The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on May 29. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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UK Fraud Office Probes GSK (London: GSK) After Claims Of Foreign Bribery (English article)
China Mobile (HKEx: 941) Relaunches Own Brand Of Mobile Phones (Chinese article)
CCTV Attacks BMW (Frankfurt: BMW) Again On High Prices For Imports (Chinese article)
The latest reports that Beijing is pressuring Chinese banks to stop using high-end servers from computing giant IBM (NYSE: IBM) don’t come as a huge surprise, amid escalating tensions between China and the US over cyber spying. This particular development is just the latest in a series of similar moves that dates back to last year, when Beijing began quietly pressuring many big state-run firms to stop using US tech products following revelations from the Edward Snowden cyber-spying scandal. The ironic element of Beijing’s anti-foreign tech campaign is that it could actually make the nation’s technology networks and systems even more vulnerable to spying, since most domestic products are far less sophisticated than their foreign counterparts. Read Full Post…
Techies have been buzzing about the huge potential of the mobile Internet for much of the last 2 years, but the latest headlines from social networking (SNS) giant Tencent (HKEx: 700) and recently listed mobile game developer Sungy Mobile (Nasdaq: GOMO) show the space is still rife with growing pains. Tencent is discovering that its wildly popular WeChat mobile messaging service is attracting not only hundreds of millions of legitimate users, but also masses of spamsters and scam artists and is trying to clean up the platform. Meantime, Sungy has just announced quarterly results that might look good for a company in any other space, but were clearly a disappointment for investors who were looking for meteoric growth. Read Full Post…
Shanghai Daily loses veteran editor to Chinese immigration laws
Shanghai has won kudos for hosting a major regional summit these past few days, but the situation was far more somber in the newsroom at the Shanghai Daily, publisher of my weekly Street View column. That’s because after more than 8 years in China, one of my longtime editors and a personal friend was spending her final week at the newspaper, including her last day on Friday. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on May 28. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Tencent (HKEx: 700) In Clean-Up Of WeChat “Moments”, Public Accounts (Chinese article)
Ford (NYSE: F) Automotive Finance (China) Completes First ABS Transaction in China (Businesswire)
Shanghai is quickly emerging as ground zero for the world’s top 2 gaming console makers to enter China, with word that Sony (Tokyo: 6753) has formed a new local tie-up aimed at bringing its PlayStation to the market. The company’s new plan comes just weeks after word emerged of a similar plan by rival Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) for its popular Xbox in partnership with another Shanghai media company. Both companies are seeking to tap China’s massive appetite for electronic gaming, after Beijing recently lifted a decade-long ban on the sale of foreign consoles in the market. Read Full Post…
With its new IPO now firmly in the past, e-commerce giant JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) is finally getting back to business as it seeks to challenge industry leader Alibaba. Two of its newest moves in that drive both look quite exciting, and are part of its recent equity tie-up with leading social networking company Tencent (HKEx: 700). One of those has JD making a major personnel move in its underdeveloped C2C e-commerce business that it recently acquired in the Tencent tie-up. The other has JD on the cusp of launching a major new sales channel over Tencent’s wildly popular WeChat mobile messaging service. Read Full Post…
After a brief cooling down period, the wars that have rattled China’s economic relationships with many of its largest trading partners were back in the headlines last week with developments in 2 cases, one involving the US and the other India. The pair of new developments comes just weeks after China levied its own punitive tariffs on a different set of products from the US and European Union. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on May 27. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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China’s State-Owned Sector Told To Cut Ties With US Consulting Firms (English article)
Yintai CEO Resigns to Join JD.com’s (Nasdaq: JD) Paipai (English article)
China State Construction Plans (Shanghai: 601688) $4.8 Bln Preferred Stock Sale (English article)
Oriental Pearl, Sony (Tokyo: 6758) to Jointly Release PlayStation in China (English article)
Mobile Base Station JV In Q3 Launch, China Telecom (HKEx: 728) To Benefit Most (Chinese article)
I was disappointed but certainly not surprised to read that homegrown telecoms equipment giants Huawei and ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063) won the big majority of a major new batch of contracts from dominant wireless carrier China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) to build its 4G network. Regular readers will know that I’m a strong advocate of free trade, and believe that Chinese and western equipment sellers should receive 4G contracts in any country roughly in line with their global market share. But in China such major purchasing often has a political element, especially when the buyer is a state-run company, which is clearly the case here. Read Full Post…
New York is firmly establishing a reputation as the preferred listing venue for China Internet IPOs, while Hong Kong is developing a taste for auto-related listings. That’s my quick assessment following reports that online video sharing site Xunlei has just joined a long queue of Chinese Internet firms filing to list in New York. At nearly the same time, car rental company China Auto Rental has filed to list in Hong Kong, reversing course from a previous plan to offer shares in New York. Read Full Post…
