Performance Designed Products Announces Acquisition by Diversis Capital

Reuters
For China's property developers, Hong Kong is becoming Shenzhen's backyard
Chinese property developers have turned their sights to Hong Kong's border districts as mainlanders from neighbouring boomtown Shenzhen consider parts of the former British colony as a more affordable long-term housing prospect. The development plans are seen by some as a turning point, with buyers from what was once considered Hong Kong's cheaper industrial hinterland increasingly viewing of the global finance hub as Shenzhen's "backyard". While Hong Kong's property market remains red-hot, the city's international economic prestige has come under pressure after prolonged pro-democracy protests in 2019 and sweeping new national security laws last year.
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MoneyWise
The 10 basic rules that made Warren Buffett $100 billion
These simple guidelines helped Buffett get rich, and anyone can use them.
19h ago
FX Empire
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It’s a relatively quiet day ahead on the economic calendar. Business sentiment figures from Germany and core durable goods orders from the U.S will draw attention, however.
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Reuters
Analysis: China digital currency trials show threat to Alipay, WeChat duopoly
In China's commercial hub Shanghai, six big state banks are quietly promoting digital yuan ahead of a May 5 shopping festival, carrying out a political mandate to provide consumers with a payment alternative to Alipay and WeChat Pay. The banks are persuading merchant and retail clients to download digital wallets so that transactions during the pilot programme can be made directly in digital yuan, bypassing the ubiquitous payment plumbing laid by tech giants Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba 9988.HK, and Tencent 0700.HK. "People will realise that digital yuan payment is so convenient that I don't have to rely on Alipay or WeChat Pay anymore," said a bank official involved in the rollout of e-CNY for the Shanghai trial, under the guidance of China's central bank.
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Reuters
U.S. auto dealers are winners as chip shortage lifts vehicle profits
Mike Bowsher shakes his head in wonder when he hears yet another customer at one of his Buick-GMC dealerships near Atlanta has agreed to pay full sticker price of more than $71,000 for a top-of-the-line GMC Yukon XL Denali SUV that is still being assembled at a General Motors factory. Customers know what Bowsher has arriving by scanning the online inventories of his six stores in the region, and they are often willing to wait more than a week and pay full price to get their desired vehicle. "I'm selling about 150% of what I have on the ground," Bowsher said.
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Reuters
Exxon retreated from oil trading in pandemic as rivals made fortunes
Exxon Mobil's effort to build an energy trading business to compete with those of European oil majors unraveled quickly last year as the firm slashed the unit’s funding amid broader spending cuts, 10 people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The cuts left Exxon traders without the capital they needed to take full advantage of the volatile oil market, these people said. The coronavirus pandemic sent prices to historic lows - with U.S. oil trading below zero at one point - before a strong rebound.
1h ago
FX Empire
USD/JPY Forex Technical Analysis – Appears to Be Headed Toward Test of 107.154 – 106.780 Support Cluster
The direction of the USD/JPY on Monday is likely to be determined by trader reaction to 107.877.
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BBC
Can Western brands recover from consumer backlash in China?
Some foreign companies are facing a boycott in China - they are not the first and won't be the last.
