26 10 / 2011
Indias rich, richer than the French. Its poor, much poorer
By Annie Banerji
As Indias politicians struggle to manage an outcry over the definition of poverty â does earning more than $0.65 a day really mean you are not poor? â a new report shows the countryâs rich doing very nicely from fast economic growth.
Rubbing shoulders with Singapore and Hong Kong, India appears in the top five countries where the affluent now have more than $1 million investable assets on average, according to the Global Affluent Investor study conducted by research company TNS.
âIndia and China have already surpassed major European markets like Germany and France. ItÂs interesting to see that the entrepreneurial spirit of people in these markets is already paying off in terms of personal wealth,â Reg van Steen, Director of Business and Finance, TNS, said.
But the report points to an important difference between the emerging Asian powers and their Western peers â wealth distribution.
âWhile 27% of the US are affluent this falls to around 1% in India and China, the report said. It defined households with more than $100,000 of investable assets as affluent.
It will take some time for the number of rich in India and China to catch up with the U.S. â where the report found 31 million affluent households, 10 times as many as India and China each have.
ÂIt is necessary perhaps to think in a different way, and to see that a country like India, like Schrödingerâs cat, exists in at least two forms simultaneously: rich and poor, wrote British historian Patrick French.
Poverty looms large over the majority of the 1.2 billion population of the worldÂs largest democracy, where hundreds of millions continue to live below the bread line.
A couple of weeks ago, the government was hit by a storm of criticism for setting the poverty line at 32 rupees ($0.65) per day. The benchmark â barely enough to buy a return ticket on New Delhiâs subway â is used to gauge who gets subsidies in a country where malnutrition rates in some states are worse than sub-Saharan Africa.
Outcry from the opposition, economists and the media forced the government to say the controversial rate would not be used to decide who has access to welfare programmes.
Two decades of fast growth have brought huge changes to India, but there are growing calls for the boom to be put to better use.
âWhile economic growth is an important boon for enhancing living conditions, its reach depends greatly on what we do with the fruits of growth,â economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen wrote in an article in February.
Permalink 117 notes
20 10 / 2011
UPDATE 1-Pershing Square bets on Fortune Brands Home & Security
Ackman and his analysts forecast strong growth for the
company, especially if the housing market picks up again in the
coming years.Pershing Square first began owning Fortune Brands about a
year ago. The company’s share price was up 5.5 percent at
$14.47 in afternoon trading after Pershing Square made its
announcement.
Permalink 41 notes
12 10 / 2011
Grosvenor, Derwent to redevelop London office site
LONDON Oct 12 (Reuters) - Property developers Grosvenor
and Derwent London are jointly converting an
office building in London’s Belgravia district into a mixed-use
scheme, comprising luxury hotel, commercial and residential
elements.The 168,000 square feet building at 1-5 Grosvenor Place,
next to London’s Hyde Park Corner, consists mainly of offices
and has the potential to be made taller, the two companies said
in a statement on Wednesday.Grosvenor and Derwent are looking to jointly spend 175-200
million pounds ($273-$312 million) on the project, a source
familiar with the project told Reuters.The commercial aspect of a mixed use development could be
either offices or retail, or both, a spokesperson for Grosvenor
said of the project.The building, which sits on a more than 1.5 acre
large site, is held under long leases by Derwent, with the
freehold held by Grosvenor. Subject to planning consent, the
redevelopment could start in 2014, the two companies said.Derwent London will continue its asset management role at
the site with Grosvenor acting as de
Permalink 19 notes
12 10 / 2011
Grosvenor, Derwent to redevelop London office site
LONDON Oct 12 (Reuters) - Property developers Grosvenor
and Derwent London are jointly converting an
office building in London’s Belgravia district into a mixed-use
scheme, comprising luxury hotel, commercial and residential
elements.The 168,000 square feet building at 1-5 Grosvenor Place,
next to London’s Hyde Park Corner, consists mainly of offices
and has the potential to be made taller, the two companies said
in a statement on Wednesday.Grosvenor and Derwent are looking to jointly spend 175-200
million pounds ($273-$312 million) on the project, a source
familiar with the project told Reuters.The commercial aspect of a mixed use development could be
either offices or retail, or both, a spokesperson for Grosvenor
said of the project.The building, which sits on a more than 1.5 acre
large site, is held under long leases by Derwent, with the
freehold held by Grosvenor. Subject to planning consent, the
redevelopment could start in 2014, the two companies said.Derwent London will continue its asset management role at
the site with Grosvenor acting as development manager.
