Dưới lòng Đồng bằng sông Hồng, sâu đến - 3500m là một bể than lớn, trữ lượng 210 tỷ tấn. Tổng công ty Than cho biết sau năm 2010 sẽ mở mỏ khai thác với sản lượng 1,5 triệu tấn/năm.
Vào thập kỷ 70 của thế kỷ trước, các nhà địa chất trong lúc khoan thăm dò dầu khí tại khu vực Đồng bằng sông Hồng đã phát hiện ra nhiều vỉa than có trữ lượng lớn. Thông tin này được các nhà địa chất tâm huyết của Việt Nam rất quan tâm và quyết định phải xem xét cụ thể. Nhiệm vụ được giao cho Viện Địa chất Khoáng sản (Tổng cục Địa chất). Sau khi tập hợp các báo cáo từ khoan thăm dò dầu khí, kết hợp với điều tra, khảo sát, đến 1986 báo cáo về "Tổng kết địa chất và độ chứa than miền võng Hà Nội" đã được hoàn thành.
Theo báo cáo này than dưới lòng Đồng bằng sông Hồng nằm trên diện tích 3500km2, trải dài từ Hà Nội - Hưng Yên - Hải Dương - Thái Bình... rồi kéo thẳng ra biển. Có khoảng vài chục vỉa than với tổng trữ lượng dự báo là 210 tỷ tấn. Các vỉa than này có chiều dày lớn, dao động từ 2-3m đến 10-20m, ít lớp kẹp, vỉa nằm thoải, duy trì ổn định, chất lượng tốt...
Ngày 25/11/1998 tại Hà Nội, Tổng công ty Than Việt Nam và Tổ chức Phát triển công nghệ công nghiệp và Năng lượng mới Nhật Bản (NEDO) đã ký văn bản cùng tham gia Dự án Thăm dò khảo sát than Đồng bằng sông Hồng Việt Nam, trong thời gian 5 năm. Dự án đã được tiến hành từ 1998 và kết thúc vào năm 2002. Vùng khảo sát của Dự án được thực hiện trên diện tích 962km2, bao gồm các tỉnh Hưng Yên, Thái Bình, một phần tỉnh Hà Tây và Hà Nội, với 19 lỗ khoan, tổng khối lượng 9.516,80m, đo địa chấn... Bên cạnh đó là khảo sát, nghiên cứu sử dụng 50 lỗ khoan của Việt Nam đã thực hiện trước đó trong quá trình thăm dò dầu khí và than.
Theo số liệu khảo sát trên diện tích 962km2, thì trữ lượng than dự báo khoảng 30 tỷ tấn( khảo sát đến độ sâu -1700m). Trong đó tổng diện tích tìm kiếm tại huyện Khoái Châu (80km2) có trữ lượng than trên 1,5 tỷ tấn. Riêng khu vực Bình Minh (Khoái Châu) với diện tích thăm dò 25km2 đạt thăm dò sơ bộ trữ lượng 456 triệu tấn (khảo sát đến độ sâu -600m). Đây là loại than á BitumB, có chất lượng tốt, rất có giá trị cho sản xuất công nghiệp nhất là luyện kim.
Hiện nay Tổng công ty Than đang tiếp tục công tác thăm dò chi tiết nơi dự định sẽ mở mỏ đầu tiên tại Bình Minh (Khoái Châu) để chuẩn xác về trữ lượng, chất lượng than, cùng các điều kiện địa chất thuỷ văn, địa chất công trình, môi trường... chuẩn bị cho việc khai thác vào sau 2010.
Theo Tổng công ty Than vấn đề phức tạp nhất hiện nay là lựa chọn công nghệ khai thác nào cho phù hợp. Hiện tại ở một số nước trên thế giới đã khai thác than ở độ sâu -1000m, nhưng ở những nơi đó có cấu tạo địa chất rất bền vững. Còn khu vực Đồng bằng sông Hồng có cấu tạo địa chất không ổn định, lớp đất đá và vách trụ mềm, rất khó khăn cho việc khai thác. Đã có nhiều hội thảo được tổ chức để tìm ra phương án khai thác cho mỏ than này, cũng có nhiều công nghệ được đề cập đến. Nhưng phương án truyền thống là khai thác hầm lò vẫn được quan tâm hơn cả. Theo ông Nguyễn Trọng Khiêm, Trưởng ban Địa chất Trắc địa Tổng công ty Than thì phương án khai thác phải đảm bảo an toàn môi trường, để than lấy lên vẫn có giá trị thương mại, còn nếu chi phí khai thác lại lớn hơn giá bán trên thị trường thì khó thực hiện.
Dự báo nhu cầu than Việt Nam sẽ tăng lên trên 30 triệu tấn/năm vào 2020. Ngoài việc khai thác những mỏ than hiện có, Chính phủ cũng đã giao nhiệm vụ cho Tổng công ty Than trong giai đoạn 2003-2010 phải tập trung đẩy mạnh công tác thăm dò đến mức -300m, đồng thời triển khai việc tìm kiếm, điều tra cơ bản dưới mức - 300m bể than Quảng Ninh; từng bước thăm dò bể than Đồng bằng sông Hồng cùng các mỏ than bùn khác để phục vụ cho chiến lược phát triển năng lượng của quốc gia. Việc tiến hành khai thác mỏ than tại Bình Minh (Khoái Châu) nằm trong "Qui hoạch phát triển ngành Than Việt Nam giai đoạn 2003-2010 có xét triển vọng đến năm 2020" đã được Chính phủ phê duyệt.
Tổng công ty Than cho biết khi mỏ than này đi vào hoạt động, sẽ đầu tư xây dựng nhà máy nhiệt điện tại đây để dùng than phát điện, nhằm tăng hiệu quả sử dụng tài nguyên và góp phần tăng sản lượng điện phục vụ phát triển kinh tế - xã hội.
Trần Thuỷ (Vietnamnet, 21-4-2004)
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Friday, July 8, 2011
Rating Agency kiếm tiền thế nào và vận hành ra sao?
Rating Agency kiếm tiền từ việc bán sản phẩm là kết quả xếp hạng tín dụng.
Ai mua?
(i) Nhà đầu tư: để quyết định mua/bán/giữ sản phẩm tài chính. Nhà đầu tư có cần bỏ tiền ra mua không hay sẽ được cung cấp miễn phí?
(ii) Người phát hành sản phẩm tài chính: để bán và định giá bán cho thị trường.
Ai đóng góp nhiều doanh số hơn cho Rating Agency, nhà đầu tư hay người phát hành?
S&P không dám yêu cầu các định chế tài chính phố Wall cung cấp dữ liệu bởi họ lo ngại rằng nếu đòi hỏi nhiều quá thì những khách hàng này sẽ chuyển sang sử dụng dịch vụ của Moody's.
Moody's có lo lắng điều tương tự? 'Có!'.
Kết cục: các kết quả xếp hạn tín dụng được công bố như bình thường dù dữ liệu có rất ít, hoặc không có dữ liệu.
Ai mua?
(i) Nhà đầu tư: để quyết định mua/bán/giữ sản phẩm tài chính. Nhà đầu tư có cần bỏ tiền ra mua không hay sẽ được cung cấp miễn phí?
(ii) Người phát hành sản phẩm tài chính: để bán và định giá bán cho thị trường.
Ai đóng góp nhiều doanh số hơn cho Rating Agency, nhà đầu tư hay người phát hành?
S&P không dám yêu cầu các định chế tài chính phố Wall cung cấp dữ liệu bởi họ lo ngại rằng nếu đòi hỏi nhiều quá thì những khách hàng này sẽ chuyển sang sử dụng dịch vụ của Moody's.
Moody's có lo lắng điều tương tự? 'Có!'.
Kết cục: các kết quả xếp hạn tín dụng được công bố như bình thường dù dữ liệu có rất ít, hoặc không có dữ liệu.
Tổng thống Philippines bán xe sang
VNExpress, 7-7-2011 - Ông Benigno Aquino III ngày 6-7 cho biết đã bán chiếc xe riêng hạng sang hiệu Porsche vì vấn đề an ninh, chứ không phải do những lời chỉ trích đây là chiếc xe không thích hợp cho lãnh đạo một nước còn nghèo.
Tổng thống Philippines mua chiếc xe thể thao nói trên qua tay vài người với giá 4,5 triệu Peso (tương đương 102.000 USD). Nhà lãnh đạo 50 tuổi này cho biết ông đã bán chiếc xe đúng bằng với giá mua. Nhưng ông cũng phàn nàn về việc có quá nhiều tin tức và bình luận về chiếc xe của ông.
Ông Aquino III giải thích lý do bán xe là do cảm giác dễ bị tấn công khi ngồi trong chiếc Porsche quá nổi bật, chứ không phải vì bị chỉ trích xài xe sang. "Chiếc xe mang đến rủi ro không cần thiết và giống như quảng cáo rằng tôi đang có mặt trong chiếc xe vậy", AP dẫn lời nhà lãnh đạo Philippines.
Nguồn tin từ văn phòng tổng thống cho biết chiếc xe được bán cho một người bạn của ông Aquino. Năm 2010, ông đã bán chiếc xe thể thao hiệu BMW để mua chiếc Porsche cũ mới chạy được dưới 10.000 km. Ông phải lên tiếng biện minh cho việc đổi xe và giải thích không phải ông muốn thử cảm giác mạnh.
Những ý kiến chỉ trích nhằm vào ông Aquino vì nhiều người cho rằng việc ông mua một chiếc xe hạng sang không phù hợp với lời kêu gọi thắt lưng buộc bụng. Dinh tổng thống thì khẳng định ông mua chiếc xe bằng tiền riêng và không mâu thuẫn với chính sách thắt chặt chi tiêu công.
Tuy vậy, tranh cãi về chiếc xe được coi là nguyên nhân khiến Tổng thống Aquino bị giảm mức độ hài lòng từ công chúng. Trước đây ông sử dụng một chiếc Lexus LX570 mượn từ anh rể. Hiện ông không còn dùng chiếc xe này, nhưng vẫn sở hữu một chiếc Toyota Land Cruiser và một chiếc Ford Everest.
Tổng thống Philippines mua chiếc xe thể thao nói trên qua tay vài người với giá 4,5 triệu Peso (tương đương 102.000 USD). Nhà lãnh đạo 50 tuổi này cho biết ông đã bán chiếc xe đúng bằng với giá mua. Nhưng ông cũng phàn nàn về việc có quá nhiều tin tức và bình luận về chiếc xe của ông.
Ông Aquino III giải thích lý do bán xe là do cảm giác dễ bị tấn công khi ngồi trong chiếc Porsche quá nổi bật, chứ không phải vì bị chỉ trích xài xe sang. "Chiếc xe mang đến rủi ro không cần thiết và giống như quảng cáo rằng tôi đang có mặt trong chiếc xe vậy", AP dẫn lời nhà lãnh đạo Philippines.
Nguồn tin từ văn phòng tổng thống cho biết chiếc xe được bán cho một người bạn của ông Aquino. Năm 2010, ông đã bán chiếc xe thể thao hiệu BMW để mua chiếc Porsche cũ mới chạy được dưới 10.000 km. Ông phải lên tiếng biện minh cho việc đổi xe và giải thích không phải ông muốn thử cảm giác mạnh.
Những ý kiến chỉ trích nhằm vào ông Aquino vì nhiều người cho rằng việc ông mua một chiếc xe hạng sang không phù hợp với lời kêu gọi thắt lưng buộc bụng. Dinh tổng thống thì khẳng định ông mua chiếc xe bằng tiền riêng và không mâu thuẫn với chính sách thắt chặt chi tiêu công.
Tuy vậy, tranh cãi về chiếc xe được coi là nguyên nhân khiến Tổng thống Aquino bị giảm mức độ hài lòng từ công chúng. Trước đây ông sử dụng một chiếc Lexus LX570 mượn từ anh rể. Hiện ông không còn dùng chiếc xe này, nhưng vẫn sở hữu một chiếc Toyota Land Cruiser và một chiếc Ford Everest.
Benz or Bentley: Vietnam car sales on the rise
By Ian Timberlake | AFP – Wed, Jul 6, 2011
A young woman in a tight silver dress posed on the front of a black Audi A6 sedan at a Hanoi auto show, hoping to entice buyers.
Luxury cars are increasingly irresistible for many Vietnamese, say industry players who report rising sales even as daily life becomes harder for the majority struggling to cope with one of the world's highest rates of inflation.
Audi's A6, launched at the Vietnam Auto Expo last month, costs almost $142,000 -- which would take the average Vietnamese worker 182 years to earn.
Yet Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Audi and other high-end brands are increasingly common on the narrow streets of Hanoi, where they vie for space with the motorcycles which are standard transport for most people.
Even more exclusive names including Bentley and Rolls-Royce can be spotted, leading to concerns about growing social inequality.
"We have been doubling our sales every year and I think we'll do the same again," said Laurent Genet, general director of Automotive Asia Ltd, Audi's official importer to Vietnam.
Ford, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and others have been assembling vehicles in Vietnam for several years.
But only since the country joined the World Trade Organization in 2007 has the market been open to official importers, Genet said, meaning it is still in its infancy and attracting an increasing number of brands.
Auto Motors Vietnam, the official Renault importer, arrived in Vietnam late last year with its Koleos, which retails for 1.429 billion dong (U.S 68,048).
"Sales have started pretty well from the beginning," said managing director Xavier Casin.
France's Citroen returned to Vietnam this year and Range Rover, which has been in the country for three years, says sales are up by about 50 percent in 2011 -- even though its models at the Hanoi show retailed for about U.S 200,000.
"Land Rover is very expensive. The market knows that," said sales manager Tran Nhat Tu.
The Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers' Association reported a year-on-year increase of almost 38 percent in car and SUV-style vehicle sales for the first four months of 2011.
The increase comes despite an economy beset by a high trade deficit, a struggling currency and inflation that has risen every month since last August.
With inflation running at 21 percent in June, ordinary people -- whose average monthly salary is 1,365,000 dong (U.S 65) -- have been cutting back on expenses.
As part of efforts to stabilise the economy the central bank wants growth in credit to stay below 20 percent this year, with lenders limiting the proportion of loans for "non-productive sectors", notably property and stocks.
But the restrictions have not affected the high-end car market, said Genet.
"In our case we are selling expensive cars for people who don't really need financing," he said. "For them it's prestige. It's almost an investment."
Tran Minh Tuan, 28, is an example. The real estate trader visited the auto show thinking of upgrading from a less-prestigious brand to Audi.
"The car you drive shows your social class, your identity," he said.
"I think the demand for luxury cars in Vietnam has always been high. Although the economy sometimes is not good, there are still a lot of people who have money, who want to change to more expensive cars."
In 1986 communist Vietnam began to turn away from a planned economy to embrace the free market, a policy which led to growth among the fastest in Asia.
Despite recent economic instability the growth has continued, inevitably bringing with it the "conspicuous consumption" evident in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, said John Hendra of the United Nations.
"The wealth gap is rising between the rich and the poor," he said in May before ending his term as UN country director.
But while displays of wealth are sometimes a sign of success, many ordinary Vietnamese doubt the money was acquired honestly, said Matthieu Salomon, international senior adviser for Towards Transparency, the local affiliate of global anti-corruption organisation Transparency International.
Saloman said a survey by his group, due for release in August, found that about a quarter of urban Vietnamese youth believe people are most likely to succeed if they are not following the rules.
Hanoi's Young Business Association recently told a World Bank-backed forum that the "supercars and expensive houses" of a few rich people reflect waste, bureaucracy and corruption in public spending.
For most Vietnamese, a car is still out of reach and the auto show was a chance for people like state employee Nguyen Tuan Hung, 37, to fantasise.
"I drive a motorcycle," he said. "I don't have money to buy a car. But of course, I dream of buying one."
A young woman in a tight silver dress posed on the front of a black Audi A6 sedan at a Hanoi auto show, hoping to entice buyers.
Luxury cars are increasingly irresistible for many Vietnamese, say industry players who report rising sales even as daily life becomes harder for the majority struggling to cope with one of the world's highest rates of inflation.
Audi's A6, launched at the Vietnam Auto Expo last month, costs almost $142,000 -- which would take the average Vietnamese worker 182 years to earn.
Yet Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Audi and other high-end brands are increasingly common on the narrow streets of Hanoi, where they vie for space with the motorcycles which are standard transport for most people.
Even more exclusive names including Bentley and Rolls-Royce can be spotted, leading to concerns about growing social inequality.
"We have been doubling our sales every year and I think we'll do the same again," said Laurent Genet, general director of Automotive Asia Ltd, Audi's official importer to Vietnam.
Ford, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and others have been assembling vehicles in Vietnam for several years.
But only since the country joined the World Trade Organization in 2007 has the market been open to official importers, Genet said, meaning it is still in its infancy and attracting an increasing number of brands.
Auto Motors Vietnam, the official Renault importer, arrived in Vietnam late last year with its Koleos, which retails for 1.429 billion dong (U.S 68,048).
"Sales have started pretty well from the beginning," said managing director Xavier Casin.
France's Citroen returned to Vietnam this year and Range Rover, which has been in the country for three years, says sales are up by about 50 percent in 2011 -- even though its models at the Hanoi show retailed for about U.S 200,000.
