Hans Lombardo

The credibility of Hong Kong’s technology-oriented Applied Research Fund has been tarnished by the alleged financial dealings of a former HSBC employee. According to several sources, a former investment officer of ARF fund manager HSBC Private Equity Management Ltd had financial dealings with a beneficiary company, Wafer Systems Holdings Ltd, which was granted HK$43 million […]

In a global petition campaign for the tenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, the campaign’s Web site June4.org has received 20,000 electronic signatures from 120 countries, according to the organizers. The petition, led by Wang Dan, student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, calls for the Chinese government to take responsibility for the […]

In the wake of the Cox Report and the NATO bombing of China’s Belgrade embassy, US-China relations are at their lowest point in decades causing concern in the Hong Kong electronic commerce industry that a possible US ban on technology exports to China will include the Special Administrative Region (SAR). Some Hong Kong IT professionals […]

In a seething attack on the Cox Report, the Chinese government yesterday declared that performance data on US nuclear warheads was available on the Web and in printed publications. Zhao Qizheng, the information minister for China’s State Council, told reporters in press conference that “performance data on the seven types of nuclear warheads–W56, W62, W70, […]

Hewlett-Packard (HP), and its partner GTE CyberTrust, Friday were awarded a HK$17.2 million (US$2.2 million) contract from the Hongkong Post to design, develop and implement a public key infrastructure (PKI). Scheduled for deployment in December, the PKI provide the Hongkong Post with the ability to serve as a public certification authority (CA). According to the […]

Chinese portal ChinaByte, a joint venture between Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and People’s Daily Newspaper, will replace CommTouch’s e-mail service with the portal services of Hong Kong startup Outblaze. The two parties Friday revealed their partnership just over a week after Outblaze signed a joint venture agreement with Hong Kong publicly listed China Rich Holdings […]

In the past week, an argument has broken out in Taiwan regarding the re-launch of the Taiwan.com portal. Owners of the Taiwan.com name, Hong Kong-based China.com Corp. (CCC), and a Taiwanese CD-ROM manufacturer, CMC Magnetics Corp., formally announce last week that they had partnered to operate the portal in Taiwan. However, controversy erupted in Taiwan’s […]

Vint Cerf, Internet guru and MCI Worldcom’s senior vice president for Internet architecture and technology, said in an interview with internetnews.com that the key to developing the Internet in Asia, as with any other region, is to promote private investment. “Almost anywhere in the world, liberalized and competitive markets have the most growth,” said Cerf […]

China.com, the portal that was allegedly blocked from mainland Chinese users by the Chinese government, went back online last week, according to sources in China. ChinaBuzz, the China-based English Web-zine that first broke the blockage story on May 13, reported on Friday that the site was back online. However, according to a knowledgeable source, the […]

To penetrate the Australian market, Pacific Internet Ltd. (NASDAQ: PCNTF) has purchased the business of Mira Networking Pty Ltd, an ISP in Australia. “Mira Networking is one of the finest providers of Internet access services in Australia making the company an ideal addition to Pacific Internet. This acquisition is the first of many steps that […]

China’s Minister of Information Industry (MII), Wu Jichuan, Tuesday opened the 1999 China Internet Conference and Exhibition. The China Daily reports that, at the opening, Wu declared that the Internet was a global phenomenon and an important information infrastructure for the next century. Moreover, he indicated that China would begin to liberalize its IT industry […]

Regional ISP Pacific Internet Ltd (NASDAQ: PCNTF) announced that it has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a public offering of 2,125,000 ordinary shares. Of the 2,125,000 shares being offered, 212,500 shares are being sold by Pacific Internet (PacNet) and 1,912,500 shares are being sold by its direct shareholders, Sembawang Ventures and […]