Category: Business and Commerce
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When Prudential’s ill-fated attempt to buy AIA was first announced, the SCMP was very slow getting on to the story. Today (Thursday) they even seem to have more coverage than the FT (or at least its Asian edition), so I think I wasted HK$28 on the pink ‘un. This is one of the SCMP’s three…
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Well, well. Common sense prevails (for once) and a huge and stupid acquisition is abandoned. Prudential top brass fight for their jobs as AIA takeover abandoned Prudential has bowed to shareholder pressure and formally abandoned its attempt to take over the Asian insurer AIA, leaving its management team with a £450m bill as they fight…
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Prudential’s madcap scheme to buy AIA is still not going well. Earlier in the week, the CEO of AIA was reported as telling friends that the deal was “unworkable”, and now they are trying to reduce the price. And the SCMP finally seems sufficiently interested in the story to have assigned one of its own…
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Prudential still seem to be struggling with the takeover of AIA. They had a run-in with the Financial Services Authority in the UK, but that has been resolved, and now they have published the prospectus. They claim that they can deliver $800m of revenue improvements by (amongst other things) making AIA’s agents more productive. They…
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A year or so ago, Prudential (a British insurance company) apparently tried to buy 49% of AIA (an Asian insurance company based in Hong Kong and owned by AIG). This seemed doomed to failure for at least three reasons: they didn’t offer enough; they didn’t have the money; and how was it going to work…
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Interesting article in The Independent (When the locals bought their local) about a pub that has been bought by its customers. Ten years ago this corner of northern Salford boasted eight pubs within walking distance of the Star. One by one they've closed their doors. Before Christmas the Star nearly went the same way. Robinsons,…
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OK, so maybe I need to be a bit more positive. Here goes… Had a problem with my iPod, so I took it to the service centre in Quarry Bay. I'd booked an appointment, but I needn't have bothered, because when I went there (at lunchtime) there was only one customer waiting to be seen. …
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File under "well, that's a surprise, I'd never have expected that" – American Express have followed the lead set by HSBC and devalued their reward points. The conversion factor for Asia Miles (Cathay) and Flying Club Miles (Virgin) has been adjusted from 12:1 to 15:1, meaning that you need 25% more points for each mile…
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Today’s SCMP has a lengthy Bloomberg story about the credit-rating weasels – Bringing Down Wall Street as Ratings Let Loose Subprime Scourge by Elliot Blair Smith: “I view the ratings agencies as one of the key culprits,” says Joseph Stiglitz, 65, the Nobel laureate economist at Columbia University in New York. “They were the party…
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It now appears that AIG is going to avoid Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but it’s striking how much power the credit rating agencies have in determining whether it fails or not. By threatening to lower AIG’s credit rating, the agencies precipitated a crisis. This in turn sent AIG’s share price down, which was enough to persuade…
Ordinary Gweilo 