Foreseeing Trouble in Exporting Natural Gas

August 15, 2013

Foreseeing Trouble in Exporting Natural Gas

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS and NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

MIDLAND, Mich. — As Dow Chemical’s chief executive, Andrew N. Liveris has made himself into something of an outcast among his fellow business leaders.

The reason? He is spearheading a public campaign against increased exports of natural gas, which he sees as a threat to a manufacturing renaissance in the United States, not to mention his own company’s bottom line. But many others say such exports would provide far more benefits to the country than drawbacks, all part of a transformation that promises to increase the nation’s weight in the global economy. Read more of this post

Department stores have been losing customers to other retailers for decades. But some are thriving

Department stores have been losing customers to other retailers for decades. But some are thriving

Aug 17th 2013 | NEW YORK |From the print edition

IN THE shopping calendar, the back-to-school period ranks behind only Christmas in importance to American retailers. It is a time for outfitting tots with superhero rucksacks and fashion-conscious teens with “metallic” oxford shoes. But events off the sales floor have distracted merchants from the tinkling of tills. In July Hudson’s Bay, a Canadian department-store chain, said it would buy Saks, an upmarket American one, for $2.4 billion. Then on August 13th Bill Ackman, an activist investor, quit the board of J.C. Penney, a less luxurious retailer, after a failed attempt to hasten the departure of its interim boss, Mike Ullman (see article). Read more of this post

Norway sees Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Prize hurt salmon exports to China; Norway’s market share of salmon exports to China has plummeted from 92 per cent in 2010 to just 29 per cent in the first half of this year

August 15, 2013 4:46 pm

Norway sees Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Prize hurt salmon exports to China

By Richard Milne, Nordic Correspondent

Call it the price of a Nobel Peace Prize. Norway’s market share of salmon exports to China has plummeted from 92 per cent in 2010 to just 29 per cent in the first half of this year. Both the Faroe Islands and the UK have overtaken it in sales despite it enjoying a near monopoly for the previous decade. The cause is obvious, say industry and political experts: the decision of a Norwegian committee in October 2010 to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a jailed Chinese dissident. “It is no secret that declining sales in China are connected to the Nobel Peace Prize. This is a difficult political situation between Norway and China, and not something that can be solved by the industry,” Alf-Helge Aarskog, chief executive of Marine Harvest, one of the country’s biggest salmon farmers, told a Norwegian newspaper. Read more of this post

China to tone down new year TV galas in anti-graft push

China to tone down new year TV galas in anti-graft push

Friday, August 16, 2013 – 14:28

Reuters

BEIJING – China will tone down and simplify the glitzy, kitsch and widely watched television galas beamed across the country over the traditional Lunar New Year festival, state media said on Friday, as part of government efforts to fight graft. The “CCTV Spring Festival Gala”, a more than four-hour showcase of comedy skits, music and dance, has become a lounge room fixture for hundreds of millions of Chinese since first broadcast in 1982, spawning copy-cat shows on regional stations over the holiday. This year, Canadian singer Celine Dion – wildly popular in China – was given top billing on CCTV’s gala where she sang “My Heart Will Go On” and a Chinese song, and every year a whole host of famous Chinese faces put in appearances. But next year’s event is going to be a more basic affair, the official Xinhua news agency reported, following newly installed President Xi Jinping’s campaign to cast aside extravagance in the name of fighting corruption and winning back public trust. “Stage lighting and decoration will use the most economical technologies, luxurious decors will be spurned, and simplicity will be striven for,” Xinhua said of the main CCTV gala for next year. Beijing Television will also cut spending on lighting, decorations and payments to stars on its show, focusing instead on “the experience of the feelings of local people”, the news agency added. Shanghai Television will give more space to new and upcoming artists, while Zhejiang Television will no longer allow any A-list celebrities to appear, Xinhua said. “All of these measures are to control … the indiscriminate extravagances of television galas,” a spokesman for China’s television regulator was quoted as saying. The new rules echo similar demands made of officials to simplify their lives by Xi since he took over as Communist Party chief last November. He has made cutting back on extravagance and waste a key theme of his administration, seeking to assuage anger over corruption and restore faith in the party.

