Philippines: winning Japanese investment at the expense of China

Feb 22, 2013 12:33pm by Ben McLannahan

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The First Philippine Industrial Park, some 50km south of Manila, is already a whopper, accounting for about 3 per cent of the country’s total exports. Which is why it is notable that Sumitomo Corporation, the Japanese trading house that owns 30 per cent of it, wants to make it even bigger. Continue reading »

Tags: FDI, Japan-EM, Philippines economy Posted in Asia, Philippines | Permalink

China Japan: red tape diplomacy?

Feb 8, 2013 12:16pm by Ben McLannahan

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KDDI and Sumitomo Corp, the dominant shareholders in JCom, Japan’s number one cable-TV company, have been waiting since October to launch an offer to mop up the shares they don’t own. And now, thanks to China, they’ll have to wait a little longer.

On Friday the pair announced that Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom) would not after all clear the Y759bn ($8.2bn) deal by early February, as they had earlier indicated it would. Continue reading »

Tags: China-Japan, M&A Posted in Asia, China, Japan | Permalink

Japan to Africa: your LNG, please

Dec 6, 2012 9:20am by Ben McLannahan

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Japan’s thirst for liquefied natural gas is well known. Since the world’s third largest economy shut down almost all of its nuclear reactors following the Fukushima disaster last year, imports of the relatively clean-burning fuel have risen sharply, as utilities have scrambled for shipments anywhere they can find them. Even Belgium – a non-producing nation – showed up in Japan’s official list of LNG suppliers this year, after it re-routed tankers that had already passed customs.

Less well appreciated, however, is Africa’s vital role in meeting that demand. Continue reading »

Tags: Japan, Japan-Africa, LNG, oil & gas Posted in Africa | Permalink

Most Japanese of Japanese exports hit hardest by China dispute

Oct 22, 2012 1:12pm by Ben McLannahan

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The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands barely show up on most maps of the world. But the impact of the big row between Japan and China over this tiny chain of islets in the East China Sea could be detected in September’s trade data from Tokyo, published on Monday.

Preliminary numbers from Japan’s finance ministry showed that the headline value of the country’s exports to its biggest trading partner slipped 1.3 per cent from August, on a seasonally-unadjusted basis. Continue reading »

Tags: diplomacy, equities, trade Posted in Asia, China, Japan | Permalink

Rolls Royce: coming soon to Wenzhou, Chongqing and a shopping mall in Bangkok

Sep 6, 2012 9:51am by Ben McLannahan

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You never get many numbers out of Thorsten Müller-Ötvös. The chief executive of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the luxury marque buried deep within BMW, won’t divulge anything as vulgar as an average sales price, let alone an operating margin or a volume forecast.

Instead, he lets slip the odd morsel like 3,538 (total cars built last year, which was a record) or 4.9, the number of seconds it takes for a Ghost limousine to hit 60 miles an hour, from zero. Continue reading »

Tags: BMW, luxury, Rolls Royce Motors Posted in China, Global, South Korea, Thailand | Permalink

Myanmar: Japan makes up for lost time

Jul 11, 2012 8:45am by Ben McLannahan

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After the debt, the deluge? Three months after Japan agreed to waive much of the money owed to it by Myanmar, clearing the way for normalised economic relations after a 25-year lending freeze, Japanese companies are beginning to make up for lost time.

On Tuesday Marubeni, Japan’s fifth largest trading house, said it had been awarded a contract to overhaul a gas-fired power plant it built seven years ago, before tighter Western sanctions took hold. Continue reading »

Tags: energy, infrastructure, Myanmar economy, Myanmar investment Posted in Asia, Myanmar | Permalink

Indonesia: taxing the patient as well as the fickle

Jun 19, 2012 4:23pm by Ben McLannahan

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Now add tax

When Indonesia shook up its minerals tax regime in May, it might have expected a reaction – not least from Japan, which has poured more cash into the archipelago in the past two and a half years than any other non-Asean nation.

Mitsubishi Corp, the nation’s largest trading house by market capitalisation, is one of a number of inward investors unhappy at what it sees as quixotic policy making by the government of southeast Asia’s largest economy. Continue reading »

Tags: FDI, Japan, tax Posted in Asia, Indonesia | Permalink

Kyocera: digging deeper into India

Apr 5, 2012 1:29pm by Ben McLannahan

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Kyocera motto

Thank you, Kyocera. At a time when India was crying out for some stable, long-term investment, the Japanese company has obliged.

