Infinite Unknown

Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) — Hong Kong’s Mandatory Provident Fund, the city’s compulsory retirement savings plan, may be headed for its largest annual loss since inception after declining 15 percent between April and September.

Net asset values of MPF dropped to HK$223.8 billion ($28.9 billion) at the end of September, from HK$248.2 billion in April, according to the latest statistics posted on the Web site of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority Oct. 31. The fund covers more than two-thirds of the 3.5 million employees and self-employed workers in the city.

Hong Kong, which doesn’t have a universal government pension plan like the Social Security in the U.S., started MPF in December 2000 to provide a basic safety net for the city’s elderly, as the portion of people over 65 is projected to more than double to 27 percent of the population by 2033 over 2004.

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Tags: China, Economy, Hong Kong, Retirement

Hong Kong investors protest Lehman Brothers losses

HONG KONG - Angry Hong Kong investors, some banging gongs and others waving banners, scuffled outside a bank on Friday as frustration mounted over losses tied to investments linked to failed U.S. bank Lehman Brothers.

Several hundred investors, many of them elderly retirees, marched to eight banks which had sold Lehman structured products, including ABN Amro, Standard Chartered, Bank of China, Citic Ka Wah and DBS bank, demanding compensation for their losses.

Some investors tried to barge into a DBS bank branch on Hong Kong island, jostling with security staff who linked arms to form a human barricade.

Lehman Brothers mini-bonds holders scuffle with officials during a protest against various banks which sold them the product in Hong Kong Friday.

“The banks are cheating us,” shouted some investors, while others banged gongs and waved protest banners accusing the banks of misleading investors on the risks involved.

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Tags: Banks, China, Derivatives, Derivatives market, Economy, Hong Kong, Lehman Brothers

BEIJING (Reuters) - Fifty-six Chinese fishermen were missing on Friday as a typhoon bore down on the southern resort island of Hainan which state media said was the earliest to threaten the region in decades and may well be the strongest.

The fishermen were taking shelter near the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea and had not been heard from since Thursday evening, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Hainan and the neighboring province of Guangdong are braced for Typhoon Neoguri, the first of the year, with almost 22,000 fishing boats having been called back to harbor as the storm skirted Vietnam.

“Neoguri will be the earliest typhoon of the season to affect the south China region since the founding of new China in 1949,” Chen Lei, deputy commander of the State Headquarters of Flood Control and Drought Relief, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

The storm was expected to be “one of the strongest in history” to hit the region, Xinhua said.

Typhoon tracker Tropical Storm Risk labeled the storm as category two in a scale up to five, with maximum sustained winds of 96-110 miles per hour. Continue reading »

Tags: Beijing, China, Climate Change, earth changes, Global Warming, Hong Kong, Japan, Philippines, Taiwan, Typhoon

LONDON (AFP) - European equities dived on Monday after heavy falls earlier in Asia as markets were gripped by growing concern that the US economy was slipping into recession, dealers said.

Stock markets in Europe and the United States had sunk late last week following signs that the fallout from the US credit crisis was far from over.

In late morning European trade on Monday, Frankfurt, London and Paris stock markets chalked up fresh losses of about 1.5 percent.

Asian stocks plunged earlier Monday with Tokyo ending down almost 4.5 percent, Hong Kong tumbled 3.07 percent and Seoul gave up 2.3 percent. Singapore and Sydney both shed about 3.0 percent.

“Not a great start to the week with the UK following falls in the US Friday and Asia today,” said Mike Lenhoff, strategist at brokerage Brewin Dolphin.

“What matters most to investors is what is happening in the US. Investors view the US as in recession or going into recession which is not good news for corporate earnings and the market.”

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Tags: Dow Jones, fear, Hong Kong, HSBC, Nasdaq, Nikkei, Recession, Singapore, Stock Market, Sydney, world