Icbccss&p500usd Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 10/2/2011 22:04

PetroChina

In one of the biggest investments to date by a Chinese company in North America, PetroChina said it would pay $5.4 billion for a 50% stake in unconventional-gas assets held by Encana, which operates in western Canada.

[briarberry] 08/2/2011 18:37

China is where the customers are - and where the customers are increasingly going to be.

But China, too, is perceived to be the country where technology mysteriously transfers from in-coming companies with know-how to companies which want to know how.

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"It is very difficult to take a copy-cat to a court in China because the cases of copying products from western countries is actually conduct that the government supports," he says.

[briarberry] 08/2/2011 12:34

China suffers worst drought in 60 years

BEIJING, Feb. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- Minimal rainfall or snow this winter has crippled China's major agricultural regions, leaving many of them parched. Crop production has fallen sharply, as the worst drought in six decades, shows no sign of letting up.

Shandong province has seen only 12 millimeters of rain since last September, fifteen percent of the normal level.

Despite more than 4-thousand pumping stations continuing to supply water, the situation is severe.

More than half the 4 million hectares of land used for growing wheat have been hit by drought.




Water level of Xiangjiang River near alarm level

Citizens walk on the dried-up river bed of the Xiangjiang River in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province, Feb. 8, 2011. Due to the lack of rainfalls, water levels of the Xiangjiang River fell to as low as 25.19 meters at the Changsha sector, just 9 centimeters above the alarm level of Changsha's water supply. (Xinhua/Long Hongtao)

[briarberry] 08/2/2011 11:28

The People's Bank of China said it would raise its benchmark lending and deposit rates by 25 basis points, according to reports.

[briarberry] 02/2/2011 23:26

Brazil

The market moved lower as Brazilian statistics agency IBGE said industrial production fell 0.7% in December from November on a seasonally adjusted basis.


India - Consumer Price Index - December: 9.5%

[briarberry] 02/2/2011 11:37

China Is Poised to Raise Rates Again, Bankers Say

The renminbi has already been rising at an annualized rate of 5.7 percent against the dollar since China broke the currency's peg to the dollar last June. China's central bank continues to intervene heavily in currency markets to brake the renminbi's rise, but not enough to stop the renminbi from rising altogether - as it did for almost two years before last June.

[briarberry] 01/2/2011 02:44

China's official PMI index slips to 52.9 vs. 53.9

The CFLP said its measure of input prices rose sharply to 69.3, up from December's 66.7.

HSBC China manufacturing PMI reportedly hits 54.5 from Decembers 54.4, but below Novembers 55.3

[briarberry] 26/1/2011 11:48

Are emerging markets slowing ???


South Korean economic growth slowed in the final three months of last year to 0.5%, from 0.7% the previous quarter, as retail spending and manufacturing production slowed.

Earlier this month, South Korea raised interest rates unexpectedly to 2.75%.

[briarberry] 25/1/2011 19:32

Chinese New Year

The Shanghai Stock Exchange will close from February 2 (Wednesday) to February 8 (Tuesday) and open for trading from February 9 (Wednesday) onwards.

[briarberry] 25/1/2011 15:35

Top 5 largest coal power producing facilities

1 Taichung Power Plant ............. Taiwan - 5,780MW
2 Tuoketuo Power Station ........... China - 5,400MW
3 Guodian Beilun Power Station .... China - 5,000MW
4 Waigaoqiao Power Station ........ China - 5,000MW
5 Bełchatów Power Station ......... Poland - 4,440MW

[briarberry] 25/1/2011 11:30

hundreds of Chinese companies have bought American shell companies...


A lack of transparency and a disregard for accounting regulations are all too common among U.S.-listed Chinese firms, and the S.E.C. is reportedly conducting, belatedly, an investigation into such stocks. Companies have been known to report one set of revenue numbers to the S.E.C. and another to Chinese authorities (perhaps to minimize tax bills). A company's suppliers or partners often turn out to be owned or controlled by the company's own managers, a practice that lends itself to "tunnelling"-using outside businesses to milk the corporation. Another problem is executives who treat their companies as personal A.T.M.s: RINO lent its C.E.O. and its chairwoman (a married couple) $3.5 million, and didn't even ask for a signed loan document in exchange.

The U.S. has an entire regulatory apparatus designed to protect the interests of investors, but Chinese companies have been adept at exploiting its loopholes. Using a tactic known as a reverse merger, hundreds of Chinese companies have bought American shell companies, which have a stock-exchange listing but few actual assets. A quick name change, and, presto, the Chinese company is traded on Nasdaq or the Amex. This gives Chinese firms the credibility of being listed on a major exchange without any of the vetting from investors that companies get when they go public. And once you're on an exchange it takes a lot to be kicked off. Even though Fuqi hasn't filed financial statements for almost a year, a Nasdaq panel recently gave it until March to do so.

As for the audits of these companies, it's hard to know what they're worth. According to a report by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, some U.S. auditors outsource their work to unsupervised Chinese auditors, or sign off on audits without ever sending anyone to China. In many cases, "auditing" probably amounts to little more than rubber-stamping a company's reported results.

[briarberry] 25/1/2011 11:24

price controls cause shortages...


IN CHINA's power industry, government planners still hold sway. While coal prices have been largely freed, electricity prices are fixed by the state. The mismatch is a bane to power companies, which often complain of having to produce at a loss. Recent attempts by the government to reassert control over coal prices have not been helping.

