Shan leaves TPG and decides to go it alone
Another day, another veteran Asian dealmaker quits to set up his own investment fund. Except this time, it is the considerable name of Weijian Shan, TPG Capital’s star investor.
Shan joined TPG – or, technically, its then affiliate Newbridge Capital – in 1998 and soon put the US fund on the Asian investment map with a string of audacious buy-outs.
Americas markets wrap: China slowdown drags stocks and currencies
Latin American markets fell on Tuesday amid concerns over slower growth in China, lingering worries about European banks and concern over rising tensions in Gaza.
“Emerging markets continue to be driven by global financial markets, at the same time, these markets have become strikingly correlated”, wrote Koon Chow, George Christou and Musawar Ahmad of Barclays Capital in a note to clients. “We do not want to make too much of this, but it is a striking environment that reflects, we think, the depths of recent market concerns about the global context. Markets are trading together as though we were in the midst of a financial crisis, though they are generally not at crisis levels.”
FT series: Is this really Africa’s year?
The 48 nations that make up sub-Saharan Africa are a very varied bunch. So the future looks wildly different depending where you are standing – in Zimbabwe, say, or Ghana.
Broadly, though, the shifting patterns of world trade, structural changes in the prices of commodities, and growing interest from around the world in the potential of sub-Saharan Africa’s poorly served markets, have offered an opportunity for the continent to turn the corner.
There have been false dawns in the past. This time it’s Africa’s to lose. Fortuitously the outlook has brightened just as the continent prepares to host the football World Cup for the first time.
Bad timing, and perhaps bad planning, for Argentine debt swap
Argentina’s extension of the deadline for its swap of defaulted bonds is no real surprise. The offer had the bad luck to be launched amid emerging market turmoil triggered by Greek default fears, and now is worth significantly less than when it was launched. As a result, Argentine bonds fell again. (See this Bloomberg story.)
The markets upset is sheer bad timing for Argentina, as was the fact that offer had already been pushed aside by the global financial crisis in 2008. But the fact that it hardened the terms at the last minute and that more retail investors have emerged that Argentina appeared not to know about looks more like bad planning.
April industrial production: Brazil’s bubble gets bigger
Yet more evidence that Brazil’s economy is growing too quickly for comfort: figures for industrial production in April published today showed a year on year increase of 17.4 per cent, more even than the whopping 16.1 per cent consensus among market economists. The quarter on quarter, seasonally adjusted annualised rate of growth was even bigger, at 19.1 per cent.
Sberbank bemoans ‘low’ Russian rates – but what’s the real reason?
Russia’s central bank decided to cut refinancing rates yesterday for the 14th time in as many months – and some people aren’t happy about it.
German Gref, head of Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, came out swinging on Wednesday with claims the country’s record 7.75 per cent refinancing rate was “unreasonably low” and did not “reflect the real risks in the economy”.
Turkmenistan caught behind the times, as ‘frac’ reshapes the global gas industry
Ask an energy pundit a question about Caspian gas these days and he’ll probably tell you to go think about “frac.”
“Frac” is the buzz word for shale gas, the new game changer on world energy markets that promises to end consumers’ dependence on remote or difficult sources of gas supply.
Shale is good news for energy guzzling countries like the US which has invented new rock fracturing technology making it easier to tease gas out of the ground. But its bad news for traditional gas players – like Turkmenistan – who risk being left behind.
CEE markets wrap: Wall Street open helps equities pare losses
Eastern European markets pared losses in afternoon trading, as Wall Street’s better-than-expected open calmed market nerves. Traders looked to strike a balance between negative manufacturing data from China, and upbeat ISM and construction figures in the US.
Poland’s stock market lost ground after data showed a slowdown in industrial output in May. The WiG20 index fell 1.8 per cent to 2,390.58. The zloty regrouped after the US open, trading around 4.10 against the euro and 3.34 against the dollar, having lost as much as 2.4 per cent against the dollar in early afternoon trading.
Dubai’s debt problems put in a holding pattern
After a delay of almost a month, the 2009 financial results of Dubai Holding’s commercial arm were unveiled today.
The 88-page document released this morning on Nasdaq Dubai’s website from Dubai Holding Commercial Operations Group, shines a spotlight on the economic turmoil afflicted on the emirate by Dubai Holding, a conglomerate majority owned by the ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
China workers’ morale suffers piece by piece
Every T-shirt is ironed at least once in its lifetime – as part of the packaging process. At a large textile plant in southern China, employing tens of thousands of workers, young men iron T-shirt after T-shirt at an amazing clip. Their jerky movements are so quick and efficient, it is like watching a video on fast forward.
They do so for eight hours a day, and longer when working overtime. Their piece-rate pay structure is a function of output. The faster they work, the more T-shirts they iron, the more money they make.
Mud-throwing is so old hat. In the hurly burly of Ecuadorean politics, Galo Borja, the country’s undersecretary of trade, has been hit by a splatter of yellow gloop that looks a lot like banana puree.
Borja, whose family owns food processor Industrias Borja, is facing calls to resign after the opposition presented documents showing the company exported 250 tons of the 590 tons of banana puree sold to Iran since January 2008.
Testing time for China’s internet cafes
Some teenagers in rural China are on an unusual spiritual diet these days: school textbooks instead of online games.
Ahead of the annual nationwide senior high school entrance exams next week, authorities in Lin county in the inland province of Shanxi and Fuzhou town in the southern province of Jiangxi closed down all local internet cafes to ensure kids were buckling down to study.
Video: China’s housing problems ‘worse than anything in the West’
Li Daokui, adviser to the People’s Bank of China, speaks with Geoff Dyer, Beijing bureau chief, about why the problems in China’s housing market are worse than anything the west has experienced.
Finding a common thread in Asia’s production figures
As those who live in the region know, there is no such thing as Asia – the word is little more than a European construct that describes the bits of the world that aren’t obviously part of other continents.
Given that, looking for common trends in the diverse countries of the region is often a difficult task – no more so than in trying to work out what signals the raft of factory production figures released today is telling us.
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