Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 28 Feb (Sat) – The Rhythm of Great Performance

Life

• The Rhythm of Great Performance: NYT
• From Julius Caesar to Taylor Swift: Phrases for Rent; The geniuses who miraculously concocted “Only time will tell,” “Make no mistake” and “Style over substance” could have made a fortune if they had been smart enough to register those expressions: WSJ
• Multiple Threads to Bind Up a Divided Nation; Lincoln’s second inaugural is actually three speeches in one. It aspires to three coherent but unique arguments in three distinct sections, each brief, each different in tone, and each conveying a discrete message: history, guilt and redemption—the past, the present and the future. WSJ
• In Short-Lived Fish, Secrets to Aging: NYT
• Is Innovation More About People or Process?: HBR
• From Julius Caesar to Taylor Swift: Phrases for Rent; The geniuses who miraculously concocted “Only time will tell,” “Make no mistake” and “Style over substance” could have made a fortune if they had been smart enough to register those expressions: WSJ
•  ‘Winners: And How They Succeed’, by Alastair Campbell; A star-struck guide to the mindset of high achievers: FT
• Picking an Adviser? Don’t Be Starry-Eyed; If only finding a good financial adviser were as easy as counting the trophies in his display case. WSJ
• Brainstorms Brewing; The brain rewires itself remarkably in response to stimuli. But if digital screens change its function for the worse, can novel therapies help us recover from injuries and illness? WSJ
• Marx transformed ‘Das Kapital’ into a fable about a toy maker who had to sell toys to the devil to meet his bills. WSJ
• The Great Enrichment that America rode to economic power was hardly slowed by the spoils system. WSJ
• Multiple Threads to Bind Up a Divided Nation; Lincoln’s second inaugural is actually three speeches in one. It aspires to three coherent but unique arguments in three distinct sections, each brief, each different in tone, and each conveying a discrete message: history, guilt and redemption—the past, the present and the future: WSJ
• ‘Feeling Certain’ and Other Mistakes That Trip Up Investors: WSJ
• When is a company too big to manage? HSBC chief’s comments raise questions about leaders’ accountability for the actions of their staff: FT
• Brainstorms Brewing; The brain rewires itself remarkably in response to stimuli. But if digital screens change its function for the worse, can novel therapies help us recover from injuries and illness? WSJ
• Marx transformed ‘Das Kapital’ into a fable about a toy maker who had to sell toys to the devil to meet his bills. WSJ
• The Great Enrichment that America rode to economic power was hardly slowed by the spoils system.: WSJ

Greater China

• China Plans to Levy Capital-Gains Tax on Foreign Investors; The 10% tax is likely to deal a blow to some investors: WSJ
• Chinese Internet Giants Get Into the Mobile Game; Tencent, Alibaba among major tech companies developing their own app stores, operating systems: WSJ
• China’s SOE merger rumours a smoke screen to hide lack of real reform: SCMP
• Louis Vuitton is now a ‘brand for secretaries’ in China: BI
• Can Market Mechanisms Clear China’s Bad Air? Data on the financial risks facing listed companies with bad environmental records is seen as a new way to fight pollution: Caixin
• The Xiaomi shock: China’s booming smartphone market has spawned a genuine innovator: Economist

India

• A 500-Year-Old Dispute Threatens Modi’s Plan to Remake India: Bloomberg
• To Fix India, Think Local: Bloomberg

Japan & Korea

• Why Is Korea Inc. Going Shopping? Bloomberg

ASEAN

• FELDA Global Ventures Holdings Bhd’s (FGV) ills go beyond accounting standards; under the rules of “fair value accounting”, the company is compelled to make provisions for its land lease agreement (LLA).: Star
• Can Asia Afford Low Taxes? Bloomberg
• ASEAN falling short of aim for an integrated community: TODAY

Macro

• Buffett, a cheerleader for America, takes his checkbook abroad: Reuters
• Emerging-Market Currencies Tumble on Growth, Stimulus Prospects: WSJ
• In Europe, Bond Yields and Interest Rates Go Through the Looking Glass: NYT
• NAB scandal: Rogue financial planners given latitude by lack of regulation: theAge
• Tax evasion: Leaks on tap; Making tax-transparency standards watertight will be difficult: Economist
• Why the country produces fewer world-class companies than it should: Economist
• Brazil: Why the country produces fewer world-class companies than it should: Economist

TMT

• The epic quest to become the first $1 trillion company: WaPo
• Cook says Apple Watch will replace car keys: Telegraph: Reuters
• Why photobooks are booming in a digital age: FT

Healthcare

• Biotech Sector Addicted to M&A Drug; Valuations call for caution amid rush of deal-making: WSJ
•  Set a thief to catch a thief is an old proverb. A way to treat bacterial infections with artificial viruses: Economist

Consumer & Others

• Under Armour Turns Ambitions to Electronic Apparel, Monitoring Apps; Athletic-gear maker envisions clothes that can track movement and biorhythms: WSJ
• Why Target lost its aim; A discount-store chain which forgot its formula for success: Barrons

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 27 Feb (Fri) – Warren Buffett’s secret to staying young: “I eat like a six-year-old.” Meet Warren Buffett’s Wannabes: The ‘Brown Buffett’ and ‘Oracle of San Quentin’; As billionaire hits 50 years at Berkshire Hathaway, fans and disciples claim his name; no female Warren Buffett

Life

• Warren Buffett’s secret to staying young: “I eat like a six-year-old.”: Fortune
• Meet Warren Buffett’s Wannabes: The ‘Brown Buffett’ and ‘Oracle of San Quentin’; As billionaire hits 50 years at Berkshire Hathaway, fans and disciples claim his name; no female Warren Buffett: WSJ
• A portrait of the takeover artist as a young man: Warren Buffett’s 1965 letter: FT
• Investor Irving Kahn, Disciple of Benjamin Graham, Dies at 109: WSJ
• This advice about surviving prison is surprisingly relevant to real life: BI
• Financial planning: Advise and dissent; Conflicted financial advice costs Americans $17 billion a year: Economist
• It’s time to reform Thai Buddhism; Dhammakaya is one among many temples giving priority to amassing wealth by encouraging worshippers to donate large sums. Followers are told that, by doing so, they improve their chance of securing a place in Heaven. This is a damaging distortion of the Lord Buddha’s teachings. JP
• Stressed? It’s not how much you do, it’s how you do it: Quartz
• Transform a boring company into a knockout brand with this strategy; If you seek to become Sticky, first get Simple. FP
• Asia’s Power Businesswomen, 2015: Forbes
• You Have to Be Fast to Be Seen as a Great Leader: HBR
• An Introvert’s Path To Fulfillment and 1.5 Million Fans; Insights from Lori Deschene, founder of the popular Tiny Buddha blog: Forbes
• Five Ways To Be A Mentally Strong Introvert: Forbes
• See if you can answer the questions asked in a child geniuses competition: BI
• A psychologist argues that America’s fixation with ‘self esteem’ could raise kids to be bullies and narcissists: BI
• Thin Slicing: People decide if you’re successful within 5 seconds of meeting you — here’s how to look the part: BI
• A child genius explains how she can memorize a shuffled deck of cards in less than an hour; For Katherine, each suit of cards represents an image of people, places, animals, etc. She incorporates these images into a story and connects every card to a particular element in that story. BI
• 6 skills that all extraordinary entrepreneurs have: BI

Investing Process

• In 1965, Warren Buffett was worried that he was getting too big to beat the market: BI

Greater China

• China atwitter over next ‘tiger’ to fall in corruption purge; Article on Manchu prince puts spotlight on former vice-president Zeng Qinghong, right-hand man to former President Jiang Zemin and one of the most powerful politicians of modern China: FT
• Chinese rivals snap at Alibaba’s heels in cross-border e-commerce race: Reuters
• HK SFC wins court order to wind up China metal recycler for forgery : SCMP
• The SEC Caves on China: An exemption for Chinese auditors puts U.S. markets at risk.: WSJ
• Failure on reform is biggest threat to our city, says Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-shing: SCMP
• Chinese tech giants Lenovo, Alibaba become hot targets of US class-action lawsuits: SCMP
• ‘Stay tuned’ as China readies to publish corruption confessions: Reuters
• China’s Real Property Problem: Bloomberg
• Foxconn targets 70% automation in 3 years: Gou: ChinaPost

India

• India to Spend $137 Billion to Upgrade Railways; Some 23 million Indians take trains each day. Freight rates have been kept high to subsidize the passenger services.: WSJ
• Modi’s Make-or-Break Budget; India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi needs to prove he’s the transformative leader his country needs. WSJ
• Kumar Mangalam Birla: Seeking a truly transformative budget: Forbes

Japan & Korea

• Samsung Elec to freeze salaries in South Korea for first time since 2009: Reuters
• How Samsung won the smartphone wars – then blew it: BI
• Sony chief denies spinoffs mean immediate withdrawal: JT
• Furniture retailer Otsuka Kagu founder tries to oust daughter from management, again: JT
• Mocha Migration: Korean Entrepreneur Taps Into China’s Coffee Craze: Forbes
• Dancing With Robots: Mayumi Kotani Leads With Japan’s Top Industrial Machines: Forbes

ASEAN

• Noble says Iceberg author a former staff; group posts US$240m Q4 loss; Noble Group, an ‘asset light’ commodity nomad: BT, FT
• Loophole for Crooks Is Pandora’s Box for Graft-Busters; ‘Sarpin Effect’ — Critics warn fight against corruption will be held up by controversial legal precedent allowing suspects to have charges against them thrown out before they are in: JG
• Lippo Jumps to E-Commerce, Sees $1 Billion in Sales in 2 Years: JG
• GM’s Indonesia closure highlights automakers’ emerging markets woes: Reuters

Macro

• SEC Commissioners Push Lifetime Bans on Executives; “There is an increasing perception that the rules are simply different for large corporations that violate the law. That there is a two-tier system of justice”: WSJ
• Bank of England banishes ‘fireside chats’; Central bank overhauls City dealings in transparency drive: FT
• Regulators on Leveraged Lending: A Cheat Sheet: WSJ
• Major Firms Are Saying the Stage Is Set for Another Crisis in the Bond Market: Bloomberg
• HSBC inquisition leaves questions unanswered; Bank’s bosses failed to explain convincingly their previous actions: FT
• HSBC, the bank that ran aground while overseas; To anyone who witnessed its rise to become a global bank, the entire thing is baffling: FT
• Negative yields Q&A: what is the rationale?: FT

Energy & Commodities

• Mining firms such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have escaped writing down the value of iron-ore pits in Australia, despite slumping commodity prices; contrast with Big Oil: WSJ

Healthcare

• Billion-Dollar Health Startups: WSJ
• Cancer Drug Once Bought for $7 Million May Now Fetch $18 Billion: Bloomberg
• The Drug Pipeline Flows Again; More new drugs are getting approved, but innovation carries a huge price tag: Bloomberg

TMT

• Mobile Industry’s 5G Revolution Heralds the Rise of the Machines: Bloomberg
• For elderly, Robear is a powerful pick-me-up: JT
• Morgan Stanley thinks LinkedIn could surge if it can dominate these industries: BI
• The two big lessons Ginni Rometty learned from IBM’s recent struggles: No. 1. The enterprise tech world is changing faster than she thought it would. No. 2. She wasn’t watching how consumer technology was invading the workplace. BI
• The legend of the Silicon Valley unicorns; Tech companies are raising private money through financing rounds rather than IPOs: FT

Consumer & Others

• Food waste costs more than $500b a year as millions starve: Consumer
• Who Killed Tony the Tiger? How Kellogg lost breakfast: Bloomberg
• KFC tests edible coffee cups lined with white chocolate: CNN

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 26 Feb (Thurs) – What to Expect From Buffett’s 50th Anniversary Letter; The dark side of achievement culture; FOMO (fear of missing out) is the enemy of valuing your own time. Value yourself for things that don’t appear on your resume. Find something to believe in; Experience Is Measured In Stories, Not Year

