The Hong Kong Stock Exchange has become a hot spot for attracting the initial public offerings of some of the largest companies in the world.
While U.S. markets await the IPOs of Uber and Airbnb, three Chinese companies that rank among the world's 20 largest internet firms are expected to list this year in $5 billion-plus deals in Hong Kong: Xiaomi, known as the Apple of China; Meituan-Dianping, operator of websites similar to Groupon and Yelp in China; and Didi Chuxing, which bought Uber's China business. Chinese state-owned enterprises China Tower, a mobile phone infrastructure company, and Sinopec Marketing, a spin-off of China Petroleum & Chemical's retail fuel business, are also expected to each hold $5 billion-plus listings in Hong Kong this year, according to Renaissance Capital.
Hong Kong is "perfectly positioned to provide effectively an access point" to one of the fastest growing regions of the world, said Andy Nybo, director at Burton-Taylor International Consulting, which does financial markets research. He pointed out the former British colony has a developed economy and financial market, and provides international investors a link to mainland Chinese markets through the "stock connect" program.
Last year, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing388-HK's revenue jumped more than 18 percent, according to a Burton-Taylor report. That's greater than 6.6 percent growth in NasdaqNDAQ revenue and 2.9 percent growth for New York Stock Exchange owner ICEICE, the study showed. Hong Kong's capital markets development also comes as Western institutional investors are increasingly interested in international opportunities, and Beijing looks to open up its financial markets to foreign investors.
"In general there is a huge battle for capital," said Sebastien Lieblich, managing director and global head of equity solutions at MSCI.
"There is clearly an incentive for the markets, the regulators, equity markets to build up their exchanges," he said. "Markets [will] become more and more globalized. Emerging markets recognize they can attract that money." Indexing giant MSCI is set to announce on Wednesday whether Saudi Arabia and Argentina will join the benchmark emerging markets index, tracked by more than $1.9 trillion in global assets. Last year, MSCI approved the inclusion of some of China's mainland-traded A shares. Part of those shares were officially added about three weeks ago. In greater China, new policies could also help increase capital inflows.
The Hong Kong Stock Exchange implemented new rules in April allowing biotech companies without revenue or profit to apply for public listings. Beijing is also launching a "China Depositary Receipt" program that will allow China's tech giants, listed in Hong Kong or in the U.S., to have a dual share offering in the mainland.
That said, U.S. dominance in global IPOs isn't going away. It is by far the first in terms of number of public offerings and U.S.-dollar proceeds year-to-date, according to Renaissance Capital data as of June 13. More U.S. listings are coming. Online survey company SurveyMonkey said Monday it confidentially registered for an IPO through its parent SVMK. Other public offerings expected this year include speaker systems company Sonos, personal loans firm SoFi, home improvement services platform Houzz and office space start-up WeWork, according to Kathleen Smith, principal at Renaissance Capital and manager of IPO ETFs.
In addition, Chinese companies still often view a New York listing as a status symbol that helps them gain brand recognition among international investors. Ten of 80 U.S. public offerings this year through June 13 were Chinese companies, Smith said.
"We have been the beneficiary of the delayed growth of these [Chinese] exchanges," she said. But Hong Kong is shifting away from listings of state-owned enterprise to high-growth tech companies, and mainland China's markets are slowly maturing. Down the road, Smith said, "Hong Kong and China together could end up being the largest issuing market for IPOs."
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The notoriously secretive brand has shared its sales numbers for the first time ever.
Chanel, arguably the most famous luxury brand in the world, is also one of fashion’s greatest mysteries. Unlike Dior, Luis Vuitton, Gucci, or Yves Saint Laurent, it isn’t owned by a publicly traded conglomerate. And because it’s under no obligation to share its financial earnings every few months, the privately held house of Chanel has, at 108 years old, been able to keep its sales a closely guarded secret.
That’s why it’s so shocking that Chanel has decided to lift the veil on its financials for the first time. As expected, it’s a lot: Chanel’s sales hit $9.62 billion in 2017, up 11 percent from $8.63 billion the year prior, according to numbers shared by the company.
Though Chanel’s financial report lacks the historical data necessary to fully understand its growth trajectory, these results firmly place Chanel as a weighty competitor in the high-end fashion market. Kering, which owns brands like Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, and Alexander McQueen, reported revenue of €15.47 billion (roughly $17.92 billion) across all of its businesses in 2017; sales of its luxury brands totaled more than €10 billion ($11.58 billion) that year. The French conglomerate LVMH achieved revenue of €42.6 billion ($48.65 billion) in 2017, with its fashion and leather goods brands, at $15.47 billion in sales, contributing most heavily.
