Richard Li quits Hutchison posts

Li also stepped down, effective immediately, as executive director of Hongkong Electric Holdings Ltd., a Hutchison subsidiary.

Li, the entrepreneurial son of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing, had confirmed on February 29 — soon after London-based Cable & Wireless Plc agreed to sell its 54 per cent-owned Hong Kong unit to CyberWorks — that he would resign from the Hutchison board, as Hutchison would then become a direct competitor to the merged company in both fixed-line and mobile phone services.

NTT to buy Verico: Japanese phone company Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. will go ahead with its $5.5 billion purchase of Verio Inc, an Internet web-hosting concern, after winning support from a US government panel that had been badly divided over the deal’s national-security implications.

The recommendation to approve the plan, expected to be passed along to President Clinton in coming days, was reached after intense debate within the Clinton administration. The decision effectively marks the end of a secretive 75-day review period that led to gyrations of Verio’s stock price and provoked fears among investors and many in the Internet industry that the high-profile purchase might collapse.

President Clinton is expected to sign off on a detailed security agreement hammered out between the two companies and officials from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, an obscure multi-agency panel headed by the Treasury Department.