Jiji Press Daily Japan Business News Briefs (March 16)

LIVEDOOR FOUNDER HORIE GETS 30-MONTH PRISON SENTENCE–Livedoor Co. founder Takafumi Horie, who grabbed public attention with his defiant attitude toward the establishment, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for securities law violations.

Tokyo District Court found the 34-year-old Internet business entrepreneur guilty of making a false financial statement by inflating Livedoor group profits, spreading false information to boost the share price of a group firm and cheating investors with false information. The accused, claiming his total innocence, appealed against the ruling immediately.

SONY, STANFORD UNIV. JOIN HANDS ON DISEASE RESEARCH USING PS3– Sony Corp. and Stanford University said they have agreed on a program to allow users of Sony’s PlayStation 3 to donate their game machine’s down time to Stanford researchers to find cure for such intractable illnesses as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s.

The PS3 consoles, mounted with a high-performance processor Cell Broadband Engine, enable grid computing as they can be linked together via the Internet to create a virtual computer when users are not playing games on them.

MATSUSHITA SET TO SELL JVC SHARES TO U.S. FUND TPG–Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. is poised to sell its shareholdings in Victor Co. of Japan , a Matsushita unit known as JVC, to U.S. investment fund Texas Pacific Group, informed sources said.

The Japanese consumer electronics giant, with a 52.4 pct stake in the troubled unit, is in a final stage of negotiations with TPG in the hope of striking a deal by the end of this month, the sources said. Though details of the JVC sale, such as the number of shares to be sold, have yet to be fixed, it is very likely that JVC will depart from the Matsushita group to undergo business restructuring led by TPG, they said.

JAPAN FY ’07 ELECTRIC MACHINERY OUTPUT SEEN DOWN 0.7 PCT– Combined production of household electric appliances and industry- use heavy electric machinery in Japan in fiscal 2007 is expected to fall 0.7 pct year on year to 5,370.1 billion yen, the first drop in four years, an industry group said.

In the year starting next month, production of household electric appliances is seen increasing 0.7 pct to 1,835.3 billion yen, the first rise in three years, on the back of steady demand for products with advanced functions, but output of heavy electric machinery is expected to drop 1.3 pct to 3,534.8 billion yen, the Japan Electrical Manufacturers’ Association said.

KDDI TO CLOSE HISTORIC SATELLITE EARTH STATION–KDDI Corp.’s Ibaraki Earth Station, which allowed the Japanese to witness the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy and other overseas historic events live, is to be shut down.

The station was the first in Japan to receive live broadcast signals from the United States via satellite. In an experiment in 1963, the first television pictures to reach the station, and be televised immediately, were of the Kennedy assassination. The station will close on March 31, ending 44 years of history.END

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