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China’s ‘Mr. Market’ Urges Political Reform; Country’s Most Famous Economist Says Next Wave of Change Needs to Target Political System

China’s ‘Mr. Market’ Urges Political Reform

Country’s Most Famous Economist Says Next Wave of Change Needs to Target Political System

ANDREW BROWNE

Oct. 22, 2013 10:31 a.m. ET

The Chinese leadership appears to have launched a battle against press freedom, civil rights and judicial independence. But China’s most famous economist, Wu Jinglian, believes that China needs more – rather than less — political reforms. The WSJ’s Andrew Browne explains why press freedom is crucial to a better economy. BEIJING—Ever since Deng Xiaoping launched his first overhauls in 1978, free-market reforms in China have come in great waves, usually in response to a crisis. Read more of this post

Yazkuza Bosses Whacked by Regulators Freezing AmEx Cards; “It’s becoming inconvenient to be a yakuza”

Yazkuza Mobsters Whacked by Regulators Freezing AmExs

The yakuza, Japan’s organized-crime syndicates that have reaped billions from activities ranging from extortion to human trafficking, are finding their ranks decimated by authorities employing methods similar to those used to jail Al Capone: going after their money. Japan’s Financial Services Agency delivered the latest blow, last month ordering Mizuho Financial Group Inc. (8411) to improve compliance and then demanding that top executives report by Oct. 28 what they knew and when about a consumer-credit affiliate found making loans to crime groups. Read more of this post

Coutts Cutting Japan Stocks on Concern About Abe’s Third Arrow

Coutts Cutting Japan Stocks on Concern About Abe’s Third Arrow

Coutts & Co., the wealth management unit of Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, is cutting holdings of Japanese shares on concern Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won’t pass the structural reforms needed to boost the economy. Coutts shifted from overweight to neutral on the best-performing developed-market equities on signs Abe will squander the early decisiveness of Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, said Gary Dugan, chief investment officer for Asia and the Middle East. With a sales-tax increase approaching in April, Abe is failing to deliver on reform measures that would ease the burden of the levy, Dugan said. Read more of this post

Hong Kong’s Missing Workers Signal Danger for Aging City

Hong Kong’s Missing Workers Signal Danger for Aging City

Hong Kong restaurant owner Hudson Chang says he can’t lower the bar much further for hiring staff. He warns his employees repeatedly about sending messages on their iPhones during work hours. He pleads with them to be more pleasant to customers. Still, he can’t afford to fire anyone: He can’t be sure of finding a replacement. “We don’t really have much choice,” said Chang, 39, owner of a venue called Indonesian Restaurant 1968 on the outskirts of the central business district. “I’m just looking for people with basic manners. You don’t even need specific qualifications. You just have to be mobile and know how to smile.” Read more of this post

Li Ka-shing’s Hong Kong Sales Signal Peak as European Growth Beckons

Li’s Hong Kong Sales Signal Peak as European Growth Beckons

Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing made his fortune over a half-century of well-timed bets on everything from property to power generation. His latest deals suggest he’s wagering the city’s era of fast growth may be drawing to an end. Asia’s richest man may raise as much as $18 billion selling stakes in his retail unit and Hong Kong’s second-largest power supplier. The moves, announced in the past month, would free up money for Li to buy more assets in Europe, where his companies including Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. (13) have spent $14.5 billion on acquisitions the past three years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Read more of this post

The debt mountain at U.K. water companies is their best defense against politicians seeking to cut the cost of living

Debts Keep Water Firms Off-Limits for Politicians: U.K. Credit

The debt mountain at U.K. water companies is their best defense against politicians seeking to cut the cost of living. The Labour opposition, which has pledged to freeze gas and electricity prices for 20 months if it wins the 2015 general election, may be wary of imposing a similar cap on highly leveraged water businesses, according to Lakis Athanasiou, a utilities analyst at Agency Partners LLP. Water companies have debt-to-equity ratios as high as 80 percent and rely on borrowings to keep infrastructure intact. “I really can’t see them going after the water industry,” Athanasiou said in a phone interview. “Because they are highly leveraged structures, they need masses of debt, not just for expansion but for replacement of existing debt.” Read more of this post

Fidelity to Open Cheapest Single-Industry ETFs in Push

Fidelity to Open Cheapest Single-Industry ETFs in Push

Fidelity Investments, the second-biggest mutual-fund provider, plans to open the cheapest lineup of single-industry exchange-traded funds as it seeks to break into a market dominated by Vanguard Group Inc. and BlackRock Inc. (BLK) Fidelity on Oct. 24 will start 10 funds, focused on industries ranging from energy to telecommunications, with an annual expense ratio of 0.12 percent, cheaper by 2 basis points than Vanguard Group Inc.’s lineup of similar ETFs, according to a regulatory filing and data compiled by Bloomberg. The ETFs, distributed by Fidelity, will be managed by BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager. A basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point. Read more of this post

Emerging-Market Currency Rout Will Worsen Next Year, Jen Says

Emerging-Market Currency Rout Will Worsen Next Year, Jen Says

Emerging-market currencies will probably see bigger declines next year when the Federal Reserve actually starts tapering its record stimulus, Stephen Jen, co-founder of hedge fund SLJ Macro Partners LLP said. The Fed’s signal on May 22 that it may start reducing its $85 billion of monthly bond purchases caused the JPMorgan Emerging Markets Currency Index to drop 7.2 percent through the end of August. India’s rupee led the declines with a 16 percent loss during the period, followed by Brazil’s real at 14 percent and Indonesia’s rupiah at 13 percent. The gauge has since rallied 4.3 percent as the Fed unexpectedly decided to maintain its debt buying on Sept. 18. Read more of this post

