Jaime Martín* - 21/12/2008
Nada más desembarcar en el aeropuerto de Tokio lo primero que atrajo mi atención fueron los enormes letreros de la campaña de imagen Yokoso Japan, Bienvenido a Japón... ¿Bienvenido a Japón? Era el lema más ingenuo que podía imaginar, ¡podría funcionar en cualquier rincón del planeta! Me pregunté si escondía algo que a mí, occidental mesetario que por vez primera pisaba suelo japonés, me estaba vedado comprender. Finalmente olvidé el tema y me dispuse a disfrutar del viaje, prometiendo que mi visión de branding del mundo no se interpondría entre mí y el país nipón. Vaya, yo sí que era ingenuo.
Japón es un país fascinante, y la cultura y tendencias que de allí emanan ejercen desde hace algún tiempo influencia creciente. La cocina nipona es hoy omnipresente en nuestras ciudades, los jóvenes occidentales leen manga y juegan a la play, Issey Miyake es un referente en el mundo de la moda, Murakami ha vendido más de ocho millones de libros, Toyota hace del Prius el coche más ‘verde’ del planeta y directores extranjeros como Iñárritu (Babel) o Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation) ruedan allí, no sólo porque Japón es la meta-modernidad, sino porque además vende un montón. No es la primera vez que esto ocurre. En el siglo XIX, Europa vivió una fiebre japonesa tras la apertura del país a punta de cañón por el comodoro Perry. En esos tiempos, el arte y la cultura japonesa viajaron hasta las capitales de medio mundo, conquistando el gusto de la multitud. Van Gogh o Gauguin se enamoraron de los grabados Ukiyo-e, en los cuales artistas como Hiroshige plasmaban la realidad con una sencillez nunca vista, presagiando el impresionismo e incluso el comic manga. Sigan conmigo, esto no va de pintura.
Tokio es el epicentro de las tendencias en Japón. Los japoneses adoran todo lo novedoso, y si se trata de artículos de lujo, mejor. En los últimos años ha surgido el fenómeno social de los solteros parásitos, jóvenes empleados que viven con sus papás y gastan todo su dinero en Vuitton o Chanel (vaya, como en España, solo que aquí no tienen un duro). En Tokio tuve la oportunidad de ver una enorme fila de chicas muy jóvenes que serpenteaba varias manzanas hasta desembocar en la recién inaugurada tienda H&M, la primera del país. Todos los turistas estábamos boquiabiertos ante aquel desenfreno por ser las primeras en ir a la última. Sin embargo, no es en la Chuo-Dori, la milla de oro, donde se ve lo último en tribus y moda urbana. Para eso hay que darse una vuelta por Shibuya y ver desfilar un sin fin de adolescentes emulando bebés, con pololos incluidos y pecas pintadas, chicas vestidas de criadas, chicos con chihuahuas del brazo, personajes salidos de comics manga, en fin, una carnaval.
Un lugar realmente fuera de lo común en Tokio es el mercado de pescado de Tsukiji. En la lonja se despachan a diario cientos de atunes. Al amanecer, los trabajadores alinean los pescados de hasta 300 kg en una nave, marcan los lotes con pintura roja, les dan un tajo en la cola, y luego los compradores toman muestras para comprobar su calidad. En un abrir y cerrar de ojos empieza la frenética puja, y poco después de allí parten los bichos para saciar el estómago de los amantes del sushi y el sashimi. Como reclamo turístico, este lugar tan poco convencional funciona y está lleno de turistas, añadiendo una capa más de atractivo a la ciudad. Curiosamente, Isabel Coixet toma la lonja como escenario en su próxima película.
Otra vez mi deformación profesional se interpone entre la realidad y mi yo viajero. El turismo actual busca experiencias más allá de la fórmula de palacios, museos y jardines. Esta demanda se puede canalizar haciendo branding de lugares insospechados. París lo hace con sus cementerios y sistemas de cloacas, Tokio con su lonja y sus tribus urbanas, Los Ángeles con sus pozos de petróleo y su mercado mejicano. En segundo lugar, al igual que hay product placement en las películas y en los libros, los city placement sirven para construir imagen. La ciudad condal, con Vicky Cristina Barcelona o La sombra del viento, supera a Madrid, ciudad a la que no le vendría mal que un gran director internacional se fijase en ella para rodar su próxima película.
Otra lección de branding desde Japón, especialmente ahora que tanto se habla y divaga sobre la ‘marca España’, es la amabilidad exquisita de los japoneses. El japonés hace todo lo posible para que el viajero se sienta a gusto. No gritan, sonríen, ponen suma atención en el detalle. En verano, cuando se llega a un hotel, lo primero que ofrecen es una toallita húmeda para aliviar el calor y en algunos lugares un te o un zumo. Son detalles pequeños, pero de gran importancia. Lógicamente forma parte de su cultura y de cómo son educados desde niños. En un país como España, donde tanta gente vive del turismo, y teniendo en cuenta que el modelo de sol y playa se agota, cabe pensar si el trato al turista podría mejorarse. Me contaba un amigo que en Barcelona vio como unos ingleses, tras pedir pantumaca, se comían a mordisco el tomate y el ajo, ante la indiferencia del camarero. Mi amigo por supuesto, se acercó y explicó como funcionaba aquello. Esto tal vez no sea la norma, pero para hacer de nuestro país un lugar cada vez más sugerente, la capacidad de servicio y la atención creo que deben mejorar. Detalles como ofrecer un zumo o una toallita no serían triviales, serían todo un símbolo de esa hospitalidad de la que tanto hacemos gala.
Al final de mi viaje, Yokoso Japan cobraba todo su sentido.
domingo, 21 de diciembre de 2008
martes, 2 de diciembre de 2008
Germany Aims to Guide the West’s Ties to Russia
MOSCOW — In the heat of the Georgia crisis in August, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany flew to Russia to warn about the consequences of renewed militarism. Two days later she was in Georgia, voicing support for the country’s eventual entry into NATO.
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Misha Japaridze/Associated Press
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany with President Dimitri A. Medvedev of Russia.
Autumn crept in and passions cooled. The beginning of October found Mrs. Merkel back in Russia, looking on as the German utility E.ON and the Russian state energy giant Gazprom signed a significant deal in St. Petersburg, giving the German firm a stake in the enormous Yuzhno-Russkoye natural gas field in Siberia.
Mrs. Merkel’s shifting focus served as a reminder of the pivotal role played by Germany in shaping the West’s relationship with Russia. It is Russia’s largest trading partner, Europe’s single biggest economy and one of America’s closest allies. Moscow’s aggressive posture has not only thrust Russia, a nuclear-armed energy power, back to the geopolitical spotlight. It has also dragged Germany there with it.
Just as the United States is struggling to redefine its relationship with a resurgent and at times antagonistic government in Moscow, Germany is scrambling to protect the close commercial, cultural and diplomatic ties with Russia it has forged since the end of the cold war — and, in some areas, long before.
How broad that divide has grown will become clearer this week, when NATO foreign ministers gather in Brussels. Berlin and Washington are at odds over how to deal with NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine — a tussle that at its heart is about how to deal with Russia.
As the United States aims mainly to counter Russia’s newfound military assertiveness, Germany favors steps to develop Russia economically and ensure its political stability. Germany sees its responsibility to guide Russia, not contain it.
The incoming Obama administration, which has vowed to pursue a new path to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions as well as achieving other foreign policy goals that involve Russia, may find that one road to Moscow runs through Berlin. At a minimum, it seems likely to have to address Germany’s deeper interests in Russia.
“There are serious disagreements between Washington and Berlin from which Moscow can only benefit if there is not better coordination,” said Angela Stent, who served as the top Russia officer at the United States government’s National Intelligence Council from 2004 to 2006 and now directs Russian studies at Georgetown University. “The Obama administration should work with the Germans as it reassesses U.S. policy toward Russia.”
Weary of American lectures about the fact that 36 percent of the natural gas that heats German homes comes from Russia, some German politicians wonder how Americans can worry more about this energy dependence than they themselves do.
“Many Germans believe Bush only invaded Iraq for oil, and many Americans believe Germany’s Russia policy is determined by gas,” said Karsten D. Voigt, who coordinates German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry and who for years ran the German-Russian parliamentary group in the German Parliament. “Every German government since at least the 1970s has tried to bind Russia, and before that the Soviet Union, more closely with Europe.”
Sergei Kupriyanov, a representative of Gazprom, said, “Our cooperation began during the cold war,” referring to deals — opposed by the United States — that laid gas pipelines between Russia and Germany in the 1970s. “The Berlin Wall still existed,” he said. “Compared to what we had then, Georgia is just peanuts.”
Germans see not dependence on Russia, but interdependence. The European Union’s 27 nations account for 80 percent of the cumulative foreign investment in Russia, a fact starkly exposed — if the Kremlin ever forgot — by the flight of capital after the Georgia crisis.
The Europeans, after Georgia, angrily froze negotiations with Russia over a new partnership agreement. Barely 10 weeks later, they decided to resume the talks. “We cannot build a European architecture against Russia or without Russia, only with Russia,” said Alexander Rahr, director of the Russian/Eurasian program at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
While Germany needs Russia’s raw materials and covets the significant market there for its precision machine tools, Russia is equally dependent on European investment to diversify its economy, a fact driven home all too clearly for Russians now that the financial crisis has sent energy prices plunging.
In the city of Yaroslavl, an automotive company, the GAZ Group, still makes diesel truck engines in a factory first built in the waning days of czarist rule in 1916. The production model evokes Soviet times, starting with iron in the foundry on the site, with workers building almost the entire engine from scratch.
A short drive away, past clusters of birch trees, is a field of concrete, metal trusses and corrugated iron roofing. It is the beginning of a state-of-the-art production plant for the company’s new engine model, a project valued at $442 million.
The plant sits a few hours north of Moscow by car, but the names of the suppliers sound like a roll call of German industry, with most of the new machinery and production lines supplied by German companies like Grob-Werke and ThyssenKrupp Krause.
“Germany is, in terms of technology, expertise and know how in the automotive industry, I think the best in the world,” said Ruslan Grekov, the project director for the new engine in Yaroslavl. “Of course, Germany is different from Russia. The difference is good.”
Such sentiments might seem surprising, even jarring, in a country where, in Soviet times, Nazis were vilified in a daily diet of war movies.
But the bonds between Europe’s two largest countries were forged over centuries, as German nobles like Catherine the Great became Russian royalty and German generals led the czar’s armies. German craftsmen worked in Moscow while German farmers settled near the Volga River.
The relationship has been tempered on the German side with guilt over World War II and gratitude over German reunification.
But always the anchor has been business, with Germany’s technical skill complementing Russia’s vast resources. The German conglomerate Siemens laid the Russian state telegraph network in the 1850s. Stalin built Soviet industrial might in his first Five-Year Plan in large part with German machines.
The current global slowdown has sent ripples of fear across Russia about a possible repeat of the 1998 collapse of the ruble. The World Bank halved its expectation for Russian growth next year, but it was still 3 percent, whereas the German economy, already in recession, is expected to contract, making Russia all the more important as layoffs in Germany mount.
Trade between Russia and Germany grew 25 percent to $49.3 billion in the first half of the year. Russia is one of Germany’s fastest-growing markets. Last year, German exports to Russia totaled $36 billion, more than five times the $6.7 billion exported from the United States to Russia.
German businessmen not only work out of sales offices in Moscow or invest in the country’s rich oil and gas fields. They are all over — from Siberia to Yekaterinburg to St. Petersburg, with some 4,600 companies in all investing $13.2 billion, building factories and delivering machinery to Russians who aspire to be more than the raw-goods store for European neighbors.
Today, Siemens is supplying Russia with its first high-speed trains, known as the Velaro RUS. The contract is worth $758 million for Siemens, half for the trains and half for servicing.
The oligarch Roman Abramovich’s construction firm Infrastruktura announced this year that it had ordered the world’s largest drill from the German company Herrenknecht to bore tunnels in Moscow and near Sochi in preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Igor Yurgens, executive board chairman at the Institute of Contemporary Development in Moscow, of which President Dimitri A. Medvedev is board chairman, said Germany was a strategic partner and the most patient investor in Russia’s future.
“We do not have laws in this country, but we have a lot of friendships, and friendship is more important than laws,” Mr. Yurgens said, in an interview in his Moscow office just off the city’s Garden Ring Road, where sputtering old Ladas inch through jams alongside late-model Mercedes sedans. “That’s historically so. And with Germans, this is the case.”
“On the background of this economic very strong cooperation and involvement, their criticism is taken a bit more lightly than the criticism of some others who do nothing at all, but just keep criticizing,” Mr. Yurgens added.
When Mr. Medvedev threatened after the American election to place new missiles in Kaliningrad, the location was a symbol of the painful, complex relationship between Russia and Germany. That island of Russian territory — awkwardly perched between the NATO members Poland and Lithuania — was the German city of Königsberg before it fell to the Soviets in the wake of World War II.
Yet in a sign of the opportunities presented by the Russian-German-American triangle, it was Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, from the usually Russia-friendly Social Democrats, who issued perhaps the sternest rebuff to Mr. Medvedev. It was “the wrong signal at the wrong time,” Mr. Steinmeier said the next day.
The incoming Obama administration, German officials say quietly, should take note. As indicated by Mr. Medvedev’s backpedaling since, the Russians apparently did.
Skip to next paragraph
Misha Japaridze/Associated Press
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany with President Dimitri A. Medvedev of Russia.
Autumn crept in and passions cooled. The beginning of October found Mrs. Merkel back in Russia, looking on as the German utility E.ON and the Russian state energy giant Gazprom signed a significant deal in St. Petersburg, giving the German firm a stake in the enormous Yuzhno-Russkoye natural gas field in Siberia.
Mrs. Merkel’s shifting focus served as a reminder of the pivotal role played by Germany in shaping the West’s relationship with Russia. It is Russia’s largest trading partner, Europe’s single biggest economy and one of America’s closest allies. Moscow’s aggressive posture has not only thrust Russia, a nuclear-armed energy power, back to the geopolitical spotlight. It has also dragged Germany there with it.
Just as the United States is struggling to redefine its relationship with a resurgent and at times antagonistic government in Moscow, Germany is scrambling to protect the close commercial, cultural and diplomatic ties with Russia it has forged since the end of the cold war — and, in some areas, long before.
How broad that divide has grown will become clearer this week, when NATO foreign ministers gather in Brussels. Berlin and Washington are at odds over how to deal with NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine — a tussle that at its heart is about how to deal with Russia.
As the United States aims mainly to counter Russia’s newfound military assertiveness, Germany favors steps to develop Russia economically and ensure its political stability. Germany sees its responsibility to guide Russia, not contain it.
The incoming Obama administration, which has vowed to pursue a new path to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions as well as achieving other foreign policy goals that involve Russia, may find that one road to Moscow runs through Berlin. At a minimum, it seems likely to have to address Germany’s deeper interests in Russia.
“There are serious disagreements between Washington and Berlin from which Moscow can only benefit if there is not better coordination,” said Angela Stent, who served as the top Russia officer at the United States government’s National Intelligence Council from 2004 to 2006 and now directs Russian studies at Georgetown University. “The Obama administration should work with the Germans as it reassesses U.S. policy toward Russia.”
Weary of American lectures about the fact that 36 percent of the natural gas that heats German homes comes from Russia, some German politicians wonder how Americans can worry more about this energy dependence than they themselves do.
“Many Germans believe Bush only invaded Iraq for oil, and many Americans believe Germany’s Russia policy is determined by gas,” said Karsten D. Voigt, who coordinates German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry and who for years ran the German-Russian parliamentary group in the German Parliament. “Every German government since at least the 1970s has tried to bind Russia, and before that the Soviet Union, more closely with Europe.”
Sergei Kupriyanov, a representative of Gazprom, said, “Our cooperation began during the cold war,” referring to deals — opposed by the United States — that laid gas pipelines between Russia and Germany in the 1970s. “The Berlin Wall still existed,” he said. “Compared to what we had then, Georgia is just peanuts.”
Germans see not dependence on Russia, but interdependence. The European Union’s 27 nations account for 80 percent of the cumulative foreign investment in Russia, a fact starkly exposed — if the Kremlin ever forgot — by the flight of capital after the Georgia crisis.
The Europeans, after Georgia, angrily froze negotiations with Russia over a new partnership agreement. Barely 10 weeks later, they decided to resume the talks. “We cannot build a European architecture against Russia or without Russia, only with Russia,” said Alexander Rahr, director of the Russian/Eurasian program at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
While Germany needs Russia’s raw materials and covets the significant market there for its precision machine tools, Russia is equally dependent on European investment to diversify its economy, a fact driven home all too clearly for Russians now that the financial crisis has sent energy prices plunging.
In the city of Yaroslavl, an automotive company, the GAZ Group, still makes diesel truck engines in a factory first built in the waning days of czarist rule in 1916. The production model evokes Soviet times, starting with iron in the foundry on the site, with workers building almost the entire engine from scratch.
A short drive away, past clusters of birch trees, is a field of concrete, metal trusses and corrugated iron roofing. It is the beginning of a state-of-the-art production plant for the company’s new engine model, a project valued at $442 million.
The plant sits a few hours north of Moscow by car, but the names of the suppliers sound like a roll call of German industry, with most of the new machinery and production lines supplied by German companies like Grob-Werke and ThyssenKrupp Krause.
“Germany is, in terms of technology, expertise and know how in the automotive industry, I think the best in the world,” said Ruslan Grekov, the project director for the new engine in Yaroslavl. “Of course, Germany is different from Russia. The difference is good.”
Such sentiments might seem surprising, even jarring, in a country where, in Soviet times, Nazis were vilified in a daily diet of war movies.