Life

• The dark side of America’s achievement culture; FOMO (fear of missing out) is the enemy of valuing your own time. Value yourself for things that don’t appear on your resume. Find something to believe in. Quartz
• Experience Is Measured In Stories, Not Years: Forbes
• I Don’t Have a Job. I Have a Higher Calling; Some employees balk as many firms-from motorcycles to accounting-step up talk about changing the world: WSJ
• Reforming the Bar Exam to Produce Better Lawyers; A recent overhaul of the test deserves a flunking grade. How about focusing on skills like factual investigation? WSJ
• The personality types of all 50 states: BI
• HSBC, tax and why good companies do bad things; There is a pattern to companies that employ decent people and fall into disgrace: FT
• When Customers Will (Willingly) Pay More for Less: HBR
• Heads of large public firms can avoid responsibility, and keep their bonus: SCMP
• Warren Buffett’s Transparency Problem: Newsweek
• The ‘Big 3’ Mistakes (And Their Fixes) For First-Time Entrepreneurs: Forbes
• Wake-up Call: Why Everyone Needs More Sleep; productivity, creativity and workplace morale are all taking a hit as a quickening capitalist society and the human need for getting to REM jostle for attention. K@W
• An Interview with The Outsiders’ William Thorndike: Motley Fool

Books, Investing Process

• What to Expect From Buffett’s 50th Anniversary Letter: Bloomberg
• The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business; Why getting drunk is so important in Japanese business relations: Amazon, BI
• Buffett sets sights on German companies: Reuters

Greater China

• Corrupt officials sought sniper kills of Xi Jinping, Wang Qishan: Boxun: WCT
• Hong Kong and Singapore plot divergent fiscal paths: FT
• Rumors of major SOE mergers do the rounds in China: WCT
• The long history of China’s obsession with numbered policies: Quartz
• Closer Look: Local Officials Have Little Love for National Hukou Reform: Caixin
• Minsheng Tries Weathering a Maelstrom; A new shareholder has stepped in and a president has been forced out as winds of change blow through the bank: Caixin
• China drops leading technology brands for state purchases: Reuters
• Forecasting China’s Oil Buying Grows Harder: WSJ
• Communist Party Mints Xi-Branded Slogan: WSJ

India

• Vijay Govindarajan: We need big, bold ideas; This is a make-or-break budget for India. Game-changing innovations to boost the economy are the need of the hour: Forbes

Japan & Korea

• Chinese Tourists Take South Korea’s Jeju Island by Storm: WSJ
• South Korea toughens up on chaebol law breakers: FT
• Lessons from Sony’s fall: Japan’s situation clearly demonstrates the limits of winners who were followers rather than creators. JA
• Samsung gobbles up tech start-ups: KH
• Samsung Electronics and its affiliates are using mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a new growth tool, a change of strategy pursued by its Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong: KT
• Under Japanese law, breaks are sacred and standby counts as work: JT
• The Humble Light Bulb Helps Japan Fill Energy Gap Left From Shutting Down Nuclear Reactors: Bloomberg
• South Korea’s Household Debt Balloons on Cheap Credit: WSJ
• Mobile Chat Service KakaoTalk Faces Growing Pains: WSJ
• In Japan, robot dogs are for life – and death: AsiaOne

ASEAN

• The legacy of its founder looms over Singapore; A palpable sense of dissatisfaction exists among the island nation’s citizens: FT
• Thai graft regulator expands its influence: FT
• Forbes Malaysia’s 50 Richest; Oil Burns A Hole; Malaysia’s Billionaires Reel As Ringgit Slips: Forbes
• Kossan’s Lim Kuang Sia Has A Head For Science And Heart In Glovemaking: Forbes
• Jakarta Govt Vows Tough Action on Bootleg Alcohol Producers: JG
• Indonesia Should Find Its Own Educational Path: JG
• Japan’s E-Commerce Giant Rakuten Trains SMEs in Indonesia: JG

Macro

• Crispin Odey “I Am Amazed To See So Many Are Fully Invested Given That Equities Are Already Fighting The Downtrend”: VW
• High costs warning for EU failed trade rules: FT
• Smart beta chipping away at Barclays’ bond index dominance: FT
• Yes, the World Is Out to Get Active Managers: bloomberg
• A dangerous revolt: People are refusing to pay back student loans: WaPo
• Barings’ collapse was the start of the City’s cultural decline; The cultural DNA of the City changed to one that favoured transactions over relationships and short-term results over sustainability: Telegraph
• Should You Cash Out, Like Private Equity? A report that Blackstone and other buyout firms have made huge payouts should give stock investors pause. Barron’s
• Special FX Should Scare Asia’s Borrowers; With 28% of Asia’s corporate loans denominated in U.S dollars, a close eye should be kept on the rising greenback.: Barron’s
• Negative Is the New Zero; Germany sold five-year government debt with a negative yield for the first time; in the longer term, it is storing up problems for investors; the bigger price falls could be in the future if rates ever rise.: WSJ
• Buyout Shops Keep Skin in the Game; Firms increasingly accept buyers’ shares as part of price when selling companies they own: WSJ
• Downgrade of Brazil Oil Giant Stirs Wider Concern: WSJ
• SEC Probes Companies’ Treatment of Whistleblowers; Agency Officials Concerned About Corporate Backlash Against Whistleblowers: WSJ
• Morrison Foester: Overview Of Insider Trading Law: VW
• The corporate watchdog has revealed it exercised “formal legal powers” as part of an expanding investigation into National Australia Bank’s under-fire financial planning division.: TheAge
• Lightning strikes twice: $7m fraud at firm controlled by family of late BRW Rich Lister Allan Scott: TheAge

Energy & Commodities

• That sinking feeling: North Sea oil was a challenge before prices halved. Now the UK industry fears a fatal blow: FT

Healthcare

• So-called basket studies, which group cancer patients in a new way, could revolutionize the path from the lab to F.D.A. approval and market success. NYT

TMT

• Once a pioneer, Google’s now playing catch-up to Apple in mobile payments: Quartz
• Researchers Find Way to Harness Brain to Control Bionic Hands; Fitted With Robotic Hands, Three Austrian Men Are Able to Perform Tasks Such as Buttoning a Coat: WSJ
• What Clever Robots Mean for Jobs; Experts rethink belief that tech always lifts employment as machines take on skills once thought uniquely human: WSJ
• Why Robots Still Can’t Fold Your Laundry; Machines struggle to match a human’s dexterity and problem-solving skills: WSJ
• Here’s what google’s super-fast flight search reveals about its product strategy: BI
• One of the smartest VCs of all time says Silicon Valley is in a risk bubble; Investors Beware: Today’s $100M+ Late-stage Private Rounds Are Very Different from an IPO: BI, Abovethecrowd
• Auto Trader plans IPO after massive online success: BI
• YouTube: 1 Billion Viewers, No Profit; Revenue growing at Google video site, but still limited by narrow audience: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Whiskey’s domination could last for decades: BI
• Lego enjoys record year and gets closer to reaching ‘every child in the world’: Telegraph

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 25 Feb (Wed) – Jetpack dream takes off as Martin Aircraft debuts on ASX; “For years Vanessa worked overtime shifts at night and on the weekends as a nurse to keep the money rolling in, so I could keep plugging away at research and development.”

Life

• Jetpack dream takes off as Martin Aircraft debuts on ASX; “For years Vanessa worked overtime shifts at night and on the weekends as a nurse to keep the money rolling in, so I could keep plugging away at research and development”: BRW

• Nick Leeson on banking: extremely competitive . and improperly policed; Twenty years after he lost £862m and bust Barings bank, the plasterer’s son from Watford talks about his experiences and the wider state of the industry; Barings collapse at 20: How rogue trader Nick Leeson broke the bank: Guardian1, Guardian2
• How Four Seconds Can Dramatically Improve Your Life And Career: Forbes
• Cognitive Exhaustion: Resting Your Mental Muscle: Farnam
• How to Seize the Opportunities When Megatrends Collide: Strategy&
• Daniel Kahneman: The Human Side of Decision Making: VW
• We hunt unicorns but must also value technology zebras; Individuals and start-ups have opportunities and must be allowed to flourish: FT
• James Proud, Hello: Degree skipped, product shipped; James Proud left London for California and created a sleep sensor: FT
• How to Know If a Spin-Off Will Succeed: HBR
• How SEEK codified culture and disrupted performance reviews: BRW
• After Funding, Watch Burn Rates And Beware The Tyranny Of Incrementalism: techcrunch

Books

• Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence: Amazon
• The Myths of Creativity: The Truth About How Innovative Companies and People Generate Great Ideas: Amazon

Greater China

• How addiction to debt came to China; Huge increases in private sector credit preceded many financial crises: FT
• ‘Don’t touch the fruits’: Hong Kong fruit vendor’s signs warn mainlanders to back off: Shanghaiist
• From China, Two Members of Billion Dollar Startup Club: WSJ
• Unit of Alibaba turns a mom into a billionaire: CD
• Watch: Dazzling Poor Man’s Fireworks in a Chinese Steel City: WSJ
• Short Sellers Target A-Share ETF After Mainland Rally: Bloomberg
• Beijing’s glare deepens crisis in Macau: Reuters
• Myth of China’s lack of ghettos exposed: WCT
• High Flying Investments: Prices for Racing Pigeons Soar on Demand From China: Bloomberg

India

• Modi Wants to Replace Crowded Slums in India With 20 Million Homes: Bloomberg
• Indian farmers balk at land law reforms: FT
• Can Bvlgari succeed in India in its second coming?: Forbes
• A brilliant opportunity for India to overtake China: A reform-oriented budget should give agriculture the boost to contribute more to a rising GDP: Forbes
• SBI seizing Kingfisher House shows public banks are finally taking on influential defaulters: FP
• Sahara’s woes continue: Supreme Court asks it to explain diversion of funds: FP
• With Triple the Wages, China Is Still a Lure for Indian Producer: Bloomberg
• Retail dilemma in India – nice malls are few and far between: Reuters
• Doctors in India profiteering from sick patients: reports: Reuters

Japan & Korea

• Tycoon Park at crossroads on fate of Kumho Asiana Group: KH
• Japan Inc shops abroad to duck bleak domestic prospects: Reuters
• Bubble Risk Seen in Record Small-Cap Valuations: Korea Markets: Bloomberg
• Low oil price forces South Korean shipbuilders to cut costs: FT
• All in the timing for Korean brands in China: WCT

ASEAN

• Indonesia to crack down on corporate tax avoidance via transfer pricing: Reuters
• Singapore Exchange CEO to Leave Firm after a five-year tenure marked by a decline in activity in regular stocks: WSJ
• U.S. raises concerns over “made in Indonesia” smartphone law: Reuters

Macro

• Regulator fines Aviva Investors £18m after finding the group’s traders manipulated deals to boost their fees at the expense of customers: FT
• Best Stock Pickers Say Easy Money Has Made Their Job Harder: Bloomberg
• Risks squeezed out of banks pop up elsewhere: FT
• “This Shorting Opportunity Is As Great As 2007-2009”, Billionaire Crispin Odey Warns: Zerohedge
• The end of the British establishment; From politics to finance Britain’s old order has lost its way: FT
• Lure of Wall Street Cash Said to Skew Credit Ratings: Bloomberg
• Asia’s FX vulnerabilities, charted: FT

Healthcare

• How to Develop New Antibiotics: NYT
• Shire, Maker of Binge-Eating Drug Vyvanse, First Marketed the Disease; The strategy for a new drug to treat binge-eating disorder reveals how a pharmaceutical company can influence the treatment of a medical condition. NYT

Energy & Commodities

• PREPA, Petrobras, Shell Trading Accused of $1 Billion Plus Oil Fraud Scheme: VW
• Which Oil Stocks Are Most At Risk of Write-Offs? Bernstein identifies major companies from India and China as most vulnerable amid low energy prices. Barron’s

TMT

• Could Jony Ive Pull off an Apple Car?: Newyorker
• How Adobe is kicking back against its disruptors: BRW
• Samsung Electronics may be looking forward to the end of Moore’s Law as a way to gain a new competitive edge: EE
• The key to an $80 billion wearables market? Invisibility. Fortune
• Magic Leap prepares leap of faith headset: FT
• Apple investors eye $1tn valuation target: FT
• Dead phone battery? Welcome to the tiny charger that ends a big problem; Nanotechnology has been harnessed by Israeli firm StoreDot to develop a battery that can be charged in just 60 seconds: Guardian

