Thailand’s Italian-Thai Development Company (ITD) will cease their operation on November 20 at the Dawei Special Economic Zone (DSEZ); Dawei seizure claim stuns ITD

Italian-Thai company to quit Dawei Special Economic Zone

Published on Sunday, 17 November 2013 17:43

The Italian-Thai Development Company (ITD) will cease their operation on November 20 at the Dawei Special Economic Zone (DSEZ) in Tanintharyi Region, southern Myanmar, according to local sources.

The company is facing financial difficulties for the project which started in 2008 and failed to carry out the project within the required time frame. Myanmar and Thailand governments had tried to intervene to keep the project alive. Though early reports said both governments would invite investments from international companies. But the plan never materialised and the local stakeholders are calling it “a waiting game.” Read more of this post

Yeo’s Lures Suitors Seeing to Win Over Owners: Real M&A

Yeo’s Lures Suitors Seeing to Win Over Owners: Real M&A

Yeo Hiap Seng Ltd. (YHS) would be among the most alluring targets in Asia’s booming drinks market if it weren’t for the Singaporean company’s controlling family. With a factory in China and sites planned for Cambodia and Indonesia, Yeo’s offers acquirers a ready-made distribution network, said CMC Markets. The $1.18 billion seller of soy milk and chilled melon tea has more than doubled its profit in two years, and rivals such as Suntory Beverage & Food Ltd. (2587) are seeking food and drinks assets in emerging markets. Read more of this post

The isotonic drink 100Plus was the first to be formulated and launched in Malaysia as a sports drink under the F&N Group in 1983

Updated: Saturday November 16, 2013 MYT 1:42:46 PM

F&N, already famous brand not resting on its laurels

BY JOY LEE
PHOTOS BY BRIAN MOH

The isotonic drink 100Plus is a brand not unknown to many. The drink was the first to be formulated and launched in Malaysia as a sports drink under the F&N Group in 1983. And Khalid Alvi, managing director of F&N Beverages Marketing Sdn Bhd believes that 100Plus continues to enjoy a loyal and significant following among Malaysians. Read more of this post

Increase transparency in property prices; Companies factor in sales gimmick freebies into the cost of the property

Updated: Saturday November 16, 2013 MYT 9:00:04 AM

Increase transparency in prices

BY CHANG KIM L OONG

Companies factor in freebies into the cost of the property

DEVELOPERS often offer sales gimmicks and marketing ploys like free legal fees, rebates, air-conditioners and furniture. Budget 2014, however, seems to make it a requirement that developers be transparent about their property prices. Read more of this post

London Lures Billionaires as Mansions Seen as Safe Haven

London Lures Billionaires as Mansions Seen as Safe Haven

“We’ve had offers of around 25 million pounds, but they aren’t quite high enough,” says Noel de Keyzer, a veteran broker for Savills Plc (SVS), a London-based real estate agency. We are standing in a surprisingly sunlit subterranean family room beneath the garden of 29 Brompton Square in Knightsbridge, on the market for 27.5 million pounds ($44.3 million). Damien Hirst butterfly prints hang on the earth-tone walls of the recently renovated, fully furnished 1820s house. Read more of this post

Young and Educated in Europe, but Desperate for Jobs; “But that doesn’t stop the feelings of guilt. On the bad days, it’s really hard to get out of bed. I ask myself, ‘What did I do wrong?’”

November 15, 2013

Young and Educated in Europe, but Desperate for Jobs

By LIZ ALDERMAN

MADRID — Alba Méndez, a 24-year-old with a master’s degree in sociology, sprang out of bed nervously one recent morning, carefully put on makeup and styled her hair. Her thin hands trembled as she clutched her résumé on her way out of the tiny room where a friend allows her to stay rent free. She had an interview that day for a job at a supermarket. It was nothing like the kind of professional career she thought she would have after finishing her education. But it was a rare flicker of opportunity after a series of temporary positions, applications that went nowhere and employers who increasingly demanded that young people work long, unpaid stretches just to be considered for something permanent. Read more of this post

Why should Britain build new towns when it already has great cities? Awarding prizes for the urbanisation of the countryside makes no sense while existing cities are given Cinderella status

Why should Britain build new towns when it already has great cities?

Awarding prizes for the urbanisation of the countryside makes no sense while existing cities are given Cinderella status

Simon Jenkins

The Guardian, Thursday 14 November 2013 20.31 GMT

I still wake at night sweating over the time at school when I came bottom in art. The teacher felt he should embrace town planning and told the class to design a city. We were each given a large sheet of paper with a wavy line across it for a river. We were issued with rulers, compasses and set squares. I was nonplussed. Others were beavering away with grids and circles while I gazed at the paper in despair. I saw no city. At last I doodled some roads wandering away from the river. I drew bridges and spattered the page with random lanes, streets, squares and factories. The teacher looked over my shoulder and was appalled. “You have simply drawn London,” he said. He tore up my masterpiece and put me bottom of the class. He apparently expected me to design Brasília, or at least Crawleynew town. I was mortified. Read more of this post

What Yellen Didn’t Tell Congress And Why It Matters

What Yellen Didn’t Tell Congress And Why It Matters

ALISTER BULL, REUTERS NOV. 17, 2013, 8:05 AM 1,195 3

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The most revealing thing about Janet Yellen’s widely praised Senate confirmation hearing performance last week might not have been what she said, but what she didn’t say – and how she didn’t say it. President Barack Obama’s nominee to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve smiled and nodded her way through a two-hour hearing on Thursday without giving the Senate Banking Committee any real clues as to how she views near-term monetary policy choices. Read more of this post

