special dividend of 63 HK cents.

The 'no' voters accounted for only 0.3 per cent of the total issued 1.95 billion shares, although 86 per cent of shareholders - including Lau - were not allowed to vote.

The firm received virtually no opposition five years ago when Lau bought 11 properties from it, including four houses on Barker Road - worth HK$28,000 per square foot then and HK$50,000 per square foot now - and a Chinese art collection for HK$632 million.

Shenzhen stars shine

Shenzhen-based firms are stealing the show on the Hong Kong market this year. Internet firm Tencent Holdings, carmaker BYD and telecommunications equipment firm ZTE Corp have all rallied three to seven times since last October's trough. But they still trail Geely Automobile, which has jumped as much as 16 times from its 12-month low and closed at HK$2.36 yesterday.

Robert Kwan dies

Robert Kwan Chiu-yin, one of the founding partners of the largest home-grown accounting firm, died last week. He was 73.

His firm, Kwan, Wong, Tan & Fong, was founded in the 1970s and merged with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu in 1997. Kwan retired in 2002. He was a former chairman of Ocean Park and Tung Wah Group of Hospitals. He was an independent non-executive director of Cheung Kong (Holdings), Shun Tak Holdings, Melco International Development and Pak Fah Yeow International.