Consumer & Others

• Reebok is catching up to Under Armour and Nike by going after a different kind of customer; The brand is trying to win over a so-called “tough fitness” customer through partnerships: BI

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 24 Feb (Tues) – How To Find Happiness In Today’s Hectic World; Why We Suck At Spotting Liars; In Hong Kong, Grandma Has to Find a Job

Life

• How To Find Happiness In Today’s Hectic World: EB
• Why We Suck At Spotting Liars: Forbes
• East Coast Q4 Letter: Twenty-Four Lessons I Learned From Andrew Carnegie: VW
• Marketing Is Dead, and Loyalty Killed It: HBR
• Two Heads Are Better Than One; The brain is organized as modules and circuits for specialized actions. The scientist who figured that out reflects on his discovery: WSJ
• Bird spit coffee? Asia firms seek global appetite for China delicacy: Reuters

Research

• Artful Paltering: The Risks and Rewards of Using Truthful Statements to Mislead Others: SSRN

Greater China

• In Hong Kong, Grandma Has to Find a Job: Bloomberg
• HK SFC action against China Metal Recycling for accounting fraud serves as test case for HK laws involving mainland China firms: SCMP
• Baidu May Steal Some of Alibaba’s Limelight with its inclusion in MSCI’s China and emerging-markets indexes: WSJ
• B shares belong in a museum: SCMP
• China’s bitter home truths: SCMP
• Increasing number of Hong Kong people want to emigrate to Taiwan: WCT
• Not all fu is fortune, say Chinese luxury brand consumers; This is not the first time that a major brand has made the wrong call in the consumer’s eye. WCT
• Taiwan night markets to accept Chinese UnionPay cards: WCT
• Support from Beijing boosts China’s cross-border e-commerce: WCT
• Taiwan Hangs Out Welcome Sign; Foreigners scoop up $4 billion of stocks this year amid the ongoing recovery in the U.S. and lower oil prices. Barron’s
• China calls the shots in Asia’s currency war: Reuters

India

• Indian Outsourcers Struggle to Evolve as Growth Slows; Indian technology outsourcing companies look to create off-the-shelf software instead of peddling services of programmers: WSJ
• NSEL retracts note claiming brokers were involved in fraud: Livemint
• Modi bets on GM crops for India’s second green revolution: Reuters
• Companies Of Several Indian Billionaires Embroiled In A Case Of Corporate Espionage: Forbes
• Reserve Bank of India is getting tougher on extending unlimited credit to the country’s banks to try to ensure they push interest rate cuts through the financial system and to stop them from making what one official called a “mockery” of its operations: Reuters
• India’s reluctant ‘prince’, Rahul Gandhi, takes break from politics: Reuters

Japan & Korea

• South Korean Tech Startup Industry Offers Graduates Life Beyond Samsung: JG
• Meet the man who helped Sony get its game back: JT
• Samsung’s heir-apparent meets PayPal founder as S. Korean tech firm looks to online payment business; Thiel is expected to also meet officials from Naver Corp: KH
• Is Japan in danger of a “fiscal crisis”? FT

ASEAN

• Jokowi’s supporters are starting to doubt the ‘Indonesian Obama’: Conversation
• Thailand Turns To A Tried And Trusted Recipe In Dealing With China: Forbes
• The government says it has instructed Indonesia’s largest pharmaceutical firm, Kalbe Farma, to halt production of its anesthetic and anti-bleeding products at the center of investigations into the death of two women, while they were undergoing surgeries at Siloam Hospital in Tangerang earlier this month. JG
• Indonesian Furniture Makers Shutting Factories, as Orders Shift to Vietnam: JG
•  In Search of a True Local Automotive Component With Astra Otoparts: JG
• Jokowi Banks on $385m Road to Banten’s Paradise; Main Attraction: Resorts and conference facilities will be built to boost tourism industry at Tanjung Lesung special economic zone: JG
• The Performance of Many Hedge Funds Just Comes Down to Owning Apple: Bloomberg

Macro

• As ‘Spoof’ Trading Persists, Regulators Clamp Down; Bluffing Tactic That Dodd-Frank Banned in 2010 Can Distort Markets: WSJ
• Looming Bank Rules Haunt Insurers; Insurance companies could struggle under proposal meant to make lenders safe enough to fail: WSJ
• Copper Tells Two Stories on Global Economy; Copper’s gyrations have left analysts unusually polarized over where its price will go next: WSJ
• Revenue recognition implementation concerns finance executives: JOA
• HSBC’s Swiss bank client base has shrunk 70%: BI
• US launches crackdown on pension adviser conflicts: FT
• Do eerie parallels presage new crisis? Falling oil, rising dollar and fears over US rate increase present in 1997-98: FT
• HSBC and the problem of managing mega banks: FT
• Nobel economist Shiller sees Japan-like slow growth everywhere: JT
• Britain’s mid-sized companies overtake the Mittelstand by revenues: Telegraph
• Insider Trading Case Could Push Congress to Define a Murky World: NYT
• Longer Lives Hit Companies With Pension Plans Hard; Firms’ balance sheets will have to reflect higher costs: WSJ
• Bad Can Be So Good for Credit Buyers as Fallen Angels Become Hot: Bloomberg
• Why the World Is So Bad at Tracking Dirty Money: Bloomberg

TMT

• 3-D Printers in a Jam: Valuations of companies leave plenty of risk in an industry prone to uneven performance: WSJ
• This simple comparison shows how well Apple Pay has taken off: BI
• DEAR SILICON VALLEY: Here’s your wake-up call.: BI
• Building a Face, and a Case, on DNA: NYT
• The tale of two IPOs: Facebook and Twitter: Fortune
• NZ jetpack company soars in Australian stock market debut: Reuters
• Apple Is Now More Than Double the Size of Exxon-And Everyone Else: WSJ

Healthcare

• About-Face on Preventing Peanut Allergies; Study finds introducing peanuts in many infants’ diets could help avoid the allergies later in childhood: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Norway faces up to prospect of North Sea slowdown; Drop in oil prices comes as investment in petroleum industry peaks: FT
• Will America’s shale boomtowns bust? A report from the heart of North Dakota’s fracking country: Fortune
• Hard up miners turn to Asian contractors to help fund projects: Reuters
• Big Banks Face Scrutiny Over Pricing of Metals; U.S. Justice Department investigates price-setting process for gold, silver,  WSJ

Consumer & Others

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 23 Feb (Mon) – The Making of the (First) President: How a conservative planter became the ‘indispensable man’ in revolution and war

Life

• The Making of the (First) President; How a conservative planter became the ‘indispensable man’ in revolution and war. WSJ
• The Art of Stillness: Farnam
• Naming revolution can hold key to group’s evolution: FT
• ‘I am not a martyr’, says LuxLeaks whistleblower facing jail: FT
• The Bright Side of Parkinson’s: To understand this disease is to understand the brain.: NYT

Greater China

• Chinese Cars Fall Farther Behind; The Xiali, once a status symbol, struggles to keep pace with Volkswagen and Chevrolet: WSJ
• Hong Kong’s tech dreams tied to unrestricted mainland access: SCMP
• Can Hong Kong be a dream city for start-ups to scale up?: SCMP
• AliPay and TenPay set for clash with UnionPay: SCMP
• China opens up to foreign short sellers; Strict limits on shorting volumes criticised: FT
• Online education sector to see push in China: WCT
• Manufacturing center Dongguan aims to become China’s robot capital: WCT

India

• Indian corporate espionage scandal deepens as employees held: FT
• India Readies Budget as Investors Seek Proof Modinomics Is Real: Bloomberg
• Modi Takes on India Billionaires With Probe Into Stolen Secrets: Bloomberg
• India’s overleveraged companies seek new dawn; Suzlon’s asset sales have given hope to other highly leveraged groups: FT

Japan & Korea

• Unemployment puts a strain on young Koreans; Those in their 20s and 30s are being forced to delay major milestones: JA
• Korea’s Finance Minister Choi says, “our good old days are gone”: Maeil
• Daewoo’s global business legacy lives on; Founder Kim Woo-choong’s formula for success in emerging markets still applicable, says professor?: KH
• Clocking off: Japan calls time on long-hours work culture; As stress levels and karoshi – deaths through overwork – increase, the Japanese government is planning a law to force workers to take paid holiday: Guardian
• Abenomics Divides Stocks as Smallest Shares Left Behind: Bloomberg

ASEAN

• Housing glut worries over Johor’s mega projects: AsiaOne
• Singapore Set to Boost Welfare Ahead of Election in 2017: Bloomberg

Healthcare

• New Cancer Technology Gives Investors a Shot in the Arm: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Global dairy crisis simmers as supply overwhelms: Reuters

TMT

• Robots are not going to steal your job, says Yaskawa chairman: FT
• Insider reveals why investors are going crazy about companies like Uber, Snapchat, and Pinterest: BI
• Google’s Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay in fight for your dashboard: TheAge
• Monday interview: Shantanu Narayen, Adobe CEO: FT
• Artificial intelligence: Digital designs for life: FT
• Asian Startups Claim 11% Of Billion Dollar Club: Forbes

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 22 Feb (Sun) – How to Read Intelligently and Write a Great Essay: Robert Frost’s Letter of Advice to His Young Daughter

Life

• How to Read Intelligently and Write a Great Essay: Robert Frost’s Letter of Advice to His Young Daughter: BP
• The Agony of the Artist: E.E. Cummings on What It Really Means to Be an Artist and His Little-Known Line Drawings: BP
• Lewis Carroll on Happiness and How to Alleviate Our Discomfort with Change: BP
• Mary Oliver on How Habit Gives Shape to Our Inner Lives: BP
• Why science is so hard to believe: WaPo
• How to bag a geek: In the battle for software talent, other industries can learn from Silicon Valley: Economist

Investing Process

• Smart Trading for Those Who Seldom Trade; Even the most patient stock investors have to buy and sell sometimes, and how you trade can make a big difference in how much money you make. WSJ

Greater China

• Why I quit the business: A Chinese loan shark’s tale; “In the early years, many private lenders pocketed earnings 10 times their principals in mere three years but a vast majority of them have gone under, in the wake of the vaporization of their fortunes overnight”: WCT
• Zhongnanhai: the mysterious hub of the China’s Communist Party: WCT
• Gov’t corn stockpiling distorts prices in China: WCT
• Shaolin Temple to oversee management of other temples: WCT
• Chinese entrepreneurs rush to invest in movies: WCT
• Hong Kong’s unwanted HK$1,000 banknote is the money launderer’s medium of choice: SCMP

Macro

•  Swiss takeover law: A controversial takeover attempt has exposed a gap in shareholders’ rights: Economist

Energy & Commodities

• LME warehousing; overdue reform or regulatory over-reach?: Reuters
• Dairy farming: Letting the cream rise; The end of quotas frees efficient European dairy farms to expand: Economist

Healthcare

• The Return of the Vaccine Wars: WSJ

TMT

• To Nasdaq 5000 and Beyond?: Barron’s
• Upsetting the Apple car: The established carmakers, not tech firms, will win the race to build the vehicles of the future: Economist

Consumer & Others

• Panera Bread’s Ron Shaich: “Flour on His Shoes”; Like Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, Shaich came out of retirement to remake the company he helped launch. Doing good, eating well. Barron’s
• Goodbye potato chips, hello jicama chips? These six start-ups want to change how you eat. WaPo
• E-Cigarette Makers Face Rise of Counterfeit; E-cigarette global sales hit $7 billion at the end of 2014: WSJ

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 21 Feb (Sat) – Richard Branson attributes some of his most successful companies to the art of note taking

Life

• Richard Branson attributes some of his most successful companies to the art of note taking: BI
• Jack and Suzy Welch on Business Today; The Welches on the problems with business, the state of global competition and their coming book on how to succeed: WSJ
• Religion’s Role in the History of Ideas: WSJ
• An Engineer Creates for Fun After a Lifetime of Workaday Rules; Seth Goldstein, 75, holds degrees in engineering and patents for biomedical innovations. But in retirement, he uses his engineering skills for whimsy and art. NYT
• Jack and Suzy Welch on Business Today; The Welches on the problems with business, the state of global competition and their coming book on how to succeed: WSJ

