Korean financial authorities to build an online system to provide financial consulting services for ordinary people in April of next year

Online financial consulting system for ordinary people to be built

2013.10.24 15:03:11

Financial authorities have decided to build an online system to provide financial consulting services for ordinary people in April of next year. According to sources Thursday, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) recently invited industry bids to upgrade its financial consumer portal, which online financial analysis services for users are newly included.
Consumers will be allowed to choose a preferred analysis method to use services that will be offered on an independent website not through the financial consumer portal. Creation of this system will begin next month and is scheduled to be open to the public in April of next year. “Using this online system, consumers will be able to have their financial status checked and understand what they can do to increase their wealth,” said an FSS official. The decision reflects the fact that retired baby boomers pay growing attention to wealth management and investments, but appropriate financial consulting services are not available. Private banking centers run by banks and insurers are designed only for wealthy people whose assets exceed 1 billion won ($950,000).

Carmakers are rolling the dice on e-bikes in the US, fearing the death of the car

Carmakers are rolling the dice on e-bikes in the US, fearing the death of the car

By Roberto A. Ferdman @robferdman 11 hours ago

The notion of an electronic bicycle craze isn’t exactly new in bike-friendly parts of the world. But despite the many obstacles that have surfaced about taking e-biking mainstream in the US, a slew of carmakers appear determined to churn out newfangled high-concept e-bikes in the hopes of jolting demand. Take BMW’s latest offering. Its new Cruise e-Bike 2014, which weighs less than 50 pounds, comes equipped with a turbo function and will cost nearly $4,000. For now, the company is hedging its bets by restricting its initial sales to Germany, where e-bikes are gaining steam. Ford, on the other hand, is blazing straight into the US market with its new Pedego e-bike, which it intends to sell across the country starting in 2014. Audi released a prototype last year that could eventually reach the US, and Mercedes Benz launched its Smart e-bike in Canada in the spring of 2012. Read more of this post

Taiwan’s Shining, which owns the Lalu luxury hotel (涵碧樓) at Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan, said it is aiming to establish 30 hotels and shopping centers in China over the next decade

Taiwan’s Shining Group plans to build thirty hotels in China

CNA
October 25, 2013, 12:27 am TWN

TAIPEI — The tourism and real estate development group which owns the Lalu luxury hotel (涵碧樓) at Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan said Thursday it is aiming to establish 30 hotels and shopping centers in China over the next decade, starting with a complex that is under construction in Qingdao. The Lalu hotel and shopping mall in the northern Chinese coastal city will open in May 2014, said Shining Group (鄉林集團) Chairman Lai Cheng-i (賴正鎰) at a igning ceremony in Taipei to give space to 28 boutiques at the complex. Read more of this post

Trade: Into uncharted waters; A 30-year trend of trade growing at twice the speed of the global economy has ended

October 24, 2013 6:18 pm

Trade: Into uncharted waters

By Shawn Donnan

A 30-year trend of trade growing at twice the speed of the global economy has ended

The Tangerine Island, a bulk carrier sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands, is moored in the Gulf of Panama after passing through the canal a few hours earlier. Off southern England, the 199-metre Turandot, a vehicle carrier, is setting a course for New York after leaving Southampton. In the Strait of Malacca off Sumatra, the Liberian-flagged Amazon River is steaming along at 16 knots. Read more of this post

Saudi Women Plan to Hit Roads in Latest Push for Right to Drive

Saudi Women Plan to Hit Roads in Latest Push for Right to Drive

A group of Saudi Arabian women plan a protest tomorrow defying the world’s only ban on female drivers.

Organizers are urging women across the country to take to the roads. The group, named the “26th October Women’s Driving Campaign,” called on the government to provide “a valid and legal justification” for maintaining the ban, and “not simply defer to social consensus,” according to its website. More than 16,000 people signed an online petition in support. Read more of this post

Puerto Rico: Greece in the Caribbean; Stuck with a real debt crisis in its back yard, America can learn from Europe’s Aegean follies; Puerto Rico’s debt crisis: Puerto Pobre; A heavily indebted island weighs on America’s municipal-bond market

Puerto Rico: Greece in the Caribbean; Stuck with a real debt crisis in its back yard, America can learn from Europe’s Aegean follies

Oct 26th 2013 |From the print edition

IT WILL not be long till Congress and the White House start squabbling again about the budget in Washington, DC. But before they create another artificial debt crisis, Barack Obama and his Republican opponents ought to pay some attention to a real one 1,500 miles to their south-east. Puerto Rico, an American territory, risks a Greek-style bust. With $70 billion of debt outstanding, the equivalent of 70% of its GDP, it is more indebted than any of America’s 50 states. (Puerto Rico is not technically a state, but its bonds are treated as if it were.) Yields on its bonds have soared as high as 10%, as investors fret it may be heading for a default. Read more of this post