Twenty-one years after the start of compulsory superannuation, the Superannuation system is going strong with more than $1.6 trillion in retirement savings, with returns hitting pre-GFC levels

Super fires up with equities

August 14, 2013

John Collett

The superannuation system has come of age. It is now 21 years since the introduction of compulsory super and there is more than $1.6 trillion in retirement savings. Our superannuation system is the envy of much of the developed world, especially those countries with rapidly ageing populations. While compulsory super started at just 3 per cent of salary in 1992, it is now 9.25 per cent and will gradually rise over the next several years to 12 per cent.

Read more of this post

Thai corporates waking up to key role of R&D

Thai corporates waking up to key role of R&D

Achara Deboonme
The Nation August 16, 2013 1:00 am

SCG president Kan Trakulhoon presents Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra a piece of motar, on which texture will prevail when sprayed on with water. In this piece is Yingluck’s face. The magic mortar is one of new innovative products.

DuPont foresees rapid progress in research and development in Thailand, with growing awareness among Thai companies that innovation will be the key for their survival in the new world order. At its innovation centre in Bangkok, which celebrates its second anniversary today, (Aug 16), 1,500 visitors from 300 companies have been seen, expressing their ideas and seeking consultation on how to commercialise them. “The innovation centre in Bangkok is among the top three most active centres, among 11 around the world,” Douglas Muzyka, chief science and technology officer of the global company, said on the sidelines of Siam Cement Group’s “Thailand Innovation Forum” yesterday. Read more of this post

Rich World’s Biggest Jobs Growth Approaches End in Singapore

Rich World’s Biggest Jobs Growth Approaches End in Singapore

Tony Cousens spent more than S$100,000 ($79,000) to find waiters and housekeepers for the Ramada and Days Hotels in Singapore. Months after the two establishments opened, he is still about 100 people short.

Cousens’s plight underscores the new reality for an economy that probably delivered the biggest employment surge among 33 advanced economies in the decade to 2014, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Singapore’s annual jobs growth may halve in the coming years from a 2007 peak as the island widens a clampdown on foreign workers, Bank of America Corp. estimates. Read more of this post

India Seeks to Overhaul a Corporate World Rife With Fraud

AUGUST 15, 2013, 3:35 PM

India Seeks to Overhaul a Corporate World Rife With Fraud

By JEN SWANSON

MUMBAI, India — In the wake of global scandals involving kickbacks and accounting fraud, one unlikely country, India, is aiming to set a tone in overhauling its corporate oversight laws. This month, the nation’s upper house of Parliament passed the Companies Bill, 2012, sweeping legislation meant to overhaul auditing, impose stiffer penalties for fraud and create more government oversight of businesses. The lower house had passed the bill last year. Once India’s president, Pranab Mukherjee, signs it into law, it will replace India’s 57-year-old corporate legislation that critics say had failed to keep up with changes in business practices. Read more of this post

India Loan Woes Go From Bad to Worse; India’s Slowing Economy Exacerbates Banks’ Nonperforming Loans; India’s capital crisis: Reform, not controls, is the only way to revitalise the economy

Updated August 15, 2013, 6:05 a.m. ET

India Loan Woes Go From Bad to Worse

India’s Slowing Economy Exacerbates Banks’ Nonperforming Loans

ABHEEK BHATTACHARYA

Indian banks’ loan books are already a problem. But they’re going to weaken further. At State Bank of India, 500112.BY +0.27% the country’s largest lender by assets, nonperforming loans jumped to 5.7% of the total at June 30 from 5% a year ago. AtPunjab National Bank, 532461.BY -0.26% bad loans jumped to 4.8% from 3.4% a year earlier. Standard & Poor’s says the ratio of NPLs sector-wide will increase from 3.4% in March this year to 3.9% by March 2014 and 4.4% a year later. India’s slowing economy is the main problem. Overall growth slumped to a 10-year low of 5% in the fiscal year ended March 2013. The situation is likely to worsen. The Reserve Bank of India forecasts only a slight recovery in the economy in the near term, with growth rising to 5.5% in the current fiscal year. Borrowers will remain under pressure when it comes to servicing debt.Credit Suisse CSGN.VX -1.17% says most NPLs so far are at small- and midsize businesses but larger companies will feel the strain too as relatively low economic growth persists. Worse, a pending rule change could force banks to record more bad loans. Read more of this post