Books

• The Creator’s Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs : Amazon

Greater China

• Primeline Energy reaches out for respect: ‘Not all Chinese companies listed in Canada are bad’: FP

ASEAN

•  Indonesia’s Corruption Fighters in the Fight of Their Lives: NYT

Macro

• IASB Member Sees Revenue Rule Delay As Inevitable: CFO
• Biggest Nordic Buyout Fund Sees “Asset Bubbles Wherever We Look”: Zerohedge
• Stanford dumps coal: why divestment doesn’t work; “You can’t subtract from a company by selling a share, it’s already committed capital, it’s just changing the ownership not the amount of capital. By definition you can’t have direct aggregate impact by divesting,” AW
• Middle Class, Undefined: How Purchasing Power Affects Perceptions of Wealth: WSJ
• Pension funds driven to take higher risks: FT
• The active fund management model is not fit for purpose; Only 19% of US equity fund managers beat Russell 1000 index of large stocks for the year: FT
• Middle Class, Undefined: How Purchasing Power Affects Perceptions of Wealth: WSJ

TMT

• Bill Gurley: FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in the ‘Private IPO’ Market Is Fueling Valuations: WSJ
• Samsung Gear VR Review: A Shallow Dip Into the Virtual Pool: WSJ
• Can an App Be Too Successful? Ask ‘Trivia Crack’; Mobile game has topped the charts with user-generated questions, but now players gripe of a glut: WSJ
• Brand success in an era of Digital Darwinism; Companies adept at using digital tools along the consumer decision journey are gaining a sizable lead over competitors.: McKinsey
• Cash floods late-stage tech despite warnings: FT
• The New Rules Of Going Public: Techcrunch
• Taking over the world? Tech giants are blowing billions and achieving little: Telegraph

Consumer & Others

• Eataly Charms The World With Italian Fare And Flair; For building a grocery empire that looks nothing like a grocery store: FastCo
• Warren Buffett’s Berkshire gets into the biker gear business: Fortune

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 20 Feb (Fri) – Jack Bogle’s success principles to live by

Life

• Jack Bogle’s success principles to live by: CNBC
• Ellen Langer on the Value of Mindfulness in Business; companies can promote innovation and their own rejuvenation by setting the right context. Strategy&
• A galactic vampire: The Milky Way is not as young as it looks: Economist
• The Reader on the Prowl: Even the smartphone-toting, text-messaging generation prefers to study using real books. It makes things easier to remember.: WSJ

Investing Process & Research

• False hope: Most trading strategies are not tested rigorously enough: Economist
• Murky Press Releases Can Conceal Poor Results; Poorly written earnings releases can be used to manipulate investors by encasing bad results in murky language, says a study. CFO
• François Sicart: Mistakes Must Service a Purpose: Some Early Lessons: Tocqueville
• Understanding Chinese accounting — from the 18th century: FT

Greater China

• Sliced and diced loans take off in China; CLOs emerge as country’s fastest-growing new asset class: FT
• Chinese Dump Milk as Prices Fall; Farmers in other countries scale back herds, brace for lower incomes: WSJ
• Need for accounts for surrendered bribe money questioned in China: WCT
• Snaring a tiger: the 3 main strategies of the CCDI (China Central Commission for Discipline Inspection): WCT
• E-commerce in China enters the age of the oligarchs: WCT
• Ling Jihua’s youngest brother rumored to be hiding in US: WCT
• Graft drive: Roads in China paved with bad intentions: WCT

India

• India’s economy: A chance to fly; India has a rare opportunity to become the world’s most dynamic big economy: Economist
• Inside India: Can Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal Really Collaborate?: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• After Google Glass and Apple Watch, Japan offers wearable tomatoes: JT
• Abe and Toyoda: Marriage of Mutual Need: WSJ
• Softbank Bets on a Robot for the Home: WSJ

ASEAN

• Concerns persist over Asean economic bloc: FT
• Expat Squeeze Belies Widodo’s Invitation to Invest: Bloomberg

Macro

• Global jihad: Rolling into town; How the rise of Islamic State is changing history in the Middle East: Economist
• Worse than nothing: Negative interest rates do not seem to spur inflation or growth—but they do hurt banks: Economist
• A wary investor’s guide to negative yields: FT
• City of London ‘black book’ is called for to track ‘bad apple’ traders: FT

TMT

• Meet the Hottest Tech Startups; Awash in venture capital, 48 new companies join WSJ’s Billion Dollar Startup Club: WSJ
• How Korea-Japan’s Line App Became A Culture-Changing, Revenue-Generating Phenomenon: FastCo
• Peter Thiel just funded a wearable device that aims to measure exactly how stressed you are: BI
• The ‘connected car’ is creating a massive new business opportunity for auto, tech, and telecom companies; Apple Wants to Start Producing Cars as Soon as 2020: BI, Bloomberg
• The revolution wasn’t televised: The early days of YouTube: Mashable
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Looks to a Future Beyond Windows: Bloomberg
• How Wearable Startups Can Win Big In The Medical Industry: Techcrunch
• A Year Later, $19 Billion For WhatsApp Doesn’t Sound So Crazy: Techcrunch
• Investors Create a Billion-Dollar-Baby Boom: NYT
• Ten Billion Dollar Ideas You’ve Never Heard Of; 73 private companies world-wide are valued at $1 billion by venture-capital investors: WSJ
•  Pandora: A Victim of Its Own Success; A Pending Ruling on Artist Rates Could Make Things Worse: WSJ

Healthcare

• Building bodies: Epic genomics; An avalanche of papers published this week look at why body cells are different from one another, and how that can cause disease: Economist
• Treating blindness: Bionic eyes; A new device may restore vision to those whose sight is dwindling: Economist
• The molecule magicians: Forget the tech bubble. It’s the biotech bubble you should worry about: Quartz
• Drug-resistant malaria found close to Myanmar border with India: Reuters

Consumer & Others

• Here’s how Under Armour grew into a $15 billion athletic-apparel empire: BI
• Ikea has created its own emoji: For when you’ve run out of ways to nag your flatmate to tidy the kitchen: Telegraph

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 19 Feb (Thurs) – Why building something useful for others is the best marketing there is; How Impulsiveness Can Boost Your Creativity

Life

• Why building something useful for others is the best marketing there is: FastCo
• How Impulsiveness Can Boost Your Creativity: FastCo
• College is for developing the muscle of thoughtfulness, the use of which will be the greatest pleasure in life and will also show what it means to be fully human. NYT
• Killer Scenes: “I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life.”: SP
• How Toll founder and Rich Lister Paul Little found out Japan Post was buying the company he created: BRW
• ‘From Atoms to Bits’: A Brilliant Visual History of American Ideas: Atlantic
• Sea Snails Make Nature’s Strongest Material And It’s Not Their Shells; What makes the structure of goethite particularly compelling is that it it doesn’t grow weaker in bigger structures. Forbes, Reuters
• How Nascar Plans To Turn Its Survival Story Into A Decade Of Success: Forbes
• How Great Coaches Ask, Listen, and Empathize: HBR
• Visualizing Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: HBR
• Bridging Psychological Distance: Four types of gaps-social, temporal, spatial, and experiential-separate us from our goals.: HBR
• From Risk to Resilience: Learning to Deal With Disruption: MIT
• Do you really understand how your business customers buy? B2B purchasing decisions increasingly trace complex journeys, challenging the long-standing practices of many sales organizations.: McKinsey
• How big companies can innovate; Who says innovation is only for start-ups? In these interviews, the heads of three large, established companies-Intuit, Idealab, and Autodesk-argue there’s no reason big players can’t develop the next big thing.: McKinsey

Books & Research

• Performing Under Pressure: The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most: Amazon, FT
• Tips and Tells from Managers: How Analysts and the Market Read between the Lines of Conference Calls: SSRN

Greater China

• Directors of London-quoted Chinese sports shoe maker Naibu have been forced to admit that they have lost all contact with the company’s chairman and senior executive, in the latest controversy to hit Aim: FT
• “So Mr Chairman, just how many passports do you have?” Investors grapple with China corruption risks: FT
• Apple is struggling to launch Apple Pay in China: BI
• Branding the new way for China’s agricultural dream: WCT
• Could internet red envelopes shift bribery in China online?: WCT
• Venture capital group linked to Li Ka-shing invests heavily outside China: WCT
• China’s contradictory war against corruption: FT
• Enter the dragons: China’s smartphone makers prepare for global domination: Fortune
• The mutating nature of trust in China: FT
• Public corruption in China: Then and now: SCMP
• SEC Sanctions Chinese Accounting Firms For Refusal To Surrender Documents: MWE

India

• How to Build in India: Bloomberg
• Sameer Pitalwalla: Creator of a media company for the digital generation: forbes

Japan & Korea

• Japan Gives Smart Eyewear a Go: Bloomberg
• An activist raid forces new logic on Fanuc robot factory; Pressure from Daniel Loeb and a changing business climate is forcing secretive company to adapt: FT
• Japan wages: Manufacturing consent; As annual pay talks begin, Abe’s government needs salaries to rise to boost the economy: FT
• Promising signs of change in corporate Japan: JT
• Japanese Shipping and Delivery Firms Push Services Abroad: WSJ
• Samsung Makes Move Into Mobile Payments: WSJ

ASEAN

• Iceberg cool to MAS review of its report; “we use public financial information, which should simplify the review process.”: BT
• Malaysia’s 1MDB to Break Up Assets, Signaling Wind Down: Bloomberg
• Bakrie Telecom debt ploy using SPV exposes new foreign investor pitfall in Indonesia: TODAY, Reuters
• Indonesian govt to place SOE subsidiaries under close scrutiny to prevent them from being exploited for illicit purposes. JP

Macro

• HSBC tax scandal prompts rivals to check for ‘problem dossiers’: FT
• The HSBC Scandal: A Red Flag for U.S. Regulators?: K@W
• Dueling Thresholds Emerge on Going-Concern Warnings; a new accounting standard meant to give investors more warning of when a company is in trouble could actually lead to less warning: Compliance
• Swiss prosecutor raids HSBC premises: FT
• Activist investors tread softly in Asia; Corporate warriors likely to have to take a less aggressive approach: FT
• The finance sector and growth: Warning: too much finance is bad for the economy: Economist
• Mutual Funds: Mutton dressed as lamb: New research suggests that investors do get misled by stale returns: Economist
• American student loan debt has surpassed the GDP of Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland combined: Quartz
• A measure introduced by the Italian government to incentivise partial listing of family businesses and encourage long-term shareholdings has been amended after institutional investors raised concerns that it unfairly benefited controlling shareholders: Campdenfb
• Why Active Management Fell Off a Cliff – Perhaps Permanently: TRB
• Watchdog ‘disappointed’ with Grant Thornton audits: FT
• Buying ‘market truths’ pays, but not impressively; It may be time to buy protection against another major drawdown: FT
• Stockpickers see fertile ground ahead; Active fund managers see fertile territory ahead for stockpicking as they expect correlations between equities to fall this year.: FT
• Sub-zero bonds will change risk calculation; Search for yield will evolve into a flight from near-certain loss: FT
• Breakup Artist Hedge Funds Betting Billions On Corporate Marriages: Forbes
• Negative rates as global cash burn: FT
• Central Banks and the Perils of Subzero Conditions; The longer such conditions persist, the greater the risk of perverse consequences: WSJ
• A new economic mystery: negative interest rates: WaPo

