The Bharti-Walmart Breakup: Where Does FDI in India Go Next?

The Bharti-Walmart Breakup: Where Does FDI in India Go Next?

Nov 01, 2013 Law and Public Policy Strategic Management Asia-Pacific India

After a seven-year partnership, Walmart and Indian retail partner Bharti Enterprises last month issued a terse joint message saying they were ending the 50/50 joint venture launched by the two firms in 2006 and had reached an agreement to independently own their business interests in India. The move wasn’t entirely unexpected. Days before the statement was released, Walmart Asia CEO Scott Price told the media during an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Bali that “the existing franchise to Bharti is not tenable as the base” for Walmart in India. Both sides were looking at the best way to move forward, he added. Read more of this post

British army of 1.7m entrepreneurial sole traders appear to be thriving with a quarter generating turnover of more than £51,000

1.7m Britons are ‘one-man band’ firms

November 5, 2013

Nicole Blackmore

British sole traders appear to be thriving with a quarter generating turnover of more than £51,000. Britain’s army of entrepreneurial sole traders is thriving despite the current tough economic conditions, according to new research. Insurer LV= found there are 1.7 million “one-man-bands” operating in the UK. Some 27pc of these generate an annual turnover in excess of £51,000 and 5pc earn in excess of £150,000. Read more of this post

London’s ‘Great Smog’ Provides Lessons for China

London’s ‘Great Smog’ Provides Lessons for China

Fall may be in the air, but in China, it’s the pollution that’s most visible. This is the time of year when many northern industrial cities switch on coal-fired heating plants to provide warmth to urban dwellers. When combined with copious quantities of industrial pollution from factories dependent on coal, entire cities shut down, as Harbin did a couple of weeks ago. Read more of this post

Europe’s Top Fund Managers Find Ways to Overcome Weak Economy

Europe’s Top Fund Managers Find Ways to Overcome Weak Economy

05 NOV 2013 – TOM BUERKLE

It was the shock felt round the world. Ben Bernanke’s suggestion earlier this year that the Federal Reserve Board might begin to reduce its bond purchases roiled emerging markets. Currencies and stock prices fell sharply from Brazil to Indonesia as the prospect of tighter global liquidity prompted panicky investors to withdraw massive amounts of funds from those countries’ securities markets. Read more of this post

In a Turnaround, Thai Government Promises Amnesty Bill Will Die

November 6, 2013, 9:08 PM

In a Turnaround, Thai Government Promises Amnesty Bill Will Die

WARANGKANA CHOMCHUEN

BANGKOK – Thailand’s government rushed to reaffirm that it would kill a contentious amnesty bill that would absolve former leader Thaksin Shinawatra of criminal charges, as protests against the bill and skepticism over its fate continue unabated on Wednesday. A lawmaker from the ruling Pheu Thai Party first proposed the bill back in August, but on Wednesday the party officially announced that it would not revive it if it’s turned down, as expected, by the country’s Senate in a meeting scheduled for next week. Read more of this post

AirAsia co-founders to take more control of budget carrier to cut costs

AirAsia co-founders to take more control of budget carrier to cut costs

7:56am EST

By Niluksi Koswanage

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – The co-founders of Malaysia’s AirAsia Bhd (AIRA.KL: Quote, Profile,Research, Stock Buzz) said on Wednesday they will take more control of running Asia’s largest budget carrier by passenger volume and push on with cutting costs that have been a drag on profit. Tony Fernandes and Kamarudin Meranun, who started up AirAsia in 1993, had shifted their base to Indonesia and set up a regional office to focus on spearheading the company’s expansion in Southeast Asia and further afield. Read more of this post

Return of Cash Sparks Big Stock Rallies; Investors Judged on Annual Performance Are Eager to Act Before Year-End

Return of Cash Sparks Big Stock Rallies

Investors Judged on Annual Performance Are Eager to Act Before Year-End

ANJANI TRIVEDI, BEN EDWARDS and JAKE LEE

Nov. 6, 2013 1:06 a.m. ET

Cash is returning to emerging markets, sparking big stock rallies and a surge in fundraising, as calm in the U.S., combined with low interest rates, spurs global investors to try to juice up returns before the end of the year. Yield-hungry investors are venturing far into risky territory. Investors snapped up $1.8 billion worth of stock sold by Chinese banks in Hong Kong over the past two weeks, while India’s stock market has climbed to record highs. Brazil sold $3.25 billion of debt, its biggest dollar-denominated offering on record, and Pakistan said Monday it plans to sell debt overseas for the first time in six years. Read more of this post