"Land Rover is very expensive. The market knows that," said sales manager Tran Nhat Tu.
The Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers' Association reported a year-on-year increase of almost 38 percent in car and SUV-style vehicle sales for the first four months of 2011.
The increase comes despite an economy beset by a high trade deficit, a struggling currency and inflation that has risen every month since last August.
With inflation running at 21 percent in June, ordinary people -- whose average monthly salary is 1,365,000 dong (U.S 65) -- have been cutting back on expenses.
As part of efforts to stabilise the economy the central bank wants growth in credit to stay below 20 percent this year, with lenders limiting the proportion of loans for "non-productive sectors", notably property and stocks.
But the restrictions have not affected the high-end car market, said Genet.
"In our case we are selling expensive cars for people who don't really need financing," he said. "For them it's prestige. It's almost an investment."
Tran Minh Tuan, 28, is an example. The real estate trader visited the auto show thinking of upgrading from a less-prestigious brand to Audi.
"The car you drive shows your social class, your identity," he said.
"I think the demand for luxury cars in Vietnam has always been high. Although the economy sometimes is not good, there are still a lot of people who have money, who want to change to more expensive cars."
In 1986 communist Vietnam began to turn away from a planned economy to embrace the free market, a policy which led to growth among the fastest in Asia.
Despite recent economic instability the growth has continued, inevitably bringing with it the "conspicuous consumption" evident in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, said John Hendra of the United Nations.
"The wealth gap is rising between the rich and the poor," he said in May before ending his term as UN country director.
But while displays of wealth are sometimes a sign of success, many ordinary Vietnamese doubt the money was acquired honestly, said Matthieu Salomon, international senior adviser for Towards Transparency, the local affiliate of global anti-corruption organisation Transparency International.
Saloman said a survey by his group, due for release in August, found that about a quarter of urban Vietnamese youth believe people are most likely to succeed if they are not following the rules.
Hanoi's Young Business Association recently told a World Bank-backed forum that the "supercars and expensive houses" of a few rich people reflect waste, bureaucracy and corruption in public spending.
For most Vietnamese, a car is still out of reach and the auto show was a chance for people like state employee Nguyen Tuan Hung, 37, to fantasise.
"I drive a motorcycle," he said. "I don't have money to buy a car. But of course, I dream of buying one."
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Temasek Holdings Raises $3.63 Billion Selling Stakes in Bank of China, CCB
By Zijing Wu, Cathy Chan and Lee Spears - Jul 6, 2011 5:12 PM GMT+0800
An employee walks past the logo of Temasek Holdings Pte at the company's headquarters, in Singapore. Photographer: Munshi Ahmed/Bloomberg
Temasek Holdings Pte raised HKD28.2 billion (USD3.63 billion) selling stakes in China Construction Bank Corp. (939) and Bank of China Ltd., hours after Moody’s Investors Service said the credit outlook for lenders may sour.
Singapore’s state-owned investment company sold about HKD18.8 billion of stock in Bank of China, the nation’s third- largest lender by assets, and about HKD9.4 billion of second- ranked Construction Bank at discounts of at least 3 percent yesterday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bank of China and Construction Bank slumped in Hong Kong, leading the nation’s lenders lower for a second day after Moody’s said loans to local governments may exceed official estimates. Construction Bank has more than doubled and Bank of China gained over 30 percent since Temasek bought the stakes before their initial public offerings more than five years ago.
“The selldown is part of Temasek’s consolidation of their share holdings in Chinese banks,” said Stanley Li, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities (HK) Ltd. in Hong Kong who rates Bank of China and Construction Bank as “hold.” “This may reflect some of its concerns about the banks.”
Bank of China dropped 3.6 percent, the most in a month, and traded at HKD3.72 at the close of trading in Hong Kong. Beijing- based Construction Bank fell as much as 3.2 percent.
Temasek continues to hold “substantial positions” in Chinese banks, Jeffrey Fang, a spokesman for Temasek in Singapore, said in an e-mail. “This sale is part of our portfolio rebalancing, which we do from time to time.”
Trimming Stakes
Foreign investors including Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) have trimmed more than D20 billion in holdings in Chinese lenders since 2009 to bolster capital as global regulators tightened requirements following the credit crisis.
Temasek, which has focused on emerging markets investments, will probably say in its annual report that the value of its assets rose to about SD200 billion (D163 billion) in the 12 months to March 31, according to Victoria Barbary, a senior analyst at Monitor Group in London, and Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB Research Pte. in Singapore. That would surpass the SD186 billion record reached a year earlier.
Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte, a unit of Temasek, sold 5.19 billion Bank of China shares for HKD3.63 each, 6 percent less than yesterday’s closing price in Hong Kong. Cairnhill Investments (Mauritius) Pte and Crescent Investments (Mauritius) Pte, both controlled by Temasek, sold 1.5 billion Construction Bank shares for HKD6.26 each, or a 3.4 percent discount.
Debt Concern
The extra 3.5 trillion yuan (USD540 billion) of local governments’ liabilities reported by Moody’s yesterday, coming on top of the national audit office’s findings last week of 10.7 trillion yuan in debt, may fuel concern that lenders will be unable to absorb losses on defaults when the economy cools.
Bank of America, the biggest U.S. lender by assets, may sell some of its almost D22 billion stake in Construction Bank, three people briefed on the plans said last month. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender was the second-biggest shareholder in Construction Bank at year end, with Temasek being the third- largest investor, according to Bloomberg data.
A lockup on 12.4 billion Hong Kong-listed Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. (3988) shares held by investors including Standard Chartered Plc and Qatar Investment Authority expires this month. The Chinese bank’s listing raised D22.1 billion in the world’s largest initial public offering in July 2010.
Temasek, set up in 1974, bought D1 billion of stock in China Construction Bank’s initial public offering in 2005. The IPO price was HKD2.35. It also purchased a 5.1 percent stake in the Chinese lender from China SAFE Investments Ltd. in August the same year, according to its annual report that year.
Offer Price
Fullerton Financial offered the shares in Bank of China for HKD3.60 to HKD3.67 each, the term sheet showed. Temasek owned about 10.5 billion shares, or 12.5 percent of Bank of China’s Hong Kong-listed stock, according to a Dec. 31 filing. It paid about D1.5 billion for a 5 percent stake in the lender before its IPO in June 2006.
Cairnhill Investments and Crescent Investments offered about 1.5 billion shares in China Construction Bank for HKD6.22 to HKD6.35 each. Temasek held 7 percent, or 16.9 billion Hong Kong-listed shares, of Construction Bank, according to filings.
Morgan Stanley (MS) led the sales by Temasek’s units, according to the offering term sheets.
To contact the reporters on this story: Zijing Wu in London at zwu17@bloomberg.net; Cathy Chan in Hong Kong at kchan14@bloomberg.net;
An employee walks past the logo of Temasek Holdings Pte at the company's headquarters, in Singapore. Photographer: Munshi Ahmed/Bloomberg
Temasek Holdings Pte raised HKD28.2 billion (USD3.63 billion) selling stakes in China Construction Bank Corp. (939) and Bank of China Ltd., hours after Moody’s Investors Service said the credit outlook for lenders may sour.
Singapore’s state-owned investment company sold about HKD18.8 billion of stock in Bank of China, the nation’s third- largest lender by assets, and about HKD9.4 billion of second- ranked Construction Bank at discounts of at least 3 percent yesterday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Bank of China and Construction Bank slumped in Hong Kong, leading the nation’s lenders lower for a second day after Moody’s said loans to local governments may exceed official estimates. Construction Bank has more than doubled and Bank of China gained over 30 percent since Temasek bought the stakes before their initial public offerings more than five years ago.
“The selldown is part of Temasek’s consolidation of their share holdings in Chinese banks,” said Stanley Li, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities (HK) Ltd. in Hong Kong who rates Bank of China and Construction Bank as “hold.” “This may reflect some of its concerns about the banks.”
Bank of China dropped 3.6 percent, the most in a month, and traded at HKD3.72 at the close of trading in Hong Kong. Beijing- based Construction Bank fell as much as 3.2 percent.
Temasek continues to hold “substantial positions” in Chinese banks, Jeffrey Fang, a spokesman for Temasek in Singapore, said in an e-mail. “This sale is part of our portfolio rebalancing, which we do from time to time.”
Trimming Stakes
Foreign investors including Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) have trimmed more than D20 billion in holdings in Chinese lenders since 2009 to bolster capital as global regulators tightened requirements following the credit crisis.
Temasek, which has focused on emerging markets investments, will probably say in its annual report that the value of its assets rose to about SD200 billion (D163 billion) in the 12 months to March 31, according to Victoria Barbary, a senior analyst at Monitor Group in London, and Song Seng Wun, an economist at CIMB Research Pte. in Singapore. That would surpass the SD186 billion record reached a year earlier.
Fullerton Financial Holdings Pte, a unit of Temasek, sold 5.19 billion Bank of China shares for HKD3.63 each, 6 percent less than yesterday’s closing price in Hong Kong. Cairnhill Investments (Mauritius) Pte and Crescent Investments (Mauritius) Pte, both controlled by Temasek, sold 1.5 billion Construction Bank shares for HKD6.26 each, or a 3.4 percent discount.
Debt Concern
The extra 3.5 trillion yuan (USD540 billion) of local governments’ liabilities reported by Moody’s yesterday, coming on top of the national audit office’s findings last week of 10.7 trillion yuan in debt, may fuel concern that lenders will be unable to absorb losses on defaults when the economy cools.
Bank of America, the biggest U.S. lender by assets, may sell some of its almost D22 billion stake in Construction Bank, three people briefed on the plans said last month. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender was the second-biggest shareholder in Construction Bank at year end, with Temasek being the third- largest investor, according to Bloomberg data.
A lockup on 12.4 billion Hong Kong-listed Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. (3988) shares held by investors including Standard Chartered Plc and Qatar Investment Authority expires this month. The Chinese bank’s listing raised D22.1 billion in the world’s largest initial public offering in July 2010.
Temasek, set up in 1974, bought D1 billion of stock in China Construction Bank’s initial public offering in 2005. The IPO price was HKD2.35. It also purchased a 5.1 percent stake in the Chinese lender from China SAFE Investments Ltd. in August the same year, according to its annual report that year.
Offer Price
Fullerton Financial offered the shares in Bank of China for HKD3.60 to HKD3.67 each, the term sheet showed. Temasek owned about 10.5 billion shares, or 12.5 percent of Bank of China’s Hong Kong-listed stock, according to a Dec. 31 filing. It paid about D1.5 billion for a 5 percent stake in the lender before its IPO in June 2006.
Cairnhill Investments and Crescent Investments offered about 1.5 billion shares in China Construction Bank for HKD6.22 to HKD6.35 each. Temasek held 7 percent, or 16.9 billion Hong Kong-listed shares, of Construction Bank, according to filings.
Morgan Stanley (MS) led the sales by Temasek’s units, according to the offering term sheets.
To contact the reporters on this story: Zijing Wu in London at zwu17@bloomberg.net; Cathy Chan in Hong Kong at kchan14@bloomberg.net;
Brookings: Bàn về khủng hoảng lương thực
Homi Kharas có ý kiến Brookings cho là đáng để mắt (trên EuropeWorld). Kharas cho rằng, vấn đề lương thực thế giới hiện không phải là lượng cung, mà chính là khả năng tiếp cận nguồn cung đó và chất lượng lương thực. Nhưng có nhiều nghiên cứu rất có ảnh hưởng, lại đưa ra các nguyên nhân bí hiểm, khiến cho nhận thức vấn đề bị chệch đi đáng kể. Sự "bí hiểm" đó tiêu biểu là:
1) Định hướng lương thực giá rẻ, dồi dào.
2) Nguyên nhân giới đầu cơ tài chính gây ảnh hưởng tiêu cực.
3) Các tổ chức quốc tế và toàn cầu cần "làm nhiều hơn nữa, nhưng vẫn theo chiều hướng cũ" (do more of the same!)
Kharas rất đáng đọc, nên tôi để nguyên phần comment của ông ở đây:
COMMENTARY ON "But don’t perpetrate the three food security myths" by Homi Kharas.
Franz Fischler’s plan to banish starvation hits all the right notes, yet he also reinforces three myths about food security that distract from the real issues.
The first is that expanding food supply will be an insuperable problem. People increasingly ask whether the world can really produce enough to satisfy the explosion of demand from more people with the income to buy meat, dairy, fish and other proteins? And whether constraints on land, water and other resources mean we are reaching the limits of agricultural production? The short answer to these is, “yes” the world can produce enough food, and “no” we’re not yet reaching binding constraints.
According to the U.S. Agriculture Department, world grain production has risen from 824m tonnes in 1960 to around 2.2bn tones last year. There have been some fluctuations, but production has remained steady with 27m tonnes being added to production every year. This trend suggests that by 2050 the increase in grain production relative to today would be exactly 50%, the target Fischler sets as the global goal. In other words, major reform is not needed as we already have far better agronomic practices, seeds and fertilisers than ever. The one disclaimer has to be climate change. But that is still so unpredictable in its impact on agriculture that it has to be treated as a “wild card”.
The real issue isn’t global food supply but access to food – its distribution and its nutritional quality. Fischler portrays a world in which food will be cheap and affordable, but that is the strategy that has led to large agricultural subsidies and a focus on increasing yield through monocrops. An alternative strategy should be for food to be local, fresh and nutritious even if that means somewhat higher prices.
Higher prices might even be useful to reduce waste. Post-harvest losses amount to about 14% of total production, mostly in developing countries, and another 15% is lost in distribution and in household waste, mostly in rich countries. In India an estimated half of the wheat and a third of the rice distributed to the poor in government programmes is lost. Put another way, three-fifths of the total supply increase needed by 2050 could be obtained if we just stopped wasting food.
Hunger has much more to do with conflict, lack of income, inequalities within households in access to food along with lack of nutritional education than it has to do with global food supply. By focusing on subsistence farmers, Fischler recognises some of this, but he distorts the message by wrapping it in the overall narrative that “with the right programmes we can produce enough food to go around.”
A second myth is that financial speculators are responsible for higher food prices because of the money they pour into futures markets. For that to be true, speculators would have to buy food today, store it away from the market and hope to sell it in the future at higher prices. But the opposite is happening; grain stocks are lower than ever before, so speculators certainly cannot be blamed for taking food off the market. Certainly it would be good to improve the functioning of global food markets by having rich countries reform their farm policies, as Fischler advocates, but the politics of this are daunting. Food markets are overwhelmingly national and don’t respond one-to-one to international prices. Improving local and national food markets would seem far easier.
The third myth is that the international institutions should be allowed to do more of the same. Fischler mentions successful EU and FAO programmes, but the reality is that the international community doesn’t yet take food security seriously. At the G8 summit in L’Aquila in 2009, world leaders committed to investing USD 20bn in developing countries’ agriculture. A new Global Agriculture and Food Security Program was established with much fanfare, but so far it has received only USD 900m in promises and half that in cash – a fortieth of the target.
It is all too easy for international institutions to talk about helping smallholders, but they focus on small projects with only a few beneficiaries, and whose design flaws mean they can never be scaled up to reach the one billion hungry people who Fischler writes about. Only the comparatively small International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) formally incorporates scaling up in its operational policies.
To banish starvation, we must rethink global food strategies. The first priority is to act on the demand side. Few rich people go hungry, so development policies that raise incomes are crucial. And while striving for an integrated global food market, we should put more effort into vibrant local markets featuring foods consistent with a healthy diet. When international institutions are involved, they need to think much-harder about how to scale up their efforts.
Và đây là bài gốc của Fischler: http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/Article/tabid/191/ArticleType/articleview/ArticleID/21839/language/en-US/Default.aspx
1) Định hướng lương thực giá rẻ, dồi dào.
2) Nguyên nhân giới đầu cơ tài chính gây ảnh hưởng tiêu cực.
3) Các tổ chức quốc tế và toàn cầu cần "làm nhiều hơn nữa, nhưng vẫn theo chiều hướng cũ" (do more of the same!)
Kharas rất đáng đọc, nên tôi để nguyên phần comment của ông ở đây:
COMMENTARY ON "But don’t perpetrate the three food security myths" by Homi Kharas.
Franz Fischler’s plan to banish starvation hits all the right notes, yet he also reinforces three myths about food security that distract from the real issues.
The first is that expanding food supply will be an insuperable problem. People increasingly ask whether the world can really produce enough to satisfy the explosion of demand from more people with the income to buy meat, dairy, fish and other proteins? And whether constraints on land, water and other resources mean we are reaching the limits of agricultural production? The short answer to these is, “yes” the world can produce enough food, and “no” we’re not yet reaching binding constraints.
According to the U.S. Agriculture Department, world grain production has risen from 824m tonnes in 1960 to around 2.2bn tones last year. There have been some fluctuations, but production has remained steady with 27m tonnes being added to production every year. This trend suggests that by 2050 the increase in grain production relative to today would be exactly 50%, the target Fischler sets as the global goal. In other words, major reform is not needed as we already have far better agronomic practices, seeds and fertilisers than ever. The one disclaimer has to be climate change. But that is still so unpredictable in its impact on agriculture that it has to be treated as a “wild card”.
