Bamboo Innovator

E-cigarettes: Lighting Up in France and Beyond

E-cigarettes: Lighting Up in France and Beyond

Dec 20, 2013 Health Economics Europe

The popularity of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) has exploded internationally, particularly in France, where smoking has long been part of the social fabric and culture. Both longtime and new smokers have gravitated toward this innovative device-drug combination, which costs significantly less than traditional cigarettes and benefits from a smokeless and odorless technology. Many claim that e-cigarettes’ noncarcinogenic liquid-vapor-based formula demonstrates a health profile superior to that of conventional cigarettes. Read more of this post

Big Bottleneck: A Weak Transportation Network Is Hurting Brazil’s Once-hot Economy

Big Bottleneck: A Weak Transportation Network Is Hurting Brazil’s Once-hot Economy

Dec 20, 2013 Law and Public Policy Latin America

On the highway that leads to Brazil’s Port of Santos,Latin America’s largest port, a line of trucks sits on the shoulder. The motorists set up lawn chairs at the side of the road, re-entering their trucks every few hours to inch forward in the line. They may spend a week or more waiting to unload their cargo in the port. In April 2013, Bloomberg reported that this line of trucks, most of which were carrying Brazil’s record soybean crop, quadrupled from its normal length of around five miles to more than 20 miles. Read more of this post

Starting a Company in Brazil: Not for the Faint of Heart

Starting a Company in Brazil: Not for the Faint of Heart

Dec 20, 2013 Latin America

In the winter of 2011, Davis Smith was cruising at 35,000 feet. His spirits should have been even higher. He had just obtained US$23 million in funding to secure the first stage of growth for his promising new start-up in Brazil, baby.com.br. As with any start-up, there would be a multitude of challenges to overcome before his fledgling company could fulfill its sky-high potential. However, instead of celebrating his recent victories and focusing on building his company, Smith was on a flight back to the U.S. to resolve Brazilian work-visa issues that had arisen during the final stages of putting everything in order. Read more of this post

Jim Chanos, bad news bear, urges market prudence

Jim Chanos, bad news bear, urges market prudence

December 9, 2013 @ 12:58 pm

By Jennifer Ablan

 ^[1]Prominent short-seller Jim Chanos is probably one of the last true “bad news bears” you will find on Wall Street these days, save for Jim Grant and Nouriel Roubini. Almost everywhere you turn, money managers still are bullish on U.S. equities going into 2014 even after the Standard & Poor’s 500’s 27 percent returns year-to-date and the Nasdaq is back to levels not seen since the height of the dot-com bubble in 1999. Read more of this post

The Illustrated Guide To 4 Years Of Currency Wars

The Illustrated Guide To 4 Years Of Currency Wars

Tyler Durden on 12/20/2013 17:03 -0500

While central bank intervention in the foreign exchange markets is nothing new, the last 4 years have seen unprecedented use of direct and indirect (jawboning) manipulation of exchange rates. As Goldman Sachs notes non-cooperative exchange-rate mechanics (i.e. currency wars) remains the new normal dynamic in world markets; and while some of the moves are generally consistent with cyclical (or structural conditions), efforts by central banks to ‘manage’ developed market rates in a low volatility range may come under further pressure with the Fed “tapering” as emerging market nations face money flow crises.

The “Big Four” accountants in Britain: When bean counting pays off

The “Big Four” accountants in Britain

When bean counting pays off

Dec 18th 2013, 12:25 by C.R.

LAST December, the outlook seemed grim for the “Big Four” accountancy firms in Britain. Three out of the four, Ernst & Young, PwC and KPMG, announced they had cut pay for their British equity partners. KPMG was particularly badly hit—announcing job cuts at all pay levels. Neither had Deloitte, the fourth, completely escaped the slowdown in the audit and advisory business. The previous year it was forced to cut partner pay as well.   Read more of this post

Ties that bind: The market for smart people is clogged up by all manner of dubious legal restrictions

Ties that bind: The market for smart people is clogged up by all manner of dubious legal restrictions

Dec 14th 2013 | From the print edition

THE business press is full of heartwarming stories about the “talent wars”. It reports that eBay pays its lead technologist twice as much as its chief executive. Apple recently slipped a high-flyer $8m to prevent him from jumping ship. Tech firms regularly spend lavishly on startups in order to “acqui-hire” their employees. They also compete furiously to provide workers with the best food and the most fashionable yoga instructors. Read more of this post

China Also Tapers, Forced To Promptly Bail Out Money Markets

China Also Tapers, Forced To Promptly Bail Out Money Markets

Tyler Durden on 12/19/2013 10:56 -0500

Overnight we warned that short-to-medium-term money market rates had spiked to record highs (1-Year rate-swaps over 5.06%) and that the PBOC was bravely standing firm on its (lack of) liquidity injections… that didn’t last long. Despite the PBOC’s veiled ongoing attempts to ‘taper’ its own liquidity provisions, as MNI noted, echoes of the June liquidity crunch were heard again in the Chinese money market Thursday and authorities moved to extend trading amid a surge in rates which quiet injections of funding by the People’s Bank of China failed to stem. Jitters in the Chinese interbank market since the PBOC tried to force deleveraging in June highlights the nervousness of an overstretched banking system that is reliant on the central bank’s largesse to ensure stable operations.  Read more of this post