Bitcoin Climbs to Record on Wider Acceptance, China Trade

Bitcoin Climbs to Record on Wider Acceptance, China Trade

Bitcoin’s price hit a record at $261 on the Bitstamp online exchange, driven by wider acceptance of the virtual currency. The digital money, which can be used to pay for goods and services on the Internet, has risen 20-fold so far this year, as trading activity has increased. Bitcoins were trading at $259.02 apiece at 1:17 p.m. in New York on Bitstamp, one of the more active Web-based exchanges where Bitcoins are traded for dollars, euros and other currencies. Read more of this post

Fukushima Debris “Island” The Size Of Texas Near US West Coast

Fukushima Debris “Island” The Size Of Texas Near US West Coast

Tyler Durden on 11/06/2013 07:59 -0500

While it took Japan over two years to admit the Fukushima situation on the ground is “out of control“, a development many had predicted for years, a just as important topic is what are the implications of this uncontrolled radioactive disaster on not only the local environment and society but also globally, particularly Japan’s neighbor across the Pacific – the US. To be sure, there has been much speculation, much of it unjustified, in the past two years debating when, how substantial and how acute any potential debris from Fukushima would be on the US. Which is why it was somewhat surprising to see the NOAA come out with its own modeling effort, which shows that not only “some buoyant items first reached the Pacific Northwest coast during winter 2011-2012” but to openly confirm that a debris field weighing over 1 million tons, and larger than Texas is now on the verge of hitting the American coastline, just west off the state of California. Read more of this post

The uncomfortable truth in China’s property market: government is one of the biggest obstacles to the success of taming the market. State income is so entwined in the need for rising land prices that policy efforts to try to curb the house market create an inherent conflict of interest. Homes in cities such as Beijing are more expensive by some measures than Britain or Japan

The uncomfortable truth in China’s property market

5:09am EST

By Xiaoyi Shao and Koh Gui Qing

BEIJING (Reuters) – In defying four years of official cooling efforts, China’s soaring house prices reveal an uncomfortable truth: government is one of the biggest obstacles to the success of taming the market. State income is so entwined in the need for rising land prices that policy efforts to try to curb the house market create an inherent conflict of interest. With one hand on a patchwork of controls aimed at taming record house prices, governments with their other hand are at the same time selling land to developers at rising prices. Homes in cities such as Beijing are more expensive by some measures than Britain or Japan, a dismal outcome for a central government campaign aimed at making homes more affordable to Chinese. House prices in September rose nationwide at their fastest pace in three years. Read more of this post

Singapore Condos for Mainland Rich Funded by Bonds: China Credit

Singapore Condos for Mainland Rich Funded by Bonds: China Credit

Faced with curbs on luxury residences and fundraising at home, China’s biggest mainland-listed property developer is building apartments for wealthy Chinese in Singapore and raising debt in the city’s currency. China Vanke Co., which also plans developments in San Francisco and Hong Kong, sold S$140 million ($113 million) of four-year notes with a 3.275 percent coupon on Oct. 31, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s a premium on the average 1.8 percent coupon for Chinese bonds in the currency. The yield on the company’s five-year U.S. dollar bonds fell 54 basis points since June, to 4.14 percent on Nov. 5, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Read more of this post

Cracks start to show in frontier markets

Cracks start to show in frontier markets

4:40am EST

By Carolyn Cohn

LONDON (Reuters) – Three years ago, a trip to the Southern Kenya production facilities of Canadian company Africa Oil attracted only seven potential investors. Two months ago, 60 boarded the flight. The investor trip, described by sales staff at Citi following a recent client conference, is just one illustration of the swelling interest in the most esoteric frontier markets. In a world of low yields and paltry growth, the attraction of frontier markets – the lesser developed emerging markets in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America – is pretty clear. Juicy returns, often huge natural resources and young populations provide a stark contrast to the ageing economic profile in the West. Read more of this post

China cuts gas supply to industry as shortages hit

China cuts gas supply to industry as shortages hit

1:55am EST

By David Stanway

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s top natural gas producers have begun to cut supplies to industrial consumers in a bid to make sure that homes and users of transport are not left short as demand surges over the winter. Chemical fertilizer makers and other industrial users are likely to bear the brunt of Beijing’s latest efforts to ration scarce gas supplies, but they are also victims of a long-term strategy to discourage the use of gas as a feedstock. Read more of this post

