A ROUND of applause for the Hong Kong legal system! Flick back to Page 8 of yesterday's paper and you'll find that Aoki Corp pleaded guilty to charges related to the hoist failure on a Quarry Bay building site last year. Twelve people died, including a 16-year-old. For eight charges, Aoki was fined $70,000 - about the same as it costs for a couple of junk trips taking customers for a spin around the harbour. We've obtained interesting figures comparing the fines against the maximum that could have been levied. For failing to ensure the hoist had been examined after being altered or repaired, Aoki was fined $5,000. This was only a tenth of the maximum fine of $50,000. For failing to ensure the hoist was of ''good construction'' it was fined $5,000. The maximum fine enforceable is also $50,000. For failing to ensure the hoist was properly maintained, a gigantic $15,000 was imposed, against a maximum of $50,000, while the penalty for failing to maintain the emergency stop equipment cost Aoki $5,000. It could have been fined $30,000. For failing to examine the hoist after changing its length of travel, it was hit for $10,000, against a maximum of $50,000. And for three charges related to not providing an interlocking landing gate, it was fined a total of $30,000. The maximum could have been a total of $150,000. There are 16 charges still to go to trial, of course. But it seems remarkable that for offences with a maximum fine totalling $380,000, only $70,000, or less than a fifth, was levied. According to Bloomberg figures, Aoki Corp had worldwide assets last year of $50 billion. Agent Orange A CONTACT gave us a telephone call yesterday about Hutchison Telecom's new strangely named phone system. Actually, ever keen to pick up new trends, we've already stopped saying ''telephone call'' here on Business Post. We've already started saying ''Orange(TM)''. For example: ''Can you ask Mr Wong to give me an Orange(TM) when he comes out of his meeting?'' Didn't get many return calls yesterday but that's the price of being fashionable. Anyway, the contact noted that it seems unlikely Hutch Telecom is going to sell this UK-based product in the Republic of Ireland. The Orange Society has been responsible for some fairly nasty incidents in Ireland over the years, and - rightly or wrongly - a phone called Orange in Ireland would be about as popular as a MaoPhone(TM) in Tibet. Poll axed THERE was plenty of extraordinary action at yesterday's extraordinary general meeting of the German Business Association. The steamy topic was proxy voting, which has long been a touchy subject at the GBA, which has more than 300 members including the local offices of many of Europe's best-known companies. In the past, those who turned up to GBA meetings sometimes found themselves mysteriously defeated by legions of proxy voters - who might not even live in Hong Kong - and whose votes have been wielded by executive director Ekkehard Goetting, who is not actually a GBA member. This led to a band of dissidents calling in on yesterday's EGM. The good news for the dissidents was that they got well over half the votes for their motions to restrict proxy votes. The bad news was that they needed three-quarters to change the by-laws to outlaw proxy voting. The superb news for the dissidents was that this didn't really matter - the committee had to concede after being challenged that legal changes effective from December extinguished the business of proxy voting for companies with constitutions like the GBA's anyway. Of course, this means the existing GBA committee was elected under a now-obsolete voting system. Through train or stopping train? It will be interesting to see. Tu piece BACK on products names, has anyone noticed Apple make a Macintosh computer with the name LCII? Who would have thought during the Star Ferry riots that she'd end up with a computer named after her? Appropriately enough, it's one of the Classic models that are rather old-fashioned but still very popular.
