Nay-cation? Why Canadians are leaving vacation days on the table

Nay-cation? Why Canadians are leaving vacation days on the table
Garry Marr | March 18, 2014 | Last Updated: Mar 19 9:26 AM ET
It doesn’t seem to add up. Canadians put a lot of value on vacation but don’t even use the days they are entitled to.
A new survey by TD Bank finds 93% of Canadians think vacations are important to be “happy” but only 43% report using up all of the days they are entitled to.

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“Ahok” Basuki Awaits Turn in the Limelight as Governor

Ahok Awaits Turn in the Limelight as Governor
By Jakarta Globe on 11:09 pm Mar 17, 2014
Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo returned to work this week after a heady weekend in which he was named his party’s presidential candidate and took part in a campaign rally for next month’s legislative election.

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The presidential declaration caught Jokowi’s political rivals by surprise and crushed their hopes. They gasped in awe as they had all hoped Megawati would run for president herself – and lose

The Race Is Over
By Yanto Soegiarto on 06:54 pm Mar 18, 2014

(Investor Daily Photo/Tino Oktaviano)
When Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) leader Megawati Soekarnoputri and Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo visited Blitar in East Java last week, this was no ordinary event. The two visited President Sukarno’s tomb and prayed for Indonesia’s founding father. Most Indonesians knew this joint visit was a sign that Megawati would finally appoint Jokowi, as the PDI-P’s candidate for president in this year’s election.

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World Bank Scornful of Indonesia’s Mineral Ore Ban

World Bank Scornful of Indonesia’s Mineral Ore Ban
By Jonathan Thatcher on 02:59 pm Mar 18, 2014
Jakarta. The World Bank delivered a blunt assessment of Indonesia ban on mineral ore exports on Tuesday, warning that it would hit trade and government revenue and risked undermining already weak investor sentiment towards Southeast Asia’s biggest economy.

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The Yangon Stock Exchange will be opened by the end of 2015 as scheduled despite emerging challenges along the preparation stage

2015 exchange opening date maintained
Khine Kyaw
MYANMAR ELEVEN March 19, 2014 4:56 pm
The Yangon Stock Exchange will be opened by the end of 2015 as scheduled despite emerging challenges along the preparation stage, said an official at a recent seminar.
While optimistic about the schedule, experts in the industry voiced that the country is yet to accomplish many more actions than just having the exchange open its doors, to ensure the full benefits to Myanmar companies.

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Leading Thai corporates outline their M&A strategies

Leading Thai corporates outline their M&A strategies
Pichaya Changsorn
The Nation March 19, 2014 1:00 am
To build up its technological prowess, the Siam Cement Group has set a specific mergers-and-acquisitions target for foreign firms, the first Thai conglomerate to do so.

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Starbucks Coffee Korea opened five upscale stores named “Starbucks Reserve” in Seoul, vowing to expand tailored services to Korean customers. Starbucks has introduced some 800 “Starbucks Reserve” outlets globally since Aug 2010

2014-03-18 16:50
Starbucks opens premium stores
By Park Ji-won
Starbucks Coffee Korea opened five upscale stores named “Starbucks Reserve” in Seoul Tuesday, vowing to expand tailored services to Korean customers.
The stores will sell rare “single-origin” coffee at higher prices.

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High school students abuse ADHD drugs to help focus on test preparations in recent years

2014-03-19 18:12
High school students abuse ADHD drugs
By Kim Da-ye
In a Feb. 5 post in the online community, “dcinside.com,” a young man confessed to taking Penid, a prescription drug for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), to help him focus on test preparations in recent years. Read more of this post

Casino wars in Asia: Jackpot delusion might hide serious social consequences; Korea has finally jumped into the ”casino wars” gripping East Asia, by opening up its gambling market for foreign operators

Posted : 2014-03-19 16:57
Casino wars in Asia
Jackpot delusion might hide serious social consequences
Korea has finally jumped into the ”casino wars” gripping East Asia, by opening up its gambling market for foreign operators.
It’s not hard to understand why the government does not want to lag behind its regional rivals, as Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan and even the Russian Far East are tapping into this lucrative service sector. If anything, Korea is a late starter.

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Screen maker’s IPO ‘a disaster’; Shares in Japan Display, the world’s biggest maker of screens for smartphones and tablets and a key Apple supplier, lost more than 15 percent of their value Wednesday following a $3.2 billion initial public offering

Screen maker’s IPO ‘a disaster’
BY HIROSHI HIYAMA
AFP-JIJI
MAR 19, 2014
Shares in Japan Display, the world’s biggest maker of screens for smartphones and tablets and a key Apple supplier, lost more than 15 percent of their value Wednesday following a $3.2 billion initial public offering. Read more of this post

POSCO chief to return 30% of salary

Posted : 2014-03-19 16:49
POSCO chief to return 30% of salary
By Choi Kyong-ae
POSCO’s executives will voluntarily return a portion of their salaries to help the steelmaker boost its profits, the company said Wednesday.
At a meeting with executives held Wednesday, POSCO Chief Executive Kwon Oh-joon said he will return 30 percent of his basic pay until the company’s profits begin to rise, the company said in a statement.

