Graft Probe Linked to Rice Subsidies Targets Thai Premier Yingluck

Graft Probe Linked to Rice Subsidies Targets Thai Premier Yingluck

WARANGKANA CHOMCHUEN

Jan. 16, 2014 1:06 p.m. ET

BANGKOK—Thailand’s anticorruption panel said it would investigate Prime MinisterYingluck Shinawatra’s role in the government’s controversial rice subsidy program, putting more pressure on the embattled leader amid a campaign to force her out of office. Read more of this post

Samsung to Honda Plants Prompt Singapore Port Expansion: Freight

Samsung to Honda Plants Prompt Singapore Port Expansion: Freight

As Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) and Honda Motor Co. (7267) are building new factories in Vietnam and Thailand, Singapore is readying a mega port to handle all those mobile phones, TVs and cars. Read more of this post

Philippine Peso Weakens Beyond 45 for First Time Since 2010

Philippine Peso Weakens Beyond 45 for First Time Since 2010

The Philippine peso weakened beyond 45 per dollar for the first time since 2010 on speculation the Federal Reserve will quicken stimulus reductions as the U.S. economy improves. Read more of this post

Structural change is the answer to the problem of bankers’ bonuses; Regulators must act to open up pay in finance to conventional market forces

January 16, 2014 4:41 am

Structural change is the answer to the problem of bankers’ bonuses

By Philip Augar

Regulators must act to open up pay in finance to conventional market forces, says Philip Augar

It is bonus time in the City of London. This annual ritual used to be about bankers, brokers and traders positioning themselves for a life-changing payout. But since the crash, the payouts are smaller and the actors have another role, which involves dodging the bullets from regulators and politicians. It is an intriguing drama with three distinct subplots: how EU bonus rules affect the City’s competitiveness; the unique case ofRoyal Bank of Scotland, taken into state control during the crisis; and, most importantly, identifying and addressing the underlying cause of the bonus rumpus. The issue has been flushed out by a new EU law that allows bankers’ bonuses up to a maximum of two times salary with shareholders’ permission. Read more of this post

Malaysian PM Najib wants those who raise food prices to be charged in court

PM Najib wants those who raise food prices to be charged in court

Friday, January 17, 2014 – 14:40

Zulita Mustafa

A. Azim Idris

New Straits Times

PUTRAJAYA – Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has directed the Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism Ministry to take stern action against business operators who raise food prices. Read more of this post

“The first and worst of all frauds is to cheat one’s self”; Corruption, fraud and scandals are common in M’sian business these days

Updated: Friday January 17, 2014 MYT 7:36:33 AM

Corruption, fraud and scandals are common in M’sian business these days

BY B.K. SIDHU

CORRUPTION, fraud and bribery scandals are common these days. They happen in every industry, although the degree may vary from sector to sector. Although many cases are being investigated by the authorities, fraud is indeed on the rise. This week, one of the leading audit, tax and advisory firms, KPMG, revealed the findings of a survey it had carried out on fraud, corruption and bribery in Malaysia. The glaring finding is that fraud cases have increased by nearly 100% in Malaysia over the past three years. Read more of this post

With $4tn of assets under management, BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager. Unlike the biggest banks, it has a simple business model and balance sheet: manage the money of institutional and retail investors, and take a fee for it

January 16, 2014 6:47 pm

BlackRock: being simple is being good

These results will keep the shine on Larry Fink’s wise man halo

In a world of JPMorgan “funding valuation adjustments”, our nation turns its glazed-over eyes to you, BlackRock.

With $4tn of assets under management, BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager. Unlike the biggest banks, it has a simple business model and balance sheet: manage the money of institutional and retail investors, and take a fee for it. With a majority of client assets in equity, it is unsurprising that its fourth-quarter earnings beat estimates announced on Thursday and that its shares are up 50 per cent since the beginning of 2013. Read more of this post

Who’s Worse: Mexico’s Drug Lords or Its Vigilantes?

Who’s Worse: Mexico’s Drug Lords or Its Vigilantes?

Sunday’s vigilante takeover of Nueva Italia, a town in the drug-war-ravaged state of Michoacan in west-central Mexico, says many things about the status of Latin America’s second-most-populous country — few of them good. The response suggests Mexico’s government doesn’t understand the risks, both social and economic, of letting the country descend into ungovernable lawlessness. Read more of this post

Where Are the U.S.’s Millionaires?

Jan 16, 2014

Where Are the U.S.’s Millionaires?

ERIC MORATH

The state making the fastest climb up the millionaire rankings doesn’t have a single Tiffany or Saks Fifth Avenue store. The closest BMW dealership is a six-hour drive from the capital.

Read more of this post

The ‘most overrated argument’ for equities; Are stocks attractive just because bonds are not?

Jan. 14, 2014, 6:00 a.m. EST

The ‘most overrated argument’ for equities

Commentary: Are stocks attractive just because bonds are not?

By Mark Hulbert, MarketWatch

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (MarketWatch) — Should you buy stocks just because there are no attractive alternatives?

That’s the question we all face these days, with cash yielding next to nothing and bonds seemingly such a poor bet. And almost everyone gives a “yes” answer. Sure, the stock market may be overvalued, and bullish sentiment may be at dangerous extremes. But with everything else even less attractive, stocks still come out on top.

