Angry Birds Soda May Arrive In China Soon With Four Flavors

Angry Birds Soda May Arrive In China Soon

By Emma Lee on July 23, 2013

Roivo, developer of Angry Bird, reportedly plans to introduce Angry Birds soft drink to the Mainland China market in addition to its full product lineup ranging from t-shirts to posters (in Chinese). Angry Birds claims the soda, which currently comes in four flavors (see below), is already a hit in Finland, even outselling Coke and Pepsi. Rovio launched this product last year and then expanded it to several countries including Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Spain and the U.K. Angry Birds, which logged more than 1 billion downloads in 2012, targets to become an industry giant like Disney.

Khaitan’s Radico Khaitan is now the largest local player in the spirits business. But he has to watch his patch as foreign competition looms

Radico Khaitan is on a High

by Prince Mathews Thomas | Jul 24, 2013

Lalit Khaitan (L), chairman, with Abhishek Khaitan, MD of Radico Khaitan

Abhishek Khaitan’s Radico Khaitan is now the largest local player in the spirits business. But he has to watch his patch as foreign competition looms

In business, it helps to keep your ears to the ground. For Abhishek Khaitan, that meant doing the rounds of pubs. He had his first ‘eureka’ moment while pub-hopping in Bangalore. Even as he was studying for an engineering degree in the garden city, the family’s distilling and bottling business was at the back of his mind.
His discovery: “Indian drinkers were becoming more conscious of what they were consuming. Brands had become very important.” This insight led Abhishek and his father Lalit Khaitan, chairman of Radico Khaitan, to launch the company’s first whisky brand—8PM—some years later. It went on to sell a record one million cases in its very first year—a historic first in the Indian spirits industry. Read more of this post

Banyan Tree’s Ho Kwon Ping: “Asia is going to be a primary engine of growth, but that growth can come to a sputtering stop if our business models are not sustainable”

Experts call for Asia-based models

Achara Deboonme,
Annika Bhasavanich
The Nation July 24, 2013 1:00 am

Fresh approach needed for sustainability, added strength in view of long-lasting global uncertainties

Asian companies need to invent their own business models for long-term sustainability, models that address social and environmental costs, highlight brand building, and capitalise on the diversity of Asian culture, said panellists at an international conference. 
New models are a must as Asia has to strengthen its resilience to global uncertainties, which are not likely to end soon as long as most global trade is denominated in US dollars, agreed participants in a panel discussion on “Asia: Sustainable Business Models” at The Nation International Conference last Friday (July 19, 2013).
“Asia is going to be a primary engine of growth, but that growth can come to a sputtering stop if our business models are not sustainable,” said Ho Kwon Ping, executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings.  Read more of this post

Bribery serves as life-support for Chinese hospitals

Bribery serves as life-support for Chinese hospitals

5:14pm EDT

By Kazunori Takada

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Bribery is the lubricant that helps keep China’s public hospitals running, and the health system would struggle to function without illegal payments to poorly paid doctors and administrators, say medical practitioners and industry experts.

They say government policies are partly to blame for a system in which doctors and other staff expect to be paid extra fees to perform operations and take kickbacks from pharmaceutical firms and medical-equipment suppliers. Read more of this post

Stratfor’s founder George Friedman: The End Of The Chinese Economic Miracle

7/23/2013 @ 8:24AM |1,543 views

The End Of The Chinese Economic Miracle

By George Friedman, Founder and Chairman of Stratfor, a geopolitical intelligence firm

Major shifts underway in the Chinese economy that Stratfor has forecast and discussed for years have now drawn the attention of the mainstream media. Many have asked when China would find itself in an economic crisis, to which we have answered that China has been there for awhile — something not widely recognized outside China, and particularly not in the United States. A crisis can exist before it is recognized. The admission that a crisis exists is a critical moment, because this is when most others start to change their behavior in reaction to the crisis. The question we had been asking was when the Chinese economic crisis would finally become an accepted fact, thus changing the global dynamic. Read more of this post

Commodity warehousing, the interest rate connection

Commodity warehousing, the interest rate connection

Izabella Kaminska

| Jul 23 19:29 | 10 comments | Share

There are three things that must be remembered when it comes to banks, trading houses and warehousing plays.

