South Korea’s $35 Billion ‘Labor of Love’; Developer Struggles to Build a City From Scratch

South Korea’s $35 Billion ‘Labor of Love’

Developer Struggles to Build a City From Scratch

IN-SOO NAM

Updated Dec. 3, 2013 7:35 p.m. ET

A pagoda stands beside Songdo’s Central Park Canal. The Northeast Asia Trade Tower, background, opens next August. Gale International

SEOUL—About a decade ago, a huge tract of land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea west of Seoul was a barren wasteland. Today it is a city named Songdo with a population of 67,000, Korea’s tallest tower and a green oasis modeled on New York’s Central Park. On Wednesday, President Park Geun-hye is scheduled to join the developers of Songdo’s centerpiece—a $35 billion business district—for a ceremony welcoming Songdo’s latest office tenants: the World Bank’s Korea office and the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations organization. Read more of this post

Thai Tourism Bends Without Breaking in Turmoil: Chart of the Day

Thai Tourism Bends Without Breaking in Turmoil: Chart of the Day

Thailand’s tourism industry, which generates revenue equivalent to at least a 10th of economic output, will rebound after the eventual resolution between the government and protesters seeking to oust the prime minister, according to DBS Vickers Securities (Thailand) Co. The CHART OF THE DAY shows monthly tourist arrivals in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, based on data compiled from state agencies, with Thailand on track to surpass its southern-border neighbor for the first full year since 1999, according to figures through October. The lower panel compares the benchmark Stock Exchange of Thailand Index and the SET Tourism and Leisure Index comprising 13 companies including Central Plaza Hotel Pcl and OHTL Pcl, operator of the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok. Read more of this post

Thai Protesters Pause Anti-Government Push for King’s Birthday

Thai Protesters Pause Anti-Government Push for King’s Birthday

Anti-government protesters in Bangkok said they will suspend street rallies tomorrow to mark the birthday of Thailand’s king, before resuming a push to oust Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. “From Dec. 6 we will resume the fight every day, every hour and every minute until we achieve victory,” protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban told supporters late yesterday in Bangkok. He has called for the government to be replaced by an unelected council to combat corruption and destroy the political network of Yingluck’s brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was toppled by a military coup in 2006. Read more of this post

Govt watching home prices, will step in if needed as price levels remain high : MAS

Govt watching home prices, will step in if needed: MAS

SINGAPORE — While property measures implemented over the last few years have dampened the rising momentum in the housing market, price levels remain high and the Government will step in, if necessary, to ensure stability and sustainability, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said yesterday.

BY LEE YEN NEE –

5 HOURS 10 MIN AGO

SINGAPORE — While property measures implemented over the last few years have dampened the rising momentum in the housing market, price levels remain high and the Government will step in, if necessary, to ensure stability and sustainability, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said yesterday. Read more of this post

Philippines’ Aquino Races the World’s Fastest Economies

Philippines’ Aquino Races the World’s Fastest Economies

Just after midnight one sultry Friday in August 1987, Manila became a battleground as rebel troops attempted a coup against Philippine President Corazon Aquino. Two blocks from the besieged presidential palace, insurgents opened fire on a car carrying Aquino’s only son, a bespectacled and soft-spoken 27-year-old junior insurance executive nicknamed Noynoy. Read more of this post

Myanmar looks abroad for investment in healthcare

Myanmar looks abroad for investment in healthcare

Mon, Dec 2 2013

By Jared Ferrie

YANGON (Reuters) – Yangon General Hospital was once the jewel in the crown of one of Southeast Asia’s best healthcare systems. These days, hundreds of patients are forced to sleep in corridors of the hulking, colonial-era red-brick building, dogs doze on the floor of the emergency ward and garbage is piled in corners. It is a scene that Myanmar’s reformist government hopes to change as it ratchets up spending on the sector and seeks foreign investment to revive one of Asia’s sickest healthcare systems. Read more of this post

Najib Faces Conservatives in Post-Election Test: Southeast Asia

Najib Faces Conservatives in Post-Election Test: Southeast Asia

As the son of a pencil factory worker, Abdul Wahid Omar grew up in poverty in Malaysia’s southern state of Johor with 10 siblings after his family left Singapore in 1969. Good test scores won him a place in a boarding school with a bed of his own, helped also by a national policy to boost the lot of ethnic Malays and indigenous people, who are about 60 percent of the population. A government scholarship led to a British accounting degree, as Abdul Wahid went on to run Malaysia’s biggest bank and become the government minister overseeing economic planning. Read more of this post

