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Korean government looking to overhaul corporate pay system; Domestic companies’ wage systems are so complicated that even employees do not precisely understand how their salaries are calculated

Gov’t looking to overhaul corporate pay system

Seo Dong-cheol, Jang Jae-woong

2013.09.02 18:29:46

A survey of 1,000 South Korean companies with 100 or more staff on their payrolls showed that basic wages constituted an average of 57.3 percent of workers’ annual salary, said the Ministry of Employment and Labor Monday. Recently, Korea has seen a series of lawsuits regarding ordinary wages, with a Supreme Court trial on a case concerning ordinary wages scheduled to be held at 2:00 pm on September 5. The trial will be presided over by the chief justice, and at least two-thirds of the 13 Supreme Court justices will be seated. The thorny issue of ordinary wages is attributed to companies’ complicated wage systems that consist of various types of allowances and bonuses. Domestic companies’ wage systems are so complicated that even employees do not precisely understand how their salaries are calculated. Consequently, workers’ performance and capacity are not proportionately tied to their salaries, and corporations are saddled with diverse types of allowances. Gaining ground is the argument that the more belatedly the basic wage and ordinary wage systems will be revamped, the more difficult it will become to tackle the issues regarding the retirement age and resolving youth unemployment to improve job creation and the quality of employment. A government official said “a fundamental shift in wage systems will ease the financial burden on corporations, increase productivity and employment and improve labor-management relations.” The Ministry of Employment and Labor set up a new division and a research task force committed to establishing a more reasonable wage system with the goal of resolving the ordinary wage issue and settling the retirement age at 60 by 2016

Japan put on hold as investors await Abe’s next move

September 2, 2013 1:09 pm

Japan put on hold as investors await Abe’s next move

By Ben McLannahan in Tokyo

For a sense of how much the Japanese government frets about stock prices, take a look at the programme for Mizuho Securities’ autumn conference, beginning in Tokyo next Monday, for which about 320 foreign and 1,200 domestic investors – a record high – have signed up. The keynote speaker – on “Abenomics: the autumn siege” – is none other than Akira Amari, minister of state for economic and fiscal policy, and the right-hand man of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. It is the first time in the conference’s six-year history that a member of the cabinet has agreed to speak. Read more of this post

Craftsman Automation: Cheap and Efficient Engineering; This diversified light engineering company has grown by adopting new ideas without worrying about following the herd

Craftsman Automation: Cheap and Efficient Engineering

by Ashish K Mishra | Sep 3, 2013

This diversified light engineering company has grown by adopting new ideas without worrying about following the herd

“So, how’s business?” Ask any businessman this question and, often, you know what response to expect. “Good, very good, excellent, thank you.” But S Ravi, chairman and managing director of Craftsman Automation, said, “Not good.” He explained why: “The commercial vehicles market is looking tough and we don’t know how long it will continue like this. But tractors have done well for us. And we are in a much better position than we were at the time of the Lehman crisis.” That’s Ravi for you: Positive and realistic at the same time. His company is no different.  Read more of this post

Genesis Colors: Success Beyond Satya Paul; its scale of 30 stores is unique for the upscale end of the Indian apparel sector which is dotted with designers, many of whom are celebrities but often fail to create a successful business

Genesis Colors: Success Beyond Satya Paul

by Prince Mathews Thomas | Sep 2, 2013

Though the company is far from a one-brand wonder, Satya Paul continues to be its calling card

One of India’s largest fashion retailers in the premium and luxury segment is, ironically, not a familiar name to the average shopper. Ask about Genesis Colors and you are likely to draw a blank. But mention Satya Paul and you are on familiar terrain. Designer brand trumps company brand: That is the Genesis business model. Here’s how it works. Although founded in 2001, the Genesis story began in 2002 with the launch of a revamped Satya Paul. Named after the designer who created it in 1985, the brand had established itself in the Indian fashion firmament before it came under Genesis’s fold. But it was only after 2002 that Satya Paul scaled up to become, arguably, the country’s leading homegrown fashion brand in the high-end segment. And Genesis’s biggest success. It has 30 exclusive stores in India, the largest network for any domestic premium brand, and accounts for 30 percent of Genesis’s Rs 310 crore revenue (for 2012-13). The scale is unique for the upscale end of the Indian apparel sector which is dotted with designers, many of whom are celebrities but often fail to create a successful business. This segment constitutes about 25 percent of India’s premium/luxury market, worth $5 billion, says Ankur Bisen, head of retail and consumer products, Technopak, a management consulting firm.  Read more of this post

Indian Land Deform; Amid an economic crisis, Delhi makes it harder to invest

Updated September 2, 2013, 8:28 p.m. ET

Indian Land Deform

Amid an economic crisis, Delhi makes it harder to invest.

