Jack Ma ringing of the bell.

Alibaba, the biggest E-Commerce company in the world founded by Jack Ma in Hang Zhou 13 years ago, went public on September 19th 2014. Its services includes business-to-businesses, online web pages, online shopping, payment services, a shopping search engine, and data centric cloud portals. On its debut, Alibaba raised $21.8 billion, becoming the biggest United States-listed Initial Public Offering in history (Bloomberg). Alibaba’s total market value is now over $231 billion (Fortune) and it surpasses big names in U.S.-technology industry such as Facebook, Ebay, and Amazon.

“Ebay is a shark in the ocean, and Alibaba is a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If they try to fight Ebay in the ocean, they will lose. But if they fight eBay in the river, they will win.” –Jack Ma

I admire Jack Ma’s perseverance in his goal: he has created the largest E-Commerce company in China, with little to no inventory. His revenue streams are endless with a variety of customer segments (Business Model Generation), and he continues to broaden his “Differentiation Strategy” (Porter’s Generic Strategies) in Alibaba. In my opinion this is a great opportunity for China to move forward on the international market and to expand the idea of global trade.  This is also a favourable time for North Americans to invest as there are 618 million Internet users in China which 231 million are Alibaba users (Forbes). This middle class will continue to grow, and it is an ever-expanding market. Jack Ma also loves to help small businesses grow, especially entrepreneurship, hence many businesses will prosper in the future years thanks to Alibaba. I believe that Alibaba is the future backbone to many online retail businesses.

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-19/alibaba-s-ma-said-to-let-customers-ring-ipo-opening-bell-at-nyse.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2014/09/19/initiating-coverage-of-alibaba-at-price-estimate-of-80-per-share/

http://fortune.com/2014/09/19/on-alibabas-big-day-jack-ma-is-an-18-billion-winner/

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/alibaba-goes-public-10-things-to-know-about-historic-ipo-1.2016369

image: http://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.2016615!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/image.jpg

http://fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/alibaba-jack-ma-bloomberg.jpg?w=840&h=485&crop=1

300 years ago, Scotland was forcibly assimilated to the Great Britain. Since then Scotts has been fighting to control back. In 2011, the Scottish Nationalist party won in their elections and catalyzed today’s referendum (Britannica). Alex Salmond, Scottish first minister, asked for a vote: to gain independence, or to have more power for Scotland.

I strongly believe that Scotland should not separate from United Kingdom. Scotland does not have the assets to back up their created currency. Their main revenue source of oil will eventually run out. If they keep the sterling pound, they cannot set their own interest rates, they will rely on Bank of England to help them bale out from potential financial troubles. Scotland will also have trouble raising bonds unless it has a large surplus; and if they cannot they will have to raise taxes instead to continue funding public services, or to simply cut them out. Many financial institutions owned by UK are located in Scotland and they may uproot and move out of Scotland; this will cause an increase in unemployment rate in Scotland.

Scotland will not collapse should they separate, but life will become very difficult. Therefore for economic sense, Scotland should chose to stay with UK even though they have a very nationalistic sentiment for having their own country.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-29231440

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/767259/Scottish-National-Party-SNP

Image: http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/77652000/jpg/_77652334_023937313.jpg

Chang Guann Co., a leading oil supplier in Taiwan was fined US$1.67 million on Tuesday the 9th for selling hundreds tonnes of “gutter oil.” In February 2014, Chang Guann purchased 243 tonnes of tainted oil collected from cookers, fryers, and grease traps; he then mixed it up with lard oil for sale. There was a total of 782 tonnes of gutter oil produced and used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau.

An excessive amount of mooncakes, pineapple cakes, bread, instant noodles, and Chinese steamed dumplings and buns have been thrown out of the shelves. Hundreds of restaurants apologized to their customers for unknowingly using such filthy oil in their food.

Mooncake found with the use of gutter oil.

Coming from a traditional Hong Kong family, I know that the customary Moon festival is very important as it symbolizes unity, and it is a great time for family gatherings. Eating mooncakes on this accustomed day is compared to eating turkey on Thanksgivings, but because of Chang Guann’s selfish actions, the buyers were unable to devour this once in a year specialty. I am furious that Guann Chang ruined this festival to earn a little bit profit for himself. In my opinion this is absolutely unacceptable for every person has the right to be assured that his or her food is safe to eat, and no one should ever contaminate any kind of food to earn an extra revenue. 

source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/international/taiwan-oil-supplier-fined/1354036.html

image: http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Chang-Guann3.jpg 

http://img.qz.com/2014/09/mooncakes.jpg?w=940