China envoy urges Japan to stick to apology script

China will question Japan's commitment to peace if it adopts an ambiguous or defiant stance regarding its wartime actions, Beijing's ambassador to Tokyo told the English-language China Daily newspaper in an interview published on Friday. 

PHOTO: REUTERS

13 Mar9:57 AM

[SHANGHAI] China will question Japan's commitment to peace if it adopts an ambiguous or defiant stance regarding its wartime actions, Beijing's ambassador to Tokyo told the English-language China Daily newspaper in an interview published on Friday.

China hopes Japan will "take a correct attitude, stick to its previous correct positions and statements, including the Murayama Statement. We also expect that Japan will remain on the pathway of peace", Cheng Yonghua was quoted as saying.

In landmark comments known as the Murayama Statement, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama made a "heartfelt apology" in 1995 for the wartime damage and suffering caused by Japan. "If Tokyo attempts to tackle the war incorrectly, or to impose ambiguity or defiance upon its war-related actions, we will worry about it further honouring the pathway of peace," Mr Cheng said.

On Tuesday, Mr Murayama told Reuters that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe risked further alienating neighbours if he does not stick to the substance of the 1995 apology for wartime aggression.

Mr Abe, who as a rookie lawmaker opposed Mr Murayama's apology in 1995, has adopted a conservative agenda that includes a less apologetic tone toward the past and revising the post-war, pacifist constitution.

Feuds over wartime history as well as territorial rows have frayed Tokyo's ties with Seoul and Beijing in recent years. Sino-Japanese relations have thawed a bit since a leaders'summit last November but ties with Seoul remain frosty.

REUTERS

Canadian documentary warns tax havens threaten democracy

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Jeff Gray,The Globe and Mail
8:45 AM, E.T. | March 12, 2015
Canadian, Economy, International

Tags: Stock Markets

 

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A new Canadian documentary warns that the practices multinationals use to avoid billions in taxes worldwide threaten the foundations of democracy, and its makers hope its release here on Friday sparks a public debate over offshore tax havens similar to those already raging in austerity-weary Europe.
The Price We Pay , by director Harold Crooks – a co-writer of the acclaimed 2003 film The Corporation, which accused modern capitalism of forcing companies to act like psychopaths – officially opens Friday in Toronto and Montreal, after its debut at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
“To me, ultimately, what the film is about is the threat that the offshoring of the world’s wealth represents to the major social innovations of the 20th century, the middle class and the social welfare state,” Mr. Crooks said in an interview with The Globe and Mail.
While the issue has received more attention in Quebec, it has not caught fire nationally in Canada the way it has in Europe, where U.S. companies such as Amazon and Starbucks have faced a furor over tax techniques that shift billions in profit out of higher-tax countries. The president of the European Commission has also become entangled in a controversy over tax deals made with major companies while he was prime minister of Luxembourg. It’s a debate that is inflamed as cash-strapped governments there cut budgets.
The documentary comes as the Group of 20 large economies and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) pursue an aggressive plan to rewrite international tax rules to close loopholes that allow multinational corporations to legally shift profits into tax havens such as Bermuda or the Cayman Islands, an initiative led by OECD tax chief Pascal Saint-Amans, who also appears in the film.
It also features an interview with French economist Thomas Piketty, whose bestsellerCapital in the Twenty-First Century created a sensation and called for global wealth tax.
The documentary has already opened in France, where it is in 50 theatres and where finance minister Michel Sapin, treated to a private screening, lauded the film as “excellent” on national television last month and called the tax practices it highlights “absolutely scandalous.”
The film makes ample use of footage of the dramatic grillings that executives from Amazon, Apple and other companies have faced from committees of legislators in Britain and the United States in recent years over the companies’ moves – all legal – to minimize tax bills and shift billions to low- or no-tax countries.
In outlining the history of the rise of offshore money, the film labels the square mile City of London, home to the British capital’s historically loosely regulated financial services industry, as the “mother of all tax havens.”
But it blames the rise of the modern world’s offshore financial centres in British colonies or dependencies in the Caribbean, such as the Cayman Islands, partly on moves made in the 1960s by Canadian banks. For example, Donald Fleming, a federal minister of finance under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker who went on to serve as chairman of the Bank of Nova Scotia, helped the Bahamas draft its attractive tax laws in the 1960s, the film says.
The movie was inspired by a 2010 book called La Crise fiscale qui vient (The Coming Fiscal Crisis), by Quebec tax policy adviser, accountant and anti-tax-avoidance crusader Brigitte Alepin, who appears in the film and co-wrote it with Mr. Crooks, whom she drafted as its director. She also interviewed many of the film’s francophone subjects.
She said she hopes the film will convince policy-makers in Canada and elsewhere to take action. But she argues that even if the OECD’s proposed tax-avoidance crackdown is implemented around the world, it will still result in limited progress as long as countries are still free to compete with each other to lower their tax rates: “Even if you solve all the problems with tax havens … even if all this stops in a magical way in a few years, it will not stop tax competition between countries.”

