Taipei - China Southern Airlines opened a representative office in Taipei Thursday, becoming the first Chinese airline to gain a foothold in the Taiwan market.

Si Xianmin, chairman of China's largest airline, opened the office in Taipei's trendy Minsheng East Road. Taiwan transport officials and airline representatives attended the opening ceremony.

The office is aimed at promoting China Southern's business links with Taiwan and will not sell plane tickets, which are sold by Taiwan travel agencies.

Beijing - Chinese-owned computer maker Lenovo on Thursday said it plans to lose about 2,500 staff, or 10 per cent of its global workforce, in the next three months.

The redundancies are a key part of a restructuring package designed to save Lenovo some 300 million dollars in its next financial year, which begins on April 1, the company said in a statement.

Lenovo, owned by China's Legend group, said it expects to announce a loss for the three months to December 31 last year, following a sharp drop in net profit for the previous quarter.

Tokyo  - Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc saw its net profit drop 51.2 per cent during the April-September period to 83.28 billion yen (870.74 million dollars) from a year earlier, the banking g

Tokyo  - Markets across the Asia-Pacific ended a roller-coaster week mixed on Friday with key bourses in Hong Kong and Tokyo down despite a much-anticipated rate cut by the Bank of Japan.

Asian markets had posted significant gains mid-week with daily surges of up to 10 per cent or even more after a rate cut in the United States, making up for similarly heavy losses at the beginning of the week.

The Bank of Japan on Friday cut its key short-term interest rate to 0.3 per cent from 0.5 per cent to help the world's second-largest economy weather the global financial crisis.

Kathmandu, Oct 22: Nepal’s Commerce Secretary Purushottam Ojha has said that both Nepal and India have agreed to amend the bilateral trade treaty within three months.

Talking to media after the meeting in Delhi on Tuesday, Ojha said the parties had agreed on the clauses to be amended in the existing bilateral trade treaty.

He further said the meeting to work out the amendments would be held in Kathmandu. The treaty has been renewed twice since it was signed in 1996.

The two countries have been discussing the amendments for the last two years.

Dubai, Oct 7: ICICIdirect. com, a major online trading platform in India, launched its online Futures and Options (F&O) trading service for non-resident Indians (NRIs), here last evening.

The online trading facility would offer secure transactions through its integrated trading site.

It would also provide an opportunity for NRI customers to create short-term trading positions and benefit from market volatility.