(BN) Kate Abandons Modernity as She Steps Back in Time to Marry Prince William

There are far more urgent things in life than watching another royal wedding when the last few have ended in divorces. 

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Kate Abandons Modernity, Steps Back in Time to Marry Her Prince

April 28 (Bloomberg) -- Kate Middleton went to university, got a job and moved in with her boyfriend. From that modern background, she'll step back in time tomorrow when she marries Prince William.

Middleton will wed the second-in-line to the throne at Westminster Abbey in London at 11 a.m. in front of a worldwide television audience of 2 billion. When William becomes Britain's monarch, she will be queen. It's the U.K.'s biggest royal event since the funeral in 1997 of William's mother, Diana, who failed to cope with the pressures that came with being the wife of the next king.

The bride is the first woman from outside royalty or the aristocracy to marry so close to the throne for 350 years. The daughter of an ex-air hostess, she'll be the first future royal consort with a degree. Even so, she's been preparing to be a princess and to deal with the scrutiny since they began dating in 2003. Now she takes on a job that includes producing the next royal heir.

Middleton "knows exactly what she is getting into," said Hugo Vickers, the author of "Elizabeth, The Queen Mother," a biography of William's great-grandmother and an adviser on the Oscar-winning movie, "The King's Speech." "She has had seven or eight years to think about it and she's very well educated."

The prince, who's 28, encountered 29-year-old Middleton when they were students at St. Andrews University in Scotland. She graduated in art history; he has a degree in geography.

Party Pieces

Middleton -- baptized Catherine Elizabeth -- is the eldest child of Michael and Carole Middleton, who met when both worked for British Airways Plc. They set up Party Pieces, a company supplying party accessories. Described in the U.K. press as self-made millionaires, they haven't disclosed how wealthy they are.

The family has lived in the village of Bucklebury in Berkshire, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of London, where Party Pieces is based, for the past 30 years. Michael Middleton is originally from Leeds in northern England, while Carole is from the west London suburbs.

After leaving university, Kate worked part-time as a junior buyer for the women's fashion chain Jigsaw before quitting that job for her parents' company. In 2008, she launched First Birthdays, a sister brand to Party Pieces. Her role within the family business included catalogue design and production, marketing and photography, according to Prince William's office.

William -- blond, blue-eyed and 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 meters) tall -- is a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force. With a fortune of 28 million pounds ($46 million) according to the Sunday Times Rich List, he was one of the world's most eligible bachelors.

Back to Ethelberht

Four generations of the House of Windsor have reigned over Britain since Edward VII ascended the throne in 1901 after the death of his mother, Victoria. His son, George V, changed the name of the ruling family during World War I from the German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

The earliest monarch named on the royal family's website is Ethelberht, who ruled Kent from around 560 to 616 and was the first English king to convert to Christianity.

That long history is littered with royal wives who were unable to live up to the ideal, whatever their background.

Middleton "is essentially pursuing and achieving a very old-fashioned view of happily-ever-after, one that hasn't worked out well for many princesses from Anne Boleyn to Diana," Peggy Orenstein, a San Francisco-based commentator on women's affairs and author of "Cinderella Ate My Daughter," a book about many young girls' obsession with fairytale princesses, said in an e- mail exchange.

Off With Her Head

Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, was beheaded in 1536 on charges of treason, adultery and incest after failing to produce a male heir.

Diana Spencer, an aristocrat who married William's father, Prince Charles, in 1981, found the public scrutiny intolerable and suffered from eating disorders. The marriage ended in divorce and she died at age 36 after a car crash in Paris, pursued by paparazzi photographers.

Sarah Ferguson married Charles's brother, Prince Andrew, in 1986 and divorced 10 years later.

Diana and Sarah "were not going into it blind either but they were not well educated," Vickers said in a telephone interview. "Kate has a degree."

William first became enamored of his future bride when she modeled a see-through dress at a university charity fashion show in 2002. The couple were just friends before the prince, who paid 200 pounds for a front-row seat, saw her sashaying down the runway. The knitted lace outfit sold on March 17 this year at an auction in London for 78,000 pounds.

'Waity Katie'

The pair failed to announce their engagement for many years, confounding media predictions. As a result, she was nicknamed "Waity Katie" by British tabloid newspapers. Later she moved to rural North Wales to live with William near his air-force base.

"I wanted to give her a chance to see in and to back out if she needed to before it all got too much," William said in a television interview when the engagement was announced on Nov. 17. "I'm trying to learn from lessons done in the past and I just wanted to give her the best chance to settle in and to see what happens on the other side."

