Bamboo Innovator

Hello Kitty Embraced by Western Pop Stars Seeking Japan Sales

Hello Kitty Embraced by Western Pop Stars Seeking Japan Sales

By Brian Bremner and Mariko Yasu December 12, 2013

In late November, Lady Gaga showed up at the Tokyo TV studio of the Music Station program in a tricked out, cutie-pie outfit featuring a big cartoonish wig, pink bow, and anime-inspired eyes painted on her eyelids. As part of a marketing blitz for her new album Artpop, the star also did a photo shoot to promote a Lady Gaga-inspired Hello Kitty doll with long blond hair and a seashell bra.

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Jafco Sees Surge in IPO Gains on Japan’s Listing Boom

Jafco Sees Surge in IPO Gains on Japan’s Listing Boom

Japan’s world-beating stock rally is sending Jafco Co., the country’s biggest venture-capital firm, to the best gains on initial public offerings since the technology bubble at the turn of the century. Companies taken public from April to September gave Jafco an average return of 24 times its investment when they started trading, the biggest since 2000, according to Hiroaki Matsuda, a corporate officer at the firm. Start-ups it backs that will list shares in the second half of the fiscal year, from October through March, are likely to quadruple to about 16 from four in the first, he said. Read more of this post

Japan’s Top Voice: High, Polite and on the Phone; The annual All-Japan Phone-Answering Competition for office workers is a closely watched contest that some say reiterates the stereotype of women in clerical positions

December 14, 2013

Japan’s Top Voice: High, Polite and on the Phone

By HIROKO TABUCHI

SENDAI, Japan — The contestants roll their shoulders and lick their lips. The audience holds its breath. At the center of attention on stage at an expansive convention hall: a single telephone. Read more of this post

Rich Japanese Investors Shift Stock Before Tax Increase

Rich Japanese Investors Shift Stock Before Tax Increase

Wealthy investors in Japan are selling or transferring shares before the capital-gains tax doubles in two weeks, according to Mizuho Financial Group Inc., which has seen a surge in such transactions. Read more of this post

Samsung: Uneasy in the Lead; While the Korean industrial group dominates some electronics categories, its chairman, Lee Kun-hee, warns employees against complacency

December 14, 2013

Samsung: Uneasy in the Lead

By ERIC PFANNER and BRIAN X. CHEN

Lee Kun-hee, the man who built the most successful, most admired and most feared business in Asia — a $288 billion behemoth that is among the most profitable in the world — had a message for his employees this year: You must do better. Read more of this post

In Korea, mortgage-backed securities that triggered the global financial crisis in 2008 are being touted as a way of preventing defaults on household debt

Mortgage Debt Pushed as Crisis Remedy Not Disease: Korea Markets

In Korea, mortgage-backed securities that triggered the global financial crisis in 2008 are being touted as a way of preventing defaults on household debt.

Korea Housing Finance Corp., which provides mortgages to low- to middle-income families, issued 22.7 trillion won ($21.4 billion) of such debt this year, 12 percent more than in 2012 and the most since its establishment in 2004, spurred by government efforts to promote fixed-rate, long-term home loans. Investors are also keen on the notes because they pay an average yield 30 basis points higher than government debt. Read more of this post

Money Managers Use Weaker Yen to Fund Asian Bets

Dec 18, 2013

Money Managers Use Weaker Yen to Fund Asian Bets

By Fiona Law

The weakening Japanese yen is gaining allure among top money managers as the funding currency of choice for investing in Asian assets. Shorter-term Asian bonds are among their investment picks, because they are less vulnerable to a rise in interest rates that would result as the U.S. Federal Reserve scales back its easy money policy. In Asia, bonds denominated in Korean won and Chinese yuan are favored because of the countries’ strong domestic economies and firmer currencies. Read more of this post

Why Abenomics is bound to disappoint Japan

Why Abenomics is bound to disappoint Japan

Martin Wolf

Last Updated: Tuesday, December 17, 2013, 21:56

The predominant concern of Shinzo Abe

, Japan’s prime minister, is with the decline of his country’s economy relative to China’s. This explains “Abenomics”, which is aimed at economic revitalisation. Can it succeed? Yes – but only in part. It should be possible to end deflation. But a big upsurge in economic growth is unlikely. Read more of this post

Abenomics scorecard: ‘A’ for early initiative, ‘C’ for follow-through

Abenomics scorecard: ‘A’ for early initiative, ‘C’ for follow-through

Sun, Dec 15 2013

By Tomasz Janowski and Yoko Kubota

TOKYO/DAITO, Japan, Dec 16 (Reuters) – One year into Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic revival plan the message from Japan’s industrial heartland and economists is clear: he has yet to act on his pledge to stage the nation’s comeback as a global economic dynamo. Read more of this post

Abe labor reforms may boost Japan’s ‘disposable’ workers, crimp wages

Abe labor reforms may boost Japan’s ‘disposable’ workers, crimp wages

4:21pm EST

By Tetsushi Kajimoto

TOKYO (Reuters) – Yumiko Kajiwara is a cheerful 46-year-old who has had several part-time jobs, including sorting clothes, cosmetics and cellphone parts at a Tokyo warehouse. She also represents a challenge to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Read more of this post

Jakarta’s Traffic Jams Drive Higher Earnings at Minimarts

Jakarta’s Traffic Jams Drive Higher Earnings at Minimarts

Traffic in Jakarta has gotten so bad that Rooslain Wiharyanti waits two hours after work for the jams to subside before heading home. She spends most of that time at PT Modern Internasional (MDRN)’s 7-Eleven minimarts. Read more of this post

