ABB, the world's leading power and automation technology group, will invest up to US$50 million for expansion in West China in the next three years.

"We are setting up more and more businesses in the west," Fred Kindle, president and CEO of the Zurich-based ABB Group, told reporters yesterday in Beijing.

The company, the world's biggest maker of power transformers, has two major ventures in Xi'an and two in Chongqing including its latest investment of US$30 million is in Jiangjin, a place near Chongqing.

Its western presence in China also includes new sales offices in places like Hohhot and Urumqi, capital cities of Northwest China's two autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang.

This year, ABB's branch offices across the country that are already opened or for which preparations are under way have grown to 30 from 23.

In the coming weeks, Kindle disclosed, the company plans to build two more ventures, also in the west, but refused to give further details.

As outlined in its China development blueprint in the run-up to 2008, ABB is to spend at least US$100 million to start new product lines and factories in China for a three-year period from now.

"And a proportion of 30 to 50 percent (of the total investment) will be poured into the western region, to go with China's Go-West initiative," Peter Leupp, chairman of ABB Group, yesterday told China Daily after the news briefing.

Globally, ABB had around US$6 billion in orders and revenues in the second quarter of this year and posted US$126 million in net income.

"We see that the Americas are doing very well, Europe is developing in the right direction and Asia - particularly India and China - is doing very well," Kindle said in a speech, adding the company will release its global business growth outline through 2009 on September 6.

The company aims to sell US$4 billion worth of products to the Chinese market before 2008. Its orders reached US$2.6 billion in China last year.

Kindle, 45, took over as CEO of ABB Group in January from Juergen Dormann, who remains chairman of ABB's board of directors.

In Kindle's philosophy, "running a company is like managing a family."

"A good leader should not only have good logical and rational thinking, but also good emotions to communicate with the members, and get people to believe in you," Kindle said.

(China Daily August 31, 2005)