High land prices in India mean no cheap hotels

August 15, 2013 5:47 pm

High land prices in India mean no cheap hotels

By Henny Sender

Sites available in China to those who promise to create jobs

Nothing happens quickly in India. It has now been six years and counting since Lemon Tree, a local chain of mid-market hotels with money from private equity group Warburg Pincus, started to build a hostelry in Mumbai. Acquiring land, whether from the government or from private hands, is both expensive and time-consuming. There is no central land registry or simple mechanism to do title searches. The construction process is hampered by lengthy approvals, changing regulations, archaic zoning and weak infrastructure. Lemon Tree now has about 3,000 rooms in India. Meanwhile, Seven Days Inn, a hotel chain in China that Warburg Pincus invested in around the same time, six years ago, has about 40,000 rooms. It is not just hotels in India that are hostage to this frustrating process. Hospitals, retailers, logistics companies and manufacturers all face the same infuriating dynamic. Read more of this post

South Korea’s cash-strapped companies are seeking to sell their headquarters one after another to secure cash amid the prolonged recession

Cash-strapped companies sell headquarters

기사입력 2013.08.15

South Korea’s cash-strapped companies are seeking to sell their headquarters one after another to secure cash amid the prolonged recession. The companies increasingly sell head offices and lease them back for a long term, a deal called sale-and-leaseback, which ensures investors to gain profit from property lease. Builders and financial companies are especially rushing to sell their headquarters. Daewoo Engineering & Construction (E&C) sold its head office at 390 billion won ($349.0 million) and GS E&C at 170 billion won, with Doosan E&C following suit. Mirae Asset Securities is working on selling its head office in Gangnam, Seoul, and Hyundai Capital plans to make an offshore investment with cash it earned from the sales of headquarters in Yeouido in April. In the securities sector, Tongyang Securities and Daishin Securities sold their respective headquarters. Press and media companies have joined the sales as well. YTN has recently decided to sell its head office in Namdaemun, Seoul, at a price between 200 billion won and 250 billion won. MBC, meanwhile, has been looking for a potential buyer for its headquarters building in Yeouido since last year. The head offices put on the market are being acquired by big investors such as pension funds, who have been struggling to look for suitable investment vehicles as the key rate has remained low. Property developers, real estate investment trusts (REIT), and private equity funds started a process to acquire the buildings, followed by pension funds, mutual aid societies and life insurance companies.

Nagasaki Bomb Maker Offers Lessons for Japan’s Fukushima Cleanup

Nagasaki Bomb Maker Offers Lessons for Japan’s Fukushima Cleanup

Hanford Engineer Works produced the 20 pounds of plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. It’s among the most toxic nuclear waste sites and the place Japan is turning to for help dealing with melted reactors in Fukushima.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) has sent engineers on visits to the Hanford site in Washington state this year to learn from decades of work treating millions of gallons of radioactive waste. Hanford also has a method to seal off reactors known as concrete cocooning that could reduce the 11 trillion yen ($112 billion) estimated cost for cleaning up Fukushima. Read more of this post

When Shareholder Activism Goes Too Far

August 15, 2013

When Shareholder Activism Goes Too Far

Posted by James Surowiecki

With the hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman having resigned from J. C. Penney’s board of directors on Tuesday, we can now declare the end of his extraordinarily unsuccessful attempt to reinvent Penney. It was months in the making: Penney’s board fired Ackman’s handpicked C.E.O., the former Apple retail head Ron Johnson, back in April. But Ackman, who still owns more than seventeen per cent of the company, had stayed on the board after Johnson’s departure, and still seemed to harbor hopes of remaking the company. The debacle at Penney is now prompting people to look more skeptically at Ackman, who manages Pershing Square Capital, and that’s fitting. But it should also make us skeptical, in general, of one of the more dubious trends in today’s market: money managers who also fancy themselves corporate visionaries. Read more of this post