What the financial media don’t want you to know: the myth of the merger scoop

What the financial media don’t want you to know: the myth of the merger scoop

By John McDuling @jmcduling November 15, 2013

The “merger scoop” has been a staple of financial journalism for decades. Careers, and even entire business models, have been built around being the first to report that Company Y is buying Company Z. But there is an alternate view that deals scoops are far from the pieces of hard-hitting, journalistic brilliance they are often portrayed to be: In fact they are almost always the result of strategically calibrated leaks in the endgame of a given deal. Read more of this post

Rate rise set to put stake through heart of zombie companies

November 14, 2013 6:10 pm

Rate rise set to put stake through heart of zombie companies

By Brian Groom, Business and Employment Editor

Stores Unlimited, not its real name, looked a classic “zombie company” – a topic back in the news as the prospect of higher interest rates means more struggling businesses face insolvency. Four years ago, the southeast England retailer, with a turnover of £30m, was losing £2m a year and barely generating enough cash to pay the interest on its £10m debt. In previous recessions “it would have been curtains”, said the turnround professional sent in to rescue it. Read more of this post

Markets are betting QE cannot last much longer

November 15, 2013 11:29 am

Markets are betting QE cannot last much longer

John Authers

Cracking the code of the new Federal Reserve chief will be key

Ultimately, the Federal Reserve will remove its extreme policies of monetary stimulus, because ultimately the US economy will stage a recovery. And ultimately, the remarkable onward march of the US stock market will be thwarted and go into reverse. The problem is to work out what “ultimately” means, and exactly when these things will happen. Read more of this post

Italy’s luxury property sector proves beacon of hope in recession

November 15, 2013 1:39 pm

Italy’s luxury property sector proves beacon of hope in recession

By Guy Dinmore and Giulia Segreti in Rome

An imposing bronze statue of a gladiator armed with trident and net overlooks the lobby paved with delicate yellow Siena marble illuminated by Murano crystal chandeliers from Venice. There is no mistaking the Italian character of the Regina Baglioni in Rome’s renowned Via Veneto, but its new owner is the ruling family of Qatar, which bought the five-star hotel through its Mayhoola for Investments fund after acquiring Italian designer Valentino last year for a reported $850m. Read more of this post

It’s Fed Versus Moody’s for ‘Most Wrong’ Crown

It’s Fed Versus Moody’s for ‘Most Wrong’ Crown

Who was more wrong in the run-up to the financial crisis of 2008: the Federal Reserve or Moody’s Investors Service? This isn’t an academic question; both organizations are still hugely relevant to shaping the way we see our financial system and the risks it contains. And both are now apparently underestimating the dangers again. To be fair, the thinking at both places has shifted, but not anywhere close to enough. The reason for this is simple: The incentives that encouraged their misperceptions before 2008 remain in place today. Read more of this post

El-Erian: Have we overestimated the power of the central banks?

Have we overestimated the power of the central banks?

Governments that once resented central banks’ power are now happy to have them compensate for their own economic-governance shortfalls

Mohamed El-Erian

theguardian.com, Wednesday 13 November 2013 15.29 GMT

History is full of people and institutions that rose to positions of supremacy only to come crashing down. In most cases, hubris – a sense of invincibility fed by uncontested power – was their undoing. In other cases, however, both the rise and the fall stemmed more from the unwarranted expectations of those around them. Read more of this post

Forget data and rhetoric, Fed liquidity’s the only show in town

Forget data and rhetoric, Fed liquidity’s the only show in town

8:27am EST

By Jamie McGeever

LONDON (Reuters) – For all the fevered speculation about when the Federal Reserve will begin scaling back its monetary stimulus, market volatility has been taking a leisurely nap, suggesting investors see no major shocks on the horizon to derail their bets. Low market volatility is a sign markets expect no “taper” any time soon, or that they are steeled for a reduction in the pace of the Fed’s bond-buying if it comes. Read more of this post

Fair value lessons from ‘London whale’; Regulators determined to safeguard investors’ interests as valuation models vary

November 15, 2013 11:24 am

Comment: Fair value lessons from ‘London whale’

By Mark Hepsworth

Regulators determined to safeguard investors’ interests as valuation models vary

The US justice department’s civil and criminal charges against two traders at JPMorgan in connection with the so-called “London whale” trading losses have kept the methods employed by banks and investors for valuing complex securities in the spotlight. Valuing a bond or a derivative can be challenging for a variety of reasons. Foremost among them is that a large portion of these instruments do not trade frequently, if at all, in over-the-counter markets. Read more of this post

Dubai Expat Rents Exceed Pay Hitting Competitiveness

Dubai Expat Rents Exceed Pay Hitting Competitiveness

Sarah El-Said is relocating for the fourth time since coming to Dubai from New Jersey in 2008. The mother of two and her husband will pay 43 percent more for a similar-sized apartment, moving their children away from friends after disagreeing with their landlord over terms of a new lease. “This is insane,” said El-Said, who pays 8,750 dirhams ($2,400) per month for an apartment on the Palm Jumeirah manmade island. “It’s like you have to move house every two years. You feel no stability in where you live and you’re always at the mercy of landlords whose sole interest is making more money.” Read more of this post