Someone should tell New Delhi that when sensible leaders talk about not letting a crisis go to waste, they mean seizing the opportunity to enact pro-growth reforms. Instead, as capital flees and growth slips again, Indian politicians last week passed a land acquisition bill that will hurt farmers, hinder investment and increase corruption. India’s current system of land laws, largely unchanged since 1894, is certainly in desperate need of a revamp. Woefully incomplete government land registries make it hard for anyone to establish a clear title to property, especially in rural areas. Attempts to buy land directly from owners can take years as the notoriously inefficient courts grapple with the resulting litigation. Read more of this post

The Malaysian Government has yet to decide which projects would be postponed to address the narrowing of the country’s current account surplus on the balance of payments and high fiscal debt

Updated: Tuesday September 3, 2013 MYT 9:19:16 AM

Government will review projects

BY LEONG HUNG YEE 
HUNGYEE@THESTAR.COM.MY

MRT lines 1,2 and 3 unaffected and will proceed as planned

PUTRAJAYA: The Government has yet to decide which projects would be postponed, but maintained that the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) project would proceed as planned, according to Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak. He said the Government, in addressing the narrowing of the country’s current account surplus on the balance of payments, would consider carefully the public sector projects to be undertaken. Read more of this post

Why Canada’s financial news is often a thinly disguised weather report

Why Canada’s financial news is often a thinly disguised weather report

Philip Cross, Special to Financial Post | 13/08/30 | Last Updated:13/09/02 4:03 PM ET
Welcome to September, Canada’s busiest month.

The quickened pace might come as a shock to you, in your life, because you just left August where the living is easy. OTTAWA — The U.S. economy has been picking up and overburdened Canadian consumers are still spending, as are fiscally strapped governments. But that’s hardly a scenario for robust growth in this country — not without the long-promised increase in business investment and expanded exports. Read more of this post

Shareholders, Small-Town America Enemy No. 1?

Shareholders, Small-Town America Enemy No. 1?

Did greedy investors really destroy small-town America?

That’s about the only conclusion one can draw from a Washington Post article last week recounting how Endicott, New York, where International Business Machines Corp. was founded and based for many years, was gutted as the company responded to shareholders who insisted on better investment returns. It used to be a given that the interests of corporations and communities such as Endicott were closely aligned. But no more. Across the United States, as companies continue posting record profits, workers face high unemployment and stagnant wages. Read more of this post

Misconceptions About Fed’s Bond Buying

Misconceptions About Fed’s Bond Buying

To combat the recession that began in 2007, the Federal Reserve and some other central banks have been buying large amounts of long-term bonds. The novelty of this quantitative easing makes the policy especially prone to popular misconceptions.

Misconception No. 1: QE bond purchases are comparable to stimulus spending on roads and tax cuts, which adds to the national debt.

— QE actions to lower long-term interest rates require much bigger changes in the Fed’s balance sheet than conventional policy aimed at short-term interest rates. The “Q” in QE is the quantity of assets purchased — and the dollar amounts are necessarily very large. But QE is a swap of one asset (bank reserves) for another (bonds); this has no direct effect on the national debt. Indeed, QE indirectly shrinks the national debt by reducing interest payments and by strengthening economic activity, which raises tax revenue. Read more of this post

Is your bond fund quietly investing in shares?

Is your bond fund quietly investing in shares?

Some fund managers have the option to invest outside their main area of expertise. Should you be worried, asks Kyle Caldwell.

Some funds managers have been straying outside their normal markets.  Photo: JLImages / Alamy

By Kyle Caldwell

7:00AM BST 02 Sep 2013

Professional fund managers are usually endlessly upbeat whether the market is rising steadily or plunging headlong. But now – after several years of healthy stock market gains, during which world economies have not recovered as swiftly – a growing number of fund managers are admitting they can no longer see value in the markets they specialise in. In other words, prices are too high. This has led some to stray outside their normal remits – with the result that the make-up of the fund is no longer the same as when many investors first put money with the manager. Read more of this post

Larry Summers the next big risk for emerging markets? “Larry Summers is not an advocate of QE and the reality is that all things being equal, he will unwind QE fast”

Larry Summers the next big risk for emerging markets?

Published: Monday, 2 Sep 2013 | 10:58 PM ET

By: Dhara Ranasinghe | Senior Writer

Thought speculation about Federal Reserve tapering was bad for emerging markets? Then just wait to see what happens if Larry Summers is appointed as the next U.S. central bank chief, analysts say. They argue that if Summers replaces Ben Bernanke, whose second term as Fed chairman expires in January, any scaling back in the central bank’s asset-purchase program would be ramped up by the hawkish Summers and deal a further blow to battered emerging markets. Read more of this post

Clash of the Cape crusaders: The world’s leading market historians are locked in an intense debate over the true value of stocks

September 2, 2013 7:57 pm

Clash of the Cape crusaders

By John Authers

The world’s leading market historians are locked in an intense debate over the true value of stocks

