China on the rise!

[Zeus]

Nabalita sa CNBC kanina may isang banko sa China ang bibili o makikipagmerge sa JP Morgan a

[uls]

nope, not JP Morgan, it's Morgan Stanley

the Chinese bank was said to be CITIC, then CITIC denied it

yun pala it's CIC -- the Chinese sovereign wealth fund

CIC already has a 9.9% stake in Morgan Stanley.

there's news CIC will increase its stake.

But there's news Morgan Stanley is gonna merge with Wachovia.

So mejo malabo pa kung ano talaga...

[paolorenzo]

If the US Fed and Treasury will approve the increase of ownership of CIC of MS, then my guess is that this will be the more likely scenario. I think MS (and GS for that matter) will avoid merging with a bank, as much as possible.

Para palang si GMA si John Mack. Sa China nanglilimos.

China is on the rise!

[uls]

GS would probably be the only player left.

---

Nasunog na ang CIC sa investment nila sa MS.

i don't think the Chinese will want to get burned again.

---

MS merger with Wachovia more likely

---

but i could be wrong

[Zeus]

nope, not JP Morgan, it's Morgan Stanley

the Chinese bank was said to be CITIC, then CITIC denied it

yun pala it's CIC -- the Chinese sovereign wealth fund

CIC already has a 9.9% stake in Morgan Stanley.

there's news CIC will increase its stake.

But there's news Morgan Stanley is gonna merge with Wachovia.

So mejo malabo pa kung ano talaga...

Tama ka ULS, Morgan Stanley nga

Morgan Stanley in talks to sell stake to China: FT

Agence France-Presse | 09/19/2008 12:48 PM
BEIJING - Troubled US investment bank Morgan Stanley is in talks to sell a stake of up to 49 percent to China's sovereign wealth fund, the Financial Times reported Friday, citing people close to the discussions.

The talks with China Investment Corp., or CIC, which bought a 9.9 percent stake in Morgan Stanley in December, were "advanced but no deal had been clinched yet", the paper said, quoting unidentified sources.

Morgan Stanley's top management prefer a stake sale to CIC to a merger with US lender Wachovia, according to the paper.

The paper said CIC president Gao Xiqing had been scheduled to meet Morgan Stanley executives in San Francisco.

When asked by China's state-run Xinhua news agency, an unnamed CIC official did not rule out the prospect of buying a stake in Morgan Stanley but pointed to political hurdles in the United States over such a deal.

"Even if the CIC intended to buy a stake, it could be very hard now as the purchase of a stake, even one smaller than 10 percent, could be subject to the US government foreign investment review," the official said.

The Financial Times also said the sale of a significant stake of a blue-chip Wall Street firm to a state-owned Chinese institution could cause a political backlash in Washington.

Nick Footitt, Morgan Stanley spokesman in Hong Kong, declined to comment on the report when contacted by AFP Friday.

[SIZE=3]CIC was[/SIZE] [SIZE=3]established last year charged with managing 200 billion dollars of China's bulging forex reserves, and has become an iconic symbol of the country's growing financial muscle as it scours the world for acquisition targets.[/SIZE]

The Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, said Thursday it would explore a possible stake in Morgan Stanley if the US investment bank made an approach.

CNBC business network reported Thursday that Morgan Stanley was also in talks to be bought by the Chinese bank CITIC.

The reports came in the same week that US investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy while another Wall Street firm, Merrill Lynch, was forced to sell itself to Bank of America for 50 billion dollars.


as of 09/19/2008 12:48 PM

Source:www.abs-cbnnews.com
Sept.19, 2008

[uls]

thing is, the Morgan Stanley-CIC deal has to get US govt approval muna.

so we'll see.

[Zeus]

Pati sahod ng trabahador nila tataas na rin...
[quote]
Companies brace for end of cheap made-in-China era

By ELAINE KURTENBACH, AP Business Writer
07/09/2010 | 03:42 AM


SHANGHAI – Factory workers demanding better wages and working conditions are hastening the eventual end of an era of cheap costs that helped make southern coastal China the world's factory floor.

A series of strikes over the past two months have been a rude wakeup call for the many foreign companies that depend on China's low costs to compete overseas, from makers of Christmas trees to manufacturers of gadgets like the iPad.

Where once low-tech factories and scant wages were welcomed in a China eager to escape isolation and poverty, workers are now demanding a bigger share of the profits. The government, meanwhile, is pushing foreign companies to make investments in areas it believes will create greater wealth for China, like high technology.

Many companies are striving to stay profitable by shifting factories to cheaper areas farther inland or to other developing countries, and a few are even resuming production in the West.

"China is going to go through a very dramatic period. The big companies are starting to exit. We all see the writing on the wall," said Rick Goodwin, a China trade veteran of 22 years, whose company links foreign buyers with Chinese suppliers.