Auto Makers Shift Gaze to ‘Emerging’ Emerging Markets

Auto Makers Shift Gaze to ‘Emerging’ Emerging Markets

Car Companies Look Past the BRICs

NEAL E. BOUDETTE

Oct. 22, 2013 1:27 p.m. ET

TROY, Mich.—The auto industry has been buzzing for the last couple of years about growth in the so-called BRIC markets –Brazil, Russia, India and China. Now the conversation is shifting to the Future 15—the next group of emerging markets beyond the BRICs that are expected to drive the industry forward. They include populous Asian nations of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia; Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran in the Middle East; South America’s Andean nations such as Chile and Argentina; and Morocco, Egypt and others in North Africa. Read more of this post

Beijing May Make ABCs Less Important After English-Training Boom

Beijing May Make ABCs Less Important After English-Training Boom

China’s capital city of Beijing proposed reducing the importance of English in education by cutting the language’s weighting on college-entrance tests in favor of the nation’s own tongue. English would count for 100 points, down from the current 150, out of the maximum score of 750 starting in 2016, the official Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday, citing the Beijing Education Examinations Authority. The possible score in Chinese would rise to 180 from 150, Xinhua said. The local government said English programs currently stress examinations over mastery of the language, according to Xinhua. Read more of this post

How Wall Street Fed Puerto Rico’s $70 Billion Borrowing Binge

How Wall Street Fed Puerto Rico’s $70 Billion Borrowing Binge

Seven years ago, in the wake of a government shutdown caused by a $740 million budget deficit, Puerto Rican officials vowed to fix the island’s finances by 2010. Now investors are calling their bluff. In the $3.7 trillion municipal-bond market, Puerto Rico and its agencies more than doubled their borrowing since 2004 to $70 billion this year. Even as the island’s population shrank and the economy contracted 16 percent since 2004, the government kept selling enough bonds to saddle each man, woman and child with $19,000 in debt. Read more of this post

Berkshire Beats Apple as Favorite Stock of Tiger 21 Group

Berkshire Beats Apple as Favorite Stock of Tiger 21 Group

By Margaret Collins – Oct 22, 2013

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) regained its ranking as the favorite stock pick among U.S. and Canadian multimillionaires, beating Apple Inc. (AAPL) and fending off the increasing preference for exchange-traded funds. Members of Tiger 21, a New York-based group of wealthy investors, selected Berkshire in an annual survey of preferred investments scheduled to be released today. Apple, which had held the No. 1 spot the last two years, slipped to No. 2. “The bloom is off of Apple,” Michael Sonnenfeldt, founder and chairman of Tiger 21, said in an interview. “For people who held Berkshire Hathaway it’s held its appeal, but for Apple, a lot of people who were on that ride have realized that perhaps the best days are behind it.” Read more of this post

You’ll never be a Yale superman: How Yale’s influential endownment fund and its CIO are reining in their ambitions

You’ll never be a Yale superman

Dan McCrum

| Oct 22 12:02 | 4 comments | Share

David Swensen is an investing superman. His pioneering use of alternative investments after he took over the Yale endowment in 1985 prompted a thousand imitators and created an industry. Indeed, the Yale model became the endowment model, so widely was it embraced. Then, with alternative investments legitimised as suitable for big investors, pension funds began to follow his lead, albeit tentatively. Yet you can never be David. Or rather, you can never match up to the myth that Mr Swensen’s performance has become. Consider the recent decision by the $21bn Yale endowment to cut its allocation to private equity for the first time in eight years, to 31 per cent from 35 per cent. That shift may simply reflect a lack of opportunities at present, but note the long-term return target which Yale expects its private equity investments to deliver. Read more of this post

Cleaner air a bitter pill for north China cities

October 22, 2013 2:20 pm

Cleaner air a bitter pill for north China cities

By Lucy Hornby in Chengde

When people in Beijing put on their pollution masks, it makes international headlines. But the effort to clean up the air in northern China depends on steel-producing cities such as Chengde, whose three million people are more worried about jobs than smog. The authorities have become so concerned about the state of the air in the Chinese capital that they want the industrial cities of Hebei province that encircle Beijing to cut coal use and steel and cement capacity to ease the problem. Read more of this post

Thailand is considering slapping a 500-baht ($16.60) entry fee on tourists to help cover foreigners’ unpaid medical bills

Thailand considers charging all tourists to cover unpaid hospital bills

October 23, 2013 – 12:32AM

Thailand is considering slapping a 500-baht ($16.60) entry fee on tourists to help cover foreigners’ unpaid medical bills, officials say. “The policy is the result of foreign tourists who have accidents or fall sick in Thailand and seek treatment at our hospitals but then can’t pay their bills,” the Health Ministry’s deputy permanent secretary, Charnvit Phrathep, said. The unpaid hospital bills of foreign tourists cost the state about 700 million baht a year, the ministry said. Read more of this post

Australia to Raise Debt Ceiling as Mining Slowdown Bites

Australia to Raise Debt Ceiling

Move to Raise Debt Ceiling to $483 Billion as Mining Slowdown Bites

JAMES GLYNN and RACHEL PANNETT

Oct. 22, 2013 4:58 a.m. ET

SYDNEY—Australia’s new conservative government said it would seek to raise the ceiling on government borrowing to fund its policies and day-to-day operations, highlighting the dire state of the nation’s finances as a long mining boom cools. In doing so, the center-right Liberal-National coalition risks a rift with voters who identified rising government debt as a key concern in the lead-up to the Sept. 7 election. Read more of this post