TMT

• Just 7% From the Bubble Peak, Nasdaq Investors Losing Nerve: Bloomberg
• Tim Cook says he always knew Google Glass would fail; “They were intrusive, instead of pushing technology to the background, as we’ve always believed.”: BI
• Software is steering auto industry; This revolution makes it possible for a technology group to be a car company: FT
• Contactless card junkies tap their way to payment addiction; Payment becomes more detached and money more abstract so friction is almost entirely absent: FT
• Microsoft Has Suddenly Gotten Serious With Mobile: NYT
• Photoshop at 25: A Thriving Chameleon Adapts to an Instagram World: NYT
• Microsoft Is The New Google, Google Is The Old Microsoft: Forbes
• Pandora’s grand plan: A CRM system for recording artists: Fortune
• Samsung buys digital wallet star to take on Apple Pay: SCMP
• Tags to Riches: Mining Company Tracks Production With Sensors: WSJ
• China’s WeChat sends a message to Line and Kakao in their home turf: Reuters
• Service Innovation in a Digital World; Digital attackers tend to thrive on simplicity. CFO
• How the Internet may be shifting innovation away from big cities: WaPo
• Confidence Games: Why People Don’t Trust Machines to Be Right: K@W

Healthcare

• How Drug Company Gilead Outpaces Its Competitors—And Common Diseases; It can take up to 15 years to bring a lifesaving drug to market. gilead operates at the speed of need. FastCo
• Is biotech growth just what the doctor ordered? When the head of the US Federal Reserve raises concerns over a potential bubble in a sector, is it time to worry?: FT
• Global Pharma’s R&D Re-Balancing: Forbes
• NYU Professor Uncovers How The FDA Systematically Covers Up Fraud & Misconduct In Drug Trials: Zerohedge

Energy & Commodities

• How oil’s dramatic plunge has changed the energy equation: Fortune
• Is Warren Buffett Right About Big-Oil Stocks?: Barron’s

Consumer & Others

• Nike just increased its cool factor by teaming up with an awesome Japanese brand: Quartz
• Under Armour is expanding its empire: BI
• The epic rise of Marlboro cigarettes: BI
• Campbell Soup CEO says distrust of ‘Big Food’ a growing problem: Fortune

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 18 Feb (Wed) – Vincent Van Gogh: Superstar Of The Year; Comparisons With Others Can Obscure Our Own Goals

Life

• Comparisons With Others Can Obscure Our Own Goals: NYT
• Vincent Van Gogh: Superstar Of The Year: Forbes
• Everything You Need to Know About Becoming a Better Listener: HBR
• The Mistake Companies Make When Marketing to Different Cultures: HBR
• Experts Brainstorm Ways to Fund Cities to Withstand Disasters: JG
• How to Find a Best Friend; It is harder for children to form lasting friendships; rising screen time and lots of activities get in the way: WSJ
• Unfriendly Persuasion by CFOs Could Spur Faulty Audits; Caught between the need to serve clients and the requirement to be skeptical of them, auditors may stint on audit quality. CFO

Investing Process

• How to Tell if a CEO Is Lying: A new approach to financial analysis measures executive evasion and candor to gauge a company’s outlook: II
• The “Oracle of Omaha’s” investment vehicle picked up a stake in 21st Century Fox and ditched all of its Exxon Mobil shares. Fortune

Greater China

• Hanergy’s Li taps shadow lenders to fund group’s startling growth: FT
• Western executives should speak truth to Chinese power; Better governance and greater transparency would be a good target: FT
• China’s Churning Out Billionaires Like It’s 1999: Bloomberg
• China Considering Mergers Among Its Big State Oil Companies; Beijing’s Step Back With Big Oil: Merging China’s National Oil Companies Would Be Retrograde Move: WSJ1, WSJ2
• Public corruption in China: Then and now: SCMP

India

• It’s Time for Modi to Live Up to His Promises; India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spent his first nine months in office on basic reforms, but there’ve yet to be any sweeping changes: WSJ
• Is India Really Growing Faster Than China?: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• Firing Up Japan’s Scrappy Steelmaker: WSJ

ASEAN

• Are Indonesia’s Years of Living Dangerously Over? Investors like Jokowi’s reform agenda but they shouldn’t forget the nation’s past financial missteps: Barron’s
• Half of Harley Motorcycles in Indonesia Are Said to Be Illegal: JG
• More Doubts Are Cast Over Jokowi’s Promise to Fight Corruption: JG
• Editorial: Dearth of Leadership From President Jokowi: JG
• In Indian Graft Battle, Some Lessons for Indonesia’s President; Joko Widodo may not have heard of Arvind Kejriwal at all but no doubt he would envy his position as head of his own political party: JG
• KPK vs Polri: Children of light and children of darkness: JP
• Future of NOL sinks deeper into doubt: BT

Macro

• Swiss prosecutor raids HSBC premises: FT
• DuPont Says Trian Bases Fight on ‘Myths’; CEO Kullman says Trian proxy fight ‘based on misrepresentations, inaccurate data, and flawed analyses’: WSJ
• Retirement-Account Standards May Tighten: Brokers Would Have to Put Clients’ Interests First: WSJ
• David Tepper Dumps 40% Of US Equity Exposure Despite Claiming “Stocks Inexpensive”: Zerohedge
• Emerging fund managers stuck in buy-and-hold as trading shrivels: Reuters

TMT

• Marc Andreessen’s plan for fostering more “Unicorn” startups: Pando
• It’s ‘Silicon Valley vs. Motor City’: Bloomberg
• GoPro CIO Prepares to Rein in Rogue IT: WSJ
• At GM, Internet Ordering Required a Massive Overhaul; Auto maker spent years building internal systems expertise to allow customers to shop online: WSJ
• Bosch CEO: Tech industry interlopers force car industry to react: Reuters

Energy & Commodities

• How will the oil crash affect Norway? FT
• Big Investors Make Big Bets For and Against Energy; Buffett, Soros Sell Off Exxon Mobil Stakes: WSJ
• Milking New Zealand’s Way of Life: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Tim Hortons will become household name around the world, CEO Daniel Schwartz says: FP
• Has Coca-Cola lost its cool?: TheAge

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 17 Feb (Tues) – Jony Ive carried a resignation letter in his pocket the first time he met Steve Jobs; “Fuck, you’ve not been very effective, have you?” Jobs was saying that the designs Ive had looked fresh and exciting, but Ive hadn’t been able to get the rest of the company to pay much attention to his work

Life

• Jony Ive carried a resignation letter in his pocket the first time he met Steve Jobs; “Fuck, you’ve not been very effective, have you?” Jobs was saying that the designs Ive had looked fresh and exciting, but Ive hadn’t been able to get to pay much attention to his work: BI, Newyorker
• The financial dangers of swapping common sense for risk models: FT
• Red Ocean Traps: HBR
• The art of delegation and clearing bottlenecks at the top: Forbes
• A multimillion-dollar fraudster who accumulated properties, luxury cars and a house boat has been jailed for eight years. TheAge
• Prerna Sharma: The scientist of small things: Forbes
• Light bulbs vs. the Internet; Calling for less destruction and more creation: WaPo
• Fraudulent Hedge Fund Manager Moazzam Malik Fakes Own Death: VW

Greater China

• Jack Ma Says Alibaba At ‘Most Critical Moment’ As China Starts New Investigation: Forbes
• Ambitious Chinese officials ‘setting secret traps to blackmail rivals’ to advance their own careers: SCMP
• Accounting scandal in hidden debt as Kaisa discloses much higher debt burden; Troubled Chinese developer Kaisa told foreign bond investors that it faces a $10.4bn debt load—more than double the audited amount it previously disclosed; Developer Kaisa eyes urgent restructuring of debts that now top HK$78 billion: WSJ, SCMP
• Hong Kong-Shanghai Trading Link Struggles to Connect With Investors; Rollout of China’s three-month-old Stock Connect program was too fast, fund managers say: WSJ
• China’s One Trillion Reasons to Prevent Yuan Tumbling: Bloomberg
• Concerns raised as China steel enters ‘peak zone’: FT
• Guangzhou doctors angry after inspectors search hospitals for ‘bribes’: SCMP
• How China’s political purge felled Kaisa; Confusion sparked by speed of developer’s demise: FT
• Chinese provinces turn to old investment and easing playbook: FT
• Chinese innovation: BGI’s code for success; DNA company’s fortunes hint at a new model for nation’s tech industry: FT
• Xi Takes A Gamble With Corruption Crackdown: Barron’s
• Sneak peek on China bank earnings offers worrying credit cost picture: SCMP
• What if China home prices keep falling?: SCMP
• China’s aluminium tug of war stuck in repeat mode: SCMP
• Peter Woo Kwong-ching will retire as chairman of Wharf (Holdings) to make way for a smooth transfer of control of the business empire to the next generation.: SCMP
• China’s COSCO Dis-Assembles 8 Ships Amid Glut As Baltic Dry Hits Another Record Low: Zerohedge
• Ambitious Chinese officials ‘setting secret traps to blackmail rivals’ to advance their own careers: SCMP
• Jack Ma Says Alibaba At ‘Most Critical Moment’ As China Starts New Investigation: Forbes

ASEAN

• Noble rejects improper accounting claims: FT, WSJ, BT
• Indonesian police seeking to ‘defang’ anti-graft agency: DW
• Yangon-based paper attacks Myanmar’s elite rulers, describing them as impediments to progress and harmony in society. TheAge
• Thai SEC has filed a complaint with the Department of Special Investigation against six people and three companies for allegedly falsifying accounts and committing fraud that caused unspecified damage to Thai Unique Coil (TUCC): NM
• 300 Singapore property investors found themselves in trouble after pumping US$11 million into Clara Tan’s CTL Global’s plan to buy up distressed houses in the US after attending property seminars: AsiaOne
• Are short sellers gunning for Singapore again?: CNBC

Macro

• Reform the Condominium: It’s become too much of a vehicle for financial speculation: NYT
• How the unspoken currency war threatens to be a silent killer in world markets: FP
• Chart of the day: How US$2.4tr will vanish from global growth: SCMP
• HSBC Bank: Secret Origins To Laundering The World’s Drug Money: Zerohedge
• Giant Australian construction firm Leighton Holdings faces courtroom accusations it concealed a financial black-hole worth up to $4 billion from shareholders, potentially breaching continuous disclosure laws: TheAge

TMT

• The migrant story behind thriving global tech sector; Immigrants are inherent risk-takers with an incentive to better their circumstances: FT
• At UPS, the Algorithm Is the Driver; Turn right, turn left, turn right: inside Orion, the 10-year effort to squeeze every penny from delivery routes: WSJ
• Liberty Global, Becoming a Big Fish, Risks Attracting the Eye of a Shark: NYT
• Gyde this: Aussie brothers Andrew and Scott Julian aiming for the Google of streaming video: TheAge
• Hyperloop Is Real: Meet The Startups Selling Supersonic Travel: Forbes
• SocialCops helps tackle big problems with Big data: Forbes
• How Zombies have taken over pop culture: Forbes
• Challenge of Apple Watch: Defining Its Purpose; Envisioned as a health monitor, Apple Watch provides data, communicates in new ways: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Time to start treating commodities as currencies?: FT

Healthcare

• Pharma Must Launch Itself Back to Full Health; Belief in improving R&D productivity needs to be justified commercially: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Fortress Ferrero resists bankers’ siege; Nutella creator’s death sparks speculation over strategy: FT
• Edible insects: grub pioneers aim to make bugs palatable; Could insects be the next sushi and bug-burgers the new sirloin steak? Pat Crowley, founder of Chapul, which makes energy bars from finely milled crickets, hopes so: FT
• All eyes on chocolate maker Ferrero’s next generation: Reuters

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 16 Feb (Mon) – If you want something done, do not write a to-do list

Life

• If you want something done, do not write a to-do list: FT
• How To Be Someone People Love To Talk To: Bark
• A new aristocracy? The beauty of Koreans’ zeal for education was that it gave people a chance, and a reason to work hard so they could build their own future. But a recent study paints an alarming picture: KT

Greater China

• Deflation is making China’s debt mountain even more terrifying: BI
• Internet payment portals luring Chinese customers with red envelope war: WCT
• The Global Economy’s Chinese Headwinds: PS
• China’s ‘blood famine’ drives patients to the black market: Reuters
• HK needs more risk-takers to nurture start-up culture: SCMP
• Hong Kong firms must break their family ties: SCMP

India

• Delhi Wakes Up to an Air Pollution Problem It Cannot Ignore: NYT

Japan & Korea

• ‘Nut rage’ prompts S.Korea to consider law against as “gabjil”, or high-handedness conduct by the rich and powerful: AsiaOne

