Singapore supermarkets still plagued by missing trolleys

Supermarkets still plagued by missing trolleys

Wednesday, October 16, 2013 – 07:30

Kash Cheong

The Straits Times

Despite having implemented various measures, supermarkets are still losing quite a number of trolleys, no thanks to inconsiderate shoppers who cart them away for convenience. Sheng Siong lost an average of 38 trolleys each month from January to July this year, almost double last year’s figures. FairPrice saw a 14 per cent drop in lost trolleys but the cooperative with 120 supermarkets and hypermarkets still lost about 100 trolleys a month in the first half of this year. Dairy Farm, which runs Giant and Cold Storage, declined to give figures, adding that the number of trolleys lost was “not significant”. Read more of this post

China to ban new projects in sectors facing overcapacity, including steel, aluminium, shipbuilding and cement

China to ban new projects in sectors facing overcapacity

3:50am EDT

BEIJING, Oct 15 (Reuters) – China said it would block new projects in a number of sectors suffering from overcapacity, including steel, aluminium, shipbuilding and cement, according to a statement issued by the government on Tuesday. The long-awaited plan to tackle long-standing supply gluts in five industrial sectors was published by China’s cabinet, the State Council, according to the statement on China’s official government website, www.gov.cn. Margins in sectors like steel and aluminium have been affected for years by a massive supply glut, leaving many firms suffering heavy losses and reliant on government subsidy. According to the new plan, China will also seek to absorb overcapacity by stimulating domestic demand, relocating plants overseas, restructuring and merging existing firms and eliminating plants by strengthening environmental, safety and energy standards.

Singapore Shows Asia How To Crack Down on Housing Bubble?

Singapore Shows Asia How To Crack Down on Housing Bubble

Singapore, the city-state that banned chewing gum to curb litter, is showing the rest of Asia how to cool a housing bubble. The government this year ramped up efforts to bring down property prices that surged to a record, adopting some of its strictest measures, including a cap on debt at 60 percent of a borrower’s income, higher stamp duties on home purchases and an increase in real-estate taxes. Read more of this post

How Ho Chi Minh City’s Filthy Canal Became a Park

How Ho Chi Minh City’s Filthy Canal Became a Park

Sewers and storm drains don’t stir most people’s deepest passions. But try creating a modern, economically vibrant city without them. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s economic capital, has spent the past decade building a modern sanitation and flood control system for the 1.2 million people living along its Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe canal. Cleaning up this once-filthy waterway and creating new sanitation infrastructure has changed the face of the city, transforming it into a model for improving urban infrastructure in difficult settings around the world. Read more of this post

Fed Gets Bigger in Markets as QE Prompts New Tools

Fed Gets Bigger in Markets as QE Prompts New Tools

The Federal Reserve is getting more involved in debt markets as it tries to compensate for the impact of its almost $4 trillion balance sheet on short-term interest rates. Policy makers are testing a new tool intended to improve their control of near-term borrowing costs. The facility would allow banks, broker-dealers, money-market funds and some government-sponsored enterprises to lend the Fed unlimited amounts of cash overnight at a fixed rate in exchange for borrowing Treasuries in so-called reverse repo transactions. Read more of this post

Two Out of Five Americans Cut Spending Amid Government Shutdown

Two Out of Five Americans Cut Spending Amid Government Shutdown

The U.S. government shutdown prompted two out of five Americans to curb spending, according to a survey commissioned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) The survey of 1,025 people, conducted from Oct. 10 to Oct. 13, found that the shutdown had a greater impact on lower income consumers, with 47 percent of respondents who earned $35,000 or less saying they would curb spending. Among those with income of more than $100,000, 32 percent said they would tighten spending. Read more of this post

Bodies Double as Cash Machines With U.S. Income Lagging: Economy

Bodies Double as Cash Machines With U.S. Income Lagging: Economy

Hair, breast milk and eggs are doubling as automated teller machines for some cash-strapped Americans such as April Hare. Out of work for more than two years and facing eviction from her home, Hare recalled Louisa May Alcott’s 19th-century novel and took to her computer. “I was just trying to find ways to make money, and I remembered Jo from ‘Little Women,’ and she sold her hair,” the 35-year-old from Atlanta said. “I’ve always had lots of hair, but this is the first time I’ve actually had the idea to sell it because I’m in a really tight jam right now.”

