Bad loan writedowns soar at China banks; Financial strains mount as $9.5bn removed from balance sheets

Last updated: March 30, 2014 7:59 pm

Bad loan writedowns soar at China banks

By Simon Rabinovitch in Shanghai

China’s biggest banks more than doubled the level of bad loans they wrote off last year, in a sign that financial strains are mounting as growth in the world’s second-largest economy slows. Read more of this post

Necessary changes for success in AEC; “How can leaders transform their companies’ cultures so they succeed at the next level, in an increasingly competitive environment?”

Necessary changes for success in AEC

The Nation March 29, 2014 1:00 am

“How can leaders transform their companies’ cultures so they succeed at the next level, in an increasingly competitive environment?” That was the first question asked of 25 senior executives at a recent workshop offered by 1-2-Win, ENPEO, and Vivo Coaching. Read more of this post

China’s largest private shipbuilder Rongsheng loss deepens, in talks with banks

China Rongsheng loss deepens, shipbuilder in talks with banks

9:30pm EDT

(Adds details, quotes)

HONG KONG, March 31 (Reuters) – China Rongsheng Heavy Industries Group, the country’s largest private shipbuilder, posted a second straight annual loss on Monday due to shrinking orders and said it was in talks with 10 Chinese banks about the repayment of loans. Read more of this post

Langkawi set to lure the rich and famous with a mixed development of RM4bil

Published: Monday March 31, 2014 MYT 12:00:00 AM
Updated: Monday March 31, 2014 MYT 5:17:28 AM

Langkawi set to lure the rich and famous with a mixed development of RM4bil

BY TAN SIN CHOW

Shaharul Farez (left) briefing Albukhary Group chairman Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Albukhar y and Najib on the RM4bil GDV Perdana Quay Masterplan. Read more of this post

China seizes US$14.5bil assets from Zhou’s family, associates

Updated: Monday March 31, 2014 MYT 8:08:34 AM

China seizes US$14.5bil assets from Zhou’s family, associates

BEIJING: Chinese authorities have seized assets worth at least 90 billion yuan (US$14.5bil) from family members and associates of retired domestic security tsarZhou Yongkang, who is at the centre of China’s biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades, two sources said. Read more of this post

Credit markets open to Argentina for first time in years: ministry

Credit markets open to Argentina for first time in years: ministry

7:34pm EDT

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina has been approached by financial institutions offering it loans at favorable rates, the economy ministry said on Sunday, marking a tentative reopening of international credit markets for the first time in over a decade. Read more of this post

Malaysia’s first-ever animation theme park to open in 2015

Malaysia’s first-ever animation theme park to open in 2015

Monday, March 31, 2014 – 09:17

Ivan Loh

The Star/Asia News Network

IPOH – Malaysia’s first ever animation theme park is set to open its doors to the public by the end of 2015. Read more of this post

What Europe Can Learn From the U.S. Bank Crisis; Stress tests will not be credible until the European Stability Mechanism can directly recapitalize banks

What Europe Can Learn From the U.S. Bank Crisis

Stress tests will not be credible until the European Stability Mechanism can directly recapitalize banks.

BENN STEIL And DINAH WALKER

Against a backdrop of stagnant euro-zone economic output and declining inflation, expected to fall below 0.6% for this month, European Central Bank officials signaled on March 25 that they were willing to take far more aggressive action to drive down borrowing rates for private business. That includes negative rates on deposits at the ECB—meaning banks would be charged for keeping reserves there—which would, in theory, encourage banks to lend funds currently parked at the central bank. Read more of this post

Up to RMB5tn of loans to become due for repayment this year

Up to RMB5tn of loans to become due for repayment this year

Staff Reporter

2014-03-29

China will see between 4 trillion and 5 trillion yuan (US$645 billion-$805 billion) worth of trust products coming due this year, and nearly 300 billion yuan (US$48.3 billion) of corporate bonds facing repayment, raising the curtain for possible defaults in the financial market, Beijing’s Economic Information Daily reports. Read more of this post

Bitcoin trading accounts banned in China: report

Bitcoin trading accounts banned in China: report

Staff Reporter

2014-03-29

The People’s Bank of China, the nation’s central bank, has ordered banks and third-party payment companies to close all bitcoin trading accounts at more than 15 exchanges across the country, Shanghai-based China Business News reports. Read more of this post

Cheap graves prove unpopular with Chinese living

Cheap graves prove unpopular with Chinese living

2014-03-29

Chinese people are grappling with the mounting prices of grave sites, but at the same time, they have shown little interest in low-priced burial places for their relatives. Read more of this post

