the Sun - April 30 2005

Business Features..
1. Don't fear asia's economic growth, Europe told
European Commissioner of trade been working hard to get Europe countries to be more aggressive in Asian trading. He cited the below expectation output as that of European countries' introspections and fearfulness over Asia's astoshining economic growth. --> Well this is actually just to please the public. In my analysis, the commissioner is wooing Europeans to come into the Asian market so to allow more expansion room for Asian ( he was speaking at Singapore) as a favor to Asian countries. According to the article, the published reason for such dry interest of European countries towards Asian in terms of trade is due to issues of intellectual properties, market access for European services(means long term investment benefits) and high industries tariff. The commissioner stressed for one world, one community idealogy, urging Asian countries to put aside historical feelings and focuses on achievements. This is very unlikely for a country with population of one third of the world, many people have no equal opportunity for success.
2. Taking care of family business.
JP Morgan will be organizing an education program called the NextGen Leadership series aiming to help existing rich Asian family business to maintain the wealth to future generations. They are holding a seminar in shanghai coming next month on sustaining family enterprises.. To me they are right on spot because China is the place where there are many rich family enterprises and chinese believes in a fact that a fortune would never last for 3 generations unless there is a third party involves. JP Morgan private banking has always been a lucrative business segment, serving clients such as Magnum and etc. They are successful because of rich clients and the question is wouldn't normal client need their services too ? Therefore, if you are a start-up, it doesn't really matter if you have sound financial knowledge, what matters is you have to make the mark, then you can afford JP Morgan!
3. Banks go big-game hunting in Africa.
International banks are interested in Africa. First of all, we need to understand that Bank make money from interest rates. They provide interest rate for depositer and charge a higher interest rate for loaner, the balance margin goes to their pockets. Therefore, as long as someone needs money, bank is there to stay. Africa is famous for corrupted government, civil wars and presence of uncivilized minority. Unless they are invited by the government, international bankers won't dare big leap into the region. and why would the government wanted a third party to be involved, to me simply is for the reason of being third party.
See.. if an investor has a budget and engaged someone implementer to do it. The implementer have to spend some money to get the things done before asking for collection. In most cases, it is usually risky for the implementer to proceed without guaranteed from a third party because the investor might not have enough budget as claimed to be. If you look at the statistic, there is nothing usual about it. South Africa is growing at 4% to 5% and banks are enjoying 20%+ growth. Nevertheless, probably the market is untapped.
Technology Features
1. Airbus Superjumbo A380 - world first double decker bigger than boeing 747, just pass the flying test. Scheduled to be doing commercial good by 2006, it is publishing illustrations asking for airports to built docking station to meet its requirement. Well, basically it has more than expected, more passenger gates and etc...
So, despite its cost, how does it gonna help airline companies ? Would fetching two times more passenger helps to sort on demand for cost reductions and revenue efficiency ? I am not too sure. The innovating team are still working hard on the testing... risking own lifes and going being the extreme part, such as flying at ice-filled cloud to test the fan and etc. They are not eligible for insurance coverage because they have gone over the limit. What they intended to is to test to make sure that what we regarded as safety is really safety not by assumption of calculation but by solid techniques.