For all the modern approach, the prince and his bride-to-be won't be breaking the mold, according to Claudia Joseph, author of "Kate: The Making of a Princess."

'Very Old-Fashioned'

"They are a very traditional couple -- their manners, the way they behave," Joseph said in a telephone interview. "They look very old-fashioned compared to the current vogue for current reality television stars."

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who will marry the couple tomorrow, said he'd been struck by the way they had approached the marriage.

"William and Catherine are making this commitment very much in the public eye and they're sensible, realistic young people," the archbishop said in a statement released by his office last week. "They know what the cost of that might be."

Middleton's real work -- the role of queens and princesses down the centuries -- will start after she walks down the aisle later this month.

"One of her great duties apart from making her husband happy is to produce the next generation of the House of Windsor," Vickers said.

Middleton's middle-class background may not be that much of a hindrance as she enters the royal arena fully, in Vickers's view.

"The way the queen copes with the contrasts of life is that when she is not being the queen or entertaining officially she feeds the dogs herself and watches the TV," he said. "She uses Tupperware and rides her horses. She is not on a millionaire's yacht. The royal family do lead quite a middle- class life."

To contact the reporters on this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at kdonaldson1@bloomberg.net Svenja O'Donnell in London at sodonnell@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net

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(BN) Greece Haircut for Bondholders Already Overdue: Matthew Lynn

Just kick the Greeks out of EU until they learn to get to work at 9. 

Bloomberg News, sent from my iPad.

Greece Haircut for Bondholders Already Overdue: Matthew Lynn

April 26 (Bloomberg) -- No cakes, party games or music. As Greece last weekend marked the passing of the first year since it was forced to seek a bailout from its fellow euro members, the mood could hardly have been more somber.

Bond yields soared to fresh highs. The cost of insuring against a Greek default rose to a record. The finance ministry started a criminal investigation into bank employees spreading rumors of an imminent restructuring.

In fact, Greece should have celebrated the anniversary of the rescue package in a different way -- by announcing it was repudiating some of its debts.

The sooner Greece imposes a haircut, to use the financial market's term for losses incurred in a default, the better it will be for everyone. Delay leads to bigger haircuts, and economic research suggests the bigger the haircut, the worse the pain that follows. The damage being inflicted on the Greek economy is too great. And once defaults within the euro area are accepted, a sensible conversation about how to fix the single currency can begin.

Over the last week, the prices in the market make it clear that most traders have already concluded that a Greek default is a done deal. The yield on two-year Greek debt rose higher than 22 percent at the end of last week. Only the most sharkish credit company charges those kinds of rates. Ten-year bond yields are now close to 15 percent. The cost of insuring Greek sovereign debt jumped to a record, with the prices of credit- default swaps now suggesting there is a 67 percent chance of default.

No Point

In reality, there isn't much point in buying the protection. It's like insuring yourself against the possibility it might rain in London in the next year. It's going to happen; it's just a question of when.

Officials in Athens and Brussels are still insisting that default isn't an option. They should quit pretending. Here's why.

The markets portray defaults as catastrophic, mainly because the bankers and fund managers who provide most of the commentary stand to lose a lot of money. In fact, countries fail to pay back their debts all the time. What does make a difference, however, is the size of the haircut.

Future Punishment

A paper presented at the Royal Economic Society conference in London this month by Juan Cruces and Christoph Trebesch studied all the debt restructurings between countries and foreign banks and bondholders since 1970 -- a total of 202 cases in 68 nations. It found that "restructurings involving higher haircuts (lower recovery rates) are associated with significantly higher subsequent spreads (borrowing cost) and longer periods of capital market exclusion." In other words, the worse the losses inflicted on the bondholders, the more the markets will punish you later on, and the longer it will be before you can access the capital markets again.

Greece's debt position is worsening. Delay isn't an option. It would be better to impose a 40 percent or 50 percent loss on bondholders this year than a 70 percent or 80 percent loss in 2013.

Next, the damage being inflicted on the Greek economy right now is catastrophic. Unemployment is set to rise above 15 percent this year. The central bank estimates the economy will shrink by another 3 percent in 2011, even though the rest of the global economy is experiencing a sustained if modest recovery.

Spending Cuts

The government is still reducing spending -- another 22 billion euros ($32 billion) of cuts were announced this month -- which will only depress the economy further. There is very little sign yet that exports can make up for the fall in domestic demand. You can't just cut your way out of this crisis. At some point, the Greek economy needs to start growing again. So far, no one has explained how that is going to happen.

