South Korea will witness the creation of a fund supermarket as early as March next year, which enables investors to easily compare and invest in all the online public funds on sale

S. Korea’s first fund supermarket to open next March

Park Seung-cheol

2013.11.26 17:20:04

South Korea will witness the creation of a fund supermarket as early as March next year, which enables investors to easily compare and invest in all the online public funds on sale. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) said Tuesday that ‘Online Fund Korea’, the nation’s first fund supermarket, filed for approval and we will review and enable it to launch as early as March next year. Online Fund Korea was created by the 47 asset management firms which jointly invested 22 billion won ($20.7 million). Cha Moon-hyun, former CEO of Woori Asset Management was named as chief executive of Online Fund Korea. Kim Jin-hong, high-ranking official from FSC, said, “FSC’s all approval procedures will be wrapped up by end-February next year,” adding “we’ll not spare efforts for Online Fund Korea to begin operation by next March.” Investors will be allowed to purchase all the available kinds of public offering funds from Online Fund Korea website without visiting off-line channel. The supermarket with competitive edge in counter maintenance and labor costs will charge commission one third less than online market. This will open up the door for investors to invest in diverse funds at lower costs, so all eyes are on if the new market will be reshaped to become more consumer-oriented.

Hit by the 2008 financial crisis, Doosan E&C has been struggling with a sharp decline in contracts and squeezed margins, resulting in a liquidity crisis. Doosan Heavy owns 88% in Doosan E&C

2013-11-28 16:51

Does Doosan leader feel new job worth it?

By Choi Kyong-ae
Doosan Group Chairman Park Yong-maan seems to have successfully spent his first 100 days as chief of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI). But his successful debut as the KCCI chairman meant he has had to sacrifice some of his time and energy that could otherwise have been spent handling pending issues at Doosan Group, such as the troubled Doosan Engineering & Construction. Read more of this post

A massive amount of Korea’s builders and shippers’ corporate bonds will come due in the second quarter of next year

$39 billion corporate debt to mature next year

2013.11.28 16:26:22

Over 41 trillion won ($38.6 billion) worth of corporate bonds in South Korea are due to mature next year. A massive amount of the country’s builders and shippers’ corporate bonds will come due in the second quarter of next year, which will pressure marginal firms to raise funds. A total of 41.2 trillion won of corporate bonds will come due in 2014, according to sources in the financial investment industry and Samsung Securities Thursday. The amount is up 2.5 trillion won from 38.7 trillion won this year.  Read more of this post

Sony is last Japanese company standing in tough smartphone market

November 28, 2013 4:51 pm

Sony is last Japanese company standing in tough smartphone market

By Sarah Mishkin in Taipei and Jennifer Thompson in Tokyo

One by one, Japanese electronics makers have fallen by the wayside as competition intensifies in the smartphone market: Panasonic and NEC both abandoned the business altogether this year, while Fujitsu and Sharp now only sell their smartphones within Japan. The last Japanese company standing is Sony, where improving sales of its Xperia smartphones helped narrow the operating loss in its computer and smartphone division to Y900m last quarter from Y23.1bn the same quarter a year ago. Read more of this post

Rice farming in Japan: Political staple; The government abolishes previously sacrosanct agricultural subsidies

Rice farming in Japan: Political staple; The government abolishes previously sacrosanct agricultural subsidies

Nov 30th 2013 | TOKYO | From the print edition

NOT even the most ardent reformers around Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, believed that he would dare to scrap the policy, known as gentan, under which the government has paid farmers to reduce rice crops since 1971. But on November 26th the agriculture ministry said the system would be phased out by 2018. Rice growers, said Mr Abe, will be able to produce crops “based on their own management decisions”. Read more of this post

Jakarta in a jam: The urban transport issue is proving to be one big headache in Indonesia’s capital for the politicians to solve

Updated: Tuesday November 26, 2013 MYT 7:34:50 AM

Jakarta in a jam

BY KARIM RASLAN

The urban transport issue is proving to be one big headache in Indonesia’s capital for the politicians to solve.