Most Americans accumulating debt faster than they’re saving for retirement

Most Americans accumulating debt faster than they’re saving for retirement

By Michael A. Fletcher, Published: October 24

A majority of Americans with 401(k)-type savings accounts are accumulating debt faster than they are setting aside money for retirement, further undermining the nation’s troubled system for old-age saving, a new report has found. Three in five workers with defined contribution accounts are “debt savers,” according to the report released Thursday, meaning their increasing mortgages, credit card balances and installment loans are outpacing the amount of money they are able to save for retirement. Read more of this post

Michael Novogratz, co-chief investment officer of macro funds at the $55bn Fortress Investment Group, endorses Bitcoin

October 24, 2013 6:46 pm

Bitcoin endorsed by top hedge fund manager

By Stephen Foley in New York

Financial advisers who gathered in New York to hear leaders of the asset management industry impart their best investment ideas for the year ahead were given a surprising tip by one prominent hedge fund manager: Bitcoin. Michael Novogratz, co-chief investment officer of macro funds at the $55bn Fortress Investment Group, used a panel discussion on the prospects for emerging markets to trumpet the much-hyped digital currency, which he said could be used as a cheaper way of transferring money in countries with weak banking systems. Read more of this post

Is Funeral Home Chain SCI’s Growth Coming at the Expense of Mourners?

Is Funeral Home Chain SCI’s Growth Coming at the Expense of Mourners?

By Paul M. Barrett October 24, 2013

Steering his jet-black Cadillac CTS sedan along the streets of West Palm Beach, Fla., Brad Zahn offers a tour of the area’s cemeteries, one more tropically lush than the next. Zahn, owner of the Tillman Funeral Home & Crematory, embalms and buries people for a living. He employs his wife, Maribel, and one of their adult sons. Another son attends mortuary school. “My succession plan is in place,” Zahn says. He speaks evenly and wears muted business attire. One hand on the wheel, he seems the very picture of a confident entrepreneur. His demeanor turns anxious, however, when I ask about the funeral chain Service Corporation International (SCI). “How can you not be nervous,” he responds, “when the 1,000-pound gorilla gets even bigger?” Read more of this post

How The 2003 Arrest Of The Richest Man In Russia Changed Everything — And What Happens Next

How The 2003 Arrest Of The Richest Man In Russia Changed Everything — And What Happens Next

ADAM TAYLOR OCT. 24, 2013, 4:51 PM 4,930 12

Pavel Khodorkovsky was in Boston when he first heard of his father’s arrest, of how masked men stormed his father’s jet at dawn in the Novosibirsk Airport in Siberia, aimed machine guns at him, slapped handcuffs on his wrists, and flew him to Moscow. He heard the news in a phone call from his mother on the morning of Oct. 25, 2003, but it would soon make headlines around the world. “Police in Russia seize oil tycoon,” read The New York Times, “Russia’s richest man held for fraud” went the BBC’s version. Read more of this post

Ford Valued Like It’s 1999 Seen Beating Toyota to Peak

Ford Valued Like It’s 1999 Seen Beating Toyota to Peak

Ford Motor Co. (F)’s market value is reaching levels last seen in 1999, putting the company closer to its historical peak than the world’s biggest carmaker, Toyota (7203) Motor Corp. For much of yesterday, Ford traded at a market capitalization of more than $70 billion, a level it has closed at only three times in the last 14 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That left the second-largest U.S. automaker within about $6 billion of its peak valuation in May 1999. Toyota ended the day $30 billion short of its $254 billion high reached in February 2007. Read more of this post

Facebook CEO paid record US$2.2 bil; “In the more than ten years that GMI has been publishing this report, I’ve never seen a top ten highest paid list that loomed this large”

Facebook CEO paid record US$2.2 bil.: survey

AFP
October 25, 2013, 12:27 am TWN

WASHINGTON — Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg set a new record for corporate compensation in 2012 with a package worth more than US$2.278 billion, according to a survey by a corporate governance firm. The report by GMI Ratings showed Zuckerberg’s salary of US$503,000 and bonus of US$266,000 were eclipsed by stock options worth some US$2.27 billion. This was the first year the survey found any chief executive collected more than US$1 billion, according to the GMI report released Tuesday. Read more of this post

Ex-Bankers Following Swiss Gain Traction Advising Asian Rich

Ex-Bankers Following Swiss Gain Traction Advising Asian Rich

Independent asset managers, who advise rich clients of private banks on their investments, may at least triple the funds they oversee in Asia as demand for specialized products rises, said Taurus Wealth Advisors Pte. Independent managers, mostly former bankers, will increase the assets they advise on in the region to about $70 billion by 2017 after boosting them to about $20 billion now from $4 billion five years ago, Mandeep Nalwa, chief executive officer of Singapore-based Taurus, estimated in an Oct. 23 interview. Nalwa was a founding member of the Association of Independent Asset Managers, which was formed in Singapore in March 2011, Read more of this post

