SHANGHAI, July 13 (Reuters) – China’s Sina Corp will launch a virtual currency for its popular Weibo microblogging service in the third quarter of this year, the firm’s first real push to monetise the platform, a source with direct knowledge of the plan said on Wednesday.

Analysts said the move is significant for Sina as it seeks to monetise Weibo and expand it into a full-fledged social network to compete with Renren Inc and Tencent Holding’s QQZone. Sina, which launched Weibo about two years ago, has more than 140 million users.

“This is a no-brainer for Sina as it tries unobtrusive, non-advertising-based ways to monetize Weibo,” said Michael Clendenin, managing director of technology research firm RedTech Advisors.

“Introducing a currency allows users to buy small, inexpensive virtual trinkets for themselves or friends, but in the aggregate this can have a large impact given that Sina Weibo has 140 million users,” Clendenin said.

Sina released details of its virtual currency, Weibi, in a document recently posted online for third-party application developers. (open.weibo.com/wiki/index.php/)

“Weibi is in the development stage now, but it will be launched very soon, in the third quarter, to a small portion of users before a full rollout later in the year,” the source said, who declined to be named because the matter was not yet officially released.

One Weibi will have a value of one yuan and can be used to pay for virtual items and services provided by third-party application developers.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s Bright Food Group said on Tuesday it was not in discussions to buy any Australian wine assets, denying a media report that it was in internal talks on bidding for Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates Ltd (TWE.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

“Currently, we have no Australian wine acquisitions in the works,” Pan Jianjun, general manager of the firm’s public relations department, said by telephone.

However, Pan said the Shanghai-based conglomerate could consider acquiring wine assets in Australia, France, Chile and the United States to broaden its brands portfolio, which currently includes labels such as Shikumen and He Jiu.

Bloomberg News reported on Friday that Bright Food was considering making an offer for Treasury Wine Estates.

The report sent the shares of Treasury Wine Estates up 11 percent on Monday. Its shares closed down 2.2 percent on Tuesday.

Treasury Wine, with brands including Penfolds, Rosemount and Beringer, was spun off by Foster’s Group (FGL.AX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in May to its shareholders after the brewer failed with an expansion into wine that resulted in nearly A$3 billion ($3.2 billion) in write-downs.

Treasury Wine, the world’s second-largest wine company behind Constellation Brands (STZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), owns vineyards from Hunter Valley near Sydney to Napa Valley in California.

SHANGHAI, July 5 (Reuters) – China’s Bright Food Group said on Tuesday it was not in discussions to buy any Australian wine assets, denying a media report that it was in internal talks on bidding for Australia’s Treasury Wine Estates Ltd .

“Currently, we have no Australian wine acquisitions in the works,” Pan Jianjun, general manager of the firm’s public relations department, said by telephone.

However, Pan said the Shanghai-based conglomerate could consider acquiring wine assets in Australia, France, Chile and the United States to broaden its brands portfolio, which currently includes labels such as Shikumen and He Jiu.

Bloomberg News reported on Friday that Bright Food was considering making an offer for Treasury Wine Estates.

The report sent the shares of Treasury Wine Estates up 11 percent on Monday. Its shares closed down 2.2 percent on Tuesday.

Treasury Wine, with brands including Penfolds, Rosemount and Beringer, was spun off by Foster’s Group in May to its shareholders after the brewer failed with an expansion into wine that resulted in nearly A$3 billion ($3.2 billion) in write-downs.

Treasury Wine, the world’s second-largest wine company behind Constellation Brands , owns vineyards from Hunter Valley near Sydney to Napa Valley in California.

SHANGHAI, July 4 (Reuters) – Baidu , which has three-quarters of China’s search market, signed a deal with Microsoft’s Bing to offer English-language search to Baidu users, as it eyes an overseas expansion and Microsoft aims to increase its presence in the world’s largest Internet market.

Baidu dominates China’s search-engine market after Google Inc pulled out last year following a high-profile fallout with Beijing over censorship.

