Automakers Honda (Tokyo: 7267) and Volvo are having more headaches in China, as the former faced a strike at one of its plants and the latter had to deal with an ugly clash with its dealers over allegations of inflated sales figures. The 2 pieces of separate news are the latest problems for both companies, which have faced a steady series of recent issues in the world’s biggest car market.
Honda and other Japanese automakers are still reeling from a steep drop in their China sales after Chinese consumers boycotted the companies during a flare-up in a territorial dispute between Beijing and Tokyo last fall. Volvo, meanwhile, has struggled since the parent of Chinese automaker Geely (HKEx: 175) purchased the faded Swedish company in 2010. Read Full Post…
Big names like Lenovo (HKEx: 992), Tencent (HKEx: 700) and Alibaba are coming out on top in a newly published survey on top brands in China, but the results also include surprisingly strong showings for fading former leaders Dangdang (NYSE: DANG) and Nokia (Helsinki: NOK1V). The survey also contains a few other surprises, including the absence of Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) from the list of top desktop and laptop computer brands, as the former global PC leader struggles with a China identity crisis. 
Beijing was back in the R&D labs last week with its announcement of a government-led effort to develop a made-in-China computer operating system (OS) to rival products from global tech giants like Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) that now dominate the market. While it’s understandable that China wants to get a piece of a market that will have a huge influence on the future of computing, this kind of government-backed approach is misguided and almost certain to fail like similar efforts have in the past. 
When the history books are written, the ongoing withdrawal of global media giants News Corp (Nasdaq: NWS) from China could do down as one of the longest divorces of all time, including the latest news that the company is further selling down its stake in one of its China partners. But we’ll need to keep a close eye on this global media group controlled by billionaire Rupert Murdoch in this instance, since this latest sale of a relatively minor asset could be the prelude to a much bigger move into the fast growing and also fast-opening China film and TV market. 
Mid-sized solar panel makers JA Solar (Nasdaq: JASO) and ReneSola (NYSE: SOL) are both in the news today discussing their finances, in what looks like an attempt to calm the nerves of investors and creditors who are no doubt worried following the bankruptcy forced upon former industry leader Suntech (NYSE: STP) earlier this week. All of these companies have billions of dollars in debt which they used to build up their manufacturing operations over the last decade, and big amounts of that money will be due for repayment in the next 2 years. 
An article today about the IPO plans of specialty e-commerce site Cogobuy caught my attention today, but not for the reasons you might think. At first, I almost ignored the report that quoted the chairman of this relatively small Shenzhen-based company talking about his plans for an IPO next year. (
The inevitable has finally happened at tanking former solar star Suntech (NYSE: STP), which has been forced into bankruptcy ending a months-long battle between the company’s founder Shi Zhengrong and just about all the company’s other stakeholders. In the meantime, I would be remiss not to mention another solar news tidbit that has panel maker Yingli (NYSE: YGE) forming a new strategic tie-up with GLC-Poly Energy (HKEx: 3800), in what could eventually become the first mega-merger in the struggling solar panel sector. 
Conventional wisdom says that people who buy stocks after reading about a company in the newspapers have probably waited too late, since a company is probably past its peak by the time it gets “discovered” by major media. Today I’d like to make a modification to that rule by substituting the name “Microsoft” (Nasdaq: MSFT) for “major media”.
