Bamboo Innovator

Investing in Koreas’ Kaesong: Who Dares?

Investing in Koreas’ Kaesong: Who Dares?

By Giles Hewitt on 1:25 pm November 6, 2013.

Seoul. For a foreign investor, there must be safer bets around than a project run by two countries that are technically at war, permanently at odds, and rarely on speaking terms. But only a few months after being threatened with a pre-emptive nuclear strike by North Korea, South Korea is pushing hard for overseas involvement in the joint industrial zone the two rivals operate in Kaesong. Read more of this post

Philippines a Symbol for Local Geothermal

Philippines a Symbol for Local Geothermal

By Dion Bisara on 8:15 am November 6, 2013.
Indonesia does not have to look very far to find the best way to tap geothermal energy, which potentially is located in protected, remote forests. As Indonesia struggles to find a balance between the development of geothermal resources, forest conservation, and development, the Philippines has shown how that can be achieved. The Philippines gets 14 percent of its electricity supply from geothermal power plants and the nation is the second-largest producer in the world of such energy by capacity, after the United States. Read more of this post

Chinese Students Flock to US Exams to Chase College Dreams

Chinese Students Flock to US Exams to Chase College Dreams

By Grace Li on 7:51 pm November 7, 2013.
Hong Kong. Chinese students form the largest overseas group at US universities and their numbers are rising as families spend a fortune in the quest for an American education to pry open the door to career and social success. For some parents, overseas education is also seen as a way to avoid China’s fiercely competitive national college entrance exam known as the “gaokao,” which is taken by millions of teenagers who see it as a make-or-break way to get ahead. Read more of this post

Crown Holdings: Big Profits in the Can

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2013

Crown Holdings: Big Profits in the Can

By TERESA RIVAS | MORE ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

Container powerhouse Crown Holdings boasts steady earnings, bountiful free cash flow, and increasing margins. The shares could climb 20%.

Seinfeld characters Kramer and Newman once famously attempted to drive a truck full of bottles and cans to Michigan for the state’s generous 10-cent rebate, but there’s an easier way to profit from packaging: Buy the manufacturer. Crown Holdings (ticker: CCK) is the world’s largest food and aerosol can producer and third-largest beverage can maker. Its containers range from extra virgin olive oil to Anti-Hero IPA to cake tins for the Royal Wedding. It boasts steady and growing earnings, an enviable geographic footprint, and after years of investing in new plants and more efficient operations, Crown looks poised to reap the benefits. Read more of this post

The world’s biggest fund is run by a computer; A Vanguard “passive” fund, which simply aims to match the performance of the US stock market, has become the largest fund in the world

The world’s biggest fund is run by a computer

A “passive” fund, which simply aims to match the performance of the US stock market, has become the largest fund in the world

By Kyle Caldwell

6:30AM GMT 07 Nov 2013

For the first time a “passive” fund or “tracker” has become the world’s largest fund. Since 2008 the title has belonged to respected bond investor Bill Gross, the head of Pimco. Gross’s Pimco Total Return fund has $247.9bn of assets, but has lost $37.5bn so far this year as a large number of investors have moved away from bonds in favour of shares. Investors have rushed for the exits amid concerns that an earlier than expected interest rate rise could hurt bonds. Read more of this post

Rakuten CEO slams Abenomics failings as he quits Japan panel; “The third arrow is so weak it is hard to find anyone who thinks it is much of a strategy”

Rakuten CEO slams Abenomics failings as quits Japan panel

Wed, Nov 6 2013

By Nathan Layne

TOKYO (Reuters) – A prominent Japanese entrepreneur is quitting a key panel advising Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, saying the government is stifling the economic reforms it has promised. Hiroshi Mikitani, chief executive of e-commerce firm Rakuten Inc (4755.T: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), said on Wednesday he was girding for a legal fight with Abe’s government over the regulation of online drug sales, an area his company sees as a lucrative business opportunity. Read more of this post

