Americas markets wrap: Miners’ gains offset oil losses to lift stocks
Latin American stock indices closed higher in thin trading today as miners gained on rising metals prices, offsetting declines in oil producers. Continue reading »
Brazil’s election: who’s your choice?
If the first round of television propaganda is any guide, Dilma Rousseff will romp home as the next president of Brazil on October 3.
Here are Dilma’s first two programmes, broadcast on Tuesday lunchtime and evening.
Her main challenger is José Serra. His evening programme is here. His lunchtime programme is flagged on his site but doesn’t play, so we’re including a link to a version apparently recorded by supporters watching it on television.
The difference between the campaigns is, as they say in Portuguese, screaming. Continue reading »
By Ronald Buchanan in Mexico City
The tropical highlands of Central America grow some of the world’s finest Arabica coffee – much of it imported by Starbucks, which accounts for some 20 per cent of the Guatemalan crop alone. Yet the inhabitants of the isthmus have yet to experience a cup of Starbucks coffee, much less an iced caramel macchiato or frappuccino.
But coffee drinkers won’t have to wait much longer; by the end of this year, a franchised Starbucks will open in El Salvador, the first in a chain of stores expected to spread throughout Central America. Continue reading »
S Africa recalls World Cup sales surge
By Simon Mundy in Johannesburg
The feel-good atmosphere of the World Cup seems far away for South Africans. Their country is sliding into an indefinite public service strike, and the media complain of a government crackdown on free speech. But retail figures published today provide a reminder of those heady four weeks of football, when locals and visitors splurged on food, drink and – apparently – household appliances.
Retail sales rose by 7.4 per cent in June compared to the same month last year, roughly in line with market expectations of a 7.6 per cent increase. Continue reading »
CEE markets wrap: stocks slip
Central and eastern European equities relinquished yesterday’s gains, as investors’ nervousness prevailed and oil touched a five-week low under $74 a barrel.
The Micex closed the afternoon session down 0.3 per cent. Sberbank, which has performed well in recent months, lost 1.5 per cent after its deputy CEO said the lender is “interested” in financing Lukoil’s buyback of shares from ConocoPhillips. Continue reading »
By Thomas Williams of mergermarket
Lebanon’s banking sector has grown to 30 per cent of the country’s GDP and, in the IMF’s words, “weathered recent regional and global crises well”. With margins slimming at home, its next trick should be deeper regional integration.
To that end, today’s move doesn’t see a Lebanese bank shopping abroad, but rather Egypt’s largest investment bank by market value, EFG Hermes, shopping in Lebanon. EFG has responded to the breakdown of its merger with one Lebanese bank – Bank Audi SAL-Audi Saradar Group, in which EFG sold its stake in January – by buying a smaller one, Credit Libanais. Continue reading »
Chinese manufacturers in Africa: missing in action
A glaring absence in the story of China in Africa is Chinese manufacturing. The Asian powerhouse may be the workshop of the world, but it has set up few of its own workshops in Africa – even as it keeps expanding its overall investments on the continent.
The World Bank has expressed its desire to work with China to change that and jump start African industrialisation. But two academics have just set out the reasons why it’s going to be an uphill battle, in a short analysis note from the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment. Continue reading »
Malaysia: GDP spike confirms Asia’s growth story
Anyone wondering whether developing Asia can sustain the blistering rates of economic growth that have followed its recovery from the global financial crisis could do worse than look at Malaysia, which Wednesday clocked up an expansion in gross domestic product of 9.5 per cent year on year for the six months to June.
That’s not in the same league as local rival Singapore, which managed a record 17.9 per cent in the same period, but it’s not bad for a country whose economy contracted by 5.1 per cent in the first half of last year. Continue reading »
Philippines: a U-turn from Aquino could take its toll
Business leaders in the Philippines attending the government’s briefing for investors on Wednesday liked what they saw and heard. They hailed the new administration, and its commitment to transparency and anti-corruption.
But away from the handshakes and back-slapping in the hotel function rooms a less investor-friendly story is taking shape, with an old bugbear at the heart of it: tax. Continue reading »
New York headlines
* Everbright makes strong Shanghai debut
* Vietnam devalues its currency
* Beijing to test banks for negative equity-paper
* Ukraine set to halve grain exports
* Chavez signs law barring Venezuela brokers from fx, govt debt
Most Asian markets gained on Wednesday, yet the big story came in Shanghai, where Everbright Bank beat expectations on its debut, rising 18 per cent from its IPO price. Everbright’s IPO is so far China’s second-biggest in 2010 after AgBank.
However, with renewed fears that Chinese authorities will tighten lending, the Shanghai Composite fell 0.2 per cent to 2,666.30, with losses in financials outweighing gains in mining stocks. The index remains 2.3 per cent up this week. Continue reading »
[Hey Bric Spender] Gadget-loving Vietnam goes shopping
Who would have thought hi-tech gadgets would take off so fast in a country where the per capita GDP, at $1,050, is lower than the cost of a new iPhone 4 ($1,100)?
But the unlocked phones are selling fast – four a day at Hoang Mobile in downtown Hanoi, according to enthusiastic sales staff in the cramped store just a few blocks from the equally tiny Digiworld, a licensed Apple vendor. It, too, is jammed most days, with customers asking for advice on how to work the 3G connection on their iPads. Continue reading »
Foxconn: mass rally to boost morale
When Foxconn was hit by a string of suicides among its workers earlier this year, the company’s first reaction was to try and wait for the trouble to just go away.
Not anymore. Wednesday afternoon, the once so media-shy company – which makes a major portion of the world’ s iPhones and other electronics gadgets – put itself in the limelight with a nationwide rally for its 800,000 workers. Continue reading »
London headlines
* Everbright makes strong Shanghai debut
* Vietnam devalues its currency
* Anil Ambani to buy 26% stake in Icex
* China proves tough for India’s outsourcers
* DP World profit beats estimates Continue reading »
As presidential campaign heats up, Dilma pulls further ahead
The phoney war is over and the real campaigning got under way on Tuesday in the run-up to Brazil’s elections in October. Brazilians will be bombarded by four 50-minute blocks of electoral propaganda every day – morning and noon on radio, lunchtime and evening on television – until September 30.
In theory, the campaign will give the biggest boost to Dilma Rousseff, candidate of the left-wing ruling PT and chosen successor to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the most popular president in Brazilian history. Continue reading »
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