Singapore digs deep for ideas to build downwards

Singapore digs deep for ideas to build downwards

Wednesday, November 6, 2013 – 07:37

Feng Zengkun

Environment Correspondent

The Straits Times

Underground classrooms, libraries, swimming pools and even a science city for up to 4,200 workers – these are some of the proposals which have been unearthed even as studies into Singapore building downwards gather pace. So far, the country has already engaged in several major underground projects, including a common tunnel under Marina Bay for telecommunications cables, power lines, water and refuse pipes, and the Jurong Rock Caverns for storing petroleum products. Read more of this post

Japan Government Green Fund Wants to Set Local Investment Model

Japan Government Green Fund Wants to Set Local Investment Model

A clean energy fund established by the Japanese government will target projects with the potential to become business models used by regional communities to promote and profit from renewable sources of energy. “One of the green fund’s roles is to show models to regional communities which aren’t aware of their potential” to develop clean energy, said Takejiro Sueyoshi, head of Green Finance Organisation, the body selected by the Ministry of the Environment to oversee the fund. “We want to tell them you can do it in your village and town with your partners.” Read more of this post

Paris Lures Billionaires as Perrotin Rivals Gagosian

Paris Lures Billionaires as Perrotin Rivals Gagosian

Emmanuel Perrotin remembers the moment his art-dealing business changed forever. “It was the fax machine,” he says. “For the first time we were able to send information and an image in a minute. Now with the Internet, we’re everywhere.” Perrotin, 45, is in celebratory mood. He’s sitting in the pale pink office of his headquarters gallery at 76 rue de Turenne in the Marais district of Paris. This year is his 25th as a dealer, an event that’s being marked by a 150-work retrospective at the state-funded Tripostal museum in Lille. Read more of this post

World’s Third-Worst Education Inspires Bond: South Africa Credit

World’s Third-Worst Education Inspires Bond: South Africa Credit

Curro Holdings Ltd. (COH) plans to sell as much as 1 billion rand ($98 million) of property-backed bonds to fund new schools in South Africa, which is languishing near the bottom of global rankings for education. The operator of private schools with more than 21,000 students will issue the first 150 million rand of securities in two weeks, Chief Executive Officer Chris van der Merwe said in an Oct. 30 interview. The bonds, to be sold over 12 months, will complement bank loans, development financing and share sales, Finance Director Bernardt van der Linde said. Read more of this post

Singapore’s United Overseas Bank Mulls Hong Kong Lure as China Builds Trade Zones

United Overseas Mulls Hong Kong Lure as China Builds Trade Zones

China’s plans to develop free-trade zones in Shanghai and Guangzhou may be dimming the attraction of banks in Hong Kong for foreign acquirers such as Singapore’s United Overseas Bank Ltd. (UOB) The zones may make Hong Kong “less relevant” in coming years, Citigroup Inc. said in a report today, citing comments made yesterday on a conference call by officials at UOB, Southeast Asia’s third-largest largest bank. They were responding to a question about UOB’s interest in bidding for Hong Kong’s Wing Hang Bank Ltd. (302), according to James Antos, an analyst at Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd., who was on the call. Read more of this post

Panama Canal’s LNG Surprise to Redefine Trade in Fuel: Freight

Panama Canal’s LNG Surprise to Redefine Trade in Fuel: Freight

When the newly widened Panama Canal opens in 2015, it will handle an estimated 12 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas annually, a cargo planners didn’t even envision when starting the $5.25 billion expansion in 2007. LNG carriers will cross the 48-mile waterway 350 times a year, and voyages to Asia from the U.S. will cost 24 percent less than longer routes, according to calculations from the canal authority. The expected 12 million tons, assuming half the transits are hauling cargoes, would be equal to about 5 percent of the world’s trade in 2012, Fearnley Consultants AS estimates. Read more of this post

