SHANGHAI, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Danish brewer Carlsberg A/S is seeking to have independent accountants to audit Chongqing Brewery, in the latest shareholder action against the Chinese company hit by slumping share prices and accusations of mismanagement.

China’s third-largest brewer by market capitalisation, which is nearly 30 percent owned by Carlsberg, has been under fire as its share prices tumbled 70 percent during the past two months, wiping out nearly 30 billion yuan ($4.8 billion) in value.

The free-fall was triggered by a Dec. 7 statement from the company that was interpreted by the market as suggesting failed results from the trial of a new hepatitis B vaccine, conducted by its biotech arm, Chongqing Jiachen Biotechnology.

Dacheng Fund Management Co, which owned a more than 10 percent stake in Chongqing Brewery before selling some of it last quarter, has called for a shareholder meeting on Feb. 7 to take up its proposal that Chairman Huang Minggui be removed from the post for mismanagement of information disclosure.

Carlsberg, which inherited its initial stake in Chongqing Brewery through its takeover of UK’s Scottish and Newcastle and boosted its stake in the Chinese company in 2010 to become its biggest shareholder, will seek approval for the hiring of independent auditors also at the Feb. 7 meeting, Chongqing Brewery said in a statement posted on the Shanghai stock exchange late on Thursday.

“Of course, the company is responsible for misleading investors,” said Zhang Haochuan, fund analyst at Z-Ben Advisors. “But on the other hand, some fund managers may not have done adequate due diligence on Chongqing Brewery and may have ignored the potential risks of drug development failure.”

The Chinese brewery also said in the statement that it forecast a roughly 50 percent slump in its 2011 net profit, but its shares ended up 0.8 percent on Friday.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China Communist Party members can now carry a tablet PC to verify identification cards, read the blogs of cadres and manage state-owned firms without fretting that using a bourgeois Apple Inc iPad will ruin their street cred.

Enter RedPad Number One, an Android-based tablet computer filled with software applications (apps) catered to a party official’s every need for control. Delivered in a decadent leather case for 9,999 yuan ($1,600), it is twice the price of Apple’s most expensive iPad 2.

The eye-popping price has China’s microblogs alight with chatter over just why this device is so expensive and who is footing the bill.

“Is it the god of toys? Why don’t they throw in a free iPad with it,” said Looperrr on Weibo, Sina Corp’s, microblogging platform.

RedPad Number One spokesman Liu Xianri said in an interview with the Southern Daily on Wednesday that sales of the tablet were completely market driven.

“We are looking to compete against the foreign brands,” Liu said in response to a question on whether public funds may be used to buy the RedPad.

RedPad’s price was high, Liu said, because of the number of pre-installed apps that cater to bureaucrats and state-owned company managers.

SHANGHAI, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Tencent Holdings Ltd , China’s largest Internet company by revenue, has no plans to implement a real-name registration system for its QQ instant messaging product because of privacy concerns, the Southern Daily newspaper reported on Thursday, quoting the company’s chief executive.

At the Municipal People’s Congress in Nanshan District in the southern city of Shenzhen on Wednesday, Pony Ma said Tencent had considered implementing a real-name system for QQ, but had decided that the question of real-name registrations, privacy and security were mutually contradictory.

QQ is China’s largest and most popular instant messaging platform.

Faced with questions at the Municipal People’s Congress about criminal activity conducted over QQ, Ma said: “If there are people now using the telephone to conduct prostitution, is it the responsibility of telecommunications operators to change that behavior?”

Company executives like Ma are frequently invited to attend annual local legislatures in a consultative capacity.

The subject of registering users’ real names with social networking sites in China has been a touchy subject of late. Beijing insists it is necessary to prevent online rumour-mongering, but critics say it is a cover to monitor and censor views of citizens on the Internet.

The Beijing city government said in December that it would tighten control over popular microblogs that have vexed the authorities with their rapid dissemination of news, giving users three months to register their real names or face legal consequences.

DONGFENG VILLAGE, China (Reuters) – It was a Cinderella story: a pig-rearing and vegetable-growing hamlet in China’s eastern Jiangsu province that transformed itself into a village boasting millionaires and expensive cars, all through plywood, ingenuity and the Internet.