‘Smart Beta’: Higher Returns, Higher Risk

November 5, 2013, 3:10 P.M. ET

‘Smart Beta’: Higher Returns, Higher Risk

By Brendan Conway

“Smart beta” is the buzzword for a different type of stock indexing. Does it work? The strategists at Pavilion Global Markets this week argue yes. But there’s a catch. Smart beta or “fundamental” indexing means building stock portfolios around desirable attributes, such as profit margins, revenue, or dividends. PowerShares FTSE RAFI U.S. 1000 (PRF), a popular example, is something like value investing 2.0, since it’s usingquantitative methods essentially to hunt for attractive-looking stocks. It’s a shift from the S&P 500 (SPY), whose market-cap weighting method favors giants like Apple (AAPL) and ExxonMobil (XOM). Read more of this post

Bitcoin Buzz Arrives in China, but with Familiar Doubts

11.07.2013 17:34

Bitcoin Buzz Arrives in China, but with Familiar Doubts

A few investors show interest in the virtual currency, but critics say the geek experiment doesn’t have much of a future anywhere

By staff reporters Wu Hongyuran and Zheng Fei

(Beijing) – A few blocks west of Zhongguancun, a technology hub in the capital, wannabe entrepreneurs gather in a coffeehouse named Garage to share ideas and meet potential investors. The shop, apparently named for the place late Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs built his first computers, gives a sense of entrepreneurial risk-taking because it allows consumers to pay in Bitcoin, a virtual currency that few people use in daily life. Read more of this post

A theme park being developed in Hengqin island off Zhuhai “not a threat” to Hong Kong Disneyland.

Hengqin theme park ‘not a threat for Disneyland’
Thursday, November 07, 2013
A theme park being developed in Hengqin island off Zhuhai will not be a rival to Hong Kong Disneyland. Giving the assurance, the Hengqin New Area Administrative Committee chief said the positioning of the park is different from Disneyland or Ocean Park, but it could enrich the tourism resources of the special economic zone. “Apart from its location, its area and facilities are different as well,” committee director Niu Jing said. Read more of this post

Sliced bread is no longer the greatest thing to have hit British consumers, judging by falling sales, which are posing a growing problem for bread manufacturers

Last updated: November 6, 2013 6:42 pm

Sliced bread no longer greatest thing

By Scheherazade Daneshkhu, Consumer Industries Editor

Sliced bread is no longer the greatest thing to have hit British consumers, judging by falling sales, which are posing a growing problem for bread manufacturers. Premier Foods, the heavily indebted UK company, said on Wednesday that it had appointed bankers to search for outside investors for its Hovis, Mother’s Pride and other bread brands, which have struggled during the recession. Read more of this post

Tumbling US oil price transforms trading

November 6, 2013 8:50 am

Tumbling US oil price transforms trading

By Ajay Makan in London

It is a taste of things to come. As the benchmark US oil price has slumped over the past month, so has the cost of crude in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the largest refining hubs in the world. The sharp price moves are testament to the impact of the US shale revolution, which has sent new supplies of crude from oilfields in North Dakota and Texas to the coasts of the US – with far-reaching effects on international oil markets. Read more of this post

The ghost at China’s third plenum: demographics; The country needs reforms that leaders will struggle to carry out

November 6, 2013 6:39 pm

The ghost at China’s third plenum: demographics

By David Pilling

The country needs reforms that leaders will struggle to carry out

As the leaders of China’s standing committee (average age 65) prepare for one of the Chinese Communist party’s most important occasions, one issue will be hidden in plain view: the country is rapidly growing old. President Xi Jinping, a sprightly 60, is only up to the third plenum of his leadership, an event at which he is expected to set out long-term plans for the country. But the nation as a whole is fast approaching the sixth age of man. In Shakespeare’s version, the fifth stage of human life is a well-fed individual with “a round belly” full of chicken. Unfortunately, China is moving “into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon” of old age before most of its people have grown wealthy. Its average standard of living is somewhere between those of Ecuador and Jamaica. Read more of this post

China Grants U.S. Investors Indirect Access to Its Stock Markets

China Grants U.S. Investors Indirect Access to Its Stock Markets

Updated Nov. 7, 2013 5:47 a.m. ET

SHANGHAI—Beijing has approved the first U.S. exchange-traded funds that track stocks in mainland China, another step forward in opening the country’s capital markets to international investors seeking better exposure to the world’s second-biggest economy. The go-ahead was given to two domestic fund managers to sell China ETFs listed on theNew York Stock Exchange, NYX +0.78% two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Thursday. These will be the first outside Hong Kong, where global money managers can buy similar products. Read more of this post

