Bottom line: China is likely to wrap up its probe of Qualcomm by year end with a record fine of more than $1 billion and Qualcomm’s agreement to significantly change its licensing practices.
End draws near in Qualcomm probe
After filling the headlines for much of the summer, news on the flood of anti-trust investigations against major foreign firms suddenly came to a halt in the fall, giving the movement an almost seasonal feel. But the story looks set to pop back into the headlines soon, with signs that China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) is getting ready to levy a record fine for anti-competitive behavior against leading global cellphone chip maker Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM). The signals are coming in new comments this week from Qualcomm’s top 2 executives, as well as from China’s Premier Li Keqiang. Read Full Post…
It’s not too often that I agree with articles published in the People’s Daily, but for once I have to say that a new attack by the newspaper on personal health products maker Nu Skin (NYSE: NUS) looks at least partly deserved. That said, I did find the language used to attack Nu Skin somewhat comical and exaggerated, even if it the basic ideas are probably true. I was also somewhat surprised at how big a market China has become for Nu Skin, reflecting how easily such companies can win over Chinese consumers and businesspeople who often assume that any product with a western name must be good and trustworthy. Read Full Post…
We’re just a week into the New Year, and already new signs of political shenanigans at the nation’s 2 leading wireless telcos, China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) and China Unicom (HKEx: 762; NYSE: CHU), are hinting at turbulence ahead as Beijing tries to liberalize the state-dominated telecoms services sector. Media are reporting that China Mobile has launched an internal probe into a botched initiative in Hong Kong, which looks to me like an extension of Beijing’s fast-expanding series of anti-corruption probes at major state-owned firms. Meantime, media are reporting separately that a top Unicom executive has left the company to joint one of the nation’s newly licensed virtual network operators (VNO), in a deal that looks aimed at undermining Beijing’s plans to inject new competition into the telecoms services sector. Read Full Post…
In a development that many would say was widely expected, Beijing’s recent campaign to root out official corruption at state-owned companies is spreading deeper into the system, with word that an executive from grocery chain operator Lianhua Supermarket (HKEx: 980) is under investigation. I don’t normally follow Lianhua, as it’s a distinctively second-tier company that operates unimpressive grocery stores that are usually mostly empty whenever I happen to shop there. But that’s exactly why this particular probe is interesting, as it shows that the anti-corruption campaign is moving beyond the high-profile biggest state-run companies that have been targeted so far and into the smaller firms that populate the big majority of China’s corporate landscape. Read Full Post…