LVMH’s stable includes names like Dior, Louis Vuitton, Céline, Givenchy, and Marc Jacobs. Chanel is just one brand.
Why did Chanel, which is controlled by brothers Alain and Gérard Wertheimer, publish its earnings for the first time ever? Chief financial officer Philippe Blondiaux told Reuters that it is “absolutely not” a signal that the brand is going to IPO, nor is it a preparation to sell. Instead, Blondiaux said, it’s an affirmation that Chanel can remain independent and privately held “for the next few centuries.” That said, Chanel has reorganized to bring nearly all of its brand activities under a single company, Reuters reports.
To help market its iconic quilted handbags, tweed suits, and fragrances during 2017, Chanel spent $1.46 billion on “brand support activities” like advertisements (starring Kristen Stewart and Lily-Rose Depp) and runway shows. Indeed, Chanel’s Paris Fashion Week shows are massive productions, with set pieces including a cruise ship, a rocket, and an iceberg. In March 2018, Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld — himself one of fashion’s most recognizable figures — transformed the Grand Palais in Paris into an immersive, surprisingly realistic forest.
YouTube said on Thursday that video uploaders with more than 100,000 followers could start paid fan clubs on the service, one of several new features aimed at helping itself and its users diversify revenue after a turbulent year.
The unit of Alphabet Inc's Google said it was investing in reducing reliance on advertisers, who deliver billions of dollars in revenue annually but increasingly do not want to be associated with some content, such as racy music videos and roguish stunts.
Some video makers saw earnings fall last year when YouTube placated advertisers by restricting where commercials appear. New tools such as memberships and expanded merchandise sales should give video producers more control over their businesses, said Rohit Dhawan, senior director of product management at YouTube.
Dhawan declined to quantify the investment into what YouTube calls "alternative monetization." But he said that YouTube is keeping $1.50 each month out of every $5 membership to justify resources involved. Alternative monetization is a major topic for YouTube staff as they interact with video creators this week at VidCon, an industry convention in Anaheim, Calif. Facebook also expanded revenue options for videomakers this week.
YouTube's goal is to develop a suite of software for creators to manage fan relationships and envisioned tools, such as a way to send personalized "happy birthday" videos to members, requires large teams, Dhawan said.
"The number of engineers we have working on this is not because we think there’s something there," he said. "We know there’s something here." Amy Shira Teitel, who posts science videos on YouTube, said she has gained 103 subscribers since starting to test memberships in September. The extra $300 a month has let her expand research, including visiting archives in Washington, D.C. In exchange, she holds members-only conversations online about her forthcoming book.
Viewers "know I’m spread pretty thin, and they know if they help me make my work possible, it won't go away," Teitel said.
Videomakers choose the name of their membership club and the perks offered, all subject to approval by YouTube staff. Members can report creators that fail to deliver on benefits, such as T-shirts or shout-outs. YouTube also said creators can customize merchandise on design service Teespring and sell it in a new section underneath their videos. Teespring is lowering fees as part of the deal, to provide creators an extra $1 in profit per item through 2019 and to pay YouTube a small commission, Dhawan said.
The work day can quickly fly by with little done when you're glued to your inbox. In fact, the average office worker now spends 6.3 hours checking both their work and personal messages.
If you ever feel bogged down by incessant emails, consider this advice from Bill Gates, who shared how he remained productive in a 2006 column for Fortune. At the time, Gates was the chairman of MicrosoftMSFT and also oversaw the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Here are three strategies the billionaire said he used to work as efficiently as possible:
1. Use your monitors strategically The billionaire's productivity hack started with his desk setup. Gates revealed that his office had very little paper because most of his correspondence took place over email. This is particularly noteworthy considering that the average executive wastes six weeks a year retrieving misplaced items due to messy desks, according to the Wall Street Journal. A clutter-free desk, according to productivity experts, is key to getting work done because it reduces your stress levels and allows you to focus on one task at a time. But email can be just as overwhelming as a messy desk, which is why the billionaire used a three-computer system to keep tabs on his messages. On his desk were three computer screens that were "synchronized," so he could drag items from one screen to the next, forming a single desktop.
"This setup gives me the ability to glance and see what new [email] has come in while I'm working on something, and to bring up a link that's related to an email and look at it while the email is still in front of me," Gates said.
2. Set boundaries It's human nature to want to respond to every email that comes in — or at the very least read them. But doing so eats up a huge chunk of time that could be better spent elsewhere.