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Bloomberg
China’s Swine Fever Lockdown Reshapes $300 Billion Pig Industry
(Bloomberg) -- China’s plan to control the transport of live hogs to rein in the spread of African swine fever is set to reshape the market and create regional price differences in the world’s biggest consumer and producer of pork.The country will be split into five regions from May, the agriculture ministry said last week, and live pigs will not be allowed across the boundaries. The move will push down pork prices in the main producing areas in the north and increase the cost of the popular protein in demand centers in the south. If the controls stay in place over the longer term, companies will be forced to open more pig farms closer to where their customers are.China’s hog industry was devastated by African swine fever in 2018 and, while herd sizes have recovered since then, a recent resurgence drove up pork imports to a record last month. Prices have fallen, however, as the culling of herds increased domestic supply. Pigs are a very important source of protein in China with the market for pork sales worth about 2 trillion yuan ($308 billion) a year, according to figures from the Dalian Commodity Exchange.Some 20% of China’s pigs, or about 140 million live animals, are transported each year, mainly from the northeast to the south to meet demand for fresh meat, said Lin Guofa, a senior analyst at consultancy Bric Agriculture Group.“Some areas that used to call themselves no-pig counties or no-pig cities will have to build pig farms,” he said. But transport of frozen meat instead of live hogs will be encouraged, which will lead to an expansion of the cold-chain industry, Lin said.Northeast China is the top pig-producing region due to an abundant corn supply and relatively easy access to land, while the northwest region of Xinjiang has also been identified as an area in which to expand pork production.The controls will depress prices in the north in the short term and push them up in the south, according to Wang Zhong, chief consultant at Systematic, Strategic & Soft Consulting Co. That may eventually prompt big pork producers -- including Muyuan Foodstuff Co., New Hope Liuhe Co. and Wens Foodstuff Group Co. -- to build more hog farms in the south and more slaughtering facilities in the northeast and northwest.The new rules are similar to systems developed in Brazil and Spain, which have been successful in getting rid of African swine fever, the agriculture ministry said. While “the virus is still widely distributed and difficult to eradicate in the short term,” regional controls are an “inevitable choice,” it said.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
5h ago
Reuters
Toshiba must seek suitors, another big shareholder says, after CVC's $21 billion offer
Toshiba Corp's second-biggest shareholder called on the Japanese conglomerate to undergo a strategic review and explicitly solicit suitors, saying potential acquirers were deterred by the company's comments on wanting to remain listed. The comments by 3D Investment Partners, which owns a 7.2% stake in Toshiba, come as a $21 billion buyout offer from CVC Capital Partners earlier this month has sparked expectations for a bidding war for the Japanese company. While Toshiba dismissed that offer citing a lack of details, CVC has not thrown in the towel and sources have said some other private equity investors are also considering making bids.
4h ago
Bloomberg
Chinese Firms Are Listing in the U.S. at a Record-Breaking Pace
(Bloomberg) -- Chinese companies are listing in the U.S. at the fastest pace ever, brushing off tensions between the world’s two biggest economies and the continued risk of being kicked off American exchanges.Firms from the mainland and Hong Kong have raised $6.6 billion through initial public offerings in the U.S. this year, a record start to a year and an eightfold increase from the same period in 2020, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The largest IPO is the $1.6 billion listing of e-cigarette maker RLX Technology Inc., followed by the $947 million offering of software company Tuya Inc.That’s even as Sino-U.S. tensions show few signs of easing and the threat of Chinese firms being delisted from U.S. exchanges remains. In fact, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said last month it would begin implementing a law forcing accounting firms to let U.S. regulators review the financial audits of overseas companies. Non-compliance could result in a delisting from the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq.The risk for mainland firms is high given China has long refused to let U.S. regulators examine audits of its overseas-listed companies on national security concerns.“They would acknowledge this is a potential risk, and if something happens they might need to get prepared for a rainy day,” said Stephanie Tang, head of private equity for Greater China at law firm Hogan Lovells. “But the risk itself would not prohibit those companies from going to the U.S., at least in the second half of this year or probably toward next year.”Despite all the risks, the pipeline continues to grow, setting up 2021 to potentially exceed last year. Chinese firms raised almost $15 billion through U.S. IPOs in 2020, the second highest on record after 2014, when e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. fetched $25 billion in its float.Didi Chuxing has filed confidentially for a multi-billion-dollar U.S. IPO that could value the Chinese ride-hailing giant at as much as $100 billion, Bloomberg News has reported. Uber-like trucking startup Full Truck Alliance is also working on a U.S. listing this year that could raise about $2 billion, people familiar with the matter said, requesting not to be named because the matter is private.