Germany Sees Global Risk Shift to Emerging Economies

Germany Sees Global Risk Shift to Emerging Economies

Germany’s top finance officials said risks to global growth are shifting away from Europe and toward emerging economies, while they expressed confidence that U.S. policy makers will overcome their divide over the budget. The euro region has left its recession behind and is no longer at the center of attention of crisis-fixing efforts, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann told reporters in Washington yesterday. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, after holding talks with his U.S. counterpart Jacob J. Lew, said he hopes that the budget standoff in the U.S. will be solved in coming days. Read more of this post

China and Taiwan to Form Equity Exchange as Relations Improve

China and Taiwan to Form Equity Exchange as Relations Improve

China and Taiwan plan to set up a cross-strait equity exchange center in the mainland’s southeastern province of Fujian as relations between the two sides improve. The center may be funded by 10 institutions including China’s state-owned Xiamen Jinyuan Investment Group and a unit of Taiwan’s SinoPac Financial Holdings Co. (2890), SinoPac Chief Financial Officer Michael Chang said by phone today. “It’s an exchange for junior shares, aiming to help early stage or small companies in China to raise funds,” he said. Read more of this post

Sugar Mills Face Wider Losses as Elections Loom: Corporate India

Sugar Mills Face Wider Losses as Elections Loom: Corporate India

Sugar mills in India, the world’s biggest producer after Brazil, are facing wider losses as the government prods them to pay more for cane in a bid to woo farmers before elections. A glut of the sweetener has caused prices to slide to a 15-month low, prompting factories in the top two states accounting for 65 percent of the nation’s output to sell below cost, said Abinash Verma, director general of the Indian Sugar Mills Association. Losses at mills may mount if cane prices are raised for the crushing season starting this month, he said. Read more of this post

Bewildering Indian policies fuel needless coal imports

Bewildering Indian policies fuel needless coal imports

5:21pm EDT

By Matthias Williams and Malini Menon

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Tata Power’s (TTPW.NS: Quote,Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) 1,050 Megawatt power station in the state of Jharkhand is a textbook case of the absurd results that India’s 1970s-era coal supply laws can produce, and why power utilities are lobbying the government to change them. The Maithon power station is located in the heart of India’s vast coal belt, but a shortfall in local fuel supplies has forced Tata to import some of the coal for the plant all the way from Indonesia – an expensive and cumbersome alternative. Read more of this post

Lloyds CEO warns against housing “Help to Buy” bubble: FT

Lloyds CEO warns against housing “Help to Buy” bubble: FT

6:18pm EDT

(Reuters) – The chief executive of Lloyds Bank (LLOY.L:Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has warned that the government’s “Help to Buy” mortgage scheme will risk creating a dangerous bubble in property prices unless steps are taken to boost the supply of new housing and free up planning restrictions, The Financial Times reported. The FT quoted António Horta-Osório, the CEO of Lloyds as saying, “It is important that planning permits, building authorizations and social housing projects are (liberalized) so that the increase in (mortgage) transactions does not lead to a substantial increase in house prices.” “I think the scheme should be focused outside London and the southeast. (In the rest of the country) you have nothing close to a housing bubble,” the FT quoted him as saying. Lloyds, which is 33 percent owned by the British government, could not be reached immediately for comment. Lloyds, along with RBS (RBS.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), HSBC (HSBA.L: Quote, Profile,Research, Stock Buzz), Santander UK (SAN.MC: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Barclays (BARC.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), has already signed up for scheme which, in exchange for a fee, will give banks greater protection against losses. The only big lender yet to commit is the customer owned Nationwide (POB_p.L: Quote, Profile, Research,Stock Buzz), one of the few lenders already offering mortgages to buyers with small deposits.

