Big Mergers Often Don’t Produce the Desired Gains Advocates Predict

September 3, 2013, 6:42 p.m. ET

History Isn’t on Side of Microsoft-Nokia Tie Up

Big Mergers Often Don’t Produce the Desired Gains Advocates Predict

SCOTT THURM

In business, struggling firm plus struggling firm rarely equals success. So say students of corporate strategy, who are skeptical that Microsoft Corp.MSFT -2.15% can rejuvenate its lagging mobile-phone efforts through its planned acquisition of Nokia Corp.’s NOK1V.HE +0.50% handset business. “The evidence suggests that combining two weaklings doesn’t create a strong player,” says Robert Bruner, dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, and a longtime student of mergers. Read more of this post

Record radiation readings near Fukushima contaminated water tanks – Now High Enough To ‘Kill An Unprotected Person Within Hours’

Record radiation readings near Fukushima contaminated water tanks — Now High Enough To ‘Kill An Unprotected Person Within Hours’
12:10am EDT

By Aaron Sheldrick and Mari Saito

TOKYO (Reuters) – Radiation readings around tanks holding contaminated water at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have spiked by more than a fifth to their highest levels, Japan’s nuclear regulator said, heightening concerns about the clean-up of the worst atomic disaster in almost three decades. Radiation hotspots have spread to three holding areas for hundreds of hastily built tanks storing water contaminated by being flushed over three reactors that melted down at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in March 2011. The rising radiation levels and leaks at the plant have prompted international alarm, and the Japanese government said on Tuesday it would step in with almost $500 million of funding to fix the growing levels of contaminated water at the plant. Read more of this post

China Record Drop in Credit Growth Puts Momentum at Risk

China Record Drop in Credit Growth Puts Momentum at Risk

China’s leaders are extending a clampdown on credit, prompting analysts from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to Societe Generale SA to caution that the economy is vulnerable to weakening after the pickup so far this quarter. New yuan loans were probably little changed in August, after aggregate financing, the broadest measure of credit, posted a fourth straight drop in July, the longest streak in 11 years of data. Analysts’ median estimates point to the fastest industrial-output gain since December and the slowest producer-price decline in six months. Read more of this post

PetroChina’s days of super-charged spending may be over as the Chinese national oil giant seeks to steer clear of the legacy of former chairman Jiang Jiemin, now under an official corruption probe

Updated: Wednesday September 4, 2013 MYT 11:18:49 AM

Under New Management, Scandal-Hit PetroChina Changes Course

HONG KONG: PetroChina Co Ltd’s days of super-charged spending may be over as the Chinese national oil giant seeks to steer clear of the legacy of former chairman Jiang Jiemin, now under an official corruption probe. PetroChina will likely record an annual drop in capital spending for 2013, according to company officials and industry specialists. That would be its first such decline since its Hong Kong and New York stock market listings in 2000. Read more of this post

Abe Adviser Hamada Doubts Japan Economy Showing Real Improvement

Abe Adviser Hamada Doubts Japan Economy Showing Real Improvement

By Keiko Ujikane and Takashi Hirokawa – Sep 4, 2013

Koichi Hamada, an adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, said it was too early to know whether Japan’s economy has turned the corner under the economic policies known as Abenomics. “Various economic indicators, including investment data, are picking up, but I’m not sure if they show a meaningful improvement,” Hamada said at an event today at Bloomberg’s Tokyo office. Read more of this post

Nepal’s smugglers cash in on India’s love of gold

Updated: Wednesday September 4, 2013 MYT 1:41:07 PM

Nepal’s smugglers cash in on India’s love of gold

KATHMANDU: After a long drive from across the border in China, the white truck arrived in Nepal’s capital at dawn with a seemingly innocuous cargo of Chinese-made clothes. But hidden in a cylinder inside the vehicle’s front bumper was the latest haul of gold smuggled from Tibet – bars weighing some 35kg and worth several million dollars on the black market. Nepal’s police were waiting for the truck and its 24-year-old driver just inside the city, after tracking them for several days along the highway that connects Nepal with China. “We had been informed from our reliable source that a consignment of gold was on its way from Khasa (a border town in Tibet),” Uttam Kumar Karkee, a senior superintendent, who led the operation in July told AFP. Read more of this post

Bollywood Cuts Costs as Rupee Crisis Bites

Bollywood Cuts Costs as Rupee Crisis Bites

By Agence France-Presse on 6:01 pm September 3, 2013.
Mumbai. Bollywood producers have long been fond of filming in exotic foreign locations, but the spiralling Indian currency has seen spending on movie sets abroad drop by one third, according to a study released Monday. The Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) said that the amount spent on Bollywood movies outside of India in the past four months has declined by 30 to 35 percent compared with the previous four-month period. Read more of this post

