Gold Smuggling Takes Off in India; Curbs on Imports Aim at Supporting Rupee; The Case of the Golden Staples

July 25, 2013, 2:01 p.m. ET

Gold Smuggling Takes Off in India

Curbs on Imports Aim at Supporting Rupee; The Case of the Golden Staples

BIMAN MUKHERJI and ARPAN MUKHERJEE

NEW DELHI—A fishing boat slid into the southern Indian coastal village of Kodikkarai late one evening in mid-June, carrying a cargo from Sri Lanka: a stack of gold bars weighing more than 40 pounds. Four men jumped off the boat and headed for waiting Jeeps. Unfortunately for them, government sleuths were there, tax officials say, nabbing the men before they could sell the gold in the nearby city of Chennai, a trading hub for the precious metal. Read more of this post

Thai Broken Rice: Bangkok’s splashy, costly subsidy scheme has been ineffective at helping poor farmers.

July 25, 2013, 12:34 p.m. ET

Thai Broken Rice

Bangkok’s splashy, costly subsidy scheme has been ineffective at helping poor farmers.

DAVID WALTER

Ask farmers in the village of Ban Laitung what they think of the Thai government’s rice subsidy scheme, and they tell you that actually, please, they’d prefer it if Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra stopped buying up rice harvests at prices 50% above market levels. In this corner of Isaan—Thailand’s poor northeastern region—Ms. Yingluck’s “rural development” scheme has not significantly improved residents’ lives. Read more of this post

New Zealand Dairy Giant Fonterra Has Troubles Away From Home; Seeking Solutions, Head of Unit Gets Down to Basics: Mucking Out Stalls

Updated July 25, 2013, 7:10 a.m. ET

New Zealand Dairy Giant Fonterra Has Troubles Away From Home

Seeking Solutions, Head of Unit Gets Down to Basics: Mucking Out Stalls

ROBB M. STEWART

MELBOURNE, Australia—One freezing evening in June, the new boss of Fonterra Cooperative Group Ltd.’s FCG.NZ +0.27% Australian unit began an unusual fact-finding mission. She stayed overnight on a farm in Gippsland, in Australia’s Victoria state, to help discover what had gone wrong in one of the New Zealand dairy giant’s biggest markets. As if in an episode of “Undercover Boss,” a reality-TV show in which the heads of some of America’s biggest companies slip anonymously into front-line jobs, Fonterra’s Australian managing director Judith Swales rose at dawn to milk some 200 cows in temperatures hovering near zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit). Ms. Swales—who as a child had often joined her milkman father on his morning rounds in Yorkshire, in the north of England—had plenty to think about as she ended the morning mucking out the dairy shed. Read more of this post

Toilet-Tissue ‘Desheeting’ Shrinks Rolls, Plumps Margins; If it seems like the toilet paper runs out more quickly, it might not be your imagination. “Desheeting” reducies the number of sheets on a roll or in a tissue box

Updated July 24, 2013, 9:39 p.m. ET

Toilet-Tissue ‘Desheeting’ Shrinks Rolls, Plumps Margins

Improved Product Means Fewer Sheets Needed to ‘Get the Job Done,’ Company Says

SERENA NG

Kimberly-Clark Corp. KMB +0.65% recently rolled out new Kleenex tissue that it says is 15% “bulkier.” It’s also stingier. Each box has 13% fewer sheets than before. Consumer products makers call this “desheeting”—reducing the number of sheets of toilet paper or tissues in each package while holding retail prices constant. Earlier this week, Kimberly-Clark executives told analysts that they expect the practice to benefit the company’s consumer-tissue unit in the second half of the year. Companies, particularly in the food business, have long shrunk packages as an alternative to hiking prices in the face of higher raw-material costs. Cereal boxes and bags of chips have in many cases become lighter over the years in what the food industry refers to as taking “weight out.” A regular Snickers bar now weighs 1.86 ounces, down from 2.07 ounces in the past, which Mars says was done to cut calories to 250 per bar. Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice is now sold in 59 ounce bottles, versus 64 ounce cartons prior to 2010. Read more of this post

GSK, corruption and the Byzantine world of Chinese politics

GSK, corruption and the Byzantine world of Chinese politics

Jul 25, 2013 12:54pm by Jamil Anderlini

Everything in China is political, even when it might not be. A series of seemingly unrelated corruption scandals in China all share a common thread that has got the political class in Beijing very excited and boosted speculation that an elite power struggle is under way within the ruling Communist party. The connections seem tenuous at first but spend enough time in the Byzantine world of Chinese politics and the logic starts to appear compelling. Read more of this post

World’s Tallest Skyscraper Remains a Hole in Chinese Ground

World’s Tallest Skyscraper Remains a Hole in Chinese Ground

Ground was broken for the world’s tallest skyscraper in an empty field in China’s Hunan Province last weekend. It was a festive and audacious occasion: the Broad Group, developer of the Sky City project, promised to build 202 floors stretched over 838 meters (2,749 feet) in a mere 10 months, using pre-fabricated modular, stackable pods that require less energy and materials than traditional construction methods.