ASEAN

• Myanmar’s next steps depend on the generals: FT
• Jokowi Has Forgotten Some Basic Truths About His Job: JG
• In Indonesia, fresh chance to break gas pump monopoly: Reuters
• The polemic on Indonesia’s wasteful and inefficient bureaucracy has resurfaced after ban on holding of meetings and other government events in hotels as from Dec. 1, 2014: JP
• Indonesia Faces a Crossroads in Corruption Battle: WSJ

Macro

• Corporate bonds: Emerging bubble; Signs of distress are appearing in companies’ debt: FT
• Banks dismantle ‘strings of pearls’ as they turn to dust; Pressure from investors and regulators has led lenders to dismantle units built in boom years: FT
• The $100m man’s guide to Brazilian graft: FT
• Negative rates to rattle financial system; Impact to hit pension funds and insurance groups: FT

Energy & Commodities

• Rigged, manipulated and opaque: the $3 trillion oil market needs reform: Telegraph

TMT

• British companies are attempting to boldly go where no manufacturer has gone before by enabling huge pieces of hardware for satellites to be built in space. FT
• Hoping Google’s Lab Is a Rainmaker: NYT
• Slice and Carve: The Next Wave in Computer-Aided Creativity: NYT
• Five Ways That Apple Is Already Positioned to Be a Car Company: Bloomberg
• Online Bank Robbers Steal Up to $1 Billion: Researcher: Bloomberg

Consumer & Others

• Starbucks in Britain: A loss-making machine; Why one of Starbucks’ divisions in a coffee-loving country is so unprofitable: Economist
• Hello Kitty…For Men! But Can Sanrio’s New Fashion Line Overcome The Pussy Factor?: Forbes
• Does Levi Strauss still fit America?: Fortune
• Vitamins Hide the Low Quality of Our Food: NYT

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 15 Feb (Sun) – The Difference Between Routine and Ritual: How to Master the Balancing Act of Controlling Chaos and Finding Magic in the Mundane

Life

• The Difference Between Routine and Ritual: How to Master the Balancing Act of Controlling Chaos and Finding Magic in the Mundane: BP
• Thoreau on Hard Work, the Myth of Productivity, and the True Measure of Meaningful Labor: BP
• Mary Oliver on a Life Well Lived and How to Be Fully Alive; “Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going?”: BP
• The Decision-Maker: A Tool For a Lifetime: Farnam
• Monopoly’s Inventor: The Progressive Who Didn’t Pass ‘Go’; Elizabeth Magie, a crusader against big business, devised the classic capitalist game decades before the man credited with its creation. NYT
• Michele Ferrero, Italy’s Richest Man And The Maker Of Nutella, Passed Away On Saturday: Forbes
• When Things Get Really Bad, Here’s The Leadership Skill You Need Most: Forbes
• How the Industrial Revolution Began; Britain enjoyed abundant supplies of coal and iron and capital and food. Innovation in all these sectors revolutionized industry. Barron’s
• What historians think of historical novels; what historians and novelists can learn from each other: FT

Books

• The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance: Amazon

ASEAN

• Here it comes again, the mobnas (national car)! The old dream of having our own national car has never really vanished in Indonesia: JP

Macro

• The SEC alleges that a fund called Wolf Hedge wasn’t doing anything close to investing: BI
• Outflanked and outmuscled: Bombardier Inc’s uphill climb against competitors with much deeper pockets: FP

TMT

• Red Hat CEO: Today’s IT department is in a fight for its life: BI
• The Invention Mob, Brought to You by Quirky, a company that uses crowdsourcing to create and refine products, could be a model for bringing ideas to market in a faster, more efficient way. NYT

Energy & Commodities

• Rick George sees a ‘cleansing’ of the oil industry after years of profligate spending: FP
• Price Of Farmland Suffers First Annual Decline Since 1986: Zerohedge

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 14 Feb (Sat) – Blackstone’s Chief Has a Warning for Wall Street’s Entrepreneurs; Are You Proud of How You’re Spending Your Time?

Life

• Blackstone’s Chief Has a Warning for Wall Street’s Entrepreneurs: NYT
• Are You Proud of How You’re Spending Your Time?: HBR
• Confucius Has Long Held Back China; Under Confucius’s teaching, the majority of Chinese people endured 2,000 years of subsistence living, while the ruling class controlled most resources and wealt: WSJ
• When the Growth Model Fails; Work hard or get laid off, as opposed to work hard and get higher wages: This management-by-stress technique is a major cause of suffering in our modern societies: NYT
• Son of Carpetright founder to launch rival flooring retailer: Telegraph
• For You, Half Price: NYT
• How Scams Worked In The 1800s: NPR
• Fund Pros Who Live Together, Buy Together; Study Suggests Managers Are Influenced by Investments of Peers Who Are ‘Neighbors’: WSJ
• How digital technology is destroying your mind: WaPo
• Coursera takes aim at education—and unemployment—on a global scale: McKinsey

Books

• To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science: Amazon, WaPo

Investing Process

• ‘Machine’ Dalio takes on ‘Man’ Ackman: CNBC
• This Quiet Activist Investor Has Averaged 19 Percent Returns for More Than a Decade: Bloomberg

Greater China

• Mobile payments thriving in China: WCT
• China entering New Year with fewer crackers, less pork, more thrift: Reuters
• Alibaba Dealings With Chinese Regulator Draw SEC Interest: WSJ
• China’s Corruption Crackdown a Boon for Lingerie; Sales Increase for Pricey Undergarments as Government Discourages Conspicuous Consumption: WSJ

India

• Beyond brick & mortar: Inside Grundfos Pumps India: Forbes
• Indian Banks Struggling With Bad Loans: WSJ
• The Many Strands of Indian Identity; An ambitious new library of Indian literature shows the cultural riches ignored by today’s Hindu nationalists: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• Samsung, LG to create drone: Maeil
• Korean DRAM makers take 70% of the market: JA

ASEAN

• Off the Wagon: Vietnam’s Binge-Drinking Problem; The nation is the third-largest beer consumer in Asia, behind Japan and China: JG
• 1MDB Mess Clouds Petronas $7 Billion Debt Proposal: Bloomberg
• OJK tells Indonesian banks to be vigilant as bad loans rise: JP
• Post-2015 Asean – empower the people: TheStar
• LNG tankers lie unused around Singapore as gas downturn turns to crisis: Reuters

Macro

• Will The Carbon Bubble Be The Next Financial Crisis? Forbes
• Avoid devaluing currencies to boost trade: TheStar
• ‘Sin-Vestors’ Can Reap Smoking-Hot Returns: WSJ
• The Myth of Black Swan Market Events: NYT
• Opinion: Why the smart money is running from hedge funds: Marketwatch

TMT

• One of the smartest VCs of all time just warned that startups are chasing the wrong thing right now: BI
• Why It Makes Perfect Sense For Apple To Invest In The Future Of The Car: Techcrunch
• Visa to fight fraud with apps: JT
• Apple Gears Up to Challenge Tesla in Electric Cars: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Mass layoffs complicate oil industry’s long-term plans: Reuters
• How not to run a national oil company: TheStar

Consumer & Others

• The incredible staying power of the Oreo cookie: Quartz
• Hitching a Toy to a Star: Superhero Movies Create Opportunity for Toymakers: NYT

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 13 Feb (Fri) – 11 inspiring quotes from Abraham Lincoln on liberty, leadership, and character; How a frugal janitor saved, invested and ultimately amassed $8 million

Life

• 11 inspiring quotes from Abraham Lincoln on liberty, leadership, and character: BI
• How a frugal janitor saved, invested and ultimately amassed $8 million: WaPo
• Authorpreneurship: To succeed these days, authors must be more businesslike than ever: Economist
• How a 23-year-old makes $500,000 a year tweeting random facts: BI
• Charles Darwin, Natural Novelist: Why style was so important to the theory of evolution: NewYorker
• “Guys, Let’s Grow The Hell Out Of This Company”: How Y Combinator Startups Go Big: FastCo
• Those who can: How to turn teaching into a job that attracts high-flyers: Economist
• Lois Braverman of the Ackerman Institute: Making Room for Differences: NYT
• Seven secrets to nailing your pitch: Shark Tank judge Naomi Simson: BRW
• Turn email responses into blog posts, and other ways to protect your time without being rude: BRW
• Are National Champions Really Winners?: PS
• The trouble with the family compact: Bombardier Inc’s new CEO Alain Bellemare is on a short leash: FP
• Identify Blue Oceans by Mapping Your Product Portfolio: HBR
• 15 Habits Of Exceptionally Persuasive People: Forbes
• Opera: The Economic Stimulus That Lasts for Centuries: Bloomberg

Greater China

• From Wealth to Health: Rich Chinese Seek Spiritual Fulfillment; Executives Spurn M.B.A.s for Philosophy Classes, Shopping Excursions for Buddhist Meditations: WSJ
• Bunge says China lenders distorting soyabean trade: FT
• China’s increase in debt is massive and unsustainable: WaPo
• Without corruption, some ask, can the Chinese Communist Party function? WaPo
• Shaanxi Government to Probe Missing Funds After Mass Investor Protests: RFA
• China’s Two Largest Taxi-Hailing App Companies Discuss Merger; Alibaba-Backed Kuaidi Dache and Tencent-Backed Didi Dache Enter Advanced Talks: WSJ
• It’s a Wanda-ful life: China’s biggest property tycoon wants to become an entertainment colossus: Economist
• China’s army: Lifting the veil; Xi Jinping is bringing a corrupt army to heel. Now he must make it behave responsibly: Economist
• For many of China’s biotech brains-in-exile, it’s time to come home: reuters
• A third of China’s $2.5 trillion corporate bond market is going to be hung out to dry: BI
• Burst of Taiwan’s real estate bubble likely: regulator; Taxes to be levied on combined value of property and land in Taiwan: WCT
• Thinking Big in Guizhou with Big Data Business: caixin
• Collateral Damage From China’s Antigraft Drive: Bloomberg
• Hong Kong Civics Class Puts Beijing on Edge: WSJ
• China’s lending push bypasses cash-starved farm sector: Reuters

India

• Slumdog Millionaires: A colorful range of everyday entrepreneurs disprove the notion that India is simply a ‘socialist country in which the state is the key.’: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• GS E&C faces a class action suit for losses a group of individual investors suffered as the result of allegedly deceptive notices made through the stock market. KT
• Japan’s Oldest Businesses Have Survived for More Than 1,000 Years: Atlantic
• Lotte Group’s “exorbitant” bid to win the largest amount of duty free space at Incheon International Airport (ICN) is triggering concerns that it may fall victim to a “winner’s curse.”: KT
• Korean Air shocked by one-year jail ruling on heiress: AsiaOne
• Japan Rally Mutating With Abe Beneficiaries Becoming Biggest Losers: Bloomberg
• How Two Small Rocks Stop Japan and South Korea Getting Along: Bloomberg

ASEAN

• Vietnam’s migrant labourers: Going to debt mountain; Working abroad is no bargain: Economist
• Thai PM pushes ‘business as usual’ amid slow politics: Nikkei

Macro

• The mystery of negative bond yields: SCMP
• Equities bask in “weird world” of negative yields: Reuters
• Britain’s markets watchdog says investigating 67 fund managers: Reuters
• How businesses linked to blacklisted oligarchs avoid Western sanctions: Economist
• The tax havens hidden in plain sight: FT
• How Mortgage Fraud Made the Financial Crisis Worse: NYT
• Credit Suisse’s Superbad Bank; The last assets are so risky they are risk-weighted at more than 100%. Eventually, what is left in the bad bank then may end up once again just being part of the bank.: WSJ
• Central Banks Now Open 24/7 Fighting Currency Wars and Deflation: Bloomberg
• Even Berkshire’s Boardroom Ties Can’t Prevent the Costco-AmEx Divorce: Bloomberg