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The price-taming effort backfired. To avoid having to buy coal at high market prices, many generating plants allowed their stocks to run down to critically low levels. Transport bottlenecks exacerbated by wintry weather made it difficult in some places to replenish them. In central and northern provinces, where electricity prices are set lower than on the coast, power rationing and outages have become common in recent weeks. In Henan, about 40% of power plants were reported last month to have no more than three days-worth of coal stocks.

[briarberry] 22/1/2011 22:29

Data Shows Less Buying of U.S. Debt by China

FOR eight years after the United States resumed running large budget deficits in 2002, China was the largest lender, buying a fifth of the new Treasury securities sold during that span - an expenditure of more than $900 billion. During 2006, China financed more than half the American deficit. When the financial crisis struck hardest, China spent more than $100 billion on Treasuries over the two-month period of September and October 2008.

But over the last year, China has been a net seller of Treasury securities, according to figures released this week by the American government. If that is true, it would be extraordinary, considering the size of the bilateral trade deficit, and there has been speculation that China has been purchasing Treasuries through accounts in other countries (The City - London).

[briarberry] 22/1/2011 17:38

China in deal to buy U.S. bank

China's largest bank, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., is the first Chinese bank to acquire a U.S. deposit-taking bank.

[briarberry] 21/1/2011 20:15

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Paul Allen reports from Dongguan, China on the New South China Mall, which has remained mostly vacant since it opened in 2005. Jim Chanos, the hedge-fund manager who was one of the first investors to foresee the 2001 collapse of Enron Corp., reiterated last month China is on a "treadmill to hell" because of a reliance on property development for economic growth. (Source: Bloomberg)

[briarberry] 21/1/2011 00:54

SocGen crafts strategy for China hard-landing

Société Générale fears China has lost control over its red-hot economy and risks lurching from boom to bust over the next year, with major ramifications for the rest of the world.

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China had carried out its own version of "quantitative easing", cranking up credit by 20 trillion (£1.9 trillion) or 50pc of GDP over the past two years. It has waited too long to drain excess stimulus.

"Policy makers are already behind the curve. According to our Taylor Rule analysis, the tightening needed is about 250 basis points," said the report, by Alain Bokobza, Glenn Maguire and Wei Yao.

The Politiburo may be tempted to put off hard decisions until the leadership transition in 2012 is safe. "The skew of risks is very much for an extended period of overheating, and therefore uncontained inflation," it said.

[briarberry] 20/1/2011 17:41

China to cut food weighting in CPI composition.

[briarberry] 18/1/2011 18:00

The China Development Bank and the China Export Import Bank offered loans of at least $110 bn (£69.2 bn) to governments and firms in developing countries in 2009 and 2010.

The research was undertaken by the Financial Times newspaper.

[briarberry] 18/1/2011 16:49

China attracted a record level of inward investment in 2010, sharply recovering from the previous year.

The country attracted $106bn of foreign direct investment - which excludes investments in financial instruments such as shares - up 17.4% from 2009, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

That was enough to more than reverse the 2.3% fall seen during the previous year caused by the global recession.

Over a fifth of the money went into China's property sector.

[briarberry] 18/1/2011 16:33

Some views on the trade imbalance with China

[briarberry] 17/1/2011 13:13

Chinese President Hu Jintao has said the international currency system dominated by the US dollar is a "product of the past".

Mr Hu also said China was taking steps to replace it with the yuan, its own currency, but acknowledged that would be a "fairly long process".

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"But making the RMB an international currency will be a fairly long process."

Some economists suggest that China's growth strategy - with its focus on exports and state-led investment - may be incompatible with Mr Hu's currency ambitions.

In order for the yuan to oust the dollar as a global reserve currency, international central banks and investors would need to be able to get their hands on huge amounts of the currency.

Yet neither of the ways in which China could supply the world with more yuan is at all appealing to Beijing, according to Michael Pettis, economist at Beijing University.

He says the country could start running big trade deficits with the rest of the world - just as the US has been doing - and finance them by selling their currency to their trade partners.

Or it could allow foreign investors to pour their money into Chinese financial assets - like shares, bonds or yuan bank accounts - matched by similar Chinese investments in the rest of the world.

But Mr Pettis warns that for the numbers to add up, China would need to do these things on an unprecedented scale, which is likely to be unpalatable to the authorities.

Either of these moves is likely to go with an increase in the yuan's value, making Chinese exporters less competitive.

And they may also fuel speculative asset bubbles in China - something that Beijing has been trying to clamp down on of late.

[briarberry] 17/1/2011 11:11

China's property prices rose again in December, but at their slowest annual pace in over a year.

House prices rose 0.3% in December, meaning the price of a home was 6.4% higher than a year ago, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Meanwhile Shanghai's mayor confirmed that his city would introduce a property tax this year.

The new tax is part of a broad set of measures by the authorities aimed at stemming a possible property bubble.

[briarberry] 14/1/2011 22:37

BEIJING, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday announced the seventh increase of the bank reserve requirement ratio in the past year amid heightened concerns about inflation.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC), or the central bank, said on its website that it would lift the bank reserve requirement ratio by 50 basis points as of Jan. 20.

After the hike, China' s major banks will have to set aside 19 percent of their reserves, and small and medium banks will have to maintain 15.5 percent of their deposits as reserve, a record high for the country's financial institutions.

According to the PBOC's latest figures, the reserve ratio hike will tighten another 350 billion yuan