“The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop.”; Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled the World – Bamboo Innovator Daily: 6 Aug (Thurs)

Life

• “The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop.”: BP
• Here’s how Richard Branson’s quirky uncle has inspired some of the biggest business decisions he’s ever made: BI
• 13 surprising ways your name affects your success: BI
• Corporate threads behind Coats’ longevity; Concealed strengths that helped threadmaker adapt: FT
• How Grohe finds growth through innovation: McKinsey
• Universities should not become glorified vocational training colleges: SCMP
• Activist Investors Are Shaking Up Business Schools, Too; Investors like William Ackman and Daniel Loeb are amassing influence-and fans-in M.B.A. programs: WSJ
• Scientists say social intelligence builds in your 30s and peaks in your 40s: BI
• Statistics must be improved but also used with more caution:FT
• How Innovation Is Helping Emerging Multinationals to Race Ahead: K@W
• Why Companies Need Their Customers to ‘Love’ Them: K@W
• Johanna Quandt, Billionaire Widow of BMW Car Mogul, Dies at 89: Bloomberg
• Time to fix patents: Ideas fuel the economy. Today’s patent systems are a rotten way of rewarding them: Economist

Books

• Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World: Amazon, LinkedIn

Investing Process

• How Toshiba delayed a $100 million loss with two words: ‘uncorrected misstatement’: Reuters
• Accounting Issues Mask a Seller’s True Value: Five accounting issues to be aware of when analyzing the financial reporting of a target company: CFO
• Serious Fraud Office Investigates Quindell PLC: VW
• How Accounting Rules Helped US Cellular Beat Earnings Expectations: SA
• Buffett’s Celebration Tempered by 50th Anniversary Stock Slump: Bloomberg
• Sun Tzu on Value Investing: VW
• Why Your Investment Strategy Should Fit on an Index Card; Distilling your investment approach into a few sentences can further some important goals.: Morningstar

Greater China

• Chinese Retail Investors Flee Plunging Markets; More than 20 million pulled out in July, as Shanghai Composite Index took biggest monthly dive in six years: WSJ
• Bad Debt Soars 35% In China As Government Set To Fabricate Dismal Loan Data: Zerohedge
• Chinese Consumers Prefer Chinese Brands: Bloomberg
• Man Who Called Top of China Stock Rally Sees Rout Worsening: Bloomberg
• How smuggled workers power ‘Made in China’: Reuters
• An old objective but a new policy loop in China: FT
• How big is your bailout? China stock market edition: FT
• Beijing Risks Its Credibility on Market Bailout; Standard Life Investments asks whether the Communist Party’s legitimacy relies on rising stocks.: Barron’s
• China Crackdown on Citadel Shines Light on Foreign Firms; Chicago-based firm is one of few foreign outfits to have penetrated mainland markets with a local trading operation: WSJ
• Several Chinese provinces’ bank NPL ratios approaching 2%: WCT
• Corrupt religious leaders may inspire welcome spiritual crisis in China: WCT
•  China’s Cities ‘Not Telling Public about Debt Levels’; Only six of 652 surveyed cities revealed how much they were indebted, Tsinghua researchers find: Caixin
• China’s Labor Force Undergoes Growing Pains; Country’s pool of migrant workers isn’t growing as fast as it once did and it is aging, prompting the government to seek policy solutions: Caixin
• New index to track Shenzhen, Hong Kong stocks ahead of stock connect: SCMP
• China’s stock rout bites into its millennials: SCMP
• Rural China shoppers embrace e-commerce, with some help from Alibaba: SCMP
• Chinese banks’ bad loans rise to US$290 billion as econony slows, manufacturers struggle: SCMP
• Car-hailing companies thrive in China despite legal ambiguities: Nikkei
• HTC Expects Loss Five Times Wider Than Estimates as Sales Plunge: Bloomberg
• China Stocks Extend $3.4 Trillion Tumble as Turnover Plummets: Bloomberg
• Chinese City Comes to Rescue of Tool Maker Facing Bond Default: Bloomberg
• China’s top bank regulator says bad loans surge, profit growth slows in cooling economy: Reuters

India

• Why A 21-Year-Old Is Building OYO As An Uber (And Not An Airbnb) For Hotels In India: Forbes
• India has become obsessed with this anti-Unilever rap video: BI, YouTube
• With Modi’s “acche din” nowhere in sight, Indian households are getting worried: qz
• An India-born Nobel laureate’s solutions for fixing science in India: qz
• India’s richest temple is now an investor in the country’s booming stock market: qz
• Modi’s ‘port-led’ export drive leaves India’s hinterland stranded: SCMP
• When cheap doesn’t sell — even to the poor; “No one, mind you, not even the poor, wants to buy a product that is pitched as a perfect item for the penniless,” said Gopalan Sunderraman of Godrej Group. Nikkei