Read more of this post

Pritzker Scion Backs Pot Plans as Getting High Gets Legal

Pritzker Scion Backs Pot Plans as Getting High Gets Legal

Robert Frichtel will have 10 minutes to persuade a roomful of investors in Las Vegas to part with as much as $6 million for a business leasing space for growing marijuana. Read more of this post

Our Selfish ‘Public Servants’; From the White House to the schoolhouse to the George Washington Bridge

Our Selfish ‘Public Servants’

From the White House to the schoolhouse to the George Washington Bridge.

PEGGY NOONAN

Jan. 16, 2014 6:56 p.m. ET

Sometimes the most obvious thing is the most unnoticed. I find myself thinking this week about the destructive force of selfishness in our political life. This common failing is the source of such woe! Politicians call themselves public servants, so they should be expected to be less selfish than the average Joe; their views and actions should be assumed to be more keenly directed toward the broad public good. But no one expects that of politicians anymore, and they know it and use the knowledge to justify being even worse than they’d normally be. “If I have the name, I might as well have the game.” Read more of this post

Nothing perturbs a professional bond manager more than the prospect of rising yields in 2014

Last updated: January 16, 2014 6:43 pm

Prospect of rising yields generates fear

By Michael Mackenzie

Bond managers are sharply underweight

Nothing perturbs a professional bond manager more than the prospect of rising yields in 2014. Such fear is clearly illustrated by the latest positioning data courtesy of Stone McCarthy, showing bond managers are sharply underweight the duration of their benchmark, the Barclays Aggregate index, and they are the most defensively positioned against interest rate risk since they were in 2008. Read more of this post

GMO Market Commentary: Ignore The “Common Sense”

GMO Market Commentary: Ignore The “Common Sense”

Tyler Durden on 01/16/2014 13:33 -0500

From GMO via Wells Fargo
“I’ve got plenty of common sense … I just choose to ignore it.”

– Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes

By the time the Times Square ball landed, U.S. equity markets had closed the books on one of the best years in recent history. Oecember’s further rise of 2.5% put the capstone on an amazing year for the S&P 500 Index, which finished 2013 up 32.4%. New historic highs on this index were reached routinely throughout the month. Small-cap stocks, as represented by the Russell 2000® Index, added 2% in Oecember to finish the calendar year up a remarkable 38.8%. Yes, you read that correctly: Small-cap stocks rose almost 40% in a single year. Read more of this post

Corporations Have Record Cash: They Also Have Record-er Debt, As Net Leverage Soars 15% Above Its 2008 Peak

Corporations Have Record Cash: They Also Have Record-er Debt, As Net Leverage Soars 15% Above Its 2008 Peak

Tyler Durden on 01/16/2014 15:42 -0500

There is a reason why activism was the best performing hedge fund “strategy” of 2013: as we wrote and predicted back in November 2012 in “Where The Levered Corporate “Cash On The Sidelines” Is Truly Going“, US corporations – susceptible to soothing and not so soothing (ahem Icahn) suggestions by major shareholders – would lever to the hilt with cheap debt and use it all not for CapEx and growth, but for short-term shareholder gratification such as buybacks and dividends. A year later we found just how accurate this prediction would be when as we reported ten days ago US corporations invested a whopping half a trillion in buying back their stock, incidentally at all time high prices. Read more of this post

Charging more, getting less: Lawyers’ biggest customers are discovering that they can haggle

Charging more, getting less: Lawyers’ biggest customers are discovering that they can haggle

Jan 18th 2014 | NEW YORK | From the print edition

THERE were groans in big companies’ legal departments in the mid-2000s, when the fees of America’s priciest lawyers first hit $1,000 an hour. Such rates have since become common at firms with prestige. A survey published this week by the National Law Journal found that they now go as high as $1,800. But the general counsels of large businesses are increasingly finding that they can ignore these extravagant rates, and insist on big discounts.

Read more of this post

Canada housing: On short notice; Record house prices and low interest rates have fuelled fears of a bubble that has excited hedge funds

January 16, 2014 6:07 pm

Canada housing: On short notice

By Camilla Hall

Record house prices and low interest rates have fuelled fears of a bubble that has excited hedge funds

Ben Rabidoux was teaching at Georgian College, a small university an hour’s drive from Toronto, when he started writing a blog about the Canadian housing market. His job teaching economics and finance gave him access to reams of real estate data, which he used to back up his contrarian – and unpopular – case that Canada was in the midst of a housing bubble. Read more of this post

A worrying wobble: Bank regulators should not have weakened rules that limit leverage

A worrying wobble: Bank regulators should not have weakened rules that limit leverage

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

IN THE immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, politicians and regulators from around the world stood shoulder to shoulder and promised to tame the excesses in the banking system that had brought the global economy to its knees. Among the first of their proposed reforms was to have more loss-absorbing capital in banks to reduce the risks of future taxpayer-funded bail-outs. How quickly memories fade. Read more of this post

IPO Fund Lures Record Money in Best Year Since 1999

IPO Fund Lures Record Money in Best Year Since 1999

The best year for U.S. initial public offerings since the 1999 technology boom is driving record money into an exchange-traded fund that invests in newly listed companies from Twitter Inc. to General Motors Co. (GM) Read more of this post