The Route Of An Onion Shows Why India Needs Walmart, Carrefour, And Tesco

The Route Of An Onion Shows Why India Needs Walmart, Carrefour, And Tesco

THE ECONOMIST1DEC 14, 2013, 07.52 AM

NITIN JAIN is the big man in Lasalgaon, a dusty town a day’s drive from Mumbai that boasts it has Asia’s biggest onion market. With a trim moustache and a smartphone stuck to his ear he struts past a thousand-odd tractors and trucks laden with red onions. Farmers hurl armfuls at his feet to prove their quality. A gaggle of auctioneers, rival traders and scribes follow him, squabbling and yanking each other’s hair. Asked why onion prices have risen so much, Mr Jain relays the question to the market. “Why?” he bellows. His entourage laughs. He says that the price of India’s favourite vegetable is a mystery that no calculation can explain.

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Tesco Partners With Tata to Enter Supermarket Business in India

Tesco Partners With Tata to Enter Supermarket Business in India

Tesco Plc (TSCO), the U.K.’s largest supermarket company, plans to become the first global chain to enter India since the government allowed foreign companies to invest in multi-brand retail more than a year ago. Tesco is likely to invest about $110 million to gain a 50 percent stake in Trent Hypermarket Ltd. (TRENT), a unit of Tata Group that runs Star Bazaar supermarkets, according to an exchange filing and a statement from commerce minister Anand Sharma. Read more of this post

Staying Away from Indian Bonds; Foreigners Are Avoiding India’s Inflation-Scarred Bond Market. Interest Rate Increases Are In Order

Staying Away from Indian Bonds

Foreigners Are Avoiding India’s Inflation-Scarred Bond Market. Interest Rate Increases Are In Order.

ABHEEK BHATTACHARYA

Dec. 17, 2013 12:25 a.m. ET

Raghuram Rajan hasn’t impressed the foreigners in India’s bond market. The chief of the Reserve Bank of India has won kudos for raising interest rates twice since he came to office in September. But foreign bond investors remain on the sidelines. Their concerns are warranted considering data out Monday that showed wholesale prices inching to a 14-month high. Consumer prices were up 11% from a year earlier in November. Investors want higher rates when the RBI meets Wednesday—or they won’t help with India’s imbalances. Read more of this post

Shah Ordered to Cut Stake in India’s Biggest Commodity Exchange MCX; Financial Technologies doesn’t meet the “fit and proper person” criteria to hold a stake of 2 percent or more in MCX

Shah Ordered to Cut Stake in India’s Biggest Commodity Exchange

Financial Technologies (India) Ltd. (FTECH), the founder of the Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd., will need to trim its holding in the nation’s biggest bourse after the regulator said it was unfit to own a controlling stake. Read more of this post

Indian politics: A stunning debut for a left-leaning, anti-graft party

Indian politics: A stunning debut for a left-leaning, anti-graft party

Dec 14th 2013 | DELHI | From the print edition

TAKE Arvind Kejriwal’s talk of “revolution” seriously. Back in June, crammed with this correspondent into a tiny Suzuki car in east Delhi, he predicted electoral triumph for his Aam Aadmi (“common man”) anti-graft volunteers. It sounded fanciful at the time. The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is just a few months old. Even as recently as late November Delhi’s chief minister for the past 15 years, Sheila Dikshit, was roundly dismissing Mr Kejriwal as an irrelevance. Read more of this post

India central bank invites buyout groups to clean up bad debts; Opening salvo in war against India’s indebted industrial groups

December 17, 2013 2:39 pm

India central bank invites buyout groups to clean up bad debts

By James Crabtree

Raghuram Rajan, India’s central bank governor, has fired the opening salvo in a battle against the country’s heavily indebted industrial tycoons, calling for private equity groups such as KKR and Blackstone to take over distressed companies. Read more of this post

India approves historic anti-corruption law

India approves historic anti-corruption law

Wednesday, December 18, 2013 – 18:23

AFP

NEW DELHI – India’s parliament Wednesday passed legislation to create a powerful anti-graft watchdog following a mass anti-corruption movement that swept the country in 2011 and spurred politicians into action. Read more of this post

Christie’s takes maiden Indian art auction to Mumbai

December 16, 2013 8:57 am

Christie’s takes maiden Indian art auction to Mumbai

By Amy Kazmin in New Delhi

Kiran Nadar, the wife of IT billionaire Shiv Nadar, started buying Indian art decades ago to fill her New Delhi home and never stopped – collecting more than 1,000 modern and contemporary works. Read more of this post

Accelerating inflation squeezes India’s middle class

December 18, 2013 9:39 am

Accelerating inflation squeezes India’s middle class

By Amy Kazmin in Ghaziabad, India

Standing on the balcony of his two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of New Delhi,Indian real estate broker Rakesh Kumar Chawla, 40, is reminded every day of his trajectory from impoverished roots at the bottom of India’s caste hierarchy.

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Hong Kong-based retailer of second-hand luxury bags Milan Station Expects to Post ‘Significant’ FY Net Loss

Milan Station Expects to Post ‘Significant’ FY Net Loss

Milan Station Holdings Ltd. (1150), a Hong Kong-based retailer of second-hand luxury bags, said it expects to record a “significant” loss for this year amid a slowing market and weaker consumer sentiment. Read more of this post