Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Dec 23, 2012 (cover date)

choi

(1) China's Ticking Debt Bomb.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... s-investment-trusts
("The [trust] industry is set to overtake insurance as the second-largest financial business after banks by yearend, according to a KPMG report")

Note:
(a) The summary underneath the title: A real estate bust may push shadow lenders into default.
(b)
(i) New China Trust &Investment Co, Ltd (based in Chongqing)  新华信托股份有限公司
www.nct-china.com/
(ii) Ordos Jin’ao Property Development  鄂尔多斯市金澳房地产开发有限责任公司
(c) Ordos Jinshan Property Development Group  
金山房地产集团公司，鄂尔多斯金山房地产，金山房地产集团
www.ordosjs.com/
(d) 鄂尔多斯市:
(i) Purple Palace  紫御府
(ii) In photo caption: Kangbashi  巴什新区


(2) François-Henri Pinault; The chief executive officer of PPR on his decision to hire Alexander Wang as creative director of Balenciaga.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... ring-alexander-wang
("Why not Alexander Wang? He’s young. He wants to do it. He’s really excited about it. He’s American. He has Chinese roots—his family is in Shanghai. He’s very multicultural in his approach. Is it important that Alexander has Asian roots? No, but it’s an extra value that he will bring. It was not a criterion for recruitment")

choi

At first I did not want to introduce this report--one of the three feature reports in the issue, because we all are familiar with tragedies when fame, wealth or power unexpectedly and suddenly befall on individuals. On second thought, I changed my mind.

David Samuels, The $314,900,000 Losing Ticket.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... akers-losing-ticket

My comment:
(a) The summary in the Table of Contents: Ten years ago, Jack Whittaker, a self-made businessman, became the biggest single winner in lottery history. And that's when his luck ran out.
(b) If you are in US in 2002, you probably still remember Mr Jack Whittaker, who won Powerball.
(c) What amazes me is this paragraph (the last in web page 1):

"The state [of West Virginia, where he lived and owned a sole proprietorship] announced Whittaker had won $314.9 million—it said so right on the giant check they gave him on TV—but Whittaker never saw anything near that amount of money. Instead of taking annual installments over 29 years, he chose a one-time payout of $113,386,407.77. After taxes, he was left with about $93 million, approximately 30 percent of the sum reported in the newspapers and advertised by Powerball. The false impression left by reports of Whittaker’s record win was nevertheless a powerful lure for West Virginians to keep playing a lottery in which their chances of winning were negligible. (Where New York and Massachusetts, the two biggest lottery-playing states, take a mere 34 percent and 20 percent of the pot from their winners, West Virginia takes a full 41.5 percent.)"

His state has high state income tax; that is for sure.
(d) An oddity of his action appears in web page 2:

"The cost of Whittaker’s insouciance went up sharply the following year. On Jan 25, 2004, according to a police report, he got drunk, parked his car in the middle of the street, went away, returned to find that $100,000 he had left on the passenger seat was stolen, and was charged with drunken driving when the police arrived. Vernon Jackson Jr, also from Scott’s Depot, was indicted on charges including breaking and entering an automobile and grand larceny, but it was also possible to imagine that Jackson had simply taken money Whittaker no longer wanted. After all, he’d left the cash out in plain sight on the passenger seat."

(i) insouciance (n: French): "lighthearted unconcern : NONCHALANCE"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insouciance
(ii) Scott Depot, West Virginia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Depot,_West_Virginia
(e) It will be up to you to decide whether to read teh rest of the report.