news blog from Shelly

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Czech Home Credit to boost Russian ops, raise Chinese lending

In Russia, where it has been since 2002 and which is its largest market by customers, Home Credit will boost its presence this year, said Milan Tomanek, head of group communication for Home Credit's owner PPF."Until the end of this year only, the Russian Home Credit wants to increase the number of its offices to 840," Tomanek said.Home Credit's Chinese operations want to double the size of its lending. It lent out 730 million Chinese Yuan ($114.4 million) in the first half of 2011, he said.The group is also planning to double its presence in China, start operations in India next month and move into Indonesia next year, Tomanek said.Tomanek declined to comment on reports that PPF, which is owned by the richest Czech Petr Kellner, wants to float a share of the European and Russian division Home Credit B.V.Sources told Reuters in July that Home Credit was mulling an initial public offering by possibly selling a 25 percent stake.A banking source told Reuters the market window is closed now and it might not happen until next year.Home Credit B.V., which also operates in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Belarus, had net interest income of 339 million euros ($464.6 million) in the first half of 2011 and net profit of 133 million euros.Vietnamese and Chinese branches of Home Credit are not part of Home Credit B.V. ($1=0.730 Euros=6.382 Chinese Yuan)

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UPDATE 1-Wealth managers pick Apple over RIM devices

* Mobile devices key for clients, wealth managers sayBy Ashley LauNEW YORK, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Wealth managers prefer using Apple (AAPL.O) products for business rather than Research in Motion's (RIMM.O) BlackBerry devices, a survey by Aite Group showed on Thursday.Of 402 financial advisers polled, 45 percent said they would choose an Apple iPhone or iPad, while 14 percent would pick a BlackBerry.The research firm, which focuses on financial services, conducted the survey in March, well before the recent RIM outage which left large pockets of BlackBerry users around the world without access to email and other functions."I'm not surprised that Apple had made inroads, but I am surprised that the statistic was that weighted against the BlackBerry," said Phil Michaels, head of business development at Aegis Capital Corp.Michaels said about 90 percent of the advisers at his company use BlackBerry smartphones because of the ease of key functions and integrated calendar availability."I always thought BlackBerrys were still preferred on the business side and Apple was more preferred on the individual user side - the creative, non-business side," he said.The study found that using mobile devices was increasingly important to advisers, many of whom service clients with hand-held devices who have access to online brokerage services.Nearly half the advisers surveyed said having access to business applications was an "important" or "very important" part of their technology strategy for 2011.