But the bonds between Europe’s two largest countries were forged over centuries, as German nobles like Catherine the Great became Russian royalty and German generals led the czar’s armies. German craftsmen worked in Moscow while German farmers settled near the Volga River.
The relationship has been tempered on the German side with guilt over World War II and gratitude over German reunification.
But always the anchor has been business, with Germany’s technical skill complementing Russia’s vast resources. The German conglomerate Siemens laid the Russian state telegraph network in the 1850s. Stalin built Soviet industrial might in his first Five-Year Plan in large part with German machines.
The current global slowdown has sent ripples of fear across Russia about a possible repeat of the 1998 collapse of the ruble. The World Bank halved its expectation for Russian growth next year, but it was still 3 percent, whereas the German economy, already in recession, is expected to contract, making Russia all the more important as layoffs in Germany mount.
Trade between Russia and Germany grew 25 percent to $49.3 billion in the first half of the year. Russia is one of Germany’s fastest-growing markets. Last year, German exports to Russia totaled $36 billion, more than five times the $6.7 billion exported from the United States to Russia.
German businessmen not only work out of sales offices in Moscow or invest in the country’s rich oil and gas fields. They are all over — from Siberia to Yekaterinburg to St. Petersburg, with some 4,600 companies in all investing $13.2 billion, building factories and delivering machinery to Russians who aspire to be more than the raw-goods store for European neighbors.
Today, Siemens is supplying Russia with its first high-speed trains, known as the Velaro RUS. The contract is worth $758 million for Siemens, half for the trains and half for servicing.
The oligarch Roman Abramovich’s construction firm Infrastruktura announced this year that it had ordered the world’s largest drill from the German company Herrenknecht to bore tunnels in Moscow and near Sochi in preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
Igor Yurgens, executive board chairman at the Institute of Contemporary Development in Moscow, of which President Dimitri A. Medvedev is board chairman, said Germany was a strategic partner and the most patient investor in Russia’s future.
“We do not have laws in this country, but we have a lot of friendships, and friendship is more important than laws,” Mr. Yurgens said, in an interview in his Moscow office just off the city’s Garden Ring Road, where sputtering old Ladas inch through jams alongside late-model Mercedes sedans. “That’s historically so. And with Germans, this is the case.”
“On the background of this economic very strong cooperation and involvement, their criticism is taken a bit more lightly than the criticism of some others who do nothing at all, but just keep criticizing,” Mr. Yurgens added.
When Mr. Medvedev threatened after the American election to place new missiles in Kaliningrad, the location was a symbol of the painful, complex relationship between Russia and Germany. That island of Russian territory — awkwardly perched between the NATO members Poland and Lithuania — was the German city of Königsberg before it fell to the Soviets in the wake of World War II.
Yet in a sign of the opportunities presented by the Russian-German-American triangle, it was Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, from the usually Russia-friendly Social Democrats, who issued perhaps the sternest rebuff to Mr. Medvedev. It was “the wrong signal at the wrong time,” Mr. Steinmeier said the next day.
The incoming Obama administration, German officials say quietly, should take note. As indicated by Mr. Medvedev’s backpedaling since, the Russians apparently did.
miércoles, 19 de noviembre de 2008
¿Deuda de EEUU denominada en yenes? El 'bono Obama' podría suceder al 'bono Carter'
elEconomista.es 11Los economistas japoneses, cada vez más preocupados por la posibilidad de que Estados Unidos pague su enorme y creciente deuda en dólares, podrían pedir que los bonos del Tesoro se emitan en yenes, según recoge el Asia Times Online. Y es que aunque ahora parece poco probable que EEUU suspenda pagos, un dólar débil podría ser una ayuda para aliviar el peso de la deuda del país. China ha superado a Japón como mayor tenedor de bonos del Tesoro de EEUU.
"No hay ninguna duda de que el dólar se debilitará", dijo al periódico asiático Eisuke Sakakibara, profesor de la Waseda University. "El dólar está fuerte ahora por razones técnicas. El dinero que las firmas estadounidenses invirtieron por el mundo está siendo repatriado, provocando una compra de dólares. Pero una vez que esto termine, la moneda volverá a bajar", añadió Sakakibara.
De hecho, los economistas japoneses ya estarían pidiendo a Obama que emita deuda en yenes y otras monedas, según el Asia Times, lo que permitiría reducir el riesgo percibido de ser tenedor de bonos estadounidenses.
Ya lo hizo Carter
Esta idea, de todas formas, no es nueva porque el presidente Jimmy Carter ya lo hizo en la década de los 70 a consecuencia de las crisis del petróleo con los denominados Bonos Carter. Además, en 1978 emitió deuda denominada en marcos alemanes y francos suizos para atraer a más inversores.
"Estados Unidos se va a ver forzado a emitir bonos denominados en monedas extranjeras", explicó Kazuo Mizuno, de Mitsubishi UFJ Securities. "Estados Unidos no puede financiarse por sí mismo. El sistema financiero estadounidense no puede sobrevivir sin inversores extranjeros. Veremos Bonos Obama en el futuro", añadió.
El yen ha sido hasta ahora una de las monedas que más se han apreciado con la crisis financiera internacional, aupado por los inversores que deshacían sus posiciones de carry trade (pedir prestado en yenes por su bajo coste y cambiarlo por otras monedas para invertir en productos que rendían más que el tipo de interés pagado en Japón).
Así, la divisa nipona ha avanzado un 15% frente al dólar, un 33% frente al euro y un 53% frente a la libra. Así, según se revaloriza el yen disminuye el valor real de los activos de deuda denominada en dólares que compraron los inversores asiáticos, algo que no ocurriría con bonos denominados en yenes.:18 - 19/11/2008
"No hay ninguna duda de que el dólar se debilitará", dijo al periódico asiático Eisuke Sakakibara, profesor de la Waseda University. "El dólar está fuerte ahora por razones técnicas. El dinero que las firmas estadounidenses invirtieron por el mundo está siendo repatriado, provocando una compra de dólares. Pero una vez que esto termine, la moneda volverá a bajar", añadió Sakakibara.
De hecho, los economistas japoneses ya estarían pidiendo a Obama que emita deuda en yenes y otras monedas, según el Asia Times, lo que permitiría reducir el riesgo percibido de ser tenedor de bonos estadounidenses.
Ya lo hizo Carter
Esta idea, de todas formas, no es nueva porque el presidente Jimmy Carter ya lo hizo en la década de los 70 a consecuencia de las crisis del petróleo con los denominados Bonos Carter. Además, en 1978 emitió deuda denominada en marcos alemanes y francos suizos para atraer a más inversores.
"Estados Unidos se va a ver forzado a emitir bonos denominados en monedas extranjeras", explicó Kazuo Mizuno, de Mitsubishi UFJ Securities. "Estados Unidos no puede financiarse por sí mismo. El sistema financiero estadounidense no puede sobrevivir sin inversores extranjeros. Veremos Bonos Obama en el futuro", añadió.
El yen ha sido hasta ahora una de las monedas que más se han apreciado con la crisis financiera internacional, aupado por los inversores que deshacían sus posiciones de carry trade (pedir prestado en yenes por su bajo coste y cambiarlo por otras monedas para invertir en productos que rendían más que el tipo de interés pagado en Japón).
Así, la divisa nipona ha avanzado un 15% frente al dólar, un 33% frente al euro y un 53% frente a la libra. Así, según se revaloriza el yen disminuye el valor real de los activos de deuda denominada en dólares que compraron los inversores asiáticos, algo que no ocurriría con bonos denominados en yenes.:18 - 19/11/2008
viernes, 7 de noviembre de 2008
Los consejos de Panasonic y Sanyo aprueban una alianza de negocio y capital
Panasonic y Sanyo acordaron hoy en sendas reuniones de sus respectivos consejos de administración comenzar el proceso para una alianza de capital y de negocio entre las dos compañías.
Sanyo se convertirá en una subsidiaria de Panasonic, compañía conocida hasta el pasado octubre como Matsushita, y la firma resultante de la suma de ambas será la mayor del sector de la electrónica japonesa.
Panasonic concretará una oferta en enero para adquirir la mayoría de las acciones de Sanyo, después de negociar con los principales accionistas, los bancos japoneses Sumitomo Mitsui y Daiwa Securities SMBC, y el estadounidense Goldman Sachs Group. En 2006 Sanyo emitió 300.000 millones de yenes (3.039 millones de dólares) en acciones preferentes que compraron los tres bancos. Si esas acciones se convirtieran en acciones comunes, la participación supondría el 70% de los derechos de voto de la compañía.
Sumitomo Mitsui y Daiwa Securities están básicamente a favor de la intención de compra de Panasonic, según las fuentes de Kyodo, pero Goldman Sachs no ha mostrado una intención clara.
Si la operación se lleva a cabo con éxito Panasonic y Sanyo deberán solucionar la duplicación de operaciones como la producción de semiconductores y electrodomésticos, pero probablemente se mantendrán tanto los sistemas de operaciones, como la fuerza laboral y la marca de Sanyo.
Sanyo se convertirá en una subsidiaria de Panasonic, compañía conocida hasta el pasado octubre como Matsushita, y la firma resultante de la suma de ambas será la mayor del sector de la electrónica japonesa.
Panasonic concretará una oferta en enero para adquirir la mayoría de las acciones de Sanyo, después de negociar con los principales accionistas, los bancos japoneses Sumitomo Mitsui y Daiwa Securities SMBC, y el estadounidense Goldman Sachs Group. En 2006 Sanyo emitió 300.000 millones de yenes (3.039 millones de dólares) en acciones preferentes que compraron los tres bancos. Si esas acciones se convirtieran en acciones comunes, la participación supondría el 70% de los derechos de voto de la compañía.
Sumitomo Mitsui y Daiwa Securities están básicamente a favor de la intención de compra de Panasonic, según las fuentes de Kyodo, pero Goldman Sachs no ha mostrado una intención clara.
Si la operación se lleva a cabo con éxito Panasonic y Sanyo deberán solucionar la duplicación de operaciones como la producción de semiconductores y electrodomésticos, pero probablemente se mantendrán tanto los sistemas de operaciones, como la fuerza laboral y la marca de Sanyo.
lunes, 3 de noviembre de 2008
Algunas lecciones de la crisis japonesa
Publicado el 03-11-2008 , por José Carlos Díez. Economista jefe de InterMoney
En 1991, la bolsa japonesa y los precios inmobiliarios se desplomaron y provocaron la peor crisis de un país desarrollado desde la Gran Depresión. El sistema bancario había financiado toda aquella locura y el desplome del valor de los colaterales provocó una quiebra sistémica, cuyo saneamiento ha costado el 15% del PIB japonés.
La principal característica de la crisis fue la inacción, tanto de los responsables de la política económica como de las empresas y de los bancos.
Cuando comenzaron a tomar medidas, el sistema financiero estaba quebrado, la economía entró en una trampa de la liquidez keynesiana, la política monetaria perdió efectividad y el policy mix de política económica fue desastroso, especialmente la política cambiaria y fiscal que acabaron neutralizando sus efectos restando efectividad a las medidas. A continuación, se va analizar las consecuencias de la crisis, que más de tres lustros después mantienen a la economía nipona al borde de la deflación.
La deflación malignaLa deflación es una patología atípica y es lógico que los economistas nos preocupemos más de proteger a las economías de la inflación que es más habitual. Pero, Japón es un ejemplo de la deflación y sus efectos deben hacer que cualquier sociedad tome las medidas que sean necesarias para protegerse de ella.
La principal característica de la crisis fue la inacción, tanto de los responsables de la política económica como de las empresas y de los bancos.
Cuando comenzaron a tomar medidas, el sistema financiero estaba quebrado, la economía entró en una trampa de la liquidez keynesiana, la política monetaria perdió efectividad y el policy mix de política económica fue desastroso, especialmente la política cambiaria y fiscal que acabaron neutralizando sus efectos restando efectividad a las medidas. A continuación, se va analizar las consecuencias de la crisis, que más de tres lustros después mantienen a la economía nipona al borde de la deflación.
La deflación malignaLa deflación es una patología atípica y es lógico que los economistas nos preocupemos más de proteger a las economías de la inflación que es más habitual. Pero, Japón es un ejemplo de la deflación y sus efectos deben hacer que cualquier sociedad tome las medidas que sean necesarias para protegerse de ella.
En el gráfico 1 se puede observar la debilidad del crecimiento de del PIB que ha registrado un crecimiento promedio anual de 1,3% desde 2001 hasta 2007. Destaca la debilidad del consumo privado y la inversión y la fortaleza de las exportaciones.
Cuando las familias tienen expectativas deflacionistas retrasan sus decisiones de consumo, especialmente de bienes duraderos, ya que esperan que al año siguiente podrán comprar los bienes más baratos.
La debilidad de consumo estanca las ventas de las empresas y la deflación de precios, junto a salarios nominales rígidos a la baja, hunde los márgenes empresariales, lo cual elimina cualquier incentivo a invertir en nuevos proyectos empresariales e incluso en proteger a la capacidad instalada de su depreciación.
Esto explica que la tesis de Keynes en la teoría General fuera que ante la contracción de la demanda efectiva, tenía que ser el gasto público el que compensase los efectos de deflación para evitar en una caída en picado de la acumulación de capital que hundiese el crecimiento potencial.
Cuando las familias tienen expectativas deflacionistas retrasan sus decisiones de consumo, especialmente de bienes duraderos, ya que esperan que al año siguiente podrán comprar los bienes más baratos.
La debilidad de consumo estanca las ventas de las empresas y la deflación de precios, junto a salarios nominales rígidos a la baja, hunde los márgenes empresariales, lo cual elimina cualquier incentivo a invertir en nuevos proyectos empresariales e incluso en proteger a la capacidad instalada de su depreciación.
Esto explica que la tesis de Keynes en la teoría General fuera que ante la contracción de la demanda efectiva, tenía que ser el gasto público el que compensase los efectos de deflación para evitar en una caída en picado de la acumulación de capital que hundiese el crecimiento potencial.
Por fortuna para Japón, la burbuja se concentró en el precio de los activos inmobiliarios y de las acciones pero no se contagió al resto del mundo, por lo que gracias a su elevada capacidad tecnológica la economía puede mantener el crecimiento y la acumulación de capital vía exportaciones. Eso libró a Japón de la pobreza extrema que si se produjo en la Gran Depresión.
En el gráfico 2 se puede observar cómo el sector público tardó varios años en implementar políticas fiscales expansivas y cuando lo hizo fue ineficaz, al no priorizar el gasto en infraestructuras y acompañarlo de medidas de liberalización de sus economías para aumentar el crecimiento potencial.
ConclusionesAunque en la actual crisis también hay deflación de activos, por fortuna hay muchas diferencias que alejan el caso japonés del escenario central, aunque el riesgo sigue existiendo. La principal es que al ser una crisis de activos, el desplome de los mercados, especialmente de las bolsas, ha hecho que la sociedad sea consciente de la gravedad de la crisis y ha favorecida la acción de los Gobiernos.
Las primeras medidas han sido apuntalar el sistema financiero y recapitalizar a los bancos más afectados, pero ahora ha llegado la hora de la política fiscal. En las últimas décadas el paradigma liberal del minimalismo público «menos estado es más» ha primado la rebaja de impuestos. A partir de ahora, la incertidumbre es máxima y la bajada de impuestos puede ser destinada por las familias al ahorro, por lo que replicaríamos la trampa de la liquidez keynesiana que ha asolado Japón.
El gasto público tiene un efecto multiplicador y acaba arras-trando al sector privado al reactivar el empleo y las rentas salariales. Lo relevante es tener presente que el Estado no puede suplantar al sector privado permanentemente y que debe priorizar el gasto en infraestructuras. El anuncio de fuertes emisiones de deuda pública mundial ha provocado un aumento de las pendientes de las curvas de tipos, lo cual nos aleja del caso japonés. Sin duda, una gran noticia.
En el gráfico 2 se puede observar cómo el sector público tardó varios años en implementar políticas fiscales expansivas y cuando lo hizo fue ineficaz, al no priorizar el gasto en infraestructuras y acompañarlo de medidas de liberalización de sus economías para aumentar el crecimiento potencial.
ConclusionesAunque en la actual crisis también hay deflación de activos, por fortuna hay muchas diferencias que alejan el caso japonés del escenario central, aunque el riesgo sigue existiendo. La principal es que al ser una crisis de activos, el desplome de los mercados, especialmente de las bolsas, ha hecho que la sociedad sea consciente de la gravedad de la crisis y ha favorecida la acción de los Gobiernos.
Las primeras medidas han sido apuntalar el sistema financiero y recapitalizar a los bancos más afectados, pero ahora ha llegado la hora de la política fiscal. En las últimas décadas el paradigma liberal del minimalismo público «menos estado es más» ha primado la rebaja de impuestos. A partir de ahora, la incertidumbre es máxima y la bajada de impuestos puede ser destinada por las familias al ahorro, por lo que replicaríamos la trampa de la liquidez keynesiana que ha asolado Japón.
El gasto público tiene un efecto multiplicador y acaba arras-trando al sector privado al reactivar el empleo y las rentas salariales. Lo relevante es tener presente que el Estado no puede suplantar al sector privado permanentemente y que debe priorizar el gasto en infraestructuras. El anuncio de fuertes emisiones de deuda pública mundial ha provocado un aumento de las pendientes de las curvas de tipos, lo cual nos aleja del caso japonés. Sin duda, una gran noticia.
miércoles, 22 de octubre de 2008
Santander writes a new chapter as it emerges as banking predator
By Victor Mallet
Published: October 21 2008 03:00 Last updated: October 21 2008 03:00
Emilio Botín, chairman of Santander and the third person of that name to head the Spanish bank since it was founded in 1857, makes the art of banking sound deceptively simple even in the midst of a global financial crisis.
