Dilma’s popularity survives crisis
Dilma Rousseff’s spring-cleaning of her fledgling government seems to have done her popularity little harm, if any.
Last week, the president lost her most important minister, Antonio Palocci, to an ethics scandal and was forced to replace him with a first-time senator, Gleisi Hoffman.
Now she has replaced her institutional affairs minister Luiz Sergio Oliveira with Ideli Salvatti, an experienced hand from her Workers’ Party (PT). Continue reading »
Chile’s volcanic ash cloud proves costly
Winter is approaching in the southern hemisphere but as Patagonia’s ski resorts gear up for the high tourist season, it’s not snow falling from the sky, but ash.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, tasted the ramifications of the June 4 eruption of the Puyehe volcano in Chile first hand. He arrived in Buenos Aires on Monday by overnight bus after the ash cloud diverted his flight to the central city of Córdoba because the ash cloud – which had dissipated – had again forced flights at Buenos Aires’ airports to be cancelled. Continue reading »
Oil rise, Dubai’s petrol retailers bleed
Fuel shortages in the oil-rich Gulf can only mean one thing: crisis.
Amid the political tumult of the Arab world, petrol shortages have accompanied acute moments of distress from Libya to Bahrain.
But the latest shortages in some emirates of the United Arab Emirates may stem from a different type of crisis: a longstanding economic imbalance rooted in intra-federal politics. Continue reading »
Kazakhmys gets $1.5bn loan from China, buys time over ENRC
The board room bust-up at Eurasian Natural Resources has cast a cloud over Kazakhstan’s biggest metals producer but it’s business as usual at Kazakhmys (KAZ:LSE), the central Asian country’s other London-listed mining group.
At a ceremony in Astana attended by Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, on Monday, Kazakhmys signed a memorandum with the China Development Bank to secure a $1.5bn loan to develop the huge Aktogay copper project in east Kazakhstan. Continue reading »
Who’s who in the yuan trading club
If China is going to promote the renminbi as a currency for trade settlement, then it has make sure its trade partners have….well, renminbi, right? Since 2008, the People’s Bank of China has been orchestrating a number of currency swaps with other central banks. Monday’s news that Beijing has agreed a RMB7bn ($1.08bn) currency swap deal with Kazakhstan has beyondbrics thinking it’s time to do a round-up of who’s who in the yuan trading club. Continue reading »
Kazakhstan and China agree $1bn currency swap
Kazakhstan became the latest country to sign a currency swap deal with China on Monday, agreeing to finance $1bn worth of trade in renminbi and tenge by 2015.
Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, said the deal marked a “new era” in relations with China - brushing off popular fear about growing Chinese influence in central Asia’s biggest economy following a raft of trade and finance agreements. Continue reading »
Kulczyk sells car business to VW
Jan Kulczyk is getting out of the car business, selling off his dealerships which account for about a fifth of new car sales in Poland to Volkswagen for 600m-800m zlotys ($220m-$294m), according to Poland’s Puls Biznesu daily.
Kulczyk, now Poland’s wealthiest man, got his start by importing Volkswagen cars into Poland in 1988, just before the collapse of communism. He has since gone on to greater business successes, acting as an intermediary in some of the country’s largest privatizations, as well as branching out into real estate, infrastructure construction and energy. Continue reading »
Poland: tricky time for $5.7bn coal IPO
Poland is pressing ahead with its biggest proposed privatisation of the year, with a drive to raise up to 5.8bn zlotys from the flotation of JSW, the European Union’s biggest coking coal producer.
But the plan to list up to a third of the company at up to 146 zlotys a share by the end of the month faces tough challenges – difficult world markets, prickly labour unions and the memory of last month’s lacklustre BGZ bank privatisation. Continue reading »
The down-to-earth ways of the world’s richest man
Although the core of his pan-American telecommunications empire is under attack by both the Mexican government and competitors, Carlos Slim appears unruffled. In a wide-ranging FT interview, the world’s richest man explains his investment views – and also why he is reading Kahlil Gibrain’s spiritual classic, “The Prophet”. Continue reading »
ENRC: lessons for London
Four years ago, Eurasian Natural Resources Corp marketed itself as the perfect vehicle for a globalising world. The profitable Kazakh miner was marrying itself to London, the hub of emerging-market finance.
Now, ENRC’s board is melting down. There are accusations about its “Soviet rather than City” approach to business. Two independent directors have been dismissed – one a grand British boss – apparently for repeatedly complaining about corporate governance flaws.
The boardroom blow-up raises an uncomfortable question for London: who should take responsibility when thing go wrong? Continue reading »
In praise of risk management and dinners missed: propaganda, banking style
China is being swept by a wave of government-directed Communist-era nostalgia as citizens in some cities are exhorted to “sing red songs” and study quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong.
In this heady atmosphere, some clever bankers in the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun have apparently found a new way to get ahead in the cut-throat world of Chinese finance. Continue reading »
EM assets: rich and getting richer
Here at the FT the editor has asked us not to use the term “eye-popping”, which has become commonplace and lost its impact. But at the risk of putting beyondbrics’ career in jeopardy, here we have a chart (after the break) worth a bit of hyperbole.
Produced by Jonathan Anderson at UBS, it shows the growth in EM financial wealth over the past decade – and it’s eye-popping. Continue reading »
MNCs in China: missing the point?
Multinational companies are never slow to complain about what they say is an unfair playing field in China: when Beijing gives Chinese companies a leg up, in the form of government procurement or indigenous innovation policies that favour locals, foreign corporates are the first to say so.
But according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, which today published a report on the China consumer market with management consultants Booz&Co, MNCs are missing a trick or two, when it comes to e-commerce. Continue reading »
* Syrian tanks take Jisr al-Shughour
* China’s bank lending falls sharply in May
* Vietnam seeks US support in China dispute
* Indian IT outsourcers face fresh challenges
* Eastern Europe pushes back euro adoption
* Villagers protest at POSCO’s $12bn Orissa project Continue reading »
Guest post: Turkey’s challenging current account deficit
By Murat Üçer, adviser to Global Source Partners
On Monday morning, Turkey has woken up to a third AKP reign. This was widely expected; the only uncertainty was about the number of parliamentary seats the party would win and the impact on the way parliament would tackle the urgent but controversial task of writing a new constitution.
The AKP ended up with almost half the votes, but fell 4 seats short of the critical 330-seat threshold required to take the constitution to referendum and well below the 367-seat threshold, that would enable it to rewrite the constitution – if necessary – without support of other parties. Continue reading »
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