Brazil’s oil groups fail to live up to hype of five years ago when vast offshore oil discoveries promised to transform the country

November 3, 2013 5:19 pm

Brazil’s oil groups fail to live up to hype

By Samantha Pearson in São Paulo

Bewitched by the sales pitch of its charming founder, investors had high hopes for the Brazilian oil company. But several years after going public, the Rio de Janeiro-based start-up has yet to find oil at any of its wells. Its cash is dwindling and its shares have slumped about 90 per cent during the past year. The company in question, however, is not Eike Batista’s OGX, which triggered Latin America’s largest corporate default last week by filing for bankruptcy protection, but the little-known company HRT. Read more of this post

Buyers Eye Hong Kong Banks for China Links

Buyers Eye Hong Kong Banks for China Links

Companies That Want to Enter China’s Banking Sector Look to Hong Kong Lenders With Chinese Licenses

ISABELLA STEGER and YVONNE LEE

Updated Nov. 4, 2013 10:04 a.m. ET

Chinese financial companies eager to break into banking in their country may have better luck looking outside the mainland, as a recent offer by brokerage owner Yue Xiu Enterprises (Holdings) Ltd. for Hong Kong’s Chong Hing Bank Ltd. 1111.HK -0.29%shows. Yue Xiu said Oct. 25 it has made an offer for a 75% stake in Chong Hing Bank for 11.64 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$1.50 billion), in what could be the first sale of a Hong Kong bank since 2010. The attraction, an official at Yue Xiu said, is less Chong Hing’s exposure to Hong Kong, a city of eight million, than its Chinese banking license, through which the family-owned bank has one branch in Guangdong. Read more of this post

Thai Protesters Opposing Amnesty Law Rally in Streets of Bangkok

Thai Protesters Opposing Amnesty Law Rally in Streets of Bangkok

Thailand’s biggest opposition party led thousands of supporters on a march through Bangkok’s streets today in an attempt to derail government efforts to pass an amnesty law for political offenses. About 10,000 demonstrators joined rallies that paralyzed traffic in separate parts of Bangkok, according to police estimates. The Democrat party has vowed to continue organizing demonstrations unless the government scraps the bill. Read more of this post

Backlash Over Thai Amnesty Bill Spreads; Plan to Absolve Former Leader Thaksin Draws Opponents to the Streets

Backlash Over Thai Amnesty Bill Spreads

Plan to Absolve Former Leader Thaksin Draws Opponents to the Streets

JAMES HOOKWAY

Updated Nov. 4, 2013 10:12 a.m. ET

BANGKOK—A backlash broke out on the streets of Thailand’s capital Monday over a bill that would absolve the country’s leaders of crimes committed over nearly a decade of political turmoil. Early Monday morning, thousands of protesters joined forces at an intersection near Bangkok’s commercial center to protest the proposed amnesty for Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted as prime minister in a 2006 military coup that set off years of instability in Thailand. Mr. Thaksin, a 64-year-old telecom tycoon who ran Thailand for five years, has been living in self-imposed exile, evading imprisonment on a corruption conviction that he says was politically motivated. Read more of this post

Indian jewellery ad celebrates remarriage; Sites called divorceematrimony. com and secondshaadi.com, which means second marriage in Hindi, are popular

Indian jewellery ad celebrates remarriage

Tuesday, November 5, 2013 – 05:00

Nirmala Ganapathy

The Straits Times

INDIA – A new advertisement by a jewellery company showing a beautiful bride with a caramel complexion getting married as her daughter looks on has put the focus on remarriage in a country where many women are still hemmed in by conservative traditions. The advertisement, which is for the wedding line of India’s Tanishq brand, shows the bride putting on her jewellery, then walking hand in hand with her daughter to the stage for the marriage ceremony. Read more of this post

Gillette’s ‘Shave India Movement’

November 4, 2013 4:08 pm

Gillette’s ‘Shave India Movement’

By Srinivas Reddy and Christopher Dula

The story. While Procter & Gamble’s Gillette safety razors have become the dominant brand in nearly every developed market, sales of its flagship product – the three-blade Mach3 – in India were disappointing. Yet there was a huge potential market in India, where most of the 400m-plus men of shaving age used double-edge razors. By 2008, years of traditional marketing had failed to increase sales of Gillette razors. Sharat Verma, brand manager for Gillette India, decided it needed to adopt radical new tactics to expand its 20 per cent market share in the razor category. Read more of this post