The world's banks, Mr Botín said last week, needed to focus on customers, make the most of recurrent business, manage risks prudently and reinforce corporate governance.
Under Mr Botín, now 74, Santander has expanded rapidly in Europe and the Americas over the past two decades. Yet envious executives at rival banks are asking whether Mr Botín, for all his sermons, has overreached himself with his latest round of acquisitions.
Merrill Lynch yesterday listed Santander as one of the big European banks that might need to raise more capital.
Shares in Santander, the biggest bank in the eurozone by market capitalisation, have been pummelled along with those of other banks during the crisis.
Santander, however, has emerged not only as a survivor but as a predator exploiting the credit crunch to purchase weaker banks.
José Antonio Alvarez, chief financial officer, said recently that Santander could benefit from a "winner takes all" market in the crisis "by rescuing falling banks at attractive prices".
Five days later, Santander announced a $1.9bn deal to buy Sovereign Bancorp of the US.
Earlier, Mr Botín had boasted to shareholders: "We are really in a magnificent position compared with our competitors."
Having bought Abbey National, Alliance & Leicester and the deposits and branches of the nationalised Bradford & Bingley, Santander is now a force in British retail banking as well as in Spain and Latin America.
Santiago López Díaz, an analyst for Credit Suisse, says the crisis has given Santander the chance to make acquisitions far more cheaply than in its dozens of previous deals.
"Right now Santander, in relative terms, is in a much better position than most of the European banks," he says.
Santander has succeeded with the help of a lot of skill and a little luck.
As Mr Botín likes to remind his listeners, risk control requires hard work, not fancy innovations.
Five directors on Santander's risk management committee meet twice a week for at least four hours. The bank's good fortune in this crisis is in its focus on retail rather than investment banking, and in the Bank of Spain's determined opposition as national regulator to the off-balance-sheet assets that turned toxic and sank banks elsewhere.
That still leaves Santander, which aims to increase net profit this year by 10 per cent to €10bn ($13.3bn), exposed to any weakness in key markets such as the UK, Spain and Latin America, and to the wholesale financing drought that is affecting the entire international banking system.
Even in these areas, however, analysts believe the risks are limited.
In Spain, for example, property developers, the borrowers most exposed to the country's residential property crash, account for only 6.8 per cent of Santander's portfolio of well provisioned Spanish assets.
Santander is a heavy user of wholesale finance - it needs more than a quarter of the €80bn that matures and needs refinancing for Spanish banks next year, according to one market analyst - but it has industrial assets to sell if needed.
Its senior executives, furthermore, helped persuade José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister, to promise up to €150bn in asset purchases and state guarantees to keep the country's banks liquid up to the end of 2009.
"We feel comfortable with their [Santander's] liquidity position," says Maria Cabanyes of Moody's, the credit rating agency.
One concern is that Santander might have extended too much capital on acquisitions, leaving it vulnerable in a world populated by rival banks that have received emergency capital injections from their respective governments.
The latest deals, however, have only a small impact on Santander's core capital ratio - a reduction of 20 basis points in the case of the Sovereign deal - and senior executives say they will be devoting their time to consolidating what they have bought and rebuilding core capital from just under 6 per cent now to over 7 per cent at the end of next year.
Thereafter, the chances are that Santander, once an obscure provincial bank, will set out again on the global acquisition trail under Mr Botín or his successors.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Published: October 21 2008 03:00 Last updated: October 21 2008 03:00
Emilio Botín, chairman of Santander and the third person of that name to head the Spanish bank since it was founded in 1857, makes the art of banking sound deceptively simple even in the midst of a global financial crisis.
The world's banks, Mr Botín said last week, needed to focus on customers, make the most of recurrent business, manage risks prudently and reinforce corporate governance.
Under Mr Botín, now 74, Santander has expanded rapidly in Europe and the Americas over the past two decades. Yet envious executives at rival banks are asking whether Mr Botín, for all his sermons, has overreached himself with his latest round of acquisitions.
Merrill Lynch yesterday listed Santander as one of the big European banks that might need to raise more capital.
Shares in Santander, the biggest bank in the eurozone by market capitalisation, have been pummelled along with those of other banks during the crisis.
Santander, however, has emerged not only as a survivor but as a predator exploiting the credit crunch to purchase weaker banks.
José Antonio Alvarez, chief financial officer, said recently that Santander could benefit from a "winner takes all" market in the crisis "by rescuing falling banks at attractive prices".
Five days later, Santander announced a $1.9bn deal to buy Sovereign Bancorp of the US.
Earlier, Mr Botín had boasted to shareholders: "We are really in a magnificent position compared with our competitors."
Having bought Abbey National, Alliance & Leicester and the deposits and branches of the nationalised Bradford & Bingley, Santander is now a force in British retail banking as well as in Spain and Latin America.
Santiago López Díaz, an analyst for Credit Suisse, says the crisis has given Santander the chance to make acquisitions far more cheaply than in its dozens of previous deals.
"Right now Santander, in relative terms, is in a much better position than most of the European banks," he says.
Santander has succeeded with the help of a lot of skill and a little luck.
As Mr Botín likes to remind his listeners, risk control requires hard work, not fancy innovations.
Five directors on Santander's risk management committee meet twice a week for at least four hours. The bank's good fortune in this crisis is in its focus on retail rather than investment banking, and in the Bank of Spain's determined opposition as national regulator to the off-balance-sheet assets that turned toxic and sank banks elsewhere.
That still leaves Santander, which aims to increase net profit this year by 10 per cent to €10bn ($13.3bn), exposed to any weakness in key markets such as the UK, Spain and Latin America, and to the wholesale financing drought that is affecting the entire international banking system.
Even in these areas, however, analysts believe the risks are limited.
In Spain, for example, property developers, the borrowers most exposed to the country's residential property crash, account for only 6.8 per cent of Santander's portfolio of well provisioned Spanish assets.
Santander is a heavy user of wholesale finance - it needs more than a quarter of the €80bn that matures and needs refinancing for Spanish banks next year, according to one market analyst - but it has industrial assets to sell if needed.
Its senior executives, furthermore, helped persuade José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister, to promise up to €150bn in asset purchases and state guarantees to keep the country's banks liquid up to the end of 2009.
"We feel comfortable with their [Santander's] liquidity position," says Maria Cabanyes of Moody's, the credit rating agency.
One concern is that Santander might have extended too much capital on acquisitions, leaving it vulnerable in a world populated by rival banks that have received emergency capital injections from their respective governments.
The latest deals, however, have only a small impact on Santander's core capital ratio - a reduction of 20 basis points in the case of the Sovereign deal - and senior executives say they will be devoting their time to consolidating what they have bought and rebuilding core capital from just under 6 per cent now to over 7 per cent at the end of next year.
Thereafter, the chances are that Santander, once an obscure provincial bank, will set out again on the global acquisition trail under Mr Botín or his successors.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
martes, 21 de octubre de 2008
Are we in danger of turning Japanese?
Japan's stock market lost more than three quarters of its capital over two decades - it might be enough to bring tears to the eyes of even the most inscrutable investor.
'Pushing on a string'' might sound like a daft if harmless activity but I fear it will be seriously bad news for all of us if the phrase ever enters mainstream usage.
Devotees of the dismal science of economics use it to describe the point at which interest rate cuts and other attempts to boost activity - such as pumping billions into bust banks - fail to restore confidence.
For a Chancellor or Prime Minister to discover he is pushing on a string is akin to a sailor being blown onto a leeward shore and, seeing he is running out of sea room, discovering that the auxiliary engine will not start.
I first heard the phrase nearly 20 years ago when the Japanese stock market began its long decline from a peak of 38,000 in the Nikkei index, despite a series of increasingly desperate rate cuts. It came to mind again this week when the Tokyo market fell by another 11pc overnight to stand below 8,500 on Thursday. Losing more than three quarters of your capital over two decades might be enough to bring tears to the eyes of even the most inscrutable investor.
While we should always take a long-term view of equity-based investment, there is a limit to what human flesh can bear - or, as the economist John Maynard Keynes put it: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.''
Here and now, the Japanese experience is a terrifying reminder that some stock market sagas do not have a happy ending - as I pointed out in this newspaper in August, 2007, when the credit crunch began to bite.
Again, in an article headed "Western banks sink in the shadow of the rising sun'' in March this year, I wrote: "First there was Northern Rock in Newcastle; now there is Bear Stearns in New York. With banks being bailed out by taxpayers on both sides of the Atlantic, no wonder investors have that sinking feeling.
"While government intervention has prevented either bank going bust, it might be dangerously complacent to underestimate the seriousness of the global credit crisis. At worst, we could be looking at a repeat of what happened in Japan 19 years ago. Then, as now, banks got into trouble with rash lending against what proved to be grossly inflated property values.
"Before the bubble burst, the ground occupied by the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was valued at rather more than all the real estate in California and the shares on the Nikkei index were briefly priced at more than all those in America.
"Bearish analysts say the main reason that the market has failed to recover is that Japanese banks were propped up by government intervention, which allowed huge losses on bad debts to remain unrealised. International institutions were not fooled and the guilty banks have been unable to borrow - or lend - on normal terms since then.
"Once confidence has been destroyed it is very difficult to restore. Without confidence, there can be no credit - at any price.
"Nobody knows what share prices will do next week or next year. That does not matter for most pension savers who do not plan to retire next week or next year. History strongly suggests the best returns will be received by those who wait for the odds to work in their favour. Selling now will certainly turn paper losses into real ones.''
That is as true now as it was then. Unfortunately, it is also a fact that shares in London have lost about a third of their value since then.
No wonder more people are beginning to worry about parallels with the Land of the Rising Sun - and whether its past may foreshadow our future.
Devotees of the dismal science of economics use it to describe the point at which interest rate cuts and other attempts to boost activity - such as pumping billions into bust banks - fail to restore confidence.
For a Chancellor or Prime Minister to discover he is pushing on a string is akin to a sailor being blown onto a leeward shore and, seeing he is running out of sea room, discovering that the auxiliary engine will not start.
I first heard the phrase nearly 20 years ago when the Japanese stock market began its long decline from a peak of 38,000 in the Nikkei index, despite a series of increasingly desperate rate cuts. It came to mind again this week when the Tokyo market fell by another 11pc overnight to stand below 8,500 on Thursday. Losing more than three quarters of your capital over two decades might be enough to bring tears to the eyes of even the most inscrutable investor.
While we should always take a long-term view of equity-based investment, there is a limit to what human flesh can bear - or, as the economist John Maynard Keynes put it: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.''
Here and now, the Japanese experience is a terrifying reminder that some stock market sagas do not have a happy ending - as I pointed out in this newspaper in August, 2007, when the credit crunch began to bite.
Again, in an article headed "Western banks sink in the shadow of the rising sun'' in March this year, I wrote: "First there was Northern Rock in Newcastle; now there is Bear Stearns in New York. With banks being bailed out by taxpayers on both sides of the Atlantic, no wonder investors have that sinking feeling.
"While government intervention has prevented either bank going bust, it might be dangerously complacent to underestimate the seriousness of the global credit crisis. At worst, we could be looking at a repeat of what happened in Japan 19 years ago. Then, as now, banks got into trouble with rash lending against what proved to be grossly inflated property values.
"Before the bubble burst, the ground occupied by the Imperial Palace in Tokyo was valued at rather more than all the real estate in California and the shares on the Nikkei index were briefly priced at more than all those in America.
"Bearish analysts say the main reason that the market has failed to recover is that Japanese banks were propped up by government intervention, which allowed huge losses on bad debts to remain unrealised. International institutions were not fooled and the guilty banks have been unable to borrow - or lend - on normal terms since then.
"Once confidence has been destroyed it is very difficult to restore. Without confidence, there can be no credit - at any price.
"Nobody knows what share prices will do next week or next year. That does not matter for most pension savers who do not plan to retire next week or next year. History strongly suggests the best returns will be received by those who wait for the odds to work in their favour. Selling now will certainly turn paper losses into real ones.''
That is as true now as it was then. Unfortunately, it is also a fact that shares in London have lost about a third of their value since then.
No wonder more people are beginning to worry about parallels with the Land of the Rising Sun - and whether its past may foreshadow our future.
Financial crisis is shifting power to Asia, says HSBC boss Stephen Green
THE crisis consuming global markets is part of a fundamental shift of power from the US to emerging economies in China and the Middle East, according to Stephen Green, chairman of HSBC.
By Katherine Griffiths, Financial Services Editor Last Updated: 7:30AM BST 21 Oct 2008
Speaking at a financial conference in Dubai, the banker also condemned the financial model that has led to the crisis as "bankrupt".
The crisis, probably the worst since the 1929 Wall Street crash, will offer several lessons, Mr Green said, but added that the underlying trend of movement from West to East would "not be derailed".
"The rebalancing of the global economy towards Asia, home to over half the world's population, and its implications for the Middle East, is the shift that will affect financial markets most profoundly," he said.
He pointed to the implosion in sub-prime mortgage lending in the US as the flashpoint but added it was "far from the only villain in town".
"The complexity and opacity of certain financial instruments reached a point where even senior and experienced banks had trouble understanding them, let alone investors," he said.
Sub-prime lending exploded because bankers found ways to package up the debts and sell them on. Driving the process was Western consumption, fuelled by cash pumped into the US and elsewhere from developing countries, where savings surpluses have built up, Mr Green said.
The HSBC chairman also criticised the bonus culture at banks, "which has so often encouraged too much opacity and excessive risk-taking".
He added that the "high-leverage model of finance is bankrupt" and said securitisation of loans would survive. "You cannot bring the whole of the world's capital markets back on to banks' balance sheets."
HSBC, one of the world's best capitalised major banks, has refocused on Asia and developing markets after a disastrous foray into US sub-prime lending. However, problems at its US sub-prime division, Household International, emerged much earlier than at other lenders and the bank is seen as having weathered the storm well.
HSBC yesterday struck a £351m deal to buy almost 90pc of an Indonesian lender, Bank Ekonomi.
By Katherine Griffiths, Financial Services Editor Last Updated: 7:30AM BST 21 Oct 2008
Speaking at a financial conference in Dubai, the banker also condemned the financial model that has led to the crisis as "bankrupt".
The crisis, probably the worst since the 1929 Wall Street crash, will offer several lessons, Mr Green said, but added that the underlying trend of movement from West to East would "not be derailed".
"The rebalancing of the global economy towards Asia, home to over half the world's population, and its implications for the Middle East, is the shift that will affect financial markets most profoundly," he said.
He pointed to the implosion in sub-prime mortgage lending in the US as the flashpoint but added it was "far from the only villain in town".
"The complexity and opacity of certain financial instruments reached a point where even senior and experienced banks had trouble understanding them, let alone investors," he said.
Sub-prime lending exploded because bankers found ways to package up the debts and sell them on. Driving the process was Western consumption, fuelled by cash pumped into the US and elsewhere from developing countries, where savings surpluses have built up, Mr Green said.
The HSBC chairman also criticised the bonus culture at banks, "which has so often encouraged too much opacity and excessive risk-taking".
He added that the "high-leverage model of finance is bankrupt" and said securitisation of loans would survive. "You cannot bring the whole of the world's capital markets back on to banks' balance sheets."
HSBC, one of the world's best capitalised major banks, has refocused on Asia and developing markets after a disastrous foray into US sub-prime lending. However, problems at its US sub-prime division, Household International, emerged much earlier than at other lenders and the bank is seen as having weathered the storm well.
HSBC yesterday struck a £351m deal to buy almost 90pc of an Indonesian lender, Bank Ekonomi.
viernes, 10 de octubre de 2008
Nepotism?
Diet 'juniors' and Japan's politics of descent
By PHILIP BRASOR
One of the busiest people on TV right now is Daigo Naito, a 30-year-old who dresses and gesticulates like a rock star while speaking in the tones of a narcotized 16-year-old. Daigo isn't a comedian, though his droning delivery elicits laughs, and he's not really a rock star, though he did start his show biz career with the intention of becoming one. His ubiquity is based on one thing: pedigree.
Daigo is the grandson of late Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, and his career as a TV star took off when Takeshita's widow gave him permission to use grandpa's name when selling himself as . . . whatever. For a decade before that, Daigo struggled to make it in the world of visual-kei, a rock subgenre whose musicians dress like manga characters and play sweetened heavy metal. He fronted a group called Jzeil (pronounced "jail") and recorded an album written and produced by superstar Kyosuke Himuro, but nothing came of it. As soon as he revealed that he was the grandson of one of the most notorious "dons" of the Liberal Democratic Party, however, offers for television work poured in.
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Progeny of famous people are as common in show business as divorce lawyers, but most "juniors" put in the appearance of having some sort of skill, be it acting, singing or weather reporting. Daigo has only the Takeshita name, which isn't his since his mother, Noboru's daughter, gave it up when she married. His blase-rocker act is meant to be an ironic comment on his respectable lineage, but there's no disrespect involved. Daigo owes his dead grandfather his livelihood.
Daigo could have become a politician, and he may run for office someday after his entertainment career dries up. As with show biz, the sons and daughters of politicians don't need talent or experience to join the "family business," and it's pretty easy. According to a recent editorial in the Asahi Shimbun, "the starting line for seshu (descendant) candidates is much closer to the finish line than it is for other candidates."
Since seshu candidates have ready-made local support and an existing political machine, their opponents have their work cut out for them. Over decades, the number of seshu politicians has snowballed, which means the government has turned into a club whose members possess the same narrow interests and values, which aren't necessarily shared by average voters. The Asahi says that the Lower House of the Diet is now about 30 percent seshu, while the Sankei Shimbun reports that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is almost 50 percent seshu. Eighty percent of Lower House candidates in 2005 who happened to be the children or grandchildren of national politicians were victorious.