The real issue isn’t global food supply but access to food – its distribution and its nutritional quality. Fischler portrays a world in which food will be cheap and affordable, but that is the strategy that has led to large agricultural subsidies and a focus on increasing yield through monocrops. An alternative strategy should be for food to be local, fresh and nutritious even if that means somewhat higher prices.
Higher prices might even be useful to reduce waste. Post-harvest losses amount to about 14% of total production, mostly in developing countries, and another 15% is lost in distribution and in household waste, mostly in rich countries. In India an estimated half of the wheat and a third of the rice distributed to the poor in government programmes is lost. Put another way, three-fifths of the total supply increase needed by 2050 could be obtained if we just stopped wasting food.
Hunger has much more to do with conflict, lack of income, inequalities within households in access to food along with lack of nutritional education than it has to do with global food supply. By focusing on subsistence farmers, Fischler recognises some of this, but he distorts the message by wrapping it in the overall narrative that “with the right programmes we can produce enough food to go around.”
A second myth is that financial speculators are responsible for higher food prices because of the money they pour into futures markets. For that to be true, speculators would have to buy food today, store it away from the market and hope to sell it in the future at higher prices. But the opposite is happening; grain stocks are lower than ever before, so speculators certainly cannot be blamed for taking food off the market. Certainly it would be good to improve the functioning of global food markets by having rich countries reform their farm policies, as Fischler advocates, but the politics of this are daunting. Food markets are overwhelmingly national and don’t respond one-to-one to international prices. Improving local and national food markets would seem far easier.
The third myth is that the international institutions should be allowed to do more of the same. Fischler mentions successful EU and FAO programmes, but the reality is that the international community doesn’t yet take food security seriously. At the G8 summit in L’Aquila in 2009, world leaders committed to investing USD 20bn in developing countries’ agriculture. A new Global Agriculture and Food Security Program was established with much fanfare, but so far it has received only USD 900m in promises and half that in cash – a fortieth of the target.
It is all too easy for international institutions to talk about helping smallholders, but they focus on small projects with only a few beneficiaries, and whose design flaws mean they can never be scaled up to reach the one billion hungry people who Fischler writes about. Only the comparatively small International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) formally incorporates scaling up in its operational policies.
To banish starvation, we must rethink global food strategies. The first priority is to act on the demand side. Few rich people go hungry, so development policies that raise incomes are crucial. And while striving for an integrated global food market, we should put more effort into vibrant local markets featuring foods consistent with a healthy diet. When international institutions are involved, they need to think much-harder about how to scale up their efforts.
Và đây là bài gốc của Fischler: http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/Article/tabid/191/ArticleType/articleview/ArticleID/21839/language/en-US/Default.aspx
The 25 Documents You Need Before You Die
By Saabira Chaudhuri , The Wall Street Journal
It isn't enough simply to sign a bunch of papers establishing an estate plan and other end-of-life instructions. You also have to make your heirs aware of them and leave the documents where they can find them.
Consider: At least 10 states have been investigating whether some of the country's largest insurers are failing to pay out unclaimed life policies to beneficiaries. California and Florida have held public hearings on the issue in recent weeks.
Insurers say they are behaving lawfully. Under policy contracts, they aren't required to take steps to determine if a policyholder is still alive, but instead pay a claim when beneficiaries come forward.
You can avoid such problems by securing important documents and telling your family where they are stored.
Jean Parr is grateful that her mother obsessed about the subject. "I really didn't want to think about it," says Ms. Parr, 54 years old, a manager at the American Chemical Society in Washington. But when her mom died in 2005, she knew exactly where to look for the will, the key to a safe-deposit box and documents indicating her mother had paid and arranged for her own funeral.
The financial consequences of failing to keep your documents in order can be significant. According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, state treasurers currently hold U.S 32.9 billion in unclaimed bank accounts and other assets. (You can search for unclaimed assets at MissingMoney.com .)
Most experts recommend creating a comprehensive folder of documents that family members can access in case of an emergency, so they aren't left scrambling to find and organize a hodgepodge of disparate bank accounts, insurance policies and brokerage accounts.
You can store the documents with your attorney, lock them away in a safe-deposit box or keep them at home in a fireproof safe that someone else knows the combination to.
That isn't to say you should keep everything. Sometimes people hold onto so many papers that loved ones can't find the important ones easily.
In 2008, Jane Bissler, a counselor in Kent, Ohio, approached her then-87-year-old mother about organizing her documents. Because her mom was a widow with relatively simple finances and two homes, Ms. Bissler, 57, says she figured it would be a relatively simple task.
Instead, it took an entire year for Ms. Bissler and her mother to go through all of her papers, which included documents from eight bank accounts, utility bills from the 1950s and reams of canceled checks.
The two of them pared down the stash from four four-drawer filing cabinets to one two-drawer cabinet, shredding anything extraneous. Ms. Bissler and her mother visited banks and brokerages to ensure she was listed on all of her mother's accounts. Her mother died in May 2009.
"It would have been a total nightmare if we hadn't gone through it all with her," Ms. Bissler says. "It was that Depression-era stuff where you keep everything and hide other things." Ms. Bissler estimates that having the documents organized ahead of time spared them from ordering an additional 15 copies of the death certificate and "years" of time.
Here is a rundown of the most important documents you'll need to have signed, sealed and delivered. You should start collecting these as soon as possible and update them every few years to reflect changes in assets and preferences. Some—such as copies of tax returns or recent child-support payments—need to be updated more often than others.
The Essentials
An original will is the most important document to keep on file.
A will allows you to dictate who inherits your assets and, if your children are underage, their guardians. Dying without a will means losing control of how your assets are distributed. Instead, state law will determine what happens.
Wills are subject to probate—legal proceedings that take inventory, make appraisals of property, settle outstanding debt and distribute remaining assets. Not having an original document means this already-onerous process could be much more of an ordeal, since family members can challenge a copy of a will in court.
Rick Law , founder of estate-planning firm Law ElderLaw LLP in Aurora, Ill., says estate planners increasingly recommend revocable trusts in addition to wills, since they are more private and harder to dispute. "Every will is like a compass that points toward the closest courthouse," he says.
A revocable living trust can be changed anytime during your lifetime. After you transfer ownership of various assets to the trust, you can serve as the trustee on behalf of beneficiaries you designate. Provided you do so, there aren't any ongoing fees.
If your family can't find the original trust documents, you are "basically setting your estate up for litigation," says Duncan Moseley , vice president of Sanders Financial Management in Atlanta.
It isn't enough simply to sign a bunch of papers establishing an estate plan and other end-of-life instructions. You also have to make your heirs aware of them and leave the documents where they can find them.
Consider: At least 10 states have been investigating whether some of the country's largest insurers are failing to pay out unclaimed life policies to beneficiaries. California and Florida have held public hearings on the issue in recent weeks.
Insurers say they are behaving lawfully. Under policy contracts, they aren't required to take steps to determine if a policyholder is still alive, but instead pay a claim when beneficiaries come forward.
You can avoid such problems by securing important documents and telling your family where they are stored.
Jean Parr is grateful that her mother obsessed about the subject. "I really didn't want to think about it," says Ms. Parr, 54 years old, a manager at the American Chemical Society in Washington. But when her mom died in 2005, she knew exactly where to look for the will, the key to a safe-deposit box and documents indicating her mother had paid and arranged for her own funeral.
The financial consequences of failing to keep your documents in order can be significant. According to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, state treasurers currently hold U.S 32.9 billion in unclaimed bank accounts and other assets. (You can search for unclaimed assets at MissingMoney.com .)
Most experts recommend creating a comprehensive folder of documents that family members can access in case of an emergency, so they aren't left scrambling to find and organize a hodgepodge of disparate bank accounts, insurance policies and brokerage accounts.
You can store the documents with your attorney, lock them away in a safe-deposit box or keep them at home in a fireproof safe that someone else knows the combination to.
That isn't to say you should keep everything. Sometimes people hold onto so many papers that loved ones can't find the important ones easily.
In 2008, Jane Bissler, a counselor in Kent, Ohio, approached her then-87-year-old mother about organizing her documents. Because her mom was a widow with relatively simple finances and two homes, Ms. Bissler, 57, says she figured it would be a relatively simple task.
Instead, it took an entire year for Ms. Bissler and her mother to go through all of her papers, which included documents from eight bank accounts, utility bills from the 1950s and reams of canceled checks.
The two of them pared down the stash from four four-drawer filing cabinets to one two-drawer cabinet, shredding anything extraneous. Ms. Bissler and her mother visited banks and brokerages to ensure she was listed on all of her mother's accounts. Her mother died in May 2009.
"It would have been a total nightmare if we hadn't gone through it all with her," Ms. Bissler says. "It was that Depression-era stuff where you keep everything and hide other things." Ms. Bissler estimates that having the documents organized ahead of time spared them from ordering an additional 15 copies of the death certificate and "years" of time.
Here is a rundown of the most important documents you'll need to have signed, sealed and delivered. You should start collecting these as soon as possible and update them every few years to reflect changes in assets and preferences. Some—such as copies of tax returns or recent child-support payments—need to be updated more often than others.
The Essentials
An original will is the most important document to keep on file.
A will allows you to dictate who inherits your assets and, if your children are underage, their guardians. Dying without a will means losing control of how your assets are distributed. Instead, state law will determine what happens.
Wills are subject to probate—legal proceedings that take inventory, make appraisals of property, settle outstanding debt and distribute remaining assets. Not having an original document means this already-onerous process could be much more of an ordeal, since family members can challenge a copy of a will in court.
Rick Law , founder of estate-planning firm Law ElderLaw LLP in Aurora, Ill., says estate planners increasingly recommend revocable trusts in addition to wills, since they are more private and harder to dispute. "Every will is like a compass that points toward the closest courthouse," he says.
A revocable living trust can be changed anytime during your lifetime. After you transfer ownership of various assets to the trust, you can serve as the trustee on behalf of beneficiaries you designate. Provided you do so, there aren't any ongoing fees.
If your family can't find the original trust documents, you are "basically setting your estate up for litigation," says Duncan Moseley , vice president of Sanders Financial Management in Atlanta.
For Europe’s start-ups, Silicon Valley still calls Is there life outside of California for Europe’s tech community?
By Kim Hjelmgaard, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) — “Go West,” young technology company. That sentiment, with its compass-point directive, is both a rallying cry and a death knell in Europe’s war to assert the credentials of its homespun technology entrepreneurs.
Divided by geography, language, regulation and, in some cases, just old-fashioned cultural prejudice, the region has struggled to shed fully its image as a place where men and women with ideas are born, but where they do not necessarily stay, prosper or secure funding.
And that’s despite some global-headline-grabbing deals recently for some of the Old World’s most innovative and promising young companies. Evidence that this unofficial tradition of European entrepreneurs leaving for the U.S. in order to make good on their business models is, at the very least, undergoing a period of critical self-examination.
In May, for example, Microsoft Corp. MSFT +0.49% paid U.S 8.5 billion to buy Luxembourg-headquartered Skype Technologies S.A., while social-media darling Twitter opened its wallet to the tune of U.S 40 million for London’s TweetDeck. Swedish music-streaming service Spotify, meanwhile, is steadily inching closer to a U.S. launch and back in 2007, CBS Corp.’s CBS +0.18% CBS Interactive division acquired U.K. music website Last.fm for about U.S 280 million.
The area around London’s Old Street, in the east of the city, increasingly known for its relative high density of technology start-ups, has even eagerly latched on to — although some are now just as keen to disavow it — the “Silicon Roundabout” sobriquet. View a 360-degree panorama of London’s Silicon Roundabout
The capital injections keep coming, in fact. There was Rovio Mobile Ltd.’s (Finland) runaway success with “Angry Birds,” which led to U.S 42 million in financing from Accel Partners and others; U.S 24 million for Germany’s social-games developer Wooga; and U.S 119 million for Britain’s e-lender Wonga. And there’s more, potentially, for targets from Madrid to Revkjavik.
But the U.S., and in particular the fertile technology corridor of California’s Silicon Valley, is still regarded by some Europeans as a kind of venture-capital-finance Shangri-La, with backers in the area very much viewed as that most digestible type of fruit: the low-hanging kind.
“There is a culture among venture capitalists in the U.K. of not really understanding the Internet,” said Mark Rock, founder and chief executive officer of London-based Audioboo, a social-networking tool that allows users to make instant, on-the-go podcasts and to easily share them.
“In the U.K., everyone hates failure, and that’s an old story here and it hasn’t really changed,” said Rock, who, in addition to putting his own money into Audioboo, has secured funding from a couple of British-based business angels as well as Imagination Technologies Group PLC UK:IMG +2.34% and UBC Media Group.
Still, for European technology entrepreneurs like Rock, a common refrain they come up against is “you’re too early.” Venture capitalists in Britain, Rock said, “prefer to invest in things, not ideas — historically, we like factories.”
But this attitude toward funding, outdated or not, while it poses some more fundamental questions about the region’s approach to risk as well as indirectly interrogating the guile of its entrepreneurial community, also speaks to the cultural waters in which some start-ups here swim.
“‘Get a proper job and pay the mortgage’ is deeply ingrained in the British psyche,” said Rock. “Whereas I always say that what I do is ‘shoot the gun, then go looking for the target.’”
Loic Le Meur, who was in London last month to talk with British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government about moving Le Meur’s influential Internet conference LeWeb from Paris to London in time for the 2012 Olympics, told a not dissimilar story.
“In the [San Francisco Bay Area] you feel like everything you do relates to technology,” he said. “Everything is about raising money, getting funded and doing deals.”
Le Meur, who moved to San Francisco four years ago and now runs Seesmic, a software company that makes it easier for users to corral all of their social network activity in one spot, said that while in Europe a start-up’s reach and capacity for success early on is often curtailed by geography, in Silicon Valley he feels as if he lives and works on a technology campus.
“It’s all right here and that’s why I moved. If you’re in Europe and you want to do something in Germany, say, you’d have to go to five different cities alone.” Listen to Loic Le Meur talk with Kim Hjelmgaard about being a technology entrepreneur in Europe.
LONDON (MarketWatch) — “Go West,” young technology company. That sentiment, with its compass-point directive, is both a rallying cry and a death knell in Europe’s war to assert the credentials of its homespun technology entrepreneurs.
Divided by geography, language, regulation and, in some cases, just old-fashioned cultural prejudice, the region has struggled to shed fully its image as a place where men and women with ideas are born, but where they do not necessarily stay, prosper or secure funding.
And that’s despite some global-headline-grabbing deals recently for some of the Old World’s most innovative and promising young companies. Evidence that this unofficial tradition of European entrepreneurs leaving for the U.S. in order to make good on their business models is, at the very least, undergoing a period of critical self-examination.
In May, for example, Microsoft Corp. MSFT +0.49% paid U.S 8.5 billion to buy Luxembourg-headquartered Skype Technologies S.A., while social-media darling Twitter opened its wallet to the tune of U.S 40 million for London’s TweetDeck. Swedish music-streaming service Spotify, meanwhile, is steadily inching closer to a U.S. launch and back in 2007, CBS Corp.’s CBS +0.18% CBS Interactive division acquired U.K. music website Last.fm for about U.S 280 million.
The area around London’s Old Street, in the east of the city, increasingly known for its relative high density of technology start-ups, has even eagerly latched on to — although some are now just as keen to disavow it — the “Silicon Roundabout” sobriquet. View a 360-degree panorama of London’s Silicon Roundabout
The capital injections keep coming, in fact. There was Rovio Mobile Ltd.’s (Finland) runaway success with “Angry Birds,” which led to U.S 42 million in financing from Accel Partners and others; U.S 24 million for Germany’s social-games developer Wooga; and U.S 119 million for Britain’s e-lender Wonga. And there’s more, potentially, for targets from Madrid to Revkjavik.
But the U.S., and in particular the fertile technology corridor of California’s Silicon Valley, is still regarded by some Europeans as a kind of venture-capital-finance Shangri-La, with backers in the area very much viewed as that most digestible type of fruit: the low-hanging kind.
“There is a culture among venture capitalists in the U.K. of not really understanding the Internet,” said Mark Rock, founder and chief executive officer of London-based Audioboo, a social-networking tool that allows users to make instant, on-the-go podcasts and to easily share them.
“In the U.K., everyone hates failure, and that’s an old story here and it hasn’t really changed,” said Rock, who, in addition to putting his own money into Audioboo, has secured funding from a couple of British-based business angels as well as Imagination Technologies Group PLC UK:IMG +2.34% and UBC Media Group.
Still, for European technology entrepreneurs like Rock, a common refrain they come up against is “you’re too early.” Venture capitalists in Britain, Rock said, “prefer to invest in things, not ideas — historically, we like factories.”
But this attitude toward funding, outdated or not, while it poses some more fundamental questions about the region’s approach to risk as well as indirectly interrogating the guile of its entrepreneurial community, also speaks to the cultural waters in which some start-ups here swim.
“‘Get a proper job and pay the mortgage’ is deeply ingrained in the British psyche,” said Rock. “Whereas I always say that what I do is ‘shoot the gun, then go looking for the target.’”
