The Future of Energy: Predicting what the energy landscape will look like in 20 years

The Future of Energy

Predicting what the energy landscape will look like in 20 years

Updated Nov. 11, 2013 4:19 p.m. ET

Consider how the energy landscape has changed in the past 20 years. In 1993, the price of oil was a bit over $18 a barrel; it’s around $100 a barrel now. In 1993, the life of a cellphone battery was hardly a concern because there were only 34 million cellphone subscribers world-wide, compared with more than 6.8 billion today. The battery for electric cars mattered even less: It would be another three years before the General Motors EV1 went into production and a year after that before the first Prius went on sale in Japan. Wind farms were a novelty, and solar energy barely registered in the statistics. Read more of this post

How to Cure South Korea’s English Fever?

November 12, 2013, 9:52 AM

How to Cure South Korea’s English Fever?

By Jasper Kim 

How much should a country pay to master the English language? Based on the economics and outcomes of English tuition in South Korea today, the country is throwing excessive amounts at the task with meager results. According to Swiss-based language learning company EF Education First, the average South Korean gets nearly 20,000 hours of English education from kindergarten through university. Much of that tuition comes at private institutes known as hagwon that Korean kids flock to stay ahead in the nation’s hyper-competitive educational race. There are currently over 17,000 hagwon that teach English in South Korea. That’s roughly one hagwon for every 647 students. Read more of this post

Behind the Scenes of Tokyo’s Political Soap Opera

Behind the Scenes of Tokyo’s Political Soap Opera

Shinzo Abe faces plenty of roadblocks in his quest to revive Japan’s sluggish economy. His mentor wasn’t supposed to be one of them. Former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is easily the most popular Japanese politician of the last 20 years. Not since Yasuhiro Nakasone in the mid-1980s had a Japanese leader made such a splash domestically and globally. Not coincidentally, both were keen reformers — as Abe, too, claims to be. Read more of this post

Jakarta Mulls Gridlock in 2014

Jakarta Mulls Gridlock in 2014

By Hotman Siregar & Deti Mega Purnamasari on 9:08 am November 12, 2013.

With hordes of cheap, new cars and motorcycles continuing to hit the city’s streets, and the two rail-based public transit networks not expected to be ready until at least 2016, experts have warned that Jakarta faces imminent gridlock next year. Azas Tigor Nainggolan, chairman of the city-funded Jakarta Transportation Council, said on Monday that he was concerned about the lack of effort to curb the number of private vehicles from clogging the city’s streets, particularly in the chronically congested downtown area, and the slow pace of improvement in public transportation. Read more of this post

Hyundai Motor Chief Technology Officer Quits Over Quality Issues

Hyundai Motor Chief Technology Officer Quits Over Quality Issues

Hyundai Motor Co. (005380)’s chief technology officer resigned after a series of recalls dented the South Korean automaker’s reputation for quality. Kwon Moon Sik, who was president of the research and development division, quit yesterday along with two other executives over a chain of quality issues, the Seoul-based company said in an e-mailed statement today. It didn’t say who will replace Kwon. Read more of this post

The Singapore brokerage unit of AMMB Holdings Bhd (AmBank Group), AmFraser, is believed to have exposure of close to S$150mil of financing for trades related to the recent fallout from a penny stock crash

Updated: Tuesday November 12, 2013 MYT 8:17:53 AM

Some snowball effect expected

BY GURMEET KAUR AND YVONNE TAN

PETALING JAYA: The Singapore brokerage unit of AMMB Holdings Bhd (AmBank Group), AmFraser Securities Pte Ltd, is believed to have exposure of close to S$150mil (RM384.61mil) of financing for trades related to the recent fallout from a penny stock crash involving Singapore Exchange Ltd (SGX)-listed Blumont Group Ltd, LionGold Corp Ltd and Asiasons Capital Ltd, sources said. Read more of this post

A simmering battle between Singapore conglomerate Fraser & Neave and its bondholders related to the company’s plans to spin off its property division has drawn the attention of the city state’s central bank

MAS Casts Eyes on F&N’s Spat With Bondholders

By Kit Yin Boey on 4:53 pm November 11, 2013.
Singapore. A simmering battle between Singapore conglomerate Fraser & Neave and its bondholders related to the company’s plans to spin off its property division has drawn the attention of the city state’s central bank. The Monetary Authority of Singapore has approached bankers and investors to gather information on a consent solicitation that F&N launched last week. Read more of this post

Capital-hungry Myanmar firms cautiously drawn to Singapore listings

Capital-hungry Myanmar firms cautiously drawn to Singapore listings

4:11pm EST

By Eveline Danubrata and Jared Ferrie

SINGAPORE/YANGON (Reuters) – At Yangon International airport, large blue and white signs in the arrival and departure halls promote Singapore’s stock exchange as the go-to destination for Myanmar businesses seeking capital. The advertisements underscore Singapore’s nascent role as a magnet for Myanmar companies eager to grow as their country emerges from decades of isolation but frustrated by its crippled banking system and barely existing financial markets. Read more of this post

