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Journalist China
Business news from China By Doug Young.
Doug Young, journalist, has lived and worked in China for 20 years, much of that as a journalist, writing about publicly listed Chinese companies.
He is based in Shanghai where, in addition to his role as editor of Young’s China Business Blog, he teaches financial journalism at Fudan University, one of China’s top journalism programs.
He contributes regularly to a wide range of publications in both China and the west, including Forbes, CNN, Seeking Alpha and Reuters, as well as Asia-based publications including the South China Morning Post, Global Times, Shanghai Daily and Shanghai Observer
The ongoing cash crunch at Chinese banks may be partly behind reports that a trio of regional banks are aiming to make IPOs in Hong Kong, with Bank of Shanghai, Huishang Bank and CGB all aiming to list in the second half of the year. These regional lenders may also be losing patience while waiting for China to lift a freeze on new IPOs that dates back to last year, which has led to a backlog of dozens of companies that want to make offerings. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) had been giving signals that it could soon lift the freeze, though it may change its mind if the current sell-off on Chinese stock markets continues. Read Full Post…
One of my well-informed sources tells me that Shenzhen-listed IT outsourcing firm Beyondsoft (Shenzhen: 002649) is weighing a bid for rival Camelot Information Systems (NYSE: CIS), in what would be an interesting twist to the ongoing exodus of Chinese firms from US stock exchanges. If this information is true, it could mean we may start to see some bidding wars among private buyers for the growing number of Chinese firms that are abandoning their New York listings due to low valuations. Read Full Post…
I previously welcomed the installment of a new generation of leaders at China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) about a year ago, but a steady series of mixed signals since then have me wondering if these new executives may be just as confused as their predecessor, former Chairman Wang Jianzhou. Since taking the helm of the world’s biggest telco, the new executives, led by new Chairman Xi Guohua, have made a number of moves that seem to reflect a company whose head remains in a haze. The latest of those has seen China Mobile just announce that it’s suspending its Skype-like Jego mobile messaging service just weeks after its launch. (Chinese article) Read Full Post…
I avoided writing about Alibaba’s controversial new Yu E Bao financial product last week, not so much because it wasn’t newsworthy but because I was personally tired of writing about China’s leading e-commerce company that has been in the headlines nonstop for much of the last month. But after all the hype has settled, I want to weigh in with my view on this new product because I think most writers have missed the main point about Yu E Bao and why it’s likely to run into big problems. Read Full Post…
Smartphone chip maker Spreadtrum (Nasdaq: SPRD) has become the latest US-listed Chinese firm to receive a buyout offer, continuing a trend that is making such names an endangered species on New York’s 2 stock exchanges. The process is the result of natural market forces and thus should be allowed to continue without interference, even though it could also cut off an important funding source for some of China’s most dynamic companies. Read Full Post…
A liquidity crunch rocking China’s banks has also wreaked havoc on their stocks, prompting their biggest shareholder Central Huijin to step in to try and ease the share sell-off. Huijin so far has limited its buying activity to the Shanghai stock exchange, in what looks like a modestly successful campaign to support shares of big name banks like ICBC (HKEx: 1398; Shanghai: 601398), China Construction Bank (HKEx: 939; Shanghai: 601939) and Bank of China (HKEx: 3988; Shanghai: 601988). Given the success of this modest program, there’s the interesting possibility that Huijin could expand the program to Hong Kong, where H-shares of the same banks have fallen much more steeply. Read Full Post…
After writing earlier this week that reports of a new TV product from homegrown smartphone maker Xiaomi appeared to be a genuine news leak, I may have to revise my opinion following yet another leak saying the company is preparing to launch a tablet PC. Before I go any further with my discussion on this latest news leak, I should say that the marketing savvy Xiaomi is becoming increasingly boring and predictable in my view, as it appears to simply be copying the entire product line of its role model, US tech giant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL). Read Full Post…
A series of accounting scandals that began more than 2 years ago has taken a toll on US-listed Chinese stocks ever since then, causing many smaller, unknown firms to de-list and even close. The biggest name to fail was financial services firm Longtop Financial, which once had a market cap in the billions of dollars but now no longer exists. But most of the victims so far have been smaller, obscure firms that no one had ever heard of before. But that could soon change. Read Full Post…
Cadillac, Microsoft come late to China luxury cars, online search
China’s luxury car and online search markets are both well established and quite competitive, which makes it difficult for new entrants to gain traction, even when they’re global giants like GM (NYSE: GM) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). In this case GM wants to challenge established giants like Audi (Frankfurt: VOWG) and BMW (Frankfurt: BMWG) with a major new push into the China luxury car market with its Cadillac brand. Similarly, Microsoft is launching its own new campaign for its Bing search engine that has yet to find much of a following despite several years in the market. Read Full Post…
Commercial real estate giant Wanda Group is continuing its recent global push, with announcements of a new major purchase of a British yacht maker and plans to build new high-end hotels in New York and London. While some of the plans look interesting, I do think that perhaps this company has just a bit too much money and even more ambition, and that it may be moving too quickly into unfamiliar areas both in terms of products and geography. It’s obviously way too early to predict success or failure for any of these new ventures, but I would caution the company to perhaps slow its rapid overseas expansion or risk running into some major problems in the future. Read Full Post…
Mengniu’s (HKEx: 2319) new announcement of its third major tie-up in the last month marks the latest step in an important and necessary consolidation for a battered Chinese dairy sector that has been in turmoil for the last 5 years. This kind of retrenchment, which includes a healthy dose of participation by foreign firms, is exactly the kind of medicine that China needs to restore consumer confidence to its fragmented and often unruly food sectors. Read Full Post…