Loic Le Meur, who was in London last month to talk with British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government about moving Le Meur’s influential Internet conference LeWeb from Paris to London in time for the 2012 Olympics, told a not dissimilar story.
“In the [San Francisco Bay Area] you feel like everything you do relates to technology,” he said. “Everything is about raising money, getting funded and doing deals.”
Le Meur, who moved to San Francisco four years ago and now runs Seesmic, a software company that makes it easier for users to corral all of their social network activity in one spot, said that while in Europe a start-up’s reach and capacity for success early on is often curtailed by geography, in Silicon Valley he feels as if he lives and works on a technology campus.
“It’s all right here and that’s why I moved. If you’re in Europe and you want to do something in Germany, say, you’d have to go to five different cities alone.” Listen to Loic Le Meur talk with Kim Hjelmgaard about being a technology entrepreneur in Europe.
The next, worse financial crisis; Commentary: Ten reasons we are doomed to repeat 2008
By Brett Arends, MarketWatch
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The last financial crisis isn’t over, but we might as well start getting ready for the next one.
Sorry to be gloomy, but there it is.
Why? Here are 10 reasons.
1. We are learning the wrong lessons from the last one. Was the housing bubble really caused by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, Barney Frank, Bill Clinton, “liberals” and so on? That’s what a growing army of people now claim. There’s just one problem. If so, then how come there was a gigantic housing bubble in Spain as well? Did Barney Frank cause that, too (and while in the minority in Congress, no less!)? If so, how? And what about the giant housing bubbles in Ireland, the U.K. and Australia? All Barney Frank? And the ones across Eastern Europe, and elsewhere? I’d laugh, but tens of millions are being suckered into this piece of spin, which is being pushed in order to provide cover so the real culprits can get away. And it’s working.
2. No one has been punished. Executives like Dick Fuld at Lehman Brothers and Angelo Mozilo at Countrywide , along with many others, cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars before the ship crashed into the rocks. Predatory lenders and crooked mortgage lenders walked away with millions in ill-gotten gains. But they aren’t in jail. They aren’t even under criminal prosecution. They got away scot-free. As a general rule, the worse you behaved from 2000 to 2008, the better you’ve been treated. And so the next crowd will do it again. Guaranteed.
3. The incentives remain crooked. People outside finance — from respected political pundits like George Will to normal people on Main Street — still don’t fully get this. Wall Street rules aren’t like Main Street rules. The guy running a Wall Street bank isn’t in the same “risk/reward” situation as a guy running, say, a dry-cleaning shop. Take all our mental images of traditional American free-market enterprise and put them to one side. This is totally different. For the people on Wall Street, it’s a case of heads they win, tails they get to flip again. Thanks to restricted stock, options, the bonus game, securitization, 2-and-20 fee structures, insider stock sales, “too big to fail” and limited liability, they are paid to behave recklessly, and they lose little — or nothing — if things go wrong.
4. The referees are corrupt. We’re supposed to have a system of free enterprise under the law. The only problem: The players get to bribe the refs. Imagine if that happened in the NFL. The banks and other industries lavish huge amounts of money on Congress, presidents and the entire Washington establishment of aides, advisers and hangers-on. They do it through campaign contributions. They do it with USD500,000 speaker fees and boardroom sinecures upon retirement. And they do it by spending a fortune on lobbyists — so you know that if you play nice when you’re in government, you too can get a USD500,000-a-year lobbying job when you retire. How big are the bribes? The finance industry spent USD474 million on lobbying last year alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
5. Stocks are skyrocketing again. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index SPX +0.10% has now doubled from the March 2009 lows. Isn’t that good news? Well, yes, up to a point. Admittedly, a lot of it is just from debasement of the dollar (when the greenback goes down, Wall Street goes up, and vice versa). And we forget there were huge rallies on Wall Street during the bear markets of the 1930s and the 1970s, as there were in Japan in the 1990s. But the market boom, targeted especially toward the riskiest and junkiest stocks, raises risks. It leaves investors less room for positive surprises and much more room for disappointment. And stocks are not cheap. The dividend yield on the S&P is just 2%. According to one long-term measure — “Tobin’s q,” which compares share prices with the replacement cost of company assets — shares are now about 70% above average valuations. Furthermore, we have an aging population of Baby Boomers who still own a lot of stocks, and who are going to be selling as they near retirement.
6. The derivatives time bomb is bigger than ever — and ticking away. Just before Lehman collapsed, at what we now call the height of the last bubble, Wall Street firms were carrying risky financial derivatives on their books with a value of an astonishing $183 trillion. That was 13 times the size of the U.S. economy. If it sounds insane, it was. Since then we’ve had four years of panic, alleged reform and a return to financial sobriety. So what’s the figure now? Try $248 trillion. No kidding. Ah, good times.
7. The ancient regime is in the saddle. I have to laugh whenever I hear Republicans ranting that Barack Obama is a “liberal” or a “socialist” or a communist. Are you kidding me? Obama is Bush 44. He’s a bit more like the old man than the younger one. But look at who’s still running the economy: Bernanke. Geithner. Summers. Goldman Sachs. J.P. Morgan Chase. We’ve had the same establishment in charge since at least 1987, when Paul Volcker stood down as Fed chairman. Change? What “change”? (And even the little we had was too much for Wall Street, which bought itself a new, more compliant Congress in 2010.)
8. Ben Bernanke doesn’t understand his job. The Fed chairman made an absolutely astonishing admission at his first press conference. He cited the boom in the Russell 2000 Index RUT +0.43% of risky small-cap stocks as one sign “quantitative easing” had worked. The Fed has a dual mandate by law: low inflation and low unemployment. Now, apparently, it has a third: boosting Wall Street share prices. This is crazy. If it ends well, I will be surprised.
9. We are levering up like crazy. Looking for a “credit bubble”? We’re in it. Everyone knows about the skyrocketing federal debt, and the risk that Congress won’t raise the debt ceiling next month. But that’s just part of the story. U.S. corporations borrowed $513 billion in the first quarter. They’re borrowing at twice the rate that they were last fall, when corporate debt was already soaring. Savers, desperate for income, will buy almost any bonds at all. No wonder the yields on high-yield bonds have collapsed. So much for all that talk about “cash on the balance sheets.” U.S. nonfinancial corporations overall are now deeply in debt, to the tune of USD7.3 trillion. That’s a record level, and up 24% in the past five years. And when you throw in household debts, government debt and the debts of the financial sector, the debt level reaches at least as high as USD50 trillion. More leverage means more risk. It’s Econ 101.
10. The real economy remains in the tank. The second round of quantitative easing hasn’t done anything noticeable except lower the exchange rate. Unemployment is far, far higher than the official numbers will tell you (for example, even the Labor Department’s fine print admits that one middle-aged man in four lacks a full-time job — astonishing). Our current-account deficit is running at USD120 billion a year (and hasn’t been in surplus since 1990). House prices are falling, not recovering. Real wages are stagnant. Yes, productivity is rising. But that, ironically, also helps keep down jobs.
You know what George Santayana said about people who forget the past. But we’re even dumber than that. We are doomed to repeat the past not because we have forgotten it but because we never learned the lessons to begin with.
Brett Arends is a senior columnist for MarketWatch and a personal-finance columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
BOSTON (MarketWatch) — The last financial crisis isn’t over, but we might as well start getting ready for the next one.
Sorry to be gloomy, but there it is.
Why? Here are 10 reasons.
1. We are learning the wrong lessons from the last one. Was the housing bubble really caused by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Community Reinvestment Act, Barney Frank, Bill Clinton, “liberals” and so on? That’s what a growing army of people now claim. There’s just one problem. If so, then how come there was a gigantic housing bubble in Spain as well? Did Barney Frank cause that, too (and while in the minority in Congress, no less!)? If so, how? And what about the giant housing bubbles in Ireland, the U.K. and Australia? All Barney Frank? And the ones across Eastern Europe, and elsewhere? I’d laugh, but tens of millions are being suckered into this piece of spin, which is being pushed in order to provide cover so the real culprits can get away. And it’s working.
2. No one has been punished. Executives like Dick Fuld at Lehman Brothers and Angelo Mozilo at Countrywide , along with many others, cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars before the ship crashed into the rocks. Predatory lenders and crooked mortgage lenders walked away with millions in ill-gotten gains. But they aren’t in jail. They aren’t even under criminal prosecution. They got away scot-free. As a general rule, the worse you behaved from 2000 to 2008, the better you’ve been treated. And so the next crowd will do it again. Guaranteed.
3. The incentives remain crooked. People outside finance — from respected political pundits like George Will to normal people on Main Street — still don’t fully get this. Wall Street rules aren’t like Main Street rules. The guy running a Wall Street bank isn’t in the same “risk/reward” situation as a guy running, say, a dry-cleaning shop. Take all our mental images of traditional American free-market enterprise and put them to one side. This is totally different. For the people on Wall Street, it’s a case of heads they win, tails they get to flip again. Thanks to restricted stock, options, the bonus game, securitization, 2-and-20 fee structures, insider stock sales, “too big to fail” and limited liability, they are paid to behave recklessly, and they lose little — or nothing — if things go wrong.
4. The referees are corrupt. We’re supposed to have a system of free enterprise under the law. The only problem: The players get to bribe the refs. Imagine if that happened in the NFL. The banks and other industries lavish huge amounts of money on Congress, presidents and the entire Washington establishment of aides, advisers and hangers-on. They do it through campaign contributions. They do it with USD500,000 speaker fees and boardroom sinecures upon retirement. And they do it by spending a fortune on lobbyists — so you know that if you play nice when you’re in government, you too can get a USD500,000-a-year lobbying job when you retire. How big are the bribes? The finance industry spent USD474 million on lobbying last year alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
5. Stocks are skyrocketing again. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index SPX +0.10% has now doubled from the March 2009 lows. Isn’t that good news? Well, yes, up to a point. Admittedly, a lot of it is just from debasement of the dollar (when the greenback goes down, Wall Street goes up, and vice versa). And we forget there were huge rallies on Wall Street during the bear markets of the 1930s and the 1970s, as there were in Japan in the 1990s. But the market boom, targeted especially toward the riskiest and junkiest stocks, raises risks. It leaves investors less room for positive surprises and much more room for disappointment. And stocks are not cheap. The dividend yield on the S&P is just 2%. According to one long-term measure — “Tobin’s q,” which compares share prices with the replacement cost of company assets — shares are now about 70% above average valuations. Furthermore, we have an aging population of Baby Boomers who still own a lot of stocks, and who are going to be selling as they near retirement.
6. The derivatives time bomb is bigger than ever — and ticking away. Just before Lehman collapsed, at what we now call the height of the last bubble, Wall Street firms were carrying risky financial derivatives on their books with a value of an astonishing $183 trillion. That was 13 times the size of the U.S. economy. If it sounds insane, it was. Since then we’ve had four years of panic, alleged reform and a return to financial sobriety. So what’s the figure now? Try $248 trillion. No kidding. Ah, good times.
7. The ancient regime is in the saddle. I have to laugh whenever I hear Republicans ranting that Barack Obama is a “liberal” or a “socialist” or a communist. Are you kidding me? Obama is Bush 44. He’s a bit more like the old man than the younger one. But look at who’s still running the economy: Bernanke. Geithner. Summers. Goldman Sachs. J.P. Morgan Chase. We’ve had the same establishment in charge since at least 1987, when Paul Volcker stood down as Fed chairman. Change? What “change”? (And even the little we had was too much for Wall Street, which bought itself a new, more compliant Congress in 2010.)
8. Ben Bernanke doesn’t understand his job. The Fed chairman made an absolutely astonishing admission at his first press conference. He cited the boom in the Russell 2000 Index RUT +0.43% of risky small-cap stocks as one sign “quantitative easing” had worked. The Fed has a dual mandate by law: low inflation and low unemployment. Now, apparently, it has a third: boosting Wall Street share prices. This is crazy. If it ends well, I will be surprised.
9. We are levering up like crazy. Looking for a “credit bubble”? We’re in it. Everyone knows about the skyrocketing federal debt, and the risk that Congress won’t raise the debt ceiling next month. But that’s just part of the story. U.S. corporations borrowed $513 billion in the first quarter. They’re borrowing at twice the rate that they were last fall, when corporate debt was already soaring. Savers, desperate for income, will buy almost any bonds at all. No wonder the yields on high-yield bonds have collapsed. So much for all that talk about “cash on the balance sheets.” U.S. nonfinancial corporations overall are now deeply in debt, to the tune of USD7.3 trillion. That’s a record level, and up 24% in the past five years. And when you throw in household debts, government debt and the debts of the financial sector, the debt level reaches at least as high as USD50 trillion. More leverage means more risk. It’s Econ 101.
10. The real economy remains in the tank. The second round of quantitative easing hasn’t done anything noticeable except lower the exchange rate. Unemployment is far, far higher than the official numbers will tell you (for example, even the Labor Department’s fine print admits that one middle-aged man in four lacks a full-time job — astonishing). Our current-account deficit is running at USD120 billion a year (and hasn’t been in surplus since 1990). House prices are falling, not recovering. Real wages are stagnant. Yes, productivity is rising. But that, ironically, also helps keep down jobs.
You know what George Santayana said about people who forget the past. But we’re even dumber than that. We are doomed to repeat the past not because we have forgotten it but because we never learned the lessons to begin with.
Brett Arends is a senior columnist for MarketWatch and a personal-finance columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Cáo buộc tham nhũng trong vụ in tiền Polymer: Hợp tác quốc tế để điều tra
Thông tin này trên Diễn Đàn Doanh Nghiệp hôm nay: Vừa qua (1/7), sau khi cảnh sát Liên bang Úc bắt giữ 6 cựu viên chức thuộc hai công ty in tiền vì cáo buộc đưa hối lộ cho các quan chức châu Á, trong đó có Việt Nam, để giành hợp đồng in tiền polymer, Bộ Công an Việt Nam đã vào cuộc để nắm bắt thông tin.
Báo The Age tiết lộ ngân hàng Úc đã chi trả chi phí du học ở Anh của Lê Đức Minh - con trai ông Lê Đức Thúy (là thống đốc Ngân hàng Nhà nước VN trong thời điểm vụ bê bối xảy ra). Khoản tiền hối lộ trong vụ việc liên quan tới Việt Nam ước tính là 10 triệu đô la Úc, được chuyển vào nhiều tài khoản ở ngân hàng Thụy Sĩ.
Nhà chức trách Malaysia cũng đã phối hợp với cảnh sát Úc bắt giữ hai người có liên quan đến vụ scandal ở Malaysia sau cuộc điều tra của Ủy ban chống tham nhũng Malaysia.
Cảnh sát Úc chưa tiết lộ danh tính của những người bị bắt. 6 người bị bắt phải ra trước tòa án Melbourne, đối mặt với án 10 năm tù và phạt tiền lên đến 1,2 triệu USD nếu bị kết tội.
Trả lời về những cáo buộc của nước ngoài, thiếu tướng Triệu Văn Đạt - phó tổng cục trưởng Tổng cục Cảnh sát phòng chống tội phạm (Bộ Công an) cho biết tại cuộc họp thông báo tình hình đấu tranh phòng chống tội phạm sáu tháng đầu năm: Vào giai đoạn đầu khi có thông tin, lãnh đạo Bộ Công an giao Cục Cảnh sát điều tra tội phạm về tham nhũng nắm tình hình, tiến hành xác minh. Sau đó, vụ việc này được bàn giao cho Cục An ninh tài chính tiền tệ thực hiện.
Theo ông Triệu Văn Đạt, từ thông tin trên báo chí nước ngoài, cơ quan chức năng VN thông qua con đường hỗ trợ tư pháp đề nghị cơ quan tư pháp nước ngoài cung cấp tài liệu nhưng chưa có căn cứ để khẳng định có hay không việc quan chức nào ở VN nhận hối lộ. Hiện Chính phủ giao Bộ Công an tiếp tục nắm vụ việc, hợp tác với cơ quan nước ngoài để thu thập thông tin. Nếu có đủ căn cứ pháp lý sẽ xử lý tương tự như vụ PCI.
* Nguồn: http://dddn.com.vn/2011761160390cat111/cao-buoc-tham-nhung-trong-vu-in-tien-polymer-hop-tac-quoc-te-de-dieu-tra.htm
Vụ việc bắt đầu sau khi báo chí Úc đưa tin tại bang Victoria, cảnh sát Liên bang Úc đã bắt giữ 6 cựu viên chức đưa hối lộ cho các quan chức châu Á, trong đó có Việt Nam, để giành hợp đồng in tiền polymer.
Theo tài liệu điều tra, 6 cựu giám đốc của hai công ty Securency International, Note Printing Australia (trực thuộc Ngân hàng Dự trữ Úc) đã đút lót các quan chức Việt Nam, Indonesia, và Malaysia từ năm 1999 - 2005. Cảnh sát Úc đã xếp vụ này là vụ tham nhũng hối lộ quy mô lớn nhất của Úc ở nước ngoài từ trước tới nay.
