Two stories from our 2-month-old Shanghai Disneyland are taking center stage in this week’s Street View, one involving some irate visitors who had to wait in long lines for attractions that were closed, and the other a campaign to rid our subways of Disney balloons. But the real story here is the fact that our new Disney Resort has been relatively scandal-free in the 2 months since its grand opening in June, which seems like a major accomplishment due to the huge attention it’s attracting.
As a longtime reporter who formerly covered Disney, I can say with authority that the US entertainment giant is a magnet for publicity, both negative and positive. Any sort of accident or other negative thing that would normally be considered quite minor suddenly becomes major news when it happens inside a Disney resort, which undoubtedly causes numerous headaches for the company’s public relations team. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and news reports about China companies were carried on August 13-15. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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China Film (Shanghai: 600977) Jumps 91 Pct in 1st Week After Record Entertainment IPO (English article)
McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) to Stop Using Antibiotic Food in US, No Word on China (Chinese article)
E-House (NYSE: EJ) Announces Completion of Merger (PRNewswire)
China Mobile (HKEx: 941) to Eliminate Domestic Roaming Fees by Year End (Chinese article)
AC Milan’s Chinese Buyers Name Club’s Future CEO (English article)
Bottom line: China Mobile’s strong profit growth shows the company has executed well on its 4G strategy, including strong promotion of data services that have rapidly become its single largest revenue source.
China Mobile notches strong Q2 profit growth
After a bumpy period over the last 2 years as it rolled out its new 4G network, leading wireless carrier China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) is finally reaping strong results from its efforts with some of the best profit growth I’ve seen in a long time. The company has just reported its interim results, which show that its profit jumped an impressive 9.2 percent in the second quarter, as it took advantage of its early entry to 4G to consolidate its place as the nation’s leading telco. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: A Chinese group’s latest purchase of British soccer club shows China’s appetite for overseas sports teams is moving to smaller entrepreneurs and lower profile assets, in a trend that could expand to North America over the next year.
Perhaps it’s Olympic fever that’s behind China’s latest global sports purchase, with word that yet another local entrepreneur has taken over a western sports club. This time it’s UK soccer club West Bromwich Albion that’s being purchased by a Chinese group led by a local entrepreneur named Lai Guoquan that’s making headlines, in what one report is calling the first purchase of an English Premier League soccer club by a Chinese buyer. (English article; Chinese article)
Of course I’m being a bit facetious by tying this latest sports sale to the Rio Olympics, which opened over the weekend in Brazil. That’s because this latest Chinese soccer purchase has been in discussions for a while, and the team has been on sale for nearly a decade. The reports say this particular deal was actually reached back in June, and that it still requires approval from the Premier League. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Sina’s latest financials show it could be benefiting from recent woes at Baidu, while JD.com’s results show its growth is slowing as it moves towards its important goal of becoming profitable.
Sina jumps on strong profit growth
Two of China’s top Internet companies have just reported their latest quarterly earnings, with web stalwart Sina (Nasdaq: SINA) wowing Wall Street with new numbers that show its Twitter-like Weibo (Nasdaq: WB) service may finally be gaining some traction. Meantime, investors were less impressed by e-commerce giant JD.com (Nasdsaq: JD), which continued to post strong revenue growth but remained squarely in the loss column. JD tried to comfort investors by saying its operations are now quite profitable on a non-GAAP basis, but that didn’t seem to change sentiment too much. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: New global initiatives by Alibaba’s cloud and electronic payments affiliates look smart by targeting Chinese customers abroad, but may only stand a 50-50 chance of longer-term success due to fierce global competition.
AliCloud global expansion moves ahead
Following lackluster results for initiatives involving its core e-commerce business outside China, Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) is pushing ahead on the global stage with new moves for 2 of its other areas with big growth potential. One of those has the company unveiling a global strategy for its cloud services unit, AliCloud, which includes a tie-up with former Taiwan smartphone superstar HTC (Taipei: 2498). The other involves Alibaba’s Ant Financial affiliate, which is rolling out its core Alipay electronic payments service in Europe. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and news reports about China companies were carried on August 11. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
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LeEco (Shenzhen: 300104) Invests 20 Bln Yuan on Zhejiang Car Factory (Chinese article)
Bottom line: China’s anti-trust regulator is moving cautiously in approving the Marriott-Starwood merger because it involves 2 major global brands with a big presence in the high end of the market, but will ultimately approve the deal.
China extends anti-trust review for Marriott-Starwood merger
China is once again creating problems for an offshore M&A deal that would create the world’s largest hotel company, with word that it’s extending an anti-trust review period for the landmark merger of US hotel giants Marriott (NYSE: MAR) and Starwood (NYSE: HOT). Industry watchers got some brief entertainment earlier this year when Chinese insurer Anbang sparked a bidding war with its surprising offer for Starwood, operator of the Sheraton and Westin brands that had already agreed to be acquired by Marriott. Anbang later dropped that bid, but now more delays are coming from China, where the anti-trust regulator says it needs more time to review the deal. Read Full Post…
A sense of loss and also a surge of nostalgia were my first reactions on reading an obituary this week for the man credited with creating mainland China’s first major English-Chinese dictionary in the post-1949 period. It was quite telling that the dictionary compiled here in Shanghai by renowned lexicographer Lu Gusun wasn’t even technically completed until 1991, reflecting China’s conflicting feelings towards the West over the years.
From a much more personal perspective, some of the most enduring memories of my time in China revolve around such Chinese-English dictionaries, which were an integral part of my life when I first arrived here in the 1980s. Such translations were not only useful for getting around in daily life, but were also an occasional source of humor for myself and other foreigners due to their occasionally political overtones. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: LeEco’s rescue plan for Coolpad will fail due to stiff competition in China’s smartphone markets and overly ambitious targets for its own new line of smartphones.
LeEco ousts Coolpad CEO
Less than 2 months after becoming the largest stakeholder of Coolpad (HKEx: 2369), online video sensation LeEco (Shenzhen: 300104) is wasting no time in making major changes at the struggling smartphone maker. The most symbolic of those has LeEco’s dynamic founder Jia Yueting ousting Coolpad’s chairman and CEO and taking over the chairman’s position for himself. More substantially, LeEco is indicating it will become Coolpad’s largest customer going forward as part of its own plans to build an entertainment ecosystem around devices like Internet-connected smartphones, TVs and cars. Read Full Post…
Bottom line: Apple’s cleanup of its China app store reflects the deceptive marketing that often occurs on the Chinese Internet, and also Apple’s more transparent approach towards its actions in China.
Apple cleans up China app store
iPhone users in China are discovering a new look at Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) local app store, following the removal of more than 10,000 apps over a one-day period late last week. App store users first noticed something unusual when it appeared that the popular news app called Jinri Toutiao, or Today’s Headlines, suddenly seemed to disappear from Apple’s China store. But further examination showed that Apple was simply removing redundant versions of the app, many of which had very similar names and identical appearances. Read Full Post…