London Wealthy Leave for Country Life as Prices Rise

London Wealthy Leave for Country Life as Prices Rise

It took more than a year for Mark Hudson to find his six-bedroom home in the English countryside. Within weeks of moving in, he got a bid that topped the 1.75 million pounds ($2.8 million) the property cost. “Somebody called offering a significantly higher sum,” said Hudson, a 55-year-old manager at a publishing company, who in August swapped his home in Clapham, a London district favored by young bankers and lawyers, for Dorset, the farm-dotted county 125 miles (202 kilometers) southwest of London that was the setting for Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. “It looks like we caught it just at the right time,” he said. Read more of this post

French farmers are committing suicide at alarming rates; Livestock farmers face particularly slim profit margins and have been unable to pass along higher costs to food manufacturers and retailers

French farmers are committing suicide at alarming rates

By Roberto A. Ferdman @robferdman October 11, 2013

France’s agriculture sector has suffered its fair share of setbacks lately. But here’s a particularly gruesome one: Farmer suicides are adding to the industry’s struggles. A new report (link in French) released yesterday (Oct. 10) by French health institute INVS reveals that nearly 500 farmers in the country took their own lives between 2007 and 2009. That’s roughly a suicide every other day, French news outlet The Local points out. The suicide rate among French farmers is more than 20% higher than that of the general populous, which is an even greater concern when one considers that France already has an alarmingly high suicide rate compared to its European neighbors; suicide rates in France, for example, are twice those of Spain and the UK. Only cancer and cardio-vascular disease are greater causes of death amongst French farmers. France’s mounting suicide problem reflects its suffering agriculture sector, which has buckled amid rising prices for inputs like fertilizers and feed. The economic squeeze has been especially hard on the country’s livestock sector, which registered the highest farmer suicide rates. Livestock farmers face particularly slim profit margins and have been unable to pass along higher costs to food manufacturers and retailers. In January, French farmers took to the streets to protest new environmental regulations that have hiked up costs further. To placate restless farmers, French president François Hollande redirected nearly a €1 billion in subsidies from the European Union last week to help those most affected by the sour economy. (France is the EU’s top agricultural producer as well as the biggest beneficiary of EU aid.) INVS plans to carry out another study to determine whether the suicide problem among France’s farmers extends into 2010 and 2011.

Indonesian Miners Risk Lives in Modern-Day Gold Rush

Indonesian Miners Risk Lives in Modern-Day Gold Rush

By Anne Usher on 12:41 pm October 11, 2013.
Kereng Pangi. In a desolate area of central Indonesia where lush rainforest once stood, illegal miners on the frontline of a modern-day gold rush tear up the earth in the hunt for the precious metal. Thousands of men use high-pressure hoses to blast tons of sand out of the ground daily in open pits around Kereng Pangi on Borneo island, before running it through filters to find specks of gold. Read more of this post

Taiwan talk show host ‘Little S’ Dee Hsu questioned over Top Pot scandal

‘Little S’ questioned over Top Pot scandal

The China Post news staff
October 12, 2013, 12:02 am TWN

Talk show host Dee Hsu (徐熙娣, stage name Little S) yesterday returned home without facing charges, at least temporarily, after telling prosecutors whether or not she had “anything to hide.” According to media reports, prosecutors want to find out whether she has knowingly lied to consumers and committed fraud. Hsu was summoned to the Taipei District Public Prosecutors’ Office (TDPPO) to testify as a witness in an insider-trading case involving her husband Mike Hsu (許雅鈞) and father-in-law Hsu Ching-hsiang (許慶祥), as well as in a false advertisement case. Read more of this post

Korea needs National Entrepreneurs Day; The number of business tycoons who are in jail is unprecedented in Korea’s history. These tycoons did not understand how our society has changed. The public has shown little sympathy for their crimes

2013-10-10 16:47

Korea needs National Entrepreneurs Day

By Lee Chang-sup
With business leaders facing jail time and the nation’s economy struggling, Korea needs a way to spark entrepreneurial spirit once again. A National Entrepreneurs Day could be exactly what the nation needs to encourage entrepreneurs to bring new moneymaking ideas to the market. The current business climate is not welcoming to new entrepreneurs.  A record number of high-profile bankruptcies haven taken place since the financial crisis in 1997. Big names like Woongjin, STX and Tongyang face either a bank-led workout or a court receivership. Almost all construction and shipping companies are in trouble. Bankruptcy is so common among small businesses that it rarely makes the news anymore. The Bank of Korea says the rate of dishonored bill — a check or similar financial instruments whose payment has been refused — rose from 0.08 percent in July to 0.14 percent in August. Read more of this post

Korean prosecutors raided the homes and offices of top executives of Hyosung Group in an investigation into allegations that the country’s 26th largest conglomerate has engaged in tax evasion and breach of trust for about a decade