In 2007 Sun Han, the 30-year-old de facto e-commerce chief in Dongfeng Village, fell in love with the designs of Swedish furniture giant Ikea and decided to make similar furniture of his own to sell on the Internet.

Others in his village soon followed suit and the fairytale of wealth was born.

What were once vegetable plots have been converted into workshops and storefronts. Sun’s factory, sitting on just over an acre of land, now churns out knock-off Ikea shelves and beds to fill the 200 orders he gets a day on his two online shops.

But the story may not have a happy ending for everyone.

Intense competition has fuelled price wars among furniture vendors. That, combined with fee hikes from China’s leading online e-commerce platform, Taobao Mall, this year forced the closure of some of fledgling businesses in this dusty village that is home to more than 1,000 Taobao furniture sellers.

“There is more competition now, but we need to continue to innovate and meet customer needs,” said Sun, who looks more like a professor than a village business chief, in his black leather loafers, grey tweed jacket and half-rimmed spectacles.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The ink is barely dry on Nicolas Anelka’s groundbreaking contract with Shanghai Shenhua but already the Chinese Super League club is working to pull off another major transfer coup by signing his Chelsea team mate Didier Drogba.

Shanghai Director Zhou Jun told Reuters in an interview on Monday his club had already spoken to Drogba and were ready to continue their lavish spending if the Ivory Coast international was prepared to switch west London for the Far East.

Anelka will become the biggest name to ply his trade in the world’s most populous nation when the striker joins Shanghai Shenhua in January. The Chinese club said Monday it had agreed a two-year deal with the Frenchman.

Zhou, who also expects former Bordeaux coach Jean Tigana to arrive as manager in January, said bringing in foreign talent was essential for the growth of Chinese soccer, which has been blighted by scandals and corruption in recent years.

“Drogba is an excellent player. We got in touch with him two weeks ago,” Zhou told Reuters near Shanghai’s Pudong training ground. “From our club’s perspective, we have this to say — If he is willing to come, we will definitely welcome him.”

The signing of Anelka and pursuit of other marquee players is evidence of the growing financial might of Chinese clubs.

Zhou said the Frenchman would certainly not be taking a paycut.

SHANGHAI, Dec 12 (Reuters) – The ink is barely dry on Nicolas Anelka’s groundbreaking contract with Shanghai Shenhua but already the Chinese Super League club is working to pull off another major transfer coup by signing his Chelsea team mate Didier Drogba.

Shanghai Director Zhou Jun told Reuters in an interview on Monday his club had already spoken to Drogba and were ready to continue their lavish spending if the Ivory Coast international was prepared to switch west London for the Far East.

Anelka will become the biggest name to ply his trade in the world’s most populous nation when the striker joins Shanghai Shenhua in January. The Chinese club said on Monday it had agreed a two-year deal with the Frenchman.

Zhou, who also expects former Bordeaux coach Jean Tigana to arrive as manager in January, said bringing in foreign talent was essential for the growth of Chinese soccer, which has been blighted by scandals and corruption in recent years.

“Drogba is an excellent player. We got in touch with him two weeks ago,” Zhou told Reuters near Shanghai’s Pudong training ground. “From our club’s perspective, we have this to say — If he is willing to come, we will definitely welcome him.”

The signing of Anelka and pursuit of other marquee players is evidence of the growing financial might of Chinese clubs.

Zhou said the Frenchman would certainly not be taking a paycut.

SHANGHAI, Dec 1 (Reuters) – Faced with accusations of selling fake goods and competition from thousands of copycats, China’s frenetic group-buying sector is sobering up, with dozens of websites reportedly shut and venture capital shunning the industry.

Group-buying websites provide daily deals to consumers by offering discounts on goods and services at rates that are pre-negotiated with vendors.

China has almost 6,000 group-buying websites, most of them backed by venture capital firms. The country saw 456 shut in October, taking the total of shuttered websites to 1,483 this year, group-buying website aggregator Lingtuan said in a report last month.

Nearly all of the sites still operating are losing money, analysts say.

“No investor with the goal of making money is wasting additional money on group buy right now,” said Michael Clendenin, managing director of Shanghai-based consultancy, RedTech Advisors.

