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.
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- China Telcos Announce January 2013 Subscriber Totals (English article)
- Jingdong Mall to Foster Development of “Born on 360Buy” Brands (English article)
- ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) Announces 3 Deals With PetroChina (HKEx: 857) (Businesswire)
- Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP) Names Co-Founder James Liang As New CEO (PRNewswire)
- Foxconn (HKEx: 2038) Halts Hiring In Inland Factories Amid Weak iPhone Demand (Chinese article)
A new announcement from US movie producer Village Roadshow is once again casting a spotlight on the growing love affair between Hollywood and China, which is showing no signs of slowing as the relationship celebrates its first anniversary. The announcement also highlights the huge potential of China’s box-office, whose rapid growth is being partly fueled by relaxation of rules that are suddenly allowing a lot more foreign-produced and funded movies into China. The Village Roadshow announcement also reflects the growing influence in China of locally made movies, which can do quite well by combining Hollywood skills with movie makers more familiar with Chinese tastes.
Chinese Internet icon Lee Kai-Fu’s penchant for controversy is once again splashing into the headlines, this time with word that the former Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) China executive has gotten himself in trouble for criticizing the foundering online search engine of a major state-owned newspaper. This latest brouhaha highlights the risk that people who do business in China face when they speak too candidly in public forums about major official organizations like the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party.
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.
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. (