Read more of this post

Machines Trading $400 Billion of Bonds as Humans Retreat

Machines Trading $400 Billion of Bonds as Humans Retreat

A record share of U.S. corporate-bond trading has moved to computers as buyers who traditionally transacted over the phone seek faster ways to buy and sell in a market where Wall Street’s human traders are retreating. Investment-grade volumes on MarketAxess Holdings Inc.’s electronic system are on pace to exceed $400 billion in 2013 after surging 45 percent to $44 billion in September from a year earlier, according to data from the company, which estimates it captures about 90 percent of electronic trades among the dollar-denominated notes. That’s equal to 14.3 percent of all market activity, including business done over the phone, up from 12.2 percent a year earlier. Read more of this post

Mining M&A Decline Imperils Explorers’ Aspirations

Mining M&A Decline Imperils Explorers’ Aspirations

Mining acquisitions valued at less than $1 billion have slumped to an eight-year low as the industry’s largest players rein in spending after a drop in commodities prices. The slump threatens hundreds of exploration and development companies that don’t have revenue, more than half of which are based in Canada. Being bought by a larger miner is proving increasingly elusive as companies such as Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX), the biggest gold producer, avoid acquisitions and new projects in favor of improving existing operations. Read more of this post

Coal’s Slump Leaves Czech Town Facing Mass Unemployment

Coal’s Slump Leaves Czech Town Facing Mass Unemployment

Most mornings, Lubomir Nevrly drives past a forest of grimy chimneys and steel-mill towers spewing smoke over the eastern Czech city of Ostrava. He doesn’t want them to stop operating. “If they close another coal mine it will be a catastrophe for the region,” said the 60-year-old Ostrava native who spent two decades working as a miner. “Crime will go up, people will start drinking. Soon we’ll be afraid to go out on the streets.” Read more of this post

India Rupee Revived by Rajan as Carry Trade Favorite

India Rupee Revived by Rajan as Carry Trade Favorite

Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan has turned the rupee from a pariah to the world’s favorite currency after just a month in office as he intensifies efforts to quell inflation and lure capital. Investors selling dollars to buy rupees earned 10 percent since Rajan took over on Sept. 4, the most among 44 currencies tracked by Bloomberg and a turnaround from a 2.8 percent third-quarter loss. Options betting on one-month implied volatility show investors becoming more confident in the rupee than for any currency in Asia or the BRIC nations, which also include Brazil, Russia and China. Read more of this post

Indian sage dreams of gold to save economy, government starts digging

Indian sage dreams of gold to save economy, government starts digging

7:22am EDT

By Shyamantha Asokan

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – The Indian government is digging for treasure after a civic-minded Hindu village sage dreamt that 1,000 tons of gold was buried under a ruined palace, and wrote to tell the central bank about it. The state Archaeological Survey of India has sent a team of archaeologists to the village of Daundia Khera in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. They are due to start digging on Friday, Praveen Kumar Mishra, the head archaeologist in the state, told Reuters. Read more of this post

Oct. 17 Is Start Rather Than Finish of Debt-Limit Crisis Endgame

Oct. 17 Is Start Rather Than Finish of Debt-Limit Crisis Endgame

The day after tomorrow represents the beginning of Washington’s debt-crisis end game, not the end of it. The Treasury Department expects to exhaust its borrowing authority no later than Oct. 17, leaving the federal government with no more than $30 billion on hand. Depending upon daily tax receipts and incoming bills, the U.S. government could be forced to default on its obligations at any date thereafter — to bond holders and millions of Social Security recipients. Read more of this post

