The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on February 20. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
- Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) Reports Q4 Financial Results (PRNewswire)
- How China’s Most Influential Micro-Blogger Got Himself Banned From Weibo (English article)
- Geely (HKEx: 175) Leading China Bids For US Green-Car Startup Fisker: Sources (English article)
- Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) Completes Purchase of Mobile OS Developer Tapas – Report (English article)
- Village Roadshow Pictures Asia’s Debut Films Break Box Office Records in China (Businesswire)
There’s a flurry of interesting new developments in China’s online search market, which has suddenly become a hotbed of new activity after a several years of quiet during a period of domination by sector leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU). Leading the reports is news that e-commerce giant Alibaba, which already operates an e-commerce search site called eTao, is entering the more mainstream search market. At the same time, other reports are saying that Sohu’s (Nasdaq: SOHU) Sogou, the industry’s third largest search engine, is in talks to acquire Soso, the search engine run by Chinese Internet titan Tencent (Nasdaq: 700). Lastly there’s the more minor news bit that the search engine run by the People’s Daily has run into hard times and is laying off up to 10 percent of its staff.
I don’t know if anyone else out there has noticed this, but a recent string of events is pointing to a growing rift between PC giant Lenovo’s (HKEx: 992) North American-based operations and its home base in China, in what could be a good or bad thing depending on how the situation develops. The nascent rift was on display recently with media reports that the company was forming a new Americas highly autonomous unit to strengthen its North and South American operations. (
New reports that major car maker Dongfeng Motor (HKEx: 489) is bidding to buy a struggling US hybrid car maker are casting a spotlight on China’s emerging role as scavenger for global new energy companies struggling to stay in business. A number of factors are driving this budding trend, led by the fact that many of these Chinese suitors are relatively cash rich and in a good position to provide much-needed funds for cash-starved western new energy firms.
China’s second largest e-commerce site Jingdong Mall may not be good at making profits, but its latest round of mega fund-raising shows it’s become quite adept at convincing wealthy investors of its longer-term viability. Equally important, this latest round of $400 million in new fund raising means Jingdong may still be eying an IPO in the near term, reviving a plan that it launched last year but later abandoned due to a weak market. It would most likely want to make the offering sooner rather than later, since archrival and market leader Alibaba may also looking to make its own multibillion-dollar offering later this year if market conditions remain positive.
The Chinese obsession with history has a major impact on the country’s major cities, which are constantly trying to show how old and historically significant they are to somehow prove their “value” to both local and out-of-town residents. It seems that any city with less than 500 years of history is considered “insignificant” in some ways, no matter how big the city is. That reality has given Shanghai, China’s leading city by any other measurement, a major inferiority complex that I find both amusing and also a bit distressing at the same time.
US apparel maker Cherokee (Nasdaq: CHKE) made a strategic gamble last week when it largely circumvented China’s traditional retail store network and opened a shop on the Internet, highlighting an emerging new path for foreign mid-sized brands into the lucrative sector. (
In a big victory for free trade, the US has approved the sale of Canadian oil exploration giant Nexen (Toronto: NXY) to China’s CNOOC (HKEx: 883; NYSE: CEO), removing the last major obstacle that could have stopped the landmark deal. The US approval was decidedly low-key, with Nexen formally announcing it had received the final major green light it needed to close the sale. (
