Chile’s currency headache
Those are the questions prompted by today’s surge in the peso to a three-year high, which took it through the level at which the central bank in January announced a $12bn intervention programme. As Reuters reports, strong foreign bets on the peso have contributed.
Japan supply chain: winners and losers among Indian car makers
The effects of Japan’s devastating tsunami and nuclear crisis are starting to be felt by India’s fast-growing automobile sector.
However, production cuts in India by Honda and Toyota represent a golden opportunity for manufacturers that are not dependent on Japanese car parts. The one company that seems to be in pole position to benefit from this situation is – unexpectedly – another Japanese carmaker: Suzuki. Continue reading »
Turkey: business in the Balkans
When Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, met his counterparts from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina on Tuesday, his overt aim was to smooth over ethnic tensions and help build confidence between the Balkan neighbours.
But Turkish business interests run parallel with growing external political influence. Continue reading »
Auto parts makers move to India
By Anjali Naik of mergermarket
Bit by bit, western component makers are taking positions in India’s auto industry, ready to supply local and newly-arrived international vehicle manufacturers in a sector growing at about 10 per cent a year. Continue reading »
Polish miners: showering in cash
A Polish Easter tradition has young men pouring water on girls. Polish coal mines have similar practices but what gets poured is not water but money – and the lucky recipients are the miners.
Coal miners have been among the country’s highest earners since communist times, and even now, despite the sector’s relative decline, they still keeping asking for more. At JSW, Europe’s largest hard coal miner, talks on Tuesday got nowhere – putting at risk coal supplies and the state-owned company’s ambitious privatisation plan. Continue reading »
Russian Helicopters: flying low
Russian Helicopters, Russia’s dominant helicopter maker, has set the price range for its $500m equity offering as the state-owned company moves closer to welcoming outside investors – and securing some badly-needed cash.
As it edges towards next month’s planned London-Moscow IPO, the group will be learning the lessons from the seven Russian companies that have attempted a London listing this year. Only three succeeded. Russian Helicopters will keep a careful eye on pricing as it tried to become the fourth. Continue reading »
China’s unaffordable housing to drive consumer boom?
It takes a bold forecaster to claim that China’s property sector is beginning to resemble that of Japan’s in the late 1980s and an even braver one to predict that this may be a good thing.
But that is exactly the thesis of Spencer Leung, an analyst with UBS in Hong Kong. He argues that as escalating price-to-income ratios for housing put it out of the reach of the middle classes – and in Beijing the ratio has already reached a stratospheric 27:1 - they will stop saving to buy homes and splash out on big-ticket consumer goods like cars and suits instead. Continue reading »
India: snap happy
At many of India’s monuments, vendors carrying cameras, even portable photo printers, are a common sight. Their targets are the many camera-less domestic tourists who visit monuments and buy a keepsake photo in front of the marvel at Rs 20 (US$ 0.45). All is takes is a click and it’s printed and delivered on the spot.
But if the Indian market is as buoyant as the world’s largest camera maker Canon will have you believe, then the “photo-clicking” vendors may soon find their business suffering. Continue reading »
MENA: no IPOs here
If you thought the financial crisis was bad for Middle Eastern market activity, try pan-regional unrest.
The Revolutions in North Africa, which have spread into unrest across the Middle East and Gulf regions, is eroding investor appetite and persuading companies to defer plans to float on regional stock exchanges, says PWC says in a report released on Tuesday. Continue reading »
Brazil’s inflation influenza
If Brazilians had thought that the country’s previous president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was the only one with a talent for theatre, they seemed to have been proven wrong on Monday.
A moment after kicking off a campaign to introduce flu vaccinations at the presidential palace, Lula’s protégé and successor, Dilma Rouseff, made a rare comment directly to the media on that other illness facing Brazilians – inflation, according to the website of the newspaper, O Estado de S.Paulo. Continue reading »
Russia: letting the rouble go?
How much higher can the rouble go, now that it stands at its highest levels against the US dollar since late 2008?
The answer depends largely on the oil price. But not entirely. The Russian authorities, with an established tradition of foreign exchange market intervention, have the capacity to keep the currency in check. But will they? It seems not. Continue reading »
New York headlines
* Russian Helicopters targets $2.6bn valuation
* Hungarians pick up pace after Wanhua takeover
* HSBC to close retail operations in Russia
* CIC set for up to $200bn in fresh funds
* Indian games chief arrested in graft probe Continue reading »
Lone Star/KEB: the never-ending story
When Hana Financial Group signed a $4bn deal to buy Korea Exchange Bank from Texan private equity group Lone Star in November, foreign investors thought one of South Korea’s most protracted corporate sagas was over. But they were wrong.
Lone Star is still waiting for approval of the deal amid increasing uncertainty. South Korea’s regulators were expected to OK the deal in March but held off following a surprise Supreme Court ruling that month which overturned a lower court decision to acquit Lone Star of stock price manipulation charges. Continue reading »
IP in China: profits trump patents
It may have passed you by, but it’s World Intellectual Property Day. To celebrate, WIPO – the global IP body – has a list of events across the world to mark the occasion.
Despite some recent, rather public, government crackdowns on counterfeit software and goods, there’s one notable exception from the list: China. Continue reading »
Further reading: are Chinese really sad?
Tuesday’s best picks from the beyondbrics team: how emerging markets are set to be powerful before they are rich, China is now Latin America’s biggest partner, and examining Saudi Arabia’s role in the Libyan conflict.
And why Chinese people may not be as unhappy as a recent Gallup poll says they are. Continue reading »
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