Lastly, once Greece has defaulted, a serious conversation can begin about how to reassemble the euro area. Plan A was to rescue Greece, arrange a bailout, get the country back on track and stop the contagion. It's as clear as day that it hasn't worked. Greece isn't showing signs of recovery, and both Ireland and Portugal have had to apply for bailouts as well. If that doesn't persuade people to switch to Plan B, it's hard to know what will.

Greece should bow to the inevitable, announce a 50 percent haircut on its debt and impose a three-year suspension of interest payments on what remains outstanding. Bondholders could be offered further payments, linked to economic growth, so that as Greece recovers, they get a bit more of their money back.

With the money saved on debt repayment, Greece could start restructuring its economy, putting demand back into the system, and focusing on creating the competitive export industries that are the only thing that will enable it to survive within the euro. The rest of Europe could stop fighting a losing battle to rescue Greece from default, and start concentrating instead on how to make the euro area work better.

There is no point in drawing out the agony any longer --and certainly not until the second birthday of the bailout package. It should be done by the end of May, and then everyone can move on.

(Matthew Lynn is a Bloomberg News columnist and the author of "Bust," a book on the Greek debt crisis. The opinions expressed are his own.)

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To contact the writer of this column: Matthew Lynn in London at matthewlynn@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

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(BN) Obama Releases Both Forms of Birth Certificate, Citing Policy Distractions

Just show how flawed the american system is that can be made used by opportunists looking for free publicity. 

You can trust trump do be the clown and amuse us all for free. 

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Obama Says Questions About Birth a Distraction From Issues

April 27 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama released his long-form birth certificate, saying he wanted to end the "silliness" of false claims he was born outside U.S. that were distracting from urgent debates over the nation's future.

Renewed questions about his place of birth have dominated the news in recent weeks even as the country is in the middle of a debate about the federal budget and how to cut the nation's debt, Obama, 49, said at the White House. He said the issue should have been settled during the 2008 campaign and he has been "puzzled at the degree to which this thing just kept on going."

"We're not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers," Obama said, without naming anyone. "We do not have time for this kind of silliness."

A recent revival of questions about whether Obama is a natural-born U.S. citizen eligible for the presidency has been driven, in part, by developer Donald Trump, who is considering a 2012 presidential bid as a Republican and has raised the issue in speeches and interviews. In addition, several states are considering legislation that would require political candidates to present birth certificates to qualify for office.

Trump's Reaction

By raising the issue, Trump has been able to draw attention at the expense of other potential Republican presidential candidates. In a televised news conference today in New Hampshire, which traditionally holds the nation's first presidential primary, Trump said he is "really happy that this has finally taken place."

He said his questions "accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish" in forcing Obama to release the document. "I'm really honored, frankly, to have played such a big role in hopefully, hopefully, getting rid of this issue," he said.

Still, he said, the document released by the White House will have to be examined. "But I hope it's true," he said.

Other Republicans have been distancing themselves from the questions about Obama's birthplace.

Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who is considering running for the party's nomination, said in an April 20 television interview that the question had been settled and it was time to move on.

"I take the president at his word," she said in an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning America."

'A Distraction'

"This issue is a distraction," Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in an e-mailed statement today. Obama "ought to spend his time getting serious about repairing our economy, working with Republicans and focusing on the long-term sustainability of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wouldn't say whether Trump's revival of the issue prompted the administration to act. During the 2008 campaign, the issue of Obama's birthplace was a "fringe discussion" that should have been settled with the release of the birth certificate that Hawaiian officials give to all those who request records, he said.

"The president believed that it was becoming a distraction from the major issues we're having in this country," Pfeiffer said at a briefing before the president spoke. While the country should be debating how to address issues such as education and entitlement spending, "what was really dominating a lot of the discussion was this fake controversy."

Continuing Questions

Ed Goeas, head of Republican polling firm the Tarrance Group, said release of the document would do little to convince skeptical Republican voters, who will question why it took Obama 2 1/2 years to release the document.

"For the president to get on and say what he did today was the height of hypocrisy," Goeas said. "He's the one that has let this fester out there."

A USA Today/Gallup poll published yesterday showed that 43 percent of those who identified themselves as Republicans said they thought the president was born abroad. Among all Americans, 38 percent said they believe Obama was born in the U.S., and 18 percent said he probably was, while 15 percent said he probably was born in another country and 9 percent said he definitely was born outside the U.S.

Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, questioned the timing of the release of the birth certificate and moved on to his next target: Obama's college records.

Education Records

"Obama has never released his college records, including those at Occidental College," he wrote in a blog post. "Many believe Obama went to college there on a scholarship reserved for foreign students."

Goeas said it may have worked to Obama's advantage to allow Trump to keep the spotlight on the issue, which created a contrast that made the president appear to be focused on serious issues.