• One is that banks and trading houses would not have an incentive to store commodities if the forward market did not compensate them for doing so — meaning speculators are as much to blame as anyone for the hoarding problems, because they are basically the ones donating money to ensure stocks of commodities are built up during times of plenty on the assumption that seven years of scarcity will follow, making it all worthwhile.
• Second, there would be no incentive to hold commodities as stock, even during a contango, if regular risk-free financial investments offered a better return. Contango is meaningless unless the yield that can be extracted from the forward markets more than compensates for your financing and warehousing costs. During high interest rate periods, chances are that it pays commodity players much more to sell stock as soon as they produce it, and to reinvest in yield-bearing instruments. During low interest rate periods, when safe returns are lacking elsewhere, the incentive to extract yield from storing commodities and futures rises.
• None of this is necessarily the product of a sinister plot. If there is manipulation, it is the result of collective responses to market dynamics that present exploitable arbitrage opportunities to intelligent agents. It is unwitting manipulation at worst. The question we should be asking is whether banks (who have fiduciary duties, unlike traders) consciously exploit or mislead institutional clients and investors in the process. It is entirely possible, however, that they not only believe in their own scarcity projections, but that they feel they are fulfilling an economic duty in bridging today’s oversupply with tomorrow’s undersupply. Read more of this post

Prices Fuel Outrage in Brazil, Home of the $30 Cheese Pizza

July 22, 2013

Prices Fuel Outrage in Brazil, Home of the $30 Cheese Pizza

By SIMON ROMERO

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Shoppers here with a notion of what items cost abroad need to brace themselves when buying a Samsung Galaxy S4 phone: the same model that costs $615 in the United States is nearly double that in Brazil. An even bigger shock awaits parents needing a crib: the cheapest one at Tok & Stok costs over $440, more than six times the price of a similarly made item at Ikea in the United States. For Brazilians seething with resentment over wasteful spending by the country’s political elite, the high prices they must pay for just about everything — a large cheese pizza can cost almost $30 — only fuel their ire. Read more of this post

Investor alarm as India flashes amber; RBI’s unexpected steps renew focus on Delhi’s troubled finances

July 23, 2013 3:22 pm

Investor alarm as India flashes amber

By James Crabtree in Mumbai

The rains fall fast during India’s annual monsoon season. Unfortunately for the country’s government, the rupee has fallen just as quickly. The Reserve Bank of India responded last week with a slate of measures to trim liquidity, aiming to stop further tumbles in a currency that has dipped around 10 per cent since May, hitting repeated all-time lows. The moves are also designed to win back badly needed foreign capital, which has flowed out of many emerging markets, including India, in the aftermath of remarks by US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke last month about scaling back the central bank’s asset-buying programme. Read more of this post

China to Punish Hospital Staff for Kickbacks as Crackdown Widens

China to Punish Hospital Staff for Kickbacks as Crackdown Widens

China will punish 39 hospital employees for taking illegal kickbacks from drugmakers, reflecting widening efforts to root out medical corruption that includes an investigation of GlaxoSmithKline Plc. (GSK)

The hospital staff received inducements totaling 2.82 million yuan ($460,000) from two pharmaceutical companies between January 2010 and December 2012, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported yesterday, citing the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Read more of this post

In Paris, Chinese Shopping-Tour Buses Go Out of Fashion; Retailers Rethink Strategies as Fewer High-Spending Visitors Arrive en Masse

July 23, 2013, 5:01 p.m. ET

In Paris, Chinese Shopping-Tour Buses Go Out of Fashion

Retailers Rethink Strategies as Fewer High-Spending Visitors Arrive en Masse

NADYA MASIDLOVER in Paris and LAURIE BURKITT in Beijing

For her recent vacation in Switzerland, Wu Mengbei shunned the whirlwind bus tour of luxury stores many Chinese tourists take in Europe.

The Shanghai resident booked her trip independently and chose to spend more on other activities, such as sightseeing and dining. “On my first couple of trips to Europe I did a lot of shopping, but it’s not so much a priority now,” says Ms. Wu, a bank marketing manager in her thirties. Read more of this post

China’s NDRC Probes Old Veteran Jewellery Stores in Shanghai; Lao Fengxiang may have to uncouple some 250 million- 2.5 billion yuan from its profits for fines

China’s NDRC Probes Old Veteran Jewellery Stores in Shanghai

07-23 16:19 Caijing

Lao Fengxiang may have to uncouple some 250 million- 2.5 billion yuan from its profits for fines.