Japan’s tofu makers battling to survive

Japan’s tofu makers battling to survive

Wednesday, November 6, 2013 – 10:16

The Yomiuri Shimbun/Asia News Network

JAPAN – A growing number of tofu makers are shutting down part or all of their business due to the rising cost of imported soybeans and demands for wholesale price cuts from supermarket chains and other buyers. Tough conditions have forced about 5,000 tofu makers out of business in the past 10 years nationwide. “We couldn’t make a profit even though we worked 365 days a year,” said Eiichi Oikawa, the 37-year-old owner of Sendaiya Honten, a tofu maker in Mitaka, western Tokyo, that declared bankruptcy in August. Read more of this post

Utilities in Pain Selling Renewable Assets at Record Rate

Utilities in Pain Selling Renewable Assets at Record Rate

Wind farms and solar parks are changing hands at record rates, signaling both an increased taste for the assets among pension funds and hard times for utilities that are the biggest sellers. About 43 percent of the 275 deals completed in the power industry in the first nine months were for renewable generators, up from 37 percent in the year-earlier period, according to data compiled by Ernst & Young LLP. The value of all the deals increased to $104 billion from $93 billion. Read more of this post

Priciest London Luxury Homes Lose Shine as Sellers Aim Too High

Priciest London Luxury Homes Lose Shine as Sellers Aim Too High

Price gains for London’s most expensive homes have stalled this year as concerns about possible tax increases and high asking prices put off even the super rich. Houses and apartments valued at more than 15 million pounds ($24 million) showed almost no gain in the year through September, compared with rise of about 5 percent for properties from 1.8 million pounds to about 5 million pounds, broker Savills Plc said in a report today. Luxury residences outside central London rose by about 10 percent. Read more of this post

Bubble Trouble Seen Brewing in Australia Home Prices

Bubble Trouble Seen Brewing in Australia Home Prices

Gigi Wong beat four other bidders in an auction of a three-bedroom Sydney house with peeling wallpaper, cracked doors and an overgrown backyard by paying A$856,000 ($811,060), 14 percent more than the realtor expected the property to fetch. “I’m not sure if I paid too much,” said Wong, an accountant at the University of Sydney, after winning the bidding war for the investment property in an inner-west suburb where prices have tripled in the past 15 years. “Since I can, and have capacity to borrow money, I should utilize it.” Read more of this post

Yunus Sees New Law Spelling Beginning of the End for Grameen

Yunus Sees New Law Spelling Beginning of the End for Grameen

Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate and outcast-founder of Grameen Bank, said Bangladesh’s move to tighten controls on the microcredit lender is “heart-breaking” and called for an end to government interference. Parliament passed legislation yesterday increasing the central bank’s supervisory powers and allowing the government to set new rules, state-run Bangladesh Television reported. Read more of this post

Food Bandits Face Smartcard Check on Theft From India Poor: Tech

Food Bandits Face Smartcard Check on Theft From India Poor: Tech

Mohanlal Kapoor, a street vendor in north India, holds a card entitling him to subsidized food for his wife and four children. To get supplies, the Kapoors must battle an estimated 15 million families in their state toting similar pieces of paper that they’re not entitled to. “When I go to the ration store, I only receive enough to feed half my family,” Kapoor said, frying samosas and bright-orange sweets in a wok-shaped karhai pan to earn about $3 a day in Vrindavan, a city about halfway between New Delhi and the Taj Mahal. “They tell me I came too late and all the food is gone, but everyone around here knows it’s being sold in markets for profit.” Read more of this post

Explosions rock Chinese Communist Party provincial headquarters

Explosions rock Chinese Communist Party provincial headquarters

AFP-JIJI

NOV 6, 2013

BEIJING – A series of devices packed with ball-bearings exploded outside a provincial headquarters of China’s ruling Communist Party on Wednesday, police and reports said. “There were several explosions caused by small explosive devices near the party provincial commission in Taiyuan,” the capital of the northern province of Shanxi, local police said on a verified social media account. Read more of this post

China’s Leaders Confront Economic Fissures; the Communist Party faces a persistent problem: Jobs abound in China, but not the kind young graduates want

November 5, 2013

China’s Leaders Confront Economic Fissures

By KEITH BRADSHER

WUHAN, China — The two-story employment complex here, like job centers across China, is crowded with educated young people who are trying to figure out their futures in a country where the job market still prizes assembly-line workers willing to labor monotonous hours on backless stools. Among them is Zheng Yilong, who graduated from a university three months ago and refuses to consider a factory job even though his degree is in machinery design. He seeks a desk job instead. Sitting at the employers’ booths are much older factory managers like Jin Tao who despair of finding the workers they need. Read more of this post