Permalink 11 notes
12 10 / 2011
BlackBerry problems hit four continents
Extensive delays hit Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India on Monday and the problems spread to Brazil, Chile and Argentina on Tuesday in the latest headache for the Canadian smartphone maker.The disruption piles pressures on RIM, which is fending off investor calls for a management shake-up and possible sale or split of the company as it shifts its phone lineup to new software first used in the widely panned PlayBook tablet.”The messaging and browsing delays being experienced … were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,” the company said in an emailed update late on Tuesday afternoon in Toronto.RIM’s BlackBerry service has long been prized by executives and politicians who rely on its security and reliability to deliver email and other messaging to mobile workers.But problems with the service may hasten corporate moves to allow rivals such as Apple Inc’s iPhone and iPad and devices running Google Inc’s Android software to access data kept behind company firewalls, one analyst said.”The current situation with the BlackBerry outages couldn’t come at a worse time for RIM, following some harsh criticism in recent months,” Informa Telecoms & Media analyst Malik Saadi said in a statement.”Some businesses may see this as a good reason to reevaluatetheir reliance on centralized servers and instead look to investing in more corporately controlled servers.”Not only would this enable IT departments to minimize the risk of unforeseen collapses, but it could also give employees more flexibility to use their own devices,” he said.The Canadian company manages its BlackBerry service via servers parked within enterprises and hooked up to a proprietary network carried by wireless operators.”Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested,” RIM said. Failover refers to the automatic switching of service to a standby server in the case of a failure of a main system.”As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible,” RIM noted.RIM hosts a number of network operating centers, including one at its headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, and another in southern England, which manage the massive amounts of data that flow through its system.RIM has suffered outages before. Its BlackBerry Messenger service went offline in Canada and Latin America last month and a massive disruption hit North American customers in April 2007, but the disruptions are usually contained within one continent or region.RIM has more than 70 million subscribers worldwide, with much growth in recent years coming from emerging markets.At 10:25 p.m. Monday Eastern Time, RIM said it had resolved problems disrupting its services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). This was some 20 hours after users in EMEA and India first reported problems with email and BlackBerry Messenger.In its latest update, RIM did not say when it expected the outage to be fully resolved or how many customers had been affected.The outages are just another headache for RIM, which has less margin for error as rivals encroach on the corporate email market it once took for granted. Employees increasingly push to use their personal devices, typically iPhones and iPads and to a lesser extent Android devices, in the workplace.It is also facing growing calls from investors for a break-up, sale or change of management following recent dismal results, slipping market share for its phones and a lacklustre reception for its PlayBook tablet, designed to challenge Apple’s iPad.Network operators and users in EMEA tweeted that email and BlackBerry Messenger services were not working from Monday morning in London. Network operator T-Mobile said on its website that the problems were due to a European-wide outage on the BlackBerry network.It said: “RIM has apologized for the interruption to services and said it’s working to restore normal operations.”Vodafone sent a message to its British BlackBerry customers on Tuesday evening that noted “you may still be experiencing issues with BlackBerry services” and saying RIM was working to resolve this urgently.
