Profitshop

Wang Jianlin is China’s invisible tycoon. The founder of Dalian Wanda group will soon be the controlling shareholder of four listed companies spanning cinemas, real estate and hotels with shares that trade in China, Hong Kong and New York. Yet he is not on the board of any of them. What may look like good governance raises a different set of questions. Investors in Chinese companies are accustomed to founders with controlling stakes and enormous power. But Wang has no official role in Wanda’s commercial property division, which is planning to list a minority stake in Hong Kong, or in the upcoming offering of its mainland Chinese cinema business. He is also absent from U.S. cinema chain AMC Entertainment, which Wanda bought in 2012 and re-floated a year later, and from its Hong Kong-listed hotel unit. Wanda executives hold various board seats, including the chairman’s role at all four companies. Yet the tycoon’s lack of direct involvement is unusual. At first glance, it’s reassuring,

Infraestructura Energetica Nova SAB (IENOVA*), Mexico’s first publicly traded pipeline operator, is reaping the benefits of longevity as it wins the country’s most vital pipeline auctions amid the country’s energy industry opening. Ienova, the best performer on Mexico’s benchmark IPC index this year, returned 56 percent in 2014 and 140 percent since the company first sold shares last year. Ienova, Mexico’s sole shareholder-owned energy company, started operating the country’s largest pipeline project Dec.2 and won approval Nov. 24 from the state-run Comision Federal de Electricidad to develop the 205-kilometer (127-mile) Ojinaga-El Encino pipeline near U.S.-Mexico border. Ienova’s domestic network provides an advantage over international competitors TransCanada Corp., Atco Ltd. (ACO/X) and Gas Natural SDG SA (GAS), according to Alik Garcia, an analyst at brokerage Intercam in Mexico City. Ienova, which won its first contract to distribute natural gas in Mexico in 1996, is the larges

Europe’s economy faces a decade of drag as policy makers struggle to enact reforms, while China will keep meeting its short-term growth targets, JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said. “Europe is going to be tough,” Dimon said yesterday at an event in Washington hosted by Politico as he predicted years of “sub-optimal growth” in the region. “They have all the same structural issues that you read about of other countries, but it’s 17 nations -- and some of those structural issues have to be agreed upon in 17 parliaments and then by Brussels.” The concern echoes that of U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, who last month called on Europe to do more to avert a lost decade of growth. European Central Bank President Mario Draghi will lead the Governing Council today in its last policy meeting of 2014, when it will debate proposals on new tools to improve the economy. Europe’s situation contrasts with the U.S., which Dimon called a “bright spot,” and with

UBS AG (UBSN) and Credit Suisse Group (CSGN) AG rose in Swiss trading after the country’s two largest banks announced the sale of almost $1.3 billion of assets on the last day of 2008. UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, gained 7.6 percent, or 1.13 franc, to 15.97 francs in Zurich. Credit Suisse added 12 percent, or 3.5 francs, to 32 francs, the biggest gain in four weeks. UBS sold shares in Bank of China Ltd. worth about $900 million to institutional investors after a lock-up period ended, and Credit Suisse agreed to sell a stake in its Global Investors business to Aberdeen Asset Management Plc (ADN) for 250 million pounds ($363 million) in stock. Both banks are scaling back because of the global credit crunch. “The selling of these assets brings in more liquidity,” said Teresa Nielsen, an analyst at Bank Vontobel in Zurich. UBS, which got a $59.2 billion aid package by the Swiss government and central bank last year, has slashed 9,000 jobs and posted almost $49 billion in losses an

Mortgage rates for 30-year U.S. loans fell for a fourth week, reducing borrowing costs to the lowest level in a year and a half. The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 3.89 percent, down from 3.97 percent last week, Freddie Mac said in a statement today. That was the lowest since May 2013. The average 15-year rate dropped to 3.10 percent from 3.17 percent, the McLean, Virginia-based mortgage-finance company said. Lower borrowing costs are helping to make housing purchases more affordable as values rise across much of the country. Home prices rose 6.1 percent in October, the 32nd straight year-over-year increase, CoreLogic Inc. said this week. “Lower mortgage rates would be a net positive for the U.S. housing market and the economic recovery more generally,” Millan Mulraine, deputy head of U.S. research and strategy at TD Securities USA LLC in New York, said in a phone interview. “It improves affordability and provides a greater incentive for people on the sidelines, waiti

Proved reserves of crude and lease condensate in the U.S. rose 9.3 percent in 2013 as drillers showed they could extract more oil than previously thought from shale formations in places like Texas and North Dakota. Reserves increased 3.1 billion barrels to 36.5 billion, the Energy Information Administration said today in its annual U.S. Crude Oil and Natural Gas Proved Reserves report. It was the fifth year in a row that proved reserves increased. They also exceeded 36 billion barrels for the first time since 1975. Proved reserves, or resources that can be recovered under existing economic and operating conditions, grew after U.S. oil output surged to the highest level in 31 years. Companies used horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to extract oil from underground shale rock layers that sat untouched a decade ago. “We know there is oil,” Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., said in a telephone interview from New York. “We know it will exceed even the most optimi

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced a higher forecast for U.K. government borrowing as he overhauled the tax on buying homes and increased levies on multinational companies and banks. Britain will borrow 91.3 billion pounds ($143 billion) in the current fiscal year, Osborne said in his end-of-year update to Parliament in London today, citing estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The OBR forecast in March that borrowing would be 86.4 billion pounds after accounting changes that took effect three months ago. “Today we do not shy away from the problems that remain unresolved in the British economy -- while the deficit is falling, it remains too high,” Osborne said. “Britain faces a choice. Do we squander the economic security we have gained, go back to the disastrous decisions on spending and borrowing and welfare that got us into this mess, or do we finish the job –- and go on building the secure economy that works for everyone?” Five months before the