Why Chinese Booze Costs More Than Fine Wine at Auction

Jun 3, 2014

Why Chinese Booze Costs More Than Fine Wine at Auction

With its strong flavor and fiery aftertaste, Kweichow Moutai isn’t for everyone. With prices for vintage bottles of the liquor spiraling upwards, it’s now for even fewer people.

On Sunday, at an auction hosted by Chinese auction house Beijing Googut Auction Co., 540 milliliter bottles of Moutai produced in the 1980s sold for between 60,000 yuan ($9,700) and 70,000 yuan ($11,300). That was up from between 50,000 and 60,000 yuan last year, and around 30,000 yuan at the end of 2012. Read more of this post

China’s economic boom leaves a trail of ghost cities

China’s economic boom leaves a trail of ghost cities

by Rob Schmitz

Monday, June 2, 2014 – 16:09

Nearly a year ago, I visited a replica of New York City under construction outside the Northern Chinese city of Tianjin. Workers were constructing dozens of skyscrapers on a piece of swampland inside a bend in the river, giving it an uncanny resemblance to the island of Manhattan. There were plans for a Lincoln Center, a Rockefeller center, and much more. Read more of this post

Chinese port stops metal shipments due to probe – trade sources

Chinese port stops metal shipments due to probe – trade sources

Mon, Jun 2 2014

By Melanie Burton

SYDNEY, June 2 (Reuters) – China’s northeastern port of Qingdao has halted shipments of aluminium and copper due to an investigation by authorities, causing concern among bankers and trade houses financing the metals, trading and warehousing sources said on Monday. Read more of this post

Election fever hits Indonesia as candidates polarize netizens

Election fever hits Indonesia as candidates polarize netizens

Tuesday, June 3, 2014 – 10:08

The Jakarta Post/Asia News Network

INDONESIA – For those Indonesians uninterested in politics, logging in to Facebook or Twitter is a frustrating experience these days.

“I’ve limited my newsfeed to close friends,” Ira Hairida, a blogger from Palembang, South Sumatra, wrote on her Facebook wall. She said she was tired of people posting political statuses and verbally attacking the presidential contenders. Read more of this post

The fear factor: Why Asian firms need to take on the world

The fear factor: Why Asian firms need to take on the world

May 31st 2014 | From the print edition

FUJIO MITARAI KNOWS more than most people about building a multinational. He is the 78-year-old boss of Canon, one of Japan’s biggest firms. Worth $43 billion, it makes everything from scanners to lenses for Hollywood. It first opened a New York office back in 1955, but breaking into America took 20 years of hard slog and an Apple-style innovation. In 1976 the company launched a cheap, automatic single-lens-reflex camera on the back of a massive advertising campaign. Mr Mitarai was in charge and the memory still makes him smile. “Our competitors thought I’d gone crazy.” Canon became America’s biggest camera firm. Today it faces competition from smartphones and low-cost rivals. Mr Mitarai insists innovation will keep the firm ahead of the pack. It is developing a raft of new products, from surveillance cameras to virtual-reality design studios and 3D printing materials. Read more of this post

Hutchison Whampoa: Now for the fat-cow years; Lessons in survival from an Asian corporate legend

Hutchison Whampoa: Now for the fat-cow years; Lessons in survival from an Asian corporate legend

May 31st 2014 | From the print edition

IF YOU WANT to hear some plain talk on the relative merits of family-controlled conglomerates, listen to Canning Fok, managing director of Hutchison Whampoa, one of the region’s biggest specimens with a value of $60 billion and a worldwide empire of ports, energy, property, telecoms and retail. “There’s a school of thought in America that widely held companies have better governance,” he says. “But if you look over the last ten years that has not happened. Just look at the big banks and all the chief executives going crazy.” Read more of this post

Governance: Avoiding the dinosaur trap; State firms and family conglomerates are Asia’s favourite kinds of companies. Both must change

Governance: Avoiding the dinosaur trap; State firms and family conglomerates are Asia’s favourite kinds of companies. Both must change

May 31st 2014 | From the print edition

ASIA IS A land never conquered by institutional shareholders. Only 28% of the region’s stockmarket consists of firms with diverse owners (see chart 4). Most of these are in Japan, where businesses are controlled by managers and employees who by long-established protocol politely listen to and then ignore what fund managers say. State-run firms make up 40% of Asia’s total and family-run firms, often conglomerates or “business houses”, account for 27%. The proportions vary from country to country (see chart 5). In China state-run firms dominate, whereas in South Korea and India business houses are prominent. All this has been true for a long time and it is tempting to think it will never change. That would be a mistake.