Raids hit Hyosung homes, offices

Tipped off by tax men, prosecutors seek clues in ‘massive fraud’

Oct 12,2013

The prosecution yesterday raided the homes and offices of top executives of Hyosung Group in an investigation into allegations that the country’s 26th largest conglomerate has engaged in tax evasion and breach of trust for about a decade. Around 60 prosecutors and investigators from the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office were sent to 10 locations yesterday morning for the raids. The headquarters of Hyosung Group and its financial arm, Hyosung Capital, as well as the homes of Hyosung Chairman Cho Suck-rai and other senior executives, were raided starting at about 7:30 a.m. Read more of this post

Japan lost more than a million millionaires last year

Japan lost more than a million millionaires last year

By Roberto A. Ferdman and Lily Kuo October 11, 2013

The greatest consolation to being kicked out of the millionaire’s club may be knowing that your rich friends went down with you. Nowhere is that truer than in Japan, which lost 1.3 million millionaires between June 2012 and June 2013, according to Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth report (pdf) released earlier this week. No other country lost anywhere near that amount of wealth. In fact, no other country lost more than 12,000 millionaires (millionaires, of course, refer to households with $1 million or more in assets). The country with the second highest loss in millionaires—100 times fewer than in Japan—was Brazil. The drop is a stark contrast to last year when Japan saw its millionaire population increase by almost half a million. What’s been obliterating millionaires has to do with ”Abenomics,” the aggressive economic reform plan to defeat deflation spearheaded by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. The policy has driven the yen/dollar exchange rate down by 22% over the past year, which has in turn driven down household wealth by $5.8 trillion over that time period. That’s roughly 20% of the country’s total net worth, according to the report. (The policy also led to a 52% surge in the Nikkei over that time period, but stocks account for less than 10% of household financial wealth.) Read more of this post

Australian millionaires: Why we are not as rich as we look; About 59 per cent of our wealth is held in property, second only to Norway. In the US, it’s 38 per cent.

Andrew Heathcote Rich Lists editor

Australian millionaires: Why we are not as rich as we look

Published 10 October 2013 11:49, Updated 11 October 2013 07:48

The average wealth per person in Australia is $426,222, according to a report by Credit Suisse on personal wealth. Photo: Louie Douvis

There was great excitement yesterday when investment bank Credit Suisse gave us some good news. Apparently, Australians are the richest people in the world. Credit Suisse’s new Global Wealth Report shows that Australia has the highest median wealth per adult for the third year in a row. According to the figures, there are 11 million Australians worth more than $232,489 and 1.1 million millionaires. Read more of this post

China will launch a pilot program next week aimed at shattering a widespread assumption among Chinese investors that products, even high-yield ones, provide guaranteed returnswhen offered by state-owned banks

Wealth management products’ yield ‘not guaranteed’

Updated: 2013-10-11 10:27

( Agencies) Read more of this post

DIY investment – a crisis in the making?

October 11, 2013 5:38 pm

DIY investment – a crisis in the making?

By David Oakley, Investment Correspondent

It was nearly seven years in the making. It has been the dominant theme in the retail asset management industry for much of the past few years. Now, the effects of the retail distribution review are being felt by the people it is meant to safeguard: consumers. For most of them, RDR was just another obscure rule change. Survey after survey found that, ahead of its implementation on December 31 2012, few ordinary investors had even heard of it. At a recent presentation to analysts, Hargreaves Lansdown noted that just one in a thousand customer service calls relates to the rule change. But RDR could yet transform the way people invest and save for their retirement or their children’s education. Read more of this post

Debt impasse exposes Achilles’ heel of finance: Risk of an accident in $2tn tri-party repo market is rising

Last updated: October 10, 2013 11:44 pm

Debt impasse exposes Achilles’ heel of finance

By Gillian Tett

Risk of an accident in $2tn tri-party repo market is rising

Who is getting spooked by Halloween bonds? That is a question which many traders are wondering. Little wonder. A week ago, I (like most people) blithely assumed that Congress would find a way to resolve the budget and debt ceiling impasse before the crucial October 17 deadline, when the Treasury claims it will start running out of funds. Now I am less sure. For the situation seems to have fallen into a pattern which defies neat, game-theory solutions: the White House does not want to give the Tea Party any victories, for fear of encouraging more hostage-taking; John Boehner, Republican House Speaker, cannot offer concessions for fear of losing his position; and the Tea Party now regards the fight as a “do-or-die” stand and also fears it cannot back down. Read more of this post

BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, said its money-market mutual funds have sold all Treasuries maturing in late October and early November

BlackRock’s Money Funds Have Sold Vulnerable Treasuries

BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world’s biggest asset manager, said its money-market mutual funds have sold all Treasuries maturing in late October and early November. BlackRock joins Fidelity Investments and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the two largest U.S. money-fund providers, in declaring its money funds are free of the debt most likely to be affected by a default as the government approaches its borrowing limit. “We continue to take prudent actions in preparation for all potential outcomes, despite our belief that Congress and the President will likely act to prevent a U.S. default,” Tara McDonnell, a spokeswoman for the New York-based company, said today in an e-mailed statement. President Barack Obama and House Republican leaders moved yesterday toward an agreement to extend the nation’s borrowing authority as they remained at odds over terms for ending the partial government shutdown. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio yesterday said he would offer as soon as today a measure to postpone a potential U.S. default to Nov. 22 from Oct. 17.

To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Condon in Boston at ccondon4@bloomberg.net

Italy Loses Its Taste for Pasta; Consumption Has Dropped 23% in Past Decade

Italy Loses Its Taste for Pasta

Consumption Has Dropped 23% in Past Decade

MANUELA MESCO

Oct. 11, 2013 2:27 p.m. ET

MILAN—When Sara Chiauzzi was growing up in Naples, pasta had pride of place on the family table, and she and her family often ate it twice a day. But now that she has a family of her own, the 38-year-old mother of two wouldn’t dream of serving so much pasta. Worried about its fattening effects, she and her husband eat it no more than a few times a week, favoring couscous, meat and vegetables instead. “Metabolism changes when you approach 40,” she says, “and pasta is out of the question.” Read more of this post

Number of Chinese Billionaires Skyrockets

October 11, 2013, 8:30 AM

Number of Chinese Billionaires Skyrockets

Asia sprouted a new crop of millionaires over the past year, with growth of wealth in China topping the charts. According to a report this week by Credit Suisse, the country now has 6% of the world’s total of ultra-high-net-worth individuals, or those with fortunes in excess of $50 million. That’s second only to the United States, which commands nearly half the world’s total.

Read more of this post

Billionaire’s Metro Builder Downgraded in Crunch: India Credit

Billionaire’s Metro Builder Downgraded in Crunch: India Credit

Indian corporate debt ratings are deteriorating at the fastest pace since 2010 amid a cash crunch created to buoy the rupee and a deepening economic slowdown. Billionaire Anil Ambani’s Reliance Infrastructure Ltd., which holds 69 percent in a venture building a metro network in Mumbai, and Apollo Tyres Ltd., which plans India’s largest acquisition in North America, were among 478 companies that had their rankings cut in the last six months at Crisil Ltd., the local unit of Standard & Poor’s. Only 417 firms were upgraded, a ratio of 0.87 against downgrades that was the lowest since September 2010. Read more of this post

Mondi Tracks Pampers to China in Bet on Packaging Boom

Mondi Tracks Pampers to China in Bet on Packaging Boom

Mondi Ltd. (MND), the South African packaging company that joined the U.K.’s benchmark FTSE 100 Index last month, is opening factories in China and Iraq as it follows clients into emerging markets to boost earnings. Customers including Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) and Nestle SA (NESN) are tapping booming local demand for products such as diapers and microwaveable food and Mondi has to stay close to meet specific requirements in each market, Chief Executive Officer David Hathorn said in an interview in Johannesburg. Mondi this year inaugurated a plant in China’s Jiangsu province to supply stretchy films for P&G’s range of Pampers diapers, he said. Read more of this post

China to install GPS in government cars to track misuse

China to install GPS in government cars to track misuse

6:29am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will install GPS systems in government cars to thwart personal use by officials, domestic media said on Friday, citing the Communist Party’s anti-corruption watchdog, as it cracks down on the profligate lifestyles of corrupt officials. Almost 200,000 government cars have been misused for private purposes, the Beijing Times newspaper said, citing the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Read more of this post