Asia Investment Banking Fees Fall to Lowest Since 2008

Asia Investment Banking Fees Fall to Lowest Since 2008

Slump Bucks Global Trend of Rising Revenues for Investment Banks

ENDA CURRAN

Dec. 19, 2013 10:01 a.m. ET

HONG KONG—Investment banking in Asia has suffered its worst year since 2008, even as economic growth in the region continues to outstrip much of the developed world. Read more of this post

“All the IPOs are up, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a donkey or a dog”; China Grave Builder Leads Surge in IPO Stocks on Fed Support

China Grave Builder Leads Surge in IPO Stocks on Fed Support

Fu Shou Yuan International Group Ltd., a Chinese developer of graveyards, soared on its Hong Kong trading debut as optimism the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates near record lows stoked demand for new equity. Read more of this post

China’s Guangdong Starts World’s Second-Biggest Carbon Exchange

China’s Guangdong Starts World’s Second-Biggest Carbon Exchange

China’s southern province of Guangdong began trading permits on the world’s second-biggest emissions-trading system at the highest price in the nation.

Seven trades covering 120,029 metric tons of carbon emissions were completed at 60 yuan ($9.90) to 61 yuan a ton on the first day at the China Emissions Exchange, it said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. Read more of this post

China Unicom Tops Slump as Alibaba Entrance Stokes Competition

Unicom Tops Slump as Alibaba Entrance Stokes Competition

Chinese stocks traded in New York fell the most in a week, led by telecommunications operators, after Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said it’s seeking to offer phone services. Read more of this post

Chinese Interest Rates Are Spiking Again, And Jim Chanos Thinks We’re Witnessing A ‘Bit Of A Banking Crisis’

Chinese Interest Rates Are Spiking Again, And Jim Chanos Thinks We’re Witnessing A ‘Bit Of A Banking Crisis’

MAMTA BADKAR

DEC. 20, 2013, 1:02 AM 1,291 2

While the Fed’s decision to taper back its monthly asset purchase program to $75 billion has received a lot of attention, many have overlooked the news out of China. The seven-day repurchase rate was up to a six-month high of 7.6% in Shanghai on Friday. It closed at 7.06% on Thursday. The People’s Bank of China [PBoC] injected money through short-term liquidity operations on Thursday. Read more of this post

How Do You Say Tesla in Chinese? Nobody Knows; One possibility is 拓速乐,with its positive connotations of “expanded speed and happiness.”

Dec 19, 2013

How Do You Say Tesla in Chinese? Nobody Knows

Electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc.TSLA -4.91%’s new Chinese-language website has been creating buzz online—but not because of the merchandise. The recently launched site has the same look and feel as the company’sAmerican site, apart perhaps from the preponderance of red cars. The color is auspicious in China. Read more of this post

How I Got Hooked on E-Cigs Hints at $2.3 Trillion Market

How I Got Hooked on E-Cigs Hints at $2.3 Trillion Market

The smokiest journalist hangout in Berlin had gone smoke-free. So had I, sort of.

I stood hunched on the sidewalk, out in the cold, blowing puffs of propylene glycol, the billowy stuff in theatrical special-effect smoke that is also a key ingredient in electronic cigarettes. Read more of this post

Japan Inc. Hoards Record Cash as Abe Targets Wage Gains

Japan Inc. Hoards Record Cash as Abe Targets Wage Gains

Japanese companies’ cash holdings rose to a record last quarter, highlighting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s struggle to spur the investment and wage increases needed to end a 15-year deflationary malaise. Read more of this post

Infosys Loses Eighth Top Executive Since Founder Murthy Returns

Infosys Loses Eighth Top Executive Since Founder Murthy Returns

V. Balakrishnan resigned from the board of Infosys Ltd. (INFO), the eighth top official to leave the Indian software maker since founder N.R. Narayana Murthy returned to run the company in June. Read more of this post

Bad bank loans behind much of India’s corporate woes; Banks must take steps to address shoddy lending practices

December 19, 2013 8:29 am

Bad bank loans behind much of India’s corporate woes

By Henny Sender

Banks must take steps to address shoddy lending practices

In recent months, indebted Indian conglomerate Jaiprakash Associates sold a cement plant in Gujarat to the UltraTech subsidiary of one of the Birla group companies. Highly levered GMR Infrastructure has sold its power plant in Singapore, a stake in an African mining venture and an expressway subsidiary with more sales to come. The deep pockets of Blackstone’s real estate arm in India are being put to work as that firm is in the process of buying and bidding for projects from cash-strapped developers such as DLF and Unitech. Read more of this post

Koreans Crowd Tokyo as Won Gains 42% Vs Yen: Currencies

Koreans Crowd Tokyo as Won Gains 42% Vs Yen: Currencies

Less than three months after a visit to Tokyo, South Korean housewife Chang Sun Ja is already planning her next Japanese trip to take advantage of the won’s surge to a five-year high against the yen. Read more of this post

Thai Billionaire’s Singapore Revamp Wins Over Market

Thai Billionaire’s Singapore Revamp Wins Over Market

Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, Thailand’s richest man, is getting support in the bond market for his plan to reorganize Fraser & Neave Ltd., a maker of beverages, books and luxury condos. Read more of this post