How to Harm Investors; Proposed crowdfunding rules by the Securities and Exchange Commission need to be thoroughly reworked

How to Harm Investors

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMARCH 29, 2014

Before Facebook paid $2 billion last week to buy Oculus VR, a virtual reality headset maker, 9,500 people donated $2.4 million via Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website, to get Oculus off the ground. Those early donors got thank-you notes, T-shirts or prototype headsets, but not a piece of the company. Donations through Kickstarter are just that, donations, not investments. Read more of this post

How Businesses Use Your SATs; “Today the SAT is actually too easy, and that’s why Google doesn’t see a correlation. Every single person they get through the door is a super-high scorer.”

How Businesses Use Your SATs

By SHAILA DEWANMARCH 29, 2014

THE news about the SAT has been confusing lately. On one hand, so many colleges and universities have opted not to require it that the College Board, which administers the SAT, has announced a top-to-bottom revamp because the test is out of step with today’s academic expectations. On the other hand, many employers are still asking job applicants for their test scores, even if they are years out of date. Read more of this post

The new ‘silk road’, a rail link from China’s factories to Europe

The new ‘silk road’, a rail link from China’s factories to Europe

POSTED: 30 Mar 2014 10:30
One of the world’s longest railways — a “modern-day silk road” — covers some 11,000 kilometres (7,000 miles) en route from the Chinesee megacity of Chongqing to Duisburg, a key commercial hub in western Germany. Read more of this post

When it comes to client portfolios, bigger may not be better

When it comes to client portfolios, bigger may not be better

Fri, Mar 28 2014

By Ed McCarthy

(Reuters) – Wealth managers routinely specify minimum sizes for new accounts, but far fewer advisers set maximums. Maybe they think “the bigger the better,” but that is not necessarily true. Read more of this post

Mt. Gox faced questions on handling client cash long before crisis

Mt. Gox faced questions on handling client cash long before crisis

Sat, Mar 29 2014

By Sophie Knight and Nathan Layne

TOKYO (Reuters) – Two years before Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy, a half dozen employees at the Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange challenged CEO Mark Karpeles over whether client money was being used to cover costs, according to three people who participated in the discussion. Read more of this post

If Modi wins election, neighbours can expect a more muscular India and get tougher on territorial disputes with China and in its old rivalry with Pakistan

If Modi wins election, neighbours can expect a more muscular India

9:01pm EDT

By Sanjeev Miglani

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India will get tougher on territorial disputes with China and in its old rivalry with Pakistan if opposition leader Narendra Modi becomes the prime minister in May after a general election, two of his aides said. Read more of this post

Japanese women and work: Holding back half the nation; Women’s lowly status in the Japanese workplace has barely improved in decades, and the country suffers as a result. Shinzo Abe would like to change that

Japanese women and work: Holding back half the nation; Women’s lowly status in the Japanese workplace has barely improved in decades, and the country suffers as a result. Shinzo Abe would like to change that

Mar 29th 2014 | TOKYO | From the print edition

   Read more of this post

Japan’s consumption tax: The big squeeze; A tax goes up while recovery remains fragile

Japan’s consumption tax: The big squeeze; A tax goes up while recovery remains fragile

Mar 29th 2014 | TOKYO | From the print edition

AS IN the rest of Japan, shopkeepers on Jizo-dori, the main street of Sugamo in north Tokyo, are nervously awaiting the effect of an imminent rise in the country’s consumption (ie, sales) tax, from 5% to 8% on April 1st. Keiji Kudo, the president of Maruji, a retail chain, has been devising ways to stave off a drop in sales of the shop’s most popular range, the red underwear which elderly customers buy for the colour’s supposedly health-boosting properties. Last week Mr Kudo began selling vouchers costing ¥2,700 ($26), which from April 1st may be exchanged for ¥3,000-worth of goods. It is the trick of a seasoned retailer, but Mr Kudo complains it will be harder to pull off next time. In October 2015 the tax is scheduled to go up again, to 10%. And Mr Kudo is under no illusion that will be the end of the rises. Read more of this post

On the antlers of a dilemma: The ambitions of Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s president, collide with popular suspicion of China

On the antlers of a dilemma: The ambitions of Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s president, collide with popular suspicion of China