With Top 4 US Banks Holding $217 Trillion In Derivatives, Total Number Of US Banks Drops To Record Low

With Top 4 US Banks Holding $217 Trillion In Derivatives, Total Number Of US Banks Drops To Record Low

Tyler Durden on 12/03/2013 09:49 -0500

Overnight, the WSJ reported a financial factoid well-known to regular readers: namely that as a result of a broken system that ever since the LTCM bailout has encouraged banks to become take on so much risk they become systematically important (as in their failure would “end capitalism as we know it”), and thus Too Big To Fail, there has been an unprecedented roll-up of existing financial institutions especially among the top, while the smaller, less “relevant”, if far more prudent banks have been forced out of business. “The decline in bank numbers, from a peak of more than 18,000, has come almost entirely in the form of exits by banks with less than $100 million in assets, with the bulk occurring between 1984 and 2011. More than 10,000 banks left the industry during that period as a result of mergers, consolidations or failures, FDIC data show. About 17% of the banks collapsed.” Read more of this post

Unilever CEO Says Emerging Market Slowdown to Last for Years

Unilever CEO Says Emerging Market Slowdown to Last for Years

Unilever (UNA) Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman said the economic slowdown in emerging markets is here to stay as many countries need to enact structural reforms to adjust to new conditions after the boom of recent years. “They are still relatively stronger economies, but still fragile,” Polman said. “And you see that growth coming off now a little bit, obviously not being helped either by lower demand coming from Europe and the U.S. This will last a few years. And it will only be corrected if some of the reforms have been made in these places.” Read more of this post

The Coming Global Wealth Tax; Indebted governments may soon consider a big one-time levy on capital assets

Romain Hatchuel: The Coming Global Wealth Tax

Indebted governments may soon consider a big one-time levy on capital assets.

ROMAIN HATCHUEL

Dec. 3, 2013 7:15 p.m. ET

Between ObamaCare

, Iran and last quarter’s uptick in U.S. economic growth, taxpayers these days may be distracted from several dangers to come. But households from the United States to Europe and Japan may soon face fiscal shocks worse than any market crash. The White House and New York Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio aren’t the only ones calling for higher taxes (especially on the wealthy), as voices from the International Monetary Fund to billionaire investor Bill Gross increasingly make the case too. Read more of this post

Richemont Chairman Warns Global Economy Is “Very Precarious… There Will Be Tears”

Richemont Chairman Warns Global Economy Is “Very Precarious… There Will Be Tears”

Tyler Durden on 12/03/2013 10:11 -0500

While most of the world’s elites are bathing in a sea of liquidity and propagandizing the status quo to keep the dream alive, Richemont Chairman Johann Rupert has unleashed a torrent of uncomfortable truthiness this morning:

*REMGRO CHAIRMAN RUPERT ‘VERY CONCERNED’ ABOUT GLOBAL ECONOMY

*GLOBAL ECONOMY ‘VERY, VERY PRECARIOUS,’ RUPERT SAYS

*WORLD HEADING FOR ‘BIG INFLATION’ OR `BIG DEPRESSION’: RUPERT

*GLOBAL ECONOMY HEADED FOR ‘TEARS’: REMGRO, RICHEMONT CHAIRMAN

*RUPERT SAYS HIS BIGGEST CONCERN IS JOBLESS GROWTH

And while things are good now, the owner of the Cartier brand warned if the global economy doesn’t do well, Richemont is not well positioned.

Via Bloomberg,

“It is very, very precarious,” Rupert said at the annual general meeting in Cape Town of Remgro Ltd., where he is also chairman.

 “There will be tears, but we don’t know when, and we don’t know whether it’s going to be a big inflation or whether it’s going to be a depression. Just hedge your bets.”

 “The luxury goods market is very cyclical and relies on consumers discretionary spend,” Rey Wium, an analyst at Renaissance Capital in Johannesburg, said by telephone. “When times are tough, consumers will tighten their belts.”

Penny Pricing for U.S. Stocks Said to Get Scrutinized

Penny Pricing for U.S. Stocks Said to Get Scrutinized

Securities executives are trying to determine if the 12-year-old decision to narrow the price increments for American stock trading has harmed investors, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Representatives from exchanges, brokers, mutual funds and regulatory agencies held two conference calls yesterday to discuss concerns about market structure, said the people, who requested anonymity because the discussions were private. One topic was the U.S. mandate in 2001 to trade equities in pennies rather than eighths or sixteenths of a dollar, they said. Read more of this post