Norway Heats Up as Wealth Fund Nears $1 Trillion: Nordic Credit

Norway Heats Up as Wealth Fund Nears $1 Trillion: Nordic Credit

Norway’s incoming Prime Minister Erna Solberg will have no shortage of cash for her campaign promises. The question is: how much does she dare use? The Labor government, which resigned yesterday, presented what it called a “cautious” budget, saying it would use 135 billion kroner ($22 billion) of Norway’s oil wealth to plug deficits next year, equal to 5.5 percent of mainland gross domestic product. That leaves Solberg’s administration with 54 billion kroner to spend before it breaches the nation’s fiscal policy rule. Read more of this post

Bitcoin Mining Rush Means Real Cash for Hardware Makers

Bitcoin Mining Rush Means Real Cash for Hardware Makers

Bitcoin, the virtual money that exists only in digital form, is spawning a real-world hardware boom. The currency, used to buy and sell everything from electronics to illegal drugs on the Web, has surged to about $135, more than 10 times its value a year ago. The rally has created a cottage industry of speculators eager to get their hands on Bitcoins, which can only be created digitally by using powerful computers to solve complex software problems. That has in turn boosted a market for high-powered machines, some costing more than $20,000 apiece, which are custom-made to unlock new Bitcoins in a process called mining, a nod to the excavation of minerals and metal ore. Read more of this post

Bike-sharing: Sharing two wheels is becoming ever more popular

Bike-sharing: Sharing two wheels is becoming ever more popular

Oct 12th 2013 |From the print edition

IN MORE than 500 cities in 50 countries, shared bicycles have become a colourful addition to street life. Schemes have increased tenfold since 2004. Most work on the principle that a user hires a bicycle at one of a number of docking stations dotted around a city. The first 30 minutes are usually free for members (annual memberships range from a $35 deposit to a $145 fee), and charges rise the longer users hang on to the bikes. The two-wheelers vary from clanking, no-frills frames in Hangzhou, in China, to the luxury models with built-in GPS and smart tablets that will be launched in Copenhagen next month. Read more of this post

The hunt for the Hispanic dollar; Companies are trying to attract a US population that is becoming less and less homogenous

October 14, 2013 5:35 pm

The hunt for the Hispanic dollar

By Barney Jopson

A new approach: Huggies last year took popular products from Mexico to the US; the retailer Target stocks the Mexican beauty brand Tio Nacho in Los Angeles and a cornflour popular with Venezuelans and Colombians in Miami; and Pepsi included a shot of a Mexican wrestling mask in its Super Bowl ad his year

Add up the headcount at a baby shower, says Lizette Williams, and you will understand that new arrivals in Hispanic-American families are a big deal. A Puerto Rican mother from New York, her own party four years ago attracted so many well-wishers that the shower of clothes and nappies became a downpour. All told there were 100 guests. “Just think about that,” she says. “Think about the kind of the stature in which it’s held. This is a major life event. It’s almost like a second wedding.” Read more of this post

Japan offers an unsettling glimpse of all of our futures

Last updated: October 14, 2013 6:54 pm

Japan offers an unsettling glimpse of all of our futures

By Gideon Rachman

A determination to maintain social cohesion is admirable, but the country has paid a price

Afew years ago Wired, the technology magazine, ran a regular feature called “Japanese schoolgirl watch”. The concept was not as dubious as it sounds. The idea was simply that the schoolgirls of Japan are technological trendsetters and that the gadgets they adopt today will go global tomorrow. These days, however, Japan is also a global trendsetter in other, more troubling ways. If the policy makers of Europe and North America want a sense of the social, economic and strategic challenges they may face in the coming years, they should visit Japan, as I did last week.

Read more of this post

‘End of the line for Japanese electricals’

‘End of the line for Japanese electricals’

Sony, Canon and other Japanese firms at centre of the Seventies and Eighties electronics revolution have ‘already lost in the global race’, according to a fund manager, who warned against funds that blindly follow these shares.