The media has never ignored this tendency, but since the process that makes it possible is democratic in principle, criticism is muted. Besides, seshu politicians are by definition celebrities, which makes it more fun to cover them. The new Aso Cabinet, however, has provoked more than the usual concern since 11 of the 18 ministers, including Aso himself, are seshu politicians. Not only that, the last four prime ministers have been seshu politicians, with the most recent three either sons or grandsons of past prime ministers.
None of Junichiro Koizumi's forebears made it to the top, but he may be the consummate seshu politician. He is the third generation of his family to represent his district in Kanagawa Prefecture, and now his second son, Shinjiro, is being groomed for his seat, since his oldest boy has already gone the Daigo route and become an actor. Koizumi Sr.'s arrogant sense of entitlement even shocks some members of the LDP. Former Nagano governor and professional gadfly Yasuo Tanaka has announced he will run against Shinjiro, since the only person who can beat a junior is a celebrity.
In an interview in the Sankei, political analyst Taichi Sakaiya explained that the LDP's preference for less risky candidates favors seshu politicians, who attain Cabinet posts sooner than nonseshu politicians — and not because they start their careers earlier. The LDP contains competing factions, and it's difficult to satisfy all of them through strategic ministry appointments. No one in the LDP, however, objects when seshu colleagues are appointed before nonseshu colleagues who have been in the Diet longer. There is no "jealousy," says Sakaiya, who believes that Aso appointed so many seshu ministers in order to avoid intraparty strife prior to the next general election.
Juniors are also said to be insulated from everyday reality, which is why that reporter last month asked former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda if he had ever looked at himself objectively. Fukuda, the son of former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, had no idea what the reporter was getting at and uncharacteristically lost his composure. This goes along with Sakaiya's comment that seshu politicians tend to be incautious with comments because they are always surrounded by like-minded people, but the practice of shooting from the hip seems general in the LDP regardless of whether or not dad was a politician.
Nariaki Nakayama, who quit his transport ministry post after only five days due to outrageous remarks he made about Japan's largest teachers union and other things, is not a seshu politician, but his ascendancy in the LDP had much to do with his older wife, Kyoko, an Upper House member who achieved political stardom when she became the government's expert on the North Korean abduction issue. Supposedly, Nakayama believed his wife's favorable reputation gave him license to rail against things he felt strongly about.
Last week the pundits on TBS's "wide show" "Ping Pong" speculated that Kyoko was busy making the rounds of people her husband had offended and apologizing for his remarks, like a mother visiting the neighbors after her little boy misbehaves in public. You don't have to be a junior to be a spoiled brat.
By PHILIP BRASOR
One of the busiest people on TV right now is Daigo Naito, a 30-year-old who dresses and gesticulates like a rock star while speaking in the tones of a narcotized 16-year-old. Daigo isn't a comedian, though his droning delivery elicits laughs, and he's not really a rock star, though he did start his show biz career with the intention of becoming one. His ubiquity is based on one thing: pedigree.
Daigo is the grandson of late Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, and his career as a TV star took off when Takeshita's widow gave him permission to use grandpa's name when selling himself as . . . whatever. For a decade before that, Daigo struggled to make it in the world of visual-kei, a rock subgenre whose musicians dress like manga characters and play sweetened heavy metal. He fronted a group called Jzeil (pronounced "jail") and recorded an album written and produced by superstar Kyosuke Himuro, but nothing came of it. As soon as he revealed that he was the grandson of one of the most notorious "dons" of the Liberal Democratic Party, however, offers for television work poured in.
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Progeny of famous people are as common in show business as divorce lawyers, but most "juniors" put in the appearance of having some sort of skill, be it acting, singing or weather reporting. Daigo has only the Takeshita name, which isn't his since his mother, Noboru's daughter, gave it up when she married. His blase-rocker act is meant to be an ironic comment on his respectable lineage, but there's no disrespect involved. Daigo owes his dead grandfather his livelihood.
Daigo could have become a politician, and he may run for office someday after his entertainment career dries up. As with show biz, the sons and daughters of politicians don't need talent or experience to join the "family business," and it's pretty easy. According to a recent editorial in the Asahi Shimbun, "the starting line for seshu (descendant) candidates is much closer to the finish line than it is for other candidates."
Since seshu candidates have ready-made local support and an existing political machine, their opponents have their work cut out for them. Over decades, the number of seshu politicians has snowballed, which means the government has turned into a club whose members possess the same narrow interests and values, which aren't necessarily shared by average voters. The Asahi says that the Lower House of the Diet is now about 30 percent seshu, while the Sankei Shimbun reports that the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is almost 50 percent seshu. Eighty percent of Lower House candidates in 2005 who happened to be the children or grandchildren of national politicians were victorious.
The media has never ignored this tendency, but since the process that makes it possible is democratic in principle, criticism is muted. Besides, seshu politicians are by definition celebrities, which makes it more fun to cover them. The new Aso Cabinet, however, has provoked more than the usual concern since 11 of the 18 ministers, including Aso himself, are seshu politicians. Not only that, the last four prime ministers have been seshu politicians, with the most recent three either sons or grandsons of past prime ministers.
None of Junichiro Koizumi's forebears made it to the top, but he may be the consummate seshu politician. He is the third generation of his family to represent his district in Kanagawa Prefecture, and now his second son, Shinjiro, is being groomed for his seat, since his oldest boy has already gone the Daigo route and become an actor. Koizumi Sr.'s arrogant sense of entitlement even shocks some members of the LDP. Former Nagano governor and professional gadfly Yasuo Tanaka has announced he will run against Shinjiro, since the only person who can beat a junior is a celebrity.
In an interview in the Sankei, political analyst Taichi Sakaiya explained that the LDP's preference for less risky candidates favors seshu politicians, who attain Cabinet posts sooner than nonseshu politicians — and not because they start their careers earlier. The LDP contains competing factions, and it's difficult to satisfy all of them through strategic ministry appointments. No one in the LDP, however, objects when seshu colleagues are appointed before nonseshu colleagues who have been in the Diet longer. There is no "jealousy," says Sakaiya, who believes that Aso appointed so many seshu ministers in order to avoid intraparty strife prior to the next general election.
Juniors are also said to be insulated from everyday reality, which is why that reporter last month asked former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda if he had ever looked at himself objectively. Fukuda, the son of former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, had no idea what the reporter was getting at and uncharacteristically lost his composure. This goes along with Sakaiya's comment that seshu politicians tend to be incautious with comments because they are always surrounded by like-minded people, but the practice of shooting from the hip seems general in the LDP regardless of whether or not dad was a politician.
Nariaki Nakayama, who quit his transport ministry post after only five days due to outrageous remarks he made about Japan's largest teachers union and other things, is not a seshu politician, but his ascendancy in the LDP had much to do with his older wife, Kyoko, an Upper House member who achieved political stardom when she became the government's expert on the North Korean abduction issue. Supposedly, Nakayama believed his wife's favorable reputation gave him license to rail against things he felt strongly about.
Last week the pundits on TBS's "wide show" "Ping Pong" speculated that Kyoko was busy making the rounds of people her husband had offended and apologizing for his remarks, like a mother visiting the neighbors after her little boy misbehaves in public. You don't have to be a junior to be a spoiled brat.
Another one bites the dust! Vol.2
La aseguradora Yamato, primera financiera japonesa en quiebra.
Efe - Yokio - 10/10/2008
Según la agencia local Kyodo, la compañía presentó hoy su solicitud de bancarrota a las autoridades niponas después de que la Bolsa de Tokio cayera en picado durante toda esta semana hasta acumular pérdidas de más del 40% desde el inicio del 2008.
La compañía japonesa, cuyas deudas ascienden a 269.500 millones de yenes (2.719 millones de dólares), pidió amparo a la Corte judicial de Tokio bajo la ley promulgada en el año 2000 para la protección de instituciones financieras con problemas. Esa ley permite que ese tribunal dé la orden de que se mantengan los activos de la aseguradora.
Tras el anuncio de hoy, Yamato se ha convertido en la octava compañía de seguros japonesa que quiebra desde el final de la II Guerra Mundial y en la primera compañía financiera que anuncia su bancarrota desde que la aseguradora Tokyo Life Insurance cayera en el 2001.
Yamato Life disponía de valores por un total de 283.100 millones de yenes (2.857,6 millones de dólares) y de pólizas de seguro valoradas en 1,07 billones de yenes (10.856 millones de dólares) a finales del año fiscal 2007, que finalizó en marzo del 2008, según el diario "Nikkei".
Efe - Yokio - 10/10/2008
Según la agencia local Kyodo, la compañía presentó hoy su solicitud de bancarrota a las autoridades niponas después de que la Bolsa de Tokio cayera en picado durante toda esta semana hasta acumular pérdidas de más del 40% desde el inicio del 2008.
La compañía japonesa, cuyas deudas ascienden a 269.500 millones de yenes (2.719 millones de dólares), pidió amparo a la Corte judicial de Tokio bajo la ley promulgada en el año 2000 para la protección de instituciones financieras con problemas. Esa ley permite que ese tribunal dé la orden de que se mantengan los activos de la aseguradora.
Tras el anuncio de hoy, Yamato se ha convertido en la octava compañía de seguros japonesa que quiebra desde el final de la II Guerra Mundial y en la primera compañía financiera que anuncia su bancarrota desde que la aseguradora Tokyo Life Insurance cayera en el 2001.
Yamato Life disponía de valores por un total de 283.100 millones de yenes (2.857,6 millones de dólares) y de pólizas de seguro valoradas en 1,07 billones de yenes (10.856 millones de dólares) a finales del año fiscal 2007, que finalizó en marzo del 2008, según el diario "Nikkei".
martes, 7 de octubre de 2008
Japan Version Of Subprime Crisis May Be Emerging
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Re-plus Inc., a rent guarantor, has gone bust amid successive real estate-related business failures, prompting worried industry officials to see the bankruptcy as heralding the possible onset of a Japanese version of the U.S. subprime loan crisis.
While the crisis has forced a large number of Americans to lose their homes, the officials warn that a similar consequence may be awaiting Japan.
Re-plus went down with liabilities totaling 32.5 billion yen. Although the sum is considerably smaller than the 255.8 billion yen left behind by Urban Corp. -- the biggest bankruptcy in Japan so far this year -- the rental home market is gravely concerned about the impact of Re-plus' failure due to its business model.
The presence of Re-plus has become noticeable recently in the market for property funds as the manager of Re-plus Residential Investment Inc., a real estate investment trust, or REIT.
Re-plus is thought to have the biggest market share in its core business of guaranteeing rents for homes. According to data released by the company, it had 600,000 guarantee contracts as of the end of June.
A rent guarantor pays rents for clients when they are unable to pay them. Demand for the service has grown sharply among people unable to find co-signers.
Re-plus receives warranty fees equivalent to half of monthly rents from clients in the first year and 10,000 yen a year in the following years.
As long as the payment ability of applicants for the service is accurately examined, the business goes smoothly. However, the screening of applications is "lax" at many guarantors, said an executive at a real estate agent.
Re-plus started running into financial difficulty around June, often failing to make payments to landlords on time. Although the company in August attributed the delay in payments to a computer system glitch, it failed to meet obligations at the end of the month.
On Sept. 24, Re-plus went under as a sharp increase in clients late on rents made it impossible for the firm to make payments to landlords.
A key question is why the delinquency of rents has increased so rapidly.
A large number of condominiums have been put on the market for rental homes because they had been on construction binges until last summer. A glut in the market for rental condos has allowed a large number of people to move in only with rent guarantee contracts requiring no security deposits, according to the president of a real estate fund.
The collapse of Re-plus shows that the market for real estate investment has grown sharply due in part to rent guarantors' lax screening of applications.
Another key question is what will happen to Re-plus' 600,000 clients. While they are unlikely to be forced out of their homes anytime soon due to legal protection, they will need to conclude new contracts with other rent guarantors or find co-signers.
As landlords have become reluctant to accept guarantees from guarantor service companies, they may well increasingly reject new lease contracts.
Because rent guarantee services are often used by people with low creditworthiness, Japan may witness its own version of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.
The failure of Re-plus casts a shadow over the future of Japan's residential market.
Translated from an article written by Nikkei staff writer Kazuhiro Kida
(The Nikkei Veritas September 28 edition)
While the crisis has forced a large number of Americans to lose their homes, the officials warn that a similar consequence may be awaiting Japan.
Re-plus went down with liabilities totaling 32.5 billion yen. Although the sum is considerably smaller than the 255.8 billion yen left behind by Urban Corp. -- the biggest bankruptcy in Japan so far this year -- the rental home market is gravely concerned about the impact of Re-plus' failure due to its business model.
The presence of Re-plus has become noticeable recently in the market for property funds as the manager of Re-plus Residential Investment Inc., a real estate investment trust, or REIT.
Re-plus is thought to have the biggest market share in its core business of guaranteeing rents for homes. According to data released by the company, it had 600,000 guarantee contracts as of the end of June.
A rent guarantor pays rents for clients when they are unable to pay them. Demand for the service has grown sharply among people unable to find co-signers.
Re-plus receives warranty fees equivalent to half of monthly rents from clients in the first year and 10,000 yen a year in the following years.
As long as the payment ability of applicants for the service is accurately examined, the business goes smoothly. However, the screening of applications is "lax" at many guarantors, said an executive at a real estate agent.
Re-plus started running into financial difficulty around June, often failing to make payments to landlords on time. Although the company in August attributed the delay in payments to a computer system glitch, it failed to meet obligations at the end of the month.
On Sept. 24, Re-plus went under as a sharp increase in clients late on rents made it impossible for the firm to make payments to landlords.
A key question is why the delinquency of rents has increased so rapidly.
A large number of condominiums have been put on the market for rental homes because they had been on construction binges until last summer. A glut in the market for rental condos has allowed a large number of people to move in only with rent guarantee contracts requiring no security deposits, according to the president of a real estate fund.
The collapse of Re-plus shows that the market for real estate investment has grown sharply due in part to rent guarantors' lax screening of applications.
Another key question is what will happen to Re-plus' 600,000 clients. While they are unlikely to be forced out of their homes anytime soon due to legal protection, they will need to conclude new contracts with other rent guarantors or find co-signers.
As landlords have become reluctant to accept guarantees from guarantor service companies, they may well increasingly reject new lease contracts.
Because rent guarantee services are often used by people with low creditworthiness, Japan may witness its own version of the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.
The failure of Re-plus casts a shadow over the future of Japan's residential market.
Translated from an article written by Nikkei staff writer Kazuhiro Kida
(The Nikkei Veritas September 28 edition)
viernes, 3 de octubre de 2008
Algunos indicadores de "deceleración" económica
Unilever cierra la fábrica de Frigo en Barcelona y despide a 268 personas
La caída de las ventas envía a casa a 4.700 trabajadores de Seat
Continúan los despidos en el sector automoción
ERE en Bridgstone sobre el 64% de la plantilla
Las suspensiones de pagos se triplican en el tercer trimestre
Un estudio pronostica que las dificultades para las empresas en suspensión seguirán hasta 2010
UBS recorta 2.000 empleos
Vamos que nos vamos amigos...
La caída de las ventas envía a casa a 4.700 trabajadores de Seat
Continúan los despidos en el sector automoción
ERE en Bridgstone sobre el 64% de la plantilla
Las suspensiones de pagos se triplican en el tercer trimestre
Un estudio pronostica que las dificultades para las empresas en suspensión seguirán hasta 2010
UBS recorta 2.000 empleos
Vamos que nos vamos amigos...
martes, 30 de septiembre de 2008
Una de cal y otra de arena...
Time for central bankers to take Spanish lessons
By Gillian Tett
Not many banks have emerged from recent events with their reputations intact. Santander might be the exception that proves the rule.
A decade ago the bank was barely known outside Spain’s business community or Latin America. Now it is emerging as one of the more savvy survivors of Europe’s banking storm.
Not only is Santander snapping up cut-price assets (such as the juiciest parts of Bradford & Bingley) but it has also avoided the credit horrors that have triggered the humiliation of so many other mighty European names.
And while that sunny vista might yet change – after all, not even bankers seem truly to know what their banks hold these days – Santander’s run looks doubly remarkable given that Spain is in the aftermath of a property boom.
So what lies behind Santander’s seeming escape? In part, the persona of Emilio Botin, its chief executive, who has a reputation for being extraordinarily shrewd. However, another more interesting issue revolves around the way that Madrid runs its banks.
One key factor protecting Santander from some of the global woes is the tough approach that the Spanish central bank has taken towards regulating its banks in recent years.
Earlier this decade the central bank in essence decided it disliked the idea of banks keeping vast quantities of credit assets off their balance sheets. It also quietly demanded that banks hold higher levels of reserves than international accounting laws required.
Consequently, it furtively “gold plated” – or rewrote – European Union rules to discourage Spanish banks from creating entities such as structured investment vehicles (SIVs). And when banks such as Santander embarked on an acquisition spree in Mexico, the central bank reined them back.
When the central bank initially took this stance, it looked pretty odd. After all, in the early years of this decade institutions such as the Federal Reserve were convinced that banks could hold less capital than before because innovation had made them less exposed to credit risk.
However, Spain had experienced a searing domestic banking crisis two decades earlier and its central bank was consequently risk averse. It was also more willing to be maverick than, say, the Germans.
None of this guarantees that Spain will escape the credit crisis unscathed. A domestic property bust is always painful.
However, Madrid’s conservative stance has helped to cushion the blow of the storm. And that highlights some interesting lessons. First, it shows some of the wisest financiers are those who have experienced shocks.