Lavish nights at Club Godfather opened door to Japan pension fund bribery case

Lavish nights at Club Godfather opened door to Japan pension fund bribery case

Thu, Oct 10 2013

* Pension fund exec handed suspended 18-mth jail term

* Two KTOs fund execs also given suspended sentences

* Regulator cracking down on excessive client entertainment

* Regulator also probing unrelated cases at investment banks

By Nathan Layne

SAPPORO, Japan, Oct 10 (Reuters) – When a Tokyo-based investment manager set out to win business from a pension fund in northern Japan, the cost included dozens of nights drinking at Club Godfather, a discrete watering hole with a $200 cover charge and kimono-clad hostesses. Kazuyoshi Takahama, now 71, was treated to more than 50 nights out at the club in Sapporo as KTOs Capital Partners, a hedge fund, lobbied for a share of the $245 million pension fund he helped oversee as its chairman, prosecutors say. Takahama favored shochu, a local liquor, while his free-spending hosts ordered up expensive wines. Read more of this post

AlphaMetrix Fires CFO as Cash Shortage Hits Commodity Fund; The revelations are another blow to confidence in the futures industry after it suffered two of its largest failures with the collapse of MF Global and Peregrine

AlphaMetrix Terminates CFO as Cash Shortfall Hits Commodity Fund

AlphaMetrix Group LLC, which connects investors with hedge fund managers and futures traders, said it’s experiencing “significant cash flow issues” and fired its chief financial officer. The Chicago-based company runs a business known as a commodity pool operator, AlphaMetrix LLC, which lets customers invest in futures accounts managed by professional traders. The parent company told clients in a letter yesterday that both its liabilities and those of the commodity pool operator “greatly exceed” liquid assets and that the net asset values of some pools may be affected. Read more of this post

IEA Sees Oil Output Outside OPEC Rising Most Since 1970s

IEA Sees Oil Output Outside OPEC Rising Most Since 1970s

The International Energy Agency estimates that oil producers outside OPEC, led by the U.S., Canada and Kazakhstan, will bolster supplies next year by the most since the 1970s, undermining the need for OPEC’s crude. Producers outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will increase output by a near-record 1.7 million barrels a day next year to 56.4 million, the IEA said, boosting its forecasts from a month ago by 300,000 barrels a day. Supply losses in OPEC members Libya and Iraq, which reduced the group’s output to a two-year low, are preventing the new shipments from calming oil prices, the Paris-based adviser to energy-consuming nations said. Read more of this post

U.S. Said to Open Criminal Probe of FX Market Rigging

U.S. Said to Open Criminal Probe of FX Market Rigging

The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation of possible manipulation of the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, a person familiar with the matter said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is also looking into alleged rigging of interest rates associated with the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, is in the early stages of its currency market probe, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the inquiry is confidential. Read more of this post

Danes With World-Beating Debt Loads Prepare To Dig Deeper

Danes With World-Beating Debt Loads Prepare To Dig Deeper

Danish households, which already have the world’s biggest debt load relative to incomes, are about to use a real estate recovery to go further into the red. Five years after the country’s real-estate crash ripped through home equity and drove up the number of borrowers owing more than their properties are worth, homeowners are ready to take on bigger loans amid the first signs prices are rising, according to Nordea Bank AB (NDA), Scandinavia’s largest lender. Read more of this post

‘We Might as Well Settle the Hog Futures Contract to the Price of Peaches’; Shutdown Shuts Down U.S. Data, So Commodities Traders Fly Blind

October 11, 2013, 3:48 p.m. ET

Shutdown Shuts Down U.S. Data, So Commodities Traders Fly Blind

‘We Might as Well Settle the Hog Futures Contract to the Price of Peaches’

ALEXANDRA WEXLER

NEW YORK—Commodities traders and investors are struggling to stay on top of their markets as the U.S. government shutdown cuts off the flow of data they rely on to place bets on everything from corn to cotton to oil. Since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, the government has stopped polling farmers about the state of their crops and also isn’t releasing data on the import and export of raw materials, among other tasks. On Friday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, one of the few agencies still collecting and releasing data, said it would cease publishing its weekly oil supply and demand surveys for the first time since the surveys began in 1979. Read more of this post