Bulletin Board
PANGAEA.Talk.NEWS(tm)
July 1995 issue
World coffee prices to be driven up -- On July 6th, COSTA RICA joined other leading coffee producers in Colombia, El Salvador and Honduras in their decision to temporarily suspend exports of coffee. This move is aimed at driving up the prices of coffee on the world market. Costa Rica joined this effort to help the sluggish coffee market recover from the lowest prices this year. The country's coffee institute [EL INSTITUTO DEL CAFE DE COSTA RICA -- OR ICAFE] decided to withhold exports after prices fell to this year-long low. The Executive Director of the Costa Rican Coffee Institute, Jose Eduardo Madriz, says that producers couldn't afford to continue under the circumstances. (Source: Voice of America) WARSAW, Poland -- British paper and packaging company David S. Smith Holdings Plc paid $15 million for a 75% stake in state-owned Polish paper firm Kieleckie Zaklady Papierowe SA and will invest another $12mil over the next three years to make this Kielce, Poland plant the British firm's East European foothold. The firm is Poland's leading converter of corrugated board and carboard boxes. Under Polish privatisation regulations, 20% of shares in the company will be offered to employees and the remainder will be kept by the privatisation ministry. (Source: Reuters, June 30) North KOREA's food shortage lead to an agreement with South Korea to supply it with 150,000 metric tons of rice. When South Korean ships arrived with their first shipment, N. Korean officials forced them to fly a N. Korean flag in their port. S. Korea halted shipment until it received a formal letter of apology from N. Korea -- received late on Friday, June 30th. N. Korea does not want to tell its citizens of this shortage, to maintan the image of a self-sufficient country. (Source: YOUR LINK HERE) JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- to host the biggest international conference on gambling and lotteries in Africa from July 29 to August 2 -- at the Las Vegas-style Sun City resort in the former nominally independent black homeland Bophuthatswana. South African business, with American backing, announced plans to launch the world's poorest continent into the world's gambling mainstream, following the drafting of new post-apartheid legislation to govern gaming in a country where past governments frowned on such activities. With an estimated 33% unemployment rate in S. Africa, these gaming activites are expected to supply economic and business opportunities. ``Africa represents the best new lottery and gaming market in the world today,'' Duane Burke, chairman of the Washington-based Public Gaming Research Institute said in a statement. ``The results of a newly released South African government study on gambling indicates a real boom for gaming of all types in just South Africa alone,'' he added. (Source: Reuters)
BANKING industry rankings worldwide, based on asset size, is lead by the Japanese banking institutions according to a ranking of the world's top 200, reported by "American Banker" in New York. Sanwa Bank Ltd. climbed to No. 1 from No. 5. Analysts estimated that most of the growth at Sanwa came from an aggressive expansion in lending to rapidly growing Asian countries. Fuji Bank Ltd. moved from being the world's biggest bank to the third; and Sumitomo Bank Ltd. moved from No. 3 to No. 4 this year. But the top position will soon go to Bank of Tokyo and Mitsubishi Bank Ltd., slated to merge next April '96 to form a behemoth institution with nearly $735 billion in assets. This move is believed to be made in the interest of increasing profitability. The single non-Japanese bank to make it into the top 10 was Germany's Deutsche Bank, ranked as No. 10, with $36 billion of assets.
``They (Japanese banks) may be the biggest in terms of assets, but they fall well below American and European banks in terms of profitability,'' said Gary Kleiman, a Washington D.C.-based international banking consultant. ``The strength of Japanese banks used to be that they had large amounts of so-called hidden capital or equity in Japanese companies whose stock prices went through the roof, and the fact that their lending was largely secured by land,'' said Andre Cappon, president of the CBM Group, a New York-based financial consulting firm. ``But land values are dropping spectacularly in Japan, and the stock market hasn't done too well either, so banks have had their assumptions completely shaken up.'' Analysts noted that the problems confronting Japanese banks, mainly large real estate lending that went sour after the Japanese economy went into a slowdown, are very similar to those faced by U.S. banks in the early 1990s. (Source: YOUR LINK HERE)
Western Europe appears ripe to develop a long-term Pan-European INSURANCE strategy for multinational operations. A borderless insurance market is slowly, but surely, emerging. This change is fueled by a combination of globalization and deregulation in Western Europe to revamp this traditionally conservative insurance market. Industry brokers are reportedly more lively than ever before, calling corporate customers for potential policy sales. These changing attitudes are favorable for US players already in the market, including companies such as Chubb Insurance Co. The interest in these global players is to lower insurance costs for multinational companies; which implies that price is an important factor in the decision.(Source: YOUR LINK HERE)
MORE NEWS ON THE HORIZON...
ARCHIVES
May 1995
June 1995
July 1995
August 1995
September 1995
October 1995
November 1995 -- Doing Business in Vietnam - an Insider's Perspective special issue
December 1995
January 1996
February 1996
March 1996
April 1996
May 1996
June 1996
July 1996
August 1996
September 1996
October 1996
November 1996
December 1996/January 1997
February 1997
March 1997
April 1997
May 1997
June 1997
July 1997
August 1997
September 1997
October 1997
November 1997
December 1997
January 1998
February 1998
March 1998
April 1998
May 1998
June 1998
July 1998
August 1998
September 1998
October 1998
November 1998
December 1998
January 1999
February 1999
March 1999
April 1999
May 1999
June 1999
July/August 1999
(c) 1995 PANGAEACommunications. All rights reserved. No part of this file may be copied, distributed or disseminated in part or in whole without the express prior written permission of PANGAEACommunications Reprints are available for US$10.00 per copy, payable to PANGAEA(tm).
