End of cheap money hits Asian groups; Few companies have hedges against strengthening dollar

Asian groups struggle with end of cheap money

By Henny Sender

Few companies have hedges against strengthening dollar

Hong Kong-based hedge fund Senrigan Capital is suing Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Group over the compensation it says it is owed as a shareholder inSiam Makro, a Thai retailer that CP is acquiring. The dispute revolves around the appropriate exchange rate between the baht and the dollar. If the investors prevail, it could raise CP’s transaction costs by millions of dollars. The dispute is one of many complications materialising across the region as the dollar strengthens dramatically against emerging market currencies – a surge that few companies in Asia anticipated and fewer still had hedged themselves against. Read more of this post

China Shadow Banking Returns as Growth Rebound Adds Risks; new credit almost doubled in August from the previous month

China Shadow Banking Returns as Growth Rebound Adds Risks

China’s broadest measure of new credit almost doubled in August from the previous month in a sign leaders are committed to meeting economic goals even at the cost of adding financial risks. Aggregate financing was 1.57 trillion yuan ($257 billion), the People’s Bank of China said in Beijing yesterday, topping the 950 billion yuan median estimate of 10 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. New yuan loans from banks accounted for about 45 percent of the total, down from July’s 87 percent, as non-traditional credit played a bigger role. Read more of this post

Investors are worried about another cash crunch in China this month following June’s unprecedented crisis, as the end of the quarter and two public holidays approach.

Sep 11, 2013

Investors Wary of Another China Cash Crunch

SHEN HONG

Investors are worried about another cash crunch in China this month following June’s unprecedented crisis, as the end of the quarter and two public holidays approach.

But analysts say Beijing has enough financial resources and the resolve to avoid another credit crisis, though borrowing costs will almost certainly rise over the next two weeks due to banks’ need to meet capital requirements and consumers’ demand for cash to pay for holidays. Read more of this post

Why “Made in China” Still Suggests Low Quality

Why “Made in China” Still Suggests Low Quality – Economic Observer Online –

By Huang Ming (黄鸣), vice president of the International Solar Energy Society and president of Himin Solar Energy.
Issue 635 , Sept 2, 2013 
Due to a low industrial entry threshold and a lack of compulsory safety standards, China’s rising solar energy industry is now showing signs of chaos and disorder. There are between 5,000 and 6,000 manufacturers in this industry, but the top 20 combined have a market share of less than 30% of the total. Thousands of these enterprises either collapse or change hands every few years, leaving their clients without service — and solar panels rotting on roofs. Read more of this post

The Global Stake in China’s Anti-Corruption Reform

The Global Stake in China’s Anti-Corruption Reform

Michael J. Boskin is Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was Chairman of George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1989 to 1993, and headed the so-called Boskin Commission, a congressional advisory body that highlighted errors in official US inflation estimates.

10 September 2013

STANFORD – The recent trial of Bo Xilai highlighted the biggest challenge facing contemporary China: the corruption and abuse of power by some government and party officials. Until his fall, Bo, a former Politburo member and party leader of Chongqing, a megacity of 30 million people, was a potential candidate for China’s ruling seven-member Politburo Standing Committee. Read more of this post

Taking China’s SOEs Back to Their Roots; The giant companies were originally owned by the people, and recent graft scandals show the need for a return to that ideal

09.10.2013 17:16

Taking SOEs Back to Their Roots

The giant companies were originally owned by the people, and recent graft scandals show the need for a return to that ideal

By Wang Yong

A recent corruption scandal that brought down Jiang Jiemin, head of the regulator of state-owned assets, is but another reminder of the alarming corruption problem at state-owned enterprises (SOEs). If left alone, the trend will eventually lead to a breakdown. The central government’s current iron-fisted approach is essential to preventing the problem from spreading. However, it is not a solution to the underlying problem. Read more of this post

Property regains top spot as driver of wealth for China’s richest; One in four members on the rich list made their money in China’s real estate industry, overtaking manufacturing as the most common source of wealth

Property regains top spot as driver of wealth for China’s richest

12:36am EDT

By Adam Jourdan

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s property industry reclaimed its spot as the number one source of income in the past year for the mainland’s wealthy, according to the China Rich List published annually by Hurun Report Inc. One in four members on the rich list made their money in China’s real estate industry, overtaking manufacturing as the most common source of wealth. Six out of the top 10 made their money in the construction sector. Read more of this post

Half of China’s Antibiotics Now Go to Livestock. And now drug-resistant genes are showing up in Chinese farms

Half of China’s Antibiotics Now Go to Livestock

And now drug-resistant genes are showing up in Chinese farms. Sound familiar?

By Tom Philpott | Tue Sep. 10, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Newsflash, from a recent Public Radio International [1] report: China’s teeming factory meat farms have a drug problem. To make animals grow quickly under cramped, feces-ridden conditions, animals there get fed small, doses of antibiotics—creating ideal breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacterial pathogens that threaten people. A research team led by scientists from China and Michigan State University recently found “diverse and abundant antibiotic resistance genes in Chinese swine farms,” as the title of the paper [2], published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, put it. According to a recent analysis [3] by a Beijing-based agribusiness consulting firm [4], more than half of total Chinese antibiotic consumption goes to livestock. Read more of this post

Foreign firms turn to FX swaps to fund Chinese operations

Foreign firms turn to FX swaps to fund Chinese operations

Tue, Sep 10 2013

By Saikat Chatterjee and Michelle Chen

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Foreign companies are increasingly using cross currency swaps to fund onshore operations in China rather than raising money via the Dim Sum bond market in Hong Kong. Multinational companies said that they could raise more money, more quickly and more cheaply by borrowing in dollars and swapping the money into yuan than if they borrowed directly in yuan through the offshore yuan-denominated bond (Dim Sum) market in Hong Kong. Read more of this post