The partnership will allow English-language input into Baidu’s search box to automatically activate Bing, whose search results will be delivered to Baidu’s web pages, Baidu said in an emailed statement on Monday.

Analysts said the tie-up would help Bing to gain greater access to China’s more than 450 million Internet users and further dent Google’s business in the country.

“The cooperation between Baidu and Microsoft will further strengthen Baidu’s dominance in China’s search-engine market, and will also make Google’s business in China more difficult,” said Dong Xu, an analyst with Analysys International.

Baidu had 76 percent of the Chinese search market in the first quarter of 2011, according to Analysys International data. Bing has a negligible share of the market, while Google has nearly 20 percent.

The new tie-up, due to be launched this year, builds on existing cooperation between Baidu and Bing on mobile platforms and page results, said Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Baidu, which has three-quarters of China’s search market, signed a deal with Microsoft’s Bing to offer English-language search to Baidu users, as it eyes an overseas expansion and Microsoft aims to increase its presence in the world’s largest Internet market.

Baidu dominates China’s search-engine market after Google Inc pulled out last year following a high-profile fallout with Beijing over censorship.

The partnership will allow English-language input into Baidu’s search box to automatically activate Bing, whose search results will be delivered to Baidu’s Web pages, Baidu said in an emailed statement on Monday.

Analysts said the tie-up would help Bing to gain greater access to China’s more than 450 million Internet users and further dent Google’s business in the country.

“The cooperation between Baidu and Microsoft will further strengthen Baidu’s dominance in China’s search-engine market, and will also make Google’s business in China more difficult,” said Dong Xu, an analyst with Analysys International.

Baidu had 76 percent of the Chinese search market in the first quarter of 2011, according to Analysys International data. Bing has a negligible share of the market, while Google has nearly 20 percent.

The new tie-up, due to be launched this year, builds on existing cooperation between Baidu and Bing on mobile platforms and page results, said Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo.

SHANGHAI, June 30 (Reuters) – China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp may be in for a top management shakeup after shareholders voted against re-electing its chief executive to its board and the death of its chairman this week.

SMIC, China’s biggest contract chipmaker, said 58.2 percent of the shareholders voted against re-electing its Chief Executive David Wang to the board at a meeting on Wednesday.

Shares of the company were suspended on Thursday on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

“It seems unlikely to me that David would want to remain CEO if he can’t also be a director so I imagine there is probably a big management shake-up going on right now,” said Steven Pelayo, Regional Head of technology research at HSBC in Hong Kong.

Wang was hired in 2009 to replace SMIC’s founder Richard Chang. With a strong industry background, Wang was tasked with turning around the company which faces stiff competition from Taiwanese rivals TSMC and UMC .

“The company is considering the implications of the non-appointment of its executive director and will make further announcement(s) of any material developments,” SMIC said in a regulatory filing.

On Tuesday, SMIC said its chairman Jiang Shangzhou had passed away.

SHANGHAI, June 23 (Reuters) – U.S.-listed Chinese Internet stocks are trading at lofty valuations even after a slump in share prices on concerns over accounting scandals, and face an uncertain business outlook.

The accounting irregularities have drawn attention from regulators and brokers and some of the auditors involved are facing legal action. Trading in several Chinese companies has been halted on U.S. and Canadian exchanges, some for months, as company and exchange officials investigate suspicions of accounting fraud.

Some stocks such as Sina Corp , Dangdang , Renren and Youku are still trading at expensive valuations and analysts recommend investors would be better placed to pick up their relatively cheaper rivals Tencent or Baidu .

“Some of these newly listed stocks are losing money but people expect them to have an (unrealistic) quick turnaround in a short period of time,” said Benjamin Tam, a Hong Kong-based portfolio manager with Investors Group.

Dangdang, a small player in China’s e-commerce industry, is trading at 140 times its 2011 earnings per share. The shares have fallen 40 percent since the accounting scandal broke in June. Thomson Reuters Starmine data shows Dangdang trades at a 200 percent premium to its peers.

