Bamboo Innovator

Korea: Is era of ‘Mofia’ gone under Park administration? The compound word of an acronym of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and mafia referred to the financial bureaucrats who dominated key positions and wielded great influence in the local financial sector

Is era of ‘Mofia’ gone under Park administration?

By Yi Whan-woo

Is the era of “mofia” gone?

The compound word of an acronym of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and mafia referred to the financial bureaucrats who dominated key positions and wielded great influence in the local financial sector.

Seemingly, the mofia don’t have the same level of power under the Park Geun-hye administration as in the past.

Park’s recent selection of her top financial nominees has raised speculation that she may not rely on the officials who built their careers at the finance ministry. Read more of this post

Crisis caution over urban push; The urbanization drive could fuel social unrest over land disputes and pose financial risks if money is thrown around recklessly

Crisis caution over urban push

Friday, March 08, 2013

The urbanization drive could fuel social unrest over land disputes and pose financial risks if money is thrown around recklessly, a senior Communist Party official and a leading economist warned.

Shifting people from the countryside to cities is a policy priority for new leaders as they seek to sustain economic growth that last year slowed to a 13-year low of 7.8 percent.

Beijing hopes 60 percent of the nation’s almost 1.4 billion population will be urban residents by 2020.

The urban population jumped to above 700 million from less than 200 million in the previous 30 years but the explosion triggered sometimes violent clashes over seizures of farmland for development, as well as water shortages, pollution and other problems.

“These are severe challenges as we try to sustain the urbanization process,” said Chen Xiwen, head of the Office of Central Rural Work Leading Group, the top body guiding farm policy.

“Many people have worries and such worries are understandable,” he told a news conference on the sidelines of the annual parliament session. Read more of this post

Price slash sparks peak buzz; A surprise cut in unit prices at the latest project of Cheung Kong Holdings (0001) has prompted speculation that the home market has peaked.

Price slash sparks peak buzz

Karen Chiu

Friday, March 08, 2013

A surprise cut in unit prices at the latest project of Cheung Kong Holdings (0001) has prompted speculation that the home market has peaked.

Prices at One West Kowloon in Cheung Sha Wan were reduced by an average of 11 percent.

Cheung Kong became the first developer to trim prices following the latest round of government curbs imposed on the property sector from February 22.

The first batch of around 50 flats – now all sold – was put in the market in November at an average price of HK$9,750 per square foot in terms of gross floor area.

Yesterday Cheung Kong offered another 20 apartments for sale at an average price of HK$9,147 psf. One Kowloon West consists of 286 units.

A three-bedroom 1,160 sq ft flat saw the sharpest cut. It is now priced at HK$10.17 million – 17.5 percent lower than the original HK$12.31 million. Read more of this post

An Unhappy Middle in the Middle Kingdom; In between China’s billionaires and peasants is a surprisingly thin and unhappy middle class, which poses a big social and economic challenge

March 7, 2013, 10:15 a.m. ET

An Unhappy Middle in the Middle Kingdom

By WEI GU

China has the world’s largest number of billionaires and 700 million peasants. In between is a surprisingly thin and unhappy middle class, which poses a big social and economic challenge.

Among the 3,000 delegates of the 2013 National People’s Congress, the percentage of blue-collar workers and peasants has risen to 13% from 8% in 2012. The number of migrant workers has jumped to 30 from just three last year. Wealthy Chinese continue to be well represented. China’s richest man, Zong Qinhou, is attending the annual powwow for the 11th time.

The squeezed middle class deserves more love. As many as 51% of Chinese working professionals suffered from some level of depression, the Ministry of Health said in 2011. They blame pressure from a rapidly changing society, increased competition, long work hours and high property prices.

“The biggest risk in the world is China’s middle class not being happy,” said Shaun Rein, the managing director of China Market Research, a consulting firm. “They are the most pessimistic group in the world.” Read more of this post

Thailand leads the world with its number of female CEOs; In Thailand, 49% of CEOs are women, which is the highest proportion in the world

Thai female CEOs on top of the world

Published: 8 Mar 2013 at 00.00

• Thailand leads the world with its number of female CEOs, according to Grant Thornton’s International Business Report (IBR).

The new research is being announced globally today on International Women’s Day.

In Thailand, 49% of CEOs are women, which is the highest proportion in the world, the research showed.

Globally, 24% of senior management roles are now filled by women, which is up from 21% last year and 20% in 2011.

China is the only country where women occupy more than half (51%) of senior management roles, while Japan remains at the bottom with 7%. Read more of this post

Nestle pushes into Indochina; Nestle: “Thailand is the centre of Asean countries”

Nestle pushes into Indochina

Positions itself to take advantage of AEC

• Published: 8 Mar 2013 at 00.00

Nestle Group (Thailand), the Swiss conglomerate’s Bangkok-based arm that also oversees operations in neighbouring countries, plans to double its business size in Indochina within 2016.

