  In the presence of large New Physics contributions to loop-induced b->s
transitions, sizable direct CP violation in B-> phi K decays is expected on
general grounds. We compute explicitly CP-violating effects using QCD
factorization and find that, even in the restricted case in which New Physics
has the same penguin structure as the Standard Model, the rate asymmetry can be
of order one. We briefly discuss a more general scenario and comment on the
inclusion of power-suppressed corrections to factorization.