Youku.com, a loss-making video-sharing website in China, has lost more than 30 percent of its stock market value since the start of June. Qihoo 360 , provider of antivirus software in China, has also fallen about 30 percent. Qihoo trades at 135 times its 2011 earnings.

Firms such as Dangdang, Qihoo 360 and Youku were the darlings of the U.S. investors when they first debuted. U.S. investors were drawn to the growth potential of these firms who marketed themselves as the YouTube or Amazon of China.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The rash of accounting scandals that has hit U.S.-listed Chinese stocks has not curbed the appetite of private equity and venture capital firms looking for the next set of Chinese Internet stars in the mainland’s “So-Lo-Mo” and luxury e-commerce sectors.

PE and VC firms are still betting on firms in So-Lo-Mo, shorthand for the social, mobile and location-based services, including Digu.cn and UCWeb, because of the impending cheap tablet and smartphone boom in China.

“We invest into the early side, around pre-revenue. We already know there are risks but this just puts an extra layer of having to be extra careful with due-diligence,” Cyril Ebersweiler, partner at Ireland-based SOSventures, said of the accounting scandals.

Many of the firms caught in the scandals have seen their stocks plunge and the uncertainty has caused investor anxiety about most Chinese plays listed in the United States.

But VC firms, who invest into earlier stage companies, peg their hopes on hot start-ups still years away from listing.

“More and more people are betting on mobile because of smartphone use picking up,” said Harry Man, partner at Matrix Partners China. Matrix Partners China, an affiliate of Matrix Partners in the United States, has about $650 million of assets under management.

“You can see that there will clearly be big, big names evolving in that space,” Man said.

SHANGHAI, June 16 (Reuters) – Alibaba Group said on Thursday it has reorganised Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce website, into three separate companies, squashing any chance of a Taobao public offering.

The move to split Taobao comes as Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma grapples with its major shareholders, Yahoo Inc and Japan’s Softbank , over ownership of Alipay, another of the group’s crown jewels.

Taobao had 70 percent of all online sales transacted in China in the first quarter of the year and has been valued by Goldman Sachs at about $7 billion.

The firm will be split effective from Thursday, into three firms, namely its product search engine, eTao, its business to consumer website, Taobao Mall, and its consumer to consumer website, Taobao.com.

“We believe that reorganising Taobao into smaller companies will create more value for the whole industry, and therefore, more value to our company and shareholders,” Ma said in a letter to employees.

Ma also said he did not rule out taking Alibaba Group public in the future to reward employees and shareholders. Yahoo owns about 40 percent of Alibaba Group, while Softbank owns about a third. Alibaba.com is the group’s listed business-to-business unit.

The move to split Taobao into three means killing all chances that the firm will list and there is no listing timetable for Alibaba Group, said John Spelich, a spokesman for Alibaba Group.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Hackers who broke into Google’s Gmail system had access to some accounts for many months and could have been planning a more serious attack, said the cyber-security expert who first publicly revealed the incident.

Google said suspected Chinese hackers tried to steal the passwords of hundreds of Gmail account holders, including those of senior U.S. government officials, Chinese activists and journalists.

“They were not sophisticated or new, but they were invasive,” said Mila Parkour, who reported the cyberattack on her malware blog in February.

“Emailing phishing messages using details from read personal messages is invasive. Plus, they maintained full email access to mailboxes for a long time,” the Washington-based Parkour told Reuters. She uses a pseudonym to protect her identify.

“I covered one; they (Google) took it and uncovered many more of the same kind,” she said, noting the method of attack was invasive and targeted.

Parkour was initially involved in investigating one such phishing incident, referring to the practice where computer users are tricked into giving up sensitive information, and then started to gather data on other similar incidents, she said.

Google declined to comment on the details of Parkour’s report, but a source with knowledge of the matter said there were similarities between the attack she analyzed and the rest of the campaign. The source declined to be identified owing to the sensitivity of the issue.