By Nicholas Weindlingm

8:00AM BST 15 Oct 2013

Stellar returns from Japan’s stock market after decades of malaise have got investors’ attention. This excitement is well founded. The aggressive economic reforms of ‘Abenomics’ – the economic policies implemented by Shinzō Abe, the current Prime Minister of Japan – are creating real structural change. Imagine if UK prices on everything from cars to clothes had gone down for years. You would always put off purchasing for a cheaper price tomorrow. That has been the Japanese reality until now. Under Abenomics, Japan is prompting consumers to buy today. This fuel for economic growth combined with what are still very low valuations translates to powerful opportunity in Japanese equities. Read more of this post

Alaska Milk Corp. named Marketing Company of the Year in Philippines

Alaska Milk Corp. named Marketing Company of the Year

(philstar.com) | Updated October 15, 2013 – 10:34am

Officials of Alaska Milk Corp. accept their trophy at the Agora Awards 2013 last Oct. 9 at the Peninsula Manila in Makati City. L-R first row: Vicente Reyes (PMA President), Gwen Galvez (PMA Board Secretary), Arnold Abad (VP, Accounting & Controller), Joselito Sarmiento (Executive Vice President & CFO), Blen Fernando (VP, Marketing), Wilfred Uytengsu (President & CEO), Maureen Castaneda (PMA Chairman), Hildebrand Barcarse (PMA Director), Alex Flores (PMA Executive Director) L-R second row: Francisco Idian (AMC, Vice President, Sales), Andreas Mantis (Business Development Director) and Henk Pijffers (Operations Director) of Royal Friesland Campina.

MANILA, Philippines – In recognition of its innovative marketing programs that have resulted in its unprecedented growth from a family-owned company to a P15-billion corporation, the Philippine Marketing Association (PMA) named Alaska Milk Corporation the Marketing Company of the Year. Alaska Milk was cited as well for its good corporate citizenship and the high esteem it receives from peers in the industry as the PMA conferred its most prestigious accolade during the 34th Agora Awards held at The Peninsula Manila in Makati, recently. Read more of this post

Currencies funds feel strain of US deadlock

Last updated: October 14, 2013 8:21 pm

Currencies funds feel strain of US deadlock

By Delphine Strauss

Currencies traders do not know which way to turn. This was meant to be the year the dollar would come roaring back against other major currencies, as the US recovery picked up steam and the Federal Reserve began scaling back its vast stimulus programme. After years of near-zero interest rates in most developed economies, hedge fundswere hoping that divergent central bank policies would finally create clear-cut economic trends on which to trade. Read more of this post

Norway orders review of $790 bln wealth fund, responding to concerns that the fund is unwieldy and its returns too low

Norway orders review of $790 bln wealth fund

Mon, Oct 14 2013

* Review comes after criticism fund is too big, unresponsive

* Norway often bars sovereign wealth fund from investments

* Asks for greater scrutiny of Shell and Eni in Niger Delta

* Fund will also raise concerns with AngloGold

By Balazs Koranyi

OSLO, Oct 14 (Reuters) – Norway has ordered a review of its $790 billion wealth fund, one of the world’s biggest investors whose largesse helps underpin Norway’s generous social benefits, responding to concerns that the fund is unwieldy and its returns too low. The government also in a regular review of the fund’s investment ethics ordered it to sell stakes in several companies due to ethical issues and expressed concern over investments in oil companies Royal Dutch Shell and Eni. Read more of this post

Oil processing: A refined model; The European refining industry is undergoing a shake-out as new entrants see opportunities

October 14, 2013 7:04 pm

Oil processing: A refined model

By Sylvia Pfeifer

The European refining industry is undergoing a shake-out as new entrants see opportunities

Gary Klesch likes trouble. The American financier made his name in the City of London in the 1980s by buying debt in struggling companies, taking on groups such as Eurotunnel, Euro Disney and Heron International, the property group. Today his €5bn Klesch Group empire is focused on industrial commodities but his appetite for businesses in trouble is unabated. Just as some of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies are scrambling to get out of European refining, Mr Klesch is trying to get in. Read more of this post

