Australia eyes Buddha and baccarat to lure Chinese tourists

Australia eyes Buddha and baccarat to lure Chinese tourists

Mon, Jun 17 2013

By Jane Wardell

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s coastal Wyong region outside Sydney, a pretty stretch of pristine beaches and wildlife-filled wetlands, isn’t high on the travel agenda of most Chinese tourists.

But the local mayor and a Chinese businessman have big plans to change that – by building a A$500 million ($480 million) theme park that will include a full-size replica of Beijing’s Forbidden City and a nine-storey temple housing a giant Buddha. Read more of this post

China Insiders Sell Most Shares in May in 4 Years, UBS Says

China Insiders Sell Most Shares in May in 4 Years, UBS Says

Major shareholders, senior management and individuals with stakes of more than 5 percent sold a net 24.7 billion yuan ($4 billion) of Chinese A shares in May, the most for a month since June 2009, UBS AG said.

The biggest sales were in computer-related shares, media and “special equipment” sectors, UBS strategists including Qin Xia wrote in a report dated today. Net stakes rose only in chemical raw materials and telecom operations, while the sell-off in smaller companies as a percentage of the free-float reached new post-2008 highs, they wrote.

Insiders sold as the Shanghai Composite Index climbed 5.6 percent in May, the biggest advance since December, and as more locked-up shares became tradable. The benchmark index has slumped 6.5 percent in June as data from exports to industrial production pointed to slowing growth and higher money-market rates signaled tighter liquidity. Read more of this post

China Foreign-Investment Gains Ease as Economic Slowdown Deepens

China Foreign-Investment Gains Ease as Economic Slowdown Deepens

Foreign direct investment in China rose in May by the least in four months, a sign of concern that growth is slowing in the world’s second-biggest economy.

Inbound non-financial investment increased 0.3 percent from a year earlier to $9.26 billion, the Ministry of Commerce said today in a statement in Beijing, after a 0.4 percent gain in April. China’s outbound investment rose 20 percent in the first five months of the year to $34.3 billion, compared with a 27.4 percent pace in January-April.

The report follows data indicating capital inflows slowed last month while growth decelerated in exports, industrial production and lending. Confidence is fading in an economic rebound this quarter, with investment banks from Morgan Stanley to Barclays Plc cutting their 2013 expansion forecasts. Read more of this post

GM Vows to Show China That Cadillac of Autos Isn’t Audi

GM Vows to Show China That Cadillac of Autos Isn’t Audi

As Vincent Qiu weighed his options for buying a new sport-utility vehicle in Beijing, he was drawn to the Cadillac SRX.

The SUV’s aggressive chrome grille, massive vertical headlamps and sharp creases along the body make the vehicle unique on China roads, where the rounded and organic shapes of Volkswagen AG (VOW)’s Audi and General Motors Co. (GM)’s Buick are popular.

“You can easily spot Audis on the roads, but not Cadillacs,” Qiu, 41, who runs an office-supply company, said last week in an interview. “But it is a big-ticket purchase and in the end my wife talked me into playing it safe and buying something that is more popular.” He bought an Audi Q5. Read more of this post

China Emission Trading Experiment Unlikely to Ease Cities’ Smog

China Emission Trading Experiment Unlikely to Ease Cities’ Smog

China’s plan to set up markets to trade emissions will make it second only to Europe in efforts to put a price on pumping carbon into the atmosphere. For cities choking on the nation’s smog, expect little relief.

Seven pilot carbon-trading programs are scheduled to start this year, with the first opening today in Shenzhen, followed by Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Tianjin, Chongqing and Hubei. They are set to regulate 800 million to 1 billion tons of emissions by 2015 in the world’s biggest cap-and-trade program after Europe’s, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Read more of this post

Craft Brewers Chug Away Heady Pressure by Bankers to Sell

Craft Brewers Chug Away Heady Pressure by Bankers to Sell

SweetWater Brewing Co. Chief Executive Officer Freddy Bensch gets plenty of solicitations from potential acquirers.

One stands out: a handwritten note with a crisp $50 bill from a banker begging for a meeting. The greenback was so pristine and odd a gesture that Bensch wondered if it was real.

“We took that $50 bill over to the pub and spent it on beers and they accepted it,” said Bensch, who co-founded the maker of hoppy 420 Extra Pale Ale and chocolaty Exodus Porter with a college roommate. “We didn’t accept the meeting. We toasted him when we were buying beers with his 50.” Read more of this post

Rubber Poised for Record Glut as Shippers End Curbs

Rubber Poised for Record Glut as Shippers End Curbs: Commodities

Rubber is headed for the biggest glut on record, prolonging the bear market that began in April, as supply exceeds demand for a third year and Southeast Asian exporters ended curbs on shipments.