The quest for a Ryanair of rail freight; The EU wants more goods to be moved by train. Progress is slow

The quest for a Ryanair of rail freight; The EU wants more goods to be moved by train. Progress is slow

Aug 17th 2013 | PRAGUE |From the print edition

IN AVIATION the arrival of privately owned low-cost airlines has shaken up the market and sent the traditional flag carriers into retreat. But in Europe’s railway business there is still little competition in passenger services. Even in freight, where there ought to be more scope for rivalry, the market is still dominated by state-owned incumbents. The European Commission’s “Transport 2050” plan, adopted two years ago, promises to get half of all the continent’s medium-distance goods transport off the roads and on to rail (or water) by 2050. But although some progress has been made in designating cross-border rail “corridors”, the plan will not get far unless there is more choice and competition.

Newer, private rail-freight firms complain that their attempts to get into the market are frustrated by the incumbents. Laszlo Horvath, president of CER Hungary, complains that the state-owned giants, which usually own the tracks as well as running trains, turn nasty whenever young private firms like his try to expand. Read more of this post

Private schools are heading for a crunch; Soaring fees were fine during the boom – but now no one can stop the race

August 14, 2013 6:45 pm

Private schools are heading for a crunch

By Jonn Elledge

Soaring fees were fine during the boom – but now no one can stop the race, says Jonn Elledge

If you wanted a single sentence to sum up why Britain’s world-renowned private schools deserve just a little bit of the sneering they attract, you could do worse than this gem. “Fees rose by 3.9 per cent last year,” the Independent Schools Council’s last survey breezily announced, “the lowest rise for almost 20 years.” Only 3.9 per cent? Well done. Have a gold star. Read more of this post

Of 15 popular measures of equity valuation, CAPE (which compares share prices to a 10-year moving average of real earnings) was the only one that made stocks look expensive

The CAPE of Less Hope

August 13, 2013 6:31 pmby John Authers

Cyclically-adjusted price/earnings multiples (CAPEs), as made famous by Yale’s Professor Robert Shiller, are growing inconvenient for the brokerage community. Last week, BofA Merrill Lynch’s Savita Subramanian pointed out that of 15 popular measures of equity valuation, CAPE (which compares share prices to a 10-year moving average of real earnings) was the only one that made stocks look expensive. Read more of this post

NYU President’s Exit Signals Shift From High-Spending Era

NYU President’s Exit Signals Shift From High-Spending Era

New York University’s announcement that President John Sexton will leave in three years could signal a shift from an era of bold plans and big spending in U.S. higher education.

Sexton, under fire from the faculty amid criticism of a campus expansion and college administrators’ pay and perks, will step down after his term ends in 2016, when he will be 74. The school will also stop lending hundreds of thousands of dollars to executives and faculty for vacation homes, the board of trustees said in a letter this week.

Under Sexton, New York University has become symbolic of colleges’ focus on expansion and prestige with little regard to cost, and the school’s announcement may suggest the start of a change, said Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor. The university costs $64,000 a year to attend, making it among the most expensive colleges in the nation. Read more of this post

Hundred-Dollar Stocks Double as U.S. CEOs Dismiss Splits

Hundred-Dollar Stocks Double as U.S. CEOs Dismiss Splits

Stock splits are losing their allure with American executives amid one of the broadest rallies ever, sending the number of shares trading above $100 to a record and showing the rising dominance of institutions in equity markets.

Gains of 20 percent or more pushed Boeing Co. (BA) and Amgen Inc. past $100 in 2013, joining 64 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index above the threshold, twice the level in 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nine companies have split their stock this year, compared with 42 annually since 1996, data from S&P show, helping send the average share price to $65.96 last quarter, the highest on record. Read more of this post