Bond market risks controllable, regulator says

    RISKS on China’s bond market are controllable overall, although the possibility of individual cases of default cannot be ruled out, Zhang Xiaojun, spokesman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said Friday.

    The comments came after Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy Science & Technology Co., a Chinese solar-equipment maker, became the first domestic corporate bond default when it failed to meet interest repayments two weeks ago. On March 7, Shanghai Chaori failed to pay all of the coupons due on the five-year bond sold two years ago as it failed to solve its liquidity crisis through normal corporate operation.

    Sinopec buys LPG from Phillips 66

    SINOPEC Corp., China’s largest refiner, has entered a long-term deal to buy liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Phillips 66.

    LPG can be used for heating, transportation fuel or for making petrochemicals. “It has further diversified the chemical feedstock supply channels for Sinopec,” Dai Houliang, Sinopec’s senior vice president, said in a statement Friday.

    Ping An Insurance’s profit jumps 40%

    PING An Insurance (Group) Co. of China Ltd., China’s second-largest insurer by market value, Friday posted a 40.4 percent rise in annual earnings, as investment income surged on the back of a recovery in China’s stock market.

    Ping An made a net profit of 28.15 billion yuan (US$4.58 billion) for 2013, the Shenzhen-based firm said. Ping An said investment income rose 105 percent to 52.65 billion yuan in 2013, while premium and policy fee income was 240.2 billion yuan, up 12.7 percent from a year earlier.

    Huawei, ZTE ‘did not violate’ patents

    HTC Corp. and others did not violate digital camera patents owned by FlashPoint Technology to make their smartphones, the U.S. International Trade Commission said Friday.

    FlashPoint Technology, which filed the complaint in 2012, had accused HTC, Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. of infringing four patents for smartphone cameras. One of the patents was dropped as the case proceeded. An administrative law judge found in a preliminary decision in 2013 that two HTC smartphones infringed upon one FlashPoint patent, while Huawei and ZTE were cleared. The commission, which reviewed the judge’s ruling, said in a final decision Friday that none of the accused firms infringed the patents and it terminated the investigation.