Bamboo Innovator

‘Purple ocean’ strategy works for big Korean retailers; Some develop private brands or introduce unique products.

‘Purple ocean’ strategy works for big retailers

Some develop private brands or introduce unique products.

BY MOON BYUNG-JOO [angie@joongang.co.kr]

Feb 10,2014

Park Bo-kyung, a 39-year-old homemaker, sighed deeply when she recently received the family’s electricity bill for December. It was 15,500 won ($14.40) higher than the previous month’s 46,760 won bill. She was convinced the bigger bill was a result of the government’s electricity rate hike that came into effect on Nov. 21. Read more of this post

Tan Sri Andrew Sheng: China’s credit boom raises flags on risk levels

China’s credit boom raises flags on risk levels

BY ANDREW SHENG AND XIAO GENG

FEB 9, 2014

Credit in China is growing at a breakneck pace, having increased from 125 percent of GDP in 2008 to 215 percent in 2012. Local-government debt has soared by 70 percent since 2009, reaching almost $3 trillion last June. This is raising serious concerns about the level of risk in China’s financial system. Read more of this post

Half of bankrupt sole proprietors in S. Korea in the 50s

Half of bankrupt sole proprietors in S. Korea in the 50s

2014.02.10 16:13:59

Nearly one out of two self-employed in South Korea who went bankrupt last year was in their 50s, data showed.
This largely came as a growing number of baby boomers (born from 1955 to 1963) start their business after retirement, but most of them went bankruptcy due to lack of preparation. This means more people are leading a gloomy life over the remaining years after establishing a business.  Read more of this post

KT ENS may file for bankruptcy if it fails to settle damages from a large-scale loan fraud committed by one of its workers in collusion with its subcontractors

2014-02-09 16:26

Loan scam too big for KT affiliate

By Kim Rahn
KT ENS may file for bankruptcy if it fails to settle damages from a large-scale loan fraud committed by one of its workers in collusion with its subcontractors.
With loans from banks and savings banks being estimated at 300 billion won ($279 million), the company with 57 billion won paid-in capital may not be able to repay the money if courts find it wholly responsible for the fraud. Read more of this post

Massive open online forces: The rise of online instruction will upend the economics of higher education

Massive open online forces: The rise of online instruction will upend the economics of higher education

Feb 8th 2014 | From the print edition

UNIVERSITIES have not changed much since students first gathered in Oxford and Bologna in the 11th century. Teaching has been constrained by technology. Until recently a student needed to be in a lecture hall to hear the professor or around a table to debate with fellow students. Innovation is eliminating those constraints, however, and bringing sweeping change to higher education. Read more of this post

Share options: The law of unintended consequences; When bosses take the short view

Share options: The law of unintended consequences; When bosses take the short view

Feb 8th 2014 | From the print edition

EXECUTIVE share options were created in an attempt to align the interests ofmanagers and shareholders. In the 1970s and 1980s many investors had feared that executives were more interested in empire-building (in order to justify higher salaries and lavish expenses) than in generating returns for shareholders. Granting options was supposed to allow executives to benefit alongside investors from rises in the share price. Read more of this post

Fees for hedge funds and private equity: Down to 1.4 and 17; The cost of investing in alternative assets is falling-slowly

Fees for hedge funds and private equity: Down to 1.4 and 17; The cost of investing in alternative assets is falling—slowly

Feb 8th 2014 | From the print edition

PHOENICIAN merchants kept a fifth of the profits generated from their seafaring adventures and paid out the rest to their financiers. So claimed Alfred Winslow Jones, the manager of the first modern hedge fund, who in the 1950s used the (perhaps apocryphal) precedent to finagle a 20% cut from his backers. Other managers subsequently added a 2% annual charge on the assets they invested to arrive at the “2 and 20” formula that became the standard for both hedge funds and private equity. Investors, who have long suspected that this arrangement enriches managers faster than their clients, are belatedly fighting back. They have succeeded in amending the formula to something more like “1.4 and 17”, at least for newcomers to the business (see chart). Read more of this post

Japan’s trading houses look to new markets

February 10, 2014 3:04 am

Japan’s trading houses look to new markets

By Ben McLannahan in Tokyo

In the coastal town of Kushimoto, on the southern-most tip of Japan’s main island of Honshu, Mitsubishi Corp is rearing tuna.

The Tokyo-based company used to buy every bluefin it sold, fished out of the Atlantic or Mediterranean or closer to home. But last August it started selling its own, raised from juveniles artificially hatched three or four years earlier. Read more of this post

Why We Can’t Afford to Not Care About Politics

Why We Can’t Afford to Not Care About Politics

By Josua Gantan

 on 6:32 pm February 9, 2014.
Bad leaders are elected by good citizens who don’t vote. Sixteen years after the reformation in 1998, political apathy remains a threat to Indonesia’s democracy. The number of non-voters is on the rise. In 2004, the number of absent voters was at 23.3 percent, during the 2009 presidential election it increased to 39 percent. When probed deeper, disenchantment with the government underlies the political apathy that prevails among the people. Yet, there are strong reasons why Indonesians need to be politically engaged despite all the reasons to think otherwise. Read more of this post

Chinese credit crackdown felt overseas

February 9, 2014 7:21 pm

Chinese credit crackdown felt overseas

By Henny Sender in New York

China’s vast development bank has begun asking some international clients to postpone drawing down previously committed credit lines, in moves that highlight how strains on the country’s financial system are reverberating abroad. Read more of this post

China to Create Unified Pension System

China to Create Unified Pension System

Plan Looks to Provide More Central Government Funding to Poorer Regions

LIYAN QI

Updated Feb. 7, 2014 10:07 a.m. ET

BEIJING—China pledged Friday to create a unified pension system to boost consumption and encourage labor mobility, a step toward empowering its vast rural poor.

