Category: Asia Investments

This is certainly worth reading about. A new coalition which includes Shanghai Land Group, subway operator Shanghai Shentong Metro and railway builder Pudong Railway will be transforming an area in Shanghai into a booming business area that will include offices, shops and cultural locations. They have 254,300 square metres in Pudong with a combined gross floor area of 1.37 million square meters.

Learn more here.

Many young people from Hong Kong have been investing overseas. As one young person said, “My income will never catch up with the galloping home prices in Hong Kong,” she said. Instead, she bought a flat in Bangkok, where she goes to visit twice a year.

Hong Kong home prices are expected to rise another 10-20% in 2018. The city is actually ranked as the world’s least affordable for home buying by the Demographia Housing Affordability Survey. Flats there cost, on average, 18 times the annual median income.

Wealthy young investors have also set their sights on Tokyo and Osaka in Japan.

SouChe.com has recently raised $335 million in a funding round that was led by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. They are a Chinese care trading site and are looking to expand in auto-financing and to potentially hit the American market. Alibaba is actually going to become the biggest backer of the site and they will integrate it into their own e-commerce services.

SouChe founder Yao Junhong said, “We are considering a U.S. IPO for next year, potentially towards the end of the year. But our finances are strong so we may not have to do it.”

The Hong Kong government is hard at work to change the restrictive tax exemption laws that it currently has on private equity funds; they are hoping that by doing so they will be better positioned to compete with Singapore and other markets. Financial Secretary Paul Chan explained recently in a blog post that changing the laws would help them to attract more private equity funds in Hong Kong.

Learn more about the issues and see how the government is trying to deal with the situation.

For those of you who are tech-savvy, Coolpad has just launched its Cool Play 6 smartphone in India. The phone includes 64 GB of internal storage with a 13 MP + 13 MP dual primary camera. It runs on Android 7.1.1 and has a stanby time of up to 300 hours.

Check out more details to be in the know and enjoy the technology that has arrived in India!

Japan Airlines is going to be increasing flights to the UK, Thailand and to other destinations in October. Their goal is to attract more business travelers and to raise their profitability. Currently, they fly one round trip daily between Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and London.

Currently, JAL has one round trip a day from Narita International Airport outside Tokyo to Bangkok

Learn more about their plans and get ready for their expansion.

It’s certainly interesting to use Indian engineering colleges and other schools as a financial barometer. In the last five years, Indian schools such as the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have seen international openings for their students in Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and the UAE. It used to be that applicants could only look at the US and UK for such jobs. As Sapna Agarwal, the head of career development services for IIM Bangalore has seen,

“Over the past five years, we have seen a definite shift. Postings in the US and the UK have become almost negligible. Postings in the Far East, including Singapore and Hong Kong, have increased. Japan is a new destination. The Middle East has been added as an overseas job destination.”

As Debasis Deb, the chairman of the career development centre IIT Kharagpur said,
“The demand for IIT graduates has seen a consistent growth from newer countries including Taiwan and Japan. IIT graduates are hired by architecture firms in Singapore, while mostly electronics firms in Japan pick our graduates.”

Read the full article for more details.

Australia Trade Minister Steve Ciobo is in Jakarta again for talks about the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA), which the countries hope to have finalized by the end of the year.

As Mr. Ciobo said, “What today’s GDP figures show is that we can’t be complacent about growth, we have got to maintain vigilance, not only with respect to our domestic reform process but also with respect to opening up opportunities for Australian exports.”

He continued, “I believe that the Asian region in general appreciates that trade and engagement with the world is crucial to higher living standards in the future and that is a point of contrast to other parts of the world where they have adopted a more protectionist approach.”

Mr. Ciobo explained that he wanted to reduce the tariff barrier for Australian sugar. As he said,

“Australian sugar exporters currently face a higher tariff barrier then other sugar exporters throughout the region. I want to make sure that, if we possibly can, we can reduce that tariff barrier.”

According to the article, Australia is also negotiating about the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This is a trade deal which would be with the Association of Southeast Asian (ASEAN) and also with China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea and New Zealand.

You may not be paying much attention to Shanghai, but you may want to start. According to a recent survey by the Global Financial Centers Index, Shanghai is one of the top picks among the world’s cities to be a significant global financial center in the coming years. Other new cities that should be watched are: Qingdao, Shenzhen, Dalian and Beijing. The index is based on statistical data and a poll of financial professionals.

Certainly, London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo remain as five of the leading centers in the ranking this year. Singapore was 42 points behind New York, and ranked third. Hong Kong ranked fourth. Tokyo was in fifth while Sydney was actually 11^th and Melbourne was 24^th.

Imax China and China Media Capital recently announced that they have formalized the $50 million Imax China Film Fund that they unveiled one year ago. They are now planning to co-finance 15 Mandarin-language films in the next three years. They will contribute $3-$7 million per project.

Imax CEO Richard Gelfond said, “Our strong relationships with China’s most acclaimed studios and filmmakers mirror those we’ve established in Hollywood, thanks to the support of our valued partner CMC,. The fund will further deepen our ties in the China film industry and allow us to generate the highest-quality Mandarin content for Chinese and international audiences alike. Our commitment to the success of our business in China and its filmmaking community is unwavering. Together, we are excited to launch a new and exciting chapter of filmmaking in China.”

Li said, “The fund is an outgrowth of CMC’s privileged capability and extensive connections in the Chinese film industry and Imax’s beloved brand and differentiated cinematic experience. We hope this will support the creation of more tentpole Mandarin-language films.”