Robert Shiller’s warnings about the internet stock bubble of the late 1990s, followed after a few years by a controversial – and accurate – prediction on the US housing market, earned him the respect of Wall Street and a place on the bestseller list. The Yale economist’s call on the internet boom, articulated in his book Irrational Exuberance, was based on the measure he developed called the Cape, for cyclically adjusted price/earnings multiple. The Cape, which uses earnings data going back to 1871, has gained wide acceptance as an accurate gauge of the market. Prof Shiller and the Cape are sounding the alarm once again, implying that the US market is 62 per cent overvalued and more expensive than any other big stock market. Read more of this post

Germany’s jobs record masks hidden flaws; Number of temporary workers has trebled in 10 years

September 2, 2013 2:02 pm

Germany’s gold standard jobs record masks hidden flaws

By Chris Bryant in Frankfurt

Angela Merkel has one key trump card when voters go to the polls in September: a record 41.8m Germans are now in employment. A decade after its sclerotic labour market caused Germany to be branded the “sick man of Europe”, the country is the envy of a continent only just crawling out of recession while still grappling with record unemployment in many nations But the German “jobwunder” has come at a cost – the big increase in low paid, precarious types of employment such as part-time work, temporary contracts, so-called “minijobs” and outsourcing. Read more of this post

Ireland fears the unthinkable – a Dublin property bubble

Ireland fears the unthinkable – a Dublin property bubble

Wed, Aug 28 2013

By Padraic Halpin

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Five years after a huge property crash devastated the Irish economy, prices are finally stabilising, but a booming urban market where supply is scarce and competition fierce is raising concerns about a new bubble in the capital. House prices quadrupled on a decade of easy credit during the boom years that earned Ireland the sobriquet Celtic Tiger, then fell by more than half from 2007, leading the country into an EU/IMF bailout, a costly bank rescue and leaving almost one in five homeowners behind on their mortgage payments. Read more of this post

Long-Term Jobless Left Out of the Recovery; Despite Improving Economy, Prospects Are Bleak for Millions of Unemployed

September 2, 2013, 7:15 p.m. ET

Long-Term Jobless Left Out of the Recovery

Despite Improving Economy, Prospects Are Bleak for Millions of Unemployed

BEN CASSELMAN

For those left behind by the long, slow economic recovery, time is running out. More than four years after the recession officially ended, 11.5 million Americans are unemployed, many of them for years. Millions more have abandoned their job searches, hiding from the economic storm in school or turning to government programs for support. A growing body of economic research suggests that the longer they remain on the sidelines, the less likely they will be to work again; for many, it may already be too late. Read more of this post

Beijing Will Cut Coal Burning and Barbecues in Bid to Fight Smog

Beijing Will Cut Coal Burning and Barbecues in Bid to Fight Smog

The Chinese capital will limit cars, outdoor barbecues and coal burning under new measures to reduce air pollution that exceeded recommended World Health Organization levels by nearly 40 times in January. Coal use for electricity consumption in Beijing will be reduced by 13 million metric tons by 2017 from the 2012 level, while limits will be put on outdoor barbecues in suburban areas and the number of cars will be kept below 6 million, the city government said in a statement today. The restrictions follow 10 pollution control measures that the country announced in June, after levels of PM2.5, the fine particulates that pose the greatest health risk, hit a record 993 in January. At his first briefing as China’s premier in March, Li Keqiang said China’s smog gave him a “heavy heart” and promised more vigorous efforts to fight it. The measures in Beijing are meant to reduce concentrations of PM2.5 by 25 percent to about 60 micrograms per cubic meter in 2017 from last year. The World Health Organization recommends 24-hour exposure to PM2.5 of no higher than 25. The measures announced today also include closing 1,200 companies that generate pollutants and limiting public offerings of companies that violate environmental laws. The city had 5.2 million vehicles at the end of last year, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Sarah Chen in Beijing at schen514@bloomberg.net

Rattled by investigations, foreign firms in China beef up compliance

Rattled by investigations, foreign firms in China beef up compliance

5:12pm EDT

By Michael Martina and Kazunori Takada

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Foreign companies in China are getting increasingly jumpy about a spate of antitrust and corruption investigations by Chinese authorities and are hiring lawyers to make sure their operations comply with the law. The investigations represent one of the most significant risks to doing business in China in years. Antitrust regulators have looked into sectors such as pharmaceuticals, milk powder and jewelry in recent months and suggested that autos, telecommunications, banks and oil firms could be next. Read more of this post

Stock offering plans by China’s banks seen as short-term fix

Stock offering plans by China’s banks seen as short-term fix

5:15pm EDT

By Michael Flaherty and Denny Thomas

HONG KONG (Reuters) – For the Chinese banks seeking billions of dollars in upcoming stock offerings, a concern is growing that the money will only refinance old loans and do little to prevent the lenders from hitting up shareholders for more cash in a few years or less. In 2010, Chinese lenders raised $82 billion as a surging stock market helped them replenish cash after a post-financial crisis lending binge. Now, in a far less forgiving climate, they are again lining up for more money, attempting to tap investors as the economy slows, profits shrink and unpaid debts pile up. Read more of this post