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Ben Kwok

A LICENSING LESSON FOR ALL AS NEW WORLD STUMBLES IN THE NAME GAME

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but not everyone enjoys it.

Blue-chip developer New World Development yesterday issued an advertisement clarifying that it is not associated with a certain 'New World Development Company' that organised a trade exhibition and Global Positioning System seminar in Macau yesterday

Believe it or not, Cheng Yu-tung's flagship company never bothered to register its moniker in nearby Macau, where it provides water, electricity and ferry services.

Let it be a lesson to all Hong Kong firms. Check your Macau registration records ASAP.

ONLINE, GLOVES OFF

EBay and Alibaba's battle for China's online auction market is turning into a bad-tempered tit-for-tat affair. Alibaba, Jack Ma's plucky Hangzhou-based start-up, has been punching well above Mr Ma's featherlight weight since August when Yahoo! paid US$1 billion for a 40 per cent stake in Alibaba and entrusted it with its  China operations.

Shortly before Yahoo!'s quarterly results announcement, Alibaba threw down the gauntlet by announcing it intends to provide free access to its auction site, Taobao.com, for an additional three years to October 2008 - and challenged eBay to do the same.

'We call on eBay to do what's right for this phase of China's e-commerce development and make your services free for buyers and sellers in China,' Mr Ma said in a statement.

EBay's response: ''Free' is not a business model. It speaks volumes about the strength of eBay's business in China that Taobao today announced that it is unable to charge for its products for the next three years.'

Ouch. Touche, eBay! Lai See scores round one decisively for the company from California.

MIXING IT WITH THE MAINLAND

You don't have to donate that much money to make it into this column - or make students happy. Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp yesterday gave away $910,000 to eight universities to 'promote diversity'. The majority of the money will help overseas students (mainland students included) pursue degrees in Hong Kong or fund local students studying on the mainland.

Announcing the scholarship fund and surrounded by hip, happy students yesterday, HSBC chairman Vincent Cheng Hoi-chuen took one of his coolest photos in years.

THE PAGES OF FEAR

If Hong Kong brokers don't strike you as being particularly bookish types, there could be a good reason. In Cantonese the word for 'books' - suu - is a homonym for 'lose', as in lose money.

But that doesn't mean there aren't exceptions.

Jim Mellon (left), non-executive director at Regent Pacific, and Al Chalabi have just published a new book entitled: Wake Up! Survive and Prosper in the Coming Economic Turmoil.

Messrs Mellon and Chalabi write that investment appetites are inexorably shifting to more entrepreneurial developing countries as China's rise, global terrorism and soaring debt levels threaten the prosperity of developed, western  nations and their ageing populations.

ANALYSE THIS

Yesterday may well have been the busiest day of October for local analysts, with seven behemoths all announcing their operating results.

These were China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom from the telecoms sphere; insurers Ping An Insurance, PICC Property and Casualty and China Insurance International Holdings; and shipper Orient Overseas International.



Lai See