Second, Spain’s story shows it pays for small countries to challenge the dominant global consensus from time to time.
But third, the Spanish tale shows the benefit of having central banks involved in regulation. In recent years other European banks have also become uneasy about trends in the global banking world; look at statements made by Jean Claude Trichet, ECB president, last year. Yet Mr Trichet could never turn this vague alarm into tangible controls since the ECB did not oversee the banks.
However, as the storm grows worse in Europe’s banking world it is becoming clearer that this state of affairs will need to be reviewed. And one place to start any debate might be with an examination of why some banks are going bust – but some, such as Santander, notably are not.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Gillian Tett
Not many banks have emerged from recent events with their reputations intact. Santander might be the exception that proves the rule.
A decade ago the bank was barely known outside Spain’s business community or Latin America. Now it is emerging as one of the more savvy survivors of Europe’s banking storm.
Not only is Santander snapping up cut-price assets (such as the juiciest parts of Bradford & Bingley) but it has also avoided the credit horrors that have triggered the humiliation of so many other mighty European names.
And while that sunny vista might yet change – after all, not even bankers seem truly to know what their banks hold these days – Santander’s run looks doubly remarkable given that Spain is in the aftermath of a property boom.
So what lies behind Santander’s seeming escape? In part, the persona of Emilio Botin, its chief executive, who has a reputation for being extraordinarily shrewd. However, another more interesting issue revolves around the way that Madrid runs its banks.
One key factor protecting Santander from some of the global woes is the tough approach that the Spanish central bank has taken towards regulating its banks in recent years.
Earlier this decade the central bank in essence decided it disliked the idea of banks keeping vast quantities of credit assets off their balance sheets. It also quietly demanded that banks hold higher levels of reserves than international accounting laws required.
Consequently, it furtively “gold plated” – or rewrote – European Union rules to discourage Spanish banks from creating entities such as structured investment vehicles (SIVs). And when banks such as Santander embarked on an acquisition spree in Mexico, the central bank reined them back.
When the central bank initially took this stance, it looked pretty odd. After all, in the early years of this decade institutions such as the Federal Reserve were convinced that banks could hold less capital than before because innovation had made them less exposed to credit risk.
However, Spain had experienced a searing domestic banking crisis two decades earlier and its central bank was consequently risk averse. It was also more willing to be maverick than, say, the Germans.
None of this guarantees that Spain will escape the credit crisis unscathed. A domestic property bust is always painful.
However, Madrid’s conservative stance has helped to cushion the blow of the storm. And that highlights some interesting lessons. First, it shows some of the wisest financiers are those who have experienced shocks.
Second, Spain’s story shows it pays for small countries to challenge the dominant global consensus from time to time.
But third, the Spanish tale shows the benefit of having central banks involved in regulation. In recent years other European banks have also become uneasy about trends in the global banking world; look at statements made by Jean Claude Trichet, ECB president, last year. Yet Mr Trichet could never turn this vague alarm into tangible controls since the ECB did not oversee the banks.
However, as the storm grows worse in Europe’s banking world it is becoming clearer that this state of affairs will need to be reviewed. And one place to start any debate might be with an examination of why some banks are going bust – but some, such as Santander, notably are not.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
viernes, 26 de septiembre de 2008
Japan finds its model back in fashion
By David Pilling, Asia Editor
When foreigners visit Japan, one of their most common gripes is the difficulty of obtaining cash from bank machines or paying for purchases with credit cards. Such basic obstacles to their red-blooded desire to spend freely and to spend often have been seen as emblematic of an anachronistic financial system that has simply failed to keep pace with modern times.
Now laggard Japan does not look quite so stupid. Whether by luck or design, its financial institutions have been relatively unscathed by the financial crisis that has felled some of the biggest names on Wall Street. While its adventurous foreign brethren were off on a lucrative, but ultimately disastrous, spending spree, most Japanese banks continued to make the bulk of their money from old-fashioned lending.
Now the tables have turned. This week, Nomura has picked up Lehman assets at seemingly bargain-basement prices. Mitsubishi UFJ will pay some $8bn (€5.5bn, £4.3bn) for a sizeable chunk of Morgan Stanley, one of the few US investment banks left standing.
Yet the quick reversal of fortunes has led to remarkably little carping. “They’ve been admirably restrained considering they spent 10 years with the Americans telling them how to run things,” says Richard Jerram, economist at Macquarie Securities. “There must be a deep temptation to say: ‘You really mustn’t manipulate the market by banning short selling. You really must let this problem work out rather than having a low-transparency rescue plan,” he says, referring to continued prodding of Japan to adopt a more robust form of free-market capitalism.
Part of the restraint is due to the fact that, in attempting to resolve the crisis, the US is practising more or less what it preached to Japan in the 1990s. Then, US officials told Tokyo, often in no uncertain terms, that Japanese banks must recognise bad debts more quickly and that the government should replenish missing capital with public funds.
“The serious complaint about Japan was how long it took them,” says Mr Jerram. “The good thing you can say about America is that they are barely a year into this and they are throwing absolutely everything at it.”
Teizo Taya, a board member of the Bank of Japan when that institution was being criticised for its supposedly unimaginative policy in tackling deflation, is not carping either. “They won’t listen anyway,” he says.
But he does argue that, by aggressively lowering interest rates after the collapse of the tech bubble and after the emergence of the subprime crisis, the US response may have been just as flawed as Japan’s more conservative tack.
Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, once famously urged the Bank of Japan to buy ketchup – in other words, any asset going – to stop deflation. But many Japanese officials privately argue that pushing interest rates too low was the cause of the bubble that has now exploded so spectacularly. They also point to the BoJ’s once unfashionable assertion – now being reassessed worldwide – that central banks should not limit themselves to targeting consumer inflation but should work out how to prick asset bubbles as well.
One senior BoJ official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday: “I’m not saying it’s possible to detect a bubble and to stop it from bursting. But there are some things you can do.” More, for example, could have been done to take the heat out of the housing market, he said.
Mr Taya says of US monetary policy: “The lesson they thought they had learnt may not be correct. In one sense, their policy was quite successful. They avoided an economic downturn from 2001. But they forgot about the side-effects of easy policy.”
Japan, says Mr Taya, has benefited from the natural caution of its institutions. “Japanese are different from US investment banks. US banks just bought assets with money that they had borrowed. That business model has now collapsed.”
But neither does he attribute the relatively healthy position of Japanese banks to wisdom. “Japanese institutions were lagging behind. I don’t think there is any positive aspect to this. Until 2005 they were busy writing down bad debt. Then there was a pause period. There was simply no time for Japanese institutions to follow suit.”
A senior Japanese finance official puts it more succinctly. “I think this was more luck than prudence.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
When foreigners visit Japan, one of their most common gripes is the difficulty of obtaining cash from bank machines or paying for purchases with credit cards. Such basic obstacles to their red-blooded desire to spend freely and to spend often have been seen as emblematic of an anachronistic financial system that has simply failed to keep pace with modern times.
Now laggard Japan does not look quite so stupid. Whether by luck or design, its financial institutions have been relatively unscathed by the financial crisis that has felled some of the biggest names on Wall Street. While its adventurous foreign brethren were off on a lucrative, but ultimately disastrous, spending spree, most Japanese banks continued to make the bulk of their money from old-fashioned lending.
Now the tables have turned. This week, Nomura has picked up Lehman assets at seemingly bargain-basement prices. Mitsubishi UFJ will pay some $8bn (€5.5bn, £4.3bn) for a sizeable chunk of Morgan Stanley, one of the few US investment banks left standing.
Yet the quick reversal of fortunes has led to remarkably little carping. “They’ve been admirably restrained considering they spent 10 years with the Americans telling them how to run things,” says Richard Jerram, economist at Macquarie Securities. “There must be a deep temptation to say: ‘You really mustn’t manipulate the market by banning short selling. You really must let this problem work out rather than having a low-transparency rescue plan,” he says, referring to continued prodding of Japan to adopt a more robust form of free-market capitalism.
Part of the restraint is due to the fact that, in attempting to resolve the crisis, the US is practising more or less what it preached to Japan in the 1990s. Then, US officials told Tokyo, often in no uncertain terms, that Japanese banks must recognise bad debts more quickly and that the government should replenish missing capital with public funds.
“The serious complaint about Japan was how long it took them,” says Mr Jerram. “The good thing you can say about America is that they are barely a year into this and they are throwing absolutely everything at it.”
Teizo Taya, a board member of the Bank of Japan when that institution was being criticised for its supposedly unimaginative policy in tackling deflation, is not carping either. “They won’t listen anyway,” he says.
But he does argue that, by aggressively lowering interest rates after the collapse of the tech bubble and after the emergence of the subprime crisis, the US response may have been just as flawed as Japan’s more conservative tack.
Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, once famously urged the Bank of Japan to buy ketchup – in other words, any asset going – to stop deflation. But many Japanese officials privately argue that pushing interest rates too low was the cause of the bubble that has now exploded so spectacularly. They also point to the BoJ’s once unfashionable assertion – now being reassessed worldwide – that central banks should not limit themselves to targeting consumer inflation but should work out how to prick asset bubbles as well.
One senior BoJ official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday: “I’m not saying it’s possible to detect a bubble and to stop it from bursting. But there are some things you can do.” More, for example, could have been done to take the heat out of the housing market, he said.
Mr Taya says of US monetary policy: “The lesson they thought they had learnt may not be correct. In one sense, their policy was quite successful. They avoided an economic downturn from 2001. But they forgot about the side-effects of easy policy.”
Japan, says Mr Taya, has benefited from the natural caution of its institutions. “Japanese are different from US investment banks. US banks just bought assets with money that they had borrowed. That business model has now collapsed.”
But neither does he attribute the relatively healthy position of Japanese banks to wisdom. “Japanese institutions were lagging behind. I don’t think there is any positive aspect to this. Until 2005 they were busy writing down bad debt. Then there was a pause period. There was simply no time for Japanese institutions to follow suit.”
A senior Japanese finance official puts it more succinctly. “I think this was more luck than prudence.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Dos dólares por toda la división europea de Lehman
El banco japonés Nomura compró la división europea y de Oriente Medio de Lehman Brothers por sólo dos dólares con el compromiso de mantener el empleos y hacerse cargo de los gastos de personal, según informa hoy el diario económico Nikkei.
Efe - Tokio - 26/09/2008
La entidad japonesa se gastará decenas de miles de millones de yenes en costes de personal para mantener los empleos de las divisiones de Asia, Europa y Oriente Medio de Lehman, de las que han pasado a hacerse cargo esta semana, después de que el 15 de septiembre el banco de inversión presentara una declaración de quiebra.
El acuerdo por el que Nomura se comprometía a conservar "una porción significativa" de los empleos de los trabajadores de Lehamn fue clave para que la casa de valores japonesa se impusiera al banco británico Barclays en la adquisición de la división europea y de Oriente Medio del banco estadounidense, según la agencia Kyodo.
Sólo en el caso de la compra de la división asiática de Lehman, incluyendo los costes por el banco y sus empleados, los japoneses tuvieron que pagar 24.000 millones de yenes (226 millones de dólares), de acuerdo con el Nikkei.
La compra de las tres divisiones le hubiera supuesto un desembolso de 700.000 millones de yenes (6.610 millones de yenes) en cualquier otro momento de bonanza de Lehman, según ese periódico.
La casa de valores nipona ya ha dicho que planea mantener los puestos de trabajo de cerca de 5.500 trabajadores de Lehman Brothers, 3.000 de la división asiática y 2.500 de la parte europea y de Oriente Medio.
Los gastos de personal le supondrán a Nomura un coste adicional al total de la operación de varias docenas de miles de yenes, según el rotativo.
Efe - Tokio - 26/09/2008
La entidad japonesa se gastará decenas de miles de millones de yenes en costes de personal para mantener los empleos de las divisiones de Asia, Europa y Oriente Medio de Lehman, de las que han pasado a hacerse cargo esta semana, después de que el 15 de septiembre el banco de inversión presentara una declaración de quiebra.
El acuerdo por el que Nomura se comprometía a conservar "una porción significativa" de los empleos de los trabajadores de Lehamn fue clave para que la casa de valores japonesa se impusiera al banco británico Barclays en la adquisición de la división europea y de Oriente Medio del banco estadounidense, según la agencia Kyodo.
Sólo en el caso de la compra de la división asiática de Lehman, incluyendo los costes por el banco y sus empleados, los japoneses tuvieron que pagar 24.000 millones de yenes (226 millones de dólares), de acuerdo con el Nikkei.
La compra de las tres divisiones le hubiera supuesto un desembolso de 700.000 millones de yenes (6.610 millones de yenes) en cualquier otro momento de bonanza de Lehman, según ese periódico.
La casa de valores nipona ya ha dicho que planea mantener los puestos de trabajo de cerca de 5.500 trabajadores de Lehman Brothers, 3.000 de la división asiática y 2.500 de la parte europea y de Oriente Medio.
Los gastos de personal le supondrán a Nomura un coste adicional al total de la operación de varias docenas de miles de yenes, según el rotativo.
miércoles, 24 de septiembre de 2008
El (des)gobierno de los bancos
Ignacio de la Torre. - 24/09/2008
El Confidencial
Decía Keynes que es mucho más fácil para el ser humano equivocarse junto a los demás que enfrentarse a la multitud y decir la verdad. Realicemos pues hoy un keynesiano ejercicio de dificultad. Les invito a que me acompañen.
¿Les sorprendería saber que, entre los consejeros independientes de Lehman Brothers, figuraba la anterior responsable de la Cruz Roja americana y de las Girl Scouts de ese país? ¿Conocían que otro de los consejeros independientes del quebrado banco llevaba 23 años dedicado a la producción de obras de teatro en Broadway?* La mitad de los consejeros de Merrill Lynch no tenía experiencia en banca. Como nos recordó Peter Hahn en el WSJ**, el antiguo presidente del denostado Northern Rock era un periodista científico. Los consejeros “independientes” de ABN en el penoso tiempo que llevó a su adquisición, disfrutaban de una media de ocho consejos, manipulando su independencia con el resultante escaso tiempo y abundante retribución.
Además, en el consejo de Royal Bank of Scotland, que compró ABN con una prima de un 70% en una de las adquisiciones más disparatadas de la historia, figuraban cinco consejeros a las órdenes del presidente. Luego hacía falta que nueve de los once independientes se alinearan contra el presidente para frenar tal alocada operación. No ocurrió, y como consecuencia de la misma el RBS tuvo que realizar la mayor ampliación de capital de la historia de Europa, con fortísimas diluciones para sus accionistas. Respecto a UBS, sólo tres de sus doce consejeros tenían conocimientos de banca. De ellos, dos en banca privada. Tan sólo uno, el antiguo presidente Marcel Ospel, conocía la banca de inversión, aunque su experiencia no se centraba en los derivados hipotecarios que provocaron las pérdidas del coloso suizo.
¿Creen que esta mezcolanza de autores teatrales o girl scouts conocía lo que era un CDO? ¿Un CDO al cuadrado? ¿Un CDS? ¿Un CLO? ¿Un SIV? ¿Un conduit? ¿Un préstamo puente? ¿Un monoline? Yo no tengo tampoco claro que los consejeros con supuesta experiencia financiera supieran un ápice sobre estos temas. Y, paradójicamente, estas instituciones han perdido 600.000 millones de dólares en estos instrumentos que poco o ningún miembro del Consejo de Administración entendía. Soy consciente de que esta ineptitud e ignorancia no es el único responsable de todo este desastre. Los esquemas retributivos asimétricos, una mala supervisión bancaria, el modelo de originar y distribuir, y sobre todo la suicida política que llevó la FED durante 2003-2005 al mantener tipos a niveles muy inferiores a los que habría debido, entre otros, tienen su parte de culpa. Sin embargo, apenas se ha escrito sobre los muy diversos consejos de los bancos. De ahí el presente artículo. ¿Se merecían las primas que cobraban?
Hace tiempo leí una columna del Financial Times firmada por un corresponsal que había visitado una escuela de negocios norteamericana. En el jardín del campus se había topado con un instructor y un grupo de alumnos MBA que tenían que imitar consecutivamente diferentes sonidos de animales. Uno era el perro, otro el ganso, otro el pájaro… Preguntó por el objetivo de tamaño ejercicio. El instructor comentó que era muy útil para permitir que el alumno se pusiera en la piel de un “ente” distinto de sí y de esta forma poder “entrenar” la diversidad.
En este mundo de corrección política, y de imbecilidad generalizada, la diversidad mal entendida campa a sus anchas. Y aunque esa imbecilidad pueda provocar la quiebra de una empresa alimenticia, la bancarrota de un banco es harina de otro costal, por las implicaciones que una crisis bancaria genera en el conjunto del sistema financiero, y por extensión, en la economía. La mejor responsabilidad social corporativa de un banco es sobrevivir y seguir prestando dinero. Sobreviviendo, el banco realizará una gran labor a la sociedad, y para sobrevivir se requiere un consejo capaz. Diverso si se quiere, pero antes que diverso, capaz.
Y acabo este artículo con una reflexión. Leíamos la semana pasada que una caja española había despedido a unos directivos por conceder hipotecas que estaban resultando fallidas, ya que entre los objetivos de estos directivos figuraba aumentar la concesión de hipotecas, con independencia de si resultaban fallidas. Está bien que se despida a estos directivos, pero ¿no debería despedirse antes a los miembros de la comisión de retribución responsable de tan aberrantes objetivos?
* Board comes under fire, FT, 17 de Septiembre de 2008.