Theo tài liệu điều tra, 6 cựu giám đốc của hai công ty Securency International, Note Printing Australia (trực thuộc Ngân hàng Dự trữ Úc) đã đút lót các quan chức Việt Nam, Indonesia, và Malaysia từ năm 1999 - 2005. Cảnh sát Úc đã xếp vụ này là vụ tham nhũng hối lộ quy mô lớn nhất của Úc ở nước ngoài từ trước tới nay.
Báo The Age tiết lộ ngân hàng Úc đã chi trả chi phí du học ở Anh của Lê Đức Minh - con trai ông Lê Đức Thúy (là thống đốc Ngân hàng Nhà nước VN trong thời điểm vụ bê bối xảy ra). Khoản tiền hối lộ trong vụ việc liên quan tới Việt Nam ước tính là 10 triệu đô la Úc, được chuyển vào nhiều tài khoản ở ngân hàng Thụy Sĩ.
Nhà chức trách Malaysia cũng đã phối hợp với cảnh sát Úc bắt giữ hai người có liên quan đến vụ scandal ở Malaysia sau cuộc điều tra của Ủy ban chống tham nhũng Malaysia.
Cảnh sát Úc chưa tiết lộ danh tính của những người bị bắt. 6 người bị bắt phải ra trước tòa án Melbourne, đối mặt với án 10 năm tù và phạt tiền lên đến 1,2 triệu USD nếu bị kết tội.
Trả lời về những cáo buộc của nước ngoài, thiếu tướng Triệu Văn Đạt - phó tổng cục trưởng Tổng cục Cảnh sát phòng chống tội phạm (Bộ Công an) cho biết tại cuộc họp thông báo tình hình đấu tranh phòng chống tội phạm sáu tháng đầu năm: Vào giai đoạn đầu khi có thông tin, lãnh đạo Bộ Công an giao Cục Cảnh sát điều tra tội phạm về tham nhũng nắm tình hình, tiến hành xác minh. Sau đó, vụ việc này được bàn giao cho Cục An ninh tài chính tiền tệ thực hiện.
Theo ông Triệu Văn Đạt, từ thông tin trên báo chí nước ngoài, cơ quan chức năng VN thông qua con đường hỗ trợ tư pháp đề nghị cơ quan tư pháp nước ngoài cung cấp tài liệu nhưng chưa có căn cứ để khẳng định có hay không việc quan chức nào ở VN nhận hối lộ. Hiện Chính phủ giao Bộ Công an tiếp tục nắm vụ việc, hợp tác với cơ quan nước ngoài để thu thập thông tin. Nếu có đủ căn cứ pháp lý sẽ xử lý tương tự như vụ PCI.
* Nguồn: http://dddn.com.vn/2011761160390cat111/cao-buoc-tham-nhung-trong-vu-in-tien-polymer-hop-tac-quoc-te-de-dieu-tra.htm
Vẫn tìm dầu, cho dù xung đột: bài viết trên The Australian
Oil and gas players shrug off Chinese naval drills
- Paul Garve - From: The Australian; July 04, 2011
China's navy has been carrying out highly publicised naval exercises along the disputed maritime border it shares with Vietnam, and the country's state-owned newspapers have been running evocative editorials warning that it will "show no mercy" should Vietnam wish to start a war in the South China Sea. At the heart of the escalating tensions is the increasing excitement about the oil and gas prospects in the water off Vietnam's coastline, where a number of Australian companies are active.
For those Australian companies with prospects in and around those waters, the tensions, unsettling as they are, are nevertheless a ringing endorsement of the potential that attracted them to Vietnam in the first place.
Australian oil and gas stalwarts Santos and Origin Energy are both exploring there, while junior player Neon Energy is sitting on two of the more interesting pieces of acreage in the region. All the companies are aware of the tensions but don't allow them to slow their exploration efforts. The aggressive rhetoric between China and Vietnam comes at a sensitive time, particularly for Neon, which is sitting on oil and gas prospects that could transform the company.
Neon is on the hunt for a joint venture partner that will carry the bulk of the cost of testing some of its best targets.
So far, the tensions appear to have done little to dampen third-party interest in the acreage. Indeed, China wouldn't be so interested in the territory were its oil and gas prospects not so attractive.
Territorial disputes between China and its neighbours in the South China Sea are nothing new, with the boundaries around the potentially oil-rich Spratly Islands north of Malaysia disputed for decades. The latest tensions, however, revolve around a relatively new area.
The latest flare-up between China and Vietnam began just before 6am on May 26 in the waters just southeast of the blocks held by Neon and Origin and northeast of Santos's 50 per cent owned Block 123. The Binh Minh 2, a survey ship owned by Vietnam's state-owned energy giant PetroVietnam, was carrying out a seismic survey in the waters when it was reportedly rushed by three Chinese patrol ships.
A number of seismic cables attached to the Binh Minh 2 were damaged in the incident. Relations between the two countries have been strained ever since.
Chinese media has been releasing details of recent naval exercises near the Vietnamese waters, including mine sweeping and missile tests, as well as beach landings at Hainan island.
Equally provocative was an editorial in the Chinese state-owned Global Times, which said: "If Vietnam wishes to create a war in the South China Sea, China will resolutely keep them company. China has the absolute might to crush the naval fleets sent from Vietnam. China will show no mercy to its rival due to 'global impact' concerns."
Against that backdrop is Neon's hunt for joint venture partners for its two Vietnamese licences, Block 105 and Block 120.
While Block 105 is not in dispute, Neon managing director Ken Charminsky estimates that the eastern one-fifth of Block 120 falls in the area of the recent controversy. Neon and its existing partner in the project, private group Kris Energy, have focused all their efforts to date in the western half of the block, away from the disputed area.
Independent consultant Netherland Sewell & Associates has identified a dozen oil leads in the block capable of hosting up to an impressive combined total of 7.9 billion barrels of oil, with a most likely estimate of 2.7 billion barrels. That is a tremendous potential target, particularly for a junior Perth-based explorer such as Neon.
Block 105 is just as enticing, with NSA identifying seven prospects it estimated could host 6.3 trillion cubic feet of gas and 46.3 million barrels of condensate on a most likely basis, and a possible 21 trillion cubic feet of gas and 177 million barrels of condensate.
The highest priority target, Ca Lang, has a most likely target of 461 million barrels and a best case estimate of 1.3 billion barrels.
"For a company of our size, when you think about the impact a discovery of that magnitude would have for us, even a large multinational could be pleased with that," Charminsky says from London.
Southern Cross Equities analyst Johan Hedstrom rates the prospects a 10-20 per cent chance of success and says just one success could be worth between 57c and $1.70 a Neon share.
Neon, which already operates some small but profitable oilfields in the US, trades around 39.5c a share.
"Companies like Woodside, Santos and Oil Search would love to have such potential in their portfolios, which does raise the risk of a takeover for Neon," Hedstrom says.
"Australian companies are probably not the main threat, but big companies like Exxon Mobil, which is drilling next door, would probably consider taking out Neon rather than doing a farm-in for 50 per cent."
The possible upside means there has already been a strong stream of inquiries from larger oil and gas players interested in funding the bulk of drilling costs on the blocks in return for an interest.
Despite or maybe because of the China controversy, Neon has had dozens of parties at the blocks' online data room and a handful of majors at the physical data rooms that have recently opened in Singapore and Perth. Neon is aiming to finalise a deal in six months and start drilling early next year.
Many of the world's oil and gas majors are already active in Vietnam, such as Exxon (which is preparing to drill a well on the block immediately north of Neon's Block 120), Chevron, Total and Gazprom.
Malaysian oil and gas giant Petronas last week announced a new oil discovery at its Diamond field off southern Vietnam, which is flowing at 5200 barrels of oil a day.
Origin Energy, which owns and operates Block 121, immediately south of Neon's Block 120, is pushing ahead with its work programs in Vietnam.
Santos has previously said it planned to drill the Tuy Hoa prospect on Block 123 in early 2011, but there has been no update on this plan.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Why Greeks are Angry, Scared and Trapped
, Managing Director, The Brookings Institution
CNN
------
With Europe pushing austerity measures on Greece in exchange for another round of bailouts, the Greek public in the streets responds with chants: "We won't pay." Faced with pain and suffering, they are contemplating suicide.
It is almost as if the script was lifted from Mel Brooks' film "Blazing Saddles." Cleavon Little's character faces a gun-wielding mob about to run him out of town -- or worse. To escape, he puts his gun to his own head and threatens to shoot unless members of the mob drop their guns first.
In this case, Europe is tired of bailing out Greece, having already done so once. In the Netherlands and Finland, nationalist parties have even called for Greece to leave the euro, angry that previous Greek governments lied to them about their level of deficit. That debt allowed Greece to bloat its federal payroll, with more than one in five Greeks employed by the government or a state-owned enterprise.
But that debt also allowed Greece to go on a shopping spree of European goods. Greeks built new highways and subways and natural gas buses, not to mention expensive military equipment -- largely imported from northern European companies and contractors.
Greece's mounting unpaid loans are owed, to a great degree, to European banks. If Greece doesn't make those payments, Europe's banks are in trouble. So Greece faces a choice -- balance its budget to free up cash to make debt payments, or refuse to pay and put Europe's financial system at risk.
Greece's government under Prime Minister George Papandreou, so far, has mostly done the right thing. Papandreou has owned up to Greece's past mistakes. More than that, the government has begun to cut wages, cut pensions and raise taxes. The newest measures -- approved in Parliament on Wednesday -- will start to sell off some publicly owned companies and land, and further raise taxes and cut spending.
Still, many outsiders -- and not a few insiders -- doubt that austerity will generate enough extra revenues to make debt payments well into the future.
Without sustained growth, it is hard for most foreign financial analysts to see where the Greeks will come up with the cash to make payments on their debt.
Sustained growth will only happen when the government takes an ax to the knots of bureaucratic red tape that hamper even the simplest of business transactions. But the benefits of that kind of reform could take years to materialize.
Policymakers in Greece and throughout the European Union have yet to offer a near-term vision for how to jump-start the Greek economy. As a result, there is no real constituency for reform.
Greeks don't want cutbacks in public sector jobs if they can't see the private sector jobs that would replace them. They don't want to sell state-owned companies if it is not clear that privately held companies would be more successful. With so many Greeks on the public payroll, everyone in Greece either fears losing his job, or fears that his brother, or aunt, or neighbor or client will lose theirs.
In short, Greece's public is angry and scared. The Greeks are angry, because they've been lied to by their politicians, and scolded by European bureaucrats. They're scared, because the current slate of reforms will, in the short term, only make matters worse. Even small businesses -- which might be expected to support reform -- are convinced that their taxes will increase, that they will lose customers, and that they will continue to be strangled with regulation.
The public also knows that Europe fears a sovereign default. Many Greeks are willing to hold out on payments until Europe comes through with more loans or perhaps more stimulus.
What these Greeks don't realize is that the way they are holding Europe hostage is by threatening suicide.
To begin with, the biggest holders of Greek debt are Greek banks. If Greek banks fail, every Greek with a checking or savings account loses. Worse still, international faith in Greek businesses would be lost.
Many of the gains from economic integration over the last 25 years would be reversed, including the transformation of Greece from being nearly a Third World country to having a fully modern economy (albeit a quirky, over-regulated one).
If Greece exits the European Union, many young Greeks would lose the opportunity to travel freely in Europe to study or work and improve their standard of living. And European investment in Greece would halt.
The crisis will only end when policymakers throughout Europe recognize the nature of the challenge they face. Europe and Greece must find a way of making Greek debts sustainable while also generating prolonged economic growth throughout the EU. This will require shared sacrifice and a shared commitment to reform. When policymakers face the truth of the tragedy they are facing, everyone will finally put his guns down.
As Number One, China to Face Hour of Choice
, Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies
YaleGlobal
-----
Recently the International Monetary Fund confirmed what the average Chinese has long anticipated: China will soon have the world’s largest economy, surpassing the United States. There may be quibbles about measuring sticks and low per capita GDP, so timing is imprecise. But the trend is clear. In terms of gross domestic product, China will become number one in this decade or the next and the United States will become number two. Yet rankings do not automatically confer power and influence. More important is how a major country chooses to use its power, for good or ill.
That China will have the world’s largest economy is a remarkable achievement. In 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party came to power, China was a very poor country, the result of more than a century of decline. Thirty years later, it was still a poor country, wracked by continual political turmoil. But China’s leaders then abandoned central planning and autarky in favor of export-led growth fueled by external investment and local initiative. They stuck to that strategy while adapting skillfully to changing circumstances. They improved the living standards of hundreds of millions and transformed the face of the country
This milestone is as important psychologically as it is economically. Chinese take pride in their civilization.They believe that their country, in its weakened state, was victimized for more than a century by the countries of the West plus Japan. To restore China to its past glory and position as one of the world’s great powers would right those wrongs. That this growing power is coming at the expense of the United States, with which China at best has had a difficult relationship for much of the last 60 years, is particularly sweet.
Some Chinese believe that passing this milestone will have automatic consequences for international politics, giving China more international influence. In their view, other countries should then confer more deference on China and accommodate to it on issues that China regards as important, rather than China continuing to accommodate them. At some point, Beijing will likely insist that the head of the International Monetary Fund or World Bank be a Chinese.
Discussions of China’s having the largest GDP come with a subtext – that rapid rise of a new power can destabilize the international system and even lead to conflict. Economic power can be translated into military power and political influence.
But as history shows, the path may not have a single destination. According to the conventional narrative, Germany challenged Great Britain’s dominant position in the international system and World War I was the result. Yet this narrative is at odds with the economic rankings at that time, according to estimates of the late Angus Maddison, a prominent economic historian.
In 1913, the year before the outbreak of World War I, the United States had the world’s largest GDP, with just more than USD500 billion in 1990 prices. Next, four countries were bunched together, each with UDS225 to USD240 billion. Germany and Great Britain were in this group but so were Russia and, surprisingly, China. France was at USD144 billion and Japan only had a GDP of USD71 billion.
China’s second-tier economy is not surprising. In 1913, as today, it had the world’s largest population. More people can produce more stuff. But China then was also politically weak: divided internally and vulnerable to external imperialism.
While, of course, the world today is very different from what it was a century ago, the 1913 configuration is instructive.
First of all, the 1913 rankings demonstrate that a large economy itself does not automatically translate into global political influence. In 1913 the United States may have had the world’s largest economy, but was virtually irrelevant in Europe’s gathering storm. Great Britain, on the other hand, “punched above its weight” to preserve stability in the international system.
Second, a large economy does not necessarily result in a robust military. The United States had a comparatively small military establishment in 1913, despite having the largest GDP. Relative to their economic size, Germany and Japan had large armies and navies.
Third, the emergence of a new economic number one doesn’t mean that international conflict is inevitable. By 1913, the United States was the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, but Great Britain accepted this decline in its global influence. Japan, on the other hand, had fought and won wars against two countries three times its economic size: China in 1894-95 and Russia in 1904-05. Despite their commercial and colonial interests, however, Britain and the United States chose to accommodate Japan rather than challenge it.
Fourth, when conflict occurs, it is not necessarily because a rising power is bent on aggression. Germany’s decision to go to war in the summer of 1914 was driven by rigid alliance commitments and anxiety, probably misplaced, that Russia was growing stronger. Berlin opted to strike preemptively to preserve its security. Russia was caught in the same dilemma.
In short, the choices that major powers make are more important than their economic rank. As number one, China may assume that it has the right to extend its influence at the expense of others. Its expansion of its strategic perimeter in the East and South China seas is a case in point. Or it may continue to focus on its economy and create a prosperous life for most of its people, letting the United States continue to bear the burden of international leadership. If so, it will remain a country that has global impact, as Kenneth Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center, puts it, but is not a global player. Or it may opt to work with other major powers to meet the critical challenges to the international system – that is the Obama administration’s hope. Or it can read the worst into what others do, particularly the United States, and act on its fears. Which choice China makes will have profound consequences for East Asia and the world.
The United States has choices too. It can regard becoming number two as another sign that of permanent decline and retreat from international leadership. It can choose to rebuild the pillars of national power that have been neglected – government finance, education, science and technology, and so on. It can conclude – without justification – that China is sure to become America’s adversary and base policy on that fear, producing a dangerous vicious circle. Or it can forgo the temptation to read the worst into China’s revival and instead seek to influence China’s trajectory in the direction of cooperation rather than conflict.
And for each country, not making conscious choices about future direction is also a choice.
China is going to be number one, but that’s no reason for Americans to head for the hills.
YaleGlobal is the flagship publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, published since 2002.
That China will have the world’s largest economy is a remarkable achievement. In 1949, when the Chinese Communist Party came to power, China was a very poor country, the result of more than a century of decline. Thirty years later, it was still a poor country, wracked by continual political turmoil. But China’s leaders then abandoned central planning and autarky in favor of export-led growth fueled by external investment and local initiative. They stuck to that strategy while adapting skillfully to changing circumstances. They improved the living standards of hundreds of millions and transformed the face of the country
This milestone is as important psychologically as it is economically. Chinese take pride in their civilization.They believe that their country, in its weakened state, was victimized for more than a century by the countries of the West plus Japan. To restore China to its past glory and position as one of the world’s great powers would right those wrongs. That this growing power is coming at the expense of the United States, with which China at best has had a difficult relationship for much of the last 60 years, is particularly sweet.