Pfeiffer said that, while letting the issue continue to percolate in the Republican campaign "might have been good politics," the president "thought it was bad for the country."

Obama said he expected the questions won't be put fully to rest.

"Now, I know that there's going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest," Obama said. "We got better stuff to do. I've got better stuff to do. We got big problems to solve, and I'm confident we can solve them, but we're going to have to focus on them, not on this."

Seeking Waiver

White House Counsel Robert Bauer said the administration decided last week to research seeking a waiver of Hawaii's state's prohibition on releasing the long-form birth certificate, which includes the name of the hospital and the signature of the attending physician.

Bauer said at a White House briefing that Judith L. Corley, Obama's personal counsel, contacted the Hawaii Department of Health about the requirements and ultimately made arrangements to pick up the birth certificate copy in Honolulu.

Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital, according to the document. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Kansas and his father, Barack Hussein Obama, was Kenyan.

The president has sometimes joked about the controversy during an April 21 fundraiser in Brentwood, California, telling such guests as movie producer Steven Spielberg and actor George Clooney that he was thankful for their support in 2008.

"A lot of you got involved when the prospect of electing Barack Hussein Obama to the Oval Office was slim," he said at the Tavern restaurant. "None of you asked for my birth certificate," he said to laughter. "It was a complete leap of faith."

To contact the reporter on this story: Roger Runningen in Washington at rrunningen@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net

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(BN) Alwaleed Sees Citigroup Returning Capital to Holders in 2012 (1)

Any mere mortal wouldn't have survived.....from 5% of Citigroup at $45 to 0.75% at $5 today....

Bloomberg News, sent from my iPad.

Alwaleed Sees Citigroup Returning Capital to Holders in 2012

April 24 (Bloomberg) -- Citigroup Inc., the third-biggest U.S. bank by assets, is likely to step up efforts to return capital to shareholders in 2012 after resuming dividend payments this year, the lender's largest individual shareholder said.

"Citigroup has announced publicly that 2012 will be the year of returning shareholders' capital," Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal told reporters in Kuwait today. "No doubt that the one-cent dividend is very symbolic and for the short- term."

Prince Alwaleed, the chairman of Saudi Arabian investment firm Kingdom Holding Co., owns a 0.75 percent stake in Citigroup, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Citigroup said March 21 it would resume paying a quarterly dividend of 1 cent per share in the second quarter after a 1- for-10 reverse stock split. Citigroup hasn't paid a quarterly dividend since 2009, when the financial crisis eroded the bank's capital. The bank took a $45 billion bailout and taxpayers guaranteed more than $300 billion of its risky assets.

Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit said in a Jan. 18 conference call that returning capital to shareholders, either through a dividend or a share buyback, was "a 2012 thing."

"No doubt, Citigroup is on the right track. Citigroup is doing very well these days," Alwaleed said today.          

------ flashback 2008 ---------

Nov. 20 2008 (Bloomberg) -- The Warren Buffett of the Gulf is taking a bigger hit from the credit crunch than the original.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was lauded by Time magazine as the Middle East's answer to the Sage of Omaha after a 1991 investment in Citigroup Inc.'s predecessor helped make the Saudi billionaire one of the world's five richest people.

This year, Alwaleed's investments aren't keeping pace with regional benchmarks, let alone Buffett. His Riyadh-based Kingdom Holding Co. has slumped 63 percent -- more than Saudi Arabia's Tadawul All-Share Index or Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. -- wiping out $13 billion in value. Kingdom today said Alwaleed will boost his Citigroup stake, his largest holding, to 5 percent, even after the shares fell more than 80 percent since Jan. 1.

"When people nail their colors to the mast in such an obvious way, if then it all blows up, then that's very damaging to your reputation," said Ken Murray, chairman of Blue Planet Investment Management in Edinburgh, who says he shorted shares in Citigroup last year.

Alwaleed and his companies are buying Citigroup shares because the prince believes they are "dramatically undervalued," Kingdom Holding said in a news release. The combined stake stands at less than 4 percent after recent Citigroup share sales diluted the holding, Kingdom said.

"Prince Alwaleed is fully confident that Citigroup's universal banking model and global franchise will make it a long- term winner in the financial services industry," Kingdom said.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS April 19, 2011, 10:14AM ET

Mongolian herders protest mining, demand elections

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ULAN BATOR, MONGOLIA

About 200 Mongolian herders on horseback and horse-drawn carts set up camp in the capital with environmental activists Tuesday to protest international mining deals and demand elections.

