For the past few weeks, most of the major news in China has centred on the Communist Party Congress. This is an pretty important event in China that happens once every 5 years and usually results in a number of far-reaching policy and people changes throughout the country and government.

 

The China Banking Regulatory Commission recently reported Chinese banking industry numbers and for a brief comparison:

So whilst everyone was making final preparations for SIBOS this past weekend, I was in Dubai keeping good on a long standing promise to visit a friend.

Lead Toys

With recall troubles dating back to 2005 when a toddler in the US ate a loose magnet and later died, the toy manufacture Mattel has been in the centre of a toy recall that has thousands of class-action lawyers around the world drooling. The company has gone through numerous recalls in the past few months, the largest being for 18 million playsets plagued by another loose magnet.

On a recent trip to Singapore, I was shocked to see that the 3 bedroom flat that I used to rent with a few people in 2004 for SGP$2,100 was now renting for SGP$4,300. Just over double in 3 years. Now what becomes even more eye-opening is if you take the USD exchange rate fluctuations into account, for those of us still clinging to greenback savings, the rise is closer to 230%. Indeed, according to government statistics, the prices are continuing to rise: in Q2, rents rose 10% and private-home prices rose 8.3 percent, the fastest in 8 years. Now, that’s not so bad when you consider Singapore’s GDP grew a healthy 7.9 percent last year, but it is worrying nevertheless.

This past weekend Craig Barrett was in China for the ceremonial groundbreaking on the brand spanking new site for Intel’s latest US$2.5B factory or “fab”. Scheduled to start production in 2010, the fab is the largest investment by Intel in China to date and represents Intel’s “continued commitment to China."

This week Singapore Airlines (SIA) bought a ~16% stake in China Eastern, a domestic Chinese airline, which is in the worst financial condition of the big three Chinese carriers. This by itself is groundbreaking news as it’s the first foreign investment in a domestic Chinese airline, but when you consider the recent takeover bid for Qantas in Australia and indeed SIA’s own failed bid for takeoff slots in Australia, it becomes even more interesting as a comparison of markets and their openness to change.

China, well known for its capital controls made some steps towards loosening those controls for individual investors last month with the announcement that individual mainland Chinese investors would be able to invest in the HK stock market. However, now it appears the implementation will be another few days or weeks off according to an announcement by the Bank of China (BOC).

A few days ago, the Beijing Municipal government (separate from the national government) issued a report promoting the capital city as a new back office operations centre for the financial sector. Using a raft of incentives such as discounts on registration payments, and subsidized housing and land, Beijing is looking to attract all types of back functions to four new specially designated zones in the capital. Apparently Goldman Sachs / Gao Hua Securities, “Swiss Bank” (?) and Deutsche Bank have been in discussions about shifting some of their back office work there; the People's Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China and the R&D arm of China Life Insurance Company have already signed contracts to relocate to the financial zone.

Reading Bank of China’s ticker last week was a crash course in China’s stock markets. Towards the end of last week, the bank reported on its sub-prime exposure. On the next trading day, if you were given the two ticker symbols for Bank of China (BOC) and their positions, you’d be hard pressed to guess what BOC’s actual position was. In HK, BOC fell by as much as 5.4% over the course of the trading day*, while in Shanghai, the stock actually rose 1% on a day when the entire market rose 5% overall. What happened?