European stock exchanges are courting small firms as never before

Stock exchanges are courting small firms as never before

Oct 26th 2013 | PARIS |From the print edition

TEN-YEAR-OLD Ekinops, a small French company that facilitates data transmission over high-speed fibre-optic cable, went public in April, raising €6.7m ($8.7m) on NYSE Euronext in Paris. The fast-growing firm wanted money to help it expand; its venture-capital backers wanted to start returning money to their investors. Didier Brédy, Ekinops’s boss, says he is “delighted” with the amount raised in exchange for over a fifth of the firm’s equity and with subsequent trading volumes in the company’s stock, the price of which has risen by a third. Read more of this post

Europe’s other debt crisis: It’s not just sovereign borrowing; there are too many zombie firms and overindebted households

Europe’s other debt crisis: It’s not just sovereign borrowing; there are too many zombie firms and overindebted households

Oct 26th 2013 |From the print edition

FIFTEEN months ago, in July 2012, Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), promised to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the single currency. Although the bond-buying scheme set up to fulfil that pledge has never been tested, yields on sovereign bonds have fallen. The euro mess has morphed from an acute crisis into a chronic one. This week Mr Draghi launched what could become the second big turning-point in the euro saga: an inspection of the balance-sheets of the region’s 128 biggest banks which the ECB will supervise from late 2014. As part of its “asset-quality review”, ECB officials, along with outside experts, will start peering into the banks’ balance-sheets and impose common standards for loan quality (see article). This process is supposed to find out which banks are viable now, which will need more capital and which should just be closed down. Read more of this post

A Crocodile’s Bumpy Road From Farm to Handbag

A Crocodile’s Bumpy Road From Farm to Handbag

By Janice Kew and Andrew Roberts October 24, 2013

These days, women of every economic stripe can be seen carrying pricey leather handbags. Not so with totes made of crocodile, one of the most difficult luxury materials to obtain, especially in the pristine condition wealthy fashionistas expect. As demand from the world’s elite surges for the skins, luxury goods companies such as LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (MC:FP) and Kering (KER:FP), the owner of Gucci, are making acquisitions to secure a supply of the beasts, whose habits make even collecting their eggs a matter of life and death. Keeping crocodiles from scratching or biting each other as you raise them from hatchling to arm candy is another major challenge. Read more of this post

Debtors’ prison: The euro zone is blighted by private debt even more than by government debt

Debtors’ prison: The euro zone is blighted by private debt even more than by government debt

Oct 26th 2013 |From the print edition

THE European Central Bank (ECB) announced this week how it will undertake a root-and-branch examination of banking assets before it takes charge of supervision in the euro area late next year (see article). One aim of the exercise is to identify the bad debts that are fouling up euro-zone banks and preventing the flow of new credit. This is important because parts of the single-currency area are crippled not just by public borrowing but by private debt, most of which is sitting on banking books. Read more of this post

Bowing to Wall Street, DuPont to spin off titanium dioxide performance chemicals unit

Bowing to Wall Street, DuPont to spin off titanium dioxide unit

Thu, Oct 24 2013

By Ernest Scheyder

(Reuters) – DuPont (DD.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Thursday it will spin off its titanium dioxide unit into a separately traded public company within 18 months, yielding to intense pressure from Wall Street to divest the volatile business. Spinning off the performance chemicals business, which also sells refrigerants, would allow DuPont to focus more on specialty materials and agriculture, two growth areas. Read more of this post

The Misreading of China’s Growth Data; Even if not technically inaccurate, Beijing’s GDP numbers mislead, resulting in misguided optimism over an economy slowing down

The Misreading of China’s Growth Data

Even if not technically inaccurate, Beijing’s GDP numbers mislead, resulting in misguided optimism over an economy slowing down.

LELAND R. MILLER and

AND CRAIG CHARNEYCraig Charney

Oct. 24, 2013 12:54 p.m. ET

Another day, another release of economic data in China—this time, Thursday’s HSBCHSBA.LN +0.57% purchasing manager’s index, where an uptick this month suggests improving business confidence. This will contribute to what many observers have described as increasingly positive economic news. But it’s a mistake to draw that conclusion from recent official data, which manage to present potentially misleading data misleadingly. Read more of this post

Yields on Chinese government bonds have risen to their highest level in nearly six years, as a confluence of factors makes investors more demanding

China Bond Yields Soar

Inflation Worries, Growth Outlook, Central Bank Moves Make Investors More Demanding

SHEN HONG

Updated Oct. 24, 2013 6:10 a.m. ET

SHANGHAI—Yields on Chinese government bonds have risen to their highest level in nearly six years, as a confluence of factors makes investors more demanding, analysts say. The yield on the benchmark 10-year bond hit 4.20% Thursday, the highest since it reached 4.60% in November 2007. “Rising inflationary pressures, a rebound in economic growth and the central bank’s shift toward a slightly more hawkish monetary policy have led to tighter liquidity conditions,” said Chen Long, an analyst at Bank of Dongguan. “These have made bonds less attractive to investors.” Read more of this post