Posts tagged…Investment
Nationalism and foreign investment policy
Mon, Feb 16 2009In today's Fairfax press, Beijing correspondent John Garnaut provides some much-needed facts to hose-down the economic nationalism being whipped up by some investment advisors and politicians over the Rio asset sale to Chinalco. Garnaut's story about the relationships of Chinalco and Chinese steel giant BaoSteel and about the pressures on the government fund backing the loans to Chinalco confirm No role for the FIRB in Rio
Thu, Feb 12 2009
Maybe Alan Kohler is right and, from a commercial perspective, Rio’s asset sale to Chinalco “stinks”. But it is not the role of foreign investment policy to pick between investments, or investors, on the basis of their commercial smarts. That’s up to the Board and the shareholders.
The half-stated concern over the Rio-Chinalco deal remains, as it was last year, that the Chinese investors have a…
Read more…Evidence that shorting ban “a mistake”
Wed, Feb 11 2009Reactive policies adopted because the regulators have a ‘hunch’ they’re right are frequently wrong. So, it now seems, with the ban that ASIC imposed on short-selling stocks—a common and prudent risk hedge—because, they said, it would lead to “unwarranted price fluctuations” in financial stocks.
Whatever that means: the regulator never explained to us what was ‘unwarranted’ about falls in the…
Suppose the SWFs got cold feet?
Thu, Dec 04 2008"‘Right now we don’t have the courage to invest in financial institutions because we don’t know what problems we will put ourselves into,’ Lou Jiwei [Chairman of China Investment Corp] said on Wednesday. ‘My confidence should come from government policies. But if they are changing every week, how can you expect that to make me confident?" extract from: Financial Times…
Foreign direct investment approvals
Tue, Aug 26 2008Below the fold, my Op-Ed in today's Australian Financial Review on the approval of foreign investment proposals.
In summary, I'm advocating a transparent policies and procedures using existing review institutions and laws (the Corporations Act, the Australian Stock Exchange Guidelines on business practices, the transfer pricing regulations of the tax laws) to regulate all companies doing business…