[snap]: Colombia hikes rates again
Colombia’s central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate for the sixth consecutive month to 4.5 per cent.
The 25 basis point rise was widely expected by economists, who point to accelerating credit expansion and strong peso appreciation. Continue reading »
Lego is not afraid of Mexico’s drug war
The world is full of production plants, but there are few that impress for their scale and modernity as much as the Lego factory in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey.
The plant, which Lego established in 2008 with a US$197m investment, already produces close to a third of the company’s global production. By next year, output is expected to grow 45 per cent.
To see all of this in action is a two-fold lesson. First, it shows that multinational companies are not overly concerned about Mexico’s growing drugs-related violence. Continue reading »
Ukrainian oligarch takes to the sky
Igor Kolomoisky, a multi-billionaire with roots in Ukraine’s lucrative industry and energy sectors, took a major step towards forming a new European airline on Friday.
Shareholders of Climber Sterling, the financially troubled Danish airline, approved a share issue that will bring Kolomoisky in as a strategic investor with a majority stake. Continue reading »
As China moves from a culture of fakes to a culture of innovation, the copycats are also getting more creative – designing better and better knockoffs that pose an increasingly stiff challenge to foreign companies that do business there. From fake iPods to phoney Apple stores, Chinese pirates are moving up the value chain. Continue reading »
Guest post: The frontier tides they are a changin’
By Gabriel Sterne, senior economist at Exotix Limited
Warren Buffett’s quote: “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked” became immortalised during the global financial crisis, and since then the emerging market tide has come back in and frontier markets have been riding the crest of the QE-supported wave. But the tide has started to turn again in Q3, posing the questions of ‘How far will it recede?’ and ‘Are there any naked bathers?’. Continue reading »
UAE: paradise for summer bachelors
For many married expat men, working in the United Arab Emirates over the summer months can be a mixed blessing. On the one hand they have a new found freedom and on the other, it can be downright lonely.
Every summer from July onwards many of the stay-at-home wives and children of Dubai’s expatriate population head home to Europe or further afield, to dodge the 40-50 degree heat and skip the onset of Ramadan, a holy period where eating and drinking in public is prohibited before sunset. That gives the UAE’s foreign married men the chance to let loose in Dubai’s bars and clubs or sometimes just order more pizza or get cooked for by the maid. Continue reading »
Asian companies raise money in euros
Europe’s travails have for the past few years created buying opportunities for Asian and Middle Eastern companies looking for deals and partnerships on the cheap.
The next step in the east to west migration, says Societe Generale, could see a surge in the number of Asian companies raising debt in euros—snapping up funds from Europe’s investors as the continent’s own companies sit tight and worry about the eurozone. Continue reading »
Indian politics: still in a logjam
As India looks ahead to the beginning of the monsoon session of parliament, which starts on August 1, it is hard not to be daunted by the prospect of 81 bills that will need to be passed in five weeks. Among them are a goods and services tax bill and banking pension and insurance bills that Macquarie Capital Securities says would channelise funds into much needed infrastructure projects. Continue reading »
New York headlines
Hong Kong taps Alder for securities regulator
Temasek to buy HK mall for $2.4bn
China’s gold demand may surpass India’s this year
China’s Wen cautions over rail push
China demand boosts Vale’s profits by 74% Continue reading »
South Korea: labour union strikes back
Old habits die hard. South Korean companies are bracing for tougher negotiations with their labour unions this summer as the country’s militant unionised workers seem to be returning to the bad old ways of getting their message across through strikes.
Hyundai Motor (A005380:KSC), the country’s largest automaker, failed to reach an annual wage agreement with its labour union on Wednesday before its 45,000 union members take a summer vacation, increasing the prospect of their first strike in two years. Continue reading »
China’s next inflation challenge: sugar
Despite three decades of market reforms, the Chinese government still clings to some elements of its centrally planned past.
Beijing is particularly fond of its strategic commodity reserves, which hold everything from frozen pork to copper and allow the state to dictate prices for raw materials deemed sensitive or strategically important. One item on the long list is white sugar. Continue reading »
Further reading: Big Mac Index
Friday’s top picks from the beyondbrics team: eight lessons of the Arab spring, why compromise is needed to save Libya’s people and the new and improved Big Mac Index. Continue reading »
Yingluck’s populist policies: economic cost?
Thailand has managed weathered the political uncertainty of the elections, but now, as parliament is expected to sit for the first time on Monday, it is the turn of the economists to get worried.
What do they think of the raft of populist policies the winning party of prime minister-elect Yingluck Shinawatra has promised, which include a 40 per cent rise in the minimum wage, increased social security and a slew of major infrastructure projects? Continue reading »
PDVSA: happy birthday Chávez
Venezuelans, who live in one of the most polarised countries in the world, had strongly contrasting ideas as to what to give their divisive president for his 57th birthday on Thursday.
While some wished Hugo Chávez a speedy recovery after being diagnosed with cancer recently, others said they would have preferred to give him a “one-way ticket to the moon”. But surely the most original present of all was from the state oil company, PDVSA: increasing its oil production. Continue reading »
South Korea: time to chill out
Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s president, has called on his people to boost the domestic economy by taking their holidays at home rather than jetting off to traditional favourites like Cebu, Guam and Hawaii. His tourism chief has gone a step further and wants workaholic Koreans to take a full (and hitherto unthinkable) two weeks off.
The president’s exhortation comes rather late but reflects his growing concern that South Korea’s domestic economy is doing pretty poorly compared with mighty groups such as Hyundai and Samsung, who seem to be getting rich in their own cocooned, export-driven world. Continue reading »
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