Following a sweep on baby formula makers and parametrical giants, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission accused gold jewellery association, Lao Fengxiang (600612.SH) and other famous jeweler stores in Shanghai of fixing prices in the latest antitrust probe. The companies under investigation could face a large sum of fine, if proves to be true, analysts say, at risk of eroding profits that have accumulated in years. Companies fixing prices in the market can be delivered a penalty equivalent to 1 percent of one year sales at the least, and 10 percent of one year sales at the most, under Chinese laws. Read more of this post

Presenting The World’s Tallest Skyscraper, Whose Construction Was Just Halted

Presenting The World’s Tallest Skyscraper, Whose Construction Was Just Halted

Tyler Durden on 07/23/2013 13:55 -0400

It appears reality is hitting home in the property bubble capital of the world. The so-called “Skyscraper Index” continues to show an unhealthy correlation between construction of the world’s tallest building and an impending financial crisis – for example, New York 1930; Chicago 1974; Kuala Lumpur 1997, and Dubai 2010. As The Dubai Chronicle reports, the record-breaking Sky Tower in Changsha, China, has seen its budget surge from $625 million to $855 million and completion dates pushed back to April 2014, after originally being scheduled for completion at the start of 2013. and here’s the dreamy video of what it will look like and how fast they were planning on building it… As Barclays notes, often the world’s tallest buildings are simply the edifice of a broader skyscraper building boom, reflecting a widespread misallocation of capital and in impending economic correction. Investors should therefore pay particular attention to China – today’s biggest bubble builder with 53% of all the world’s skycrapers under construction – and India – which with just two completed skyscrapers, now has 14 skyscrapers under construction.

Singapore’s foray into the $300 billion-a-year space industry may seem like a lucrative venture, but the path is lined with risks, especially in satellite manufacturing where Western firms have long dominated and entry barriers are high

Singapore plots economic lift-off with satellites, spacecraft

10:11pm EDT

By Kevin Lim

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Singapore’s foray into the $300 billion-a-year space industry may seem like a lucrative venture, but the path is lined with risks, especially in satellite manufacturing where Western firms have long dominated and entry barriers are high.

The push into space technology, announced earlier this year, will initially focus on satellites to meet growing demand for top-speed Internet connections as well as high-resolution images commonly used in surveillance, forestry and energy exploration. Read more of this post

Buffett’s Wells Fargo deposes China’s ICBC as world’s biggest bank

Wells Fargo deposes China’s ICBC as world’s biggest bank

POSTED: 24 Jul 2013 1:47 PM
The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has lost its standing as the world’s largest bank by market capitalisation to US-based Wells Fargo, data showed Wednesday, as China’s economy slows.

SHANGHAI: The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has lost its standing as the world’s largest bank by market capitalisation to US-based Wells Fargo, data showed Wednesday, as China’s economy slows. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co is worth $236 billion, according to the New York Stock Exchange, where it is listed, while Chinese figures show ICBC is now valued at $223 billion. Read more of this post

China starts 5-year ban on new gov’t buildings

China Bans New Government Buildings in Waste Crackdown

China banned government and Communist Party agencies from constructing new buildings for five years and told them to suspend projects that have already won approval as the country seeks to cut wasteful spending.

The ban includes construction for purposes of training, meetings and accommodation, the government said in a statement on its website yesterday, calling for resources to be spent instead on developing the economy and improving public welfare. All localities should report the implementation of the new rules by Sept. 30, according to the statement. Read more of this post

Fur Coats in Stores as Sweltering Britons Seek Bikinis

Fur Coats in Stores as Sweltering Britons Seek Bikinis

Finding t-shirts and bikinis during the U.K.’s longest heat wave in 18 years is presenting an unlikely fashion emergency for British shoppers.

Even as temperatures have topped 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit) for 17 consecutive days, coats and sweaters are starting to replace shorts and flip-flops in store displays as retailers roll out fall fashions, leaving little choice for customers seeking to replenish their wardrobes after two years of summer washouts.

“I want to buy summer clothes now and they’re all gone,” James Arscott, a 52-year-old data analyst, said in London. “They sell summer clothes in the spring and now they’re selling autumn clothes. It’s almost like they expect people to buy things too soon.” Read more of this post

China’s Coal-Fired Economy Dying of Thirst as Mines Lack Water

China’s Coal-Fired Economy Dying of Thirst as Mines Lack Water

At first glance, Daliuta in northern China appears to have a river running through it. A closer look reveals the stretch of water in the center is a pond, dammed at both ends. Beyond the barriers, the Wulanmulun’s bed is dry.

