Tuesday 17th December 2013

Dear Reader,

It's been a while, hasn't it? Check out our new Webb-site Total Return graphing system, which now shows the adjusted volume of shares traded and is more touch-friendly for those viewing on tablets, so you can pinch and zoom your way through the graph. Have yourselves a Merry Solstice.

NEW ARTICLES
Not classy
The new Dragonair First Class: Cathay Pacific Business Class passengers have seen it all before... (17-Dec-2013)

CCB Asia's abuse of HKID numbers
Time to start embarrassing service providers into stopping the abuse of HKID numbers as authenticators or passwords. We start with China Construction Bank (Asia) Corp Ltd. (26-Nov-2013)

IN OTHER NEWS
Qunxing Paper (3868): SFC searches premises, court freezes assets
Company announcement, 15-Dec-2013

SFC orders Du Jun to pay HK$23.9m to some investors
SFC, 12-Dec-2013
This is the first restoration order for insider dealing. We question the fairness of the allocation though. 297 sellers whose orders just happened to be matched with his, during an 11-week period in which he bought 26.7m shares, will get about $0.90 per share - even though some of them may have been net buyers during the period. The whole market was unaware of the good news, and anyone who sold shares during that period, when volume was 1844m shares, but not to Mr Du, gets nothing. That turns the payout into a lottery with about a 1 in 69 chance of success.

HKICPA reprimands Wallen Wu for quoting a fee on his web site
HKICPA, 2-Dec-2013
Who knew that the HKICPA has a rule prohibiting the advertising of fees? Surely that is an anti-competitive rule. This accountant is now in trouble for breaking it, for quoting a fee on his home page for incorporating a company, something that other service providers do all the time. Bizarrely, HKICPA draws a distinction between a homepage and other pages of a web site, claiming that the home page is "analagous to a newspaper advertisement" while other pages are not. All web pages require active requests, of course.

Webb on 'Backchat" re the proposed stamp duties
RTHK, 29-Nov-2013
The proposed laws on Buyer's Stamp Duty, higher rate and longer period of Seller's Stamp Duty, and Double Stamp Duty are still in LegCo Bills Committees. The show discusses whether they should be withdrawn.

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