Foreign Owned Corporations

SHANGHAI -- Several large U.S. corporations have been ensnared in China's anticorruption drive, according to state-run news organizations, which reported details Friday of a bribery investigation. Some of the 22 people detained because of allegations that they accepted $500,000 in bribes from four Chinese computer-network equipment companies were employees of McDonald's Corp., Whirlpool Corp. and consulting firm McKinsey & Co.

As chief executive of Avery Dennison Corp., Charles Miller wanted to spread the Pasadena company's office products to Asia. But he balked when he thought about the hassle of sitting around in foreign airports wasting time. He turned to Air Group Inc., a Van Nuys company that manages corporate jets and arranges charters for businesses and wealthy individuals. Private jets enabled him to fly to Shanghai, Beijing and Tokyo and back within a few days. He could work comfortably and even get in a nap.

European companies would be allowed to hold larger stakes in U.S. airlines under a tentative agreement reached Friday between the U.S. and the European Union. The deal also would give carriers more freedom to choose transatlantic routes and potentially lead to lower fares. The agreement, announced by the Transportation Department, would allow European airlines to fly from anywhere in the EU to any point in the U.S., and vice versa.

All foreign companies operating huge crude projects in Venezuela's Orinoco reserve have agreed to cede operational control to the state, Venezuela's oil company said, another step in President Hugo Chavez's nationalization push. State oil company Petroleos de Venezuela said Thursday that U.S. companies Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips agreed to meet a May 1 deadline decreed by Chavez to hand over operations to PDVSA in two of the four targeted projects.

Chinese lawmakers approved a tax overhaul Friday that would eventually end nearly three decades of preferential treatment for foreign companies. The measure is likely to pinch a variety of U.S. and other foreign corporations, particularly larger manufacturers, whose sales and profits have been growing robustly in China. But analysts don't expect a significant slowdown in foreign corporate investment in China, given the country's large market, extensive supply chain and rapid growth.

China approved four foreign banks to begin local currency services to individual Chinese customers, opening access to the country's $4 trillion in household savings and surging demand for credit cards and other financial services. The four banks approved are the locally incorporated entities of Citigroup Inc., HSBC Holdings' Hongkong & Shanghai Banking Corp., Standard Chartered and Bank of East Asia, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said.

Venezuela threatened Tuesday not to compensate some foreign oil companies in its planned takeover of their multibillion-dollar projects in the OPEC nation's vast Orinoco reserve. The warning from the oil minister has intensified the pressure the leftist government of President Hugo Chavez has exerted on some of the world's largest companies as they negotiate before a June deadline over the nationalizations. "We are all talking.

Four major oil companies Wednesday agreed to cede control of Venezuela's last remaining privately run oil projects to President Hugo Chavez's government, but ConocoPhillips resisted, prompting warnings that its fields could be taken over outright. Markets have waited to see whether the companies, which process heavy oil in the Orinoco River basin, would remain as minority partners after Chavez decreed last month that their fields be nationalized May 1.

Venezuela stripped the world's biggest oil companies of operational control over massive Orinoco Belt crude projects Tuesday, sending in workers backed by troops to occupy the multibillion-dollar installations. Rallying thousands of workers dressed in the signature red of his self-styled revolution, President Hugo Chavez hailed what he called the end of U.S.-prescribed policies that had opened up the largest oil reserves in the hemisphere to foreign investment.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, which plans to drop a requirement that foreign companies reconcile their financial statements with U.S. accounting standards, found discrepancies in how businesses follow international rules. Overseas companies in the same industry sometimes present figures on profit and revenue differently, the agency said in a staff report released Tuesday. The regulator said it also found instances in which disclosures were "missing, unclear or generic."