Govts & policies

Brokerages see H1 profit declines

All 25 listed securities firms posted sharp falls in net profits for the January-June period, according to their half-year financial reports or preliminary earnings estimates filed with stock exchanges. Guotai Junan Securities, an industry leader, saw its profits shrink 47.91 percent from a year ago, while Shanxi Securities registered the biggest drop of 84.93 percent. Weighed by a market downturn, brokerage incomes from fees and leverage financing fell substantially.

Consumer goods sales increase

Chinese consumer spending on fast-moving consumer goods in the second quarter grew 4.6 percent from a year ago, against 2 percent year-on-year growth in the first quarter, according to a report from global research company Kantar Worldpanel. Fast-moving consumer goods refers to everyday food and non-food consumer products that sell quickly and at relatively low cost. Modern trade channels including hypermarkets, supermarkets and convenience stores, showed a similar trend of improved growth.

Liaoning drop an 'individual case'

The sharp drop in fixed asset investment in northeastern China's Liaoning province is an individual case, and its drag on China's FAI growth is expected to ease in coming months, according to the latest research by the Liaoning Provincial Development and Reform Commission. In the first five months of this year, Liaoning's FAI totaled 342.6 billion yuan ($51.51 billion), a year-on-year drop of 48.7 percent.

Companies & markets

New tram rolls off production line

China's first independently designed supercapacitor tram rolled off the production line in central China's Hunan province on Monday. The tram uses supercapacitor energy storage to operate without external wires and can be fully charged during a 30-second stop and run for 3 to 5 kilometers, according to Engineer-in-Chief Suo Jianguo with Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Co under CRRC Corp Ltd, the country's largest rolling-stock maker.

The tram can carry up to 380 passengers and travel at 70 kilometers per hour.

O2O titan sets up e-commerce school

Chinese online-to-offline giant Meituan & Dazhongdianping will set up a college to train e-commerce personnel. The college, named Internet Plus University, is the first of its kind in the e-commerce sector to focus on developing business models, technology and skills to promote China's "Internet Plus" strategy. It will integrate the company's training departments to establish several schools to train internal staff and business partners on upgrading e-commerce, the company announced.

Yuan climbs against dollar for fifth day

The yuan rose for the fifth day, the longest run of gains in 2015, as reduced expectations of an interest-rate increase in the United States aided China's efforts to stabilize its currency. The onshore yuan climbed 0.08 percent to 6.6345 a dollar as of 11:06 am in Shanghai, taking its five-day advance to 0.7 percent. The rate in Hong Kong dropped 0.1 percent, after adding 0.46 percent on Friday. The People's Bank of China earlier strengthened its daily fixing by the most since June 23.

PBOC lends 900m yuan via facility

China's central bank extended 900m yuan ($135.64m) of loans to local financial institutions in July via its standing lending facility, it said on Monday. The total outstanding amount of SLF loans was 400 million yuan at end-July, the central bank said. The People's Bank of China uses the SLF and the medium-term lending facility as tools for managing short and medium-term liquidity in the country's banking system.

Around the world

S.Korean exports show decline

South Korea's July exports posted the longest monthly decline for 19 months in a row, boosting worries about recovery in the export-driven economy, a government report showed on Monday. Exports, which account for about half of the export-driven economy, reached $41.04 billion in July, down 10.2 percent from the same month of last year, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.

Oldest bank does poorly in stress test

Italy's third biggest and the world's oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, performed poorly in an adverse scenario in a stress test by the European Banking Authority, according to local media reports. In the test result Monte dei Paschi di Siena was revealed as the weakest in Europe under adverse conditions. But the other four Italian banks showed a good performance, the Bank of Italy, the country's central bank, said in a statement.

Panasonic Q2 profit slumps 63.5%

Japanese electronics maker Panasonic posted a 63.5 percent slump in its April-June group net profit, which once again shows that Japan's traditional electronics firms are facing a difficult time. Panasonic Corp reported a group net profit of 21.74 billion yen ($213 million) for the three months ending in June, down from 59.56 billion yen a year earlier. The company also announced on Friday that operating profit tumbled 12.6 percent to 66.93 billion yen as sales dropped 5.9 percent to 1.75 trillion yen.

Call for NZ foreign purchasers ban

Opposition lawmakers on Monday stepped up calls for a ban on non-residents buying New Zealand homes, accusing the government of skewing data in order to play down the role of overseas purchases in the country's housing crisis. Figures out on Monday showed overseas tax resident buyers and sellers were behind just 3 percent of New Zealand property transfers, Land Information Minister Louise Upston said on the release of data covering the April-June period.

UAE growth set to pick up in 2017

Dubai-based economic research company MEED said the United Arab Emirates will benefit from 2017 onward from a recovery in oil prices combined with growing public and private sector activities boosted by its preparations for the World Expo in 2020. Dubai will host the six-month Expo from April to October in 2020. The UAE is expected to see gross domestic product growth rising between four to five percent each year from 2017 to 2020, compared with about 3.1 percent growth so far this year, the company said in its annual outlook on the Gulf state.

Fitch gives Croatia a 'BB' rating

Ratings agency Fitch gave Croatia a rating of 'BB', below investment grade, with negative outlooks, local media reported. "The ratings balance Croatia's high government and external debt loads and weak growth performance, against favorable governance indicators and relatively high per capita GDP," the agency said in a statement. The agency forecast Croatia's growth to reach 1.8 percent this year and average 1.9 percent in 2017-18. But public debt remains high this year and is forecast to reach 86.3 percent of GDP in 2018.

Namibia looks to industrialization

Africa should vigorously pursue an industrialization agenda because it was the only sure way of breaking the cycle of poverty on the continent, according to Namibian President Hage Geingob. "Industrialization will enable us to expand our productive capacities which will in turn enable us to make maximum use of our natural resources so that we are able to create employment opportunities for our people," he said officially opening on Saturday Zambia's premier agriculture and commercial event, the 90th Agricultural and Commercial Show, in Lusaka, the country's capital.

UK lending forecast to shrink until 2019

Business loans in the United Kingdom will shrink to the lowest in more than a decade in the next couple of years as weaker economic prospects in the aftermath of the vote to leave the European Union damp demand, according to the EY ITEM Club. Total lending to companies will contract 1.8 percent next year and another 1 percent in 2018 before finally recovering the following year, the organization said in a report released on Monday. By then, the total stock of business loans will have dropped to 376 billion pounds ($497 billion), the lowest since 2005, EY said. The outlook adds to a picture of gloom that may prompt Bank of England policy makers to add stimulus this week.

Tech billionaires lead 2016 gains

Technology billionaires are making a run for the top of the global wealth rankings as surges for Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Google parent Alphabet Inc added $5.6 billion to their founders' fortunes this week. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin gained a combined $2.7 billion after the search engine's ad business reported a growing user base and better cost controls. Jeff Bezos added $1.4 billion on Amazon's results while Mark Zuckerberg's net worth rose $1.5 billion after the social networking giant's second-quarter earnings trounced analysts' estimates.

China Daily - Agencies

(China Daily 08/02/2016 page14)