"Joint Venture Activities"

Well, they didn't seem to mind the coal for X-Mas . . . Before this year's Tet holiday several hundred workers at a joint venture run by Swedish engineering giant ABB were understandably miffed when they learned they'd be replaced by machines in several weeks, following the Tet holiday. What got them truly disgruntled, though, was receipt of pay envelopes they presumed to contain salary along with their annual Tet bonuses, which are traditionally about a month's pay. They opened the envelopes and found - nothing. A joint venture exec was quoted as "regretting the act," according to the outraged local press.

Finally, good vibes coming from the folks at Nike . . .Seems two managers at Dong Nai-based Nike sub-contractor Pouchen, instructed local designers and workers to create a specialized mold and then produce rubber replicas of a certain male body part - or, in the blunt language of an October 13 headline published in the state-run Vietnam News- "51 dildos." The batch reportedly fell into the hands of a Nike supervisor who destroyed them "in disgust." According to the newspaper, Nike fined sub-contractor Pouchen $5,000 over the incident. This followed the arrest of five Pouchen underlings who "threatened to go public on the managers with photographic evidence." The paper did not elaborate on the charges.

Attention Home office: Does your country manager say he would stop spending days getting his hair trimmed if only the U.S. Government extends EXIM? . . . Why American and Western companies crying for Vietnam financing is a mystery to Mr. Nguyen. They should be ringing up Japanese trading houses. Itochu, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and many others have been lending cash to non-Japanese firms, as well as bidding for World Bank and ADB projects on behalf of clients they hustled, for several years on now. Smaller traders like Nichimen, with a $30 million turnover last year, will lend in exchange for a piece of the deal, e.g. a contract to supply materials or machine parts. And Western bankers in Hanoi are quietly weeping that these trading houses are lending at rates that are "too competitive."