“Chinese companies in the new economy do not seem to have been deterred from seeking U.S. listings despite the ongoing tensions,” said Calvin Lai, a partner at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. “They take that as one of the risks but that doesn’t tilt the pendulum.”Additional share sales by Chinese companies have also been well-received in the U.S. this year, delivering an average return of 11% from their offering prices in the following session, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.And while rival financial centers like Hong Kong have in recent years changed their listing rules to make it easier for new economy firms to go public there, that has not stopped the flow of firms going stateside. In fact, the traffic now goes both ways, with U.S.-traded Chinese firms getting a second listing in Hong Kong to expand their investor base and as a hedge against the delisting risk.Such secondary listings raised almost $17 billion last year and have fetched over $8 billion this year already, Bloomberg data show. Bankers said many companies go to the U.S. knowing they can subsequently list in Hong Kong.For example, Didi is also exploring a potential dual offering in Hong Kong later, a person familiar with the matter has said, while Chinese electric carmaker Xpeng Inc. is also looking into a share sale in the financial hub less than a year after going public in New York.To be sure, it’s not all plain sailing for everyone. TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd.’s IPO plans have been put on hold as it seeks to comply with regulatory demands from both China and the U.S., the South China Morning Post reported on Saturday. The world’s most valuable startup is struggling to find a business structure that satisfies both Beijing and Washington, the report said, with the separation of Douyin, the domestic version of TikTok, from its global peer posing a particular challenge.U.S. capital markets have long attracted Chinese companies for a number of reasons: their greater liquidity, broader investor base, and the cachet associated with a U.S. listing. Technology and fintech firms have flocked to the U.S. because of its more streamlined process as well as greater openness to loss-making businesses.“The U.S. still remains a magnet for the IPOs of Chinese technology companies,” Tang said. “Just in terms of the pipeline, I don’t see any pause to that. I think the pipeline is very strong.”(Updates with ByteDance IPO plans in third last paragraph)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
10h ago
Reuters
Nasdaq futures edge lower ahead of Big Tech earnings
Futures tracking the Nasdaq 100 index dipped on Monday as big technology stocks retreated ahead of first-quarter results later this week, while investors awaited clarity on a new tax plan from President Joe Biden. Tesla Inc shares edged higher as analysts expect the electric automaker to report a rise in first-quarter revenue when it reports after markets close following record deliveries for the period. Of the 123 companies in the S&P 500 that have published results so far, 85.4% have reported earnings above analysts' estimates, with Refinitiv IBES data now predicting a 33.9% jump in profit growth.
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Crypto Long & Short: The Pattern in Bitcoin’s Volatility
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Credit Suisse Fund Investors Face More Losses on Greensill Loans
(Bloomberg) -- Investors in the Credit Suisse Group AG funds that invested in assets sourced by Greensill Capital may face a further $190 million loss on their holdings.A discount of roughly 7% will be applied to notes on a book of around $2.8 billion loans held in the funds, adding to potential losses stemming from troubled borrowers such as SoftBank Group Corp.-backed Katerra, U.S. coal miner Bluestone Resources Inc. and Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance, according to a statement from the Swiss lender.The bank didn’t identify the creditors that may not fully repay the loans. It hired an advisory firm to assess the creditworthiness of the underlying borrowers, according to the statement.Greensill filed for insolvency in March as it couldn’t roll over insurance coverage for some of the products it sourced and packaged. Credit Suisse, citing valuation concerns, eventually moved to wind down a $10 billion group of supply chain finance funds that purchased those loans.The bank has since returned a total of $4.8 billion to investors. Valuation on the $2.3 billion notes linked to Katerra, Bluestone and GFG remain uncertain, Credit Suisse said in the statement.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
2h ago
Bloomberg
Sell Signals All but Useless in Unchartable 2021 Stock Market
(Bloomberg) -- If you bailed because of Bollinger Bands, ran away from relative strength or took direction from the directional market indicator in 2021, you paid for it.It’s testament to the straight-up trajectory of stocks that virtually all signals that told investors to do anything but buy have done them a disservice this year. In fact, when applied to the S&P 500, 15 of 22 chart-based indicators tracked by Bloomberg have actually lost money, back-testing data show. And all are doing worse than a simple buy-and-hold strategy, which is up 11%.Of course, few investors employ technical studies in isolation, and even when they do, they rarely rely on a single charting technique to inform decisions. But if anything, the exercise is a reminder of the futility of calling a market top in a year when the journey has basically been a one-way trip.“What we’ve seen this year is a very strong up market that didn’t get many pullbacks,” said Larry Williams, 78, creator of the Williams %R indicator that’s designed to capture a shift in a security’s momentum. A long-short strategy based on the technique is down 7.8% since the end of December.