Daliuta in Shaanxi province sits on top of the world’s biggest underground coal mine, which requires millions of liters of water a day for extracting, washing and processing the fuel. The town is the epicenter of a looming collision between China’s increasingly scarce supplies of water and its plan to power economic growth with coal. Read more of this post

European Banks Face Capital Gap With Focus on Leverage

European Banks Face Capital Gap With Focus on Leverage

Europe’s biggest banks, which more than doubled their highest-quality capital to $1 trillion since 2007 to meet tougher rules, may have further to go as regulators scrutinize how lenders judge the riskiness of their assets.

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), Barclays (BARC) Plc and Societe Generale SA (GLE) are among European banks that issued stock, sold units or hoarded earnings to bring capital, as a proportion of assets weighted by risk, into line with new global rules. Now some regulators are questioning the weightings, typically set by the banks’ own models, and embracing a broader measure of equity to total assets known as the leverage ratio that ignores risk. Read more of this post

UPS Shuns ‘Slash-and-Burn’ in Bid to Blunt Next-Day Drop

UPS Shuns ‘Slash-and-Burn’ in Bid to Blunt Next-Day Drop

United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) is trimming flight hours and miles driven to reduce costs as customers shy away from pricier overnight packages to cheaper two-day and deferred offerings.

UPS is trimming main aircraft routes out of Asia to an average of 7.5 from 8, and will lower headcount through attrition and slower hiring, Chief Financial Officer Kurt Kuehn said. The company will also cut discretionary spending on projects that don’t have an immediate payoff, he said. Read more of this post

Bad Real-Estate Deals Return to Haunt Detroit’s Pensions

Bad Real-Estate Deals Return to Haunt Detroit’s Pensions

In 2006, businessman Robert Shumake asked trustees of Detroit’s two pensions to hand him $27 million to invest in real estate.

George Orzech, a fire battalion chief who still represents uniformed workers on their fund’s board, found one thing odd:

“Anybody who knows the first names of trustees in a first meeting has already had meetings with people,” said Orzech, who unsuccessfully opposed the plan. “It was a political deal.” Read more of this post

Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme Alleged by SEC in Lawsuit Against Texas Man

Bitcoin Ponzi Scheme Alleged by SEC in Lawsuit Against Texas Man

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued a Texas man over claims he operated a Ponzi scheme involving Bitcoin, the virtual currency that has recently attracted investors including Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss.

Trendon T. Shavers raised at least 700,000 Bitcoin starting no later than September 2011 through his firm Bitcoin Savings and Trust and improperly used currency from new investors to cover investor withdrawals, the SEC said in a complaint filed today in federal court in Texas. Read more of this post

Selling Off Detroit’s Art Could Depress Global Market

Selling Off Detroit’s Art Could Depress Global Market

Art experts yesterday reacted with concern at the prospect of masterpieces from the Detroit Institute of Arts, including works by Bellini, Rembrandt, van Gogh and Picasso, suddenly flooding the global market.

That possibility looms in the wake of the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy filing by the city on July 18. The Detroit collection has been valued at more than $1 billion. Read more of this post

Worthless land could prolong Spanish banks’ property woes

Worthless land could prolong Spanish banks’ property woes

4:26am EDT

By Jose Elías Rodríguez and Tomás Cobos

MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish banks may have to swallow more losses to shake off the legacy of a property crash, real estate experts warn, as they struggle to sell plots of land that have ended up on their books and which are now worth less than many have accounted for.

Lenders were forced by the government to take billions of euros in provisions against losses last year after property values collapsed in 2008, with the steepest writedowns destined to cover land they were saddled with as developers went bust. Read more of this post

In Washington’s glare, Wall Street commodity trade falls under a shadow

In Washington’s glare, Wall Street commodity trade falls under a shadow

12:05am EDT

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street’s multibillion-dollar commodity trading operations will be put under the political spotlight on Tuesday as a powerful U.S. Senate committee questions whether commercial banks should control oil pipelines, power plants and metals warehouses.

