Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 15 May (Fri) – Mark Zuckerberg: Let your kids play video games; The Magic of Moss and What It Teaches Us About the Art of Attentiveness to Life at All Scales

Life

• Mark Zuckerberg: Let your kids play video games: BI
• The Diffusion of Useful Ignorance: Thoreau on the Hubris of Our Knowledge and the Transcendent Humility of Not-Knowing: BP
• The Magic of Moss and What It Teaches Us About the Art of Attentiveness to Life at All Scales: BP
• How to Make Use of Our Suffering: Simone Weil on Ameliorating Our Experience of Pain, Hunger, Fatigue, and All That Makes the Soul Cry: BP
• Want a new invention? Organise a competition and offer a prize: Economist
• Management training: Keeping it on the company campus; As more firms have set up their own “corporate universities”, they have become less willing to pay for their managers to go to business school: Economist
• Minding the Family Store for the Next Generation: A century-old retail business lays the groundwork for succession; Only 30 percent of family businesses survive into the second generation, and only 12 percent are viable into the third. Bloomberg
• Asia’s richest man blames ‘Western education’ for controversial son: WCT
• If you want to be the next Menulog, you’ve got to be prepared to fail: BRW

Investing Process

• Don’t write off write-offs: Bad news often reflects past overoptimism: Economist
• Pimco Pulls Out of Stock Strategies: WSJ
• SEC Charges Spiral Toys CFO and Son With Insider Trading: WSJ
• Avon Manipulation May Have Been Designed For Algorithms, Not Humans: Telegraph
• Boiler Rooms Meet Boardrooms as Scammers Invade City of London: 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

• This Chinese Developer Has 3 Days to Prove It’s Not Kaisa II: Bloomberg
• Hong Kong street stalls hang on under the skyscrapers: AsiaOne
• Here’s Taiwan on a Map, And It Has $554 Billion to Buy Your Debt: Bloomberg
•  How China Inc.’s Debt Fix Is Piling Risk on Individual Investors: Bloomberg
• China is risking an economic art attack; Chinese art collectors are paying higher and higher prices for paintings, just like the Japanese did before their economy stalled: Telegraph
• Can China Reach Full Potential Of Internet Technologies?: Forbes
• How China’s Banks Hide Trillions In Credit Risk: Full Frontal: Zerohedge
• China’s Haier Group says acquisition plans in deep freeze: SCMP

India

• Tata Steel takes $785m writedown: FT

Japan & Korea

• Japan and corporate governance: The troubles of two big firms show how far corporate reform still has to go: Economist
• The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (for Japanese Equities): Wisdomtree
• Japanese trading houses to cut investments, step up asset sales: Reuters
• Samsung heir takes charge of foundations in succession step: Reuters
• Toyota prepares for a stormy future: Nikkei
• Toshiba puts downward profit revision at over ¥50 billion ($412 million) for the three years through March 2014 because of an in-house investigation into improper accounting at its infrastructure-related businesses.: JT, WSJ
• Corporate Japan Answers to Nobody; How could the massive accounting irregularities at Toshiba still happen four years after the $1.7 billion Olympus fraud scandal?: Bloomberg
• Toyota Panders to Grandma: Bloomberg
• About $91 Million of Avon Stock Traded at Peak of Frenzy: Bloomberg

ASEAN

• YFG Bhd has been slapped with sanctions by the Securities Commission (SC) for knowingly authorising the furnishing of false statements on Nov 5, 2014 in its amended audited financial statements to Bursa Malaysia. Star
• Rage Against the State: Discontent Grows in Vietnam: Bloomberg

Macro

• Franchise Loans Keep Blowing Up, and the Government Keeps Backing Them; Nearly 20 percent get charged off by the SBA. Guess who pays: Bloomberg
•  Debt Traders to Fed: We Dare You to Try Raising Rates This Year: Bloomberg
• As Money Pours Into Peer-to-Peer Lending, Some See Bubble Brewing: Bloomberg
• The Scary New World of Tax Fraud: Forbes

Healthcare

• When E. Coli Becomes a Business Opportunity: WSJ
• The Antibiotic Arms Race: Bloomberg
•  The drugs to watch in fight against cancer; Treatments turn the immune system into a weapon: FT
• New drugs way to avoid an antibiotic apocalypse; Pharmaceutical industry needs incentives to overcome market failure: FT

Energy & Commodites

• After OPEC: American shale firms are now the oil market’s swing producers: Economist
• A $150 Billion Income Windfall Has Disappeared Under the Mattress: Where did the oil savings go?: Bloomberg

TMT

• Friends with benefits? Facebook and several news firms have entered an uneasy partnership: Economist
•  Nvidia wants to leap from video games to self-driving cars: Reuters
• IT Giants Face the Cloud Era With Their Glory Days Behind Them: Bloomberg
•  Qualcomm Says Internet of Things Effort Already Paying Off; There are 20 million cars that use Qualcomm chips to connect to the Internet and its products were used to connect 120 million home devices: Bloomberg
• Google’s Self-Driving Cars Will Hit Public Roads In Mountain View This Summer: Techcrunch
•  How To Better Predict Unicorns: Techcrunch
• Tech groups valued at $1bn are risky business for small investors: FT

Consumer & Others

• The New Organic Walmart Is Eating Whole Foods’ Lunch: The pioneer of organic groceries has attracted bigger rivals, which are stealing its growth: Bloomberg
• Think outside the mall: 3 lessons for retail success from Koskela: BRW
• Why Nordstrom is the Amazon of department stores: Fortune
• GE scientist creates obscure ceramic that may have important role in jet engines: JT
• McDonald’s Has to Do More than Manipulate Its Stock Price: HBR