Mr England (right) and Nopadol Sivabutr, the corporate affairs director, at yesterday’s briefing. PAWAT LAOPAISARNTAKSIN

The move is aimed at capturing a huge market opportunity when Asean becomes a single market in 2016, its top executive said yesterday.

“Thailand is one of the strategic countries for Nestle. We see a big opportunity to grow business and double our size by 2016, as Thailand is the centre of Asean countries,” said Wayne England, who was recently appointed chairman and chief executive of Nestle Group (Thailand). Read more of this post

Distance from All-Time Highs

Who Is Absent (For Now) From The Record High Party?

Tyler Durden on 03/07/2013 18:06 -0500
Four years from the lows and with US risk assets melting up, BAML notes that at this rate the S&P 500 will end 2013 above 2013! The low growth, high liquidity environment has, however, only benefitted some asset classes. As the following table shows, there are a few markets that have a long way to go still…

Future female billionaires most likely to be Asian

Future female billionaires most likely to be Asian

By Joe Marsh | 8 March 2013 (1 hour ago)
However, more support is still needed for women entrepreneurs in the region. Such are the findings of two new studies.

Vera Wang, with $790 million in net worth, is likely to be a billionaire soon, says Wealth-X

On the one hand, Asian women are growing richer quicker than their peers elsewhere in the world, while on the other there are fewer female business owners in Asia than male ones, and more support is needed for female entrepreneurs.

The first conclusion comes from ultra-high-net-worth research firm Wealth-X, the second from a study carried out by UK bank Barclays.

Of the top 13 women most likely to become the next female billionaires, more than 60% are from Asia, notes Wealth-X, “mirroring the ‘emerging’ theme seen across other sectors”. Read more of this post

This Colorful Table Shows Why You Should Diversify Your Emerging Markets Portfolio

This Colorful Table Shows Why You Should Diversify Your Emerging Markets Portfolio

Sam Ro | Mar. 7, 2013, 5:37 AM | 783 | 

If you’re lucky, then you might be able to pick the right stocks that’ll help you beat the major benchmarks.  But most investors who try to be stock pickers end up losing. The same goes for emerging market investors. This is why the best strategy may be to invest in a portfolio of countries rather than just one. Below you’ll find US Funds’ Periodic Table of Emerging Markets, which ranks the annual stock market returns for various emerging markets. “Emerging markets, like all investments, can have wide price fluctuations over time,” they write.  “This table shows the ebb and flow of emerging market countries over the past decade and illustrates the principal of mean reversion — the concept that returns eventually move back toward their mean or average.”

How Dollar Diplomacy Spelled Doom for the British Empire

How Dollar Diplomacy Spelled Doom for the British Empire

“The British Empire seems to be running off almost as fast as the American loan,” Winston Churchill thundered before the House of Commons on Dec. 20, 1946. “The haste is appalling.”

As if secretly synchronized, the pillars of empire and the international acceptability of the pound sterling were crumbling in tandem.

In late 1945, President Harry S. Truman’s administration had grudgingly agreed to provide the bankrupt U.K. with a $3.75 billion loan — but on the condition that the pound sterling be made fully convertible to dollars at the rate of $4.03 to the pound by July 15, 1947. This would allow Britain’s colonies and dominions to sell sterling for dollars, satisfying a long- standing demand of U.S. exporters and anti-imperialists while depleting the U.K.’s meager official reserves.

Now dollars hung over every question of how the empire would be dismantled. In February 1946, the great economist John Maynard Keynes had been full of foreboding about the British government’s inertial desire to “cut a dash in the world considerably above our means.” The country, he observed, was “not prepared to accept peacefully and wisely the fact that her position and her resources are not what they once were.” Read more of this post

Where Have China’s Workers Gone? China’s large pool of surplus labor has fueled its rapid industrial growth. Now this “demographic dividend” may be almost exhausted, and its economy reaching a Lewis turning point

Where Have China’s Workers Gone?

March 7 (Bloomberg) – Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang are taking over China’s leadership at a time when growth has slackened and labor issues have become more complex.

Reports that businesses such as Foxconn Technology Group are raising wages and struggling to recruit workers in China have intensified debate over just how many surplus workers the country still has. Meanwhile, a boom in college-educated Chinese has raised concerns of an impending threat to U.S. competitiveness. These seemingly disparate concerns about China’s labor force are actually linked by common underlying factors, with critical implications for China’s ability to remain the growth engine of the world.

