More than one-fourth of senior executives in Singapore feel it is justifiable to misstate financial performance in order to survive an economic downturn

PUBLISHED JUNE 12, 2014

More execs say it’s OK to misstate financials

MICHELLE QUAH

MICHQUAH@SPH.COM.SG   @MichelleQuahBT

More than one-fourth of senior executives in Singapore feel it is justifiable to misstate financial performance in order to survive an economic downturn. The staggering statistic was one of many in EY’s 13th and latest Global Fraud Survey. – PHOTO: SPH Read more of this post

Scrambling to Win China’s Auto Prize

Scrambling to Win China’s Auto Prize

ABHEEK BHATTACHARYA

June 11, 2014 4:11 a.m. ET

When China’s car market was speeding up, it dragged everyone along for the ride. Now car makers have to fight among themselves to get ahead.

China sold 11% more passenger cars in the first five months of 2014 than the year before, a comedown from the nearly 15% growth over the same period in 2013. Some of the deceleration is because last year was in comparison to a weak year in 2012. It’s also possible that China’s broader economic problems are weighing down on consumption.

Read more of this post

Ready or Not, Here Come the Asian Regulators

Ready or Not, Here Come the Asian Regulators

Soon, international banking investigations won’t be the sole preserve of the West.

WILLIAM MCGOVERN

June 11, 2014 12:45 p.m. ET

Global investigations of banking activity are becoming a fact of life given that banking is now a global activity. So far most of the headlines have come from Western regulatory inquiries into the activities of Western banks in Western markets. But more of this heat is destined to shift to Asia, and bankers, local regulators and Western authorities alike will face new challenges. Read more of this post

Curtain Up in China: Broadway Gives Its Regards to Beijing

Curtain Up in China: Broadway Gives Its Regards to Beijing

Jun 06, 2014

The next must-see Andrew Lloyd Webber musical may be making its debut in Beijing rather than Broadway. Recently, the composer and theater impresario announced plans to restructure his company so he can infuse more investment capital in Asia. The move by Lloyd Webber, famous for musicals such as Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Evita, lends further recognition to the region’s increasing influence as a growth market and tastemaker.

“They love the product out [in Asia],” Mark Wordsworth, chairman of Lloyd Webber’s companies, told The Daily Telegraph. “The commentators in London think it is all about the West End or Broadway. Well, we make more money globally from performances of The Phantom of the Opera in Manila, [Philippines].” Read more of this post

Howard Marks, Investing In A Low Return World

Howard Marks, Investing In A Low Return World

by Michael IdeJune 10, 2014, 4:34 pm

Marks says Oaktree Capital is fully invested, but recommends proceeding with caution

Value investors are contrarian by nature. They want to buy when everyone else is cashing out, and sell when sentiment is driving asset prices ever higher. So when dyed-in-the-wool value investor and founder of Oaktree Capital Management Howard Marks spoke at the Morgan Stanley Financials Conference earlier today you might have expected him to warn people against being too optimistic, but you would only be half right. Read more of this post

US Has The Most Overvalued Equity Market: Rothschild

US Has The Most Overvalued Equity Market: Rothschild

by Michael IdeJune 11, 2014, 2:20 pm

Rothschild likes equities, short maturity corporate debt, and gold

Even though economic growth was weak last quarter (and negative in the US), Rothschild Wealth Management is bullish on global economic growth and believes that developed economies should continue to expand and emerging markets stabilize through the rest of the year as capital spending picks up speed. Even though it calls equity valuations ‘stretched’, especially in the US, it still believes that equities are the most attractive asset class available.

   Read more of this post

Large banks and trading firms are frantically trying to determine whether they have fallen victim to a suspected commodities fraud emanating from the giant Qingdao Port in northeast China

Banks Fear Missing Collateral In China

By PETER EAVIS and NEIL GOUGH

JUNE 11, 2014 6:49 AM 11 Comments

Large banks and trading firms are frantically trying to determine whether they have fallen victim to a suspected commodities fraud emanating from the giant Qingdao Port in northeast China.

Citigroup and several other big Western banks are concerned that their loans may lack the appropriate collateral of big stockpiles of copper and aluminum at the port. The banks have inspectors on the ground who are trying to assess whether enough of the metals are there. Read more of this post

Coles builds a team to establish financial services in empire expansion to better bind customers to its stores and boost grocery sales

Coles builds a team to establish financial services in empire expansion

Date

June 12, 2014

Eli Greenblat and Eric Johnston

Coles has pulled together a high-level strategy team to develop its burgeoning financial services arm, with an eye to offering banking services to better bind customers to its stores and boost grocery sales.