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New Alliances in Battle for Corporate Control; The abrupt rise and increasing success of activist investors are forcing big money managers to reassess their traditionally passive role as shareholders

MARCH 18, 2014, 9:40 PM Comment
New Alliances in Battle for Corporate Control
By DAVID GELLES and MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED
For ages, institutional investors like mutual funds and pension funds were content to take stakes in public companies, trust their managements and bet on long-term gains. Companies trusted that these investors would be passive shareholders and not rock the boat.

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Billionaire Tan Sri Tan Chin Tuan: “You know, Khim, diamonds don’t pay dividends.” “It suddenly made me realise that there is a big difference between an item of show and something that generates a return.”

Chew Gek Khim Unlocks Value at Straits Trading
by Jennifer Schultz Wells | Mar 17, 2014

Despite the legacy of her grandfather, she’s proving herself
Chew Gek Khim recalls a day in her early 20s when she was shopping with her maternal grandfather, wealthy Singaporean banker and philanthropist Tan Chin Tuan. They ended up in a jewellery store where she wanted to make a purchase, but he balked and tried to dissuade her. Finally he said, “You know, Khim, diamonds don’t pay dividends.”

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The Amazon.com of Japan is the world’s biggest online retailer of elephant ivory and whale meat

The Amazon.com of Japan is the world’s biggest online retailer of elephant ivory and whale meat
By Gwynn Guilford @sinoceros March 18, 2014
Countries around the world are burning ivory stockpiles. It’s a powerful symbol against the illegal trade in elephant tusks that resulted in as many as 30,000 elephant deaths last year. But those demonstrations can only be so effective when a legal market for ivory trade exists. And according to a new report (pdf) from the Environmental Investigation Agency, an NGO, one of the world’s biggest digital companies is facilitating not only a brisk business in illegal ivory, but also the sale of meat from endangered whales.
Rakuten Ichiba—the Japanese online marketplace of Rakuten Group, a digital giantthat recently bought messaging app Viber—offers products made from endangered animals that can fetch up to ¥2,640,000 ($28,186) (link in Japanese), shows EIA’s investigation. This might be morally outrageous, but it’s not—at least on the face of it—illegal; Japan claims exceptions to international bans on the the commercial trade of elephant ivory and whale meat. And it shows how futile laws protecting threatened animals are as long as they have loopholes.

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Look beyond Yangon, businesses urged

PUBLISHED MARCH 19, 2014
Look beyond Yangon, businesses urged
JAIRA KOH
THE chief ministers of Myanmar’s various regions yesterday urged Singapore businesses to look more at tapping emerging opportunities outside Yangon. They said at a dialogue arranged by IE Singapore that an international airport was coming up in the Bago region and that Mandalay provides opportunities for traders as it has become a major channel for the growing trade between Myanmar, China and India.

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The pending failure of a major Chinese property developer looks a lot like Pets.com

The pending failure of a major Chinese property developer looks a lot like Pets.com
By Heather Timmons and Gwynn Guilford March 18, 2014
The news that Zhejiang Xingrun Real Estate, a property developer, is close to a 3.5-billion-yuan ($570-million) default is the latest in a slew of high-profile Chinese default risks of late. Though defaults have been relatively few given the scale ofChina’s debt woes, analysts have already turned to historical shorthand to make sense of what’s going on, including:
“Bear Stearns moment”—Bank of America/Merrill Lynch’s David Cui recently likened the corporate bond default of Chaori Solar to Bear Stearns’ 2007 bailout of two of its hedge funds, which set off the first wave of panic about bank investment in subprime mortgages.

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The house that China built

The house that China built
David Keohane | Mar 18 10:55 | 1 comment | Share
From the FT:
China’s central bank and one of its largest state lenders are holding emergency talks over whether or not to bail out a defaulting real estate developer…
In a case which offers a microcosm of the cracks emerging in China’s shadow banking system, Zhejiang Xingrun Real Estate, the provincial developer, had been offering usurious rates of interest to individuals after being shut out by conventional banks.

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Will Tesla’s China Story Lose Its Charge?

Nina Xiang, Contributor
3/18/2014 @ 2:10PM |2,163 views
Will Tesla’s China Story Lose Its Charge?
When 35-year-old Eric Zhu deliberated to which car his family should buy, Tesla Motors didn’t stay long in the race.
Zhu, who works as a senior manager at a Western industrial firm in Beijing, is drawn by Tesla’s 100% electric power and zero emissions promise. As a father of a two-year-old boy, Zhu is willing to compromise a lot for the sake of clean air.

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China’s Secret Vaults: Where Is All The Missing Gold?

Shu-Ching Jean Chen, Contributor
3/18/2014 @ 9:50AM |22,526 views
China’s Secret Vaults: Where Is All The Missing Gold?
China has recently become the world’s largest consumer of gold. Uniquely, it also ranks as both the largest producer and the biggest importer of gold. Yet a big question surrounds the true state of the Chinese demand for gold; the answer would determine how global gold prices are likely to fare. The expectation that Chinese investors will sustain a voracious appetite for gold has helped to spark a recent rebound in gold prices.

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