Mar 29th 2014 | From the print edition

THE fresh-faced good looks have been lined and drawn by the cares of office. His immaculate English is forsaken for the dignity of immaculate Mandarin. Patient replies to questions come wearily, as if said many times before. Yet, six years into his presidency, Ma Ying-jeou’s hair remains as lush and jet-black as any Chinese Politburo member’s. And, speaking in the presidential palace in Taipei, he remains as unwilling as any leader in Beijing to admit to any fundamental flaws in strategy. Read more of this post

India’s election: The country’s south will do much to shape the coming national election

India’s election: The country’s south will do much to shape the coming national election

Mar 29th 2014 | BANGALORE AND HYDERABAD | From the print edition

LICK your lips: mangoes are coming into season in Andhra Pradesh, piled up on roadside fruit stalls. Hyderabadis claim theirs are the country’s sweetest. So too are the bribes paid by the state’s politicians to get people to vote. Since early March state police have seized more money from politicians aiming to buy votes—590m rupees ($10m)—than the rest of India combined. An excited local paper talks of “rampant cash movement”, reporting that police do not know where to store the bundles of notes, bags of gold and silver, cricket kits, saris and lorry-loads of booze. Read more of this post

Politics in Taiwan: Manning the trade barriers; Students occupy Taiwan’s legislature in protest against a free-trade pact with China

Politics in Taiwan: Manning the trade barriers; Students occupy Taiwan’s legislature in protest against a free-trade pact with China

Mar 29th 2014 | TAIPEI | From the print edition

TAIWAN’S Legislative Yuan, the island’s parliament, is used to rumbustious scenes. But the occupation since March 18th of its main chamber by protesting students is unprecedented in the country’s nearly two decades of full democracy. The demonstrators, whose actions took many by surprise, want the government to scrap an agreement with China that would allow freer trade in services across the Taiwan Strait. They have displayed a large cartoon of President Ma Ying-jeou in the debating hall, portraying him as a Chinese pawn. The president is at the nadir of his popularity, while China struggles to win over public opinion in Taiwan. Signs of public sympathy with the students are growing. Read more of this post

A handful of banks are caught short by the Fed’s annual stress test

A handful of banks are caught short by the Fed’s annual stress test

Mar 29th 2014 | New York | From the print edition

THE current mood in America’s financial markets is enthusiasm for companies that can receive investment now with the prospect of using it to make more in the future. The exceptions are banks, for whom the ability to return capital now rather than later is seen as a critical indicator of health. On March 26th the Federal Reserve disclosed the results of its “comprehensive capital analysis and review” determining which of the country’s 30 largest banks could increase their dividends and share buybacks. Read more of this post

Catholics in America: What crisis? Catholicism is thriving. This is good news for Democrats

Catholics in America: What crisis? Catholicism is thriving. This is good news for Democrats

Mar 29th 2014 | ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA | From the print edition

IN HIS eighth-floor office overlooking a snow-covered city, Father José Hoyos has just finished writing a book about faith and healing, his fourth on the topic. This one contains stories from cancer patients about the miraculous shrinking of tumours that had once seemed unstoppable. Father Hoyos (pictured) was born in Colombia but has been in Arlington, Virginia, for 25 years. On most Sundays he can be found in one of the diocese’s churches, healing by prayer or livening up services by getting worshippers to act out Bible stories. Read more of this post

100 years after 1914: Still in the grip of the Great War; The first world war was the defining event of the 20th century. Thousands of books have been written about every aspect of it. More are on the way

100 years after 1914: Still in the grip of the Great War

The first world war was the defining event of the 20th century. Thousands of books have been written about every aspect of it. More are on the way

Mar 29th 2014 | From the print edition

WITH four months to go before the centenary of the start of the first world war, the bombardment of new books from competing historians is growing heavier. Unlike many of the young men who went off to fight in 1914, nobody thinks it will all be over by Christmas. Read more of this post

Investing in higher education; Student numbers are growing worldwide, but profiting is not easy

March 28, 2014 6:18 pm

Intellectual property: investing in higher education

By Adam Palin

Benjamin Franklin once said that “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest”. The structural shifts in higher education in particular, which are seeing new ways of delivering tuition as well as accommodation and finance, present opportunities as well as potential pitfalls for investors. Read more of this post

Shrewd investors assess history’s threat to globalisation

Last updated: March 28, 2014 4:39 pm

Shrewd investors assess history’s threat to globalisation

By John Authers

History, it appears, has restarted. Back in 1990, after the Berlin Wall fell, Francis Fukuyama famously prognosticated that we were witnessing not just the end of the cold war but “the end of history as such”. Our ideological evolution, he said, was complete, with the universalisation of western liberal democracy as “the final form of human government”. Read more of this post