Chinatrust Financial Holding Company, the biggest credit card issuer of Taiwan , said on Tuesday that it will buy a 30% stake in American International Group Inc.'s (AIG) Taiwan life insurance unit, Nan Shan Life Insurance Company, for $660 million from Hong Kong-based China Strategic Holdings.  On Oct 12, 2009, AIG announced the sale of its 98% stake in Nan Shan to an investor group consisting of China Strategic and Hong Kong-based Primus Financial for about $2.15 billion. This amount was lower than Chinatrust’s bid but, Chinatrust lost its bid to buy the business. As a result, Chinatrust was considering legal action against AIG.  In exchange for the Nan Shan deal, China Strategic would take a 9.95% Chinatrust stake, worth about 20.8 billion New Taiwan dollars ($647 million). According to Chinatrust management, the transaction will combine Chinatrust’s distribution network and Nan Shan ’s customer base to ...

Hana Biosciences is a company that is clearly moving in the right direction. The company’s lead product candidate, Marquibo, has been developed to help all cancer patients battle the deadly disease and with news released today, the concept has a great deal of backing.

The young California Company announced there is a definite agreement in place with accredited investors to sell units consisting of common stocks and warrants which will result in total cash proceeds of $12.4 million the closing of which is expected to occur prior to October 9th with Piper Jaffray and Co. serving as exclusive place agent for the transaction.

The net proceeds of this offering will be used to support the completion of the pivotal Phase 2 clinical trial of Marquibo in adult patients with Philadelphia Chromosome negative acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and lymphoblastic lymphoma in second relapse or who failed two prior lines of treatment. The

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Cereplast, Inc. announced this morning that the company has received financing from a European group of investors led by a major bank in Sweden. The company will use the funding to implement its new strategic plan to accelerate growth as well as finance manufacturing supply agreements for the company’s major customers.

“The additional capital allows us to move forward aggressively in a very challenging economic environment,” stated Frederic Scheer, Chairman and CEO of Cereplast. “This investor group clearly understands the rapidly growing market opportunity for bio-plastics and has endorsed our business model that leverages our proprietary product development capabilities and marketing strengths.”

“The new licensing structure has the potential to help Cereplast land contracts with large packaging companies, which require large quantities of resin in a short time,” commented Rene Nicolodi, senior sustainability analyst at Zuercher Kantonalbank (Zurich Cantonal Bank), which began looking at Cereplast two years ago as a

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