Trial of four Rio Tinto employees opens in China

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Four employees of mining giant Rio Tinto stood trial in China on Monday, in a case closely watched by foreign investors nervous about navigating a booming economy with often murky legal boundaries.

Australian Consulate General, Tom Connor (C) goes through a security check as he enters the Shanghai Number One Intermediate People's Court on the morning of Rio Tinto trail March 22, 2010. (REUTERS/Nir Elias)

Four police vans swept into the court in Shanghai, China's financial hub, while foreign reporters were excluded from the trial of Australian national Stern Hu and three Chinese employees of Rio, all accused of taking bribes and violating commercial secrets.

The case has highlighted the risks of doing business in a country with a huge market but close ties between the ruling Communist Party, police and courts. Shanghai is likely to want the case over quickly, before its much ballyhooed 2010 World Expo opens in Shanghai in May.

The four employees from Rio's iron ore team, including Hu, were detained last summer at the height of fraught negotiations over 2009 ore prices, creating a furore over China's opaque state secrets laws.

Chinese media last summer accused the four of seeking information about Chinese mines and steel mills, which many firms consider legitimate market information.
Rio has said that its employees did nothing wrong.

China has excluded Australian diplomats from observing the part of the trial concerning commercial secrets, drawing protest from Canberra, which says they have the right to be present for the whole trial, which is scheduled to last three days.

Before entering the court, Australia's Consul-General in Shanghai, Tom Connor, told a crush of reporters he would make a statement after the day's proceedings.

WARNING TO AUSTRALIA
 A Chinese researcher in a think-tank run by the nation's Ministry of Commerce said there was a strong case against the Rio employees and warned Australia to keep a distance.

"The Australian government and public need to calmly and rationally consider this question: should the government waste such a large amount of political and financial resources to pay the bill for certain companies' immature and even illegal ways?" the researcher, Mei Xinyu, wrote in the Chinese-language Shanghai Securities News.

"What Rio Tinto and Stern Hu did would be utterly taboo in any host country," wrote Mei.
The trial opened on the same day that, according to one Chinese news report, Internet giant Google may announce whether it will pull out of China over its complaints about censorship and hacking.

While the trial progresses in a brown and grey concrete building near an elevated highway in Shanghai, Rio's chief executive, Tom Albanese, is in Beijing to address a conference of government and business elites in China, his firm's largest market.

Mindful of the international attention paid to the Rio case, China has stuck strictly to its own legal deadlines for moving the case from police to the court system.

Defence lawyers interviewed on Friday did not yet know in which order the charges would be considered, or which days would be open. The verdict may not be immediately announced.

By Lucy Hornby, Reuters

Baby boomers brands big bucks

IN America there are 77 million baby-boomers. (These are the folks born between 1946 and 1964; when Dad came back from war he had only one thing on his mind!) So how many boomers are there worldwide – like, wow! who knows?

AdAge reports that today baby-boomers in the United States alone have a buying power of US$3 trillion! And that in US newsman Tom Brokaw’s, quaintly titled, documentary, Boomer$, these now 40 to 60-something, ex-hippies, still have their favourite brands; Levis, Marlboro (tsk, tsk), Harley, Absolut, Club Med, VW, Clairol, Apple Mac, Pepsi, Trojan (no joke!) and even McDonald’s. And baby-boomers can still cite their most favourite TV commercials. Levis “Fridge”, VW “Lemon”, Pepsi Challenge, “Marlboro County”. Far out.

Yet over in Adweek Kathy O’Brien, a Unilever marketing director, says we now have to move past the 30” commercial. No way Kathy! You know why, just study the press, and the advertising you mostly hear about is in the shape of really groovy TV commercials.

Adage, as usual, is hip to the superbowl. This time there was a heck of a lot to say about a spot for Kathy’s very own “Dove for Men”. Starting with a sperm fertilising an egg, it proceeds to snapshot the journey through a man’s life; bikes, baths, big brothers and bras, all set to a somewhat contrived lyric sung to Rossini’s William Tell overture. It’s a really nice spot. High score on the boomer-meter.

UK’s News of The World features prominently (but maybe because of her prominent features) Pamela Anderson in a TV spot for CrazyDomains.com.au where she strips to a gold bikini and romps around in flying fresh cream with another woman in a gold bikini. No come back, it’s cool! Perhaps less to do with boomers than things going boom.

AdAge has a report about the scandal caused by a French anti-smoking spot which shows a young boy on his knees in front of a much older man (very likely a boomer) seemingly conducting fellatio on a cigarette. The point is a little lost on me but you know those French dudes; after all it (the act) is named after them. And in Denmark a garage door maker’s ad shows a car shaped hole in the door with the line “not for Toyota owners”. Very topical but a bit uncool, especially to baby-boomers who just love hybrids. Sidebar: Did you know the US national sales director of Toyota is called Doug Frisbie! Now that’s what I call a boomer name.

