World Business Quick Take

Repayment calls from Europe probably will not cause a currency-exchange crunch among the country's banks because the lenders already have secured enough foreign-asset liquidity, the Financial Supervisory Service said. Foreign-currency cash liquidity at local banks gained fivefold at the end of October compared with the level at the end of June, the regulator said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. Borrowing, including loans and bonds from European countries, totaled US$43.6 billion at the end of October, accounting for 34 percent of overseas borrowing, it said. That compares with US$42 billion at the end of June, when Europe accounted for 36 percent of overseas borrowing, it said.

China's largest maker of telecommunications equipment said it was voluntarily limiting its business activity in Iran because of the "increasingly complex situation" there. Huawei Technologies Ltd said it was no longer seeking new clients and was limiting its business with existing clients. It said in a statement on its Web site that it would continue to provide necessary services relating to communication networks that are in accordance with delivery or have already been delivered. The Wall Street Journal reported in October that Huawei's business grew in Iran following a pullback by Western companies afterwards the government's bloody crackdown on demonstrators in 2009.

The acquisition of US firm Success Factors

The acquisition of US firm Success Factors by SAP will make the German software giant No. 1 in "cloud computing" and show a profit from 2013, Jim Hagemann Snabe, one of SAP's two co--executives, said in an interview with the financial weekly Focus on Saturday. SAP, the world's leader in professional software, announced last week that it would acquire Success Factors for US$3.4 billion. Success Factors specializes in cloud computing, which involves managing on the Internet data in other words stored on distant servers. It eliminates the need for customers to keep data on their own computers or servers.

Pope Benedict XVI said on Saturday that in the business world, transparency and the search for profit were compatible, speaking at a time when Italy and the eurozone faces deep financial woes. "In the field of economics and finance, fair intentions, transparency and the search for good results are consistent and should never be separated," the pontiff said in the Vatican. "The economy and the market should never be separated from solidarity." He was speaking as 3,000 representatives of Italian cooperative associations attended a mass at St Peter's Basilica, 120 years since the encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed the condition of the working class, was issued.