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Loans with fewer protections are a warning sign

Last updated: October 18, 2013 5:17 pm

Loans with fewer protections are a warning sign

By Tracy Alloway in New York

The growth of ‘cov-lite’ may point to overheating in credit

The government shutdown temporarily hit markets from stocks to bonds to the $4.5tn “repo market” that underpins the US financial system. But one asset class was curiously immune to the two-week gridlock in Washington – leveraged loans. Read more of this post

Asia’s Animators Draw Inspiration From Japan’s Miyazaki

Asia’s Animators Draw Inspiration From Japan’s Miyazaki

By Mathew Scott on 2:28 pm October 16, 2013.

A scene from Hayao Miyazaki’s hit film ‘My Neighbor Totoro.’ (Photo courtesy of Studio Ghibli)

Busan. As Oscar-winning animator Hayao Miyazaki heads into retirement, industry watchers say the next generation of Asian filmmakers stepping out of his shadow will struggle to match the Japanese master’s box office domination. “The view here is that there will be no ‘second Miyazaki,’” Tokyo-based author and film critic Mark Schilling told AFP. The market for Asian animation is dominated by children’s films, Schilling said, and not the more adult-themed productions Miyazaki became famous for, such as his Oscar-winning “Spirited Away” in 2002. The 72-year-old director last month shocked the industry — and his legions of fans — by announcing he was walking away from directing. Read more of this post

Victoria’s Secrets’ Parent L Brands Coach ‘Cut Their Own Throat’ With Discount Stores; Physical stores among top Victoria’s Secret attributes

LIMITED BRANDS CEO: Coach ‘Cut Their Own Throat’ With Discount Stores

HAYLEY PETERSON OCT. 17, 2013, 12:44 PM 1,562 4

The CEO of Victoria’s Secret parent L Brands Inc. blasted Coach on Wednesday for seeking “easy money” by becoming a discount outlet, the Wall Street Journal reports.  “Coach became a discount outlet,” L Brands CEO Les Wexner said at an analyst meeting in New York. “They cut their own throat. The outlet business is easy money, [but] discounting yourself is the beginning of the end. I can’t find the exception. It’s hard to have a dual identity. Outlet doesn’t build a brand. We don’t milk it.” Coach’s net income dropped a staggering 12% in the second quarter as the luxury handbag maker faces intense competition from Michael Kors, Kate Spade and Tory Burch. Coach’s outlet stores have grown to 60% of its retail sales in North America from about 30% in 2006, The Journal reported in July. The outlets have become more profitable for the brand than its full-price stores, bringing in about $600 more in sales per square foot.  Wexner said Wednesday that L Brands is moving Victoria’s Secret in the opposite direction with plans to close one of the lingerie brand’s four outlet locations.

Physical stores among top Victoria’s Secret attributes: L Brands CEO Wexner

October 16, 2013, 4:10 PM

By Andria Cheng Read more of this post

Soft drinks in Mexico: Fizzing with ragel A once-omnipotent industry fights what may be a losing battle

Soft drinks in Mexico: Fizzing with ragel A once-omnipotent industry fights what may be a losing battle

Oct 19th 2013 | MEXICO CITY |From the print edition

LA MANSION steakhouse inside Mexico’s lower house of Congress has become the headquarters of a lobbying effort the likes of which congressmen say they have never seen before. There is so much wining and dining that one lawmaker, proposing a bill on October 15th to regulate the lobbyists, claimed he was talking to a half-empty floor because his colleagues were too busy being schmoozed at La Mansion. Read more of this post

The Hong Kong dollar: Buy now at 1983 prices; After 30 years, Hong Kong’s peg to the American dollar is still going strong

The Hong Kong dollar: Buy now at 1983 prices; After 30 years, Hong Kong’s peg to the American dollar is still going strong

Oct 19th 2013 | HONG KONG |From the print edition

“WHATEVER exchange-rate system a country has, it will wish at some times that it had another one,” according to Stanley Fischer, a former central banker. Many countries find it hard to cope with a floating currency and even harder to stick to a fixed one. It is therefore remarkable that Hong Kong this week celebrated the 30th anniversary of its currency’s peg to the dollar. Read more of this post

Petrobras: Unfulfilled potential; Fuel subsidies have thwarted the Brazilian state oil company’s ambitions to become a global power

October 17, 2013 6:55 pm

Petrobras: Unfulfilled potential

By Samantha Pearson and Joe Leahy

Fuel subsidies have thwarted the Brazilian state oil company’s ambitions to become a global power

Pharaoh’s motel in the industrial outskirts of São Paulo is typical of Brazil’s 5,000 secretive “love hotels” found in the suburbs of big cities. Just visible from the 10-lane highway that runs to the coast, rows of secluded, air-conditioned lodges offer the usual combination of round beds and thematic quirks – in this case, murals of Cleopatra and a selection of hieroglyphs. However, Pharaoh’s biggest, and perhaps dirtiest, secret is locked away in one of the back rooms: a diesel-guzzling generator. Like other remote hotels cut off from the main gas system, it runs on a generator at peak times to avoid expensive electricity tariffs, taking advantage of diesel prices that are kept artificially low in Brazil. Read more of this post

Tata Looks to Public Transportation in Indonesia

Tata Looks to Public Transportation in Indonesia

By Muhamad Al Azhari on 10:43 am October 18, 2013.

