HDTV makers ride India’s cricket bug
The Cricket World Cup is a fervently watched event in India. Analysts say it has delivered a regular surge in television sales since the 1980s, when India first won the competition.
This year is no different – only the TV sets on offer are more technologically advanced.
TV manufacturers are eyeing the World Cup to increase the sales of high-definition televisions during the season, capitalising on the national addiction to the sport. Continue reading »
Dilma faces first Congress test
No sooner had Guido Mantega, Brazil’s finance minister, finished a teleconference with the international media and analysts on Brazil’s agenda for the G20 than he moved onto the next big fight for the new government – the minimum wage.
Brazil’s Congress is set to decide as early as Wednesday on a government proposal to increase the wage by about 6.9 per cent in nominal terms to R$545. Adjusted for inflation, which is running at near to 6 per cent, this will represent a very restrained pay rise indeed for Brazil. Continue reading »
Americas markets wrap: BM&FBovespa slumps on competition worries
Latin American markets slipped today as commodities prices dropped and rising Chinese inflation raised worries over interest rate hikes, sending producers’ stocks lower and weighing on the region’s currencies.
In Brazil, the Bovespa lost 0.3 per cent as exchange operator BM&FBovespa sank 4.7 per cent on worries over competition from a potential challenger backed by BATS and Claritas. Iron ore miner Vale and oil group OGX also fell on declining commodity prices. Continue reading »
Barclays exits Russian retail banking
Barclays’ decision to sell its Russian retail and commercial lending arm after failing to meet return on investment objectives may raise some alarms. The bank announced in its 2010 full-year financial statement released on Tuesday that it has written off the cost of its Barclays Bank Russia, claiming a £243m goodwill write-down.
But Barclays’ failure in Russia’s retail banking market didn’t come as a surprise and it shouldn’t scare investors, says a senior analyst at Troika Dialogue: “For every foreign bank that exits, there is another waiting to enter”. Continue reading »
Groupon friends Russia’s Odnoklassniki
Groupon is stepping up its commitment to Russia and the country’s largest internet group, Mail.ru. The e-commerce site announced on Tuesday it would begin offering deals on Odnoklassniki, one of Mail.ru’s social networking sites, allowing customers to make one-click purchases and follow friends’ shopping habits without ever having to leave the Odnoklassniki site.
The partnership, Mail.ru announced with little modesty, would be the “first project of its kind worldwide. No other social network has ever before realised incentives of this scale in the field of social commerce.” Continue reading »
CEE markets wrap: equities flat
Central and eastern European stocks were relatively flat on Tuesday, as US retail sales increased less than forecast and concerns about inflation intensified.
“The short-term driver downwards is US retail sales, but the sentiment hasn’t been great for Russia for a few days,” said Julian Rimmer, a trader of Russian shares at CF Global Trading in London. Continue reading »
Danone: Russia gets the cream
Quelle surprise! At Danone, the French dairy group, Russia will this year replace the land of 246 cheeses as its number one market. Deuxieme surprise! Emerging markets will this year take more than half group sales – with more to come if Danone’s predictions prove correct.
Moreover, as the company made clear in its 2010 results statement on Tuesday, EM growth isn’t coming at the expense of profits, as at some multinationals. Margins in Asia (almost all EM) are higher than they are in either Europe or America (mixed EMs and developed markets). Continue reading »
Deal of the day: Chinese seek Kazakh oil
by Olia Wang and Yumin Wang of mergermarket
China’s thirst for oil is evidenced by the growing number of deals Chinese companies are making with companies in its oil-rich neighbourhood.On Tuesday another private Chinese oil company made such an acquisition in Kazakhstan. China’s MIE Holdings acquired Emir Oil, the wholly-owned operating subsidiary of BMB Munai (BMB), a Kazakh oil and gas explorer for US$170m.
Turkey: sticking with low rates bet
Turkey is standing by its decision to defy conventional wisdom and cut interest rates despite growing concerns about inflation.
The central bank on Tuesday left its policy rate, the one-week repo, unchanged at 6.25 per cent and said it would monitor the tightening impact of recent measures until its next meeting (next month) and take further measures if necessary.
Even though China and some other leading emerging markets have recently raised rates, Turkey has decided against increases for fear of attracting bigger inflows of unwelcome hot money. Continue reading »
CEE’s green shoots still tender
Central Europe’s economies are continuing to grow, according to a raft of numbers on the fourth quarter released across the region on Tuesday, but the pace of expansion is beginning to tail off.
In a flash estimate released on Tuesday morning, the Czech Republic’s Q4 growth came to an annualised 2.9 per cent, lower than the consensus forecast of 3.2 per cent. For the whole of 2010, the Czech economy grew by 2.3 per cent, enough to erase the effects of its recent recession. Continue reading »
HKEx no gold mine for Vale
What has happened to Vale’s Hong Kong listing? The Brazilian miner began trading on the Hong Kong exchange on December 8, in what it described as “a significant step in raising its profile in, and demonstrating its commitment to, Asia”.
But things appear not to have gone to plan. Volume trading fell sharply from the outset and, according to figures compiled by Webb-site.com, a market-watching outfit based in Hong Kong, the mining giant – which currently ships about 140m tonnes of iron ore to China per year – has been busily shipping its shares back in the other direction. Continue reading »
Video: Bahrain boiling over
As unrest spreads around the Arab world, another man died in Bahrain on Tuesday in a second day of clashes triggered by the death on Monday of a young demonstrator who was allegedly shot by police. In this video the FT’s Simeon Kerr gives an eyewitness account from the country of clashes between police and pro-democracy protesters.
China’s GDP growth made news this week because, on the official figures, China overtook Japan to become the second largest economy in the world in 2010. But actually, on a different way of calculating the data, this was very old news. Using purchasing power parity, China not only overtook Japan way back in 2001, but it is also quite close to overtaking the US as the biggest economy in the world – if, indeed, it has not done so already. Continue reading »
EM bonds: a new yardstick
Bond investors aren’t short of indices by which to measure their performance. BofA Merrill Lynch alone has 4,000. But that hasn’t stopped the US bank launching a new one this week: an index for emerging market corporate bonds.
BofA clearly wants to grab a bigger share of a growing market. At the end of 1998, the market capitalisation of bonds in the new index was just $38bn. Today it is $600bn. The compound growth rate – 25 per cent a year – was achieved in a golden decade age for bonds that may not soon be repeated. But emerging economy corporate bonds are now too big to ignore. Continue reading »
GM head: China central to strategy
China gets a lot of love from the heads of global carmakers. The latest comes from Daniel Akerson, chief executive of GM, who on Tuesday called China “the crown jewel in the GM universe” and said GM plans to launch over 20 new or redesigned cars in China over two years.
It’s not without reason that China remains the American company’s top priority. Today’s announcement comes as GM hit a record for January sales (268,071), and as Chinese demand for GM cars surpasses demand in the US. Continue reading »
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