Thursday 29th September 2011

Dear Reader,

Another lost day of productivity in HK as everything shuts down for a passing gale. Hong Kong's weather-related shutdown system harks back to a time when most of its buildings were made of wood rather than reinforced concrete, and nobody could get from the island to Kowloon without taking a ferry. It is high time we raised the thresholds so that we don't shut down the city unless conditions are much worse (expected sustained winds of 63 km/h are currently enough). Today is this year's first stoppage, but in other years we've lost as many as 3 days to typhoon or "Black rainstorm" warnings. If more windswept parts of the UK adopted HK's standards, they'd be working 3-day weeks on a regular basis.

NEW ARTICLES

BoCom's bonus-share tax hit
BoCom (3328) found a nasty wrinkle in China's taxes that resulted in an effective 60% tax rate on its final dividend, because of a tax on bonus shares. Webb-site calls on the Chinese Government to clarify its tax treatment of bonus issues so that there will be no withholding tax, because they are not a distribution of value. Further, it would be better and fairer to abolish the distortive dividend withholding tax and raise corporate tax rates instead. (29-Sep-2011)

New Webb-site database feature
Check out our new league table of SFC licensees per firm. (27-Sep-2011)

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