Reuters (January 24)
Hong Kong’s “status as a global financial hub” is being threatened by its “zero COVID” policy and draconian immigration protocols. With no signs the government will ease restrictions, “more expats are thinking of leaving, and global banks, asset managers and corporate law firms are facing up to many of their staff exiting after annual bonuses are paid out in the first three months of the year.”
Tags: Asset managers, Banks, Draconian, Expats, Financial hub, Hong Kong, Immigration, Restrictions, Staff, Threatened, Zero COVID
Financial Times (June 6)
“The Japanese AGM season will provide rapidly digestible evidence of three things: how empowered activists feel, how awkward the big institutions feel about backing them, and how threatened managements feel by both of those.” The results are unlikely to show real change. “Despite the appearance of change, half of Japanese stocks still trade below book value and carry not just a record value of cash as a proportion of equity, but the largest such ratio in developed markets.”
Tags: Activists, AGM, Appearance, Awkward, Book value, Cash, Change, Empowered, Evidence, Institutions, Japan, Managements, Stocks, Threatened
The Economist (January 25)
Toshiba has threatened “to block the takeover” of Toshiba Machine by Yoshiaki Murakami with a new share issue. This “should alarm anyone who cares about how Japanese firms are run.” Last year, Japanese corporations held cash in excess of ¥446 trillion, “even after they had bought back a record ¥6.5trn in shares the year before.” This “reluctance to part with cash shortchanges investors in Japan by ¥16trn a year.”
Tags: Alarm, Cash, Investors, Japan, Murakami, Share issue, Takeover, Threatened, Toshiba, Toshiba Machine
LA Times (July 3)
“The Trump administration is absolutely bonkers—which comes as a surprise to no one at this point, but it’s remarkable how many different ways it manifests itself.” His administration is one growing knot of contradictions. “Time and truth are fluid when you’re the mayor of ‘crazy town.’” The only thing we know is that “nothing the president says can be believed, and no threatened or promised action can be trusted until, in fact, it has happened.”
Tags: Administration, Believed, Bonkers, Contradictions, Crazy town, Fluid, Promised, Threatened, Time, Trump, Trusted, Truth
Wall Street Journal (July 26)
“The Trump administration is on the verge of launching a global trade war, the magnitude of which the world hasn’t seen in a century….If all the threatened Trump tariffs take effect, and the targeted countries respond with the expected retaliatory tariffs on American exports, everyone will lose.”
Tags: Exports, Global trade war, Lose, Magnitude, Retaliatory, Tariffs, Threatened, Trump, U.S.
New York Times (October 2)
Last week, President Obama “created the largest marine preserve in the world,” expanding it more than five-fold from 87,000 square miles to nearly half a million square miles. “At a time when the world’s oceans are threatened by rampant pollution, overfishing and climate change, the benefits of Mr. Obama’s decision will be profound, particularly if other countries now follow the United States’ excellent example.”
Tags: Climate change, Marine preserve, Obama, Oceans, Overfishing, Pollution, Threatened, U.S.
Institutional Investor (May Issue)
“New innovative business models by upstarts Tesla and Uber are poised to disrupt multiple industries at once.” Both companies have been driving around barriers thrown up by conventional businesses that feel threatened. “The real winners to watch — the companies that will shape the landscape of American business and tech — are those that seek to fill customers’ every need, that work themselves into new markets however possible.”
Tags: Barriers, Business, Business models, Customers, Disrupt, Innovative, Markets, Needs, Tech, Tesla, Threatened, U.S., Uber, Winners