KUALA Lumpur is not the only city struggling with traffic congestion. On most weekdays, the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, is basically a barely moving parking lot. The city’s notorious macet is estimated to cause annual losses in excess of US$3bil (RM9.6bil). This figure will spiral even further as President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s administration launches its Low Cost Green Car policies — policies that don’t appear to have been paired with any mass transport initiatives. Read more of this post

Wockhardt’s Main Drug Factory Faces FDA Bans After Lapses

Wockhardt’s Main Drug Factory Faces FDA Bans After Lapses

Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) — Wockhardt Ltd. was banned from selling some medicines to the U.S. from its most lucrative factory in India after U.S. regulators added it to a list of restricted facilities. Its stock slumped as much as 14 percent. The Mumbai-based company’s Chikalthana plant in Aurangabad, was added to the Food and Drug Administration’s “red list,” which means its products may be detained without physical examination, the FDA said in a statement yesterday. Read more of this post

Ratan Tata still has big hopes for little Nano

Ratan Tata still has big hopes for little Nano

Tata Motors‘ Nano may have been a consistent flop in India, but the former chairman of parent and conglomerate Tata Group still has high hopes for the world’s cheapest car. In an interview on CNBC’s Managing Asia, Ratan Tata said he believes the minicar still has the potential to take off in the home market. “A re-launched Nano with some of the differences that we’re trying to incorporate, yes I do,” said Tata, adding that the company has plans to launch the Nano outside of the Indian market, but did not give a timeframe for when. Read more of this post

KKR to Take Minority Stake in India’s Gland Pharma

KKR to Take Minority Stake in India’s Gland Pharma

KENAN MACHADO

Nov. 28, 2013 2:43 a.m. ET

MUMBAI— KKR & Co. L.P. KKR +0.08% Thursday said it had agreed to pick up a minority stake in Indian generic injectable pharmaceutical products company Gland Pharma Ltd. for about $200 million. The U.S. private-equity firm didn’t disclose how much stake it had planned to buy. As part of the deal, KKR will also buy the stake held by Evolvence India Life Sciences Fund, an existing private equity investor in Gland Pharma. Read more of this post

Financial-sector reform in India: A financial system intended to promote equality and stability no longer does

Financial-sector reform in India: A financial system intended to promote equality and stability no longer does

Nov 30th 2013 | MUMBAI | From the print edition

SINCE taking office in September Raghuram Rajan, the governor of India’s central bank, has championed financial-sector liberalisation as a way to boost growth and help the poor. Change is risky, he has said. “But as India develops, not changing is even riskier.” India’s financial system is like a ramshackle engine lovingly maintained by a sect of oil-spattered engineers and wearily tolerated by most people who depend on it. After Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, nationalised most banks in 1969, India slipped towards financial socialism, with a central bank that printed rupees on politicians’ command. When India opened up in 1991 a wave of reform took place. The system today is a mishmash. Market forces have a role, but the state looms large. Read more of this post

Billionaire Agarwal Regrets $8 Billion Aluminum Spending

Billionaire Agarwal Regrets $8 Billion Aluminum Spending

Billionaire Anil Agarwal, who controls London-based Vedanta Resources Plc (VED), said he regrets investing 500 billion rupees ($8 billion) on an aluminum complex in India that’s faced a shortage of raw materials. “I could either invest in Vedanta Aluminium or I could have bought Asarco,” Agarwal said in an interview with Bloomberg TV India in New Delhi aired today, referring to U.S. copper miner Asarco LLC. “If you ask me today, I regret it.” Read more of this post

As bad loans mount, India gets tough on ‘willful’ default

As bad loans mount, India gets tough on ‘willful’ default

4:08pm EST

By Swati Pandey

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Kemrock Industries and Exports (KEMR.NS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) owns a golf course near its plant in western India and its chairman, Kalpesh Patel, talks of the high salaries he pays employees. Still, the company has defaulted on payments for about $250 million in loans and Patel’s banks, frustrated that they are unable to seize assets as he fights them in court, say they want to declare him a “willful defaulter”, a fast-growing category in India as bad loans mount. Read more of this post

