For the latest news on U.S.- and Hong Kong-traded Chinese stocks, visit our new Bamboo Works site.
A year of hype surrounding what’s likely to become the biggest IPO in history will officially end later this week, when homegrown Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba formally lists on the New York Stock Exchange. The IPO will give most global investors access to Alibaba’s shares and a chance to profit from one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing e-commerce markets. Read Full Post…
A couple of smaller deals are in the headlines today, with smartphone sensation Xiaomi dipping its toe into the financial services market and online news portal Phoenix New Media (NYSE: FENG) eying the news feed business. Both deals are relatively small in terms of size, but each provides some interesting insight on the thinking at these 2 different companies in the tech and new media space. The first deal has Xiaomi joining a group of investors betting on a peer-to-peer (P2P) online lending platform called Jimu Box. The second has Phoenix investing in Particle Inc, maker of an app that lets users design personalized feeds to receive news over their mobile phones. Read Full Post…
What nearly became a blockbuster marriage between China’s 2 leading online travel sites has instead ended in divorce, with word that industry leader Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP) has formally yanked its hotel listings from the site of the second largest player Qunar (Nasdaq: QUNR). My use of the divorce metaphor here isn’t completely appropriate, since the 2 companies came close but never formally consummated a marriage. Still, the final split in this tie-up is probably the best ending for everyone, since it would have been a rocky road even if the 2 companies had agreed to merge their operations. Read Full Post…
This week’s tech round-up from the microblogging realm is a flurry of interesting but unrelated news bits, as the world gets back to work following the end of the summer holidays. Leading the list is the latest effort by Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) to find a backdoor into China, which comes in the form of a new Weibo account that isn’t verified but has at least one tech executive spreading the word and encouraging people to follow the page.
Meantime, online search leader Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) generated some microblogging buzz when it unveiled an unusual pair of high-tech chopsticks in Beijing. Last but not least there’s Xue Manzi, a tech investor also known as Charles Xue, who was busy hyping a tech start-up on his microblog. Xue is a man I came to dislike over the years for his largely empty talk, even as he built up a base of more than 10 million followers on Weibo (Nasdaq: WB). But then he got sent to prison for becoming too influential and political, making me more sympathetic, before his release in April and quick return to vacuous blogging. Read Full Post…
A new report on the resignation of the head of Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) huge Asia R&D labs to take a job at homegrown Internet giant Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) is shining a spotlight on the growing challenges that multinationals may soon face in retaining some of their top Chinese employees. Just a decade ago, jobs at foreign companies were highly coveted by ambitious Chinese in the high-tech sector, mostly because China didn’t have any of its own big names in the space.
But the emergence of companies like Baidu, Tencent (HKEx: 700) and Lenovo (HKEx: 992) have created a whole new set of opportunities for these workers. What’s more, improving working conditions at Chinese-owned firms, combined with Beijing’s subtle anti-foreign bias against high-tech multinationals, could ultimately lead many of China’s brightest tech workers to abandon their jobs at the multinationals for domestic names. Read Full Post…
The latest headlines about an upcoming IPO for online game operator Linekong made me realize it’s been quite a while since we last saw any news of offshore listing plans by Chinese Internet and tech firms. Such listings were coming nonstop earlier this year, and saw a wide range of names including the Twitter-like Weibo (Nasdaq: WB), e-commerce giant JD.com (Nasdaq: JD) and real estate services site Leju (NYSE: LEJU) all make IPOs in New York. But the Internet IPO pipeline has gone largely silent since early August, when mobile game operator iDreamSky (Nasdaq: DSKY) made its trading debut. Read Full Post…
I’ve become a big fan lately of top Internet company Tencent (HKEx: 700), which has taken a more focused, measured approach to M&A in a recent string of major acquisitions and tie-ups by China’s top 3 web firms. But the company seems to be rapidly moving into M&A overdrive, following word of 3 major new deals this week alone, none of which looks too exciting or focused. Whereas nearly all of Tencent’s tie-ups to date have been with other online firms, the trio of rumored new deals all involve major players from traditional industries that have little or no experience on the Internet. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on August 30-September 1. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
Corporate culture is seldom on public display for most of China’s top tech firms, even though such culture often determines the success or failure of a company and is well known to industry insiders. The internal cultures at PC giant Lenovo (HKEx: 922) and smartphone sensation Xiaomi were the subject of chatter in the blogosphere this past week, as executives from inside and outside the companies discussed the less visible side of these well-known names. In Lenovo’s case, the talk came from a company executive herself, on the release of her new book. The latter saw a couple of outside executives comment on less attractive elements behind the inside culture at China’s hottest smartphone maker.
Meantime, the viral “Ice Bucket Challenge” was also all over the tech sphere, with nearly every major executive mentioning the topic on his personal microblog. Many also took the plunge that raises money for a rare neurological disease, but has also been derided as little more than a publicity stunt. Read Full Post…
The following press releases and media reports about Chinese companies were carried on August 28. To view a full article or story, click on the link next to the headline.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════
A new report on big investment plans in digital media by Hunan Satellite Television is shining a spotlight on this aggressive company in interior China, and its potential to become an important consolidator as Beijing looks to revamp the stodgy traditional media sector. According to that report, Hunan Satellite is planning to invest 1 billion yuan ($160 million) in its Mango TV service, which delivers video over the Internet and other digital platforms and competes directly with private sector firms like Youku Tudou (NYSE: YOKU) and Baidu’s (Nasdaq: BIDU) iQiyi. Read Full Post…