“All the overbought and oversold indicators, mine as well as anybody else’s, didn’t get many buy signals, but a lot of sells,” he said.The temptation to book profits and bail is getting hard to resist after the S&P 500’s best 12-month rally since the 1930s. Increasing the anxiety are a mountain of charts signaling a market that’s stretched to its limits.Earlier this month, the index soared 16% above its 200-day average, a feat that before December had occurred only a handful times over the past three decades. Moreover, the benchmark’s relative strength index has surpassed 70 on both a weekly and monthly basis, a sign that the market has risen too far, too fast.Add in pundits warning of bubble-like valuations and resurgent coronavirus concerns, and it’s a recipe for sell orders. Hedge funds, for instance, have hit the exits this month, stampeding out of tech stocks just days before Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. report financial results.Yet avoiding the stock market for any period of time has proven to be the riskiest wager of all. The S&P 500 has yet to retrench more than 5% this year. At the same time, missing out on the big up days is more penalizing than ever. Absent the top five sessions, the index’s 11% gain dwindles to 2%.“To try to guess that this is the right time to be out of the market, you may as well go to Las Vegas,” said Mark Stoeckle, chief executive officer at Adams Funds. “There’s just as much risk doing that.”Bloomberg’s back-testing model purchases the S&P 500 when an indicator signals a “buy” and holds it until a “sell” is generated. At that time, the index is sold and a short position is established and kept until a buy is triggered.A strategy following RSI signals has dropped 10% this year. The damage occurred as stocks entered the year with unbridled momentum that touched off an order to sell. The trade has since been in place as the S&P 500 never pulled back fast and long enough to flash buy.The moving average convergence/divergence indicator -- better known as MACD -- has suffered a loss of 9.8%. Five of the nine trading signals that the model has produced have been buys, and four of them have lost money. In addition, all four short recommendations have been losers.Such is the cost of betting against momentum in a market where the S&P 500 has already eclipsed the average Wall Street strategist’s year-end target.“Today, and for much of 2020, the overbought conditions have been absorbed by the market with more strength, or at best a pause,” said Renaissance Macro Research co-founder Jeff deGraaf, who ranked as the top technical analyst in Institutional Investor’s annual survey for 11 straight years through 2015. “Overbought/oversold conditions are useless without first defining the underlying trend of the market.”Williams, who has been trading since 1962, agrees. Technical analysis tools aren’t broken, he says, but in a bull market that’s as resilient as this one, investors need to use them in the right context.“You have to have a different tool, if you will, for a job you’re doing,” he said. “I have a hammer that can build a house, but if I use the hammer to dig a hole in the ground, that’s going to be really hard.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
2d ago
Reuters
Analysis: China digital currency trials show threat to Alipay, WeChat duopoly
In China's commercial hub Shanghai, six big state banks are quietly promoting digital yuan ahead of a May 5 shopping festival, carrying out a political mandate to provide consumers with a payment alternative to Alipay and WeChat Pay. The banks are persuading merchant and retail clients to download digital wallets so that transactions during the pilot programme can be made directly in digital yuan, bypassing the ubiquitous payment plumbing laid by tech giants Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba 9988.HK, and Tencent 0700.HK. "People will realise that digital yuan payment is so convenient that I don't have to rely on Alipay or WeChat Pay anymore," said a bank official involved in the rollout of e-CNY for the Shanghai trial, under the guidance of China's central bank.
11h ago
Reuters
Philips lifts 2021 forecast as first quarter sales soar amid pandemic
Philips posted a hefty jump in quarterly profit on Monday and nudged its expectations for 2021 higher as the coronavirus pandemic drives demand for its hospital equipment and personal health appliances. The Dutch health technology company said core earnings surged 74% in the first quarter to 362 million euros ($438 million) compared with the year earlier period, on a 9% rise in comparable sales, easily beating analysts' expectations. "Revenue growth was a bit stronger than we originally expected", Chief Executive Frans van Houten told reporters.
7h ago
Reuters
U.S. auto dealers are winners as chip shortage lifts vehicle profits
Mike Bowsher shakes his head in wonder when he hears yet another customer at one of his Buick-GMC dealerships near Atlanta has agreed to pay full sticker price of more than $71,000 for a top-of-the-line GMC Yukon XL Denali SUV that is still being assembled at a General Motors factory. Customers know what Bowsher has arriving by scanning the online inventories of his six stores in the region, and they are often willing to wait more than a week and pay full price to get their desired vehicle. "I'm selling about 150% of what I have on the ground," Bowsher said.
2h ago
CoinDesk
Bitcoin Snaps 5-Day Losing Streak, Climbs Above $52K
The bellwether cryptocurrency was changing hands around $52,150, with hourly buyer volume at the highest since April 23.
10h ago
CoinDesk
JPMorgan to Let Clients Invest in Bitcoin Fund for First Time: Sources
The JPMorgan bitcoin fund could roll out as soon as this summer, sources tell CoinDesk. NYDIG will be the fund’s custody provider.
1h ago

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Performance Designed Products Announces Acquisition by Diversis Capital

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