**Blame the Bank Boards WSJ, 28 de Noviembre de 2007.
El Confidencial
Decía Keynes que es mucho más fácil para el ser humano equivocarse junto a los demás que enfrentarse a la multitud y decir la verdad. Realicemos pues hoy un keynesiano ejercicio de dificultad. Les invito a que me acompañen.
¿Les sorprendería saber que, entre los consejeros independientes de Lehman Brothers, figuraba la anterior responsable de la Cruz Roja americana y de las Girl Scouts de ese país? ¿Conocían que otro de los consejeros independientes del quebrado banco llevaba 23 años dedicado a la producción de obras de teatro en Broadway?* La mitad de los consejeros de Merrill Lynch no tenía experiencia en banca. Como nos recordó Peter Hahn en el WSJ**, el antiguo presidente del denostado Northern Rock era un periodista científico. Los consejeros “independientes” de ABN en el penoso tiempo que llevó a su adquisición, disfrutaban de una media de ocho consejos, manipulando su independencia con el resultante escaso tiempo y abundante retribución.
Además, en el consejo de Royal Bank of Scotland, que compró ABN con una prima de un 70% en una de las adquisiciones más disparatadas de la historia, figuraban cinco consejeros a las órdenes del presidente. Luego hacía falta que nueve de los once independientes se alinearan contra el presidente para frenar tal alocada operación. No ocurrió, y como consecuencia de la misma el RBS tuvo que realizar la mayor ampliación de capital de la historia de Europa, con fortísimas diluciones para sus accionistas. Respecto a UBS, sólo tres de sus doce consejeros tenían conocimientos de banca. De ellos, dos en banca privada. Tan sólo uno, el antiguo presidente Marcel Ospel, conocía la banca de inversión, aunque su experiencia no se centraba en los derivados hipotecarios que provocaron las pérdidas del coloso suizo.
¿Creen que esta mezcolanza de autores teatrales o girl scouts conocía lo que era un CDO? ¿Un CDO al cuadrado? ¿Un CDS? ¿Un CLO? ¿Un SIV? ¿Un conduit? ¿Un préstamo puente? ¿Un monoline? Yo no tengo tampoco claro que los consejeros con supuesta experiencia financiera supieran un ápice sobre estos temas. Y, paradójicamente, estas instituciones han perdido 600.000 millones de dólares en estos instrumentos que poco o ningún miembro del Consejo de Administración entendía. Soy consciente de que esta ineptitud e ignorancia no es el único responsable de todo este desastre. Los esquemas retributivos asimétricos, una mala supervisión bancaria, el modelo de originar y distribuir, y sobre todo la suicida política que llevó la FED durante 2003-2005 al mantener tipos a niveles muy inferiores a los que habría debido, entre otros, tienen su parte de culpa. Sin embargo, apenas se ha escrito sobre los muy diversos consejos de los bancos. De ahí el presente artículo. ¿Se merecían las primas que cobraban?
Hace tiempo leí una columna del Financial Times firmada por un corresponsal que había visitado una escuela de negocios norteamericana. En el jardín del campus se había topado con un instructor y un grupo de alumnos MBA que tenían que imitar consecutivamente diferentes sonidos de animales. Uno era el perro, otro el ganso, otro el pájaro… Preguntó por el objetivo de tamaño ejercicio. El instructor comentó que era muy útil para permitir que el alumno se pusiera en la piel de un “ente” distinto de sí y de esta forma poder “entrenar” la diversidad.
En este mundo de corrección política, y de imbecilidad generalizada, la diversidad mal entendida campa a sus anchas. Y aunque esa imbecilidad pueda provocar la quiebra de una empresa alimenticia, la bancarrota de un banco es harina de otro costal, por las implicaciones que una crisis bancaria genera en el conjunto del sistema financiero, y por extensión, en la economía. La mejor responsabilidad social corporativa de un banco es sobrevivir y seguir prestando dinero. Sobreviviendo, el banco realizará una gran labor a la sociedad, y para sobrevivir se requiere un consejo capaz. Diverso si se quiere, pero antes que diverso, capaz.
Y acabo este artículo con una reflexión. Leíamos la semana pasada que una caja española había despedido a unos directivos por conceder hipotecas que estaban resultando fallidas, ya que entre los objetivos de estos directivos figuraba aumentar la concesión de hipotecas, con independencia de si resultaban fallidas. Está bien que se despida a estos directivos, pero ¿no debería despedirse antes a los miembros de la comisión de retribución responsable de tan aberrantes objetivos?
* Board comes under fire, FT, 17 de Septiembre de 2008.
**Blame the Bank Boards WSJ, 28 de Noviembre de 2007.
martes, 23 de septiembre de 2008
Nomura ultima su reentrada en España con la compra de las actividades de Lehman en Europa
Los bancos japoneses salen de su escondite. Después de años de reestructuraciones -tras la crisis y ola de fusiones y adquisiciones de finales de los 90 y principios de esta década- están aprovechando la coyuntura actual crisis para ganar poder en el nuevo mapa bancario. Lo acaba de hacer el gigante Mitshubishi UFJ, el mayor banco del país, con la toma de un paquete de entre el 10% y 20% en Morgan Stanley. Pero otros también están interesados en crecer. Nomura Holdings, el mayor bróker japonés, se quedará finalmente con los activos de Lehman Brothers en Asia, tal y como confirmó la entidad en un comunicado.Pero el bróker presidido por Kenichi Watanabe también está negociando la compra de Lehman International Europe, la filial europea del caído banco de inversión, que se encuentra bajo la administración concursal de PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) desde Londres, lo que incluye las actividades en España y del equipo gestor que dirigen Luis de Guindos y Juan Gich. Con oficinas en Castellana 41 en Madrid, Nomura dará un salto cualitativo en nuestro país, especialmente, en el área de banca privada y en la de fusiones y adquisiciones que dirige a nivel global Hiromi Yamaji.Fuentes del banco en Madrid declinaron realizar comentarios y se remitieron a la nota oficial del grupo sobre la adquisición en Asia de Lehman. Antes de verano, Nomura presentó en Madrid un fondo de capital riesgo de 200 millones de euros bajo el nombre de Thesan Capital, que está dirigido por Santiago Corral, el hombre fuerte en España del banco japonés y que cuenta con la participación de José Luis Macho, ex ejecutivo del grupo de alimentación Campofrío. "Han ofrecido el mantenimiento de los puestos de trabajo con las mismas condiciones de los dos años anteriores", dijo una fuente conocedora de los contactos entre Lehman y Nomura, aunque no obstante, no llegará a ser tan generosa como la retribución variable que percibían los empleados antes de la quiebra, como informó este diario la semana pasada.Nomura compite con Barclays en hacerse con los activos europeos. La entidad británica ha tomado ya el controla la filial de Lehman en EEUU y creará así un gigante con 26.000 empleados y más de un billón de libras en activos bajo gestión bajo la enseña Barclays Capital, según informó la entidad desde Londres. Bob Diamond, director general del grupo británico, dirigirá así un nuevo grupo capaz de rivalizar con las grandes firmas históricas de Wall Street como Goldman, Morgan, Citigroup o JPMorgan.Y Morgan Stanley también tiene dueños japonesesParalelamente al troceo de Lehman Brothers en el que participa Nomura, otro gran banco de inversión pasará a estar controlado en gran parte, hasta un 20% del capital, por otro grupo japonés. Se trata de Morgan Stanley, que durante la última semana ya tiene nuevos accionistas. El banco de inversión ha alcanzado un principio de acuerdo con Mitsubishi UFJ, el mayor banco de Japón, para que tome una participación que podría oscilar entre el 10 y el 20 por ciento del capital del grupo dirigido por John Mack. La entidad japonesa no tiene presencia en España, cuya filial ha sido presidida durante los últimos años por Luis Isasi.
Fuente: El Confidencial
domingo, 21 de septiembre de 2008
¡Vuelve Gekko!
Uno de los líderes espirituales de este blog, el despiadado "broker" Gordon Gekko, volverá a las pantallas si el proyecto de la Fox sale adelante:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/05/movies/05movi.html?ex=1336017600&en=64f8ac17912072b8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/05/movies/05movi.html?ex=1336017600&en=64f8ac17912072b8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
viernes, 19 de septiembre de 2008
lunes, 15 de septiembre de 2008
The Japan Lesson: U.S. Must Own Up To Its Bank Crisis
The Wall Street Journal
By JUSTIN LAHARTSeptember 15, 2008;
When Japan was mired in economic crisis, the U.S. urged it to take decisive action to deal with its ailing banks. Japan didn't follow the advice and the crisis dragged on for years. Now, it is the U.S. that is mired in crisis and facing the prospect of swallowing the bitter medicine it once proffered.
Japan's stock-market bubble began rapidly deflating in 1990 and its property bubble followed suit shortly afterward. Many borrowers were unable to make payments on their debt and bad loans piled up on bank balance sheets. A long period of lackluster economic growth made a tough situation worse. With the financial system saddled with bad debts, Japan desperately needed its banks to acknowledge the severity of their problems and for some banks to shut their doors. But the banks, unwilling to take steps that might render them insolvent, refused to acknowledge their problems, extending the crisis.
"One of the lessons we took from Japan was the hesitation and refusal to own up to the problem was a disaster," says University of Chicago Graduate School of Business economist Anil Kashyap.
U.S. financial firms, too, have struggled with owning up to the extent of their credit losses, partly because those losses are a moving target. A year ago, Bear Stearns Cos. was reluctant to sell mortgage-related credit at a loss. That decision came back to haunt the firm as declining home prices continued to pummel mortgages, and Bear ended up in a government-backed fire sale to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive John Thain said in a January interview that the firm's troubles were "for the most part behind us" -- but in July the firm agreed to sell more than $30 billion in mortgage-related assets at a large loss.
Still, U.S. financial firms have been much quicker to acknowledge losses than their Japanese counterparts were. While the slicing and dicing of mortgages into tradable securities played a part in the mortgage mess, accounting rules make it difficult for firms to ignore losses on those securities, says Princeton University economist Hyun Song Shin. In contrast, by continuing to extend credit to bad borrowers, Japanese banks were able to put off recognizing the extent of their debt problems.
"The denial strategy is harder to pull off -- it will catch up to you in the accounting," says Mr. Shin. "That's one of the more encouraging and hopeful signs in the U.S."
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant mortgage companies that the U.S. government seized a week ago, operated under rules that made the extent of their woes much more difficult to assess. But Treasury officials took a tougher line getting Fannie and Freddie to own up to their problems than Japan's Ministry of Finance did with ailing Japanese banks. Just as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been intent on not repeating the Fed's Depression-era mistakes, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is intent on not repeating Japan's mistakes in the 1990s, says Brad DeLong, an economic historian at the University of California at Berkeley.
One last problem the current U.S. situation shares with Japan in the 1990s may be a financial sector that is far larger than it should be. "If you have an unsustainable lending boom, then by definition the lending has to shrink," says Adam Posen, a deputy director at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
In Japan, that didn't happen. Rather than failing, troubled banks merged with healthier ones. But even though the combined bank would often end up with branches that were within steps of one another, few bank workers lost their jobs. Mr. Posen worries that concerns about the systemic risk to the financial system will prevent the U.S. from allowing enough firms to shut their doors to make the necessary capacity cuts.
In that regard, the tougher line with Wall Street that U.S. officials took over the weekend is encouraging. Refusing to financially backstop a takeover of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. with government money, as they did for J.P. Morgan's hasty acquisition of Bear Stearns, they showed they were far more willing to let a troubled firm fail than their Japanese counterparts were. Also, many financial firms have already begun cutting operations in a way Japanese banks balked at.
But while the U.S. has been decisive where Japan was not, it is worth remembering there was a reason Japan was hesitant to deal with its problems. Recognizing the financial sector's problems quickly increases the possibility of a run for the exits that could seize up the credit markets, putting the overall economy at greater risk. Quickly shrinking the financial sector could have a social cost, as well, putting tens of thousands of people out of work. Where will they go?
By JUSTIN LAHARTSeptember 15, 2008;
When Japan was mired in economic crisis, the U.S. urged it to take decisive action to deal with its ailing banks. Japan didn't follow the advice and the crisis dragged on for years. Now, it is the U.S. that is mired in crisis and facing the prospect of swallowing the bitter medicine it once proffered.
Japan's stock-market bubble began rapidly deflating in 1990 and its property bubble followed suit shortly afterward. Many borrowers were unable to make payments on their debt and bad loans piled up on bank balance sheets. A long period of lackluster economic growth made a tough situation worse. With the financial system saddled with bad debts, Japan desperately needed its banks to acknowledge the severity of their problems and for some banks to shut their doors. But the banks, unwilling to take steps that might render them insolvent, refused to acknowledge their problems, extending the crisis.
"One of the lessons we took from Japan was the hesitation and refusal to own up to the problem was a disaster," says University of Chicago Graduate School of Business economist Anil Kashyap.
U.S. financial firms, too, have struggled with owning up to the extent of their credit losses, partly because those losses are a moving target. A year ago, Bear Stearns Cos. was reluctant to sell mortgage-related credit at a loss. That decision came back to haunt the firm as declining home prices continued to pummel mortgages, and Bear ended up in a government-backed fire sale to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive John Thain said in a January interview that the firm's troubles were "for the most part behind us" -- but in July the firm agreed to sell more than $30 billion in mortgage-related assets at a large loss.
Still, U.S. financial firms have been much quicker to acknowledge losses than their Japanese counterparts were. While the slicing and dicing of mortgages into tradable securities played a part in the mortgage mess, accounting rules make it difficult for firms to ignore losses on those securities, says Princeton University economist Hyun Song Shin. In contrast, by continuing to extend credit to bad borrowers, Japanese banks were able to put off recognizing the extent of their debt problems.
"The denial strategy is harder to pull off -- it will catch up to you in the accounting," says Mr. Shin. "That's one of the more encouraging and hopeful signs in the U.S."
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two giant mortgage companies that the U.S. government seized a week ago, operated under rules that made the extent of their woes much more difficult to assess. But Treasury officials took a tougher line getting Fannie and Freddie to own up to their problems than Japan's Ministry of Finance did with ailing Japanese banks. Just as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been intent on not repeating the Fed's Depression-era mistakes, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is intent on not repeating Japan's mistakes in the 1990s, says Brad DeLong, an economic historian at the University of California at Berkeley.
One last problem the current U.S. situation shares with Japan in the 1990s may be a financial sector that is far larger than it should be. "If you have an unsustainable lending boom, then by definition the lending has to shrink," says Adam Posen, a deputy director at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
In Japan, that didn't happen. Rather than failing, troubled banks merged with healthier ones. But even though the combined bank would often end up with branches that were within steps of one another, few bank workers lost their jobs. Mr. Posen worries that concerns about the systemic risk to the financial system will prevent the U.S. from allowing enough firms to shut their doors to make the necessary capacity cuts.
In that regard, the tougher line with Wall Street that U.S. officials took over the weekend is encouraging. Refusing to financially backstop a takeover of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. with government money, as they did for J.P. Morgan's hasty acquisition of Bear Stearns, they showed they were far more willing to let a troubled firm fail than their Japanese counterparts were. Also, many financial firms have already begun cutting operations in a way Japanese banks balked at.
But while the U.S. has been decisive where Japan was not, it is worth remembering there was a reason Japan was hesitant to deal with its problems. Recognizing the financial sector's problems quickly increases the possibility of a run for the exits that could seize up the credit markets, putting the overall economy at greater risk. Quickly shrinking the financial sector could have a social cost, as well, putting tens of thousands of people out of work. Where will they go?
Spanish Conquest Squeezes Italian Olive Oil
Family-Owned Labels Are Struggling to Compete With SOS Cuétara
The Wall Street Journal
By DAVIDE BERRETTASeptember 15, 2008;
By DAVIDE BERRETTASeptember 15, 2008;
Over the past five years, Italy's biggest olive-oil brands have fallen steadily into Spanish hands. SOS Cuétara SA's July purchase of Bertolli, one of the world's best-known olive-oil labels, gave the Spanish food company control of half the Italian market and made it the world's undisputed leader in olive-oil sales.
The Spanish conquest has left small olive-oil companies up and down Italy in a fix. Once synonymous with the olive-oil business around the world, family-owned Italian labels like Monini, Farchioni, Filippo Berio and Pietro Coricelli are now struggling to compete against the pricing power, marketing heft and distribution breadth of SOS. "It's not an easy path," says Roberto D'Auria, an analyst at agrarian research institute Ismea, who predicts that some of the brands may end up closing down or being put up for sale.
Massimo Gargano, chairman of the Italian olive grower association Unaprol, says Italy's small players face a "long entrepreneurial agony" amid competition from SOS.
Maria Flora Monini, co-owner of Olio Monini SpA, one of the largest Italian-owned labels, says she has received offers to buy the company, which sells 30 million bottles a year. For now, though, she says the family plans to hold on, sticking to its strategy of marketing Monini as a trendy "lifestyle" brand.
Most of Monini's nine varieties of olive oil are sold in supermarkets at moderate prices ranging from €4.50 to €7 ($6.40 to $9.95) a bottle, but the company is nonetheless working hard to enhance its brand. It sponsors some of Italy's largest music festivals, photo exhibitions at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and a magazine that is distributed to 100,000 subscribers three times a year. In 2003, it opened an olive-pressing factory, or frantoio, near the town of Spoleto, in Italy's central Umbria region, where it produces small quantities of olive oil and organizes olive tastings and cooking courses.
Pompeo Farchioni, chief executive of the 250-year-old Farchioni olive-oil brand from Umbria, says he has dabbled in the higher end of the market. He sells six "protected origin," or DOP, olive-oil varieties whose production is traced and certified. But those high-end bottles account for only 2% of Farchioni's overall yearly sales of €100 million. Most of the 20 million bottles Mr. Farchioni sells each year are priced between €4 and €6.
