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Strategies & Market Trends : HONG KONG -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: allen menglin chen who wrote (1181)	1/24/1998 2:08:00 AM
From: ----------	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2951

And if you like to diversify, as I recall China Everbright bought 5% of CHL at the IPO. This appeared 21/01/98: China Everbright Hldgs profit jumps 10-fold But that's only a ballpark number pending audit: official By Lu Ning [SINGAPORE] espite the regional financial turmoil, China Everbright Holdings Co Ltd (HK) chalked up an impressive 10-fold jump in after-tax profit last year, its chairman Zhu Xiaohua disclosed yesterday. However, he did not give any figures or a breakdown of contribution by its subsidiaries. Instead, a senior company official cautioned that Mr Zhu's figure was only a ballpark number, pending the auditing of its results. China Everbright Holdings is the Hongkong-based holding company that controls four companies listed on the Hongkong and Singapore exchanges -- China Everbright-IHD, China Everbright International, China Everbright Technology and China Everbright Pacific. Speaking at a National University of Singapore seminar, Mr Zhu said the group -- an investment arm of the Chinese government -- also "suffered" from the financial crises sweeping through the region. But he stressed that the group has outperformed "most Hongkong companies", citing its holding company's high profit growth. Commenting on the Hongkong dollar's peg to the greenback, the former vice-governor of China's central bank said that "Hongkong has no other choice" but to keep the peg which has worked successfully in the past 15 years. When things turn around, "Hongkong would be the first to recover", he said. As the chief architect of China's current foreign exchange regime, Mr Zhu also expressed his belief that the renminbi will remain stable by citing China's "sound economic fundamentals" and "institutional framework". China's forex reserves, he revealed, reached US$150 billion (S$263 billion) at the end of 1997, including returns earned on the funds. The official figure is US$139.9 billion, excluding earned returns. Although exports are expected to slow down this year, China's foreign trade "can still achieve a surplus", he predicted. The limited -- less than 20 per cent -- overlap of China's exports with those of the South-east Asian economies and China's ability to shift production to lower-cost inland regions as well as to raise export tax rebates and reduce export quota charges will help China retain its competitiveness, he said. Hence "China's currency does not face downward pressure in the short to medium term", he said.