Permalink 49 notes
11 10 / 2011
Battle over huge coal deposit highlights risks in Indonesia
London-listed Churchill Mining Plc has been in dispute with Indonesia’s Nusantara Group for three years over the right to develop the world’s seventh-largest undeveloped coal asset. The case has reached Indonesia’s highest court and could take years more to settle.The 350-sq-km (135-sq-mile) mine site in East Kutai, a coastal district in East Kalimantan province, is said to contain 2.8 billion tonnes of coal reserves.”It’s a big medium to low-grade thermal coal deposit,” Churchill Executive Chairman David Quinlivan told Reuters in a telephone interview. “That requires a substantial amount of infrastructure to be able to bring it into production.”But once in production, it will be very much a long-term project — 50 years or more.”Nusantara Group originally held six licenses in the disputed area. According to court documents filed by Churchill, these lapsed between March 2006 and March 2007. The East Kutai government declared the area open to other companies and Indonesian firm PT Ridlatama received four mining licenses, Churchill said.Between November 2007 and February 2008, Churchill bought a 75 percent stake in Ridlatama’s licenses and spent about $40 million on the project. But after Churchill announced in May 2008 that the project could yield substantial coal, things turned messy.A few weeks later, the East Kutai regional government granted extensions to the Nusantara Group mining licenses that Churchill believed had lapsed.The undeveloped and potentially highly lucrative coal mine has since become the subject of a series of legal tussles . But after a March 2011 tribunal ruling in Indonesia, Churchill and minority partner Ridlatama no longer own the East Kutai project.Churchill filed an appeal on September 26 in Indonesia’s Supreme Court. It is unclear how long the court’s verdict will take.”At least months and it can be years,” said Rozik Soetjipto, an Indonesia mining consultant on supreme court judgments. “About one or two years, maybe longer if something is very exceptional, but generally less than two years.”Officials at Nusantara were unavailable for comment despite repeated telephone calls and e-mails.LEGAL TUSSLE”I’m disappointed more than anything else — that it had to get to this to try and maintain title,” Quinlivan said, adding that Churchill may seek international arbitration. “The legal process doesn’t end in Indonesia.”According to Churchill, Nusantara Group is controlled by former Indonesian army general Prabowo Subianto.Prabowo was a former head of the Kopassus special forces and was once married to one of former strongman President Suharto’s daughters. He is the son of a former Indonesian finance minister and data from Indonesia’s anti-graft agency shows he had an estimated personal wealth of about $160 million as of 2009.The legal tussle between Nusantara and Churchill also highlights the complex bureaucracy of the sprawling country of 17,000 islands.”If you are going to be on the wrong side of a land acquisition that is in dispute, if it gets blown up in the press, then you will end up with the perception that regulatory risk is getting worse,” said Andreas Bokkenheuser, an analyst at UBS. “But if you look beyond assets in dispute, I actually see the regulatory risk improving in Indonesia.”The government is drafting a rule that would, by 2014, require miners to carry out minimum processing on minerals before export — part of a mining and coal law introduced in 2009 aimed at making life easier for investors.Despite these changes, one Indonesia-based analyst estimated there are currently about 100 unresolved disputes involving mine ownership or licenses.”They are trying to clean up the sector,” said Bokkenheuser. “We’re seeing enforcement of the law, which is positive… There is still a concerted effort to make the mining environment more attractive for foreigners to come in and invest.”Indonesia’s coal export growth will be fueled in large part by China and India, where power demand is expected to lift coal imports significantly over the next five years. Output will hit 340-354 million tonnes for 2011, industry groups say.The government has also tabled a new land bill to speed up land acquisition, but it may be not be effective until 2012 and companies still face risks.”Number one, don’t underestimate the legal due diligence,” said Bokkenheuser, referring to foreign miners looking to invest in Indonesia. “Use a combination of Indonesian and foreign guys to do so because you will need local help on that issue.”Point number two … you need to make it clear what kind of land you have got — because land is another regulatory issue — we still don’t have a land reform (bill) in Indonesia that empowers the government to buy land.”For Churchill, the advice may be too late.”My advice would be, be wary and make sure you’ve done extensive — and I mean extensive — due diligence,” Quinlivan said. “Even though, whilst you may have done all this due diligence, and we certainly believe we had, things can turn around that are very unexpected.”If there is a loophole there, somebody will use it.” ($1 = 8905 Indonesian Rupiah)
Permalink 114 notes