For the bulk of his business, Mr. Farchioni says, he is trying to get more space from retailers. But if that doesn't work and Farchioni starts losing money, "we might end up having to sell too," he says.
The olive-oil business conjures up romantic images of pungent green olives being squeezed through presses, and many olive-oil companies harvest some of their own olives. But the industry is mainly involved in bottling and marketing, and most bottles available in supermarkets are blends of Italian olive oil and oil made from Spanish, Greek or North African olives.
Most of Monini's nine varieties of olive oil are sold in supermarkets at moderate prices ranging from €4.50 to €7 ($6.40 to $9.95) a bottle, but the company is nonetheless working hard to enhance its brand. It sponsors some of Italy's largest music festivals, photo exhibitions at New York's Museum of Modern Art, and a magazine that is distributed to 100,000 subscribers three times a year. In 2003, it opened an olive-pressing factory, or frantoio, near the town of Spoleto, in Italy's central Umbria region, where it produces small quantities of olive oil and organizes olive tastings and cooking courses.
Pompeo Farchioni, chief executive of the 250-year-old Farchioni olive-oil brand from Umbria, says he has dabbled in the higher end of the market. He sells six "protected origin," or DOP, olive-oil varieties whose production is traced and certified. But those high-end bottles account for only 2% of Farchioni's overall yearly sales of €100 million. Most of the 20 million bottles Mr. Farchioni sells each year are priced between €4 and €6.
For the bulk of his business, Mr. Farchioni says, he is trying to get more space from retailers. But if that doesn't work and Farchioni starts losing money, "we might end up having to sell too," he says.
The olive-oil business conjures up romantic images of pungent green olives being squeezed through presses, and many olive-oil companies harvest some of their own olives. But the industry is mainly involved in bottling and marketing, and most bottles available in supermarkets are blends of Italian olive oil and oil made from Spanish, Greek or North African olives.
Still, olive-oil names from Italy generally hold more cachet than those from other countries. That's why SOS -- a food conglomerate that also sells crackers, coffee and rice -- began its major foray into the Italian market by buying Olio Sasso in 2004. SOS then took over Carapelli, a renowned olive-oil brand from Florence with strong sales in the U.S. And it bought Bertolli, which, according to data research firm Euromonitor, is the leading olive-oil brand in the world with 6% to 7% of global olive-oil sales. (When it bought Bertolli, it also acquired the Dante brand.)
It's a good time to be the market leader. Demand for olive oil has been growing nearly 10% each year over the past five years, in step with the increased focus on healthy eating, says Euromonitor. SOS is also moving into the actual production of olives and oil. It owns Todolivo, a company that specializes in intensive olive growing, along with more than 400 hectares of land in Portugal. The goal, SOS says, is to exert even more control over the entire chain of production and distribution.
To finance its growing olive-oil empire, SOS plans to spin off its four Italian olive-oil brands into a new company that will then be listed on the Milan stock market, says SOS Chief Executive Jesús Salazar. If the IPO, which is planned for sometime in the 2009 first half, is a success, SOS could be on the prowl for more Italian olive-oil brands, Mr. Salazar adds.
Pietro Coricelli SpA, a smaller Umbrian bottler, exports 65% of its olive oil to the U.S. and Northern Europe. CEO Lorenzo Coricelli says he doesn't plan to sell his company any time soon. He notes that revenue have nearly doubled over the past two years, helped by new business from selling olive oil to catering companies, which makes up about a quarter of his company's revenue.
But he is convinced change is afoot. In today's Italian olive oil market, he says, "there are about 30 companies. We should have seven or eight."
It's a good time to be the market leader. Demand for olive oil has been growing nearly 10% each year over the past five years, in step with the increased focus on healthy eating, says Euromonitor. SOS is also moving into the actual production of olives and oil. It owns Todolivo, a company that specializes in intensive olive growing, along with more than 400 hectares of land in Portugal. The goal, SOS says, is to exert even more control over the entire chain of production and distribution.
To finance its growing olive-oil empire, SOS plans to spin off its four Italian olive-oil brands into a new company that will then be listed on the Milan stock market, says SOS Chief Executive Jesús Salazar. If the IPO, which is planned for sometime in the 2009 first half, is a success, SOS could be on the prowl for more Italian olive-oil brands, Mr. Salazar adds.
Pietro Coricelli SpA, a smaller Umbrian bottler, exports 65% of its olive oil to the U.S. and Northern Europe. CEO Lorenzo Coricelli says he doesn't plan to sell his company any time soon. He notes that revenue have nearly doubled over the past two years, helped by new business from selling olive oil to catering companies, which makes up about a quarter of his company's revenue.
But he is convinced change is afoot. In today's Italian olive oil market, he says, "there are about 30 companies. We should have seven or eight."
miércoles, 10 de septiembre de 2008
La proyección exterior de España
Primo González
Estrella Digital 10/09/08
El presidente Rodríguez Zapatero se ha reunido con los embajadores españoles en el exterior para, entre otras cosas, pedirles que prediquen en el exterior la buena nueva de la economía española. Una tarea en la que el sector empresarial ha predicado abundantemente con el ejemplo en los últimos años, de modo que el máximo representante del Ejecutivo casi debería haberse reunido con los empresarios multinacionales españoles para expresarles una petición de este tipo, porque si algo se conoce bien en el exterior de las capacidades de los españoles son las habilidades de empresas y bancos, que han escalado en los últimos años a posiciones de relieve en la clasificación mundial de los negocios.
Es mucho sin duda lo que pueden hacer los embajadores desde sus sedes diplomáticas predicando las bondades del Gobierno de Zapatero en la cosa económica, pero mejor haría el presidente del Gobierno en aleccionar a los representantes diplomáticos españoles en el exterior para que presten un apoyo mucho más decidido a la actividad de las empresas nacionales, que rara vez acuden a las sedes diplomáticas españolas en el exterior para recabar una colaboración que saben de antemano que no se encuentra entre las prioridades que emanan del Palacio de Santa Cruz hacia la tupida red exterior española.
Más que convertirles en apóstoles y propagandistas de una verdad que ahora mismo cuesta trabajo hacer entender a los extranjeros, sobre todo porque hay que competir con rivales de la potencia del Financial Times, que se empeñan casi a diario en mostrar nuestras debilidades económicas (algunas con razón, aunque en su país de origen las padezcan en grado bastante superior), el jefe del Gobierno español debería haberles instruido con un manual práctico de apoyo a las iniciativas empresariales, ya que de ellas se derivarían importantes avances para una aún mayor internacionalización de las empresas españolas y, a la postre, para reducir el alarmante déficit comercial y de pagos con el exterior. Otros países nos podrían servir de ejemplo en esta tarea de activismo diplomático, empezando por Francia y siguiendo por algunos otros países desarrollados, auténticos maestros en el arte de abrir caminos a sus empresas nacionales. Las empresas españolas han logrado, sin embargo, importantes éxitos en el exterior sin que los apoyos diplomáticos hayan servido para desatascar ni allanar dificultad alguna. A pesar de ello, a pesar de la pusilánime acción exterior del Gobierno, las empresas españolas ocupan hoy posiciones muy destacadas en el exterior.
Nombres hay más de medio centenar capaces de encontrar un puesto de honor entre las empresas mundialmente más reconocidas. Hace poco, un estudio realizado sobre las empresas del Ibex 35, es decir, entre las principales empresas españoles con proyección pública importante, ponía de relieve que alrededor de la mitad de la facturación de las principales empresas del país se genera ya en los mercados internacionales. Hay algunas empresas que incluso rozan el 90% de sus ingresos procedentes del exterior y no se trata de empresas pequeñas, sino de compañías mundialmente reconocidas, como la siderúrgica Acerinox, una de las primeras del mundo en el segmento del acero inoxidable.
No sólo la procedencia de sus ingresos mayoritariamente procedentes del exterior denota la importante participación española en la globalización de la economía. También es preciso recordar las importantes compras que algunas empresas españolas de primera fila han realizado y siguen realizando en el exterior, incluso en países de primera fila como Estados Unidos, Gran Bretaña o Alemania, además lógicamente de Latinoamérica, que fue por donde comenzó la extensión exterior de las empresas españolas a finales de los años 80.
La proyección empresarial española en el exterior está muy por encima de la de algunos países que superan ampliamente el PIB español y todo ello a pesar de la escasa relevancia que tiene la diplomacia española más allá de nuestras fronteras. Hay una más que evidente desproporción entre la presencia empresarial española en el exterior y nuestra presencia diplomática, una desproporción que con el Gobierno Zapatero se ha agudizado de forma alarmante. La arenga que Zapatero acaba de realizar a los diplomáticos españoles, no para que rectifiquen su pasividad en su actitud de apoyo a las empresas nacionales sino para que ensalcen la labor económica del Gobierno, coincide además con un cerrojazo a los presupuestos públicos que durante los últimos años han empezado a prodigarse en apoyo de la inversión española en el exterior y de la imagen económica de España. Mientras Zapatero predicaba estos días hermosas palabras para adornar los oídos de sus embajadores, con la otra mano les dejaba prácticamente sin un euro para desarrollar su trabajo. Ironías de la vida.
Estrella Digital 10/09/08
El presidente Rodríguez Zapatero se ha reunido con los embajadores españoles en el exterior para, entre otras cosas, pedirles que prediquen en el exterior la buena nueva de la economía española. Una tarea en la que el sector empresarial ha predicado abundantemente con el ejemplo en los últimos años, de modo que el máximo representante del Ejecutivo casi debería haberse reunido con los empresarios multinacionales españoles para expresarles una petición de este tipo, porque si algo se conoce bien en el exterior de las capacidades de los españoles son las habilidades de empresas y bancos, que han escalado en los últimos años a posiciones de relieve en la clasificación mundial de los negocios.
Es mucho sin duda lo que pueden hacer los embajadores desde sus sedes diplomáticas predicando las bondades del Gobierno de Zapatero en la cosa económica, pero mejor haría el presidente del Gobierno en aleccionar a los representantes diplomáticos españoles en el exterior para que presten un apoyo mucho más decidido a la actividad de las empresas nacionales, que rara vez acuden a las sedes diplomáticas españolas en el exterior para recabar una colaboración que saben de antemano que no se encuentra entre las prioridades que emanan del Palacio de Santa Cruz hacia la tupida red exterior española.
Más que convertirles en apóstoles y propagandistas de una verdad que ahora mismo cuesta trabajo hacer entender a los extranjeros, sobre todo porque hay que competir con rivales de la potencia del Financial Times, que se empeñan casi a diario en mostrar nuestras debilidades económicas (algunas con razón, aunque en su país de origen las padezcan en grado bastante superior), el jefe del Gobierno español debería haberles instruido con un manual práctico de apoyo a las iniciativas empresariales, ya que de ellas se derivarían importantes avances para una aún mayor internacionalización de las empresas españolas y, a la postre, para reducir el alarmante déficit comercial y de pagos con el exterior. Otros países nos podrían servir de ejemplo en esta tarea de activismo diplomático, empezando por Francia y siguiendo por algunos otros países desarrollados, auténticos maestros en el arte de abrir caminos a sus empresas nacionales. Las empresas españolas han logrado, sin embargo, importantes éxitos en el exterior sin que los apoyos diplomáticos hayan servido para desatascar ni allanar dificultad alguna. A pesar de ello, a pesar de la pusilánime acción exterior del Gobierno, las empresas españolas ocupan hoy posiciones muy destacadas en el exterior.
Nombres hay más de medio centenar capaces de encontrar un puesto de honor entre las empresas mundialmente más reconocidas. Hace poco, un estudio realizado sobre las empresas del Ibex 35, es decir, entre las principales empresas españoles con proyección pública importante, ponía de relieve que alrededor de la mitad de la facturación de las principales empresas del país se genera ya en los mercados internacionales. Hay algunas empresas que incluso rozan el 90% de sus ingresos procedentes del exterior y no se trata de empresas pequeñas, sino de compañías mundialmente reconocidas, como la siderúrgica Acerinox, una de las primeras del mundo en el segmento del acero inoxidable.
No sólo la procedencia de sus ingresos mayoritariamente procedentes del exterior denota la importante participación española en la globalización de la economía. También es preciso recordar las importantes compras que algunas empresas españolas de primera fila han realizado y siguen realizando en el exterior, incluso en países de primera fila como Estados Unidos, Gran Bretaña o Alemania, además lógicamente de Latinoamérica, que fue por donde comenzó la extensión exterior de las empresas españolas a finales de los años 80.
La proyección empresarial española en el exterior está muy por encima de la de algunos países que superan ampliamente el PIB español y todo ello a pesar de la escasa relevancia que tiene la diplomacia española más allá de nuestras fronteras. Hay una más que evidente desproporción entre la presencia empresarial española en el exterior y nuestra presencia diplomática, una desproporción que con el Gobierno Zapatero se ha agudizado de forma alarmante. La arenga que Zapatero acaba de realizar a los diplomáticos españoles, no para que rectifiquen su pasividad en su actitud de apoyo a las empresas nacionales sino para que ensalcen la labor económica del Gobierno, coincide además con un cerrojazo a los presupuestos públicos que durante los últimos años han empezado a prodigarse en apoyo de la inversión española en el exterior y de la imagen económica de España. Mientras Zapatero predicaba estos días hermosas palabras para adornar los oídos de sus embajadores, con la otra mano les dejaba prácticamente sin un euro para desarrollar su trabajo. Ironías de la vida.
viernes, 5 de septiembre de 2008
New Candidates Emerge to Replace Japan's Premier
ASSOCIATED PRESSSeptember 5, 2008
TOKYO -- Two new candidates indicated Thursday they would join the race to replace Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda after his resignation this week, but a poll suggests voters want their say in national elections.
The Asahi, a major newspaper, said 56% of Japanese are in favor of dissolving parliament and holding general elections "as soon as possible," according to a telephone poll of 1,069 people conducted Tuesday and Wednesday. It didn't give a margin of error.
Speculation over which party members would enter the race began immediately after Mr. Fukuda made his surprise announcement, and Thursday several put their names forward.
Taro Aso, an outspoken and popular former foreign minister, has indicated a strong desire to run and is considered to be the favorite. Nobuteru Ishihara, the son of Tokyo's governor, said Thursday he would run against Mr. Aso if no other candidates emerged as challengers.
"I'm on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Secretary General Aso," Mr. Ishihara said. "So I have to create opportunities to speak from that stance."
Yuriko Koike, a former defense minister and TV anchorwoman, was widely reported to be considering entering her name, and said Thursday she was consulting with political allies. Economic Minister Kaoru Yosano also said Thursday he will seek the position.
The Liberal Democratic Party, which has been reluctant to call new elections, effectively picks the prime minister from within its ranks because it holds a majority in the powerful lower house of parliament.
The party has announced that it will choose a new leader on Sept. 22, and parliament was expected to install its choice as prime minister after it reconvenes on Sept. 24.
None of the ruling party's candidates were expected to stray much from the economic and diplomatic policies that Mr. Fukuda pursued, although Mr. Aso's nationalist stance could affect international relations.
Copyright © 2008 Associated Press
TOKYO -- Two new candidates indicated Thursday they would join the race to replace Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda after his resignation this week, but a poll suggests voters want their say in national elections.
The Asahi, a major newspaper, said 56% of Japanese are in favor of dissolving parliament and holding general elections "as soon as possible," according to a telephone poll of 1,069 people conducted Tuesday and Wednesday. It didn't give a margin of error.
Speculation over which party members would enter the race began immediately after Mr. Fukuda made his surprise announcement, and Thursday several put their names forward.
Taro Aso, an outspoken and popular former foreign minister, has indicated a strong desire to run and is considered to be the favorite. Nobuteru Ishihara, the son of Tokyo's governor, said Thursday he would run against Mr. Aso if no other candidates emerged as challengers.
"I'm on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Secretary General Aso," Mr. Ishihara said. "So I have to create opportunities to speak from that stance."
Yuriko Koike, a former defense minister and TV anchorwoman, was widely reported to be considering entering her name, and said Thursday she was consulting with political allies. Economic Minister Kaoru Yosano also said Thursday he will seek the position.
The Liberal Democratic Party, which has been reluctant to call new elections, effectively picks the prime minister from within its ranks because it holds a majority in the powerful lower house of parliament.
The party has announced that it will choose a new leader on Sept. 22, and parliament was expected to install its choice as prime minister after it reconvenes on Sept. 24.
None of the ruling party's candidates were expected to stray much from the economic and diplomatic policies that Mr. Fukuda pursued, although Mr. Aso's nationalist stance could affect international relations.
Copyright © 2008 Associated Press
lunes, 1 de septiembre de 2008
FUKUDA RESIGNS
Prime Minister Fukuda abruptly announces resignation
Kyodo News
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda announced Monday that he will step down from the post due to difficulties in implementing key policies such as one to address the nation's slowing economy, a step that will put an end to his government launched only in September last year.
"It is necessary to try to implement measures under a new framework...I thought now is the best time (to resign) to avoid a political vacuum," Fukuda, 72, told a hastily convened news conference.
Fukuda, who doubles as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, also said he instructed LDP Secretary General Taro Aso to prepare to hold a party presidential election to pick his successor, who will thus become prime minister.
Fukuda denied he has any health problems as he announced his resignation.
Fukuda, who took over the government from ailing Shinzo Abe, has been struggling with dismal support rates, despite a major Cabinet reshuffle he implemented in August.
Fuente: Japan Times
miércoles, 13 de agosto de 2008
Japón, al borde de la recesión
Publicado el 13/08/2008, por Expansión.com
Las cifras del PIB de Japón correspondiente al último trimestre dejan a la segunda mayor economía mundial al borde de la recesión. La contracción fue del 0,6% respecto al trimestre anterior, y nada menos que del 2,4% en tasa interanual. La economía nipona, que tiene aún reciente su salida de la etapa de deflación, vivió su última recesión hace seis años.