China Wants Its Movies to Be Big in the U.S., Too; “We have 5,000 years of history. We have lots of stories”

November 6, 2013

China Wants Its Movies to Be Big in the U.S., Too

By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES — Investment capital? They’re loaded. Film studios? They are promising to build the world’s fanciest. As for movie stars, few are more dazzling than Li Bingbing, who was an honored guest here on Tuesday at the annual U.S.-China Film Summit. But China’s ambitious new film entrepreneurs, dozens of whom gathered in the Los Angeles area this week for the summit meeting, the American Film Market and other events, are still searching for something that has largely eluded them: a homemade global hit. “We have 5,000 years of history. We have lots of stories,” said Yang Buting, the chairman of the China Film Distribution and Exhibition Association, who spoke on a panel at the gathering on Tuesday. Read more of this post

Lord of the RINs? Vitol’s ethanol credit bonanza

Lord of the RINs? Vitol’s ethanol credit bonanza

1:19am EST

By Cezary Podkul

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Swiss trading company Vitol SA is among the biggest beneficiaries of an opaque U.S.-government-mandated trading scheme established to help boost the share of ethanol in the nation’s fuel supply, market sources say. As refiners scrambled this year to meet an expected steep rise in the amount of ethanol that must be blended into gasoline, trading in little-known credits used to enforce the quotas turned white-knuckled. RINs, or renewable identification numbers, have traded for years in a niche market for pennies apiece. In mid-July they soared to nearly $1.45 from about 5 cents last December, providing huge opportunities for oil traders and others in the market. Read more of this post

China’s Soviet-Style Suburbia Heralds Environmental Pain

China’s Soviet-Style Suburbia Heralds Environmental Pain

Take away the haze of air pollution and Waterfront Corso Mansions near Tianjin might seem like an urban idyll for China’s growing population of city dwellers. Inside a gated compound, residential towers and houses overlook a lake and manicured gardens. What’s missing from the neighborhood are shops and amenities, turning the block and hundreds like it in the suburb of Meijiang into a giant dormitory for Tianjin, 40 minutes away by car. Read more of this post

Hong Kong Seeks More Women Workers as Aging Population Looms

Hong Kong Seeks More Women Workers as Aging Population Looms

Hong Kong is seeking to attract more homemakers into the workforce as an aging population and low fertility rates threaten to curb economic growth. More than half a million women homemakers in the city are between the ages of 30 and 59, representing a “huge potential,” Florence Hui, the undersecretary for home affairs, said late yesterday at a Bloomberg seminar in Hong Kong. Read more of this post

Let’s Not Overstate the U.S. Manufacturing Revival

Let’s Not Overstate the U.S. Manufacturing Revival

The revival of the U.S. manufacturing sector has been sufficiently robust to convince many Americans that a factory renaissance is under way. Boston Consulting Group predicted that increased exports promoted by stagnant U.S. wages and lower energy costs will result in 2.5 million to 5 million new jobs by 2020 and a reduction of the 7.3 percent unemployment rate by two to three percentage points. Read more of this post

Buyout Opportunities Seen in Vietnam Imbalances: Southeast Asia

Buyout Opportunities Seen in Vietnam Imbalances: Southeast Asia

Franklin Templeton Investments (BEN)’ venture in Vietnam said the time is right for buyout firms to invest in the country as it expects monetary and fiscal reforms to take effect over the next three to five years. Low valuations, constrained bank lending and an improved corporate landscape mean private-equity investors have an opportunity to buy companies in the Southeast Asian country before the economy picks up again, said Avinash Satwalekar, chief executive officer of Vietcombank Fund Management, Templeton’s venture with Joint-Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam. Read more of this post

The forex market is designed to encourage crime; Lax structure supplies the opportunity, big bonuses create the motive

November 6, 2013 6:43 pm

The forex market is designed to encourage crime

By Patrick Jenkins

Lax structure supplies the opportunity, big bonuses create the motive, says Patrick Jenkins