Japan & Korea

• Young Koreans Without Jobs at 15-Year-High Swells Student Debts: Bloomberg
• Toshiba CEO apologises to Japan PM office for accounting scandal: Star
• Lotte feud ignites nationality dispute: KH
• Special pardons expected to include business moguls: KH
• AmorePacific pushes for tailored cushion tech; “I was inspired by the stamp pad used at parking lots. The sponge is saturated yet does not the Leak and the Stamp Ink is evenly printed on tickets”: KH
• Korea’s Indebted companies distort merit-based pay; 30 major public corporations were saddled with a combined debt of 429 trillion won (US$366 billion): CP
• South Korean dreams fade as economy and president struggle: Reuters
• The owners of Korea’s 10 largest conglomerates possess an average 0.25% in their affiliates. Despite this, a complicated web of cross-shareholdings among affiliates has enabled them to take control of sprawling business empire: KT
• Korea Discount 2.0 (I): KT
• Korea’s top economic policymaker issued a warning to Lotte Group, saying that unless it improves its opaque corporate governance structure, the government will take “appropriate” actions. KT

ASEAN

• Amid a consumer backlash, bakery chain BreadTalk has come out to defend the freshness of its main products: bread, buns and cakes.: SS
• Pragmatic Singapore can afford a little poetry: FT
• Bad debts in Thailand spread from retail to small companies: Star
• Bad debts in Thailand spread on falling consumption and exports: Star
• Public Bank’s Teh honoured with William Seidman Lifetime Achievement: Star
• StoxPlus launches financial database for Vietnam’s investors: Nikkei
• Indonesia Stocks Seen Extending Asia’s Worst Drop on Growth Risk: Bloomberg

Macro

• Debt markets: After the binge; Low interest rates sparked record bond issuance but with rates set to rise the market is anxious: FT
• Lost Decade in Emerging Markets: Investors Already Halfway There: Bloomberg
• The Real Problem With CEO Pay: Bloomberg
• Somebody just overpaid for this exchange-traded note by about 50%: FP

Energy & Commodities

• Banks can’t say if they will book any forestry scheme losses: TheAge
• Liquefied Natural Gas Makes Qatar an Energy Giant: NYT
• Lost decade in oil industry reinforces ‘lower for longer’ prices: Goldman Sachs: Reuters
• With crude at $50, oil firms fear deeper crisis than in 1980s: Reuters

Healthcare

• Why Teva Paid $40.5 Billion for Allergan’s Generic Business: K@W
• The FDA Tells Hospitals How to Clean Scopes That Spread Superbugs: bloomberg
• Brain Chemicals Explain the Power of Placebos; How chemicals made in our brains reduce pain: WSJ
• First drug made with 3-D printer, for epilepsy, gets FDA nod: JT

TMT

• The 100 Richest Tech Billionaires From Around The Globe; Europe’s Richest Tech Tycoons 2015; Asia Is Home To One Third Of Tech Industry’s 100 Richest: Forbes1, 2, 3
• Lots of people aren’t convinced by Disney CEO Bob Iger’s argument that ESPN will continue to dominate for years to come: BI
• Why Disney and ESPN will be ok: Stratechery
• ESPN has one killer advantage that will protect it from the death of cable: BI
• Here’s what Amazon looks for when deciding whether or not to greenlight a series: BI
• Meet the man who invented the modern selfie stick, he’s now a millionaire: BI
• How an oddball internet quiz turned a startup into an overnight success; “Who Were You In Your Past Life?” : BI
• New world of work: digital marketplace reshapes casual labour: FT
• Google Translate: good enough to use in business? The voice feature still misses out on nuance but so do many conversations in a second language: FT
•  Best chapter in Pearson breakup story yet to come: Star
• The CEO of Blippar says he’ll never sell to Google or Microsoft ‘because what I’m trying to make is bigger than the internet itself’: BI
• The real secret to success in Silicon Valley, according to a Stanford professor: qz
• 4 million users, now for revenue as Canva launches first subscription product; “Across every profession there is an increased need to create beautiful visual content. A designer is often really over-stretched with pressure from all corne: BRW
• He knows he’ll lose money on every shipment for 5 years: should Jet.com founder Marc Lore really be smiling?: BRW
• Line’s AI program captures hearts with lifelike personality: JT
• How YouTube became the new food network: internet cooking shows are big business.: FastCo
• If You Think Apple Shares Are Doing Badly, Check Out Samsung: Bloomberg

Consumer & Others

• A billion-dollar fast food chain no one ever talks about is taking over America; Zaxby’s, a billion dollar chicken chain, is taking over America. BI
• How Chick-fil-A’s restaurants sell three times as much as KFC: BI
• Adidas AG has bought fitness tracking app maker Runtastic, giving it access to a community of 70 million active users and helping it catch rivals in connected wearables: Star