A tie-up between SingPost and Adidas shows how postal carriers can make more from e-commerce

November 4, 2013 4:09 pm

Singapore delivers a new post

By Jeremy Grant

©FT/Munshi Ahmed

Mail man: Wolfgang Baier brings family pedigree and experience at McKinsey to the postal business

When Wolfgang Baier was on a trip to his native Austria from his current base inSingapore, he dropped by to catch up with his 94-year-old great aunt. To his surprise, he discovered something he had never known about her. Like his mother and maternal grandfather, she too had worked in the Austrian postal service decades before. “It can’t be an accident that I have the postal business in my blood,” says Mr Baier, who has been chief executive of Singapore Post since 2011. Read more of this post

Malaysia’s Iskandar Waterfront delays IPO on gov property measures-sources

Malaysia’s Iskandar Waterfront delays IPO on gov property measures-sources

Monday, Nov 04, 2013

Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR – Iskandar Waterfront Holdings, a Malaysian property developer focused on the southern state of Johor, has postponed an up to S$373 million IPO to the last quarter of 2014 due to property cooling measures, two sources said on Monday. The firm, tasked with developing a metropolis in Johor state that neighbours Singapore, had previously deferred the listing to early 2014 from an initial target to sell shares in this current quarter. The IPO is a casualty of the Malaysian government’s plan to raise real property gains taxes next year and double the minimum price at which foreigners can buy property as it seeks to cool prices. “The assets have to be revalued now with the changes in real property gains tax,” said one of the sources. The sources declined to be identified as the matter was private. Officials in Iskandar could not be immediately reached for comment.

World’s wet woodlands ‘at risk from water crisis’

World’s wet woodlands ‘at risk from water crisis’

Monday, November 4, 2013 – 18:57

AsiaOne

SYDNEY – Nations round the world need to cut back on their water use if they want to save their precious woodlands and rivers, warned scientists at the Australia’s National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT). The work of PhD researcher Sepideh Zolfaghar reveals that even trees in areas with abundant rainfall are at risk from over-extraction of groundwater. Read more of this post

Water Mystery Baffles Engineers as Rainy Dublin Endures

Water Mystery Baffles Engineers as Rainy Dublin Endures

In Dublin, where it rains about every other day, residents and businesses in Ireland’s biggest city enduring a second week of water restrictions don’t know when full service will resume. City engineers aren’t sure what caused a water-treatment plant at the country’s largest such facility to stop filtering properly and until that’s determined, the supply cutoffs that have upset Dubliners and hurt restaurants will continue. Read more of this post

Shiller’s Brazil Housing Bubble Warning Dismissed in Loan Surge

Shiller’s Bubble Warning Dismissed in Loan Surge: Brazil Credit

Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff is disregarding warnings about a housing bubble and is stoking demand instead by helping people buy more homes as prices surge. The government increased the price limit of houses people can buy using the unemployment insurance fund on Sept. 30 after public lending for homes increased more than four times as much as private banks in the two years through June, to 202 billion reais ($90 billion), according to central bank data. Read more of this post

Shell game: Britain makes a bold move on making firms say who owns them

Shell game: Britain makes a bold move on making firms say who owns them

Nov 2nd 2013 |From the print edition

CONCEALING a company’s ownership is legal in most countries. So long as you stay away from the stock exchange, you can register the owner as another firm or list a nominee (such as a friendly lawyer). Even using false or flimsy documents is often, in effect, risk-free. Checks are scanty: registrars record what they are told but often fail to check it. The result is a corporate vehicle that can prudently preserve privacy—or wreak mayhem. Global Witness, a London-based anti-corruption campaign, calls such anonymous shell companies the “global getaway cars for crime, corruption and tax evasion”. Read more of this post

