Forget Lotto, just bank at Westpac NZ for a jackpot

AUCKLAND: THE Westpac bank in New Zealand, which last month mistakenly transferred $NZ10 million ($8.06 million) into the account of a man who is still on the run, has been involved in another big-figure error.

The administration manager at computer firm Elite Business Systems, Graeme Richer, couldn’t believe his eyes when he received a Westpac fax last week telling him $NZ4.3 million had been transferred into the firm’s account by a client paying a bill. But the sum owed was just $NZ43,000. Mr Richer said the correct amount was transferred into the firm’s bank account.

“We were hopeful, almost had our tickets booked to fly out to Hong Kong,” he told The Waikato Times newspaper.

A Westpac spokesman, Craig Dowling, said the mistake was “a typing error” on the fax. He said the most important thing was that the correct amount was transferred and that controls, including a verification process, were in place to ensure accuracy.

Last month, Rotorua couple Leo Gao and Kara Hurring skipped the country for Hong Kong after Westpac mistakenly put $NZ10 million into Mr Gao’s account.

Mr Gao had asked for a $NZ100,000 overdraft. Westpac said most of the money had been recovered but $NZ3.8 million was still outstanding.

Forget Lotto, just bank at Westpac NZ for a jackpot

CCB looks at renminbi trade move

Guo Shuqing, chairman of China Construction Bank, said his bank, the second largest in China, was exploring offering renminbi-denominated trade finance credit that could make the Chinese currency more widely used internationally.

His voice, the first from the head of a large Chinese bank, joins a chorus from senior government officials on currency matters that together reflect concerns about the stability of the US dollar and several efforts to promote the use of the renminbi more widely.

On the eve of the G20 meeting about two months ago, Zhou Xiaochuan, head of the People’s Bank of China – China’s central bank – published a paper proposing to replace the dollar with an international reserve currency and expanding the use of special drawing rights, a unit of account of the International Monetary Fund.

Mr Zhou’s proposal came after Wen Jiabao, premier, called on the US to guarantee the safety of dollar-denominated Chinese assets. About 70 per cent of the $2,000bn or so in Chinese reserves are in dollar-denominated assets.

In addition, the Chinese have negotiated a series of currency swap arrangements with seven countries – including, most recently, Argentina – which would allow these trade counterparties to settle some trading bills in renminbi. China has agreements with other countries, including Iran, to not use the dollar in their trade.

While most developments have been theoretical, Mr Guo said he was in talks with the PBoC and others to develop the concept.

The Chinese desire to diversify away from the dollar comes as many oil exporters have expressed a similar wish. Venezuela has frequently complained about the dollar and last year Kuwait abandoned its currency peg with the dollar.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

FT.com / China / Economy & Trade - CCB looks at renminbi trade move

What financial crisis? Portrait of a Chinese millionaire

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One of China’s growing number of millionaires - for whom the financial crisis barely registers - Chen Yilong has just bought a private plane to add to his many luxury homes.

Lighting a cigarette in a teahouse in Xi’an, in northern Shaanxi province, the 49-year-old pauses when asked how much money he has, before saying in a conspiratorial voice: “You can safely say I’m a multi-millionaire (in yuan).”

Research by the Hurun Report, a magazine that tracks China’s wealthiest, revealed in April that 825,000 people had personal wealth of over 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million), or 0.06 percent of the population.

And at a time when the financial crisis has left 25 million migrant workers out of a job in China, the vast majority of these millionaires said the meltdown had not had any impact on their lifestyle, the research said.

Sipping his tea contentedly, Chen, a rotund, jovial man sporting a striped shirt with red braces, agreed.

The real estate company owner talked animatedly of the Cirrus SR22 private plane he was having shipped over from the United States to satisfy a childhood dream.

“This plane is essentially the BMW of the air,” he said smugly of the aircraft he paid five million yuan for, describing an elaborate parachute system that would bring him safely back to earth if there was a problem.