“Even e-commerce overall is losing its appeal because of the hypercompetitive nature of the Chinese market in which only those with the most money to lose will eventually win,” Clendenin said.

The success of Groupon Inc’s business model and the industry’s low barriers to entry led to a creation of the thousands of group-buying clones in China who found themselves advertising heavily and slashing their portion of the revenue-share with vendors to survive.

YISHUI, China (Reuters) – A Chinese tourism company listed in the United States wants investors to pour their money down a dark hole. Literally.

China’s “Underground Grand Canyon”, about an hour’s drive outside the smoggy city of Linyi in the eastern province of Shandong, promises visitors 3 km (2 miles) of grand stalactites, multicolored lights and an exciting luge ride.

Tracing the attraction’s ticket receipts back to investors in the United States proves an even more complex labyrinth to navigate. Following the trail sheds light on the lengths some Chinese businesses have gone to secure overseas listings, which bring the companies funding and prestige back home.

“For entrepreneurs, going public gives them a sense of recognition. For employees, going public gives them a sense of achievement,” Zhang Shanjiu, the chairman of the company, boasted to a tourism publication four years ago as he embarked on the odyssey to list it.

The owners of the Underground Grand Canyon attraction eventually used a dizzying array of holding companies to ultimately list in the United States through a reverse merger that accomplished the feat in 2010.

That practice has come under scrutiny over the past year, as short-sellers including Muddy Waters have targeted some firms listed in the United States and Canada, publishing research reports accusing them of fraud that caused their stock prices to plummet, from which the short-sellers profited.

Some companies that listed through reverse mergers, including Chinese clean-tech firm Rino International, were eventually delisted following investigations prompted by short-sellers’ accusations of accounting flaws.

SHANGHAI, Nov 30 (Reuters) – Shares of Jiangsu Phoenix Publishing & Media Corp Ltd surged 38 percent on its Shanghai debut on Wednesday on pent up investor demand for new listings.

Jiangsu Phoenix, one of the country’s biggest publishers, raised 4.48 billion yuan ($705 million) through its initial public offering, much more than it had initially planned.

Its shares opened at 12.03 yuan a share, up 36.7 percent compared with the IPO price of 8.8 yuan. By 0200 GMT, the shares edged up to 12.18 yuan, up 38 percent.

“This company should benefit from an emphasis on cultural industries that the government announced recently,” said Chen Yi, an analyst at Xiangcai Securities in Shanghai.

“I think it’s a good investment in the longer run and would represent good value at about 9 yuan, but right now, I think it’s too highly priced and would actually advise clients to sell into strength,” Chen said.

Jiangsu Phoenix had said in its draft prospectus it planned to raise 2.76 billion yuan to fund an expansion of its sales network, book publishing and e-commerce.

At its IPO price, Jiangsu Phoenix would be valued at 50.7 times its 2010 earnings, it said in a filing earlier in the month. Its listed peers currently trade around 34 times historic earnings, according to the statement.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Alibaba.com, China’s largest e-commerce firm, posted an 11.9 percent rise in quarterly net profit, its slowest growth in nearly two years, with the company raising concerns due to a weak trade outlook stemming from debt woes in Europe and the United States.

The third-quarter results missed analyst forecasts and were attributed to a weak macroeconomic climate that led to a slower pace of customer additions.

“They are focussing on the quality of suppliers and also improving the overall quality of products that they are offering, such as some of the newer services to help buyers to check the quality of products before they are shipped,” said Dick Wei, an analyst with JPMorgan.

“If you look at customer growth, there are no new initiatives and growth is not that top priority at this point,” Wei said. “Revenue will pick up again later in 2012 or 2013.”

Alibaba Group, parent of Alibaba.com, has seen a series of protests and dissatisfaction from its clients and suppliers.

Earlier this year, a significant increase in fraudulent transactions had caused a management reshuffle in Alibaba.com and prompted the e-commerce firm, one of the best known Chinese internet names, to step up supervision of suppliers.

This week, hundreds of sellers from Taobao — which focuses mainly on consumer-to-consumer transactions — protested outside the firm’s Hangzhou offices, calling for the abolition of the website’s feedback system, local media said.