Some Chinese believe that passing this milestone will have automatic consequences for international politics, giving China more international influence. In their view, other countries should then confer more deference on China and accommodate to it on issues that China regards as important, rather than China continuing to accommodate them. At some point, Beijing will likely insist that the head of the International Monetary Fund or World Bank be a Chinese.
Discussions of China’s having the largest GDP come with a subtext – that rapid rise of a new power can destabilize the international system and even lead to conflict. Economic power can be translated into military power and political influence.
But as history shows, the path may not have a single destination. According to the conventional narrative, Germany challenged Great Britain’s dominant position in the international system and World War I was the result. Yet this narrative is at odds with the economic rankings at that time, according to estimates of the late Angus Maddison, a prominent economic historian.
In 1913, the year before the outbreak of World War I, the United States had the world’s largest GDP, with just more than USD500 billion in 1990 prices. Next, four countries were bunched together, each with UDS225 to USD240 billion. Germany and Great Britain were in this group but so were Russia and, surprisingly, China. France was at USD144 billion and Japan only had a GDP of USD71 billion.
China’s second-tier economy is not surprising. In 1913, as today, it had the world’s largest population. More people can produce more stuff. But China then was also politically weak: divided internally and vulnerable to external imperialism.
While, of course, the world today is very different from what it was a century ago, the 1913 configuration is instructive.
First of all, the 1913 rankings demonstrate that a large economy itself does not automatically translate into global political influence. In 1913 the United States may have had the world’s largest economy, but was virtually irrelevant in Europe’s gathering storm. Great Britain, on the other hand, “punched above its weight” to preserve stability in the international system.
Second, a large economy does not necessarily result in a robust military. The United States had a comparatively small military establishment in 1913, despite having the largest GDP. Relative to their economic size, Germany and Japan had large armies and navies.
Third, the emergence of a new economic number one doesn’t mean that international conflict is inevitable. By 1913, the United States was the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere, but Great Britain accepted this decline in its global influence. Japan, on the other hand, had fought and won wars against two countries three times its economic size: China in 1894-95 and Russia in 1904-05. Despite their commercial and colonial interests, however, Britain and the United States chose to accommodate Japan rather than challenge it.
Fourth, when conflict occurs, it is not necessarily because a rising power is bent on aggression. Germany’s decision to go to war in the summer of 1914 was driven by rigid alliance commitments and anxiety, probably misplaced, that Russia was growing stronger. Berlin opted to strike preemptively to preserve its security. Russia was caught in the same dilemma.
In short, the choices that major powers make are more important than their economic rank. As number one, China may assume that it has the right to extend its influence at the expense of others. Its expansion of its strategic perimeter in the East and South China seas is a case in point. Or it may continue to focus on its economy and create a prosperous life for most of its people, letting the United States continue to bear the burden of international leadership. If so, it will remain a country that has global impact, as Kenneth Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center, puts it, but is not a global player. Or it may opt to work with other major powers to meet the critical challenges to the international system – that is the Obama administration’s hope. Or it can read the worst into what others do, particularly the United States, and act on its fears. Which choice China makes will have profound consequences for East Asia and the world.
The United States has choices too. It can regard becoming number two as another sign that of permanent decline and retreat from international leadership. It can choose to rebuild the pillars of national power that have been neglected – government finance, education, science and technology, and so on. It can conclude – without justification – that China is sure to become America’s adversary and base policy on that fear, producing a dangerous vicious circle. Or it can forgo the temptation to read the worst into China’s revival and instead seek to influence China’s trajectory in the direction of cooperation rather than conflict.
And for each country, not making conscious choices about future direction is also a choice.
China is going to be number one, but that’s no reason for Americans to head for the hills.
YaleGlobal is the flagship publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, published since 2002.
Hy Lạp: Chương trình “thắt lưng buộc bụng” và hoạt động du lịch
5-7-2011 (Vietnamica.net) – Stratfor, hệ thống phân tích và đánh giá địa chính trị toàn cầu, gần đây có mở thêm chuyên mục mới về An Ninh Du Lịch, cung cấp thông tin, cảnh báo và chỉ dẫn khách du lịch toàn cầu các biện pháp đảm bảo an ninh. Stratfor là hệ thống cung cấp thông tin kinh doanh, bởi vậy, quyết định mở thêm chuyên mục là thông số cho thấy nhu cầu du lịch quốc tế, ít nhất là với người Mỹ, rất cao.
Tình hình kinh tế Hy Lạp cũng được nhắc tới trong một bài viết về an ninh du lịch vào ngày 4-7 như sau.
Các cuộc biểu tình phản đối chương trình “thắt lưng buộc bụng” tại Hy Lạp gần như khiến toàn bộ hoạt động của quốc gia này ngưng trệ, kể cả nhiều dịch vụ công. Trên thực tế, các phương tiện giao thông công cộng, trừ tàu điện ngầm, đều dừng hoạt động. Nhiều cơ quan chính phủ và ngân hàng đóng cửa. Cơ quan kiểm soát không lưu chỉ làm việc 4 giờ buổi sáng và 4 giờ buổi tối, một cửa quá cảnh quan trọng cũng bị đóng cửa. Lẽ tự nhiên, tình trạng này ảnh hưởng đáng kể tới hoạt động du lịch tại Hy Lạp.
Mấy đề tài có thể rất hấp dẫn về insights đối với Vietnamica
Gợi ý để khỏi quên, và suy nghĩ thêm (tôi tự đặt tên, có thể còn phải sửa, nhưng nó có tính gợi ý):
1) Vietnam's Exports in 2011 and Slim Chance of Financing the Widening Trade Gap: http://vneconomy.vn/20110705075948272P0C10/xuat-khau-nam-2011-co-the-dat-845-855-ty-usd.htm
2) Unmeasurable Underground Economy and the People's Buffer: (không có bài nào gợi ý)
3) Growing Pile of Public Spending and Option to Quit: (không có bài nào gợi ý, hay nói chính xác là quá nhiều bài gợi ý)
1) Vietnam's Exports in 2011 and Slim Chance of Financing the Widening Trade Gap: http://vneconomy.vn/20110705075948272P0C10/xuat-khau-nam-2011-co-the-dat-845-855-ty-usd.htm
2) Unmeasurable Underground Economy and the People's Buffer: (không có bài nào gợi ý)
3) Growing Pile of Public Spending and Option to Quit: (không có bài nào gợi ý, hay nói chính xác là quá nhiều bài gợi ý)
Crise du crédit souverain subprime : combien de milliards de dettes supplémentaires inutiles ?
A la vue de ces plans de sauvetage successifs et au-delà des débats académiques sur la liquidité, la solvabilité, la réforme nécessaire de la zone euro, la restructuration éventuelle de certaines dettes souveraines, un certain nombre de questions simples et de bon sens se posent :
Première série de questions : d'où viennent tous ces milliards ? Comment cet argent est-il finalement distribué aux Etats secourus ?
Deuxième question : ces milliards suffisent-ils à régler le problème de solvabilité des Etats concernés ?
Troisième question : ces milliards mettent-ils à l'abri les systèmes bancaires de ces pays en cas de besoins de recapitalisation urgente ?
Première question: d'où viennent ces milliards et comment cet argent est-il finalement distribué aux Etats secourus ?
A vrai dire, ces sommes ne pourraient venir que de trois sources.
Premièrement, ce pourrait être de l'argent créé par la Banque centrale européenne. Concernant ces plans d'aide, cette source n'a pas été utilisée. La Banque centrale européenne a bien émis de la monnaie pour acheter des titres d'Etat des pays périphériques en difficulté. Mais il ne s'agissait pas d'argent frais puisque ces achats ont été, pour l'essentiel, réalisés sur le marché secondaire. La BCE a racheté des obligations déjà émises sur le marché secondaire qu'elle a inscrites à son bilan.
Ceci est neutre en termes de liquidité et il n'y a pas eu de création monétaire à proprement parler puisque ces achats ont donné lieu à une stérilisation de la masse monétaire ; la monétisation des dettes périphériques a été neutralisée par des retraits de liquidité de la part de la banque centrale.
Au total, depuis juin 2010, la BCE aura acheté 75 milliards d'euros de dette périphérique sans création monétaire additionnelle, donc en maintenant quasiment inchangée la taille de son bilan.
Ceci est donc différent de ce qui s'est passé au Royaume-Uni et aux Etats-Unis.
La Bank Of England a acheté pour près de 200 milliards de livres de gilts depuis mars 2009 sans stérilisation de la masse monétaire.
La Fed a acheté pour 2 300 milliards de dollars de Treasuries et autres titres là aussi sans stérilisation. La première passe de quantitative easing entre mars 2009 et septembre 2009 s'est élevée à 1 700 milliards de dollars. La deuxième passe de quantitative easing entre novembre 2010 et juin 2011 a créé 600 milliards de dollars.
Deuxième source : l'emprunt et la mise sur pied de nouveaux véhicules
A cet effet, le Fonds Européen de stabilité financière (FESF) crée en mai 2010 est une société de droit privé basée au Luxembourg, dont les actionnaires sont justement les 16 Etats de la zone euro.
Pour bénéficier de la notation AAA, 100 euros émis doivent être garantis par 120 euros. C'est ce que les experts appellent le mécanisme de rehaussement.
Ce qui veut dire que les 440 milliards d'euros de garanties ne permettent d'émettre que 83% de ce montant, soit 365 milliards d'euros. En pratique, c'est moins aujourd'hui puisqu'il faut exclure les garanties apportées par les Etats secourus ainsi que les montants déjà émis pour financer les plans de sauvetage.
Le Mécanisme Européen de Stabilité Financière (MESF) devrait prendre le relais du FESF à partir de la mi-2013. La capacité de prêt effective sera de 500 milliards d'euros pour un capital de 700 milliards d'euros ; assurant ainsi un coussin potentiel de 40% à cette structure. Ce niveau de garantie ou "sur collatéralisation" devrait permettre au MESF d'obtenir la note AAA.
Sur ces 700 milliards d'euros, 80 milliards d'euros seront effectivement émis -- donc empruntés -- par le nouveau véhicule. Ils correspondent à du capital souscrit par les Etats membres en fonction de leur poids économique :
- 21,7 milliards d'euros pour l'Allemagne
- 16,3 milliards d'euros pour la France
- 14,3 milliards d'euros pour l'Italie
- 9,5 milliards d'euros pour l'Espagne.
Ces sommes viennent alourdir l'endettement de ces pays.
Les 620 milliards d'euros restants n'existent, quant à eux, pas du tout puisqu'ils seront composés de garanties et de capital non-souscrit (ce que l'on appelle encore dans le jargon le callable capital. Il se transformera en capital à souscrire dès qu'il faudra aider des Etats non encore secourus et surtout dès que les 80 milliards auront été émis et versés).
En d'autres termes, plus ça ira mal, plus il faudra transformer ce capital non souscrit en capital à souscrire et plus l'endettement des pays de la zone s'accroîtra.
Belle mutualisation du risque qui ne pourra à terme que provoquer des tensions sur les taux longs de la zone, y compris ceux des pays jugés les plus vertueux aujourd'hui.
Troisième source également utilisée pour le financement des plans de sauvetage, la mobilisation de ressources "monétaires". A la différence des ressources empruntées et donc émises sur les marchés par les véhicules décrits ci-dessus, ces ressources existent déjà puisqu'elles sont assises sur les droits de tirage spéciaux du FMI.
Chaque pays dispose au FMI en fonction de son poids économique de ce que l'on appelle les droits de tirage spéciaux (DTS). Ces droits ont été crées en 1969 pour jouer un rôle de réserves de change additionnelles pour les Etats. Ainsi l'Allemagne dispose de 13 milliards de DTS, la France de 10,7 milliards et, pour l'ensemble de la zone, ce montant s'élève à 50,4 milliards.
La parité actuelle se situe autour de 1,15 euro pour 1 DTS. Nous avons donc un total de 58 milliards d'euros. Il existe une règle qui fixe à 10 fois les quotas la limite de financement, cela signifie que l'ensemble de la zone euro a théoriquement la capacité de lever jusqu'à 580 milliards d'euros. Pour les pays aidés, on peut dire que ce matelas de 10 fois a été largement utilisé.
Par exemple, le financement par le FMI de 30 milliards d'euros (dont 10 milliards dès 2010) pour le plan grec de mai 2010 sous la forme d'un accord de confirmation équivaut à 3 200% (32 fois) de la quote-part de la Grèce dans le Fonds. Autant dire que le FMI finance la Grèce en utilisant les quote-parts d'autres pays de la zone.
Situation similaire pour le Portugal puisque dans le cadre du plan de sauvetage de mai 2011, le Mécanisme Elargi de Crédit du Fonds représente 2 300% (23 fois) de la quote-part du pays dans le FMI.
Tout cet argent émis ou tiré sur des quotes-parts est généralement distribué au fil de l'eau avec, en principe, un suivi de la mise en oeuvre des réformes structurelles et de l'assainissement budgétaire.
Par exemple, pour la Grèce, l'aide européenne du plan de mai 2010 prend la forme de prêts uniques gérés par la Commission européenne avec des décaissements trimestriels. Aujourd'hui, la Grèce a déjà touché 53 milliards du plan de 110 milliards. Avant même la finalisation d'un nouveau plan d'aide, l'actualité porte aujourd'hui sur le déblocage par la zone euro et le FMI, prévu au départ début juin 2011, de 12 milliards d'euros. Ceci correspond à la cinquième tranche du prêt accordé au pays en mai 2010.
Dans la réalité des choses et malgré la médiatisation du conditionnement de ces aides, l'argent est majoritairement emprunté puis distribué sans audit véritable des mesures mises en oeuvre en contrepartie.
Deuxième question : ces milliards suffisent-ils à réguler le problème de solvabilité des Etats concernés ?
Les autorités politiques ont souvent évoqué la possibilité d'un soutien illimité aux pays en difficulté. Tout ceci n'a de sens que si ces pays doivent faire face à une simple crise de liquidité. En revanche, si un pays insolvable reçoit un soutien "infini" de la part d'investisseurs publics, il reste insolvable. La crise est seulement repoussée dans le temps.
Pour succéder au FESF en 2013, les gouvernements de la zone euro veulent s'orienter vers la création de ce MESF, sorte de "FMI européen", capable de prêter aux pays des montants très importants puisque ses ressources sont monétaires et non empruntées sur les marchés obligataires comme celles du FESF. Il s'agit encore et toujours d'acheter du temps mais en quantité de plus en plus considérable.
En tout cas, ce qui est connu précisément aujourd'hui auprès de sources officielles ce sont les besoins d'emprunts des pays périphérique en difficultés budgétaires réelles ou potentielles sur l'horizon 2011-2013 (2013 correspond à l'échéance officielle du FESF) :
- Grèce : 78 milliards d'euros
- Portugal : 25 milliards d'euros
- Espagne : 135 milliards d'euros
- Irlande : 16 milliards d'euros.
L'addition est donc de 254 milliards d'euros. A comparer aux 365 milliards d'euros du FESF, moins ce qui a déjà été distribué.
Attention donc à la contagion à l'Espagne compte tenu de sa taille.
Troisième question : ces milliards mettent-ils à l'abri les banques en cas de besoins de recapitalisation urgente ?
Les plans de sauvetage ont aussi pour objet d'assurer la stabilité des systèmes financiers nationaux. Cela passe souvent, comme en Irlande, par la création de bad banks pour transférer des banques vers des structures étatiques les actifs toxiques. Ceci permet de libérer des fonds propres. Ce principe s'inspire de ce qui a été fait en Suède, aux Etats-Unis et au Japon à la fin des années 1980 et au début des années 1990. Des ressources doivent aussi être prévues pour garantir les passifs bancaires (c'est-à-dire les dettes émises par les banques).
Il est naturellement difficile d'estimer les impacts de krachs financiers sur des dépréciations d'actifs de banques fragiles donc sur leurs besoins de recapitalisations supplémentaires inattendues.
Même avec des stress tests crédibles, la vraie question est aujourd'hui de savoir si les Etats les plus fragiles seraient capables de venir sauver à nouveau leur système bancaire national, à l'instar de ce qui s'était passé à l'automne 2008.
La réponse est évidemment non, ce qui signifie que les tailles du FESF et du futur MESF sont probablement mal calibrées. On sait, en effet, que ces tailles ont été fixées en fonction des besoins de financement connus des Etats. Mais des besoins additionnels et surtout inattendus de financement liés à la situation de certaines banques européennes, voire des besoins aujourd'hui "cachés" de certaines collectivités publiques (en Espagne et même en France) pourraient nécessiter un redimensionnement des fonds européens.
Pour assurer un financement adéquat du dispositif de soutien à l'Europe, il faudrait mettre sur la table peut-être jusqu'à 2 000 milliards d'euros selon certains. Bien évidemment, cette somme ne serait pas dépensée et ce serait juste une réserve de liquidités, encore que...
Encore une fois, ces montants suffisent juste pour parer au plus pressé, la résolution de problèmes de liquidité, et non pour traiter du problème véritable, la solvabilité.