De la deflación a la recesión con apenas unos meses de tregua. Ese podría ser el camino al que parece abocado Japón. Para evitarlo, mucho tendría que reaccionar la segunda economía mundial durante el trimestre en curso.En el trimestre anterior, las cifras invita al pesimismo. La contracción fue del 0,6% intertrimestral, un porcentaje que se eleva hasta el 2,4% en tasa interanual. Estos números no tienen nada que ver con el crecimiento positivo del 3,2% contabilizado en el primer trimestre del año. Uno de los principales motoresde la economía nipona, las exportaciones, experimentaron su peor comportamiento desde el año 2001, con un descenso del 2,3%, debido a la desaceleración económica mundial y a las presiones derivadas de la revalorización del yen frente al dólar. El consumo interno tampoco pudo serir de apoyo a la segunda mayro economía mundial, con un descenso del 0,5%. El Banco de Japón ya se había encargado en las últimas semanas de anticipar parte de este pesimismo. Pero aún así estas cifras resultaron demasiado inquietantes como para que la Bolsa de Tokio las pasara por alto. Al cierre de la sesión, el índice Nikkei bajó un 2,11%, de forma quese sitúa muy cerca de perder la barrera de los 13.000 puntos, con sólo 23,05 puntos de margen.La peor parte en el Nikkei se la llevaron empresas financieras e inmobiliarias. Entre las primeras, los recortes rozaron el 6% en Sumitomo Trust, superaron el 5% en Resona Holdings, y el 4% en el gigante Mitsubishi UFJ. Entre las inmobiliarias, Tokyu Land se dejó un 5,6%, Heiwa Real State y Sumitmo Realty un 5%.
Las cifras del PIB de Japón correspondiente al último trimestre dejan a la segunda mayor economía mundial al borde de la recesión. La contracción fue del 0,6% respecto al trimestre anterior, y nada menos que del 2,4% en tasa interanual. La economía nipona, que tiene aún reciente su salida de la etapa de deflación, vivió su última recesión hace seis años.
De la deflación a la recesión con apenas unos meses de tregua. Ese podría ser el camino al que parece abocado Japón. Para evitarlo, mucho tendría que reaccionar la segunda economía mundial durante el trimestre en curso.En el trimestre anterior, las cifras invita al pesimismo. La contracción fue del 0,6% intertrimestral, un porcentaje que se eleva hasta el 2,4% en tasa interanual. Estos números no tienen nada que ver con el crecimiento positivo del 3,2% contabilizado en el primer trimestre del año. Uno de los principales motoresde la economía nipona, las exportaciones, experimentaron su peor comportamiento desde el año 2001, con un descenso del 2,3%, debido a la desaceleración económica mundial y a las presiones derivadas de la revalorización del yen frente al dólar. El consumo interno tampoco pudo serir de apoyo a la segunda mayro economía mundial, con un descenso del 0,5%. El Banco de Japón ya se había encargado en las últimas semanas de anticipar parte de este pesimismo. Pero aún así estas cifras resultaron demasiado inquietantes como para que la Bolsa de Tokio las pasara por alto. Al cierre de la sesión, el índice Nikkei bajó un 2,11%, de forma quese sitúa muy cerca de perder la barrera de los 13.000 puntos, con sólo 23,05 puntos de margen.La peor parte en el Nikkei se la llevaron empresas financieras e inmobiliarias. Entre las primeras, los recortes rozaron el 6% en Sumitomo Trust, superaron el 5% en Resona Holdings, y el 4% en el gigante Mitsubishi UFJ. Entre las inmobiliarias, Tokyu Land se dejó un 5,6%, Heiwa Real State y Sumitmo Realty un 5%.
martes, 12 de agosto de 2008
A Bofetadas en el Caucaso
Mi pregunta es: ¿ Cómo coño se le ocurre a un ejercito de indigentes con chancletas como el georgiano atacar a un ejercito de borrachos pendencieros como el ruso? ¿ No sabían que sus palos con clavo no son nada frente al poderío de las botellas de vodka rotas que empuñan los rusos? ¿ Pensaban quizás que los rusos se quedarían durmiendo la mona mientras les robaban las vacas a sus primos de Osetia del Surl? Estos y otros interrogantes, como la verdadera sexualidad de Lina Morgan, acuden a mi mente en estos días de furía bélica.
Dado que este bloggerl es presuntamente colaborativo, presuntamente lo pergeñamos entre tres, y presuntamente esos dos saben leer, no voy a dar mi opinión sobre lo que sucede basándome en mis profundos conocimientos de las tensiones bélicas existentes en el Caucaso desde la expansión rusa de finales del XVIII, si considerais que teneis algo que añadir os lo guardais en ese pequeño espacio que queda entre el dolor de las novias que os han dejado y las variopintas frustaciones sociales que habeis venido acumulando losers. El debate está abierto.
Dado que este bloggerl es presuntamente colaborativo, presuntamente lo pergeñamos entre tres, y presuntamente esos dos saben leer, no voy a dar mi opinión sobre lo que sucede basándome en mis profundos conocimientos de las tensiones bélicas existentes en el Caucaso desde la expansión rusa de finales del XVIII, si considerais que teneis algo que añadir os lo guardais en ese pequeño espacio que queda entre el dolor de las novias que os han dejado y las variopintas frustaciones sociales que habeis venido acumulando losers. El debate está abierto.
lunes, 21 de julio de 2008
The global economy is at the point of maximum danger
Un mes celebrando la victoria del combinado español, el golazo de Torres, la inutil salida del cancerbero teutón, y ha tenido que venir el Señorito Ambrose Evans-Pritchard a mandarnos de vuelta al mundo real: hemos superado la crisis y nos dirigimos de cabeza, sin casco y con la gorda de tu prima de Las pedroñeras al volante del 127, hasta las cejas de cazalla, hacia terrenos desconocidos.... suenan campanas de recesión dudes. Hoy el análisis optimista de Ambrose en el Telegraph, mañana o pasado hablaremos del gobierno.
PSD: Agradecer a los otros dos presuntos pergeñadores de este bloggerl su inestimable aportación de documentos, sois escoria tios!!
PSD: Agradecer a los otros dos presuntos pergeñadores de este bloggerl su inestimable aportación de documentos, sois escoria tios!!
miércoles, 2 de julio de 2008
European champions (of nearly everything)
Hay que ver lo bien que nos deja The Independent en un completo artículo a todo color cuatricomía papel maché apaisado, ya solo falta que nos devuelvan Gibraltar y tan amigos.
martes, 1 de julio de 2008
Il sorpasso 2.0
La profezia di Zapatero
Italia superata anche nel calcio
E così ci hanno superati pure nel calcio. Sul campo gli italiani battevano gli spagnoli per diritto divino dai tempi di Zamora e Alfonso XIII. Nel frattempo loro ci hanno sopravanzati in quasi tutto il resto. A Vienna, per dire, l'Italia schierava ‘Gnazio La Russa, la Spagna re Juan Carlos (per quanto oggettivamente ridimensionato dall'intervista in italo-spagnolo concessa ad Amedeo Goria). Unica consolazione: Zapatero sarà pure un leader giovane e dinamico, ma di calcio sa poco. Non soltanto — a differenza di Berlusconi, e analogamente a politici minori tipo Churchill e de Gaulle — non ha vinto cinque Coppe dei Campioni; ha pure pronosticato una partita scoppiettante («Vinciamo noi 3-2!»). A Zapatero queste cose piacciono: prima delle elezioni del marzo scorso, aveva affidato al direttore del Mundo un foglietto con il numero — 172 — dei seggi che il suo Partito socialista avrebbe conquistato. Furono solo 3 di meno: comunque, vittoria. Anche stavolta ha vinto lui. Ma al termine di un match senza reti. Ha fatto miglior figura il nostro premier, per una volta prudente e silenzioso. Per giunta siamo — o crediamo di essere — molto amici, quasi parenti. Zapatero e Berlusconi appartengono a due generazioni e due famiglie politiche lontane, ma il rapporto personale è ottimo. Si stanno simpatici.
Alla vigilia del 13 aprile, il premier spagnolo mandò un video augurale a Walter Veltroni (Zapatero dice Ualter); ma il giorno dopo fu il primo tra gli stranieri a congratularsi con Berlusconi. I due simpatizzarono fin da quando, nel maggio 2004, il Cavaliere volle abbracciare l'ospite non solo metaforicamente, smarcandosi da Fini che ne aveva criticato il programma laicista: «Tra me e José Luis le posizioni sono identiche». Non era proprio così, ma sei mesi dopo lo riabbracciò in pubblico, stavolta a Cuenca: «Io e José Luis siamo due guapos », fu la risposta agli applausi della folla. Qualche recente dissapore, italiani e spagnoli l'hanno avuto anche fuori dal calcio. C'era ancora Prodi quando Zapatero annunciò il sorpasso di Madrid nel pil pro capite, e il Professore contestò: «Non è vero, in media restano più ricchi gli italiani ». La ministra Bibiana «Bibi» Aido, appoggiata dalla vicepremier Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, parlò di razzismo italiano dopo i roghi nei campi rom e la stretta sulla sicurezza del nuovo governo. Schermaglie. Per il resto, italiani e spagnoli si sono inventati una fratellanza che nella storia non è mai esistita. Anzi, i due popoli si sono detestati e combattuti per secoli, e persino quando si allearono come a Lepanto gli screzi furono tali che il patto venne subito infranto (scrive Arrigo Petacco nel minuzioso libro dedicato alla battaglia che fino all'assedio di Famagosta e già qualche mese dopo la Serenissima si trovava meglio con i turchi di Selim II, la cui favorita e madre dell'erede al trono era per altro veneziana).
L'equivoco nasce forse dalla percezione distorta che l'Italia ha della Spagna, e viceversa. Se gli spagnoli, e non solo, pensano l'Italia come un'immensa Napoli, con il sole la pizza il mandolino gli spaghetti e tutto, noi pensiamo la Spagna come una grande Andalusia. La Spagna verde, atlantica, zitta, diffidente, ci è estranea; sono posti dove non si va in vacanza e che non si vedono in tv. In realtà, spagnoli e italiani sono molto diversi. Ad esempio un'antica diceria popolare iberica, radicata nei secoli del declino e delle guerre civili, racconta che la Spagna sia nata sotto una cattiva stella. In Italia avevamo inventato invece la leggenda dello stellone (ridimensionata pure quella dai rigori di ieri). Per il resto, le parti si sono invertite. Come informano le statistiche, gli spagnoli sono il popolo più ottimista d'Europa, e noi il più pessimista. Gli spagnoli ci sono diventati simpatici qualche decennio fa, quando abbiamo scoperto che erano più poveri e più disorganizzati. Nel frattempo il sistema di Madrid, uscito da una dittatura autarchica, si è rivelato capace di batterci. In due generazioni, gli spagnoli hanno creato imprese in grado di comprare o contendere quote delle società italiane che gestiscono i telefoni e le autostrade, nel Paese con la massima concentrazione di telefonini e di auto al mondo. Così Telefonica è entrata in Telecom, e Abertis è stata fermata dalla politica sulla soglia della fusione con Autostrade. La Spagna è di gran moda, considerata un punto di riferimento per la gioia di vivere, la concordia tra le parti sociali, la flessibilità del lavoro, il progresso dei diritti civili. La società spagnola pare un modello di dinamismo sia ai progressisti («Viva Zapatero! ») sia ai restauratori, ai sostenitori del matrimonio omosessuale come ai difensori della famiglia tradizionale, agli amanti della movida e dei film di Almodovar come ai neocatecumenali seguaci del santo chitarrista Kiko Arguello e ai ciellini che dopo la morte di Giussani si sono affidati allo spagnolo Carron. E' la derrota di cui parla Panucci, che a Madrid ha trovato casa e moglie (già lasciata però). Eppure da qualche mese la crisi finanziaria e immobiliare morde i primati della Spagna. La partita, quella vera, non è certo finita stasera; forse è appena cominciata.
Aldo Cazzullo 23 giugno 2008
Fuente: Corriere della Sera
Italia superata anche nel calcio
E così ci hanno superati pure nel calcio. Sul campo gli italiani battevano gli spagnoli per diritto divino dai tempi di Zamora e Alfonso XIII. Nel frattempo loro ci hanno sopravanzati in quasi tutto il resto. A Vienna, per dire, l'Italia schierava ‘Gnazio La Russa, la Spagna re Juan Carlos (per quanto oggettivamente ridimensionato dall'intervista in italo-spagnolo concessa ad Amedeo Goria). Unica consolazione: Zapatero sarà pure un leader giovane e dinamico, ma di calcio sa poco. Non soltanto — a differenza di Berlusconi, e analogamente a politici minori tipo Churchill e de Gaulle — non ha vinto cinque Coppe dei Campioni; ha pure pronosticato una partita scoppiettante («Vinciamo noi 3-2!»). A Zapatero queste cose piacciono: prima delle elezioni del marzo scorso, aveva affidato al direttore del Mundo un foglietto con il numero — 172 — dei seggi che il suo Partito socialista avrebbe conquistato. Furono solo 3 di meno: comunque, vittoria. Anche stavolta ha vinto lui. Ma al termine di un match senza reti. Ha fatto miglior figura il nostro premier, per una volta prudente e silenzioso. Per giunta siamo — o crediamo di essere — molto amici, quasi parenti. Zapatero e Berlusconi appartengono a due generazioni e due famiglie politiche lontane, ma il rapporto personale è ottimo. Si stanno simpatici.
Alla vigilia del 13 aprile, il premier spagnolo mandò un video augurale a Walter Veltroni (Zapatero dice Ualter); ma il giorno dopo fu il primo tra gli stranieri a congratularsi con Berlusconi. I due simpatizzarono fin da quando, nel maggio 2004, il Cavaliere volle abbracciare l'ospite non solo metaforicamente, smarcandosi da Fini che ne aveva criticato il programma laicista: «Tra me e José Luis le posizioni sono identiche». Non era proprio così, ma sei mesi dopo lo riabbracciò in pubblico, stavolta a Cuenca: «Io e José Luis siamo due guapos », fu la risposta agli applausi della folla. Qualche recente dissapore, italiani e spagnoli l'hanno avuto anche fuori dal calcio. C'era ancora Prodi quando Zapatero annunciò il sorpasso di Madrid nel pil pro capite, e il Professore contestò: «Non è vero, in media restano più ricchi gli italiani ». La ministra Bibiana «Bibi» Aido, appoggiata dalla vicepremier Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, parlò di razzismo italiano dopo i roghi nei campi rom e la stretta sulla sicurezza del nuovo governo. Schermaglie. Per il resto, italiani e spagnoli si sono inventati una fratellanza che nella storia non è mai esistita. Anzi, i due popoli si sono detestati e combattuti per secoli, e persino quando si allearono come a Lepanto gli screzi furono tali che il patto venne subito infranto (scrive Arrigo Petacco nel minuzioso libro dedicato alla battaglia che fino all'assedio di Famagosta e già qualche mese dopo la Serenissima si trovava meglio con i turchi di Selim II, la cui favorita e madre dell'erede al trono era per altro veneziana).
L'equivoco nasce forse dalla percezione distorta che l'Italia ha della Spagna, e viceversa. Se gli spagnoli, e non solo, pensano l'Italia come un'immensa Napoli, con il sole la pizza il mandolino gli spaghetti e tutto, noi pensiamo la Spagna come una grande Andalusia. La Spagna verde, atlantica, zitta, diffidente, ci è estranea; sono posti dove non si va in vacanza e che non si vedono in tv. In realtà, spagnoli e italiani sono molto diversi. Ad esempio un'antica diceria popolare iberica, radicata nei secoli del declino e delle guerre civili, racconta che la Spagna sia nata sotto una cattiva stella. In Italia avevamo inventato invece la leggenda dello stellone (ridimensionata pure quella dai rigori di ieri). Per il resto, le parti si sono invertite. Come informano le statistiche, gli spagnoli sono il popolo più ottimista d'Europa, e noi il più pessimista. Gli spagnoli ci sono diventati simpatici qualche decennio fa, quando abbiamo scoperto che erano più poveri e più disorganizzati. Nel frattempo il sistema di Madrid, uscito da una dittatura autarchica, si è rivelato capace di batterci. In due generazioni, gli spagnoli hanno creato imprese in grado di comprare o contendere quote delle società italiane che gestiscono i telefoni e le autostrade, nel Paese con la massima concentrazione di telefonini e di auto al mondo. Così Telefonica è entrata in Telecom, e Abertis è stata fermata dalla politica sulla soglia della fusione con Autostrade. La Spagna è di gran moda, considerata un punto di riferimento per la gioia di vivere, la concordia tra le parti sociali, la flessibilità del lavoro, il progresso dei diritti civili. La società spagnola pare un modello di dinamismo sia ai progressisti («Viva Zapatero! ») sia ai restauratori, ai sostenitori del matrimonio omosessuale come ai difensori della famiglia tradizionale, agli amanti della movida e dei film di Almodovar come ai neocatecumenali seguaci del santo chitarrista Kiko Arguello e ai ciellini che dopo la morte di Giussani si sono affidati allo spagnolo Carron. E' la derrota di cui parla Panucci, che a Madrid ha trovato casa e moglie (già lasciata però). Eppure da qualche mese la crisi finanziaria e immobiliare morde i primati della Spagna. La partita, quella vera, non è certo finita stasera; forse è appena cominciata.
Aldo Cazzullo 23 giugno 2008
Fuente: Corriere della Sera
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