Friday 13th November 2009

Dear Reader,

Thanks if you participated in the opinion poll on cooling off periods for new home sales. The result shows that 86% of you agree that there should be a cooling-off period. Of those who did, 12% preferred 3 business days, 31% preferred 5 business days, and 57% preferred 10 business days. We'll forward the results to the Government. Now, here's a story which has kept us up late at night...

NEW ARTICLE
China Strategic bubble
We warn investors of a bubble in the stock of China Strategic, the 80% owner of the proposed buyer of Taiwan's Nan Shan Life Insurance, partly financed by a massive note issue convertible into 78bn shares at $0.10 each. We publish the placing list and analyse the names in the deal. Finally, we warn investors to avoid 7 companies in the "Chung Nam network", which has lost HK$6.2bn in 5 years.

RECENT ARTICLE
Cyber-Export (8-Nov-09)
The HK government claims to be exporting its Cyberport "know how" to New Zealand. All citizens should know how interventionist this office, hotel, retail and cinema project was. It should now be sold off, perhaps as a REIT. Meanwhile, Government should rethink the Murray Building plan. Sell it to the highest bid, allow redevelopment, and don't restrict it to hotel use, which may be sub-optimal. Another Government-owned hotel would represent further intervention.

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