BUSINESS BRIEFS

head of its Australia business would step down later this year and it had not yet decided on a replacement.

David Clarke, who led Investec Bank Australia for four years, had given six months’ notice, spokeswoman Ursula Nobrega said yesterday.

“Australia contributed 11 percent of Investec’s 2012 revenue, according to Thomson Reuters data, compared with 59 percent from South Africa and 30 percent from Britain and Europe. – Reuters

Passenger-data scheme rejected

BRUSSELS: The European Parliament rejected a plan yesterday to create a European system for storing airline passengers’ personal details, a move to help fight crime and terrorism.

The proposal would require airlines to provide HARARE: Zimbabwe’s empowerment minister said he would not order a new wave of business seizures without giving proper compensation.

Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said yesterday reports that ignited alarm in the nation’s foreign- and white-owned businesses that shares would be seized without payment were “misleading and misguided”.

Empowerment laws passed in 2007 require that 51 percent of shareholding of foreign and white-owned firms be given to black Zimbabweans.

The law has seen industries and mining enterprises yield to black control under buy-out arrangements.

The laws define whites born in Zimbabwe as not being “indigenous” citizens.

Kasukuwere said the government was “engaging companies to bring them in line” with the laws, and when seizing firms it would meet the laws to pay for the shares. – Sapa-AP European governments with data including passengers’ phone numbers, addresses and credit card details when entering or leaving the 27-country EU. Such information is already shared with the US, but not with all other EU states.

But the parliament’s civil liberties committee voted against the scheme by 30 votes to 25, concluding that an EU passenger data system would breach citizens’ fundamental rights. – Reuters

MTN subscribers

MTN said today its subscribers increased by 3 percent in the first quarter of the year, bringing its customer base to 195.4 million people across Africa and the Middle East.

The company said it increased its subscribers across most of its major countries, with one of the biggest advances seen in Nigeria, where its customer base grew by 8 percent, or 3.9 million subscribers, from the previous quarter.

Its home market bucked the trend, however, seeing a decrease of nearly 2 percent or 470 000. – Reuters