The herders swept into Ulan Bator's central square abutting the parliament building and erected traditional round, felt tents for what activists said would be a lengthy protest.

They say deals with international mine companies have spoiled grazing lands and political parties have sacrificed the national interest to please the mining firms.

Herders have become increasingly hard-pressed in largely poor, landlocked Mongolia as overgrazing, rough winters and industrialization degrade grasslands.

"More and more people are coming from rural areas of Mongolia to support us," said environmental activist Munkhbayar Tsetsgee. "We all want same thing: dismissal of the parliament and government and elections. We will camp here until our demands are met. "

Mining Mongolia's rich deposits of copper, gold and coal has been a source of growth in the landlocked country where nearly a third of people live in poverty. But herders are a powerful constituency in a nation that traces its origins to Genghis Khan's uniting of nomadic tribes 800 years ago.

Vestas, the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer, has recently won a large contract from China Datang Corporation Renewable Power, said Vestas China Tuesday in Beijing.

The contract includes an order for 25 two-megawatt wind turbines, which will be installed near the city of Hulunbuir in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. The turbines are scheduled to be delivered in the second quarter of 2011.

The climate in Hulunbuir is extremely harsh during most of the year. High winds and low temperatures mean that the window of time safe to install the turbines is around five months, starting from early May.

"Completing a 50-megawatt project in a window of five months is not easy, but we definitely believe we have the right people for this task," said Jens Tommerup, president of Vestas China.

Vestas installed China's first wind turbines in Shandong in 1986. Vestas turbines provided nearly 3,000 megawatts of clean energy in thirteen of China's provincial regions as of December 2010. This makes Vestas one of the biggest suppliers of wind power in China.

Vestas has worked with Datang on many projects since 2005, with a total of 800 megawatts of power capacity installed to date.

Rich 2nd generation waiting in the wings

There are some problems here. First, the 2nd generation NEVER have the passion of the 1G. They were forced into the trade. Second, 2G are mollycoddled and will NEVER know how it is like to build the company. The more you protect a kid, the more he is vulnerable to viruses.

So these 2G rich, are often 'cursed' from birth. Maybe born with drive, but drive driven out of them.

Rich 2nd generation waiting in the wings

By Zhao Yanrong (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-19 16:35

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WENZHOU, Zhejiang - Yu Yizhou is a good-looking man who could pass off as a film star.

Indeed, he wanted to get into movies, by studying film production in Britain, but his parents refused to pay his tuition fees, and would only agree to him enrolling in a business school.

The reason: Yu, now 27, has been earmarked by his father to inherit a multimillion-yuan shoe factory in the city of Wenzhou, in East China's Zhejiang province, and wanted to ensure the son will have the right training to run the business.

Yu is just one of many young people in China poised to inherit family businesses, a large proportion of the country's 7 million private firms.

Thirty years after China's economic reform, private enterprises have become the backbone of the country, with family enterprises playing a major part. Now, with the founders planning retirement, most of them are hoping the business will be passed down to a family member.

However, it has been a struggle for some who will be taking over the business.

A Guangdong Federation of Industry and Commerce report in September said more than 60 percent of family enterprises plan to hand the business to their children, and half will do so within 10 years.

In South China's Guangdong, which has the biggest economy among China's provinces, more than 40 percent of the economy was contributed by family enterprises.

Throughout China, there are more than 7 million private enterprises, which contributed 70 percent of the country's total GDP, Xinhua News Agency reported.

They control 20 trillion yuan ($3 trillion) in capital and pay about one-third of taxes. Private enterprises create more than 80 percent of new jobs.

As such, the strength and continuation of family businesses affect not only the future of private enterprises, but also the country.

Wenzhou, one of the first cities in China to set up individual and private enterprises after the economic reforms of the late 1970s, has more than its fair share of family enterprises.

It is also home to large shoe-manufacturing operations, including the Yu family company, Sincere Shoes.

Yu, who will inherit the company from his father, said being born into wealth means "more responsibilities".

"I might follow my interests in film for fun, but I think I will never have the chance to make it as my career," he said.

Nevertheless, he sometimes envies his younger sister, a marketing assistant for a cosmetic company in Shanghai. "She is doing what she wants, which is less stressful and more passionate," Yu said.

Many of the young people are having a hard time dealing with their parents, who are willing to pass on the business to them, but still retain control.

"Conflicts between the young and their parents are very common," said Chen Xuepin, co-founder of Relay China Youth Elite Association, an association for young leaders from family companies. The association has recruited more than 100 members over the past three years since it began in 2007.

Chen said up to 30 percent of its members studied abroad. "Different education background and experience of growth make the two generations have very different understandings," Chen said.

