Merchants Bank to buy insurance JV stake

    CHINA Merchants Bank Co. has signed a deal to buy from a sister company a 50 percent stake in a Shenzhen-based insurance joint venture with Cigna Corp. for 141.9 million yuan (US$20.27 million).

    The agreement to buy the stake in Cigna & CMC Life Insurance Co. marks Shenzhen-based China Merchants’ first foray into the insurance business. The bank plans to seek shareholder approval to buy the stake, which has been held by Shenzhen Municipal Dingzun Investment Advisory Co., another unit of China Merchants Group. Cigna & CMC Life Insurance was set up in August 2003 and is owned equally by Cigna and Dingzun.

    Microsoft to build research center

    MICROSOFT Corp. said yesterday it will invest US$280 million to build a research and development center in Beijing and will double the number of its full-time research and development staff in China to 3,000 in three to five years.

    China is already Microsoft’s largest research and development center outside the United States, Zhang Yaqin, chairman of the company’s China operations, said. Microsoft said it will finish building the Microsoft China R&D Campus in Beijing in 2010. The center will be able to accommodate 5,000 employees.

    PetroChina Sichuan projects approved

    PETROCHINA Co. won government approval to build an oil refinery and a chemical plant for 38.6 billion yuan (US$5.5 billion) in Sichuan Province, the Shanghai Securities News reported yesterday.

    The refinery will be able to process 10 million tons of crude annually and the ethylene plant will produce 800,000 tons of the chemical, it said. Construction will start soon, the newspaper said, without giving details. PetroChina, the nation’s largest oil company, announced plans to build the two plants in the southwestern province of Sichuan last March.

    Vanke April apartment sales rise 74%

    CHINA Vanke Co., the country’s largest publicly traded real-estate developer, sold property worth 4.32 billion yuan (US$618 million) in April, 74 percent more than a year earlier.

    The Shenzhen-based company sold apartments with a total floor area of 482,000 square meters last month, it said in a statement to Shenzhen Stock Exchange yesterday.