Asia

Plagued by lackluster domestic demand and geopolitical wrangles, Shiseido’s sales slump is likely to take a toll on the company’s profits. The attempts at stimulating Japan’s economy and the other concept enshrined in what has become known worldwide as “Abenomics” in honor of Japan’s newly-elected prime minister, Shinzo Abe, have yet to benefit Shiseido Co. [...]

Even if consumers are swapping their PCs for tablets, the one constant will be their demand for touch screen devices, and Taiwan-based TPK Holdings is well positioned to profit from that and capture additional market share going forward. Two of the most buzzed-about topics in the technology world these days are the slowdown in the [...]

Investors threw themselves into “risk-on” investments at the start of the new year, although the odds of greater volatility and uncertainty remain high. After a wary and uncertain end to 2012, investors celebrated the advent of 2013 by once again embracing the concept of risk. They seized on respectable if not dramatic gains in corporate [...]

Advantest is facing a double whammy: demand from two key kinds of clients (smartphone companies and the PC manufacturers) is falling, putting the semiconductor testing equipment company on course to deliver a negative earnings surprise this spring. The kind of turbo-charged growth in demand for smartphones – at least in North America and Europe – [...]

New automotive technologies have already made Mazda’s cars hotter-selling vehicles than many of their rivals; now, the falling yen could boost exports and profits further. The weakening of the Japanese yen against other currencies, including the dollar, may be bad news for that nation’s own consumers, but it helps make Japanese exporters’ products more competitive [...]

China’s economic slowdown has been felt around the world, but some companies have experienced a significantly greater degree of pain, such as Sinotruk, whose fate is tied to Chinese growth in GDP and exports. A setback to both of these means the company’s 2012 earnings are likely to disappoint. While it may be hard to [...]

Wuliangye Yibin has tremendous pricing power and its premium liquors appeal to China’s burgeoning middle class; even an anti-corruption crusade isn’t likely to spoil the possibility of a positive earnings surprise next month. The recent clampdown on political and business corruption in China has been bad news for the domestic liquor producers as well as [...]

Calls for bold monetary easing by freshly elected Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, have pushed down on the value of the Yen and fuelled a rally in Japanese equities. Refresh Chart   Edit Chart Anticipation of more aggressive monetary easing in Japan has pushed the Yen to multi-year lows against the US dollar and fuelled a [...]

The rhetoric in the emerging global currency war, or as we have dubbed it ‘the ugly race’, has stepped up recently. Finance Ministers from some emerging market economies have become increasingly vocal in their stand against unconventional policy measures such as quantitative easing that they interpret as unduly impacting upon foreign exchange markets. For the [...]

China trade data for December pointed to pick up in momentum in the final month of 2012. Export growth outpaced import growth, which led to a rise in its trade surplus. This suggests that China’s long-awaited rebalancing has yet to fully take shape. Refresh Chart   Edit Chart China’s trade position improved in December as [...]