Crowdsourcing on knowledge, example : best source of business / investment news in a country

(This is the elaboration on Mahalo Answers that I mentioned in the comment of this post.)

For foreign investors, one of the major drawbacks is :

• the investors are not familiar with where and how to get updated local news related to business/investment aspect of that country. He may be disadvantaged on information aspect.

It will be good if I can find these insights/resources from Mahalo Answers’s community. Hopefully there are locals that can point me to relevant information sources.

So I ask this questions in Mahalo Answers:

• What is the best source (in English) of business / investment news in:
  Middle East, Australia, India, France, Germany, UK, Brazil, Russia…etc...(respectively) ?

Some of the questions are not answered, some yielded great, insightful answers, for examples:
India, UK, Australia.

The most insightful answer comes when I ask on Middle East.
This answerer saves me the need to ask similar question again, country-by-country.
A great "thank you" to him/her.

His/her answer is on EINnews.
Take a look at EINnews.

It provides access to breaking news, organized within 300+ countries (classified under Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, Russia & CIS, Latin America, Africa, North America), regional, US states and specialised topics (in categories of industry, business & economy, government & politics, miscellaneous).

Wow, that’s amazing !

Mahalo Answers is also a venue to seek valuable local opinions/surveys.
Some examples that I have asked:

• "For Mahaloians in US, have you observed "green shoots’ in US economy, in real life ?"
• "For Mahaloians in US, will option ARM reset incur a big financial burden to your family ?"

I have also learnt a lot from others’ Questions. This widens my horizon.

Mahalo Answers has widgets that can be put on blog, showing Answers by me to others’ Questions. I have removed the "Mahalo Answers Widget" from this blog since this blog is already too cluttered. However, I still put up the widget on my Innovation For the Future blog.
You may check it out.

CFA: Shareowner Rights across the Markets: A Manual for Investors

PDF file of Shareowner Rights across the Markets: A Manual for Investors

On 16 April 09, CFA Institute Centre for Financial Market Integrity has launched a manual "Shareowner Rights across the Markets: A Manual for Investors" to help global investors to understand their rights in 22 of the largest markets, namely:

Australia
Brazil
Canada
China
France
Germany
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Italy
Japan
Malaysia
Mexico
Poland
Russia
South Africa
South Korea
Switzerland
Taiwan
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States

This Manual for Investor is indeed useful, especially now that investors can invest globally but face with lack of information and means to seek help when potential frauds/mismanagement happen in companies invested.

For each country, it comes with these sections:
1. Summary of Current Shareowner Rights
2. Current Engagement Practices and Shareowner Rights Developments
3. Legal and Regulatory Framework
4. Key organizations with information relevant to shareowner rights in the country.
Indeed a very good resource for shareholder activism.

Surprised though, couldn’t find Singapore in the lists of 22 largest markets.

In the Introduction, there is also an insightful section which states GovernanceMetrics International (GMI) criteria to determine whether a board member is to be classified as independent board member. We can use this criteria to determine and "clean up" the pseudo-independent board members as a start.

If you find this post useful, you may check out my other posts on shareholder activism.

Tax havens

Following the G20 meeting and communiqué, OECD has provided a list (PDF file, dated 2 Apr 09) of countries which are classified into:

• "White list" - Jurisdictions that have substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard
• "Grey list" - Jurisdictions that have committed to the internationally agreed tax standard, but have not yet substantially implemented
• "Black list" - Jurisdictions that have not committed to the internationally agreed tax standard

The Jurisdiction inside "Black list" then were Costa Rica, Malaysia (Labuan), Phillipines, Uruguay.

Read from the PDF file: Wow, there are so many Tax Havens (in "Grey list").

Tax haven criteria are divided into 4 factors:
1. Jurisdiction imposes no or only nominal taxes
2. Whether there is a lack of transparency
3. Whether there are laws or administrative practices that prevent the effective exchange of information for tax purposes with other governments on taxpayers benefiting from the no or nominal taxation.
4. Whether there is an absence of a requirement that the activity be substantial

Announcement
On 7 Apr 09, it was announced that Costa Rica, Malaysia, Philippines and Uruguay (countries in the "black list") have committed to the tax standard on exchange of information and are moved to "Grey list" (meaning: no more in "Black list") !

There are lots of resources on tax evasion, exchange of information, harmful tax practices.

Question:

How big are the effects of regulation on tax havens ? How big will be the outflows, if any ?

Rise of Nations 大国崛起

There is this documentary series 大国崛起 (Rise of Nations) that I like very much.
It is about how some nations (Portugal, Spain, Neatherland, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Russia amd United States of America) rise to become great nations.
There are many lessons we can learn from their paths to greatness (also on their decline) and obstacles they face.

website
There are some video clips and texts that are excerpts from the documentary series.

link
Website by Taiwan’s 天下magazine on 大国崛起
Click on the countries. There are some articles that are great read too.

The book 大国崛起 by 唐晋 is a great book to complement this documentary.
It gives a more detailed look on these great nations’ development path to greatness.
I think this is some kind of country analysis too (part of investment analysis) :-)

Country analysis : Socio-political risk

PERC (Political & Economic Risk Consultancy)
website

Free reports are available in its library.

Its framework of analysing socio-political risk are:

• Domestic political risk
• Social disorder risk
• External risk
• Systemic risk

Refer to any one of the Risk Monitoring Service’s reports for more detailed breakdown.
Too bad not all its updated reports are freely available.

Financial Development Report by World Economic Forum

Came across this Financial Development Report by World Economic Forum.
Financial Development Report link

Financial Development Index 2008 ranking.

We can learn a great deal from the report:
components of financial development, weak and strong points of each country etc..

The Financial Development Index is divided into 3 categories, 7 pillars:
Categories are :
factors, policies, institution – pillars 1 to 3
financial intermediation – pillars 4 to 6
capital availability and access – pillar 7

1st pillar: institutional environment
2nd pillar: biz environment
3rd pillar: financial stability
4th pillar: bank
5th pillar: non-banks
6th pilllar: financial markets
7th pillar: size, depth and access

Singapore is at rank #10 . Malaysia is at rank #20.
Maybe we can see what our country is weak at and learn from the best in class.

From Table 2 (page 14):
Wow, Malaysia actually gets #2 position in "bank", what a surprise !
Singapore gets #1 position in pillars 1-3, all the pillars related to policymaker !

Malaysia detailed report is at page 156, Singapore at page 204.

Seems like Malaysia’s bank is good at "financial information disclosure" (rank #1).

Technical Notes and Sources (page 331 onwards) provides information of where to get data for all the indicators for the Financial Development Index. Great resources to do country analysis, economic analysis !