Read more of this post

How to keep roaring: Over the past two decades Asia’s companies have enjoyed huge success. But now they need to reform to become brainier, nimbler and more global

How to keep roaring: Over the past two decades Asia’s companies have enjoyed huge success. But now they need to reform to become brainier, nimbler and more global, says Patrick Foulis

May 31st 2014 | From the print edition

Read more of this post

Convergence: Asian and Western business will become more alike

Convergence: Asian and Western business will become more alike

May 31st 2014 | From the print edition

ASIA PROSPERED OVER the past two decades by following a different economic model from the West’s. But if it wants to continue to do well over the next 20 years, it will have to reform. What that involves will vary from place to place. Myanmar, a big country with a difficult past, is beginning to pull itself out of the mire. India and Indonesia, two chaotic democracies, have to create enough order to attract factories and industrial jobs. In China the government needs to ease its grip on the economy. Japan is embarking on the world’s biggest experiment to see whether a society can shrink and still remain prosperous. Read more of this post

Megatrends Q & Asia: A handful of Asian conundrums the world’s boardrooms should chew over

Megatrends Q & Asia: A handful of Asian conundrums the world’s boardrooms should chew over

May 31st 2014 | From the print edition

OVER THE PAST decade innumerable PowerPoint presentations have condensed Asia into two bullet points. One is its rise as a vast consumer market. About 30% of the world’s middle-class spending is done by Asians, up from 20% in 2000, according to the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, which defines the middle class as those earning $10-100 a day at purchasing-power parity. The other is Asia as a production hub: 47% of world manufacturing is now in the region. But the world’s boardrooms have started to grapple with a much broader set of questions about Asia. The most immediate ones are higher labour costs and ageing populations, growing consumer expectations and the way the internet will affect business there. A rising risk of hostilities in the region is adding further complexity. And in the background looms the broader issue of whether, and if so how much, Asian companies need to globalise (which will be dealt with later in this special report). Read more of this post

High-dividend-paying stocks tend to outperform all other equities during long time horizons, but they are the worst performers when interest rates increase

Dividends Great for Long Term, but Beware Rising Rates

High-dividend-paying stocks tend to outperform all other equities during long time horizons, but they are the worst performers when interest rates increase.

By Timothy Strauts | 05-29-2014 10:00 AM

Tim Strauts: Today we’re going to look at how dividend stocks have performed in different interest-rate periods. In this chart, you can see we’ve broken up the equity universe into four buckets. The highest 30% bucket is the 30% of stocks with the highest dividend yield, going all the way down to the no-dividend bucket of companies that pay no dividends. Read more of this post

Indonesia: A True Tiger?

Indonesia: A True Tiger?

CONTRIBUTOR YOUR SAY  JUN. 3, 2014, 10:40 AM

The complexity of Indonesia’s culture is perhaps only outmatched by its economic and political workings.  This is a country and people with a history of battling colonialism, erupting in constant turmoil and political unrest.  Its democracy is a fairly young 15 years.  While Indonesia portrays itself to have a stable democracy, the tenseness surrounding the presidential elections this year tells a widely different story.  Political and economic “games” erupt, for which corruption is the most common explanation.  Corruption almost seems to be a way of life here in Jakarta, as it is acknowledged constantly in conflicts, with heads nodding in understanding and then dismissal, as “that is just the way it is.” Read more of this post

Forget artisan bread and A2 Milk: Woolworths’ latest assault on ¬Australia’s wealthiest shoppers includes walk-in cheese rooms, a ¬gourmet pizza bar and resident chefs ready to dole out tips on their favourite recipes

Samantha Hutchinson Reporter

Woolworths Double Bay: it’s Woolies for the Prada set

Published 02 June 2014 10:03, Updated 03 June 2014 09:26

Woolworths state manager Danny Baldwin at the new Double Bay store. Photo: Louise Kennerley

Forget artisan bread and A2 Milk: Woolworths’ latest assault on ­Australia’s wealthiest shoppers includes walk-in cheese rooms, a ­gourmet pizza bar and resident chefs ready to dole out tips on their favourite recipes. Read more of this post

Jump in shareholder activism to hit Australian companies

Jump in shareholder activism to hit Australian companies

Published 29 May 2014 14:49, Updated 30 May 2014 11:17

Joyce Moullakis

Australian boards should brace for an uptick in shareholder activism, as lawyers and bankers urge preparedness and engagement with activists and proxy firms to navigate a typically disruptive process. Read more of this post