India has long been a promising market for Kyocera’s cutting tools. Three years ago the Kyoto-based manufacturer of ceramics, electronics and industrial components set up its first sales subsidiary in Gurgaon, later branching out into Pune, Bangalore and Chennai. Now it is going one better, launching a manufacturing joint venture with CTC, a Kyocera sub-contract manufacturer for the past ten years. Continue reading »

Tags: FDI, Kyocera, technology Posted in India | Permalink

China: banks hold out begging bowls

Sep 27, 2010 3:00am by Ben McLannahan

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Roughly $45bn down, at least another $45bn to go.

China’s banks have been on a fund-raising binge this year. Agricultural Bank of China ($22bn), Bank of China ($6bn) and Bank of Communications ($4bn) were the biggest of seven $2bn+ deals. But that certainly won’t be the end of it. Continue reading »

Posted in China | Permalink

Are Pakistan stocks really a steal?

Aug 17, 2010 8:25am by Ben McLannahan

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Mark Mobius likes to think he knows a bargain when he sees one. That’s why the Singapore-based chairman of Templeton Asset Management has told Bloomberg that he is busily picking stocks in flood-hit Pakistan. Down 9 per cent so far this month, Karachi is the world’s worst performing market by some distance.

This kind of thing is par for the course for Mobius. Whenever the index dips sharply – such as after the assassination the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto three years ago – the seasoned emerging-markets investor pops up with some soothing assurances. Continue reading »

Tags: Mark Mobius Posted in Asia, Pakistan | Permalink

Banks too big for just Japan

Jun 30, 2010 6:53am by Ben McLannahan

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A 4.5 per stake may not seem like much. And neither does the price-tag: 13.7bn rupees ($295m). But Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group’s acquisition of a piece of Mumbai-based Kotak Mahindra Bank, 110 times smaller by assets, is revealing all the same.

Japan’s three megabanks are just too big in Japan. At the core of each is a domestic commercial banking operation covering retail, lending to small-to-medium sized enterprises and corporate banking. Until now, they have diversified not by geographic expansion but by acquisitions and product line launches mostly within Japan, moving into securities broking, regional banking, asset management and consumer finance (a particularly bad move). Continue reading »

Tags: banking Posted in Asia, India | Permalink

Tencent: still got game

Jun 16, 2010 6:30am by Ben McLannahan

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Managers at Tencent Holdings may have been particularly grateful for the Dragon Boat festivities in Hong Kong on Wednesday. What better way to bring an end to a vicious drubbing of the shares than to close the Hong Kong stock exchange for a national holiday? Continue reading »

Tags: internet, Tencent Posted in Asia, China | Permalink

Li & Fung delivers

Jun 4, 2010 12:15pm by Ben McLannahan

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Let’s hear it for Li & Fung, the best-performing stock this year among 43 in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index. Its 10.4 per cent return since January 1st – against a slide for the benchmark of 9.5 per cent – is not just catch-up, either. Last year it ranked eighth on the leader board, with a 110 per cent return.

This is heady stuff for the world’s biggest supply chain specialist, established 104 years ago in China’s export hub of Guangzhou. Continue reading »

Posted in China | Permalink

Beijing moves closer to de-pegging renminbi

Apr 30, 2010 10:12am by Ben McLannahan

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It’s been six long months since the People’s Bank of China scrapped a pledge to keep the renminbi “basically stable”. Ever since, investors have scoured every utterance for hints over when, and by how much, and in what form the dollar peg would be abandoned.

Judging by a little-noticed announcement on Thursday evening from the State Administration for Foreign Exchange, a move could be imminent. Continue reading »

Posted in Asia, China | Permalink

The Philippine economic fix: quick moves and fast punches?

Apr 28, 2010 2:27pm by Ben McLannahan

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In the boxing ring, Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao is legendarily quick on his feet. In politics, too, he is showing a talent for manoeuvring.

The 31 year-old national hero, vying to become a Philippine congressman, has switched his candidacy to southern Sarangani, one of the nation’s poorest provinces, to improve his chances in next month’s elections. Three years ago he failed to unseat an incumbent political dynasty in his (slightly richer) home province of South Cotabato. Continue reading »

Posted in Philippines | Permalink

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