Chinese Regulators Crack Down on Cartoons to address violent programming content

October 14, 2013, 9:24 PM

Chinese Regulators Crack Down on Cartoons

Chinese cartoon “Pleasant Goat and the Big Big Wolf” hasn’t been so pleasant as of late, according to the country’s TV regulators. China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television called out the popular cartoon, which made headlines earlier this year for episodes containing violent scenes, and the regulator said Saturday in a statement that it plans to outline new content standards for TV animation to address violent programming content. Read more of this post

Why the World’s Cheapest Car Flopped; No-Frills Tata Minicar Gets Chrome, Sound System, Higher Price to Boost Appeal

Why the World’s Cheapest Car Flopped

No-Frills Minicar Gets Chrome, Sound System, Higher Price to Boost Appeal

SEAN MCLAIN

Oct. 14, 2013 1:55 p.m. ET

MUMBAI—When the Tata Nano, a stripped-down minicar priced at around $2,000, was introduced in 2009, it was marketed as a car that would transform the way aspiring consumers in India and other developing countries got around. But the low-cost automotive revolution fizzled. Selling poorly at home and with exports drying up, the Nano has become a cautionary tale of misplaced ambitions and a drag on sales and profit at Tata MotorsLtd. 500570.BY +1.34% , India’s fourth-largest auto maker and the owner of Jaguar and Land Rover luxury vehicles. Read more of this post

Kinh Do Corp., Vietnam’s biggest listed confectionery maker, may expand into noodles, cooking oils and sauces within three years as it seeks new products to weather slowing economic growth

Kinh Do Looks to Noodles as Vietnam Growth Slows: Southeast Asia

Kinh Do Corp., Vietnam’s biggest listed confectionery maker, may expand into noodles, cooking oils and sauces within three years as it seeks new products to weather slowing economic growth. “Our existing products are still somewhat seasonal in that we sell a lot during the holidays and a lot less during the regular time of year,” Chief Financial Officer Kelly Wong said in an interview at a Kinh Do office in Ho Chi Minh City. “We want to sell products that people eat more regularly.” Read more of this post

Coal Slump Leaves Aussie Port Half-Used and Bank Lenders at Risk

Coal Slump Leaves Aussie Port Half-Used and Bank Lenders at Risk

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. (ANZ) and Westpac Banking Corp. are among lenders risking losses on $3 billion of loans backing a coal port in Australia that will be twice its required size. Wiggins Island Coal Export Terminal Pty, the group comprising the unfinished project’s owners, including Glencore Xstrata Plc (GLEN) and Wesfarmers Ltd. (WES), in 2011 borrowed the debt from 19 banks, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. When the port in the state of Queensland begins shipping in early 2015, only about half of its 27 million metric tons of initial annual export capacity will be used after a slump in coal demand, forecaster Wood Mackenzie Ltd. estimates. Read more of this post

Global public opinion poll reveals an increasingly negative view of China

Global public opinion poll reveals an increasingly negative view of China

Monday, 14 October, 2013, 12:00am

Kate Whitehead life@scmp.com

China could do with an image makeover, judging by the increasingly negative perceptions of the country revealed in a global public opinion poll

First up the good news for China: around the world people increasingly see the country as an emerging superpower, or indeed a superpower already. The bad news? They don’t much like China. Public opinion, especially in the US, towards China is at an all-time low. Read more of this post

Norway fund blacklists Malaysia’ WTK, Tan Ann and 3 others for taking part in activities that damage the environment or for being linked to child labour

Updated: Tuesday October 15, 2013 MYT 7:56:26 AM

Norway fund blacklists Malaysia’ WTK, Tan Ann and 3 others

PETALING JAYA: Norway has excluded five companies from the investments of the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s largest, for taking part in activities that damage the environment or for being linked to child labour, Bloomberg reported. Local timber firms WTK Holdings Bhd and Ta Ann Holdings Bhd were excluded alongside China’s Zijin Mining Group and Peru’s Volcan Cia Minera SAA. Read more of this post