Jetmakers feud over seat width with big orders at stake

Jetmakers feud over seat width with big orders at stake

Sunday, November 3, 2013 – 18:52

Tim Hepher

Reuters

PARIS – A row has flared up between leading planemakers over the width of tourist-class seats on long-distance flights, setting the tone for a bitter confrontation at this month’s Dubai Airshow. The dispute focuses on the width of seats provided on long-haul flights for economy passengers – not always the ones most courted by airlines, but whose allocated space holds the key to efficiency claims for the latest jets offered by Airbus and Boeing. Read more of this post

Gross Loses World’s Largest Mutual Fund Title to Vanguard

Gross Loses World’s Largest Mutual Fund Title to Vanguard

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) — Bill Gross no longer runs the world’s largest mutual fund. Gross’s Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTRX) has shrunk by $37.5 billion since the start of this year, ending last month with $247.9 billion in assets, according to data provided by Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California, and compiled by Bloomberg. The Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX) ended October with $251 billion, Vanguard Group Inc. spokesman John Woerth wrote in an e-mail, taking the top spot. Read more of this post

‘Bail-in’ jitters for bank bond investors; Effect on funding costs for European banks could be significant

Last updated: November 4, 2013 7:07 pm

‘Bail-in’ jitters for bank bond investors

By Christopher Thompson in London and Michael Steen in Frankfurt

“Burden-sharing”, “bail-in” or “haircuts” – call it what you like. The prospect of bank creditors sitting in the line of fire is causing jitters among bond investors ahead of stress tests by European Union regulators. EU finance ministers have already raised concern among senior bondholders, agreeing in June rules to force losses on creditors in failed banks, a move Moody’s described as “clearly credit negative” for unsecured investors. Read more of this post

No need to dig: Many of Africa’s fastest-growing economies have not relied on oil or mining

No need to dig: Many of Africa’s fastest-growing economies have not relied on oil or mining

Nov 2nd 2013 |From the print edition

AFRICA is a continent rich in minerals and oil. China has an economy that requires them in abundance. Since the mid-1990s the economy of sub-Saharan Africa has grown by an average of 5% a year. At the start of this period Africa’s trade with China was negligible. It is now worth around $200 billion a year. Most of Africa’s exports are raw materials. China sends manufactured goods back in return. Read more of this post

Africa Water Utilities Lose as Much as $800 Million A Year because of leaks, fraud and unpaid bills

Africa Water Utilities Lose as Much as $800 Million

African water companies lose as much as $800 million a year, or about 35 percent of total production, because of leaks, fraud and unpaid bills, according to the African Water Association. As much as 50 percent of the water produced in some African nations is never accounted for, Sylvain Usher, the secretary-general of the Abidjan, Ivory Coast-based group, said Oct. 30 in an interview in Abidjan. The organization collects data on 100 private and government utilities in 40 African nations. Africa’s population will rise 66 percent to 1.2 billion people by 2050, putting a strain on the world’s poorest region, which is already struggling to meet water and sanitation metrics set by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Most of the waste is because of aging equipment and poor management of facilities, Usher said. Utilities need to use more meters and improve reading of the existing ones to reduce costs, he said. “Rampant urbanization is driving governments to try to extend their infrastructure, but they aren’t replacing existing equipment,” Usher said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Olivier Monnier in Abidjan at omonnier@bloomberg.net

Megawati urged not to run for Indonesia president

Megawati urged not to run for president

Monday, November 4, 2013 – 03:00

Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja

The Straits Times

INDONESIA – With just two months to go before the election year starts, observers and party insiders have suggested that former president Megawati Sukarnoputri take a tip from India’s Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi – do not seek the top job again, opt out instead while retaining a considerable amount of political influence. Their concern comes as Ms Megawati, chairman of the Indonesian Democratic Party-Struggle (PDI-P), continues to defer a decision on whether she will make another run for the presidency at a time when opinion polls suggest her party has a clear shot at power after 10 years on the outside. Read more of this post

Fixing Indonesia’s Public Transport Woes

Fixing Indonesia’s Public Transport Woes

By Rudy Setiawan on 9:20 am November 4, 2013.

Indonesia is one of the largest countries in the world without a decent or well-functioning public transportation system. The public transportation issue itself is not only limited to large cities such as Jakarta, Surabaya or Medan, but it also involves many intra-city transportation hubs and island transportation systems. It is, without a doubt, one of the largest and most complex issues that the government and private sector must tackle from all fronts. Read more of this post