China financial ECM deals set for strongest year since 2010

Chinese banks, brokerages and insurers plan to raise at least US$30 billion in new funds through equity offerings in the coming months, which would make 2015 the most active year for the financial services sector since 2010.

PHOTO: BLOOMBERG

13 Mar8:17 AM

[HONG KONG] Chinese banks, brokerages and insurers plan to raise at least US$30 billion in new funds through equity offerings in the coming months, which would make 2015 the most active year for the financial services sector since 2010.

The year started with a bang, with more than US$6 billion of equity deals in less than three months, including a US$3.9 billion private placement by China's second-largest brokerage Haitong Securities and the US$1.6 billion Shanghai initial public offering of Orient Securities, Thomson Reuters data shows.

Chinese banks and insurers are raising funds to strengthen their balance sheets and meet new capital adequacy rules, while brokerages are tapping the capital markets to expand their profitable margin financing and other lending businesses.

The capital-raising, in turn, would be a boon for investment banks targeting Hong Kong and China equity deals for the bulk of their fee revenues in the Asia-Pacific region.

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Fund-raising through equities has suffered for years from lacklustre investor interest due to concerns over non-performing loans and weak stock markets in mainland China. The rush of deals this year points to a more upbeat outlook, especially for financial companies, following a series of monetary easing measures in China.

The Hang Seng China H-Financials index has rallied more than 30 per cent in the past year. In the coming months, the pipeline of expected deals includes an IPO of up to US$3 billion by China Huarong Asset Management, the country's biggest bad-debt manager, and Hong Kong share sales worth US$2 billion each from brokerages Huatai Securities and GF Securities.

"Considering the cut in monetary policy, considering the earnings outlook for the banks, it will be an interesting window of opportunity for them to issue shares," said Francois Perrin, head of Greater China equities at BNP Paribas Investment Partners Asia, adding that he favours insurers over banks due to growth in the insurance industry and their higher return on equity.

REUTERS

      

 

EU will be damaged if fails to agree US trade deal: UK minister

13 Mar12:25 AM

[LONDON] Failing to agree a transatlantic free trade deal would be damaging for the European Union and send a message that the bloc has waning international importance, Britain's Minister for Europe said on Thursday.

This year is crucial in making progress on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) before US President Barack Obama leaves office, but so far nothing has been agreed. Each side has accused the other of trying to protect specific industry interests.

"If the TTIP project fails I think that will send a really dismaying message about Europe's waning importance in world affairs," David Lidington, Britain's Minister for Europe, told an event on EU reform. "We should not pretend that that will have anything other than a damaging impact both economically and diplomatically."

Free-trade advocates say the agreement, which seeks to reduce trade barriers and harmonise regulations, will create a market of 800 million people, generate millions of jobs and serve as a counterbalance to Russian and Chinese power.

Those opposed say it will undermine European laws and allow US multinationals to bully EU governments into doing their bidding. In Britain, protecting the National Health Service from privatisation has been a key concern of many opponents.

Mr Lidington said he believed this could be overcome and warned that without the pact, "the alternative ... is that we wake up in a few years time and we find that the Pacific and Asian countries have set their own global benchmarked standards and Europe will be in the somewhat humiliating position of having to run after and copy what has been decided," he said.

Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to renegotiate Britain's ties with the EU before holding a membership referendum by the end of 2017 if his Conservatives win a May 7 election.

Speaking alongside German lawmaker Stephan Mayer, Mr Lidington said Germany and Britain had a shared agenda for EU reform, including in areas such as boosting competitiveness and generating growth and jobs.

Mr Mayer also said more needed to be done to tackle EU migrant abuse of social welfare systems, a key campaign issue for Mr Cameron, but said this should be done through secondary legislation because it wouldn't be possible to make changes to the EU treaties by 2017.

"We have much more in common on this topic of immigration that we differ," he said.

REUTERS

Germany's Schaeuble says can't rule out "Grexident"

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Thursday the onus was on Greece to help itself and he could not rule out an accidental exit of the country from the euro zone. 

PHOTO: EPA

13 Mar7:48 AM

[VIENNA] German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Thursday the onus was on Greece to help itself and he could not rule out an accidental exit of the country from the euro zone.

"As the responsibility, the possibility to decide what happens only lies with Greece, and because we don't exactly know what those in charge in Greece are doing, we can't rule it out," Mr Schaeuble told Austrian broadcaster ORF when asked about the prospect of a "Grexident".

He said Europe remained prepared to help Greece but that the country had to help itself.

REUTERS