Early China iPhone launch gives smugglers a run for their money

Early China iPhone launch gives smugglers a run for their money

Tue, Sep 10 2013

By Yimou Lee and Lee Chyen Yee

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Apple Inc’s millions of Chinese fans will celebrate the near-simultaneous launch of the latest iPhone in China and the United States, but one group will have little to cheer – the smugglers. An early launch of Apple’s latest smartphone in China is expected to stifle a thriving grey market worth billions of dollars a year built around smuggling from Hong Kong, where in the past the U.S. tech giant’s gadgets have gone on sale months before they reach official channels in the mainland. Read more of this post

Crackdown on Bloggers Is Mounted by China

September 10, 2013

Crackdown on Bloggers Is Mounted by China

By CHRIS BUCKLEY

HONG KONG — These are bad times to be a Big V in China. Big V, for verified account, is the widely used moniker for the most influential commentators on China’s growing microblog sites — online celebrities whose millions of fans read, discuss and spread their outpouring of news and opinions, plenty of which chastise or ridicule officials. And the Communist Party has turned against them in the most zealous crackdown on the Internet in years. Read more of this post

China-Style Obamacare for 1 Billion People Saves Toddler

China-Style Obamacare for 1 Billion People Saves Toddler

Toddler Wang Xiaobu was struck down in July by a motorcycle outside her home amid the rice terraces of Languan, a village deep in the mountains of the poorest part of Guizhou, China’s poorest province. The 3-year-old was rushed by her parents past chicken coops and duck pens to the village clinic, a home doubling as a bare-bones dispensary. Xiaobu’s bloodied head was bandaged by an attendant who lacked the skills and equipment to stitch her wound or check for internal bleeding. Read more of this post

China’s baijiu, drink of generals, pushed to bargain bin

China’s baijiu, drink of generals, pushed to bargain bin

Tue, Sep 10 2013

By Adam Jourdan

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Nearly three-quarters of a century after it was hailed for helping China’s Red Army survive the tortuous Long March, fiery grain liquor baijiu has fallen down the ranks, hit by a crackdown on luxury spending that has clouded its prospects. For decades, famed baijiu makers Kweichow Moutai Co Ltd and Wuliangye Yibin Co Ltd enjoyed fat profit margins that once dwarfed those of Apple Inc, helped by the Communist Party’s penchant for a brew that fuelled many a business deal and smoothed over countless egos. Read more of this post

China’s Richest Man Wang Hunts Hotel Management Companies in U.S.

China’s Richest Man Wang Hunts Hotel Management Companies

By Bloomberg News – Sep 10, 2013

Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man and owner of the country’s biggest commercial land developer, said he has hired two investment banks to buy hotel management companies, mostly in the U.S. He is also in talks with overseas movie theater chains following his $2.6 billion purchase of the second-largest U.S. cinema operator AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. last year, Wang said in an interview with Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the World Economic Forumheld in Dalian, where Wang started his business. He didn’t name the investment banks or targets. Read more of this post

Asian central banks brace for Fed’s move, Indonesia seen most at risk

Asian central banks brace for Fed’s move, Indonesia seen most at risk

Tue Sep 10, 2013 7:12am EDT

By Choonsik Yoo

SEOUL (Reuters) – As global markets tremble in anticipation that the U.S. Federal Reserve will decide next week to begin tapering its monetary stimulus, four central banks in the Asia-Pacific with very different comfort levels are likely to hold interest rates steady at policy meetings on Thursday. Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and New Zealand have all been buffeted by stormy markets since May, when the Fed first hinted that it could finally begin calling time on the easy money go-round that has lasted almost five years. Read more of this post

Indonesia-Philippine Growth Gap Widens as Rupiah Spurs Rate Rise

Indonesia-Philippine Growth Gap Widens as Rupiah Spurs Rate Rise

Indonesia faces pressure to add to its most aggressive monetary-tightening cycle since 2008, underscoring a widening divergence in its growth outlook with the Philippines in a reversal of fortunes for the two economies. Bank Indonesia will probably raise its deposit facility rate tomorrow a fourth time this year, according to seven of 14 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, with the rest forecasting no change. Analysts see the key reference rate rising as high as 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2014 after staying at 7 percent this week. The Philippines will hold its benchmark at 3.5 percent the rest of the year, surveys showed. Read more of this post

Go-It-Alone Pensions Grab Attention of Australian Banks

Go-It-Alone Pensions Grab Attention of Australian Banks

Playing a Saturday competition round at the eucalyptus-fringed Whittlesea Golf Club north of Melbourne, Gary Hunt told his three golfing partners that he’d been to a seminar on how to manage his own pension and was thinking of doing it. Turns out, two of his fellow Australians — a retired school teacher and the owner of a tree-cutting business — already did — as do almost a million others. Read more of this post

Asia’s LNG Market Poised for Price Alternatives, IEA Chief Says

Asia’s LNG Market Poised for Price Alternatives, IEA Chief Says

By Chou Hui Hong – Sep 10, 2013

Asia’s liquefied natural gas market is poised to introduce alternatives to oil-indexed pricing as supply expands from new sources, according to the International Energy Agency. “When you have a more flexible gas market, with more gas being brought to Asia, it will certainly help” lead to new gas-pricing methods, Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the IEA, said in Tokyo today. Read more of this post