Good morning, New York…
FT ALPHAVILLE
Billionaires, mapped: Paul picks up on the concentration of ultra wealth by city, courtesy of Wealth Insight. It’s a Tokyo versus London showdown.
No one is impressed by China’s amazing April trade figures: The good news is China’s April trade figures are super high! The bad news is no one believes them, which is fair enough because just a few days ago the Chinese foreign exchange authority virtually said that the export numbers are not reliable — it plans to crackdown on companies that appeared to be over-invoicing for exports as a way of skirting capital inflow restrictions. After looking through half a dozen strategist notes, not one of which thinks the export data is accurate, Kate takes us through some of the problems.
Hopium and Japanese exports: A surging stock market, increased corporate earnings and frothy domestic consumer spending are lending some real optimism to Japan’s Abenomics but the main avenue through which hope flows might be narrower than originally thought. David’s post explores the reality of previous periods of yen depreciation on Japanese exports.
RBNZ is really not the one: New Zealand’s central bank has done what it threatened to do back in February and intervened directly in the country’s rather high exchange rate via the FX markets. Kate wonders if it will make any real difference.
NEWS
Toyota said its net profit more than tripled last year and would likely rise by a further 40 per cent this year as a result of a weaker yen, improved US demand and relentless efforts to cut costs. The Japanese automaker on Wednesday reported a net profit of Y962bn ($9.7bn) for the fiscal year that ended in March, up from Y283bn a year earlier. For the current year, it expects to earn Y1.37tn. (Financial Times)
Brazil’s Roberto Azevêdo has emerged as the new director-general of the World Trade Organisation after seeing off Herminio Blanco of Mexico, the favoured candidate of the US and EU, according to officials familiar with the contest. Both Latin American rivals coveted the WTO position as a means to elevate their countries’ influence and cement their status as rising powers. (Financial Times)
Proxy firm Glass Lewis calls on Jamie Dimon to drop chairman role. Jamie Dimon’s future as chairman of JPMorgan Chase suffered a setback when a second shareholder advisory group recommended he be stripped of the role. Ahead of a crucial annual meeting in Tampa in two weeks, shareholders faced a barrage of calls from both the bank and corporate governance groups soliciting their support in votes, with some of the largest investors backing the company’s board. (Financial Times)
The average commodities hedge fund lost 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of the year, according to a closely watched index compiled by brokerage Newedge. The losses come after commodities hedge funds lost 3.7 per cent in 2012, the biggest decline in more than a decade, according to the Newedge Commodity Trading Index. (Financial Times)
SAP took a big step into the cloud computing market on Tuesday with the announcement that it would run corporate applications for its customers in its own data centres. The push signals a potential sea-change in the German software company’s business model and puts it into direct competition with a wider range of technology companies, such as Amazon and IBM. (Financial Times)
The US Federal Trade Commission has warned 10 data brokers that their business practices could be in violation of a privacy protection laws. FTC staff members posed as individuals or company representatives and tried to buy data about people that could be used to assess their creditworthiness, insurance eligibility or whether they were fit for employment. (Financial Times)
Portugal has issued its first new government bonds since requesting an international bailout two years ago, in a heavily-oversubscribed offer of 10-year debt that raised €3bn. Tuesday’s syndicated issue was a crucial milestone in the crisis-hit eurozone country’s bid to regain full access to international debt markets ahead of its planned exit in June 2014 from a three-year bailout programme. (Financial Times)
Chinese securities brokers are boosting the profits they make from proprietary trading and other investment activities even as these are being outlawed among western banks following the financial crisis. The country’s securities regulators have handed a boost to this business by cutting the capital that brokers must hold against their prop trading activities and expanding the kinds of assets in which they can invest. (Financial Times)
Revenues at Alibaba surged by 80 per cent in the final three months of last year, keeping the Chinese ecommerce company on track for what could turn out to be one of the biggest stock market debuts by a tech company either later this year or early next. (Financial Times)
Markets: Global stocks are inching to fresh cyclical highs as robust Chinese trade data crimp concerns about slowing growth in the world’s second-biggest economy, while assets are seen also underpinned by ongoing central bank largesse. Away from equities the mood is less buoyant, with industrial commodities mixed and perceived havens, such as US Treasuries, holding their ground. Gold is up $4 at $1,456 an ounce. (FT’s Global Market Overview)
