KT Corp. CEO Offers to Quit After Prosecutors Raid Headquarters

KT Corp. CEO Offers to Quit After Prosecutors Raid Headquarters

KT Corp. (030200), South Korea’s second-largest mobile operator, said Chief Executive Officer Lee Suk Chae offered to resign after prosecutors raided the company’s headquarters and his home. The board will soon decide the resignation date and discuss a successor to Lee, who also held the role of chairman, the Seongnam, South Korea-based carrier said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. Read more of this post

Six years following bankruptcy, eikaiwa (English conversation) school chain Nova boosts the brand

Six years following bankruptcy, Nova boosts the brand

BY PATRICK BUDMAR

SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES

NOV 3, 2013

In September, Tokyo-based Jibun Mirai Associe Co. (JMA) announced it would adopt Nova as its official corporate name — 19 months after it acquired the eikaiwa (English conversation) school chain from its previous operators, and almost six years after its well-publicized downfall. It has been a rocky road for the school since the Oct. 26, 2007, bankruptcy announcement that put thousands of foreign-language instructors out of work (and in some cases out of apartments), even necessitating some governments to intervene and give them assistance.

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Coming Soon: A Mahindra Aircraft

Coming Soon: A Mahindra Aircraft

by Seema Singh | Nov 1, 2013

Aerospace is not quite automotive but Anand Mahindra believes that just as Mahindra Jeeps plied Indian roads even as they were being made, Mahindra utility aircraft will fly Indian skies even as runways are being readied. In two years Mahindra Aerospace will begin manufacturing GA-8s in India. GA-8 and GA-10 (the numeric indicates seating capacity) enters its portfolio via the acquisition of Australia’s GippsAero, which makes these aircraft. At the inauguration of its Rs 150-crore aerostructures facility near Bangalore, Mahindra announced a strategic partnership with Aernova of Spain, a Tier I global aerostructures supplier that will transfer technology to Mahindra. Initially, the Bangalore facility will supply components to the aircraft being made by GippsAero in Australia, but it soon plans to enter the global supply chain. At peak capacity the plant could gross Rs 250 crore in revenue and employ 400 people. With commercial aerospace booming even as defence aerospace shrinks, according to a Deloitte 2013 report, Mahindra’s vision to increase India’s footprint in the global sourcing market is not sentimentalism. It hasn’t named its customers but some of the top manufacturers—Boeing, Airbus and EuroCopter—were at the launch and were interested in testing the components. Between aerostructures and utility aircraft—provided it finds a good number of customers for the latter in India—Mahindra Aerospace could well turn out to be a worthy sibling of the group’s automotive business.

‘It’s Cloudy and It’s Gloomy and People are in a Bad Mood’: Rains and a Propane Shortage Leave Corn Farmers Wet Behind the Ears

Rains and a Propane Shortage Leave Corn Farmers Wet Behind the Ears

‘It’s Cloudy and It’s Gloomy and People are in a Bad Mood’

TONY C. DREIBUS and BRETT PHILBIN

Updated Nov. 1, 2013 7:50 p.m. ET

Farmers in the upper Midwest are used to dealing with drought, disease and pests. Now, they are grappling with a different problem: a propane shortage. Unusually heavy rains have left corn from this year’s bumper harvest soggier than normal. Farmers are struggling to acquire enough propane to fuel the giant, oven-like machines that dry corn before it is stored to prevent rot. The dash for the gas has helped send U.S. domestic propane prices to an 18-month high and is slowing the corn harvest, already delayed because of wet weather during planting. The propane shortage is keeping farmers in parts of the upper Midwest from finishing collection of their corn, because they have no way to quickly dry the kernels. About 59% of the U.S. harvest has been completed, behind the historical average of 62% for this point in the year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Monday.

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A seemingly “unbridgeable valuation gap” between buyers and sellers continues to stymie big merger activity in the mining sector

November 3, 2013 3:46 pm

Mining valuation gap blocks big mergers

By Neil Hume, Commodities Editor

A seemingly “unbridgeable valuation gap” between buyers and sellers continues to stymie big merger activity in the mining sector while private capital has emerged as a growing force in dealmaking. A total of 165 deals worth only $8bn were completed in the three months to September, down from 236 deals worth $20bn in the same period a year ago, according to figures from consultants E&Y. Read more of this post

Mitsubishi Expands Into Asian Condos as Commodity Profits Slow

Mitsubishi Expands Into Asian Condos as Commodity Profits Slow

Mitsubishi Corp. (8058), Asia’s largest trading company by market value, is expanding into property development in Southeast Asia as the slowdown in China shrinks profits from its commodity businesses. The first project, starting next year, entails building an apartment complex with more than 1,000 units in the Philippines at a cost of 40 billion yen ($405 million), Masahiro Nagaoka, head of township development and construction at Mitsubishi, said in an interview in Tokyo. Read more of this post

Wei Chuan Falls Most Since 2003 After suspending the sale of some edible oil products on concern about the sources of raw materials