The surplus will expand 57 percent to 490,000 metric tons this year, enough to meet U.S. demand for six months, according to RCMA Commodities Asia Group, the Singapore-based company that has traded rubber for nine decades. Futures in Tokyo, a global benchmark, will drop at least another 4.9 percent to 225 yen a kilogram ($2,373 a ton) by the end of December, according to the median of 16 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Five anticipate 200 yen, a price last seen in 2009. Read more of this post

EU Car Sales Fall to 20-Year Low as Joblessness at Record

EU Car Sales Fall to 20-Year Low as Joblessness at Record

European Union car sales in May fell to a 20-year low as rising joblessness caused by a recession in the euro region contributed to falling demand at PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG), Renault SA (RNO) and General Motors Co. (GM)

Registrations in the 27-member EU dropped 5.9 percent to 1.04 million vehicles from 1.11 million cars a year earlier, reaching the lowest level for the month since 1993, the Brussels-based European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, or ACEA, said today in a statement. Including figures from Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, sales in May fell 5.9 percent to 1.08 million cars. Read more of this post

Protests Show Brazilian Dream Fading as Rousseff Popularity Ebbs

Protests Show Brazilian Dream Fading as Rousseff Popularity Ebbs

Francisco Soares, a 32-year-old Brasilia electrician, felt good about life two years ago when he started commuting in his first car, blasting the music and passing packed buses. Since then, bills started piling up, the cost of living jumped and last week he had to sell his wheels.

After a decade that saw 40 million people rise from poverty, Brazil’s middle class finds itself squeezed by faster inflation, rising debt and a weaker currency. Consumers are spending less at supermarkets and hairdressers as the classic weekend event, a prime cut barbecue, becomes a stretch for some. Continuing a wave of protests sparked by an increase in bus fares, demonstrators surrounded Congress in Brasilia yesterday and set a car on fire in Rio de Janeiro as tens of thousands marched in major cities. Read more of this post

Road building revival offers rare hope for India infrastructure overhaul

Road building revival offers rare hope for India infrastructure overhaul

Mon, Jun 17 2013

By Matthias Williams and Swati Pandey

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI (Reuters) – K. Ramchand, managing director at one of India’s biggest road builders, is doing something unusual to help dispel the gloom pervading much of the country’s infrastructure sector today: bidding for new projects.

His company, IL&FS Transportation Networks Ltd (ILFT.NS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), signed a $300 million contract in April to build a six-lane highway. The project will link an eastern industrial zone afflicted by some of India’s worst traffic snarls to mining districts such as Dhanbad, the nation’s coal capital. Read more of this post

Analysis: Companies may turn to courts on U.S. natural gas export push

Analysis: Companies may turn to courts on U.S. natural gas export push

1:59am EDT

By Ayesha Rascoe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. companies hoping to export natural gas are frustrated by lengthy delays and rule changes as they await U.S. Department of Energy approval of their applications and may turn to the courts to speed up the process.

Both the slow pace of decisions on applications to ship U.S. liquefied natural gas abroad and the process for making those decisions could be challenged, legal sources say.

Potential strategies could be laid out during a House of Representatives panel on Tuesday, which will focus on the current impediments to U.S. LNG exports. Read more of this post

How old-economy firm Haier succeeded without Western-style razzmatazz

How old-economy firm succeeded without Western-style razzmatazz

Created: 2013-6-18

Author:Bill Fischer, Umberto Lago, and Fang Liu

LESS than 30 years from near-bankruptcy to global leadership; reinvention at least three times; trusting nearly 80,000 people to accept leadership roles in self-organizing, autonomous work units. Is it yet another new economy, Silicon Valley razzamatazz success story? Not at all.  This is about a Chinese company making home appliances, and it’s an incredible story about what is possible in old-economy, commodity markets.
Read more of this post

Online financial services threaten China’s traditional banks

Online financial services threaten China’s traditional banks

Kung Chun-jung and Staff Reporter

2013-06-16

The rapid emergence of the internet industry in China, which provides a broad range of online financial services, has posed a severe threat to the traditional banking and financial sectors, the money page of Chinese internet portal NetEase reports.

The emerging trend of online third-party payments, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and P2P microfinance services has significantly eaten into the benefits offered by the established financial sector, the report said. Read more of this post

Foreign fast food chains in China experiencing confidence crisis

Foreign fast food chains in China experiencing confidence crisis

Staff Reporter

2013-06-18

Foreign fast food chains are facing a series of challenges that have hit their sales in China, which has become a key market after the companies’ rapid expansion in the country, the financial site of Chinese portal Tencent reported.

Yum Brands, which owns chains including KFC and Pizza Hut and controls 0.2% of the fast food market in China, posted a 13% drop in same-store sales at its over 5,200 outlets across the country in March, and forecast a further fall of 29% in April. Read more of this post

Chinese regulators seek to increase the public’s role in rooting out IPO fraud

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Chinese regulators seek to increase the public’s role in rooting out IPO fraud

China likes to keep its business to itself, often going so far as to label some corporate finances as state secrets. Few places have been more secretive than the securities market, where the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) passes opaque judgments on which firms get to IPO, and when.

After years of poor performance of mainland exchanges, where companies are frequently found to be ridden with fraud, China’s top securities regulator has finally deigned to give the public a glimpse of the companies they could buy into.  Read more of this post

Canada has more Subway stores per capita than it does in the United States and store traffic in Canada is higher than at U.S. outlets

Subway thrives in Canada while avoiding beverage wars

Hollie Shaw | 13/06/17 | Last Updated: 13/06/17 5:29 PM ET

Peter J. Thompson/National PostFred DeLuca, president and co-founder of Subway at the franchise’s 127 Bremner Boulevard Toronto location. Mr. DeLuca borrowed US$1,000 to start the business with a friend in 1965.

TORONTO • Subway Restaurants keeps growing steadily in Canada even though the fast-food sandwich purveyor has not followed rivals McDonald’s and Tim Hortons in appealing to coffee-loving Canadians. Read more of this post