Chen says he is one of the first in this part of China to have bought a private plane - a luxury purchase that is still very rare in the country even among the group of multi-millionaires.

It is all a far cry from a decade ago, he said, his rags to riches story mirroring China’s own rapid economic growth over about the same period.

In the late 1990s, he had just delisted from the army, been given a demobilisation fee of 50,000 yuan and had decided to buy a second-hand truck to transport goods.

“I rented a driver and it went for more than a year, but it got into two road accidents, and it hit a person - I realised it was just too dangerous, and not profitable,” he said.

That is when Chen discovered real estate and decided to set up a company with some of his own funds and borrowed money.

A lawyer by training, he had spent most of his working life in the army but had gained some business experience in the late 1980s while in a tank division, where he oversaw a unit that produced and sold oxygen.

At the time, he said, the government allowed army personnel to do business on the side as a way to supplement their income.

“But then the government said we couldn’t do this anymore - the army had got messy, everyone was earning money, they weren’t training,” he said.

That experience helped his first foray into real estate, and soon he had built up Weinan Changlong Real Estate Development Company - a firm of over 20 staff members with a turnover of several million yuan a year.

He now has “many houses,” he says, without being drawn into the exact number, and proudly talks about his caravan - a rarity in China and a purchase that drew a questioning look from his wife, who co-owns the company. Laughing, Chen recalled her saying: “What are you going to get next, a plane?”

What financial crisis? Portrait of a Chinese millionaire - Taiwan News Online

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Wal-Mart

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dihard:

If you’ve read or heard much about Wal-Mart, you likely know the magnitude of its power. If it were an independent country, it would have the 23rd largest economy in the world - at that size, Wal-Mart can certainly influence some major change. A great example of this is the deodorant story from the early 90s.

Prior to the early 90s, deodorant came boxed. The plastic deodorant stick was packaged in a paperboard box. In The Wal-Mart Effect, Charles Fishman describes how in the early 1990s, Wal-Mart decided the box was a waste. It wasted cardboard, took up shelf space, increased shipping expenses, and was unnecessary since the plastic deodorant package was more durable than the box. So Wal-Mart asked their suppliers to eliminate the box. Of course, they did. And it benefited everyone - the box turned out to cost about 5 cents, which Wal-Mart split with its suppliers - the deodorant makers got a couple cents, and a couple cents of savings were passed on the Wal-Mart customers. Everyone, except for the box makers, that is.

According to the Sr VP of Sustainability in a talk I attended this weekend, the Wal-Mart Sustainability Team has met with Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, a few times this year. During these meetings, Yvon had a few requests of Wal-Mart. They included

1. Wal-Mart should make suppliers change the ingredients in their products, including eliminating high-fructose corn syrup. He told them “If you told your suppliers to clean up their act, you could change the world.” He states, “They could do that to Kraft…Wal-Mart is 25 percent of Kraft’s business. You could change the world if you told Kraft, ‘We don’t want any more high-fructose corn syrup in our products’.”

2. Wal-Mart should make suppliers eliminate the “on” light on appliances. There’s no reason to have a green light that shows your tv is “on” when you are watching it. Yvon did research to find that if Wal-Mart required this, it would save many power plants worth of energy.

Imagine.

(Though they apparently have no plans to respond to these requests, Wal-Mart did just have a Sustainability Summit in Beijing in October during which it revealed a mandate for a sustainable supply chain from its suppliers in China.)

• Wal-Mart Threatens Factories: Clean Up or Get Out!

Bank of America to raise stake in China Construction Bank to 19.13 pct

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - Bank of America Corp has decided to exercise a call option to buy an additional 19.58 bln H-shares in China Construction Bank Corp (CCB) (SHA 601939; HK 0939) from Central Huijin, the investment arm of sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp, CCB said.

-Forbes.com

• Why China Won’t Come to the Rescue