Thai Prime Minister Struggles to Find Way Out of Crisis

Thai Prime Minister Struggles to Find Way Out of Crisis

Yingluck Shinawatra Survives No-Confidence Vote, but Faces Mounting Protests

JAMES HOOKWAY

Updated Nov. 28, 2013 6:31 a.m. ET

BANGKOK—When Thailand’s Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was elected in 2011, it looked for a while that the country’s long-running political crisis was over. She built a fragile détente with the army generals who ousted her brother Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006 and set the country on a path to recovery after severe floods crippled industries and shocked supply chains around the world. Read more of this post

Thai companies likely to grow through M&A under AEC

Thai companies likely to grow through M&A under AEC

Watchiranont Thongtep
The Nation November 29, 2013 1:00 am

In preparation for the Asean Economic Community in 2015, major Thai companies are likely to be more active in pursuing mergers and acquisitions of firms in the region while multinational corporations are focusing more on business expansion in Myanmar, financial and investment experts said yesterday. Read more of this post

Rice Bond Flop Adds to Yingluck Protest Misfortune: Asean Credit

Rice Bond Flop Adds to Yingluck Protest Misfortune: Asean Credit

The failure of a bond sale for subsidized rice purchases adds to Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s challenges as she rounds up support to counter protesters occupying government offices. The finance ministry sold 37 billion baht ($1.2 billion) of three-year notes on behalf of Bank for Agriculture & Agricultural Cooperatives on Nov. 25, short of its 75 billion baht goal. The yield of 3.53 percent was 39 basis points above that on similar-maturity sovereign debt, according to the Public Debt Management Office. That compared with a 30 basis point premium at the last offer on Oct. 31, Thai Bond Market Association figures show. Read more of this post

Fixing Thailand’s broken politics requires the government, the opposition and the monarchy all to change

Fixing Thailand’s broken politics requires the government, the opposition and the monarchy all to change

Nov 30th 2013 | From the print edition

YET again, anarchy threatens Thailand. Rival crowds of pro- and anti-government protesters have gathered in Bangkok. The (far more numerous) antis have occupied government ministries, prompting the government to extend special security laws across the capital. The government has seen off a no-confidence motion in parliament but its future remains in doubt, in the face of challenges not just on the streets but also in the courts. Violence may return. Blame for the resurgence of the chaos that plagued Thailand in 2006-10 lies with the government, the opposition and the institution to which they both look for their legitimacy—the monarchy. Read more of this post

Malaysian Westport Billionaire May Let Shipping Lines Invest in Malaysian Terminals

Billionaire May Let Shipping Lines Invest in Malaysian Terminals

Malaysian billionaire G. Gnanalingam said he is open to shipping-line clients investing in Westports (WPRTS) Holdings Bhd.’s terminals to help retain their business as it expands port capacity. “We won’t sell equity in the port but will welcome joint-venture terminals,” Westports founder and Chairman Gnanalingam, 69, said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. “The advantage is that the customer will stay.” Read more of this post

What a Higher Minimum Wage Does for Workers and the Economy

What a Higher Minimum Wage Does for Workers and the Economy

By Peter Coy and Susan Berfield November 27, 2013

Tom Wolfe himself couldn’t have imagined a better New York juxtaposition. Pizza, Pepsi, and hot chicken wings were out on the table one November evening at Strive New York, an agency in East Harlem that helps ex-convicts and other chronically unemployed people get and keep jobs. Luz Droz, 32, who has a 10-month-old son, explained that she was trying to turn things around after “a little situation in my life,” which turned out to be two prison sentences totaling eight years for dealing drugs and passing bad checks. She detests being on welfare but was turned down recently for a minimum-wage job at Burlington Coat Factory (BURL). “I thought I was going to get it,” she said. “Once I get a job, I’m off to the races.” Read more of this post