China’s large pool of surplus labor has fueled its rapid industrial growth. Now this “demographic dividend” may be almost exhausted, and its economy reaching a Lewis turning point: a shift named after the Nobel prize-winning Arthur Lewis, who was the first to describe how poor economies can develop by transferring surplus labor from agriculture to the more productive industrial sector until the point when surplus labor disappears, wages begin to rise and growth slows. Read more of this post

China’s Richer-Than-Romney Lawmakers Show Xi’s Reform Challenge

China’s Richer-Than-Romney Lawmakers Show Xi’s Reform Challenge

The ranks of China’s ultra-wealthy in its legislature swelled 20 percent this year, highlighting the vested interests that may oppose any measures by incoming President Xi Jinping to reduce the nation’s wealth gap.

Ninety members of the National People’s Congress are on a list of China’s 1,000 richest people published by the Shanghai- based Hurun Report, up from 75 last year, according to a review of the data by Bloomberg News. Everyone on the Hurun list had a fortune of at least 1.8 billion yuan ($289.4 million), more than former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The growing presence of wealthy people in the legislature coincides with efforts by Xi to stem corruption and the public display of luxury by officials as he seeks to address concern the Communist Party no longer represents interests of ordinary Chinese. Xi’s task may become more difficult as the rich move to cement their gains through legislation, said Yang Fengchun, an associate professor of government and management at Peking University.

“The National People’s Congress has a lot of rich businesspeople who have the knowledge and the means to make laws, and that’s a privilege the rest of society doesn’t have,” Yang said in a telephone interview. “The common people believe that they can’t protect the rights of the weak.” Read more of this post

China: Interest rate hikes ‘cannot be ruled out’

Interest rate hikes ‘cannot be ruled out’

Updated: 2013-03-07 09:51

By Wang Xiaotian ( China Daily)

Diverse measures could be used to help control inflation, says adviser Read more of this post

With Positions to Fill, Employers Wait for Perfection

March 6, 2013

With Positions to Fill, Employers Wait for Perfection

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

American employers have a variety of job vacancies, piles of cash and countless well-qualified candidates. But despite a slowly improving economy, many companies remain reluctant to actually hire, stringing job applicants along for weeks or months before they make a decision.

If they ever do.

The number of job openings has increased to levels not seen since the height of the financial crisis, but vacancies are staying unfilled much longer than they used to — an average of 23 business days today compared to a low of 15 in mid-2009, according to a new measure of Labor Department data by the economists Steven J. Davis, Jason Faberman and John Haltiwanger. Read more of this post

Internet rumors and xenophobia cost the world’s biggest instant noodle maker Tingyi/Master Kong $2.4 billion

Internet rumors and xenophobia cost the world’s biggest instant noodle maker $2.4 billion

By Gwynn Guilford — 4 hours ago

When most people think “ramen” they think Japan, but that association has landed Master Kong, the world’s biggest instant noodle maker, in a lot of hot water. The company, which is based in Taiwan and listed in Hong Kong, has lost some $2.4 billion in market capitalization after false rumors about its ownership circulated during Japan and China’s showdown over islands in the East China Sea. Japanese products and companies have been hit with damaging boycotts and protests since the crisis began last fall. That’s also when spurious rumors began circulating online that Master Kong’s parent company Tingyi was majority-owned by a Japanese company. Then a mass campaign encouraged a boycott  via internet and SMS, alleging that the Hong Kong-listed noodle-maker had donated ¥300 million to Japan’s purchase of the controversial islands, as reported by Chinese media blog Danwei, which also created this great chart: 

The smear campaign got its facts wrong—the Japanese instant food company Sanyo owns 33.18% of Tingyi, just behind Taiwan’s Ting Hsin, which owns 33.27%. And the company didn’t make any pledges to buy the islands for Japan. But the facts are little consolation to the company or its investors. Tingyi says the originator of what it calls “Japanese investment-gate” (link in Chinese) was its biggest competitor in the ramen market, Uni-President (which, for its part, denies involvement). But this just goes to show how volatile a mix of social media, misinformation, and xenophobia can be—even before you add the extra spicy packet.

Former Thai DPM and chief economic architect Somkid: “The country is like a Monet painting – nice to look at from a distance but just a blur at closer inspection”; Thailand may become a country without a future if its leaders continue to overlook visionary and sustainable development

Somkid scathing on ‘lip service’ of populist govt

JEERAPONG PRASERTPOLKRUNG
THE NATION March 7, 2013 1:00 am

Thailand may become a country without a future if its leaders continue to overlook visionary and sustainable development, Somkid Jatusripitak, a former deputy prime minister, said on Tuesday.

“The country is like a Monet painting – nice to look at from a distance but just a blur at closer inspection,” he said, referring to French impressionist Claude Monet, who died in 1926.

Somkid was a guest speaker at an event to mark the 58th anniversary of the Thai Journalists Association. On the surface, the Thai economy is at the forefront of Asean countries, he said. But underneath the apparent success story lurk worrisome trends that could lead to decay. Read more of this post