Most family enterprises were started by people with only basic education, relying on hard work, social networks and opportunities to succeed.

However, their children are generally better educated, with many having studied advanced and modern management theories.

But with many founders still in charge, young leaders are finding it difficult to get their ideas implemented.

One example is Xie Shusheng, who controls a third of another multimillion-yuan shoe company in Wenzhou, Dibang Shoes, which is still run by his father.

Xie has started putting his management ideas in the warehouse of the company, installing several computers.

Before this, the warehouse team would record all movements in a notebook and due to inaccuracies, many products would go missing.

But while the computerized system is working well and improving daily, Xie's father would remember only the mistakes he made. "I've been working with my father for a year, but I have never heard any approval from him yet."

Xie, who was born in the 1980s, said his father used to sleep for only four hours a day when he started the business with fewer than 10 employees. Today, despite the company employing more than 1,000 workers, the founder still wants to deal with everything himself.

"He would even call the cleaners directly if he saw a piece of paper lying in the compound," Xie said.

Xie also has difficulties with some mid- to high-level executives, especially some senior managers who have been with the company for more than 20 years. "They may not want me as a young boss, who they have been seeing as a child all the time," he said.

Xie's career path with the family's company was set by his parents.

"When I was sent to study in Canada after high school, I was told to take business programs," said Xie.

"As I am an only child, I knew I would be asked to come back and take over the family business."

US companies still want to do business Related readings: Help offered to newly rich Rich list grows but getting up there on top is harder   Shanxi rich man accused of fraud Good and bad things about the rich

Dibang is one of several shoe manufacturers in Wenzhou, which exported more than $218 million worth of shoes to the United States last year. Total shoe exports from Wenzhou reached $2.91 billion, with European Union countries taking the lion's share.

The city of about 8 million also exudes wealth, with many young people driving expensive cars.

Chen from Rely China said those second-generation managers are like star staff members, who are being closely watched. If they do well, some will say that is how it should be. But if they fail, they'll be blamed for not doing enough.

Many local governments, such as those in Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces, offer training courses for the young, particularly those not familiar with company management, covering such topics as the Chinese business environment and efficient ways to run a company.

However, some experts suggest that family enterprises should consider employing professional managers, rather than forcing their children to take over.

Qian Xuefeng, from the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, Hubei province in Central China, said that improving the management system may be more useful than improving the quality of the young generation.

The future of family enterprises lies in a modern system, where ownership and management are separated. Reform can only be carried out by professional managers, Qian said.

Chen supports the concept of professional managers, but he said it is still early for family companies to do so as there are not enough professional managers in China to support private enterprises, and owners trust their family members more than other people.

"It's same as survival of the fittest. Only the young can withstand the pressure from inside and outside the company."

Living rich - China

Living rich

By Lifestyle Desk in Beijing/China Daily | ANN – Wed, Apr 13, 2011 6:20 PM SGT

Beijing (China Daily/ANN) - Traveling, luxuries and child education take up the bulk of spending by the mainland's wealthiest people, said the latest GroupM Knowledge - Hurun Wealth Report 2011 released on Tuesday (April 13).

Spending

More than half of China's rich, who have more than 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) in personal assets said their annual consumption ranges from 1 to 3 million yuan, while about 13 percent said their spending exceeded 3 million yuan.

Holiday resorts

As for overseas holiday resorts, France surpassed the United States by a slight margin to top the list of hot spots for China's high rollers, while Sanya in Hainan province, Hong Kong and Yunnan province remain the top three choices for domestic travel. On average they take a 15-day vacation every year and two-thirds of them own resort houses.

Leisure

Apart from traveling, the two major ways the rich kill time is golf and reading. They are followed by swimming and tea drinking. Compared with last year, multimillionaires are paying more attention to reading, the report said.

Collections

Meanwhile, luxury watches continue to be the top collection choice for China's rich, with 44 percent having a taste for them, followed by ancient painting and calligraphy works, and liquor.

Children's education

More than half of China's wealthiest are willing to send their children to the United States and the United Kingdom for overseas study, the third year the two countries have led the list of overseas study hot spots for the "second generation of the rich".

Social Responsibility

One-third of the rich said taxation, charitable donations and environmental protection are the three major ways to take social responsibility.

(BN) Hot Tips for a Winning Inside-Trading Career: Susan Antilla

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Hot Tips for a Winning Inside-Trading Career: Susan Antilla

April 13 (Bloomberg) -- You have to admire three guys who can keep an insider-trading ring going for 17 years, pocketing $34 million even as they toiled at their day jobs -- at least according to prosecutors who filed a federal complaint last week.

