There’s upbeat news come from 2 of China’s top domestic automakers, led by word that Dongfeng Motor (HKEx: 489) has finally signed a joint venture deal to make sport utility vehicles (SUVs) with France’s Renault (Paris: RENA) after more than a year of negotiations. Meantime, Geely Auto (HKEx: 175), which is trying hard to turn around struggling Swedish automaker Volvo, has announced its own major new auto financing joint venture with France’s BNP (Paris: BNP). This sudden love fest between Chinese automakers and French companies is probably just coincidence, since the 2 deals look unrelated. But both look like smart moves, as they involve Chinese firms pairing up with relatively strong, experienced foreign partners. That contrasts sharply with the more common Chinese preference in the past for sickly, struggling companies, especially when Chinese firms buy equity stakes in their venture partners. Read Full Post…
A major homecoming for the top executive at e-commerce giant Jingdong is topping the news this week in China’s microblog airwaves, which have been humming with gossip in the run-up to the Christmas holidays. Internet watchers will know I’m talking about Jingdong’s talkative founder Liu Qiangdong, whose voice suddenly disappeared from the microblogging realm for much of this year. Now we’re learning that his silence was due to his quiet departure from China for the US, where he spent a year in a study program.
Elsewhere in the microblogging world, a couple of high level executives at UnionPay, operator of China’s leading electronic payments network, and game operator 4399 are drawing attention to the fact that Sina’s (Nasdaq: SINA) Weibo microblogging service may be past its peak and losing its luster. I’ve also noticed this trend, which spotlights how China’s Internet seems much more susceptible to fads than in other parts of the world. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on December 19. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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A new scandal involving the sudden closure of Marie France Bodyline beauty salons in Shanghai didn’t surprise me much, leaving its hundreds of members holding cards with thousands of yuan in worthless credit. This kind of rapid shutdown made headlines because it involved such a high-profile name, but frankly I’m most surprised we haven’t seen a lot more similar closures.
More broadly speaking, the demise of Marie France in Shanghai reflects the ridiculous explosion in spas, massage shops and beauty parlors and other centers of hedonism in China over the last decade. My own daily walk around my neighborhood takes me past at least a dozen such shops, and the density is even higher in more commercial areas of Shanghai. Read Full Post…
Boosted by the big success of the IPO for its money-losing Qunar (Nasdaq: QUNR) online travel unit, Internet search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is reportedly aiming to test investor appetite for a similar offering next year for its loss-making iQiyi online video unit. Frankly speaking, I don’t think this plan looks very good for a number of reasons, led by the fact that money-losing firms aren’t very attractive in general to investors. Qunar has been the only money-loser of 5 Chinese tech companies to make New York IPOs in the last 2 months, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if investors were attracted to the firm chiefly for its strong ties to Baidu, its controlling stakeholder. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on December 18. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) Cloud Web Services Enters China In New Tie-Up (Chinese article)
I’m quite excited to see some drama finally taking shape in one of the imminent privatization plans for a US-listed Chinese firm, with word that a major stakeholder in telecoms software maker AsiaInfo-Linkage (Nasdaq: ASIA) plans to oppose the company’s buy-out plan. This particular plan is just one of many privatization plans announced by US-listed Chinese companies over the last year, mostly launched by opportunistic buyers who believe the shares were heavily undervalued. But unlike the other plans, this one has drawn particular controversy due to hints of insider dealing that excluded higher bids from several US-based private equity buyers. Read Full Post…
It’s the season for consumption and gift buying, but no one seems to want to buy shares of China’s top banks and e-commerce firm LightInTheBox (NYSE: LITB), which have both just announced new share buy-backs. In the case of the big Chinese banks, the buyer is their state-run controlling stakeholder, Central Huijin, which has conducted a modest Chinese-style share repurchase. In LightInTheBox’s case the buyer is the company itself, which has also launched a its own modest share repurchase program. Read Full Post…
After 2 weeks of silence following the long-awaited issue of 4G mobile licenses, China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU) is finally making some hints about its strategy in the new era of high-speed telecommunications. I’m usually quite negative about the company due to its disorganization and lack of focus, but for once I have to compliment it for a strategy that looks reasonably well conceived. Meantime in other 4G news, the final countdown to China Mobile’s (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) iPhone launch may finally be nearing an end, with speculation that announcement of the long-overdue tie-up could come as soon as Wednesday. Read Full Post…
A week after declaring it was abandoning the US networking equipment market for now, Huawei is adding that it remains committed to the less controversial American smartphone market. At the same time, one of China’s biggest high-tech exporters is admitting it faces a long and difficult road in the highly competitive US smartphone market where global leaders Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Samsung (Seoul: 005930) dominate. This admission and newer low-profile approach look like a smart moves to me, since the chances of Huawei capturing more than 10 percent of the US smartphone market in the next 5 years are practically zero.
It seems appropriate that I’m writing this post on my computer while sitting in a coffee shop at a Wanda Plaza shopping center in Shanghai, since new reports say the Wanda real estate group owned by one of China’s richest men is planning a big new move into the booming e-commerce sector. Wanda Group Chairman Wang Jianlin will certainly have plenty of competition if he makes such a move, including from an increasingly aggressive Walmart (NYSE: WMT), whose China-based Yihaodian site is reportedly getting set to move into a ground-breaking new free-trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai. Read Full Post…