The joy was short-lived. Read more of this post

Singapore’s CapitaLand to Alter Home Sizes to Tackle Curbs; “The fact that they are similar plots and that they are planning about 40 percent more units means they are thinking of downsizing units”

CapitaLand to Alter Home Sizes to Tackle Curbs: Southeast Asia

CapitaLand Ltd. (CAPL), Singapore’s biggest developer, may alter the size of its apartments as it seeks to improve affordability to combat government measures aimed at curbing speculation and lowering prices.

The developer sold 139 residential units in the island-state in the three months ended June, 31 percent fewer than in the same period last year, it said yesterday as it forecast “headwinds” in the near term with the housing curbs. Read more of this post

China Cuts Capacity in Some Industries to Reshape Economy

China Cuts Capacity in Some Industries to Reshape Economy

China ordered more than 1,400 companies in 19 industries to cut excess production capacity this year, part of efforts to shift toward slower, more-sustainable economic growth.

Steelmaking, ferroalloys, electrolytic aluminum, copper smelting, cement production and papermaking are among areas affected, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement posted on its website yesterday. Excess capacity must be idled by September and eliminated by year-end, it said. Read more of this post

Bond Vigilantes Burn Sao Paulo to Whip Inflation: Brazil Credit

Bond Vigilantes Burn Sao Paulo to Whip Inflation: Brazil Credit

Protesters who forced authorities to cut bus fares last month in Brazil’s largest demonstrations in two decades are helping inflation ease to the slowest in almost three years, providing an unintended boon to the nation’s bondholders.

Yields on the government’s fixed-rate notes due in 2023 dropped 0.74 percentage point through today since reaching a 15-month high of 11.63 percent on June 21. The decline was more than three times as fast as comparable Mexican bonds as data published on July 19 showed consumer prices in Brazil rose 0.07 percent in mid-July from the prior month, the slowest increase since August 2010. Read more of this post

Brazil’s Batista Loses Billionaire Status as Debts Mount

Brazil’s Batista Loses Billionaire Status as Debts Mount

Eike Batista, ranked as the world’s eighth-richest person last year, is no longer a billionaire after Mubadala Development Co. opted to convert an investment in his Brazilian companies into debt.

Batista’s EBX Group Co. owes $1.5 billion to Mubadala after the Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund restructured a $2 billion investment, said three people with knowledge of the deal. The fund no longer has equity in EBX, which paid back $500 million after renegotiating earlier this month, said two of the people, asking not to be named because terms are private. Read more of this post

Ma Rules Out Driving Down Taiwan Dollar as Growth Slows

Ma Rules Out Driving Down Taiwan Dollar as Growth Slows

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou ruled out driving down the Taiwan dollar to boost exports following the currency’s rally against the yen and said the government still aims for growth of at least 2 percent this year.

A decline in the Taiwan dollar would push up prices of imported commodities and hurt the livelihood of the island’s people, Ma said in an interview at his presidential office in Taipei today. Japan, which competes with the island as an exporter of electronics, was able to depreciate its currency because of entrenched deflation, he said. Read more of this post

Singapore’s largest instant-coffee maker Super is seeking its first acquisition in a decade as it battles Nestle for a bigger share of the market in Southeast Asia and China

Super Plans Deal to Rival Nestle Among Asia Coffee Drinkers

Super Group Ltd. (SUPER), Singapore’s largest instant-coffee maker, is seeking its first acquisition in a decade as it battles Nestle SA (NESN) for a bigger share of the market in Southeast Asia and China.

“We are building our war chest for acquisitions,” Darren Teo, Super’s head of corporate strategy and business development, said in an interview on July 23. “Organically, the company is doing well, but we are looking at ways we can expand faster. We are at the right time of the growth story.” Read more of this post

You don’t know as much about bonds as you think you do

You don’t know as much about bonds as you think you do

By Allan Sloan, senior editor-at-large July 25, 2013: 5:00 AM ET

Don’t feel bad if you weren’t aware of the recent plummet in long-term bond prices. Most everyone else missed it too.

FORTUNE — We hear lots of talk about the bond market these days. So let me ask you a simple question: Do you think you’d notice if a key bond-market segment took a one-day hit equivalent to a 600-point drop in the Dow? Answer: No, you wouldn’t. How do I know that? Because when such a drop took place recently, almost no one outside of a few bond experts noticed. Read more of this post

Why Chinese Companies Lack Homegrown Luxury Brand Power

July 25, 2013, 9:56 a.m. ET

Why Chinese Companies Lack Homegrown Luxury Brand Power

WEI GU

Chinese companies build iPads, high-speed trains and world-class telecom gear, but they can’t seem to make their own fancy handbag.

It’s true that global giants from Prada 1913.HK +1.27% to Apple source goods from China, but it is difficult to name a single Chinese brand that is known for its quality products. That’s true not just in luxury, but also in automobiles, smartphones and home appliances. Read more of this post

Toronto Bankers Feel Pain From Mining Slowdown

Toronto Bankers Feel Pain From Mining Slowdown: Corporate Canada

The downturn in the mining industry is beginning to ripple through brokerage firms and investment banks in Canada.

One small brokerage firm, Fraser Mackenzie Ltd., closed earlier this year. Casimir Capital Ltd., a closely held investment bank, has cut jobs on its mining team and is shifting its focus to energy companies. Read more of this post