The ambitious threesome provides a road map to aspiring inside traders at a time when a steady income can be hard to come by. That's to say nothing of the boost they've given to the disposable cell-phone industry, but more on that in a minute.

Charged in the case were stock trader Garrett D. Bauer and lawyer Matthew H. Kluger, both arrested on securities fraud and other charges on April 6. A co-conspirator, Kenneth T. Robinson, separately pleaded guilty for his role in the scheme in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, on Monday. He recorded his buddies on the phone in March after the feds raided his home.

Lawyers for Kluger and Bauer declined to comment on the allegations.

Consider some tips from this case, which in the hands of a hustling publisher holds promise for a winning "Insider Trading for Dummies" guide:

-- Start young. As the government tells the story in a criminal complaint and a related civil lawsuit filed April 6 by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Kluger was a law student at New York University in 1994 when he landed a summer job at the firm Cravath, Swain & Moore and discovered he had access to confidential information about planned corporate mergers. The greenhorn student allegedly called Robinson, whom he'd worked with at a Manhattan real estate company in 1991, to suggest that he track down a trader to buy and sell merger targets. Robinson allegedly recruited Bauer, a former co-worker. It would be a partnership made in heaven until the FBI raided Robinson's Long Beach, New York, home on March 8.

-- Be open to learning from mistakes. The government says lawyer Kluger initially passed on tips about deals he worked on, but eventually realized it would be less risky to tap company computers for deals where he wasn't involved. The complaint describes another shrewd decision: While Kluger allegedly read titles of confidential documents to glean trading ideas, he usually took care not to leave a record that he'd actually opened a computer file.

-- Take a break once in a while. When you're making a lot of money, there's no reason to be greedy. The complaint says the men "became increasingly concerned" in 1999 that they might get caught and decided to chill for a while. Robinson said in court Monday that the group resumed trading in 2001. Four years after that, when Kluger got a job at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Washington, they picked up the pace, trading in nine merger targets as a group from 2006 to 2011, the complaint says.

-- Use prepaid cell phones that are harder to trace than a phone in your name, and pay for them in cash. In fact, make each new deal special by getting a brand new prepaid phone, and toss your old one. The three "often got a new phone for each of their insider trading deals," the FBI said in a press release.

-- Make it fun. Hey, this doesn't all have to be about raiding computer files and paranoid conversations on phones that can't be traced. According to the complaint, Kluger made a field trip out of it when it was time for him to pick up his stash, driving regularly from his Virginia home to Long Island, where Robinson would give him his cut. The government also says that Bauer and Robinson ventured off to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to create an alibi for bank withdrawals that could add up to "tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time." Bauer used ill- gotten gains to buy a $6.65 million condominium in Manhattan and an $875,000 home in Boca Raton, Florida, the government says, plus $110,000 to spiff up the two places.

As for "don'ts" in the insider-trading saga, there are a couple of those too.

-- Don't deviate from the plan. In the end, the crew that the feds describe as covering every base got sloppy. The government says Robinson himself traded on Kluger's tips in 2009, neglecting to use the setup that separated Kluger, the information source, from Bauer, the trader. The New York Times, citing an anonymous person with knowledge of the investigation, reported that Robinson's personal trades in Wilson Sonsini's deals alerted the SEC to his role in the ring.

-- If you know there's been a raid, don't answer your phone. When Robinson started recording telephone calls with his alleged collaborators after last month's raid, his pals seemed oblivious to the prospect that Robinson might have reason to set them up. While a recorder was running, Kluger made reference to a "thing" the group had done in April or May of 2006, a few months after he'd arrived at Wilson Sonsini. And Bauer blurted out that when he learned about the raid, "I went right up to my apartment and I broke the phone in half," dumping each half into a different garbage can at McDonalds.

Bauer, the alleged trader for the group, was released on a $4 million bond Monday. The once-active trader will be electronically monitored in his $6.7 million Manhattan apartment, and was sent off in the custody of his mother.

Which leads us to the most important thing to remember if you're considering an insider-trading gig: it pays to stay friends with your mom.

(Susan Antilla is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Susan Antilla in New York at santilla@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

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(BN) Singapore Exchange's $7.9 Billion Takeover of ASX Is on Brink of Collapse

So what are you BATNAs??

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Singapore's ASX Bid Faces Collapse Amid Australian Opposition

April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore Exchange Ltd.'s A$7.6 billion ($7.9 billion) bid for bourse operator ASX Ltd. is on the brink of collapse after Australia said the takeover was not in the national interest.

Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan said the Foreign Investment Review Board had advised him Singapore Exchange's bid wasn't in the country's national interest, and that he had major concerns about the proposal. ASX shares, trading below their level on the day before the bid was announced, dropped 3.3 percent today, while Singapore Exchange's shares jumped as much as 6.5 percent.

"FIRB informed SGX that I had serious concerns about the proposal and that, subject to further consideration, I intended to accept the unanimous FIRB advice that the takeover would not be in the national interest," Swan said in an e-mailed statement. "I am still open to further representations or information from the parties before coming to a final decision."

Singapore Exchange offered to buy ASX on Oct. 25 in a cash and share deal then valued at A$8.4 billion, a 42 percent premium to ASX's share price. The bid was opposed by several Australian parliamentarians. Pressure on rival exchanges to expand increased in February when Europe's Deutsche Boerse AG and NYSE Euronext agreed to merge, and after London Stock Exchange Group Plc said it would buy Canada's TMX Group Inc.

It is the first proposed foreign merger to be opposed on national interest grounds in Australia since former treasurer Peter Costello blocked a $3.2 billion bid by Royal Dutch Shell Plc in 2001 to take control of Woodside Petroleum Ltd.

National Interest

"I don't think SGX or ASX will sit where they are and accept it," said Angus Gluskie, who helps manage $350 million at White Funds Management Pty in Sydney. "It's one thing for the government to say it's not in the national interest, but they've got to look at it from the company's position where they're saying it's a practical necessity for them to continue operating in a competitive manner."

Singapore Exchange offered on Feb. 15 to give more board seats to Australians in a concession aimed at overcoming opposition from lawmakers in Canberra to the deal, which won approval from Australia's competition regulator on Dec. 15.

The Singapore bourse today said it would continue to pursue organic and other strategic growth opportunities, including further talks with ASX on other forms of cooperation. ASX spokesman Matthew Gibbs said in an e-mail to Bloomberg News today that his company would keep looking at merger opportunities.

Exchange Consolidation

"Bearing in mind that FIRB have communicated with SGX, not ASX, our position is that we continue to believe in the importance of participating in exchange consolidation, and we'll continue to look at opportunities there, including further dialogue with SGX," Gibbs said.

"The compelling business logic is for fewer platforms around the world," said Shaun Manuell, who helps manage A$750 million in Australian stocks at Equity Trustees in Melbourne. "ASX is going to have to sit down with the government and have a clear understanding of the basis by which they would allow global M&A activity to occur."

Singapore Exchange's bid valued ASX at 19.5 times earnings before interest and taxes, almost twice as much as the 10.4 times involved in London Stock Exchange Group Plc's bid for TMX Group, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That also compares with 11.2 times offered by Deutsche Boerse AG for NYSE Euronext.

ASX shares fell 3.3 percent to A$33.70 at the 4:10 p.m. close of trading in Sydney today, and Singapore Exchange jumped as much as 6.5 percent to S$8.53 following Swan's comments.

Shareholders Unhappy

"SGX was de-rated when it announced the deal as shareholders didn't really like that they were offering a very a high premium," said Anand Pathmakanthan, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. in Singapore. "It is only logical that with the deal effectively called off, the share price should re-rate."

The FIRB's recommendation allows the minority Labor Party government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard to avoid trying to pass legislation enabling the deal through a potentially hostile parliament, said Barnaby Joyce, an opponent of the merger and a member of the opposition coalition partner the Nationals.

"This is convenient for the government because it doesn't have to face the political reality that there is no way the parliament would have approved this nonsense deal," Joyce said in a phone interview from Tamworth today. "It would have seen the closure of Sydney and Australia as a commercial center if this ludicrous proposal had been approved -- jobs would have disappeared."

Greens leader Bob Brown, another opponent, said in an e- mailed statement that there was no use in Swan's comment that the government would look at a restructured deal: "So what? It would still be controlled by Singapore regardless," he said.

Unusual Step

The advice from the Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board is not usually released before the treasurer announces a decision. Public sentiment against it has been building, with lawmakers including independent Bob Katter raising nationalist sentiment.

"The government has taken an unprecedented step of releasing the advice without making a decision on it," said Rick Kuhn, a political analyst at the Australian National University. "It's inconceivable that Swan would now go ahead and approve this deal as the nationalist backlash would be even greater."

The government's two-party preferred support fell to an eight-year low of 45 percent in a Newspoll published in the Australian newspaper today. The poll of 1133 people conducted between April 1 and April 3 had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

"They don't have much going for them at the moment," Kuhn said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Shani Raja in Sydney at sraja4@bloomberg.net Gemma Daley at gdaley@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Gentle at ngentle2@bloomberg.net .

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