Business news for Tue, 25 Dec 2007 & with word bid. 5 news.

ALLIANCE Group, controlled by oil entrepreneur Musa Bazhaev, and billionaire OAO Polymetal owner Suleiman Kerimov, plans to bid for a stake worth US$622 million in OAO Polyus Gold, Russia's biggest miner of the metal. ZAO KM Invest, the manager of jointly held assets of Mikhail Prokhorov and Vladimir Potanin, is selling the 7.4-percent stake because they plan to pursue investments separately, Bloomberg News reported. Their wrangling has delayed Polyus's plans to spin off its least-developed mining assets. Polyus has dropped 9.5 percent this year in London. "Polyus shares have had a very mediocre year, while gold has risen rapidly," said Yury Vlasov, an analyst with Renaissance Capital in Moscow. "The common feeling is Polyus will start to copy that dynamic." Alliance's ZAO Alliance-Prom unit has sent a letter to KM Invest, Moscow-based Alliance said yesterday in a statement. Nafta Moskva Ltd, Kerimov's holding company, also sent a letter, Anton Averin, head

Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain yesterday made his first significant move to address the firm's ongoing subprime woes by accepting a $6.2 billion cash infusion and selling a majority stake in its middle-market lending arm to GE Capital. The bid for...

SICHUAN Changhong Electrical Co acquired a controlling stake of Huayi Compressor Co through an auction yesterday to become the compressor maker's biggest shareholder, Changhong said in a statement today. The country's second-largest television maker paid 234 million yuan (US$32 million) for 29.92-percent stake in the Jiangxi-based Huayi which produces compressors for air conditioners and refrigerators, it said in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Changhong's net profit in the first nine months of this year totaled 340 million yuan, jumping 39 percent from a year earlier on the booming electronics market. The TV maker has grabbed the lion's share of government-financed home appliance sales in rural areas. China promised to give farmers subsidies, about 13 percent, for buying household electrical appliances, in a bid to stimulate sluggish rural consumption and reduce the rising trade surplus, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce said over the weekend.

Raul Castro said Monday that Communist Party leaders support his brother Fidel's re-election to parliament, saying he is exercising two hours daily and gaining weight while keeping his mind healthy with reading and writing.

India's third-largest software firm, Wipro Ltd., is expected to bid for Capgemini by the end of January in a deal valuing the French consulting firm between US$6.4 billion to US$7 billion, a newspaper reported Monday quoting banking sources.