This week I wanted to take a look at the more serious issue of guns, which have made several appearances in the headlines these last few days. The series of stories on the topic began with the high-profile destruction of hundreds of confiscated real and fake guns, highlighting the city’s efforts to rid Shanghai of these weapons that are both unnecessary and dangerous in the hands of ordinary citizens. Days later, the city also detailed new plans to arm hundreds of police officers with guns. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on April 30. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Chinese Pork Giant WH Group Pulls IPO Due To Weak Demand: Sources (English article)
ICBC (HKEx: 1398) Says To Buy 75 Pct Of Turkey’s Tekstilbank For $316 Mln (HKEx announcement)
Shanghai Disney (NYSE: DIS) Resort Accelerates Resort Expansion (Businesswire)
China’s Big 4 Banks’ Q1 Profits Surprise As Reforms Gather Pace (English article)
Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) Conducts Major Clean-up Of P2P Lending Platform (Chinese article)
An ongoing consolidation in the crowded online travel space has taken a new twist, with word that industry leader Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP) has made a major investment in up-and-comer Tongcheng and is eying a similar tie-up with IPO candidate Tuniu. The latest news comes from one official announcement on Tongcheng, and another media report on Tuniu, showing just how active the online travel space has recently become due to the entry of several new players over the last few years. All of this comes just weeks after Ctrip was reportedly in talks to merge with Qunar (Nasdaq: QUNR), the sector’s second largest player, in a deal that would have created a sector leader with a market value of around $10 billion. Read Full Post…
Just a day after getting some extremely worrisome news that could see many of its most popular offerings censored, leading online video site Youku Tudou (NYSE: YOKU) has announced a more positive development in the form of a $1.22 billion investment led by e-commerce leader Alibaba. The move is part of Alibaba’s recent buying binge, which has already included a handful of investments of this size, as it tries to get into every area of the Internet imaginable. The tie-up does have some positive elements that could help Youku Tudou, and comes as a slight surprise since media were reporting just a month ago that the company was preparing to sell a similar stake to Alibaba rival Tencent (HKEx: 700). Read Full Post…
China sent an important message to the struggling solar panel sector last week when one of the country’s major manufacturers was forced to turn to global capital markets to raise new funds, hinting that it couldn’t receive the money from state-backed domestic sources. The move sparked a sell-off for New York-listed shares of Yingli Green Energy (NYSE: YGE), as its request for funds met with a frosty response on Wall Street. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on April 29. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Youku Tudou (NYSE: YOKU) Announces $1.22 Bln Investment Led by Alibaba (PRNewswire)
Tuniu Cuts Fund Raising Target For New York IPO By 20 Pct (Chinese article)
LightInTheBox (NYSE: LITB) Announces New CFO, Senior Management Shuffle (PRNewswire)
Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP) Invests $200 Mln In Tongcheng Unit LY.com (PRNewswire)
Cheetah Mobile To Sell Up To $50 Mln IPO Shares To Baidu, Kingsoft, Xiaomi (Chinese article)
A flurry of IPO news is in the headlines as we start this new week, including more troublesome signs from New York for an upcoming tech IPO, and a potentially exciting new offering in Shanghai from China’s leading budget airline. Meantime, another quirky piece of IPO news is making headlines with word that a Sichuan-based soccer club is aiming for an eventual listing in London. The 3 companies involved in these news bits, respectively, are security software maker Cheetah Mobile, budget carrier Spring Airlines and the Sichuan Leaders soccer club. Read Full Post…
The week ahead could be a rough one for Chinese online video stocks, with word that the government agency in charge of screening content has ordered the removal of 4 popular US television series from services including Youku Tudou (NYSE: YOKU) and Tencent Video (HKEx: 700). Word has circulated for the last few weeks that this kind of a move might be coming, but this looks like the official launch of a new rule that will make these fast-growing video sites subject to the same strict censorship rules that apply to all foreign movies, TV shows, music and other published material entering China. That could mean headaches for the video site operators, which in all fairness do increasingly look like TV station operators. Read Full Post…
Just a day after China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) reported some of its worst results in years, new developments in the telecoms space are showing why the nation’s leading telco will face a rough time for the rest of this year and quite possibly well beyond that. According to the latest media reports, China’s telecoms regulator could issue 4G licenses for the main technology being used by China Mobile’s 2 rivals as soon as next month, injecting a major shot of competition into the market. The second telecoms news bit comes in broadband, with reports that the nation’s newly formed national cable TV company has formally registered and will start business soon. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on April 26-28. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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China Budget Airline Spring Plans $400m IPO In Shanghai (English article)
Cheetah Mobile Announces IPO Price Range, To Raise Up To $200 Mln (Chinese article)
Yingli (NYSE: YGE) Announces Pricing Of Offering of 25 Mln ADSs (PRNewswire)
Suning (Shenzhen: 002024) To Exhibit Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Glass In China (English article)
Many Return To Work After Yue Yuen (HKEx: 551) Offer In China Strike (English article)
Government clamps down on Sina’s literature, photo sites
It’s been a roller coaster ride this past week for leading web portal Sina (Nasdaq: SINA), which has just fallen victim to a government clampdown targeting illicit content like pornography on the Internet. The clampdown sparked a sell-off in Sina’s shares, reversing gains from an earlier rally fueled by strong performance of its newly listed Weibo (Nasdaq: WB) microblogging unit, often called the Twitter of China. But Sina should be accustomed to this kind of roller coaster ride, and its shares could easily bounce back in the next week or two as investors realize this latest crackdown is largely meaningless and won’t have any impact on the company’s business.
