You’ve probably read more than one story about Apple’s current troubles in China. This latest kerfuffle involves a broadside against Apple’s warranty and repair policies by local media (e.g., CCTV, People’s Daily) and at least one consumer agency. Why have I avoided it? While it’s big news for Apple, and for all you Cult of [...]
Chinese investors snapping up cheap Detroit homes is an old story, so I’m surprised that there are still suckers out there who are throwing good money after bad: Low property prices in Detroit, United States, have lured global investors, many of them Chinese, to the city keen to join the buying spree, housing agents said. [...]
OK, time to catch up with a few admin issues, not to mention the news. As I mentioned previously, I’ve been spending the past couple weeks in Pennsylvania at corporate HQ getting up to speed on the new professional gig (FYI: I finally updated my bio with details). I’ve been enjoying such learning opportunities as: [...]
You might not have caught the news from early in the week about a possible acquisition of a Chinese brewery by beer colossus InBev-AB. I didn’t see much coverage of the deal, and to be honest, it is a fairly run-of-the-mill M&A transaction that probably means little to folks outside of the beer/beverage market. Moreover, the story [...]
There is a lot to dislike about China’s ginormous week-long holidays, one of which, Spring Festival/New Year, is coming up in a few weeks. The crowds are larger than you can imagine, requiring some sort of logarithmic scale of imagination to comprehend, the weird system of moving around weekend days is bizarre and uncomfortable, and [...]
The New York Times has run a follow-up story to their earlier excellent coverage of Foxconn/Apple China labor problems and mitigation efforts. The article ran early in the week, but I was only able to get to it this morning because of VPN (i.e., technical) issues. The basic take away from “Signs of Changes Taking [...]
It’s not exactly breaking news to say that multinationals/foreign companies have it tough in China. Seems like every other day I’m writing something about a new investigation, enforcement campaign, or dispute involving a foreign firm here. Some times the criticism turns out to be fair, and other times the rumors are unfounded. Occasionally there are [...]
This article first appeared in Agenda magazine. Check out the latest issue here. Getting that merger or acquisition done right is a difficult proposition. From choosing the right target to crunching the numbers, from due diligence to post-deal restructuring, there are already numerous pitfalls, and some devious cyberthieves out there just found a new way [...]
You remember the CNOOC-Nexen deal, right? China’s State-owned CNOOC was looking for some offshore energy assets, and Canadian oil and gas producer Nexen raised its hand and said “Pick me!” Hilarity then ensued on the political front, both in the U.S. and Canada, and somewhere along the way, I’m sure some of the Chinese people [...]
A quick recommendation here for a William Pesek column in Bloomberg about China short sellers, specifically Carson Block’s Muddy Waters. Pesek argues that instead of demonizing short sellers and throwing up road blocks to thwart their research capabilities, China should embrace these folks since they operate to uncover corruption, fraud and other irregularities that will [...]
This regulatory struggle between the U.S. and China is one of the few accounting stories that is actually exciting. Well, comparatively exciting. You know what I mean. This is a strange U.S.-China bilateral dispute that most of us (I think) figured would be fixed long ago. I thought so because there is a lot of [...]
From the Telegraph: Huawei’s UK arm paid more than £8,600 to send executives to a networking event at the Conservative Party conference, in the same week US politicians said its technology should be blacklisted from American government systems. The company also paid £10,000 to the Liberal Democrats to sponsor a reception at its conference in Brighton. [...]
Huawei’s media affairs chief talks about the company’s U.S. strategy, transparency and what lies ahead.
It looked like a sure bet for approval when it was announced, but now the future of the CNOOC-Nexen deal is decidedly murky.
Economic slowdowns are bad enough for most companies. Don’t make tough times worse with hasty, knee-jerk response plans.
Still no movement on the Iron Man 3 co-production front, but the Mandarin, after his Chinaectomy, is definitely in the picture.
Critics of the U.S. House Intelligence committee report on Huawei and ZTE fail to understand that this wasn’t about past bad acts but rather future “What If?” scenarios.
The government warned Wal-Mart to stay out of the e-commerce biz, so it’s doing some house cleaning. However, there are some complications.
ZTE thinks a rigorous testing regime should allay the fears of the U.S. government. Not going to happen, although I have no idea why.
Everyone seems to think that Huawei and ZTE assembled a crack team of U.S. experts to help them with the investigation. So where were they?