The Senate Banking Committee hearing comes as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase – which generated an estimated $4 billion in commodity revenues last year – face growing pressure from a number of investigations into their operations, and as the Federal Reserve reviews Wall Street’s right to operate in raw material markets. Read more of this post

Land of Samba Is World’s Murder Champion; Crime is a symptom of the broader civic distress that is driving the protests that continue to erupt in some major cities

Land of Samba Is World’s Murder Champion

Brazil has a well-deserved reputation for violent crime. It is so pervasive that people routinely alter their behavior to reduce the odds of being victimized. Stopping at red lights at night? Better not. Thinking of wearing jewelry? Leave it home. Carrying cash? Bring no more than you need and can afford to lose. Crime also is a symptom of the broader civic distress that is driving the protests that continue to erupt in some major cities. Since Brazil seems unable or unwilling to root out the corruption that makes it difficult to develop decent infrastructure, policing and social services, it’s worth asking how it will get a handle on the crime problem. Read more of this post

1 in 5 Malaysians has a mental health problem, says Deputy Health Minister

1 in 5 Malaysians has a mental health problem, says Deputy Health Minister

KUALA LUMPUR — About 20 per cent of Malaysia’s total populations has a mental health problem, the country’s Deputy Health Minister said today (July 23).

BY –

1 HOUR 35 MIN AGO

KUALA LUMPUR — About 20 per cent of Malaysia’s total populations has a mental health problem, the country’s Deputy Health Minister said today (July 23). Dr Hilmi Yahaya, speaking in Parliament during a question-and-answer session, gave his estimation of the reach of problems like depression, stress and anxiety in the country, Malaysia’s official news agency Bernama reported. He added that the health ministry has made available screening facilities at 806 health clinics, 40 hospitals and four mental hospitals nationwide to help detect these problems. “There are 224 psychiatric specialists and 100 clinical psychiatric specialists nationwide,” Dr Hilmi said. He was responding to a senator’s question on what measures the government is taking to raise awareness of problems such as stress. Dr Hilmi also said that one per cent of the population suffers from more serious mental problems. AGENCIES

Rate-Cut Ammo Running Low Poses RBA Threat as China Risks Mount

Rate-Cut Ammo Running Low Poses RBA Threat as China Risks Mount

Australia entered its last recession with the benchmark interest rate at 12 percent. Now, as a once-in-a-century mining-investment boom wanes, the central bank finds itself with little conventional ammunition.

The Reserve Bank of Australia’s overnight cash rate, at a record-low 2.75 percent, is at a level it took the Federal Reserve and Bank of England just months to exhaust before they turned to quantitative easing. While economists see just a 12 percent chance of an Australian contraction by mid-2014, a pronounced downturn would pose unprecedented challenges. Read more of this post

Why Buffett Bailed on India

Why Buffett Bailed on India

India has long been viewed as a value investor’s dream: rapid growth, 1.2 billion people pining for a taste of globalization, and underdeveloped industries ripe for turnarounds. So it surprised few when the genre’s guru, Warren Buffett, placed a bet on the world’s ninth-biggest economy.

What did come as a surprise, though, was last week’s decision by the billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to give up on India’s insurance market after just two years. Adding to the drama, the withdrawal came the same week India unveiled plans to open the economy as never before to foreign-direct investment. Read more of this post

The ’India Story’ Is a Fantasy Written in New Jersey

The ’India Story’ Is a Fantasy Written in New Jersey

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is visiting India this week to, among other things, drum up fresh business for American companies. The magnitude of his task can be judged by the fact that a few days before his arrival, steelmakers Posco and ArcelorMittal (MT) SA canceled huge projects in India because of land disputes. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) has shown signs of pulling out as well, despite new laws supposedly allowing foreign ownership in the retail sector. The Indian government’s latest desperate attempt to reverse the flight of foreign investment and the fall of the rupee — by opening up telecommunications to 100 percent foreign ownership — doesn’t look any more likely to change minds. Read more of this post

China’s Zhejiang banks hacking away at mounting non-performing loans

Zhejiang banks hacking away at mounting non-performing loans

Staff Reporter

2013-07-23

Zhejiang, which has the highest non-performing loans and NPL ratio of any province in China, hopes to take a softer approach to cutting its ratio than it did 10 years ago. Whether it can be successful depends on whether the Chinese economy can smoothly pop its market bubbles, the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekly reports.

As of the end of 2012, Zhejiang banks had combined outstanding NPLs at 79 billion yuan (US$12.8 billion), accounting for 16% of the country’s total, statistics showed. In Zhejiang and the southeastern coastal region, asset preservation and cutting NPLs have become major initiatives of the banks in the region. Read more of this post