UBS shrinks corporate advisory team for rich in emerging markets

UBS shrinks corporate advisory team for rich in emerging markets

5:50am EST

By Katharina Bart and Dinesh Nair

ZURICH/DUBAI (Reuters) – Swiss lender UBS is scaling back corporate advisory and investment banking services for ultra-rich clients in some key emerging market countries to reduce overlaps with other departments, three sources familiar with the plan said. The bank’s Corporate Advisory Group (CAG) offers services such as advice on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and initial public offerings (IPOs), financing options and structured equity products to ultra-high-net-worth individuals and entrepreneurs who were the bank’s wealth management customers. Read more of this post

There Are 199,235 “Ultra High Net Worth” People In The World With Over $30 Million In Assets

There Are 199,235 “Ultra High Net Worth” People In The World With Over $30 Million In Assets

Tyler Durden on 11/29/2013 10:39 -0500

It is no secret that the bulk of “very rich people” in recent years has been created in Asia (where some $15 trillion in liquidity has entered broad circulation in just the past five years). As the FT reports, “Asia is producing more new wealth than any other part of the world at any point in history. Over the past five years, the assets of rich individuals have grown at triple the rate of the wealthy elsewhere, while the number of rich people has increased by twice that of other regions. Their number grew by almost 10 per cent to reach 3.7m last year, according to the survey, while their wealth expanded by 12 per cent to $12tn.” However, to find the truly ultra-high-net-worthy (UHNW), those with over $30 million in net assets, one has to go to the US and Europe – the places where Ben’s print baby print policy has most aggressively inflated the latest asset bubble, making the richest richester. “More people from the US and Europe entered this club in the past year than from anywhere else – the population in China and Brazil actually declined slightly.” So how many ultra-high-net-worth individuals are there? The answer: 199,235. Read more of this post

The struggle of low-income workers, many in retailing, is adding momentum to efforts to increase the federal minimum wage

November 28, 2013

On Register’s Other Side, Little to Spend

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

In many stores around the country, the workers stocking the shelves and ringing up the gifts are at the very heart of this season’s retail lament —many Americans are so financially strapped that projections for holiday sales have grown bleaker by the week. And more so than in years past, the focus is on retail workers as more stores open on Thanksgiving Day, requiring many more to work on the holiday. Even if they have the option of staying home, those still stuck at the bottom economic rung long after the recession’s end have little choice but to take on extra shifts. Read more of this post

The founder of one of the earliest virtual currencies has re-emerged with a rival toBitcoin, more than five years after his first venture, e-gold, was shut down by the US Department of Justice

November 28, 2013 2:44 pm

E-gold founder backs new Bitcoin rival

By Stephen Foley in New York

The founder of one of the earliest virtual currencies has re-emerged with a rival toBitcoin, more than five years after his first venture, e-gold, was shut down by the US Department of Justice. Douglas Jackson is consulting for a membership organisation called Coeptis that hopes to launch a new version of his gold-backed currency, which attracted millions of users at its height. Read more of this post

Regulators want banks and asset managers that arrange deals for collateralized loan obligations to have some skin in the game

Loan Rules Raise Squawks

Lenders, Managers Say Keeping Skin in the Game Could Hamper CLO Market

STEPHANIE ARMOUR

Nov. 28, 2013 8:46 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—An attempt by regulators to prevent the kind of lax underwriting that exacerbated the financial crisis is running into resistance from corporations, investors and asset managers who said new rules will cripple a $300 billion market for loans to U.S. companies. Regulators want those who manage or arrange collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs, to retain some of the loans’ risk on their books. Policy makers said requiring such skin in the game will ensure loans sliced, packaged and sold to investors are of high quality and help protect against default. Read more of this post

No quick exit from West’s economic malaise

No quick exit from West’s economic malaise

2:16am EST

By Alan Wheatley, Global Economics Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) – Ending the Great Stagnation that is taxing Western policy makers may depend as much on the Chinese Communist Party as it does on the world’s leading central banks. Six years after the global financial crisis erupted, there is any number of explanations why Europe cannot shake off a Japan-style balance-sheet recession and why the United States is experiencing sub-par growth and high unemployment. Read more of this post

