{ design@tive } information design

India, China, and Brazil saw bigger growth in the millionaire population last year than anywhere else, and wealth in the Asia-Pacific is expected to grow nearly 8 percent a year to 2012 despite a slowdown in the world at large, a survey showed. The number of millionaires in the Asia-Pacific grew 8.7 percent from a year ago to 2.8 million people and their combined wealth soared 12.5 percent to $9.5 trillion US dollars, excluding the value of their homes and consumables, Merrill Lynch and Capgemini said at a news conference in Singapore recently.

Asia was home to some of the world’s fastest-growing populations of millionaires, their annual World Wealth Report said, with India, China, Indonesia, South Korea and Singapore in the top ten in terms of growth.

The number of millionaires in India rose 22.7 percent to 123,000 people, the fastest growth in the world, and millionaires in China grew 20.3 percent to 415,000, making it home to the fifth-largest number of millionaires in the world, displacing France in that position.

Li Ka-shing, who controls a vast telecoms and property empire in Hong Kong and China, ranks as the world’s 11th richest man, according to Forbes.

Globally, millionaires grew 6 percent to 10.1 million people and their wealth rose 9.4 percent to $40.7 trillion in the same period, the Merrill/Capgemini report said.

“This year’s report found that the number of high net worth individuals (with net assets, excluding primary residences, of at least US$1.0 million), and the amount of wealth they control, continued to increase in 2007, with the greatest wealth being created in the emerging markets of India, China and Brazil,” said Mr Robert McCann, president of Global Wealth Management at Merrill Lynch in Paris.

Kong Eng Huat, Merrill Lynch’s Southeast Asia head of wealth management, said that in five years millionaires in Asia would have more combined wealth than those in Europe.

“Notwithstanding the recent dislocation in global markets, the robust economies in Asia are increasingly being driven by the domestic consumption story and continue to spur wealth creation in the region,” he said.

Asian millionaires’ wealth would grow annually by 7.9 percent to $13.9 trillion in 2012 against $13.5 trillion among Europe’s wealthiest, or 4.9 percent annual growth, the report said.

Stopbadware.org has released its latest findings on the prevalence of what it refers to as “badware,” and the upward trend is not surprising. What is a bit startling, however, is how much of it flows from just one nation.

Using data from Google’s Safe Browsing initiative, StopBadware.org analyzed over 200,000 websites found to engage in badware behavior. The analysis found that over half of the sites were based on Chinese network blocks, with a small number of blocks accounting for most of the infected sites in that country. The U.S. accounted for 21% of infected sites, and these were spread across a wide range of networks.

Compared to last year, the total number of sites was much higher, likely due both to increased scanning efforts by Google and to increased use of websites as a vector of malware infection. Several U.S.-based network blocks that were heavily infected last year, including that of web hosting company iPowerWeb, whose network block topped last year’s list, no longer host large numbers of infected sites.

With 52% of identified badware sites, China hosts far more sites than any other country. The U.S. is second with 21%. No other country hosts more than 4% of the world’s badware sites, though a total of 106 countries host at least one infected site and 38 countries host at least a hundred.

StopBadware.org also analyzed, for the seven countries topping the list of infections, the relationship between a country’s Internet-using population and its number of badware sites. It is difficult to find current numbers of Internet users by country, but using the most recent data (ranging from 2005 to 2008) from the CIA Fact Book, StopBadware.org calculated the badware sites per million Internet users for the world (210 sites per million) and for each of the seven countries:

These numbers reinforce the dominance of China as a malware host, with an infection rate over three times that of the world average. Russia also stands out with a disproportionately high rate (possibly skewed by rapid growth in Internet use not reflected in the CIA’s 2006 numbers), while the United States is just about average. Relative to their populations, the western European countries and the Republic of Korea are far less likely to host badware sites than other nations.

China has told its six telecommunications companies to merge their assets, allowing fixed-line carriers to expand into wireless services and creating three operators that will offer phone and Internet connections to 1.3 billion people.

Under the plan, the parent of China Telecom will buy a mobile phone network from the parent of China Unicom, which in turn will merge with the company that controls the China Netcom Group, the Ministry of Industry and Information said in a statement on Saturday. China will issue three third-generation wireless licenses after the overhaul is completed, it said.

The revamp will help China Telecom and Netcom expand their operations to compete against China Mobile in China, the world’s biggest wireless and Internet market by users.

China had 583.5 million mobile phone users at the end of April, exceeding the combined populations of the United States and Japan. But the $105 billion US dollars industry has room to expand because 6 out of 10 people in China still do not own mobile phones and 84 percent of the population lacks Web connections.

“Everyone has been waiting for it for over three years and now it is here,” said Kelvin Ho, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Nomura International, referring to the reorganization plan. “Creating three full-service phone companies offering both fixed and mobile services will help the fixed-line phone companies.”

The statement, jointly issued with the Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission, did not give a timeframe for the plan or financial details.

China Telecom said in a statement on Sunday that it was in talks to buy Unicom’s code-division multiple access technology business, or C.D.M.A. — the technology that is used in Japan and South Korea. The companies have not agreed on a price. In a separate release, Unicom confirmed those talks and also said it was discussing a merger with Netcom.

Trading in shares of Netcom, China Unicom and China Telecom was suspended on Friday at the companies’ request after a report from the official Xinhua News Agency prompted speculation that China was poised to announce its plans for the industry. Trading will continue to be suspended in Hong Kong pending further announcements, according to the statements.

China Mobile, which has nearly 400 million customers and is the world’s largest phone company by users, fell the most in two months in Hong Kong trading. The drop wiped out $12.8 billion in market value on concern that the company would face increased competition.

China Telecom, the nation’s biggest fixed-line company, will acquire Unicom’s smaller mobile-phone network, which provides services to 43 million customers based on the C.D.M.A. technology, according to the statement. China Telecom will also get the phone assets of China Satellite Communications, the statement said.

Unicom’s C.D.M.A. network, the smaller of the company’s two wireless networks, and its subscribers are worth about 111 billion yuan ($16 billion US dollars), according to estimates by Goldman Sachs in a March report.

The China Network Communications Group, Netcom’s parent, will merge with Unicom’s parent to offer fixed-line and mobile phone services based on the global system for mobile communications technology, or G.S.M., which is the technology used in most of the world, according to the statement.

Unicom had 125.4 million G.S.M. customers as of the end of April, according to the company. Netcom, the nation’s second-largest fixed-line company, had 108.7 million phone users.

China Mobile, which counts more than two-thirds of the nation’s mobile phone users as customers, will take control of the unlisted Tietong, the statement said, confirming the Xinhua report.

China’s telecom market has long suffered from a lack of competition under the de facto monopoly of China Mobile, which has been raking in huge revenues in recent years and taking business away from fixed-line carriers China Telecom and China Netcom as users go mobile.

Chinese regulators aim to boost competitiveness at fixed-line operators before the nation introduces 3G high-speed wireless services, which will require billions of dollars in investments for network equipment. The government has said it plans to offer 3G during the Olympic Games in August.