Hong Kong’s Needy Children Wait for Homes

Hong Kong’s Needy Children Wait for Homes

By Agence France-Presse on 5:40 pm September 4, 2013.
Hong Kong. Life could have turned out very differently for Mary, who like many other 12-year-old girls in Hong Kong enjoys shopping, music and going out with friends, while she dreams of one day travelling the world as a flight attendant. Mary was taken into foster care when she was three years old, her biological parents addicted to drugs and unable to look after her as they drifted in and out of prison. But she is one of the luckier ones in a city where a growing number of children are waiting for care as the number of couples who can afford to provide it is falling, social workers say, due to high property costs, a lack of space in the city and the fact that both partners often have to work to support a family. Read more of this post

Indonesia Faces Price Rise as Currency Weakens; At malls across Jakarta, a small Caffè Americano at Starbucks is up 9% since early August; taxi has raised minimum fares by more than 16%

Updated September 3, 2013, 7:41 p.m. ET

Indonesia Faces Price Rise as Currency Weakens

Weakening Currency After Fund Exodus Compounds the Problem

BEN OTTO

JAKARTA—Indonesia’s currency weakened to its lowest level in more than four years against the dollar Tuesday, underscoring the reality that consumers in Southeast Asia’s largest economy are facing after a harrowing summer slide: Inflation is taking hold and prices are rising. The rupiah has been in decline since last year, but an exodus of cash in the recent emerging-markets selloff led to a 6% slide in August alone. Meanwhile, prices were already beginning to increase after the government raised the cost of fuel this year, and a weaker rupiah has compounded the trend by making the country’s many imports more expensive. Recently, the government has tightened monetary policy, making concessions on growth in order to contain inflation. Read more of this post

Singapore’s Volatile Data Stump Professionals

September 4, 2013, 5:32 AM

Singapore’s Volatile Data Stump Professionals

By Gaurav Raghuvanshi

Last month, Singapore’s government announced the economy grew 3.8% on-year in the second quarter. But as late as June, economists polled by the city-state’s central bank were predicting growth of just 1.5%. Economists got it wrong on exports too: They predicted a nearly flat print in the second quarter, when exports actually fell 5.0%. The difference was even starker in the first quarter: Economists in March predicted exports would fall 0.5%, but in fact they shrank a whopping 12.5%. The Monetary Authority of Singapore polls economists at banks and research firms every quarter on key local data such as gross domestic product, exports, currency, inflation and employment. The results are released at the start of every quarter, with the second-quarter survey landing Wednesday. It turns out that the 20 or so economists who respond to the survey get it quite wrong, quite often. Read more of this post

Previous limited U.S. strikes were followed by unforeseen consequences

Previous limited U.S. strikes were followed by unforeseen consequences

6:01am BST

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s national security team is trying to make the case to sceptical U.S. lawmakers for a limited strike against the Syrian government over its alleged use of chemical weapons on August 21. Following are details of missile strikes and other limited military action taken by the United States over the past 30 years and what transpired afterwards: Read more of this post

IMF sees emerging economies vulnerable to U.S. tapering

Exclusive: IMF sees emerging economies vulnerable to U.S. tapering

11:14am EDT

By Gernot Heller

BERLIN (Reuters) – Advanced economies led by the United States will increasingly drive global growth while emerging countries are at risk of slowing due to tighter U.S. monetary policy, the International Monetary Fund said in a note obtained by Reuters on Wednesday. In the surveillance note, prepared for the Group of 20 meeting in St. Petersburg, the IMF urged strengthened global action to revitalize growth and better manage risks, warning that some downside risks have become more prominent. Read more of this post

Europe’s Auto Makers Poised to Lose $6.6 Billion in 2013 With Demand at 20-Year Low

September 4, 2013, 4:23 a.m. ET

Europe’s Auto Makers Poised to Lose $6.6 Billion in 2013 — Moody’s

Demand at 20-Year Low

GILLES CASTONGUAY

MILAN—Moody’s Investors Service Inc. expects four of Europe’s volume car manufacturers including Fiat SpA F.MI +9.06% and PSA Peugeot-Citroën SAUG.FR +0.42% to lose a combined €5 billion ($6.6 billion) in the region this year as demand falls to its lowest level in two decades. It would be the second year in a row that these manufacturers—Ford Motor Co.F +3.24% and General Motors Co.GM +2.69% being the other two—suffer such a loss at the operational level. Read more of this post