Posts

Wall Street is finally waking up to the reality of China

This week, the Chinese Communist Party dealt a humiliating blow to Wall Street, by crushing a major Chinese tech firm days after its IPO in which investors had invested 4.4 billion dollars On July 2, just two days after Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley launched an initial public offering for the Chinese ride-hailing app Didi on the New York Stock Exchange, Chinese regulators cracked down on the company hard.  Citing data privacy concerns, the Chinese government ordered the removal of Didi’s app from app stores, pending an opaque national security review process. As a result, investors have lost 30% of their money in just a few days It’s a watershed moment that has even the most die-hard Wall Street China boosters finally admitting that the game has fundamentally changed. Until now, many in the financial world wanted to believe the Chinese Communist Party was fundamentally pragmatic. They insisted that Beijing would never risk its economic development by killing its Wal...
Post a Comment
Read more

NCLT benches have become the weak link of the IBC

The NCLT benches have become the weak link of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) There have been inordinate delays at the NCLT, mainly due to inconsistent application of law, lack of institutional capacity and the tendency to entertain frivolous cases by promoters and disgruntled creditors Supreme Court has conclusively ruled on contentious issues under the IBC such as supremacy of commercial wisdom of financial creditors, subordinate status of operational creditors and bar on promoter participation.  Yet the NCLT continues to entertain petitions questioning settled positions.  It is commonplace to find contrarian orders passed on emotive grounds bereft of legal reasoning which defy statutory provisions and the Supreme Court’s orders Erroneous decisions are set aside at the NCLAT and the Supreme Court but it needlessly waste time  If the NCLT is taking unreasonably long to approve a plan then it must submit a report to the NCLAT, justifying the delay. Failure to ref...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hundreds of children's graves found at Christian school in Canada

Leaders of Indigenous tribal groups in Canada have found more than 600 unmarked children's graves at the site of a former Christian residential school for Indigenous tribal children that was run by the Christian Church  The history of such schools is as follows: From the 19th century, more than 150,000 Indigenous tribal children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to forcibly assimilate them into White Canadian society.  They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages or follow their culture.  The children were beaten and verbally abused, and up to thousands are believed to have died.  The true death toll is unknown but is likely to be in the tens of thousands.  The Canadian government admitted in Parliament in 2008 that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant.  Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages; they also lost touch with thei...
Post a Comment
Read more

Living with Covid: Singapore's plan for a post vaccination world

Singapore's plan for a post vaccination world in which Covid is unlikely to be eliminated and will continue to circulate especially in the unvaccinated population  The plan is roughly as follows: Instead of daily infection numbers, the focus will be on outcomes: How many fall very sick, how many in ICU A fully vaccinated person can recover at home if infected as symptoms will be mostly mild with vaccination. Risk of transmission will be low as others will also be vaccinated. There’ll be less worry about healthcare system being overwhelmed. No need for massive contact tracing, quarantining with each new infection. Those with positive results from regular fast and easy tests can confirm with a PCR test and then isolate themselves. Large gatherings allowed at major events, like the National Day Parade Businesses will have certainty that their operations will not be disrupted. Travel will restart, at least to countries that have achieved high level of vaccination and controlled the vir...
Post a Comment
Read more

Only 0.05% of vaccinated healthcare workers got severe Covid that required intensive care

Only 0.05 per cent of vaccinated healthcare workers got severe Covid that required intensive care, showed a recent study released by Fortis Healthcare. The study covered over 16,000 healthcare workers across Fortis hospitals in the country, who were administered both first and second doses of the vaccine between January 2021 and May 2021.  Fortis said that this period included the period when India was recording 350,000-400,000 daily Covid-19 cases and these healthcare workers were treating Covid patients. Since healthcare workers by the nature of their job are at highest risk of exposure to the virus, the performance of the vaccines will be even better in case of the common man who is not exposed to such conditions. Read more: https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/only-0-05-fully-vaccinated-healthcare-workers-got-severe-covid-fortis-121061701236_1.html
Post a Comment
Read more

Countries that relied on Chinese vaccines are now battling resurgence of Covid

Data from several countries like Chile, Bahrain, Mongolia suggest that the Chinese vaccines may not be very effective at preventing the spread of the Chinese Virus  These countries are using vaccines made by two Chinese vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were the first two countries to approve the Sinopharm shot, even before late-stage clinical trial data was released Since then, there have been extensive reports of vaccinated people falling ill in such countries The Chinese have also not been transparent about the clinical trials of their vaccines  Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/business/economy/china-vaccines-covid-outbreak.html
Post a Comment
Read more

Lessons from China on bad banks to solve NPAs

After the Asian financial crisis, China set up dedicated bad banks for each of its big four state-owned commercial banks. These bad banks were meant to acquire non-performing loans (NPLs) from those banks and resolve them within 10 years. In 2009, their tenure was extended indefinitely. In 2012, China permitted the establishment of one local bad bank per province. In 2016, two local bad banks were allowed per province. By the end of 2019, the country had 59 local bad banks. However researchers have found that the Chinese bad banks effectively help conceal NPLs.  As India gets ready to operationalize  a new bad bank, the National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd. (NARCL), we need to learn the following important lessons from the bad experience of the Chinese: A centralized  bad bank has a temporary purpose, and need not exist in perpetuity. Transferring NPLs to a bad bank is not a solution in itself. There must be a clear resolution strategy and the...
Post a Comment
Read more