One remedy is to select who can and can't message you. While at Microsoft, Gates purposefully made sure to keep his emails to around 100 a day by filtering who could contact him. Only emails from Microsoft personnel, partner companies and people with whom he'd had prior correspondence came directly to his inbox.
Nowadays, most email platforms, such as Gmail and Outlook, have filter settings that allow you to categorize and control your incoming messages. If you're scared of missing an important email — and have someone to help you — you can also follow Gates' strategy and send those external emails to an assistant or secretary who responds on your behalf. Actor Ashton Kutcher uses a similar approach at his venture capital firm Sound Ventures. Whenever a new company is added to the firm, its founder receives an email outlining who to contact for various tasks, he says. That way, he's not overwhelmed with minute questions and messages that others can answer
3. Prioritize
Gates is not a fan of writing to-do lists, and neither is self-made millionaire Tony Robbins. To-do lists "make you feel like you're being productive without actually accomplishing anything," Robbins wrote in a recent blog post. As Microsoft's chairman, Gates used his email, desktop folders and an online calendar to prioritize tasks. "When I walk to my desk, I can focus on the emails I've flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects," he wrote. In addition, the philanthropist utilized in-box rules and search folders to highlight and group emails based on their importance and content. Hitting the spam button can also help prioritize certain messages, explains Boomerang CEO and email productivity expert Alex Moore. By marking extraneous emails as spam, rather than just deleting them, your email platform is better programmed to know what content to remove automatically. This frees up the time that you'd spend deleting useless messages.
Since email is the preferred mode of communication in the workplace, we're faced with information overload, Gates asserted in his Fortune article.
"We're at the point now where the challenge isn't how to communicate effectively with e-mail, it's ensuring that you spend your time on the e-mail that matters most," he wrote.
It wasn't the first time my key card failed, I assumed it was time to replace it."
So began a sequence of events that saw Ibrahim Diallo fired from his job, not by his manager but by a machine. He has detailed his story in a blog post which he hopes will serve as a warning to firms about relying too much on automation.
"Automation can be an asset to a company, but there needs to be a way for humans to take over if the machine makes a mistake," he writes.
The story of Mr Diallo's sacking by machine began when his entry pass to the Los Angeles skyscraper where his office was based failed to work, forcing him to rely on the security guard to allow him entry. "As soon as I got to my floor, I went to see my manager to let her know. She promised to order me a new one right away.." Then he noticed that he was logged out of his work system and a colleague told Mr Diallo that the word "Inactive" was listed alongside his name.
His day got worse. After lunch - and a 10-minute wait for a co-worker to let him back into his office - he was told by his recruiter that she had received an email saying his contract was terminated. She promised to sort out the problem.
The next day he had been locked out of every single system "except my Linux machine" and then, after lunch, two people appeared at his desk. Mr Diallo was told that an email had been received telling them to escort him from the building. His boss was confused but helpless as Mr Diallo recalls: "I was fired. There was nothing my manager could do about it. There was nothing the director could do about it. They stood powerless as I packed my stuff and left the building." At the time, he was eight weeks into a three-year contract and over the next three weeks he was copied into emails about his case.
"I watched it be escalated to bigger and more powerful titles over and over, yet no-one could do anything about it. From time-to-time, they would attach a system email.
"It was soulless and written in red as it gave orders that dictated my fate. Disable this, disable that, revoke access here, revoke access there, escort out of premises, etc. "The system was out for blood and I was its very first victim." It took Mr Diallo's bosses three weeks to find out why he had been sacked. His firm was going through changes, both in terms of the systems it used and the people it employed.His original manager had been recently laid off and sent to work from home for the rest of his time at the firm and in that period he had not renewed Mr Diallo's contract in the new system. After that, machines took over - flagging him as an ex-employee.
"All the necessary orders are sent automatically and each order completion triggers another order. For example, when the order for disabling my key card is sent, there is no way of it to be re-enabled. "Once it is disabled, an email is sent to security about recently dismissed employees. Scanning the key card is a red flag. The order to disable my Windows account is also sent. There is also one for my Jira account. And on and on."
Although Mr Diallo was allowed back to work, he had missed out on three weeks' worth of pay and been escorted from the building "like a thief". He had to explain his disappearance to others and found his co-workers became distant. He decided to move to another job.
His story should serve as a cautionary tale about the human-machine relationship, thinks AI expert Dave Coplin.
"It's another example of a failure of human thinking where they allow it to be humans versus machines rather than humans plus machines," he said. "One of the fundamental skills for all humans in an AI world is accountability - just because the algorithm says it's the answer, it doesn't mean it actually is."