It is notoriously idiotic to leave the purchase of holiday currency until arriving at the airport – as I learnt to my cost (yet again) last week. With a choice of two currency outlets, both run by the same operator, there was one dreadful rate on offer: £1 would net me €1.05. Buying back £1 would cost €1.35. Outrageous as that near 30 per cent spread was, it looks like modest abuse compared with the alleged manipulation that was emerging at the same time, as regulators deepened their probes into the $5.3tn a day foreign exchange market. In the past fortnight, seven of the world’s leading banks have confirmed they are being investigated as part of the affair. Read more of this post

Spanish lenders had been making their loan books look healthier than they really were by refinancing big numbers of loans to struggling homeowners and businesses

Spain’s Banks Boost Books by Refinancing Loans to Homeowners

Bank Earnings Reveal Part of Answer to Question Puzzling Analysts

ILAN BRAT and CHRISTOPHER BJORK

Nov. 6, 2013 12:12 p.m. ET

MADRID—It has puzzled Spanish bank analysts for years: Why did the country’s mortgage delinquency rate rise so slowly even as unemployment soared above 26%? A big part of the answer—revealed by a spate of bank earnings reports in recent days—is that Spanish lenders had been making their loan books look healthier than they really were by refinancing big numbers of loans to struggling homeowners and businesses. Read more of this post

Quant funds suffer dismal ‘QE’ losing streak

November 6, 2013 10:04 am

Quant funds suffer dismal ‘QE’ losing streak

By Sam Jones

How does a hedge fund react to losing a quarter of its investors’ money in a matter of months? Double-up? Blow up? Or buy Lego and wait? Cantab Capital, a multibillion-dollar quant hedge fund, run by computers (or rather, run by maths geeks who run computers) went for option three. The irreverent – and until this year, highly profitable – Cambridge-based firm, set up by Goldman Sachs’ former head of quantitative trading, spent £2,000 on Lego to boost staff morale this summer after a painful losing streak struck hundreds of millions off its trading portfolio’s value. Read more of this post

US rental deals give rise to new asset class

November 7, 2013 9:43 am

US rental deals give rise to new asset class

By Tracy Alloway and Anjli Raval in New York

Hank Rosely says it all happened very quickly.

The retired lawyer sold his Palm Beach house to Invitation Homes, the rental unit of private equity giant Blackstone, back in August, in a transaction which closed within days. Blackstone is one of a number of large institutional investors – from private equity firms to hedge funds – that have spent the five years since the worst of the financial crisis snapping up tens of thousands of residential properties on the cheap and then converting them into rental homes. Read more of this post

Startup Nation is growing up, but it’s not maturing with the years; The giant exits of 2013 don’t mean that Israeli high-tech is creating many jobs, benefiting local investors or generating much added value for the economy

Startup Nation is growing up, but it’s not maturing with the years

The giant exits of 2013 don’t mean that Israeli high-tech is creating many jobs, benefiting local investors or generating much added value for the economy.

By David Rosenberg | Aug. 23, 2013 | 2:44 AM

Another round of backslapping and hardy handshakes accompanied last week’s sale of the Israeli startup Trusteer to IBM for a reported $900 million. Websites and newspapers were full of pictures of smiling employees, who might now finally be able to afford to buy a home with their share of the payout. Venture capital funds were counting up their double-digit returns. Meanwhile, industry executives were explaining how the giant buyout – coming weeks after Google paid more than $1 billion for the navigation app startup Waze – marked a new phase for Startup Nation: Entrepreneurs and investors are more mature, they are ready to build businesses and think long-term, rather than look for a quick and easy exit. Read more of this post

A bright new day for Startup Nation? Or just another bubble? The record number of venture capital investments and parade of IPOs are more cause for caution than joy

A bright new day for Startup Nation? Or just another bubble?

The record number of venture capital investments and parade of IPOs are more cause for caution than joy.

By David Rosenberg | Oct. 29, 2013 | 6:08 PM

These are heady days for Startup Nation. In the third quarter of the year, tech companies raised $660 million in new capital, the most in any three-month period since 2000. This quarter looks like it’s on its way to beating that figure, with a stream of double-digit fund-raising rounds by the likes of Outbrain and Wilocity ($35 million apiece), SundaySky ($20 million), TabTale ($12 million), and Mintingo ($10 million) and a host of smaller fry. Read more of this post