TMT

• Automated Insights, the guys with ‘robots’ writing stories, acquired by owner of Stats, LLC: WaPo
• The entrepreneur who is beating Amazon at same-day delivery: FastCo
• Holographic movies: Light at the end of a tunnel; Affordable moving holography may not be too far away: Economist
• Web pioneer Vint Cerf warns of internet history ‘black hole’: FT
• Tim Cook Doesn’t Believe This Made-Up Math Law Will Limit Apple’s Growth: Bloomberg
• 10 years of Google Maps: 10 ways it changed the world: TheAge
• Google, Mighty Now, but Not Forever: NYT

Healthcare

• The Coming Boom In Brain Medicines: Forbes
• Why Isn’t Health Care More Like Starbucks? Forbes
• Vaccines and Politicized Science; Jenny McCarthy knows the credibility of science is a house of cards. WSJ
• Toxic Ganges adds to spread of drug-resistant bacteria: FT
• How CVS turned its cigarette ban into a strategic weapon: BI
• Does a Real Anti-Aging Pill Already Exist? Inside Novartis’s push to produce the first legitimate anti-aging drug; The bacterium Streptomyces hygroscopicus is found only on Easter Island. Bloomberg

Consumer & Others

• Levi Strauss CEO on a ‘mission to get women back into jeans’: Fortune
• Tesla: The Road to Riches Is Littered With Potholes: WSJ
• Even Pasta and Cheese Makers Now Want Their Own Small Jet: Bloomberg

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 12 Feb (Thurs) – Jeff Bezos’ best piece of advice to entrepreneurs: Be missionaries, not mercenaries; Rethink Your After-Work Routine to Make the Transition Home a Happy One; Fatigue and Stress Fuel the Tendency to Ruminate; a Mental Break Helps Us Leave the Bad Mood Behind

Life

• Jeff Bezos’ best piece of advice to entrepreneurs: Be missionaries, not mercenaries: BI
• This Harvard grad couldn’t find a job on Wall Street, so he launched his own startup — it’s now worth $600 million: BI
• Rethink Your After-Work Routine to Make the Transition Home a Happy One; Fatigue and Stress Fuel the Tendency to Ruminate; a Mental Break Helps Us Leave the Bad Mood Behind: WSJ
• Peter Thiel and Education’s New Utopians: Bloomberg
• 1 in 5 S Korean teachers regret choice of job; The discontent among Korean teachers was in stark contrast to Korean teachers’ relatively high average pay: Reuters
• What Is the Purpose of Society? We can’t fix our problems if we don’t know the end goal: NYT
• Lessons from RadioShack: To Stay on Top, Figure Out What Got You There: K@W
• Dr. Henry Singleton – Part Four: Five Strategies For Business Success: VW
• Is Your Leadership Style Right for the Digital Age? K@W
• An Excess of Sunshine, a Paucity of Rules; Disclosure and transparency have become the answer to every vexing problem, but too much sunlight can be blinding: NYT
• Darwin’s Finches Reveal Role of Genes in Evolution; Scientists Identify Genetic Mechanism Behind Beak Shapes: WSJ
• Sriracha’s inventor refuses to trademark the name even though he could be losing out on millions: BI
• How to Live a Happier Financial Life: WSJ
• 5 Ways to Become More Self-Aware: HBR
• A Lesson in Entrepreneurship From a Doll; American Girl, Other Firms Design Toys for Young Girls That Tap Into the Appeal of Owning a Business: WSJ
• W.R. Grace: The End of an Empire; a conglomerate that dates back over 150 years, has operated everything from steam ships to dialysis centers, is joining H-P, ITT and other giants narrowing its focus and splitting up. WSJ

Books

• Design to Grow: How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (and How You Can Too) : Amazon
• Frugal Innovation: How to do more with less: Amazon, FT

Investing Process

• A Reader’s Suggestion for DEEP VALUE COURSE: CS
• Tales of Russia’s First Activist Investor; The founder of The Hermitage Fund made, lost, and made a fortune investing in Russia. Then he learned the truth about doing business in Moscow: Barron’s

Greater China

• PBOC keeps close watch on shadow banking, bad debt amid China slowdown: SCMP
• Under pressure: Graft campaign weighs heavily on Wang Qishan: WCT
• 50 Shades of Shadow Banking: China Risks Reined In; A central bank report has a more granular look at credit expansion: Bloomberg
• China Inc’s bank-free shopping spree?: FT
• Kaisa Group, the Chinese developer embroiled in an anti-graft probe, sent prices on its bonds sliding after saying it expects it will need to change its international debt obligations: Bloomberg
• First Tell Us What’s Wrong With Stock Market, SEC Official Says: Bloomberg
• China’s Top Anti-Graft Regulator to Inspect 26 State Companies: Bloomberg
• CEOs On The Run: Financial Crisis With Chinese Characteristics: Forbes
• China’s Huawei Says Its Ready for Transparency: Caixin
• The shuttering of China? FT
• Bringing the American way of selling skin-care products and vitamins to China helped make Amway Corp. the world’s largest direct seller. It also made the children of one of its co-founders billionaires. Bloomberg
• China’s People’s Liberation Army audits spending; move aimed at uncovering embezzlement, accounting fraud, stealing from private coffers and other wrongdoing so as to curb “deep-seated, unhealthy” tendencies in the military. SCMP
• Beijing Directive Cuts Into Debt Issuance; Sales Are Derailed as Doubt Is Cast on Local-Government Backing for Bonds: WSJ

India

• Trick or treat? India’s strong GDP figures mask economic reality: Reuters
• Delhi Elections: What Lessons Will the BJP Choose to Learn? WSJ
• McDonald’s hit by beef with India partner: FT
• India Smugglers, and Their Bodies, Take a Break From Gold: Bloomberg
• Sebi questions ownership of Sahara properties ; Sebi says the group may not wholly own some of the properties in India it listed as proof of its ability to repay the savers: Livemint

Japan & Korea

• Paint peeling off South Korea’s economic miracle: Nikkei
• Abe’s Third Arrow Finds Its Mark; Prime Minister Shinzo Abe scores a major victory in agricultural reform, but things only get harder from here: WSJ
• Popularity of e-cigarettes is lighting up Korea; As debate rages over health risks, the government has focused its attention on regulating the smoking trend. JA
• Can Ssangyong Motor regain its past glory?: KH
• Samsung sees gold in mirrorless camera market: JP

ASEAN

• 1MDB’s Lenders Threaten to Put Malaysian State Investment Firm in Default: WSJ
• Alibaba’s AliExpress Sets Its Sights On Indonesia’s Promising E-Commerce Market: Techcrunch
• MAS seeks more bite to oversight of derivatives, securities: BT
• Companies should comply with SGX’s MTP as soon as possible: BT
• Key Thaksin Ally to Face Thai Court Over 2008 Crackdown: JG
• Survey: High Hopes but Little Satisfaction in Jokowi: JG
• Do You Already Speak Indonesian? Under a controversial new proposal, foreigners working in Indonesia may need to master the Indonesian language: JG
• Household Debt Keeps Thailand Southeast Asia’s Sick Man: JG
• Singapore Finds A Way Out of Labor Crunch With Drones: JG

Macro

• SEC Claws Back Money from Tech CFOs for Accounting Fraud: AT
• The Reason Why Trading Currencies Is Now The Most Difficult Since Lehman: Zerohedge
• SEC Wades Into Bitter Fight Over CVR Energy Takeover; Watchdog Investigates Whether Refiner Made Misleading Disclosures During Takeover by Carl Icahn: WSJ
• ‘Smart beta’ drives down active management fees: FT
• Yes, looser credit – and fraud – drove the housing bubble: FT
• Krugman: Nobody Understands Debt: NYT
• Hedge Funds Focused on Currencies Get Big Payoff; January Was Big Winner for Firms, Especially Those Driven by Algorithms: WSJ
• The Day the Shouting Stopped; The energy, the surging life force of the trading pits has given way to the silent precision of electronic trading. WSJ
• U.S. becomes hot spot for aerospace manufacturing: Reuters

Healthcare

• Analytics Predict Which Patients Will Suffer Post-Surgical Infections: WSJ
• Stroke Procedure to Pluck Clots From Brain Betters Recovery Odds: Bloomberg

TMT

• Tim Cook explains why Apple Pay doesn’t collect your data: ‘You are not our product.’: BI
• Datto: The Secret Tech Money-Making Machine You’ve Never Heard O: Forbes
• Slow Start for Google’s Smartwatches; Dearth of Apps Are Cited as Problem Hurting Sales: WSJ
• Sleuthing Search Engine: Even Better Than Google? Memex, Developed by the U.S. Military, Is Helping to Track Down Online Criminals: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Next RadioShack? Here Are The Most Troubled Retail Stores: Forbes
• Crowdsourcing Helps Domino’s Pizza Serve Up Rise in Profit; Mobile Application Pizza Mogul Allows Customers in Australia to Design Their Own Pizzas: WSJ
• Adore Me’s secret for disrupting the lingerie market: BRW

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 11 Feb (Wed) – The classic allegory of ‘stone soup’ provides a lesson every entrepreneur should learn

Life

• The classic allegory of ‘stone soup’ provides a lesson every entrepreneur should learn: BI
• A Time for Fewer, Better Friends; As people get older, they deliberately narrow their social circles. Ties with close friends tighten; less meaningful relationships are discarded. WSJ
• The Act of Rigorous Forgiving: NYT
• TIM COOK: ‘Sitting is the new cancer’; Apple Watch will gently vibrate on his wrist to remind him to occasionally get up and move: BI
• The fear of not delivering that accompanied Ocado’s rise; Creating a business often requires self-belief bordering on the sociopathic: FT
• Five Ways to Reverse the Downward Spiral of Distrust: Strategy&
• Peter Thiel has never met a regulation he didn’t hate: Fortune
• Everything Is Awesome! Why You Can’t Tell Employees They’re Doing a Bad Job; New Mantra at Many Workplaces Is ‘Accentuate the Positive’: WSJ
• Malcolm Gladwell shares the worst advice he’s ever received: ‘It’s been done” : BI
• The Redefined No of the CFO; For today’s financial leader, decisions are based on strategy, not spreadsheets. Strategy&
• Your Lifetime Earnings Are Decided in the First 10 Years of Your Career: Bloomberg
• Ending the cycle of elect and regret: TheStar

Investing Process

• Booth Laird 2014 Annual Letter: Reflection On 7 Years: VW
• On the Perils of Management Access & Straying From Process: Our Adventure With Jones Soda: SSA

Greater China

• Credit insurer Atradius warns of spiraling payment problems in China as trade data for January signals the sharpest slowdown in domestic demand in five years: SCMP
• Jack Ma, Alibaba Navigate a Tangled Web in China: WSJ
• Political risks stalk China SOEs abroad: FT
• First online hospital in China starts services in Guangdong: WCT
• The ‘New Normal’ for Doing Business in China; While the business environment isn’t perfect for U.S. companies operating in China, the glass is still half full. WSJ
• China Stocks Become Asia’s Biggest Loser; Chinese Stocks Fall After 2014 Rally; Worsening Economy, Flurry of IPOs, Reliance on Borrowed Money Spell Trouble: WSJ
• Ageing China draws investors to its ‘hot as Internet’ healthcare sector: Reuters
• Hong Kong warns over digital currencies amid alleged bitcoin fraud: Reuters

India

• Beware of froth over India’s tech sector turning into a bubble; Hopes for a ‘mobile-first’ ecommerce model rest on questionable assumptions: FT
• Sahil Barua: Leading E-commerce logistics with Delhivery; The potential of ecommerce logistics is a no-brainer and Sahil Barua’s Delhivery spotted the opportunity before most in India: Forbes
• India’s ruling party trounced in Delhi in big blow for Modi; Winning power in India’s states is critical to control of the upper house of parliament, where Modi’s party lacks a majority and has been thwarted in its effort to pass reform: Reuters

Japan & Korea

• Korean companies still offer lowest payout ratios among big Asia markets: FT
• Loeb’s Third Point takes aim at Fanuc; A famed US activist investor is taking on one of Japan’s most obsessive companies in what promises to be an epic clash of cultures across the Pacific. FT
• Competitive lives of Korean superrich supermoms: KH
• Unconventional analysts thriving during hard times in Korea; Changing demands of investors reshaping a financial profession: JA
• Japan’s deflationary challenge caught in a bottle of ketchup: Reuters