China’s State Council, or cabinet, said it planned to create a unified pension system for residents in both rural and urban areas. Funding would come from contributions from individuals, the central government, local governments and social institutions, the State Council said on the central government’s website. Read more of this post

Move Over, Rickshaw: Cambodia Launches Public Buses

Move Over, Rickshaw: Cambodia Launches Public Buses

By Suy Se

 on 2:17 pm February 9, 2014.

Phnom Penh. Motorcycles, cars, tuk-tuks and the humble rickshaw dominate its traffic-clogged roads, but now the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh is launching a new weapon in the fight against chronic congestion: its first public buses in over a decade. Read more of this post

New Regulations Leave Buyout Shops Out on Their Own

February 9, 2014, 6:06 p.m. ET

New Regulations Leave Buyout Shops Out on Their Own

By Ryan Dezember

Most private-equity firms have to raise funds by sending executives around the world to drum up interest from investors. For years, executives at Ridgemont Equity Partners never had to leave Charlotte, N.C., home to both the buyout firm and its lone backer: Bank of America Corp. Read more of this post

Let weak banks die, says eurozone super-regulator

February 9, 2014 7:00 pm

Let weak banks die, says eurozone super-regulator

By Claire Jones, Sam Fleming and Alice Ross in Frankfurt

The eurozone’s new chief banking regulator has warned that some of the region’s lenders have no future and should be allowed to die, heralding a far tougher approach to the supervision across the currency bloc. Read more of this post

George Soros picks up $5.5bn as Quantum Endowment fund soars

February 9, 2014 10:00 pm

George Soros picks up $5.5bn as Quantum Endowment fund soars

By James Mackintosh

George Soros’s Quantum Endowment fund had its second-best year ever in dollar terms in 2013, adding $5.5bn to the billionaire’s fortune and putting Quantum back in top place among the most successful hedge funds of all time. Read more of this post

Emerging markets need a lasting solution to cure their woes

Updated: Monday February 10, 2014 MYT 9:38:04 AM

Emerging markets need a lasting solution to cure their woes

BY YAP LENG KUEN

At the moment, it would appear that Asian central banks are picking up the bill to steel their economies in the face of capital outflows.

Indonesian and Indian authorities have improved their defences against rapid outflows, but their governments have failed to tackle supply bottlenecks and market rigidities that fuel inflation and limit room for policy manoeuvre, said Reuters, quoting economists. Read more of this post

Corporate America’s battle with activist investors is increasingly being fought across the deal table rather than the boardroom, according to new research.

February 9, 2014 6:59 pm

Activist investors force higher price takeovers

By Ed Hammond in New York

Corporate America’s battle with activist investors is increasingly being fought across the deal table rather than the boardroom, according to new research. Read more of this post

MAS-SGX measures: more can be done; Scope for improvement with regard to manipulation and disciplinary action

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 10, 2014

MAS-SGX measures: more can be done

Scope for improvement with regard to manipulation and disciplinary action

R SIVANITHY SIVAN@SPH.COM.SG

SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

Welcome proposals: The measures are consistent with SGX’s oft-stated preference for a disclosure-based, ‘buyer beware’ regime. – PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

THE moves proposed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Singapore Exchange(SGX) on Friday targeting speculative trading inpenny stocks are welcome since all are aimed at improving the quality of listings, transparency and levelling the playing field for small investors. Read more of this post

The Fed’s waning magic in the age of Yellen; With a forecast year of take-off in danger of faltering, the central bank has run out of ammunition

February 9, 2014 6:06 pm

The Fed’s waning magic in the age of Yellen

By Edward Luce

With a forecast year of take-off in danger of faltering, the central bank has run out of ammunition

Every chairman of the US Federal Reserve seems to get hit by a crisis in their first year. For Paul Volcker in 1979 it was raging inflation. For Alan Greenspan it was the 1987 “Black Monday” meltdown. And for Ben Bernanke in 2006 it was the bursting of the US housing bubble. Whatever might blindside Janet Yellen, she starts off with a problem that affected none of her predecessors: the Fed has run out of ammunition. Moreover the one remaining weapon the Fed thinks it has – the hocus-pocus of “forward guidance” – is a gun that fires blanks. Read more of this post

Europe Stunned, Angry As Switzerland Votes To Curb Immigration

Europe Stunned, Angry As Switzerland Votes To Curb Immigration

Tyler Durden on 02/09/2014 13:28 -0500

This wasn’t supposed to happen. At a time when the European Union, reeling from the ongoing near collapse of the Eurozone, has been preaching its key benefits – the removal of borders and the free transit of labor – moments ago Switzerland, with a tiny majority of 50.4%, voted in favor of new immigration curbs which requires the government to set an upper limit for foreigners, risking a backlash from the (utterly toothless) European Union. Read more of this post