Regulators must hold UK asset managers to higher standards

November 11, 2013 6:20 pm

Regulators must hold UK asset managers to higher standards

By Patrick Jenkins

Pay and churn should be the focus of UK regulatory reform

By the end of this month, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority will come up with its latest proposals to reform the asset management industry. A consultation paper will focus on customer charging structures, raising further questions over the sector’s murky interactions with the research and sales staff of investment banks. Read more of this post

One Answer to the Index Fund: Build a Better Index

NOVEMBER 11, 2013, 11:10 AM

One Answer to the Index Fund: Build a Better Index

By JEFF SOMMER

PAUL A. SAMUELSON made a startling and significant case for index funds in 1974. In a deliberately provocative essay, Mr. Samuelson, who had already won the Nobel in economic science and written the most influential economics textbook in history, said most professional investment managers should “drop dead.” At the very least, he said, they should “go out of business.” Read more of this post

Investors need to starve the hedge fund beast; The industry model mainly benefits intermediaries

November 11, 2013 7:38 pm

Investors need to starve the hedge fund beast

By Jonathan Ford

The industry model mainly benefits intermediaries, writes Jonathan Ford

Asked in the late 1970s how he saw the outlook for the specialist investment vehicles that he is credited with inventing, Alfred Winslow Jones was no optimist. “Thehedge fund doesn’t have a terrific future,” he said gloomily. Hedge funds’ investment styles were too easily copied, and the inefficiencies on which they thrived too swiftly eroded. They would never, Jones thought, become a big part of the investment scene. Read more of this post

Hedge Funds Are Muscling Into the Stodgy World of Municipal Debt

Hedge Funds Are Muscling Into Munis

Sharp-Elbowed Investors See Potential in the Stodgy World of Municipal Debt

MICHAEL CORKERY and MATT WIRZ 

Updated Nov. 11, 2013 8:01 p.m. ET

Hedge funds are making a large bet on municipal debt, bringing aggressive tactics to a $3.7 trillion market long known as humdrum. The strategies include demanding high interest rates in return for financing local governments, buying the debt of struggling municipalities on the cheap, and trying to profit on rising volatility as many mom-and-pop investors who have dominated the municipal-bond market for decades flee amid deepening fiscal problems in many U.S. cities and states. Read more of this post

Financial Innovation Is Depressing

Financial Innovation Is Depressing

DealBook has a special section today on ideas and innovation on Wall Street and let’s just say it will not inspire too many idealistic Stanford undergrads to stop work on their iPhone apps and take that financial-engineering job at Wells Fargo. It’s all pretty sad stuff. My favorite article in the section is of course the one on innovation in fraud, which it turns out is genuinely fertile ground for creativity, though tell that to the Stanford kids. To be fair, though, there is also innovation in catching fraud, specifically a Commodity Futures Trading Commission Rule, adopted in 2011, that outlaws market manipulation. So! Nice work there CFTC. Read more of this post

Eastern Europe: Which way to turn? Former Soviet states that choose to join the EU trade bloc run the risk of Russian retaliation

November 11, 2013 6:40 pm

Eastern Europe: Which way to turn?

By Neil Buckley and Roman Olearchyk

Former Soviet states that choose to join the EU trade bloc run the risk of Russian retaliation

Vladimir Pirogov, 73, who for 50 years was a trainer at the city stadium in Yalta in the well-funded heyday of Soviet sport, perches these days on a stool just off the Crimean resort’s elegant promenade, selling his paintings to tourists. In what is now Ukraine, his generation still looks east to Russia, he says. “We’re not needed in Europe, not our factories, not our economic potential. We’re mostly Russian speakers here,” says Mr Pirogov. “We want to live with Russia.” Read more of this post

Soured deals: Just a handful of companies have taken goodwill write-downs this year on past acquisitions that have soured. Low premiums, high stock prices and new accounting rules may be letting more firms avoid or delay the charges

Companies Get More Wiggle Room on Soured Deals

EMILY CHASAN and MAXWELL MURPHY

Nov. 11, 2013 8:15 p.m. ET

Last year U.S. companies slashed the value of their past acquisitions by $51 billion because the deals didn’t pan out as expected, according to a study set for release Tuesday. That was the highest yearly total for such write-downs since the financial crisis. This year, however, there have been only a handful of big corporate mea culpas. Suitors are paying the lowest premiums for target companies in nearly 20 years, stocks are trading near records, giving companies cover to avoid write-downs on the value of their assets, and new accounting rules may be allowing more of them to delay the charges. Read more of this post

In Malaysia’s culture of ingratiation, ‘Datuks’ are dime a dozen

In Malaysia’s culture of ingratiation, ‘Datuks’ are dime a dozen
(1 hr 20 mins ago)

For centuries, the Malay royal title “Datuk” – Malaysia’s equivalent of “Sir’’— was an honor that unlocked doors to the elite. But Datuks like K. Basil don’t feel so special these days. “Just throw a stone in the street and you’ll hit a Datuk,” complains Basil, a policeman-turned-politician and one of many who feel the awarding of the coveted titles has got out of hand in a status-obsessed Malaysian society, writes Shannon Teoh of AFP. (pictured, a ‘Datuk’ anointed by a self-styled royal Raja Noor Jan Shah Raja Tuah Shah, stand for a photo before attending a private event at a palace in Gombak, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur). Read more of this post