Today Hong Kong-listed Intime Retail (Group) announced that Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba Group Holding will invest $692.2 million in the department store retailer. The cash flow is intended at the development of the online business of Intime. Currently Intime is engaged in the operation of department stores and malls in China and it plans to issue 220.54 million shares at HK$7.53 each (today the stock opened at $10.50) and to release HK$3.71 billion in convertible bonds to a segment of Alibaba. Following the deal Alibaba will most probably hold about 9.9% of Intime. If converted to common stocks the bonds will give to Alibaba possibility to receive more than 25% of Intime. 

 

Tech giants Apple and Samsung are about to enter the next round of litigations against each other over patents and stolen design. The companies would be back in court later this week following numerous cases between the two over allegations for stolen patents and technologies. The continuing legal cases in the high tech segment are rising concerns over the patent law and its interpretations these days. “There's a widespread suspicion that lots of the kinds of software patents at issue are written in ways that cover more ground than what Apple or any other tech firm actually invented,” commented Mark McKenna, Notre Dame Law professor. 

 

Today stock markets in India increased significantly in await of the meeting of the Reserve Bank of India, where country’s monetary policy is to be discussed that is scheduled for tomorrow. BSE major index Sensex reached its all-time peak of 22.467.21 and then dropped to 22,399 points. Meanwhile NSE Nifty also increased by 0.23% to 6,711.30 after it reached a peak of 6,730.05. The positive mood is set by expectations that the Central bank will keep its current interest rates untouched. 

 

Currently world’s second largest telecommunications equipment maker Huawei announced that its profit in 2013 has increased the fastest so far, triggered by higher sales and consumer revenue in its network construction business. Higher demand came amid increasing investments in mobile and cloud services. Huawei also managed to expand in mobile devices production reaching to world’s third largest smartphone maker in 2013. The Chinese manufacturer will now head to telecom operators that seek to invest in renovating and upgrading their current network to fourth generation technologies. For the previous year Huawei’s net profit increased by 34.4% to $3.38 billion or 21 billion yuan. Meanwhile operating profit stood at 29.1 billion yuan. For 2014 the company forecasts revenue growth of 10%.