Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 11 May (Mon) – People laughed at this entrepreneur’s idea – now it’s a $500 million business, thanks to his mom’s encouraging words

Life

• People laughed at this entrepreneur’s idea – now it’s a $500 million business, thanks to his mom: BI
• How The HondaJet Took Flight: An Engineer’s 29-Year Obsession: Forbes
• From New Zealand to Pittsburgh, a Moneyball Approach to Helping Troubled Kids; In a program pioneered in New Zealand and arriving soon in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, social workers use data to figure out who’s most at risk. Bloomberg
• How Uncertainty Fuels Anxiety: An inability to live with life’s unknowns can lead to worry and distress. Atlantic
• Your Brain Is Primed To Reach False Conclusions: 538
• Will White-Collar Work Get an Uber Disruption? Bloomberg
• How To Improve Self-Esteem: A New Secret From Research: Barker
• Celframe billionaire Arun Pudur is Asia’s wealthiest entrepreneur under 40; the software firm now produces the world’s second most popular word processor after Microsoft: AsiaOne

Investing Process

• How ‘Active’ Is Your Fund Manager? Some fund providers, financial analysts and industry analysts fear the metric is being misused. WSJ
• Pledging shares by promoters increases risks: BusinessStandard
• Stock Market 101: Teaching the Wrong Lessons? WSJ
• A Dozen Things I’ve learned from Julian Robertson about Investing: 25iq
• The Short-Seller Edge That Hedge Funds Get From Crucial Time Lag: Bloomberg

AsianExtractor: Unearthing Accounting Fraud in Asia

• Detecting Accounting Fraud in Asia (Part 4): Introducing Six New Measures: AsianExtractor
• Sihuan (460 HK) Updates on Audit Delay: Improper accounting treatment in consolidation trick of using MRAs (Market Research Agents) to exclude hidden sales and distribution expenses to artificially boost profits: AsianExtractor
• China Environment FY2014: Significant Deterioration in Receivables Collectability And No Provision for Impairment: AsianExtractor
• China Environment (SES: 50U, Bloomberg: CENV SP): Auditor Emphasis of Matter raises more questions on potential accounting tunneling risk: AsianExtractor
• Open Letter to SGX/MAS: Reply to CFO of SGX-Listed China Environment (CENV SP) on report “Potential Accounting Tunneling Fraud at China Environment?” – Address the accounting and governance concerns in an SGX/MAS announcement: AsianExtractor
• Does Auditor Explanatory Language in Unqualified Audit Reports Indicate Increased Financial Misstatement Risk? “Emphasis of matter” language predicts restatements + China Environment’s Auditor Emphasis of Matter: AsianExtractor

Greater China

• From Icicles to Burger King, Sinopec’s Fu Mirrored China’s Rise: Bloomberg
• Investors Pay a Price for Caution on China; Skittishness has kept cash out of Chinese shares, which have been on a tear: WSJ
• Efforts to revive Dongguan factories may be too little, too late: SCMP
• After government ban, now Guangzhou wants to copy Uber: SCMP
•  ‘Weishang’ business model poses challenges for WeChat: WCT
• Distance (from China) gets hearts racing for the wrong reasons; Aim has provided rich pickings for Chinese bosses with more than 80 companies listing: FT
• China’s Cut-Rate Credit Rankings Raise Alarms as Defaults Loom: Bloomberg
• China’s ‘ridiculous’ ID documents may get the chop: AsiaOne
• During One Hour Every Day, China’s Stock Rally Falls Apart: Bloomberg
• Investors Pay a Price for Caution on China; Skittishness has kept cash out of Chinese shares, which have been on a tear: WSJ
• Efforts to revive Dongguan factories may be too little, too late: SCMP
• Dongguan’s migrant factory workers dream of going home for same wages: SCMP

India

• HDFC Makes to World’s Top-10 List of Consumer Finance Firms: NDTV
• RBI chief wants PMO to act against bank frauds worth Rs 17,500 crore ($bn); The bank accounts cited by the RBI belong to Winsome Diamond, Zoom Developers, Tiwari Group, Surya Vinayak Industries, Deccan Chronicle, First Leasing, Biolor, Hindutimes
• Late to the party, global banks try to muscle into India’s start-up boom: Reuters

Japan & Korea

• Samsung pushes drive for management restructuring; Rumors of Samsung setting up holding firm continue to swirl: KH
• Samsung Group struggles to find new growth engine; Korean conglomerate puts focus on M&As, converging businesses: KH
• Sharp says may reduce capital, shares slide nearly a third; Japanese media suggested the capital reduction is aimed at easing its tax burden as the smaller capital base will allow Sharp to be classified as a SME for tax purposes: Reuters
• Rise in one-person households in S Korea boosts pet market: AsiaOne
• In S Korea: From shopping centres to shopping experience: AsiaOne

ASEAN

• Indonesia’s slow-moving bureaucracy weighs on Widodo’s economic reforms: Star
• For 1MDB, it cannot be business as usual: BT
• Indonesia Plans to Gradually Cut Corporate Tax Rate to Below 18%: Bloomberg

Macro

• Emerging market company debt worries Fidelity: FT
• Top 50 US boardroom hoarders sit on $1tn in cash; Apple, Microsoft, Google, Pfizer and Cisco are sitting on $439bn of cash – accounting for more than a quarter of the total $1.73tn being held by US groups: FT
• Bond Market Bloodbath Is in the Math; The reach for yield in longer-dated bonds puts investors in peril as the market goes into reverse: WSJ

Energy & Commodities

• Asia Loses Its Sweet Tooth for Chocolate; Rising prices, slower growth have Asian buyers shunning cocoa: WSJ
• America’s oil boom is sputtering back to life one rig at a time: SCMP
• These Asian Bankers Face $43 Billion Dead Deals After Oil Plunge: Bloomberg
• Asia Loses Its Sweet Tooth for Chocolate; Rising prices, slower growth have Asian buyers shunning cocoa: WSJ
• America’s oil boom is sputtering back to life one rig at a time: SCMP

TMT

•  Pocket-sized fingerprint scanner could solve healthcare bottleneck: Reuters
•  Networks Fret as Ad Dollars Flow to Digital Media: NYT
• ‘They’ve picked their exit brilliantly’: the Leibovich brothers and Leon Kamenev sell takeaway food ordering platform Menulog for 371 times EBIT: BRW
• Mobile-Game Makers Try to Catch More ‘Whales’ Who Pay for Free Games; With soft sell and number-crunching, ‘Candy Crush Saga’ and ‘Kim Kardashian: Hollywood’ creators nudge you to spend $50 or $100 a month: WSJ
• Will Smartwatches Be a Hit? Some see advantages over smartphones and tablets; others see a niche product: WSJ

Consumer & Others

• Bottled water flies off shelves as fizzy drinks go flat; Global soft-drinks companies battle for share amid surging demand for the simplest beverage of all: FT
• Birkenstock Doesn’t Care if Fashionistas Stop Wearing Its Sandals; German footwear firm shrugs at recent popularity with the trendy set; ‘Fashion trends tend to roll over us’: WSJ