Tata Motors Indonesia president director Biswadev Sengupta with the recently introduced Tata Super Ace model. (GA Photo/Suhadi)

Tata Motors Indonesia, the local unit of Indian automotive giant Tata Motors, has announced it is eyeing a piece of the domestic small-engine commercial and public transportation vehicle market. The company’s planned Indonesian public transport and commercial foray follows the company’s introduction of passenger car models last month. “We feel that Tata Motors is well placed. With the right approach, we can provide good solutions [for Indonesia],” said Biswadev Sengupta, president director of TMI. The company, established a year ago, serves as the sole distributor of Tata Motors vehicles in the archipelago. Read more of this post

Sweeping Civil Service Reform Gathers Pace in Indonesia; ‘To clean up a very dirty place, you have to use a special method’: Azwar

Sweeping Civil Service Reform Gathers Pace in Indonesia

‘To clean up a very dirty place, you have to use a special method’: Azwar

By Anastasia Winanti Riesardhy on 9:47 am October 18, 2013.
The government has vowed to minimize political influence in the civil service, particularly in the appointment of senior bureaucrats, including ministers. Azwar Abubakar, the minister for state administrative reform, said on Thursday that the new measures would be enshrined in the civil service bill, currently being deliberated at the House of Representatives to eventually replace the 1999 and 1974 laws on the civil service. Read more of this post

Suddenly people are talking about dynasties in Indonesia

Keep It in the Family

By Yanto Soegiarto on 10:24 am October 18, 2013.
What’s wrong with dynasties? Suddenly people are talking about dynasties in Indonesia. Everybody’s making comments, even the president. Lawmakers argue for amendments. Activists demand the arrest of the governor of Banten. The magnitude of the controversy about dynasties seems to be overshadowing the real issues the nation is facing: how to deal with such mega-scandals as the Constitutional Court bribery case, Bank Century and Hambalang. Read more of this post

Jakarta Property Slowdown Takes Effect

Jakarta Property Slowdown Takes Effect

By Francezka Nangoy & Dion Bisara on 8:20 am October 18, 2013.
The once hot property market in Jakarta showed signs of cooling during the third quarter, with demand for office space in the central business district down as some companies delayed their expansion plans, and sales of condominiums weakening under new regulation, according to J ones Lang LaSalle Indonesia . Anton Sitorus, head of research at the property consultancy firm’s Jakarta office, told reporters on Thursday that net take-up for office space — which measures the change in occupied space — in the July-September period fell to 61,000 square meters from 93,400 square meters in the second quarter. The decline was caused by the economy slowing this year, a depreciating rupiah and rising borrowing costs. Read more of this post

A new business idol: Why Indian firms are rooting for Narendra Modi

A new business idol: Why Indian firms are rooting for Narendra Modi

Oct 19th 2013 |From the print edition

INDIAN industry is in a funk and has decided that one man is the answer. “We’re waiting for NaMo,” says a tycoon. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that almost everyone in a suit and with a pulse in the private sector wants Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat state, to become prime minister after elections due by May 2014. Private-equity types, blue-chip executives and the chiefs of India’s big conglomerates all think he can make the trains run on time. Some Western investors hope Mr Modi, the son of a tea-stall owner, will be India’s Margaret Thatcher, a populist reformer who forces through measures that put the economy on a higher growth path. Bankers in Mumbai reckon the stockmarket will jump by 20% if Mr Modi wins. Read more of this post

The revised Asean Corporate Governance scorecard will be adopted in Thailand next year in an effort to boost listed companies’ attractiveness in the eyes of foreign investors

Scorecard ‘to spruce up Thai listed firms’

Varin Trino
The Nation October 18, 2013 1:00 am

The revised Asean Corporate Governance scorecard will be adopted in Thailand next year in an effort to boost listed companies’ attractiveness in the eyes of foreign investors, according to the Thai Institute of Directors (IOD). Listed companies would be evaluated in five main categories – the same as the scorecard currently in use, but the evaluation will be given greater depth, as the number of questions will be raised from 148 to 243, said IOD president Bandid Nijathaworn.  Read more of this post