The team have been meeting in a sealed-off section of Coles’ Melbourne headquarters where their confidential discussions are quarantined from other staff in the building’s open-plan office. Read more of this post

China to maintain manufacturing supremacy

May 23rd 2014

China to maintain manufacturing supremacy

In the past three decades China has revolutionised global manufacturing. In that time 500m people have moved from its fields to its cities, creating an unprecedented mass of factory workers. China’s economy is changing, however, as wages rise and labour unrest grows. Does this mean an end to its dominance of global manufacturing? The Economist Intelligence Unit believes that new infrastructure and further productivity growth, allied to a continued supply of new urban workers, will keep China competitive, despite several new trends in supply chains. Read more of this post

PCAOB Cracks Down on Fraud; A new PCAOB standard will require auditors to probe more deeply into related-party deals, unusual transactions and executive pay.

June 11, 2014

CFO.com | US

PCAOB Cracks Down on Fraud

A new PCAOB standard will require auditors to probe more deeply into related-party deals, unusual transactions and executive pay.

David M. Katz

Bottom of Form

Citing “decades of financial reporting frauds,” the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board yesterday issued new rules aimed at tightening auditor scrutiny of corporate related-party deals, “significant unusual transactions,” and executive compensation. Read more of this post

Political meddling is at the root of India’s power problems

Political meddling is at the root of India’s power problems: Kemp

Tue, Jun 10 2014

By John Kemp

LONDON (Reuters) – (John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own)

For decades, India’s power engineers had a dream: “One Nation. One Grid. One Frequency.”

At the start of this year, that vision was realised. India finally has a nationwide power system stretching from Tamil Nadu in the south to Kashmir in the north, Gujarat in the west to Nagaland in the east. Read more of this post

Revealed: Asian slave labour producing prawns for supermarkets in US, UK

Revealed: Asian slave labour producing prawns for supermarkets in US, UK

Thai ‘ghost ships’ that enslave, brutalise and even kill workers are linked to global shrimp supply chain, Guardian investigation discovers
• Trafficked into slavery on Thai trawlers to catch food for prawns 
• Thailand’s seafood industry: state-sanctioned slavery?
Kate Hodal, Chris Kelly in Songkhla and Felicity Lawrence

The Guardian, Tuesday 10 June 2014 12.05 BST

Slaves forced to work for no pay for years at a time under threat of extreme violence are being used in Asia in the production of seafoodsold by major US, British and other European retailers, the Guardian can reveal.

A six-month investigation has established that large numbers of men bought and sold like animals and held against their will on fishing boats off Thailand are integral to the production of prawns (commonly called shrimp in the US) sold in leading supermarkets around the world, including the top four global retailers: Walmart, Carrefour, Costco andTesco. Read more of this post

More Than 1 in 5 Homes in Chinese Cities Are Empty, Survey Says; Southwestern University of Finance and Economics Analysis Finds 49 Million Sold but Vacant Units

More Than 1 in 5 Homes in Chinese Cities Are Empty, Survey Says

Southwestern University of Finance and Economics Analysis Finds 49 Million Sold but Vacant Units

ESTHER FUNG

June 11, 2014 7:01 a.m. ET

SHANGHAI—More than one in five homes in China’s urban areas is vacant, and a current housing-price correction is putting additional pressure on the owners of such empty properties, according to a nationwide survey by researchers from China’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. Read more of this post

PCAOB Adopts Standard on Auditing Related-Party Transactions

PCAOB Adopts Standard on Auditing Related-Party Transactions

WASHINGTON, D.C. (JUNE 10, 2014)

BY MICHAEL COHN, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, ACCOUNTINGTODAY.COM

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board adopted a new auditing standard Tuesday, along with amendments to other auditing standards, to require auditors to pay more attention to three critical areas of the audit: related-party transactions, significant unusual transactions, and a company’s financial relationships and transactions with its executive officers. Read more of this post

Asia’s new generation of billionaires drive hard bargain with private banks

June 9, 2014 8:18 pm

Asia’s new generation of billionaires drive hard bargain with private banks

By Jeremy Grant

How do you meet a billionaire?

For the many banks and wealth managers chasing business from Asia’s ultra-wealthy, finding the answer to that question makes the difference between managing money for the region’s biggest business tycoons and merely aspiring to do so.

While the global population of billionaires – or ultra-high net worth individuals, in wealth managers’ jargon – has risen 60 per cent since 2009, say Singapore-based consultancy Wealth-X and UBS, the Swiss bank, the number in Asia has grown faster than anywhere else. Read more of this post