Month: October 2012

CPP investing international sports properties

Post author By yifanliu
Post date October 27, 2012
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Canada’s national pensions plan (CPP) has currently announced its two big transactions on Friday, investing considerable amount of money into two international sports properties, respectively. Specifically, it took 39% stake in Dorna sports and signed a debt agreement with Formula One Group to finance $400 million of a $1 billion high-yield loan. If these transactions were made by a normal corporation, it would be perfectly fine in terms of a chance of generation extra bucks, but it just happened to be CPP. So for this particular organization, Canadian retired citizens need the money from it for a living.

CPP has bought a stake in the company that has the rights to the MotoGP racing series until 2036.

That reminds me of the supply chain issue about what is the appropriate amount to keep in stock, depending on how serious it could be if there was a surplus or shortage of the supply. In this case, I think CPP better makes sure that it has cash all the time. Otherwise, if this investment crashes, policies involving cutting down retirement benefits are likely to be established.

I do understand that the Canada government will be backing up CPP, but the decisions are really not that wise. Since both organizations that CPP invested in are suffering from lack of financial support to run their teams, there must be something bad in whether it is generally liked by people. Therefore, CPP should invest more reliably rather than take high risk for high benefits.

Electronic Vehicles will soon appear in Japan

Post author By yifanliu
Post date October 7, 2012
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The ZEVe ultracompact

Small-sized, environmental-friendly and cheap-priced electronic car, called the ZEVe ultracompact, will soon be running on the roads of Japan. The establishment of this car costs Toyota Motor Corporation $254,800, only for the approval from Japan’s government, a quota of up to 70,000 units annually. From the perspective of the company, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance”, stated by Yoshiro Sugimoto, a veteran of the company.

I believe that this product will bring about many positive contributions to Japan. For the government’s concern, it reduces pollution. For smaller businesses, it is an ideal transportation option with very low cost. More importantly, it maximized transportation efficiency, as stated in the article referenced below, like “one man driving a four-seat car.”

However, it may cause even more serious traffic problem in Japan, given Japan’s huge population density, because most customers of this car would be those who didn’t have a car initially. Therefore, although it is small, the establishment of this vehicle will not reduce any current existing car; it may only provide a chance for low income people to update their bikes to faster “bikes”. Maybe this is the major reason why the government sets that quota.

Samsung estimated record profits in the three months to Sept.

Post author By yifanliu
Post date October 6, 2012
No Comments on Samsung estimated record profits in the three months to Sept.

Samsung is one of the biggest high-end electronics manufacturers, producing and selling phones, TVs and etc. Led by the strong sales of its smart phone product Galaxy S3, Samsung expects its operating profits to hit 8.1 trillion won which is $7.3 billion for a single quarter. Although this expected profit is fairly stunning, Samsung still has unending lawsuits with Apple which sued Samsung for violating several of Apple’s patents. A recent law court that asked Samsung to pay more than $1 billion to Apple also confirmed this shadow over Samsung.

In my opinion, although it will definitely cost Samsung some money to Apple, since I also personally think that Samsung copied some features from iPhone, I still believe that the Samsung’s future performance would be satisfying. It is largely due to its technology similarity with its major competitor Apple’s iPhone and its price competitiveness compared to iPhone. But undeniably speaking, these two companies are dominating the smart phone markets.

The most famous copycat in China — Tencent

Post author By yifanliu
Post date October 1, 2012
No Comments on The most famous copycat in China — Tencent

Tencent is one of the biggest companies in the Internet industry, with more than 700 million user base according to its office site. However, it is widely notorious for its “strategy” in copying products from others in almost every category of the mobile and internet applications. Examples of products of well-known companies being copied are Facebook, eBay and etc. What interested me is that the Tencent’s profit for the first half year in 2012 was two billion Yuan (312,420,000.00 CAD) which was a 54.3% increase compared to that in 2011.

tencent_penguin

I think there are mainly three reasons for its success. Firstly, Tencent was established as early as 1998, leading to its huge user base; at least all of my friends in China use QQ, which is the major product developed by Tencent. Secondly, many famous companies like Facebook are kept out of the China market, so, to some extent, Tencent becomes these companies for Chinese users. More importantly, Tencent did many improvements and modifications to the products it copied, and most of the products are free!

In all, I’m not really supporting this behavior because it’s not ethically right by stealing other people’s works, but I think Tencent has done a great job in positioning itself in the market, with low costs and risks.