LyrArc Article Gist
Priceline surged in a tech boom of two decades ago before coming down. It has regenerated itself through its 2005 acquisition of Amsterdam based portal Booking.com, followed by acquiring booking site Agoda and travel search engine Kayak. This has helped the stock rise in the last decade. Over 90% of its revenue comes from outside the U.S., even though its original model of naming a price for a booking is gone.  Booking.com is making an attempt to penetrate the Chinese travel market with a series of acquisitions starting with online travel agency Ctrip.com. Ctrip.com is established but recent acquisitions are burning cash. There is skepticism about these acquisitions as Chinese company share prices are seen as inflated similar to the stock booms that went bust in the U.S. Booking.com invested heavily in online advertising primarily through Google. Yet though western customers use search engines to find and book travel, in China customers go directly to Ctrip or apps like Meituan to book trips. To get people to book Chinese travel companies offer large discounts, a model that may not be right for Booking.com. The effort is to add to Ctrip customer base the middle to lower income customers from Didi ride sharing app and the Meituan app, through its partnerships with these companies. The experience of other travel sites such as Expedia in the Chinese market is poor, with price wars and Expedia selling its majority stake to Didi Chuxing. Expedia's CEO at the time calls it "the wild, wild east" because of the intense competition. About 130 million Chinese travelled overseas in 2017, up 7%, and spending $115 billion. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Chinese companies are heavily invesing in the stock markets and many companies get a large part of their earnings from the stock markets. The myth is that the real economy will simply go on like before if the stock market takes a nosedive. This is not true because large and small companies are both playing the stock market and IPO's in a big way. They are using corporate funds to invest in IPO's and stocks to boost their earnings. Morgan Stanley estimates that more than one third of corporate earnings in China come from putting money in stocks. The figures are much higher for some industries. In the health sector this number is 54% including real etate earnings also and in consumer goods sector 65% according to Morgan Stanley. If the markets take a steep downturn then these companies will have to show the losses on their income statements, depressing earnings and pushing their stock prices down even further and more steeply. Japan experienced something similiar in the the eighties. And in one respect the situation is more dismal than in Japan. The financial statements may be even less transparent than the ones in Japan's boom period. And investors lack the expertise to figure out whats behind the financial statements. There is no effort to think deeply about what can happen when a nosedive in stocks hits corporate earnings and these losses create a vicious cycle that sends stocks into a further fall turning into a freefall. A Professor of Accounting at a Business School in Shanghai, head of China research at Morgan Stanley and a governance expert in HongKong all point to the dangers in the situation as it evolves. Most of these bubbles like the housing bubble in the US have a situation which George Soros described recently as it burst after he had kept predicting for years that its going to collapse and finally he got tired of saying that because it continued going up. Its possibly the nature of bubbles that a sharp observer can tell whats going on but the phenomena will continue for quite awhile even when its obvious that something is wrong. Its something to do with human nature and the dynamics of human situations where knowing the danger the person will continue to act the opposite way just because everybody else is playing in a certain way. This is the situation in China in 2007. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Alibaba begins a delicate balancing act between sentiment in Hong Kong and sentiment in Beijing with the acquisition of The South China Morning Post newspaper in Hong Kong.

LyrArc Article Gist
Zhonghanhai Compound of China's leaders in Beijing and American visitor DJT, guest of Xi Jinping, in May 2026.

LyrArc Article Gist
Francesca Doner's interview with Jean-Marc Duvoisin, CEO of Nestle Nespresso SA. Duvoisin was CEO of Nestle SA in Mexico before becoming chief of Human Resources for Nestle. He now heads Nespresso. Here he responds to questions about the competition from other companies such as Swiss supermarket Migros, which makes the coffee pods for Nespresso machines. Duvoisin says the competition is not affecting Nespresso sales and he sees the consumer insights from selling direct to the consumer as invaluable to Nestle. Nespresso's next challenge is markets in the U.S., China and emerging markets. He sees the shift from tea to coffee in China as a very gradual one. Nestle's focus is on making the coffee experience good for consumers so that they stay with Nestle for a long time. Strategy in the U.S. will focus on the long cup of coffee with milk and not on the espresso. This he sees as a more feminine experience, more relaxed and smoother. TV spots in the U.S. feature actress Penelope Cruz.

LyrArc Article Gist
In the first quarter of 2011 consumer demand for gold in China increased by 47% over the prior year quarter to 233 tons, according to the World Gold Council's data. Most of this is for jewelry accounting for 64% in 2010, with gold bar demand increasing as an hedge against inflation. Orlik points out that if inflation decreases from the existing level of 5.3%, and with the increase in wealth management products from Chinese banks, the demand for gold may not be sustained as it offers no return. He says urban resident demand may have reached its peak and there is not much demand from the rural population. Central bank purchases to shift a small part of foreign exchange reserves to gold is the only other factor for a push up in gold prices.