Economist, May 31, 2014 (II)

choi

This issue has a special report: Business in Asia. Prior to it is a preview in the section of Leaders.

(1) Leaders  |  A World to Conquer. Asian business is reforming.
(“In the 1920s British firms owned 40% of the global stock of foreign direct investment. By 1967 America was top dog, with a 50% share”)

My comment: There is no need to read the rest.


(2) The special report has a summary and six articles. Only a bit of one article is worth reading.

Globalisation  |  The Fear Factor. Why Asian firms need to take on the world.
www.economist.com/news/special-r ... e-world-fear-factor

two consecutive paragraphs:

“Evidence of the third important trend—and the most impressive—can be found in the Chinese seaside city of Qingdao. It is home to two big brands. One of them is Tsingtao Brewery, set up by Germans in 1903. Tsingtao is one of China’s favourite beers and most powerful brands, but has become complacent. It faces a price war on its home turf as multinational brewers have gone on the attack, and has made surprisingly little progress abroad. Some analysts think it is a takeover target for a global firm (Asahi, a Japanese drinks firm, owns a minority stake).

“Qingdao’s true corporate champion is more unexpected. Haier, built from the ruins of a state-run factory in the 1980s, is now one of the world’s largest makers of household goods. It is owned by its staff and makes sales of $30 billion, a quarter of them abroad, having entered America back in the 1990s. It is rightly celebrated by business gurus as a Chinese triumph, but there is a snag: the margins on the foreign business are low. As Haier’s boss, Zhang Ruimin, explains, ‘there is a rule in business expansion overseas. You suffer losses for eight years before you make money. This rule applied to us in the US. We spent a lot of money on R&D and advertising locally.’ Margins abroad are now improving. Mr Zhang’s new obsession is the internet, and remaining nimble and innovative.

My comment: There is no need to read the rest. View the two bar charts, though.