"I have 15 major clients. My job is to give the best advice I can give. I tell it like it is. I tell them, put your helmet on, it's going to get ugly," said Goodwin, who says dissatisfied workers and hard-to-predict exchange rates are his top worries.

Beijing's decision to stop tethering the Chinese currency to the U.S. dollar, allowing it to appreciate and thus boosting costs in yuan, has multiplied the uncertainty for companies already struggling with meager profit margins.

In an about-face mocked on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Wham-O, the company that created the Hula-Hoop and Slip 'n Slide, decided to bring half of its Frisbee production and some production of its other products back to the U.S.

At the other end of the scale, some in research-intensive sectors such as pharmaceutical, biotech and other life sciences companies are also reconsidering China for a range of reasons, including costs and incentives being offered in other countries.

"Life sciences companies have shifted some production back to the U.S. from China. In some cases, the U.S. was becoming cheaper," said Sean Correll, director of consulting services for Burlington, Mass.-based Emptoris.

That may soon become true for publishers, too. Printing a 9-by-9-inch, 334-page hardcover book in China costs about 44 to 45 cents now, with another 3 cents for shipping, says Goodwin. The same book costs 65 to 68 cents to make in the U.S.

"If costs go up by half, it's about the same price as in the U.S. And you don't have 30 days on the water in shipping," he says.

Even with recent increases, wages for Chinese workers are still a fraction of those for Americans. But studies do show China's overall cost advantage is shrinking.

Labor costs have been climbing about 15 percent a year since a 2008 labor contract law that made workers more aware of their rights. Tax preferences for foreign companies ended in 2007. Land, water, energy and shipping costs are on the rise.

In its most recent survey, issued in February, restructuring firm Alix Partners found that overall China was more expensive than Mexico, India, Vietnam, Russia and Romania.

Mexico, in particular, has gained an edge thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement and fast, inexpensive trucking, says Mike Romeri, an executive with Emptoris, the consulting firm.

Makers of toys and trinkets, Christmas trees and cheap shoes already have folded by the thousands or moved away, some to Vietnam, Indonesia or Cambodia. But those countries lack the huge work force, infrastructure and markets China can offer, and most face the same labor issues as China.

So far, the biggest impact appears to be in and around Shenzhen, a former fishing village in Guangdong province, bordering Hong Kong, that is home to thousands of export manufacturers.

That includes Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology, a supplier of iPhones and iPads to Apple Inc. Foxconn responded to a spate of suicides at its 400,000-worker Shenzhen complex with pay hikes that more than doubled basic monthly worker salaries to $290. Strike-stricken suppliers to Honda Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp., among many others, also have hiked wages.

Foxconn refused repeated requests for comment on plans to move much of its manufacturing capacity to central China's impoverished Henan province, where a local government website has advertised for tens of thousands of workers on its behalf.

But among other projects farther inland, Foxconn is teaming up with some of the biggest global computer makers to build what may be the world's largest laptop production hub in Chongqing, a western China city of 32 million where labor costs are estimated to be 20 to 40 percent lower than in coastal cities.

Given the intricate supply chains and logistics systems that have helped make southern China an export manufacturing powerhouse, such changes won't be easy.

But for manufacturers looking to boost sales inside fast-growing China, shifting production to the inland areas where many migrant workers come from, and costs are lower, offers the most realistic alternative.

"The new game is to find a way to do the domestic market," says Goodwin.

Many factories in Foshan, another city in Guangdong that saw strikes at auto parts plants supplying Japan's Honda, have left in the past few months, mostly moving inland to Henan, Hunan and Jiangxi, said Lin Liyuan, dean at the privately run Institute of Territorial Economics in Guangzhou.

Massive investments in roads, railways and other infrastructure are reducing the isolation of the inland cities, part of a decade-old "Develop the West" strategy aimed at shrinking the huge, politically volatile gap in wealth between city dwellers and the country's 600 million farmers.

Gambling that the unrest will not spill over from foreign-owned factories, China's leaders are using the chance to push investment in regions that have lagged the country's industrial boom.

They have little choice. Many of today's factory workers have higher ambitions than their parents, who generally saved their earnings from assembling toys and television sets for retirement in their rural hometowns. They are also choosier about wages and working conditions. "The conflicts are challenging the current set-up of low-wage, low-tech manufacturing, and may catalyze the transformation of China's industrial sector," said Yu Hai, a sociology professor at Shanghai's Fudan University. —AP {/quote]
Source:www.gmanews.tv

[uls]

Foxconn is going to shift some plants to the western part of China where labor cost is lower

[CVT]

Isa sa mga major customers namin iyang Foxconn....

10.3K:sumo:

[tidus1203]

Foxconn is going to shift some plants to the western part of China where labor cost is lower

Yeah the trend in Chinese manufacturing is to shift westwards and inlands as the eastern coastal areas start to become affluent and wages keep on rising... Another trend is southwards towards Vietnam pero mas maganda pa rin kasi infra ng China kaya as much as possible we want to stay there!