Wei Chuan Falls Most Since 2003 After Pulling Oils: Taipei Mover

Wei Chuan Foods Corp. plunged the most in more than 10 years after the Taiwanese food retailer said it suspended the sale of some products amid a government probe into the labeling of edible oils sold to consumers. The stock fell by the maximum 7 percent daily limit to NT$51.90, headed for the biggest loss since March 2003, after the company said yesterday it voluntarily removed some edible-oil products from shelves on concern about the sources of raw materials. The Taipei-based company said it would cooperate with the government investigation, according to the statement it filed with Taiwan’s stock exchange. Taiwan Premier Jiang Yi-huah said Nov. 1 the government will improve systems to prevent substandard foods from reaching the public, the Taipei-based Central News Agency reported. The health ministry discovered cases where oil mixtures were labeled as pure oils through tests on ingredients and additives in cooking oils, the China Post reported Nov. 1. As of yesterday, officials discovered 129 products were in breach of regulations out of 7,665 products tested in spot checks around Taiwan, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

To contact the reporter on this story: Debra Mao in Taipei at dmao5@bloomberg.net

Wine World Atlas Revised to Include Finger Lakes, China

Wine World Atlas Revised to Include Finger Lakes, China

A rich cabernet blend at a recent reception tasted like a cru classe Bordeaux, but it was a terrific red 2010 from RdV Vineyards Lost Mountain in Virginia. The state gets a nod as a world-class wine region in the latest edition of “The World Atlas of Wine” by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. For the first time, the authoritative reference allots Virginia wine country, less than an hour’s drive from Washington D.C., a detailed map and two pages of text. Read more of this post

Rewards shift to stock pickers in U.S. market rally

Rewards shift to stock pickers in U.S. market rally

2:34am EST

By David Randall

NEW YORK (Reuters) – It’s a good time to be a stock picker. Some 57 percent of U.S. funds run by active managers are beating their benchmark indexes this year, according to fund-tracker Morningstar. That is the best overall performance for the industry since 2009 and well above the 37 percent of funds that typically top the indexes. Stock pickers are doing well in part because after more than four years of marching higher en masse, stocks have started to separate themselves into leaders and laggards. The lines of demarcation became more pronounced during the past few weeks as U.S. companies reported their recent quarterly results. Read more of this post

Property hot spots from Canada to China renew easy-money bubble fears

Property hot spots from Canada to China renew easy-money bubble fears

Alan Wheatley and Tim Reid, Reuters | 01/11/13 8:22 AM ET
LONDON/LOS ANGELES — From China to Canada and London, fast-rising property markets are haunting the global economy again, five years after the U.S. subprime mortgage bubble burst and triggered the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. For now, house price inflation is neither as high nor as widespread as it was in the middle of last decade. Except in a few cases, the warning signals are flashing amber, not red, and several countries have acted to cool overheating markets. Read more of this post

How Turkey made its railway tunnel under the Bosphorus earthquake-proof

How Turkey made its railway tunnel under the Bosphorus earthquake-proof

By Philip A. Stephenson @phantomath November 1, 2013

This week, the world’s first transcontinental tunnel was opened in Turkey. Istanbul’s Marmaray tunnel connects Europe and Asia, delving 1.4 kilometers (0.87 miles) across the Bosphorus Strait at  a depth of 60 meters (185 feet), breaking records for an immersed tube tunnel. The name is a portmanteau of “Marmara” (the Turkish body of water just outside the strait) and “ray,” the Turkish word for “rail.” As construction was a mere 20 kilometers from the active North Anatolian earthquake fault, the tunnel segments had  to be built to withstand earthquake magnitudes up to 9.0. Read more of this post

Higher Swiss Leverage Ratio Could Mean End of Universal Bank

Higher Swiss Leverage Ratio Could Mean End of Universal Bank

Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said lenders including UBS AG (UBSN) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) may have to pull out of investment banking as she called for their leverage ratios to be raised. “Banks would have to consider whether to carry on with investment banking or focus even more on asset management,” Widmer-Schlumpf was quoted as saying in an interview with Schweiz am Sonntag. Banks “must be organized in such a way that the state isn’t ultimately held liable.” Read more of this post

Emerging-Stock Rally Raises Concern; Some Analysts Expect a Volatile Time; Avoiding the ‘Fragile Five’: India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia and South Africa

Emerging-Stock Rally Raises Concern

Some Analysts Expect a Volatile Time; Avoiding the ‘Fragile Five’

E.S. BROWNING

Nov. 3, 2013 3:20 p.m. ET

Investors have rediscovered developing countries, sending their stocks up 16%, as a group, since late June. A growing number of analysts who follow these countries, known in the trade as emerging markets, find that troubling. Their message: Proceed at your own risk. Emerging markets are exciting to investors because for much of the past decade, EM stocks and bonds delivered the big gains. Many investors still are nervous about U.S. stocks, even though many major U.S. indexes are in or near record territory. Read more of this post

