VietNam Business

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Vietnam looks for more Belgian tourists

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) and Vietnamese
Embassy in Belgium on September 4 co-organised a programme to
promote the country’s image as an attractive and safe tourism
destination.

As part of activities in the
“Vietnamese Days in Belgium ”, the programme, titled “ Vietnam , your
destination”, also aimed to offer Belgian and Vietnamese businesses
operating in tourism industry an opportunity to exchange and seek out
partners.

At the meeting, VNAT’s deputy head Nguyen
Manh Cuong introduced tourism potentials of Vietnam , a country with
54 ethnic groups that boast a diverse cultural asset, and a
thousand-year history. Especially, the country is home to ten world
natural and cultural heritages recodnised by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), he said.

The Vietnamese tourism industry has also organised a
wide range of special activities on the celebration of the 1,000 th
anniversary of the capital city of Thang Long-Hanoi , Cuong added.

On the occasion, he called on Belgian tourist businesses to increase their investment in Vietnam./.

Japan Noda warns on yen, suggests joint steps difficult

Decisive steps should be taken to stem the yen's rise when needed as coordinated currency market intervention is a difficult option

Photo: Reuters

TOKYO - Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Saturday Tokyo would take decisive steps to stem the yen's rise when needed, while suggesting that coordinated currency market intervention was a difficult option.

Traders are getting cautious about bidding the yen up too much after Japanese ministers kept up warnings against the currency's surge to 15-year high versus the dollar.

Policymakers have repeatedly said they could take decisive action on the yen -- normally a code phrase for currency intervention.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan and ruling party powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa are facing off in a ruling party leadership vote on September 14 that is distracting policymakers as Japan confronts a strong yen and weak economy.

The winner will likely be prime minister by virtue of the party's majority in the powerful lower house.

Kan and Noda have said Japan would take decisive action on currencies without using the word intervention. But Ozawa has more specifically threatened to intervene in the currency market.

"What they have been saying means the same thing. The issue is whether we would actually decide to intervene at the end," Noda said on a Tokyo television program.

"Our statement that we would take decisive steps when needed says it all," he added.

Despite repeated warnings, traders have doubts over whether Tokyo will step into the forex market now because it could have trouble convincing leaders of other major economies about the need to intervene at a time when they are calling on China to make the yuan more flexible to ease global imbalances.

They say the US and European countries seem to have no interest in helping Japan by jointly intervening in the market to curb the yen's rise as they want to benefit from falls in their currencies, which boost exports.

Asked about the perception that coordination with other countries on the yen's rise seem to be tough, Noda said, "It's about what we can do while coordination is difficult."

HSBC warns UK bank break-up could force exodus

LONDON - HSBC Holdings, Europe's biggest bank, warned that Britain's big banks could move overseas if a government review decides that lenders should be broken up.

Stuart Gulliver, head of investment banking, said HSBC was "genuinely concerned" that a UK government appointed commission would recommend big banks must split retail banking from riskier investment banking.

Gulliver said it was "clearly possible" the Commission will recommend a break up, which could have implications for itself, Barclays and Standard Chartered.

"That has significant implications for where we may choose to headquarter our institution and that would probably also be the case for the other two institutions," Gulliver said at a conference held on Thursday, which was webcast.

"Our absolute wish is to stay here in the UK, but we won't know until we see how the Commission responds."

HSBC Chief Executive Michael Geoghegan moved to Hong Kong earlier this year to be in the bank's key region.

The CEO of Asia-focused rival Standard Chartered warned last month that the rationale for keeping its headquarters in London was weakening as UK banks face being at a disadvantage to rivals on taxes, pay and regulation.

Gulliver also said he expects HSBC's annual profit in the Middle East, which plunged to $455 million last year from $1.7 billion in 2008 due to troubles in Dubai, should recover to between $1 billion and $1.2 billion by 2012 at the latest.

HSBC warns UK bank break-up could force exodus

LONDON - HSBC Holdings, Europe's biggest bank, warned that Britain's big banks could move overseas if a government review decides that lenders should be broken up.

Gulliver said it was "clearly possible" the Commission will recommend a break up, which could have implications for itself, Barclays and Standard Chartered.

"Our absolute wish is to stay here in the UK, but we won't know until we see how the Commission responds."

HSBC Chief Executive Michael Geoghegan moved to Hong Kong earlier this year to be in the bank's key region.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Google to pay $8.5 mln to settle Buzz case

Google has agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a privacy lawsuit over a Buzz social networking tool added to free email service Gmail in February

Photo: AFP

SAN FRANCISCO - Google has agreed to pay US$8.5 million to settle a privacy lawsuit over a Buzz social networking tool added to free email service Gmail in February, according to court documents.

Legal paperwork made available online Friday detailed the proposed settlement, which awaits approval by the federal court judge in San Francisco presiding over the case.

Lawyers that filed the class-action suit staked out 30 percent of the settlement money and the seven named plaintiffs were to get no more than $2,500 each, according to court documents.

The rest of the money, which Google is to deposit in a fund, was earmarked for organizations devoted to Internet privacy policy or education.

The settlement also called on the California-based Internet giant to do more to educate people about privacy at Buzz.

Facing a slew of privacy complaints in the wake of the Buzz launch, Google has made changes to the new social networking tool.

"Google has made changes to the Google Buzz user interface that clarify Google Buzz's operation and users' options regarding Google Buzz," the settlement maintained.

Among the concerns aired in technology blogs and elsewhere was that Google Buzz was taking a user's Gmail contacts and automatically adding them to their public Buzz social network.

Gmail users now have to create a Google Buzz public profile and can view, edit or hide lists of people in their online circles.

Google also gave users the ability to block anyone following their account.

Buzz allows Gmail users to get updates about what friends are doing online and offers ways to share video, photos and other digitized snippets.

Buzz has been described by some technology analysts as a direct challenge by Google to social networking stars Facebook and Twitter.

The court filing came as Google updated its privacy policy.

"We're simplifying and updating Google's privacy policies," Google associate general counsel Mike Yang said Friday in a blog post.

"To be clear, we aren't changing any of our privacy practices; we want to make our policies more transparent and understandable."

On Thursday, a nonprofit consumer group that has been hounding Google about privacy released a satirical video cartoon featuring the Internet firm's chief giving away ice cream to snoop on children.

Google noted that information about its privacy tools can be found online at google.com/privacy.

Google to pay $8.5 mln to settle Buzz case