Mory Doré est un professionnel des marchés financiers depuis plus de 20 ans ayant exercé différentes fonctions dans plusieurs grands groupes bancaires : économiste de marché ; trader et arbitragiste sur produits dérivés de taux d'intérêt ; trésorier et responsable de l'allocation des excédents de fonds propres ; responsable gestion financière.
Aujourd'hui, il est responsable du département des risques financiers dans un grand groupe bancaire mutualiste.
Durant ces 10 dernières années, il est un interlocuteur privilégié de la gestion financière et des risques financiers de son établissement auprès de différentes instances et institutions : commissaires aux comptes, Commission bancaire, Comité d'audit et Comité d'entreprise.
Il possède un diplôme de statisticien économiste de l'école nationale de la Statistique et de L'Administration économique ainsi qu'une maîtrise d'Econométrie de l'Université de Bourgogne (Dijon).
Mory Doré, MoneyWeek - La Vie Financière, 4-07-2011.
Première série de questions : d'où viennent tous ces milliards ? Comment cet argent est-il finalement distribué aux Etats secourus ?
Deuxième question : ces milliards suffisent-ils à régler le problème de solvabilité des Etats concernés ?
Troisième question : ces milliards mettent-ils à l'abri les systèmes bancaires de ces pays en cas de besoins de recapitalisation urgente ?
Première question: d'où viennent ces milliards et comment cet argent est-il finalement distribué aux Etats secourus ?
A vrai dire, ces sommes ne pourraient venir que de trois sources.
Premièrement, ce pourrait être de l'argent créé par la Banque centrale européenne. Concernant ces plans d'aide, cette source n'a pas été utilisée. La Banque centrale européenne a bien émis de la monnaie pour acheter des titres d'Etat des pays périphériques en difficulté. Mais il ne s'agissait pas d'argent frais puisque ces achats ont été, pour l'essentiel, réalisés sur le marché secondaire. La BCE a racheté des obligations déjà émises sur le marché secondaire qu'elle a inscrites à son bilan.
Ceci est neutre en termes de liquidité et il n'y a pas eu de création monétaire à proprement parler puisque ces achats ont donné lieu à une stérilisation de la masse monétaire ; la monétisation des dettes périphériques a été neutralisée par des retraits de liquidité de la part de la banque centrale.
Au total, depuis juin 2010, la BCE aura acheté 75 milliards d'euros de dette périphérique sans création monétaire additionnelle, donc en maintenant quasiment inchangée la taille de son bilan.
Ceci est donc différent de ce qui s'est passé au Royaume-Uni et aux Etats-Unis.
La Bank Of England a acheté pour près de 200 milliards de livres de gilts depuis mars 2009 sans stérilisation de la masse monétaire.
La Fed a acheté pour 2 300 milliards de dollars de Treasuries et autres titres là aussi sans stérilisation. La première passe de quantitative easing entre mars 2009 et septembre 2009 s'est élevée à 1 700 milliards de dollars. La deuxième passe de quantitative easing entre novembre 2010 et juin 2011 a créé 600 milliards de dollars.
Deuxième source : l'emprunt et la mise sur pied de nouveaux véhicules
A cet effet, le Fonds Européen de stabilité financière (FESF) crée en mai 2010 est une société de droit privé basée au Luxembourg, dont les actionnaires sont justement les 16 Etats de la zone euro.
Pour bénéficier de la notation AAA, 100 euros émis doivent être garantis par 120 euros. C'est ce que les experts appellent le mécanisme de rehaussement.
Ce qui veut dire que les 440 milliards d'euros de garanties ne permettent d'émettre que 83% de ce montant, soit 365 milliards d'euros. En pratique, c'est moins aujourd'hui puisqu'il faut exclure les garanties apportées par les Etats secourus ainsi que les montants déjà émis pour financer les plans de sauvetage.
Le Mécanisme Européen de Stabilité Financière (MESF) devrait prendre le relais du FESF à partir de la mi-2013. La capacité de prêt effective sera de 500 milliards d'euros pour un capital de 700 milliards d'euros ; assurant ainsi un coussin potentiel de 40% à cette structure. Ce niveau de garantie ou "sur collatéralisation" devrait permettre au MESF d'obtenir la note AAA.
Sur ces 700 milliards d'euros, 80 milliards d'euros seront effectivement émis -- donc empruntés -- par le nouveau véhicule. Ils correspondent à du capital souscrit par les Etats membres en fonction de leur poids économique :
- 21,7 milliards d'euros pour l'Allemagne
- 16,3 milliards d'euros pour la France
- 14,3 milliards d'euros pour l'Italie
- 9,5 milliards d'euros pour l'Espagne.
Ces sommes viennent alourdir l'endettement de ces pays.
Les 620 milliards d'euros restants n'existent, quant à eux, pas du tout puisqu'ils seront composés de garanties et de capital non-souscrit (ce que l'on appelle encore dans le jargon le callable capital. Il se transformera en capital à souscrire dès qu'il faudra aider des Etats non encore secourus et surtout dès que les 80 milliards auront été émis et versés).
En d'autres termes, plus ça ira mal, plus il faudra transformer ce capital non souscrit en capital à souscrire et plus l'endettement des pays de la zone s'accroîtra.
Belle mutualisation du risque qui ne pourra à terme que provoquer des tensions sur les taux longs de la zone, y compris ceux des pays jugés les plus vertueux aujourd'hui.
Troisième source également utilisée pour le financement des plans de sauvetage, la mobilisation de ressources "monétaires". A la différence des ressources empruntées et donc émises sur les marchés par les véhicules décrits ci-dessus, ces ressources existent déjà puisqu'elles sont assises sur les droits de tirage spéciaux du FMI.
Chaque pays dispose au FMI en fonction de son poids économique de ce que l'on appelle les droits de tirage spéciaux (DTS). Ces droits ont été crées en 1969 pour jouer un rôle de réserves de change additionnelles pour les Etats. Ainsi l'Allemagne dispose de 13 milliards de DTS, la France de 10,7 milliards et, pour l'ensemble de la zone, ce montant s'élève à 50,4 milliards.
La parité actuelle se situe autour de 1,15 euro pour 1 DTS. Nous avons donc un total de 58 milliards d'euros. Il existe une règle qui fixe à 10 fois les quotas la limite de financement, cela signifie que l'ensemble de la zone euro a théoriquement la capacité de lever jusqu'à 580 milliards d'euros. Pour les pays aidés, on peut dire que ce matelas de 10 fois a été largement utilisé.
Par exemple, le financement par le FMI de 30 milliards d'euros (dont 10 milliards dès 2010) pour le plan grec de mai 2010 sous la forme d'un accord de confirmation équivaut à 3 200% (32 fois) de la quote-part de la Grèce dans le Fonds. Autant dire que le FMI finance la Grèce en utilisant les quote-parts d'autres pays de la zone.
Situation similaire pour le Portugal puisque dans le cadre du plan de sauvetage de mai 2011, le Mécanisme Elargi de Crédit du Fonds représente 2 300% (23 fois) de la quote-part du pays dans le FMI.
Tout cet argent émis ou tiré sur des quotes-parts est généralement distribué au fil de l'eau avec, en principe, un suivi de la mise en oeuvre des réformes structurelles et de l'assainissement budgétaire.
Par exemple, pour la Grèce, l'aide européenne du plan de mai 2010 prend la forme de prêts uniques gérés par la Commission européenne avec des décaissements trimestriels. Aujourd'hui, la Grèce a déjà touché 53 milliards du plan de 110 milliards. Avant même la finalisation d'un nouveau plan d'aide, l'actualité porte aujourd'hui sur le déblocage par la zone euro et le FMI, prévu au départ début juin 2011, de 12 milliards d'euros. Ceci correspond à la cinquième tranche du prêt accordé au pays en mai 2010.
Dans la réalité des choses et malgré la médiatisation du conditionnement de ces aides, l'argent est majoritairement emprunté puis distribué sans audit véritable des mesures mises en oeuvre en contrepartie.
Deuxième question : ces milliards suffisent-ils à réguler le problème de solvabilité des Etats concernés ?
Les autorités politiques ont souvent évoqué la possibilité d'un soutien illimité aux pays en difficulté. Tout ceci n'a de sens que si ces pays doivent faire face à une simple crise de liquidité. En revanche, si un pays insolvable reçoit un soutien "infini" de la part d'investisseurs publics, il reste insolvable. La crise est seulement repoussée dans le temps.
Pour succéder au FESF en 2013, les gouvernements de la zone euro veulent s'orienter vers la création de ce MESF, sorte de "FMI européen", capable de prêter aux pays des montants très importants puisque ses ressources sont monétaires et non empruntées sur les marchés obligataires comme celles du FESF. Il s'agit encore et toujours d'acheter du temps mais en quantité de plus en plus considérable.
En tout cas, ce qui est connu précisément aujourd'hui auprès de sources officielles ce sont les besoins d'emprunts des pays périphérique en difficultés budgétaires réelles ou potentielles sur l'horizon 2011-2013 (2013 correspond à l'échéance officielle du FESF) :
- Grèce : 78 milliards d'euros
- Portugal : 25 milliards d'euros
- Espagne : 135 milliards d'euros
- Irlande : 16 milliards d'euros.
L'addition est donc de 254 milliards d'euros. A comparer aux 365 milliards d'euros du FESF, moins ce qui a déjà été distribué.
Attention donc à la contagion à l'Espagne compte tenu de sa taille.
Troisième question : ces milliards mettent-ils à l'abri les banques en cas de besoins de recapitalisation urgente ?
Les plans de sauvetage ont aussi pour objet d'assurer la stabilité des systèmes financiers nationaux. Cela passe souvent, comme en Irlande, par la création de bad banks pour transférer des banques vers des structures étatiques les actifs toxiques. Ceci permet de libérer des fonds propres. Ce principe s'inspire de ce qui a été fait en Suède, aux Etats-Unis et au Japon à la fin des années 1980 et au début des années 1990. Des ressources doivent aussi être prévues pour garantir les passifs bancaires (c'est-à-dire les dettes émises par les banques).
Il est naturellement difficile d'estimer les impacts de krachs financiers sur des dépréciations d'actifs de banques fragiles donc sur leurs besoins de recapitalisations supplémentaires inattendues.
Même avec des stress tests crédibles, la vraie question est aujourd'hui de savoir si les Etats les plus fragiles seraient capables de venir sauver à nouveau leur système bancaire national, à l'instar de ce qui s'était passé à l'automne 2008.
La réponse est évidemment non, ce qui signifie que les tailles du FESF et du futur MESF sont probablement mal calibrées. On sait, en effet, que ces tailles ont été fixées en fonction des besoins de financement connus des Etats. Mais des besoins additionnels et surtout inattendus de financement liés à la situation de certaines banques européennes, voire des besoins aujourd'hui "cachés" de certaines collectivités publiques (en Espagne et même en France) pourraient nécessiter un redimensionnement des fonds européens.
Pour assurer un financement adéquat du dispositif de soutien à l'Europe, il faudrait mettre sur la table peut-être jusqu'à 2 000 milliards d'euros selon certains. Bien évidemment, cette somme ne serait pas dépensée et ce serait juste une réserve de liquidités, encore que...
Encore une fois, ces montants suffisent juste pour parer au plus pressé, la résolution de problèmes de liquidité, et non pour traiter du problème véritable, la solvabilité.
Mory Doré est un professionnel des marchés financiers depuis plus de 20 ans ayant exercé différentes fonctions dans plusieurs grands groupes bancaires : économiste de marché ; trader et arbitragiste sur produits dérivés de taux d'intérêt ; trésorier et responsable de l'allocation des excédents de fonds propres ; responsable gestion financière.
Aujourd'hui, il est responsable du département des risques financiers dans un grand groupe bancaire mutualiste.
Durant ces 10 dernières années, il est un interlocuteur privilégié de la gestion financière et des risques financiers de son établissement auprès de différentes instances et institutions : commissaires aux comptes, Commission bancaire, Comité d'audit et Comité d'entreprise.
Il possède un diplôme de statisticien économiste de l'école nationale de la Statistique et de L'Administration économique ainsi qu'une maîtrise d'Econométrie de l'Université de Bourgogne (Dijon).
Mory Doré, MoneyWeek - La Vie Financière, 4-07-2011.
Nouriel Roubini Is All Wrong About China
Shaun Rein, 06.15.11 (Forbes) - He bases his pessimistic forecast on phantom facts.
The famed bearish economist Nouriel Roubini has been making waves recently by siding with China bears like Jim Chanos and saying that China will run into big economic problems in 2013. To buttress his argument, he has been telling anecdotes from a recent trip to China.
He has been quoted by Reuters as saying, "'I was recently in Shanghai and I took their high-speed train to Hangzhou,' referring to the new Maglev line that has cut traveling time between the two cities from four hours to less than one. 'The brand new high-speed train is half-empty and the brand new station is three-quarters empty. Parallel to that train line, there is also a new highway that looked three-quarters empty. Next to the train station is also the new local airport of Shanghai and you can fly to Hangzhou,' he said. 'There is no rationale for a country at that level of economic development to have not just duplication but triplication of those infrastructure projects.'"
Roubini, who correctly predicted America's housing crisis, is no lightweight economist. If China were building infrastructure projects in triplicate, it might portend that China was overbuilding at a faster pace than Dubai. If that became the case, it could create problems that rarely end well, such as a credit-fueled real estate boom.
However, most of Roubini's conclusions are based on phantom facts, as is his evidence for why China will have economic problems. There is no direct flight between Shanghai and Hangzhou, nor is there a maglev train system connecting the two cities. Shanghai has two, not three, airports, and the last new one opened a dozen years ago, in 1999. Both the Hongqiao and Pudong airports have been adding runways and terminals because the airports are too crowded, contrary to Roubini's suggestions of emptiness. Pudong's passenger and cargo traffic grew 27% in 2010, to 40.6 million passengers. It is now the third busiest airport in the world in terms of freight traffic, with 3,227,914 metric tons handled every year.
That hardly sounds like an underutilized airport with wasted investment in triplicate. Many analysts have turned bearish on China's economy over the last few years because they are concerned about empty apartments, too much debt and overcapacity. However, like Roubini, these analysts surprisingly misunderstand basic facts about income, demographics and investment in these facilities, and they use data points that are simply wrong to lead to their conclusions.
The reality is that most of China's infrastructure spending has created greater business efficiency while maintaining stable employment numbers. There were indeed plans to build a maglev train between Shanghai and Hangzhou, but those plans were scrapped following analysis that indicated it would be a waste of money. Instead, high speed rails were installed. This is a sustainable investment because it improves the linkage between two cities with populations of 24 million and 9 million. Every time I have been on the trains they have been packed to capacity, and I can assure you I have been on them far more often than has Roubini.
Most of China's transportation projects are not like Japan's bridges and highways to nowhere i that connect big cities with hamlets. China' projects improve business efficiency, and they are needed in that still developing economy. China has not yet gotten to where Japan was when it started wasting money on infrastructure projects to get out of its deflationary cycle.
The Chinese government is also severely limiting the number of new automobile license plates it issues, to reduce pollution and congestion. Only 21% of those who applied for a license plate in Beijing in January received one. My firm, the China Market Research Group, estimates that 350 million Chinese now live in households that can afford automobiles, and gross domestic product per capita is rising 10% a year. Per capita GDP more than tripled to USD3,400 at the end of 2010 from $949 in 2000. As a result of the limits on new autos, there is major pent up demand for cars, as incomes continue to rise. Until the restrictions on auto buying are eased, if ever, the demand for high-speed comfortable trains will grow.
China is not immune to economic cycles. It will definitely go through rough patches in the coming years, and housing prices may in fact fall. Despite a relatively efficient bureaucracy, no government can stave off market forces forever, and problems are starting to arise. However, the headwinds are coming from raging inflation, a shrinking labor pool and a weak education system, not from over-construction in infrastructure spending, as Roubini argues. It is important that analysts use real, not phantom, data points to draw conclusions about China.
Shaun Rein is the founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group, a strategic market intelligence firm, and is based in Shanghai. Follow him on Twitter @shaunrein.
The famed bearish economist Nouriel Roubini has been making waves recently by siding with China bears like Jim Chanos and saying that China will run into big economic problems in 2013. To buttress his argument, he has been telling anecdotes from a recent trip to China.
He has been quoted by Reuters as saying, "'I was recently in Shanghai and I took their high-speed train to Hangzhou,' referring to the new Maglev line that has cut traveling time between the two cities from four hours to less than one. 'The brand new high-speed train is half-empty and the brand new station is three-quarters empty. Parallel to that train line, there is also a new highway that looked three-quarters empty. Next to the train station is also the new local airport of Shanghai and you can fly to Hangzhou,' he said. 'There is no rationale for a country at that level of economic development to have not just duplication but triplication of those infrastructure projects.'"
Roubini, who correctly predicted America's housing crisis, is no lightweight economist. If China were building infrastructure projects in triplicate, it might portend that China was overbuilding at a faster pace than Dubai. If that became the case, it could create problems that rarely end well, such as a credit-fueled real estate boom.