Dutch government is planning to sell all $12 billion of the US mortgage bonds acquired during the 2009 bailout of ING as prices of the securities soared, more than doubling in some cases from lows that year

Dutch Gamble on U.S. Housing Debt After Patience Wins

The Dutch government’s decision to hold onto U.S. mortgage debt acquired during the 2009 bailout of ING Groep NV (INGA) has paid off so far as prices of the securities soared, more than doubling in some cases from lows that year. The nation now is planning to sell all $12 billion of the bonds, many of which are tied to borrowers who were deemed more risky after failing to document their incomes or taking on mortgages with growing balances. ING, the Netherlands’ biggest financial-services company, said last week the current market value of the bonds is about 71 percent of the face amount. The government may see a gain of almost 800 million euros ($1.1 billion), Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem told Parliament. Read more of this post

Big finance is a problem, not an industry to be nurtured; To bring down our debt levels, we cannot avoid shrinking the financial sector

November 3, 2013 5:23 pm

Big finance is a problem, not an industry to be nurtured

By Dirk Bezemer

To bring down our debt levels, we cannot avoid shrinking the financial sector, says Dirk Bezemer

Many western economies have both large financial sectors and exorbitant private debt-to-output ratios. This is no coincidence. Each loan is a debt, so a large financial sector implies high debt levels. For example, in the mid-1980s, loans by UK banks to UK companies and households were less than a quarter of gross domestic product; today they amount to 130 per cent. Add non-bank borrowing to that, and total private debt today stands at well over twice UK GDP. Read more of this post

Stratospheric Views, and Prices; Hard as it may be to believe, the price per square foot for luxury apartments in New York City is considerably less than it is for luxury elsewhere in the world

November 3, 2013

Stratospheric Views, and Prices

By JULIE CRESWELL

Walking slowly to the windows facing the meadow of green that is Central Park, Gary Barnett slips into salesman mode as he spreads his arms wide, embracing the sweeping bird’s-eye view he has from the 87th floor of his shimmering skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan. Noting a visitor’s gasp at the stunning vista, he smiles. “That’s what we want. We want the ‘Oh, wow,’ ” he says. Read more of this post

Shopping Mall Giant Westfield Group Focuses on U.S., U.K., Cautious on China

Westfield Group’s Retail Therapy

Shopping Mall Operator Focuses on U.S., U.K., Cautious on China

ROSS KELLY

Nov. 3, 2013 8:29 p.m. ET

Westfield Group, WDC.AU +0.46% one of the world’s largest shopping mall operators by revenue, is all about attracting big spenders. From Prada and Gucci to high-end restaurants, its malls cater to customers who are willing to pay for prized goods. So it may be surprising that Peter Lowy, the company’s joint chief executive, takes a cautious approach to investment. Despite a balance sheet bolstered by more than $6 billion from asset sales since the start of 2012, Westfield has resisted risky expansions into emerging markets like China. For now, it has no plans to join the rush of luxury brands and main-street retailers vying for the favor of Asia’s increasingly affluent middle classes. Read more of this post

The Fed is locked in a QE prison of its own making; US policymakers are caught in a trap – a seemingly inescapable dilemma that stems directly from the massive scale of QE

The Fed is locked in a QE prison of its own making

US policymakers are caught in a trap – a seemingly inescapable dilemma that stems directly from the massive scale of QE

Last Wednesday, at its monthly meeting, the Fed’s monetary committee voted to keep QE going – ordering the purchase of another $40bn of mortgage-backed securities and another $45bn of Treasuries, so $85bn in total. Photo: AP

By Liam Halligan, Economic Agenda

6:30PM GMT 02 Nov 2013

Back in the spring, Ben Bernanke told the world that “tapering” would start “later this year”. The Federal Reserve Chairman was indicating, in other words, that America’s central bank would start to wind-down its $85bn-a-month money-printing habit by the end of 2013. Such an outcome now looks increasingly unlikely. My view, in fact, is that the Fed, could soon unleash more, not less, quantitative easing – ramping up the policy rather than tapering. Such an outcome, were it to happen, would be incredibly risky. Speeding up monetary stimulation, rather than slowing it down, could spook financial markets – and even cause a panic. Yet in recent weeks, I’ve heard several well-placed economists and policymakers, especially in the US, start to contemplate such action. Read more of this post

How China Profits From Our Junk

How China Profits From Our Junk

By Adam Minter

China’s reputation as the “world’s factory” is well-established. But what happens to everything the world throws away? Since 2002, the Shanghai-based journalist Adam Minter has sought to find out. The son and grandson of scrap metalists, Minter traveled throughout the world to investigate how what we discard—and reuse—helps drive the global economy. Minter, who has written for a variety of publications (including both the print and digital versions ofThe Atlantic), now writes a weekly column on China for Bloomberg. In this excerpt from his forthcoming book Junkyard Planet, which will be published by Bloomsbury Press on November 12,  Minter travels to the epicenter of the global scrape trade: southern China. Read more of this post