Campaign Magazine reports that Cadbury has axed a big-budget TV ad for their Flake bar. It seems that, in research, it was a bit too saucy for the target audience. Now British boomers from way back, when TV was in black and white, will remember the sight of a sultry dolly-bird treating a long slim chocolate bar like – well, a French cigarette I guess, and then coming over all peculiar (the bird not the boomer). It was one of our favourite spots.

So I can only guess who the current target market is. (It has been hinted that the real target could be Cadbury’s new owners from the ultra-conservative American mid-west!)

The UK’s BBC describes a TV spot that’s the most outrageously, wide of the mark, kiss-up to the baby-boomers ever. Citroen is airing an ad featuring a documentary clip of John Lennon, (yes he, the patron saint of boomers.) In the spot he tells us that looking back to the past for inspiration is not “rock and roll”. (Pretty rich coming from the greatest plunderer of old rock songs ever.)

Many balked; many boomers cried “sacrilege”. Lennon’s son, Sean, said he approved because he was “hoping to keep dad in [the] public consciousness”, and that there are, “Not many things as effective as TV.” Right on Sean! The car company said Lennon had been chosen for his “universal, timeless and iconic status”. I’m sure he’s both twisting and shouting in his grave.

This all goes to prove that ignoring the power of a nicely written, nicely executed TVC is probably surrendering to cheapness, disposability or instant gratification of the “new” media. What the boomers enjoyed and are still feeding back is the effect of those neat TV spots; some of them decades old, because possibly nothing else has the emotional pull, the ability to connect with a viewer. This is why the boomers remember. (They were also groovy brands, of course). I don’t want to sound spaced out, but will there be much viral stuff remembered in 30-40 years? Let me know.

And lest we forget, the greatest boomer of all is Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the world wide web!

And yes, I am a boomer, I was born in 19frgrfwn-ngfwernf.

Bummer!

PS: Further to last month, Unilever has now appointed a new CMO (chief marketing officer). Which is really fab. His name is (wait for it) Keith Weed. Is that a great Boomer name or what?

 Paul Loosley is an English person who has been in Asia 30 years, 12 as a creative director, 18 making TV commercials. And, as he still can’t shut up about advertising, he tends to write every month. Any feedback; mail
p.loosley@gmail.com (but only if you’re a Boomer)

Source: SHUT UP ABOUT ADVERTISING
By PAUL LOOSLEY

Rising cost of housing

 Price 14 times more than average household income

THE average selling price of a residential unit on Penang island today has far exceeded the average yearly income of a household, says Socio-Economic and Environmental Research Institute senior fellow Dr Lim Mah Hui.

“The average annual household income in Penang is RM42,000, while the average house price is RM578,000, or 14.2 times more.

“The national average annual household income is RM38,987, while average house price nationwide is RM180,000, or 4.6 times,” he said at a recent forum on housing affordability in Penang.

Among the speakers present were Raine & Horne senior partner Michael Geh and Real Estate & Housing Develeopers’ Association (REDHA, Penang) chairman Datuk Jerry Chan.

 

 A place to call home: Terrace houses on Penang island are now selling from RM700,000, say realty experts.

 

Lim said the selling price for a condominium unit had now increased to RM350 per sq ft from RM250 two years ago.

“In some areas, the selling price per sq ft has increased to RM500, while new projects have a price tag of RM600 per sq ft.

“Terrace houses are now selling from RM700,000 onwards, compared to RM520,000 in the second quarter of 2009. In some locations, a new terrace house is selling for RM1.2mil,” he said.

Speculation was responsible for the high house prices in Penang, said Lim, adding that special financial packages introduced last year further fuelled the speculative trend.

Raine & Horne senior partner Michael Geh said that over the past two years, there had been developers on the island who invited speculators to take up over 50% of their newly launched medium-cost condominium schemes priced around RM220,000 and RM250,000.

”The speculators then re-sell these units at a higher price, making between RM50,000 and RM100,000 from each sub-sale.

For more affordable units: The Government should be responsible for low-cost projects as this will remove the low-cost subsidy borne by developers, says an expert.

 

“How much they make de-pend on the time that they sold. Such speculation has caused the price of medium-cost housing to rise by more than 20%, compared to two years ago,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chan said the Government should be responsible for low-cost housing and community projects as this would remove the subsidy for low-cost housing borne by developers who pass the cost to house buyers.

“Developers can then price their property more affordably.

“The plot ratio guideline in Penang is also outdated, as developers are allowed only to build less than one sq ft for every one sq ft.

“In Singapore, the plot ratio is 2.8 times to five times. The plot ratio guideline should be revised to give developers more scope for innovation and creativity which allow them to develop units with a variety of prices,” he said.
  
By DAVID TAN, Star, also in 

http://article.wn.com/view/2010/03/19/Rising_cost_of_housing/