The North Korean leader departed Tuesday's summit with President Donald Trump in what is believed to be an armored Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman Guard limousine. Little is known about Kim's limo, though it looks to be from the W221 generation, sold from 2008 to 2013, and features white leather upholstery.
Photos of the North Korean Mercedes limos first surfaced in 2014. The vehicles are estimated to have been worth well over $1 million each at the time of purchase.
While Kim's limo is not the most updated version of the vehicle, it's still quite the ride. Production W221 S600 Pullman Guards are powered by a 517-horsepower, 5.5-liter, bi-turbo V12 engine and decked out with a luxurious leather-lined interior.
At roughly 21 feet long, the S600 Pullman is absolutely massive, and there are almost certainly special modifications to suit Kim's personal needs.
These days, if you want something like Kim's limo, you'll have to go with the Mercedes-Maybach S600 Pullman Guard. The current-generation W222 Maybach S600 Pullman Guard debuted in late 2016, but customer deliveries didn't commence until the second half of last year. Though Mercedes-Maybach announced an updated S650 Pullman limo in March, there is not yet an armored Guard version of the new model - so if you want bullet resistant luxury, you'll need the S600. Take a look at the latest version of the vehicle below.
You may be intrigued, you may be horrified, or you may feel some of both.
But you can't afford to ignore major trends in new technology. Like it or not, blockchain is here to stay. And it will have the power to enable your business like never before. For the moment, blockchain is in its nascent phase -- think of the internet in 1996. It's inaccessible to most nontechnical people, except through bitcoin and some of the gaming applications like CryptoKitties. So it's the perfect time to learn. You have time to get up to speed about blockchain before it represents a threat to your business. And when the technology matures, you will be prepared to capitalize on it.
Once you delve into this topic, you will find that blockchain will fuel much more than the overhyped cryptocurrency market. Blockchain technology, once the technology and infrastructure have evolved, will ultimately give rise to a host of applications that will become very useful.
So you cannot afford to ignore blockchain. Instead, educate yourself about it. First, the basic primer about blockchain: Blockchain is a distributed, decentralized ledger based on "blocks," each of which is a record of a transaction. Multiple blocks are strung together to form a "blockchain." Information on the blockchain is encrypted -- it remains anonymous and secure. Individuals retain ownership of their personal information and also can be authenticated without giving up that privacy.
Here are three ways that blockchain will eventually transform your business.
1. Seamless payments A few years ago, a local business sent someone to clean my couch. He said the company would invoice me. Several months later, I realized the company had never sent me an invoice. It took me three phone calls to get it to take my money. Any decent invoicing system would solve the problem of not sending out customer invoices. Using a system on the blockchain will significantly enhance this process. It will enable seamless payments, straight to your mobile digital wallet, as soon as the service is completed or the product delivered. Seamless payments will also extend to the ability to pay contractors, employees, and vendors in any currency. Payments will go directly into the receivers' digital wallets, eliminating the need for administration and allowing people and companies to get paid faster. Since the payment can be sent in any currency, this allows access to services and employees anywhere in the world.
To get a taste for this, check out Bitwage, a blockchain-powered international wage payment-processing company, or PayStand, which allows companies to track invoices and payments.
2. Decentralized marketplaces Small and large merchants already have places to sell their goods and services -- just look at Amazon. But there are downsides to those marketplaces for businesses. Since they act as the trusted third party, they are in the middle of every transaction. That leads to high costs for the privilege of being there and lag time for businesses to get their money. Ultimately, blockchain technology will enable marketplaces to allow businesses to list their goods and services with a small fee or none at all. District is a good example. Through the use of smart contracts, District allows merchants to place their goods and services on this marketplace. It handles posting and listing, search filtering, payments, and "reputation management," which means you can trust those on the network to pay you.
3. Finding remote and project-based talent
How many times have you identified a specific project that you need to get done but none of your employees have skills or bandwidth to do it? That's when you need to find someone you can hire for a discrete project with a specific deadline. The gig economy has transformed the way companies and workers relate to work. Blockchain helps companies find temporary workers for specific projects, and enables gig workers to present themselves to opportunities seamlessly . One company that is building a marketplace for this using blockchain technology is Dock. Dock is a "decentralized data exchange protocol that lets people connect their profiles, reputations, and experiences across the web with privacy and security." That allows freelancers to be in control of their information and to easily apply for opportunities when they see them in job marketplaces or through HR. And it's a clearing-house for your business to find excellent talent for specific projects. These are three examples of how blockchain technology may mature to help your business. Take the time to learn about blockchain today to help power your business tomorrow. Sources: INC |
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