China

Morgan Stanley and UBS Group are planning to raise their stakes in their securities operations in the country to the maximum 49% allowed, people with direct knowledge of the moves said, Reuters reported on Monday.

China allowed foreign banks to boost share holdings in securities joint ventures to a maximum 49% in 2012 from the previous cap of a third to help modernise the country’s capital markets.

Foreign investments banks with securities joint ventures in China, however, have not as yet raised their stakes as most of the ventures were small or struggling to break even due to sluggish onshore deals.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group is back on the U.S. government’s annual list of "notorious markets" that sell pirated goods. The listing carries no penalties but will likely be an embarrassment for Alibaba, which has been trying to burnish its image in international markets.

On Wednesday, the Office of the United States Trade Representative dumped Alibaba back on its Notorious Markets List, which “highlights prominent online and physical marketplaces that reportedly engage in and facilitate substantial copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting.” This comes four years after the USTR had removed the Chinese e-commerce company from the list after it made some progress in combating fakes.

The 47th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum will focus on five critical leadership challenges in 2017: strengthening global collaboration, restoring a sense of shared identity, revitalizing economic growth, reforming capitalism and preparing for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The WEF will take place on 17-20 January 2017 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, under the theme Responsive and Responsible Leadership. More than 2,500 participants from nearly 100 countries will meet and participate in over 300 sessions.
The theme of the meeting calls on global leaders to renew the systems that have supported international cooperation in the past by adapting them to today’s complex, multipolar world in ways that foster genuinely inclusive and equitable growth.

SIX Payment Services and Alipay, the third-party payment and lifestyle platform operated by Ant Financial Services Group, announced their close cooperation for the acceptance of POS and E- Commerce payments across Europe. Under the terms of the agreement, Alipay’s payment service will be integrated into the payment application of SIX in order to enable merchant clients of SIX to accept Alipay payments from Alipay users.

SIX currently has a customer base of 220,000 merchants locations, principally in Switzerland, Luxemburg, Austria, Germany.

Chinese industrial production grew less than expect last month, falling behind market forecasts and raising questions about the strength of recovery in the world’s second largest economy, official figures revealed on Monday.

According to the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, industrial production rose 6.1% from a year earlier in October, compared with 6.1% in September. Retail sales growth slowed to 10 per cent, missing estimates for 10.7%. Retail sales were surprisingly weak, growing at 10% over the year, but well down on the 10.7% growth recorded in September.

US dollar is overvalued and that investors would do well to move out of that currency. In the long run the national debt, which is currently 106% of GDP, and the balance of payments deficit, currently running at about 40 to 45 billion dollars a month, are unsustainable. Of course the US is the largest single economy globally and has huge reserves of coal, oil and gas besides extensive farming land. So it is not to be expected that the US dollar is going to collapse. It could soon however gradually lose 20% to 30% of its current value.

Chinese chemical giant ChemChina has extended the deadline of its offer to purchase the agrochemical group Syngenta Basel, until January 5. The previous deadline was to expire next Tuesday.
It is the fourth time that the Chinese group extends its tender offer (Opa): the giant state had already been extended to May its initial offer until July 18 and then to July until 13 September and until September 8th of November.

HNA Group, the giant Chinese hotel and tourism company, agreed to buy about 25% of Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc from Blackstone Group LP for about US$6.5 billion. HNA, controlled by Chen Feng, will pay US$26.25 a share in cash, or 15 per cent more than Hilton’s closing price on Friday. Under the deal, HNA cannot reduce its 25% stake over the next two years or increase it without Hilton’s permission. The deal, which is expected to go through in early 2017, will cut Blackstone’s share in Hilton to 21%.

This latest move by HNA is part of the group’s efforts to become a "global tourism business," said the company’s chief executive Adam Tan. HNA announced in April that it had agreed to acquire Carlson Hotels, which owns the Radisson and Park Plaza brands.