Mexico’s Surprising Engineering Strength

Mexico’s Surprising Engineering Strength

By Brendan Case November 27, 2013

As global automakers pour billions of dollars into their Mexican factories, Marcos Perez is trying to make sure the nation’s future goes beyond assembly lines. The head of product development at Ford Motor’s (F) Mexico unit, Perez has helped the company almost triple its local engineering staff, to nearly 1,000, since 2010. His engineers have filed for 40 U.S. patents in the last three years, including one for a low-cost crash protection system that boosts safety ratings without adding much weight or cost. “It’s an inflection point,” Perez says. “We used to be a simple-assembly kind of country, and we moved to a truly core manufacturing country, where most of our assembly plants are hitting record numbers on productivity, on quality, on cost. Now we are transitioning from Made in Mexico to Designed in Mexico.” Read more of this post

In Bogle Family, It’s Either Passive or Aggressive; While Vanguard Group’s Founder May Be the Father of Passive Investing, His Fund-Manager Son Sides With Active Stock-Picking

In Bogle Family, It’s Either Passive or Aggressive

While Vanguard Group’s Founder May Be the Father of Passive Investing, His Fund-Manager Son Sides With Active Stock-Picking

LIAM PLEVEN

Updated Nov. 28, 2013 5:59 p.m. ET

On their regular Friday morning phone calls, Jack Bogle and his son, John, catch up on family news. Sometimes they will compare notes on a particularly gnarly crossword. But the conversation often turns to a big topic among the Bogle clan: the best strategy for investing in stocks. For them, it is more than just shooting the breeze. Read more of this post

How Canada’s pension funds changed their conservative ways to become global buyout kings

How Canada’s pension funds changed their conservative ways to become global buyout kings

Katia Dmitrieva and Matthew Campbell, Bloomberg News | 28/11/13 | Last Updated:28/11/13 7:32 AM ET

Mark Wiseman, the chief executive of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, walked into the high-end New York department store Bergdorf Goodman in the mid-1990s looking for a suit. He left empty-handed. “I couldn’t afford anything there — I probably still can’t,” said Wiseman, sitting in the $192.8 billion fund’s headquarters in Toronto last month. “Is that where I shop? No, thanks. But there are a lot of people who do.” Read more of this post

Howard Marks: “Markets Are Riskier Than At Any Time Since The Depths Of The 2008/9 Crisis”

Howard Marks: “Markets Are Riskier Than At Any Time Since The Depths Of The 2008/9 Crisis”

Tyler Durden on 11/27/2013 20:43 -0500

In Feb 2007, Oaktree Capital’s Howard Marks wrote ‘The Race to the Bottom’, providing a timely warning about the capital market behavior that ultimately led to the mortgage meltdown of 2007 and the crisis of 2008 as he worried about “carelessness-induced behavior.” In the pre-crisis years, as described in his 2007 memo, the race to the bottom manifested itself in a number of ways, and as Marks notes, “now we’re seeing another upswing in risky behavior.” Simply put, Marks warns, “when people start to posit that fundamentals don’t matter and momentum will carry the day, it’s an omen we must heed,” adding that “the riskiest thing in the investment world is the belief that there’s no risk.” Read more of this post

How Poland Became Europe’s Most Dynamic Economy

How Poland Became Europe’s Most Dynamic Economy

By Stephan Faris November 27, 2013

The oldest coffee shop in Warsaw has been in operation nearly without interruption since the end of the 18th century. In the upstairs room, a young Frédéric Chopin played one of his last concerts before emigrating to Paris. During the Nazi occupation from 1939 to 1945, the cafe was strictly for Germans. When the city rose up at the end of the war, the building, like much of the old city around it, was completely destroyed—then reconstructed from photographs in the years following. The cafe was state-owned under communism and privatized in 1989 after the fall of the Iron Curtain, sold to a journalist and a jazz musician. “And now,” says Polish businessman Adam Ringer, sitting in the cafe in early October, “it’s been bought by an international company.” Read more of this post