ASEAN

• Foreign Ownership Cap, Divestments Loom in Revived Indonesian Banking Bill: JG
• OW Bunker accounting fraud fallout could lead to exit of Opet Singapore: BI
• Hard, soft or effete: Jokowi, choose your brand of power!: JP

Macro

• Tax avoidance as bad as bottom of the harbour schemes: TheAge
• Asian cities attract more overseas money than Switzerland: FT
• Sin stocks pay as alcohol and cigarettes beat sober rivals: FT
• EM bond allure fades as US rate rise looms: FT
• The inaugural Luxembourg tax-avoidance power rankings: Quartz
• Most CFOs are embarrassed by their companies’ tax avoidance schemes; just take a look at how Pepsi runs money through Luxembourg shell companies to “optimize” its tax bill: Quartz
• HSBC files: Swiss bank aggressively pushed way for clients to avoid new tax; Far from acting as passive party to clients’ tax schemes, HSBC Suisse marketed device to effectively sabotage European savings directive: Guardian
• Cash pilgrims and bricks of money: HSBC Swiss bank operated like cash machine for rich clients: Guardian
• Sri Lanka Cancels Casinos, Spotlights Asia Investment Risk Crapshoot: Forbes
• The Paratroopers of Crony Capitalism; Why give golden parachutes to executives who leave to enter government service?: WSJ
• Australia’s Property Boom Spurs Interest in ‘Granny Flats’: WSJ
• GMO Q4 Letter: Jeremy Grantham: ‘How On Earth Did I Miss This!’ Jeremy Grantham says that falling oil prices shouldn’t have been such a surprise, calling it his major regret for 2014: VW

TMT

• Tim Cook demolishes anyone who thinks Apple is about to get smoked by Chinese upstarts like Xiaomi: BI
• Google has a patent for a wearable that makes you smell better: Quartz
• SAP’s Bill McDermott Pushes Into the Cloud: WSJ
• Handwriting Isn’t Dead-Smart Pens and Styluses Are Saving It; Connected Pens and Improved Styluses Make Your Handwritten Notes Available on All of Your Devices: WSJ
• Apple: the first $700 billion company: Fortune, WSJ

Healthcare

• Healthcare: The race to cure rising drug costs; Critics are asking if the big pharma industry’s premium pricing model can endure: FT
• New Dosages of Old Drugs Are Used to Raise Their Prices: NYT

Consumer & Others

• Unilever must aim not to spread itself too thinly: FT
• Saving McDonald’s; With fourth-quarter earnings dropping 21% and global sales down, the company needs a back-to-basics turnaround. WSJ

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 10 Feb (Tues) – Plumbing the delicious depths of February with ume; Blossoming during one of the coldest months of the year, often covered in ice and snow, the ume is sometimes thought of as a metaphor for chinmoku (沈黙, silence or reticence) and nintai (忍耐, patience)

Life

• Plumbing the delicious depths of February with ume: JT
• The rise of the entrepreneur-in-residence: FT
• Power of the humble CEO: BT
• How Ancient Chinese Thought Applies Today: HP
• Seven strategy lessons from the Staples deal to buy Office Depot; Latest bid shows fragility of competitive advantage but ‘category killer’ notion is not dead: FT
• The hackathon enters the corporate mainstream; Moving beyond coding roots, they now inject urgency into business: FT
• Are Economists Overrated? NYT
• How to use financial blogging to build an audience: LinkedIn
• Boiling point: redesigning the kettle for the 21st century: Guardian
• The RadioShack Lesson: Another storied brand succumbs to change and competition. WSJ

Books

• This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress: Amazon, WaPo

Greater China

• 984 HK and 246 mainland clients named on HSBC list of hidjng assets, including Li Xiaolin – the daughter of former Premier Li Peng. Standard
• A mining billionaire said to have links with disgraced former security chief Zhou Yongkang and who once launched a bid for Australia’s Sundance Resources was executed for multiple murder: Standard
• Is the $1tn China carry trade imploding?: FT
• China’s ‘little red soldiers’ get lessons in loyalty: JT
• Hidden debts in Beijing: JA
• China’s Dangerous Debt Drag: Bloomberg
• Seventy Chinese listed firms affected by far-reaching anti-graft campaign so far: SCMP
• Refiners in China told to strengthen inventory management; “Over the past several years, China’s crude oil reserves have been a secret: WCT
• New China law targets tax avoidance offshore: SCMP
• In China, Heavy Industry Unexpectedly Falls Sharply: NYT
• Chinese Phone Upstarts Sell With Personality, Not Product: NYT
• Qualcomm’s Fine Signals China’s Toughened Stance: WSJ, WSJ2

India

• India GDP figures fuel investor suspicion: FT
• India’s happy story stands out in Asia: Debt piles elsewhere are worryingly high, particularly in China and South Korea: FT
• Taking The Taboo Out Of Lingerie In India By Putting It Online: Forbes
• Subsidies lure firms in India’s electronics push: SCMP
• India Growth Rate Set to Rival China: WSJ

Japan & Korea

• Kosdaq’s trillion won club growing: JA
• Amid mobile slump, Samsung needs more outside customers for its chips and panels: Reuters

ASEAN

• A tale of two shipbuilders: Petrobras scandal rocks the boat for Singapore’s largest rig makers: SBR
• 1MDB caught in battle of tycoons brewing in Malaysia: BT
• Foreign Investors Canceled Plans for 16 Footwear Factories in Indonesia: JG
• Flamboyant Malaysian Jho Low’s real-estate deals called into question: NYT

Macro

• HSBC admits failings after helping criminals hide assets; The Swiss Leaks: Bill Whitaker investigates the biggest leak in Swiss banking history and examines HSBC’s business dealings with a collection of international outlaws: TODAY. CBS
• Leaked HSBC files damage bank and the concept of banking secrecy; Outcry about why more has not been done to prosecute individuals: FT
• Morgan Stanley eyes an exit from hedge funds; The US bank is looking to sell off its stakes in Lansdowne Partners and other alternative investment groups: Telegraph
• The S.E.C.’s Hazy Approach to Crime and Punishment: NYT
• Asian cities attract more overseas money than Switzerland: FT
• Policy makers eye corporate cash piles in bid to boost growth: FT
• Too BIG to sail? Container ship giants veer off course in battle of the mega vessels: SCMP
• Why U.S. Assets Are So Seductive; The drop in oil prices, Europe’s bouts of weakness, and a strong dollar make American stocks and bonds the world’s most attractive–for now.: Barron’s
• Central Banks Encourage Risky Behavior; Investors in Asia should be wary of low interest rates and rising debt amid weaker growth across the region. Barron’s
• Asian Borrowers Walk Credit Tightrope; The region’s debt burden has climbed to a massive 244% of GDP and poses a major risk to its economies.  Barron’s
• More pig farms popping up in US; Growing U.S. hog herd, flat Chinese demand slams pork prices: Yahoo
• Currency-hedged ETFs in vogue as investors clamor for more: Reuters
• Regulation of Shadow Banking Takes a Dark Turn: A ‘chain’ of routine securities transactions, the Fed suggests, can transform a nonsystemic firm into a systemic firm. WSJ
• SEC Advances Hedging Rule; Rule Requires Firms Disclose Whether Employees are Allowed to Hedge Against Company Stock: WSJ
• New Rules Poised to Reshape Analyst Research Sector; EU Law Requires Investment Managers to Pay for Research or Related Services: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Oil ‘contango’ puts profit in storage: FT
• Oil could plunge to $20 and this might be ‘the end of OPEC’: Citigroup: FP
• Oil Producers Stress Surviving $50 Oil; Investors Weigh Independents’ Balance Sheets, Prospects Amid $50 Oil: WSJ

TMT

• Industrial robots steal a march in east Asia: FT
• Yahoo: Identity crisis; Once the storefront of the web, the internet company has been overtaken by rivals: FT
• Cheaper robots could replace more factory workers: study: Reuters
• The Holy Grail of Welding: Steel + Aluminum; Auto Industry’s Drive for Light-Weight Parts Fuels Voestalpine’s Hunt for New Process: WSJ

Healthcare

• A Warning From the Heart of Malaria Research; A Veteran Doctor Fears the Rise of a Drug-Resistant Strain Will Help the Disease Spread: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Unilever must aim not to spread itself too thinly: FT
• Paul Polman’s socially responsible Unilever falls short on growth: FT

Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 9 Feb (Mon) – How to Be Invisible: Stop demanding attention. Be like the arctic fox

Life

• How to Be Invisible: Stop demanding attention. Be like the arctic fox: NYT
• Care Is the X Factor at Work: The most powerful influence on people’s engagement at work is feeling genuinely cared for by their supervisor: NYT
• What is college good for? A college education should infect students with the desire to pursue worthy perception and lofty goals in their lifelong journeys: KT
• When You’re at the Crossroads of Should and Must: Firstround
• Would Aristotle find fat bonuses gross? We live in an age of meritocracy, but there is some debate over what this thing we call merit is. SCMP
• Engage The Fox: Farnam
• Marcus Aurelius: You Have One Life To Live: Farnam
• Atul Gawande: The Building Industry’s Strategy for Getting Things Right in Complexity: Farnam

Greater China

• Kaisa Sequels Coming to China’s Banks Amid Corruption Web: Bloomberg
• Magic Kingdom in China a mystery after the U.S. entertainment giant pushed back the opening of its first mainland China theme park to 2016: ChinaPost
• Fraud committed by unlicensed organizations running banking businesses are on the rise in China, reflecting poor government supervision: WCT
• HK Bitcoin investors claim HK$3b losses: Standard
• Taiwan’s Richest Man Faces Tougher Times In Mainland China: Forbes
• “Desperate” China Technocrats Worry About Balance Of Payments Crisis: Forbes
• In Macau, casino titans join China reform wagon: Reuters

India

• BRIC Becomes I With India Set to Outperform First Time Since ’99: Bloomberg
• India Sensex Set for Longest Loss Streak in 15 Months After Vote: Bloomberg
• With the much-hyped USD 2-billion funding by Mirach falling apart over “forgery” allegations, Sahara has begun exploring fresh options to secure bail for its chief Subrata Roy: Moneycontrol

Japan & Korea

• More than half of home-furnishing retailers near IKEA’s first shop in South Korea have seen their sales sink for the past two months, hit by the Swedish industry giant’s entry into the local market: KT
• Korea Pop Fervor to Lift AmorePacific China Sales by 30%: Bloomberg

ASEAN

• As Technology Entrepreneurs Multiply in Vietnam, So Do Regulations: NYT
• Indonesian Hotels Face Carnage From Widodo’s State Spending Cuts: Bloomberg

Macro

• EM fund managers: genuinely active or closet trackers? FT
• Fed-mageddon Looms Over Asia: The growing number of Americans finding work could lead to higher U.S rates and renewed volatility for Asia. Barron’s
• Easing Isn’t a Cure-All for Asia: Beijing’s monetary policy isn’t all that aggressive, and India’s central bank chief worries about “hot” money chasing rates. Barron’s
• Bigger Container Ships Pose Bigger Risks; Insurers, Others Worry About the Potential for Catastrophic Accidents: WSJ
• Currency-hedged ETFs in vogue as investors clamor for more: Reuters
• Warren Buffet faces pressure for more disclosure: FT: Reuters
• Head Of Largest Swiss Cantonal Bank Says Swiss Capital Controls Are “Certainly Possible: ZeroHedge
• Hanergy’s soaring share price raises bubble fears: SCMP

TMT

• Predicting Apple’s Future: Tim Cook’s Gentle Path To Avoid Apple’s Downfall: Forbes
• Uncovering Security Flaws in Digital Education Products for Schoolchildren: NYT
• Google shares its plan to nab 80% of Microsoft’s Office business: BI
• Smartwatch App Helps Track Glucose: WSJ

Healthcare

• Drug Making Breaks Away From Its Old Ways; ‘Continuous-Manufacturing’ Process Can Improve Quality Control, Speed Output: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Tapped in: Craft breweries usher in a beer can revival: Fortune
• Behind RadioShack’s Collapse Is a Tiny Distressed Lender: bloomberg