Mondelez Follows Microsoft Selling Bonds in Europe as Costs Fall

Mondelez Follows Microsoft Selling Bonds in Europe as Costs Fall

U.S. food and beverage company Mondelez International Inc. (MDLZ) is following Microsoft Corp. selling bonds in Europe as borrowing costs fall. The maker of Oreo cookies is marketing 18-month floating-rate notes and fixed-rate bonds due January 2017 and January 2021, according to a person familiar with the matter. The average yield investors demand to hold corporate bonds in euros instead of government debt dropped six basis points this week to 123 basis points, the lowest since June 12, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show. Read more of this post

Keeping Shareholders in the Dark; The Securities and Exchange Commission is failing to put investor interests first

December 3, 2013

Keeping Shareholders in the Dark

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

Protecting investors and ensuring proper corporate governance are the essence of the mission of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But you wouldn’t know that from the recent actions of the agency and its chairwoman, Mary Jo White. Last week, the S.E.C. unwisely removed from its regulatory agenda a plan to consider a rule to require public companies to disclose their political spending — even though the case for disclosure is undeniable. Basic investor protection requires that shareholders know how corporate executives are spending shareholder money. Good corporate governance requires that companies are transparent about their use of corporate resources. Shareholders know this and have demanded disclosure. Read more of this post

Investors invited to join forces to rein in wayward governance

December 2, 2013 10:04 pm

Investors invited to join forces to rein in wayward governance

By David Oakley, Investment Correspondent

Britain’s largest shareholders are joining forces with the world’s biggest international investors in a groundbreaking initiative to curb boardroom excesses and improve company performance. An Investor Forum, a central recommendation of economics professor John Kay’s 40,000-word report on UK equity markets last year, will be created to tighten checks on all London-listed companies over pay, auditing and strategy and to promote long-term decision-making. Read more of this post

Inflation-Linked Bonds Boom

Inflation-Linked Bonds Boom

Governments in Emerging Markets Plan New Issues

ANJANI TRIVEDI

Governments in emerging markets are turning to inflation-linked bonds, some for the first time, as they look to tap more avenues to raise cash and signal they’re serious about keeping a cap on price increases. An Indian trader counted money at a wholesale market in Hyderabad. A fourfold surge in the cost of onions helped push Indian inflation to a seven-month-high in September. Read more of this post

How Peugeot and France ran out of gas

How Peugeot and France ran out of gas

5:36am EST

By Sophie Sassard, Mark John and Gilles Guillaume

PARIS (Reuters) – The rush to Paris’s Charles-de-Gaulle airport for flights to China began on Friday, October 11. A first set of bankers booked onto the 10-hour overnight Air China Flight; over the next 48 hours, they were followed by top management from PSA Peugeot Citroën and the French Finance Ministry. Peugeot was ailing – and it had just started talks about selling a stake to state-owned Chinese automaker Dongfeng. Read more of this post

Gold Drops Below Cash Cost, Approaches Marginal Production Costs

Gold Drops Below Cash Cost, Approaches Marginal Production Costs

Tyler Durden on 12/02/2013 19:32 -0500

As we showed back in April, the marginal cost of production of gold (90% percentile) in 2013 was estimated at between $1250 and $1300 including capex. Which means that as of a few days ago, gold is now trading well below not only the cash cost, but is rapidly approaching the marginal cash cost of $1125… Of course, should the central banks of the world succeed in driving the price of gold to or below its costs of production (repressing yet another asset class into stocks) then we fear the repercussions will backfire from a combination of bankruptcies, unemployment, and as we have already seen in Africa – severe social unrest (especially notable as China piles FDI into that region). Read more of this post

Potter Says New Repo Tool Should Increase Fed’s Control of Rates

Potter Says New Repo Tool Should Increase Fed’s Control of Rates

Simon Potter, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s markets group chief, said the Fed’s reverse repurchase agreement program now being tested will probably play a central role in the eventual removal of record stimulus. Market “participants have indicated that they expect that a facility, if executed in full scale in the future, should be an effective tool for increasing the Federal Reserve’s control of short-term money market rates,” Potter said today in the text of speech in New York. He is in charge of the System Open Market Account used in implementing monetary policy. Read more of this post

Europeans Struggle to Put Out Cigarettes as Nicotine Trumps Bans

Europeans Struggle to Put Out Cigarettes as Nicotine Trumps Bans

Never mind the smoking bans, high taxes and the pictorial death warnings. Europeans still rank as the world’s heaviest smokers. About 28 percent of adults smoked in 2011 in Europe as more French picked up the habit, according to statistics released today by the World Health Organization’s regional office in Copenhagen. Tobacco-related illnesses cause 16 percent of deaths in Europe, compared with 12 percent globally, the WHO said. Read more of this post