However, most of Roubini's conclusions are based on phantom facts, as is his evidence for why China will have economic problems. There is no direct flight between Shanghai and Hangzhou, nor is there a maglev train system connecting the two cities. Shanghai has two, not three, airports, and the last new one opened a dozen years ago, in 1999. Both the Hongqiao and Pudong airports have been adding runways and terminals because the airports are too crowded, contrary to Roubini's suggestions of emptiness. Pudong's passenger and cargo traffic grew 27% in 2010, to 40.6 million passengers. It is now the third busiest airport in the world in terms of freight traffic, with 3,227,914 metric tons handled every year.
That hardly sounds like an underutilized airport with wasted investment in triplicate. Many analysts have turned bearish on China's economy over the last few years because they are concerned about empty apartments, too much debt and overcapacity. However, like Roubini, these analysts surprisingly misunderstand basic facts about income, demographics and investment in these facilities, and they use data points that are simply wrong to lead to their conclusions.
The reality is that most of China's infrastructure spending has created greater business efficiency while maintaining stable employment numbers. There were indeed plans to build a maglev train between Shanghai and Hangzhou, but those plans were scrapped following analysis that indicated it would be a waste of money. Instead, high speed rails were installed. This is a sustainable investment because it improves the linkage between two cities with populations of 24 million and 9 million. Every time I have been on the trains they have been packed to capacity, and I can assure you I have been on them far more often than has Roubini.
Most of China's transportation projects are not like Japan's bridges and highways to nowhere i that connect big cities with hamlets. China' projects improve business efficiency, and they are needed in that still developing economy. China has not yet gotten to where Japan was when it started wasting money on infrastructure projects to get out of its deflationary cycle.
The Chinese government is also severely limiting the number of new automobile license plates it issues, to reduce pollution and congestion. Only 21% of those who applied for a license plate in Beijing in January received one. My firm, the China Market Research Group, estimates that 350 million Chinese now live in households that can afford automobiles, and gross domestic product per capita is rising 10% a year. Per capita GDP more than tripled to USD3,400 at the end of 2010 from $949 in 2000. As a result of the limits on new autos, there is major pent up demand for cars, as incomes continue to rise. Until the restrictions on auto buying are eased, if ever, the demand for high-speed comfortable trains will grow.
China is not immune to economic cycles. It will definitely go through rough patches in the coming years, and housing prices may in fact fall. Despite a relatively efficient bureaucracy, no government can stave off market forces forever, and problems are starting to arise. However, the headwinds are coming from raging inflation, a shrinking labor pool and a weak education system, not from over-construction in infrastructure spending, as Roubini argues. It is important that analysts use real, not phantom, data points to draw conclusions about China.
Shaun Rein is the founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group, a strategic market intelligence firm, and is based in Shanghai. Follow him on Twitter @shaunrein.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Citigroup buys 9.9% stake in Vietnam's Horizon Securities Corp
By Alison Tudor at WSJ; Jul 1, 2011 -- Citigroup Inc. took a stake in a Vietnamese brokerage firm, betting that once the economy's rampant inflation slows, foreign investors will flock back to the communist country.
The New York bank signed a deal Thursday to buy a 9.9% stake in Horizon Securities Corp. for an undisclosed amount, becoming one of a few foreign firms to own a stake in a local broker. Others include Japan's Daiwa Securities Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
Citi's purchase comes at a time when Vietnam's economy is floundering. Inflation is running around 20%, a level the World Bank has labeled "intolerable," and the stock market is trading well below its 2007 peak. Labor strikes are spreading.
The government has aggressively moved to reel in inflation by raising interest rates and restricting bank lending. Many small businesses, which make up about 40% of the country's economy, are struggling. When state-run shipbuilder Vinashin defaulted on loan repayments late last year, much foreign capital fled on worries that other firms would follow suit.
Citigroup said it wasn't deterred.
"Fundamentally we're very bullish on Vietnam, despite the short-term pressures on the economy," said Brett Krause, head of Citigroup in Vietnam. He believes the government's policies are starting to have an impact.
Investing is also becoming easier. Vietnam has been gradually opening up its financial-services sector to outsiders since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2007. Foreigners can buy only 49% of a local brokerage, but Vietnam has committed to allowing full ownership by 2012.
The sector also looks ripe for consolidation. The government granted scores of brokerage licenses in recent years, when foreign capital was flooding into the country. But the hundred or so operational securities houses have been struggling because of the stock market's slide.
Ho Chi Minh-based Horizon, founded in 2006, is a privately held firm that provides brokerage and corporate-finance services.
"Arguably now is a good time to come into the market as it starts to consolidate," said Citi's Mr. Krause. If Citi decides to take a larger stake, it will then bring the local broker's technology, service and compliance standards into line with Citi's practices globally, he added.
"This is a platform that we can work together with moving forward," said Mr. Krause.
Investment banks are keen to build their franchises across the Asian-Pacific region to offer investors a one-stop shop in the region and to secure a role in helping Vietnam privatize broad swathes of its economy. The privatization process should give a fillip to the tiny Ho Chi Minh stock exchange, which currently has about 280 companies listed.
Citigroup already has offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and offers banking services across the country, including corporate and investment banking. It also offers trading in 10 Asian stock markets, signed a securities joint venture in mainland China this month and opened a research office in the Philippines last year.
The New York bank signed a deal Thursday to buy a 9.9% stake in Horizon Securities Corp. for an undisclosed amount, becoming one of a few foreign firms to own a stake in a local broker. Others include Japan's Daiwa Securities Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
Citi's purchase comes at a time when Vietnam's economy is floundering. Inflation is running around 20%, a level the World Bank has labeled "intolerable," and the stock market is trading well below its 2007 peak. Labor strikes are spreading.
The government has aggressively moved to reel in inflation by raising interest rates and restricting bank lending. Many small businesses, which make up about 40% of the country's economy, are struggling. When state-run shipbuilder Vinashin defaulted on loan repayments late last year, much foreign capital fled on worries that other firms would follow suit.
Citigroup said it wasn't deterred.
"Fundamentally we're very bullish on Vietnam, despite the short-term pressures on the economy," said Brett Krause, head of Citigroup in Vietnam. He believes the government's policies are starting to have an impact.
Investing is also becoming easier. Vietnam has been gradually opening up its financial-services sector to outsiders since it joined the World Trade Organization in 2007. Foreigners can buy only 49% of a local brokerage, but Vietnam has committed to allowing full ownership by 2012.
The sector also looks ripe for consolidation. The government granted scores of brokerage licenses in recent years, when foreign capital was flooding into the country. But the hundred or so operational securities houses have been struggling because of the stock market's slide.
Ho Chi Minh-based Horizon, founded in 2006, is a privately held firm that provides brokerage and corporate-finance services.
"Arguably now is a good time to come into the market as it starts to consolidate," said Citi's Mr. Krause. If Citi decides to take a larger stake, it will then bring the local broker's technology, service and compliance standards into line with Citi's practices globally, he added.
"This is a platform that we can work together with moving forward," said Mr. Krause.
Investment banks are keen to build their franchises across the Asian-Pacific region to offer investors a one-stop shop in the region and to secure a role in helping Vietnam privatize broad swathes of its economy. The privatization process should give a fillip to the tiny Ho Chi Minh stock exchange, which currently has about 280 companies listed.
Citigroup already has offices in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City and offers banking services across the country, including corporate and investment banking. It also offers trading in 10 Asian stock markets, signed a securities joint venture in mainland China this month and opened a research office in the Philippines last year.
Bribe scandal extends to Vietnamese spy colonel
July 4 2011 (Richard Baker and Nick McKenzi, The Age) - AUSTRALIAN trade officials met or spoke with a colonel from a Vietnamese spy agency 18 times before suggesting to a Reserve Bank currency firm that it hire him as an agent in an arrangement that is now expected to lead to more corruption charges as part of the nation's biggest bribery probe.
The Age can also reveal that the federal police investigated an Austrade commissioner, who is still serving in Asia, after uncovering information about Austrade's role in assisting banknote firm Securency International provide overseas travel for Vietnamese officials.
The revelation of Austrade's intimate role in Securency's allegedly corrupt Vietnam dealings comes just hours after German police swooped on a former senior sales executive from Note Printing Australia (NPA), the second RBA banknote company accused of bribing overseas officials.
The dramatic weekend arrest of Christian Boilott over his alleged role in a conspiracy to bribe overseas officials while working for NPA came just before his yacht was to sail in a contest in Boltenhagen, in Germany.
Mr Boilott, whom Australian authorities will seek to extradite, is the ninth man to be charged around the globe for an alleged role in the banknote companies' bribery scandal, with six Victorians and two Malaysians arrested on Friday.
The Vietnamese colonel also suspected of playing a key role in a bribery scheme allegedly driven by Reserve Bank companies Securency and NPA is yet to be questioned by Vietnamese authorities, who have so far declined to assist Australia in the global inquiry.
Former Australian diplomatic and trade officials have privately confirmed that Securency agent Anh Ngoc Luong's status as a colonel in Vietnam's spy agency, the Ministry of Public Security, was well known to the Australian embassy in Hanoi when Austrade suggested Securency appoint him and his company, CFTD, as its agent in 2002.
Information released by Austrade and the Department of Foreign Affairs to Liberal senator Russell Trood shows that Australian officials in Hanoi met or spoke to Luong 18 times between 1999 and 2001.
It is illegal for an Australian company to hire a foreign official as its paid agent, and Luong's appointment is suspected to have begun one of the highest paying bribery arrangements that Securency set up across the globe, paying the colonel up to $20 million, much of it in suspected bribes.
In return, he helped Securency win a massive contract to switch Vietnam's banknotes from paper to plastic.
Australian embassy staff in Hanoi continued to have close dealings, including intimate dinners, with Colonel Luong even after an Austrade commissioner formally warned Canberra and the RBA in 2007 and 2008 that he was a high-ranking Ministry of Public Security officer. The ministry is Vietnam's internal security and counter-espionage agency.
This information was also made available to the Securency board at that time. The board did not ask Securency management to end its arrangement with Colonel Luong.
The Austrade commissioner investigated by the AFP over Securency's Vietnam dealings is understood to have helped arrange visas for Vietnamese officials to enter the United States on a brief Securency-funded holiday.
The Austrade official has not been charged. Other Austrade officials have also given statements to the AFP.
The revelation of Austrade's intimate involvement with Securency's Vietnam affairs is likely to increase pressure on the Gillard government to agree with a push by Greens leader Bob Brown for a parliamentary inquiry into the roles of the trade agency and the RBA in the bribery scandal.
A senior federal government official has told The Age that if an inquiry was held into Austrade's relationship with Securency and Note Printing Australia ''it would emerge that the Australian government has sanctioned and engaged in corruption''.
A high-ranking Austrade manager has separately told The Age that ''in the case of Securency … there is no doubt as to Austrade's complicity as the agency not only made the introductions to CFTD but advised on how to deal with them''.
The RBA owns half of Securency and all of NPA. During the period of the alleged bribery, both companies were chaired by former deputy RBA governor Graeme Thompson and had other senior RBA officials as directors.
In Vietnam, Securency has been charged with bribing former Vietnamese central bank governor Le Duc Thuy by providing a scholarship for his son to study at an exclusive English university. Mr Thuy remains a senior figure in the Vietnamese government and chairs the National Committee for Financial Supervision.
Colonel Luong is believed to have used some of the commissions paid to him and CFTD by Securency to fund the education of Mr Thuy's son. Bribery in Vietnam carries the death penalty.
Austrade deemed the partnership between Securency and Colonel Luong's CFTD firm to be so successful that it presented them with a special export award in 2004.
In November 1999, Colonel Luong was invited to Australia as part of an Austrade seminar on the Vietnam market. In August 2008, he was part of an Australia-Vietnam Joint Trade and Economic Co-operation Committee delegation - months after Austrade's commissioner in Vietnam warned of his links to the Ministry of Public Security. Colonel Luong also attended several lunches and dinners hosted by the Australian embassy.
He twice met embassy officials in the months after The Age broke the Securency bribery story and named him as an agent in May 2009.
The Age has previously reported on internal Austrade documents from 1998 that reveal Colonel Luong was known as having ''family relations in various key [government] ministries''. They also detail how he had a ''well-connected'' father and a ''father-in-law [who] is minister of interior''.
In an interview with a Vietnamese journalist in 2007, Securency executives said the services provided by Colonel Luong and his company primarily involved translation, organising meetings and picking people up from the airport.
The AFP's investigation into Securency and NPA remains ongoing and further charges against other former executives are expected.
Britain's Serious Fraud Office is investigating Securency's contracts in Nigeria, which involved nearly $20 million in commission payments to a network of agents and offshore bank accounts.
Austrade declined to comment, citing the ongoing police probe.
The Age can also reveal that the federal police investigated an Austrade commissioner, who is still serving in Asia, after uncovering information about Austrade's role in assisting banknote firm Securency International provide overseas travel for Vietnamese officials.
The revelation of Austrade's intimate role in Securency's allegedly corrupt Vietnam dealings comes just hours after German police swooped on a former senior sales executive from Note Printing Australia (NPA), the second RBA banknote company accused of bribing overseas officials.
Mr Boilott, whom Australian authorities will seek to extradite, is the ninth man to be charged around the globe for an alleged role in the banknote companies' bribery scandal, with six Victorians and two Malaysians arrested on Friday.
The Vietnamese colonel also suspected of playing a key role in a bribery scheme allegedly driven by Reserve Bank companies Securency and NPA is yet to be questioned by Vietnamese authorities, who have so far declined to assist Australia in the global inquiry.
Former Australian diplomatic and trade officials have privately confirmed that Securency agent Anh Ngoc Luong's status as a colonel in Vietnam's spy agency, the Ministry of Public Security, was well known to the Australian embassy in Hanoi when Austrade suggested Securency appoint him and his company, CFTD, as its agent in 2002.
Information released by Austrade and the Department of Foreign Affairs to Liberal senator Russell Trood shows that Australian officials in Hanoi met or spoke to Luong 18 times between 1999 and 2001.
It is illegal for an Australian company to hire a foreign official as its paid agent, and Luong's appointment is suspected to have begun one of the highest paying bribery arrangements that Securency set up across the globe, paying the colonel up to $20 million, much of it in suspected bribes.
In return, he helped Securency win a massive contract to switch Vietnam's banknotes from paper to plastic.
Australian embassy staff in Hanoi continued to have close dealings, including intimate dinners, with Colonel Luong even after an Austrade commissioner formally warned Canberra and the RBA in 2007 and 2008 that he was a high-ranking Ministry of Public Security officer. The ministry is Vietnam's internal security and counter-espionage agency.
This information was also made available to the Securency board at that time. The board did not ask Securency management to end its arrangement with Colonel Luong.
The Austrade commissioner investigated by the AFP over Securency's Vietnam dealings is understood to have helped arrange visas for Vietnamese officials to enter the United States on a brief Securency-funded holiday.
The Austrade official has not been charged. Other Austrade officials have also given statements to the AFP.
The revelation of Austrade's intimate involvement with Securency's Vietnam affairs is likely to increase pressure on the Gillard government to agree with a push by Greens leader Bob Brown for a parliamentary inquiry into the roles of the trade agency and the RBA in the bribery scandal.
A senior federal government official has told The Age that if an inquiry was held into Austrade's relationship with Securency and Note Printing Australia ''it would emerge that the Australian government has sanctioned and engaged in corruption''.
A high-ranking Austrade manager has separately told The Age that ''in the case of Securency … there is no doubt as to Austrade's complicity as the agency not only made the introductions to CFTD but advised on how to deal with them''.
The RBA owns half of Securency and all of NPA. During the period of the alleged bribery, both companies were chaired by former deputy RBA governor Graeme Thompson and had other senior RBA officials as directors.
In Vietnam, Securency has been charged with bribing former Vietnamese central bank governor Le Duc Thuy by providing a scholarship for his son to study at an exclusive English university. Mr Thuy remains a senior figure in the Vietnamese government and chairs the National Committee for Financial Supervision.
Colonel Luong is believed to have used some of the commissions paid to him and CFTD by Securency to fund the education of Mr Thuy's son. Bribery in Vietnam carries the death penalty.
Austrade deemed the partnership between Securency and Colonel Luong's CFTD firm to be so successful that it presented them with a special export award in 2004.
In November 1999, Colonel Luong was invited to Australia as part of an Austrade seminar on the Vietnam market. In August 2008, he was part of an Australia-Vietnam Joint Trade and Economic Co-operation Committee delegation - months after Austrade's commissioner in Vietnam warned of his links to the Ministry of Public Security. Colonel Luong also attended several lunches and dinners hosted by the Australian embassy.
He twice met embassy officials in the months after The Age broke the Securency bribery story and named him as an agent in May 2009.
The Age has previously reported on internal Austrade documents from 1998 that reveal Colonel Luong was known as having ''family relations in various key [government] ministries''. They also detail how he had a ''well-connected'' father and a ''father-in-law [who] is minister of interior''.
In an interview with a Vietnamese journalist in 2007, Securency executives said the services provided by Colonel Luong and his company primarily involved translation, organising meetings and picking people up from the airport.
The AFP's investigation into Securency and NPA remains ongoing and further charges against other former executives are expected.
Britain's Serious Fraud Office is investigating Securency's contracts in Nigeria, which involved nearly $20 million in commission payments to a network of agents and offshore bank accounts.
Austrade declined to comment, citing the ongoing police probe.
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