Stuart Gaffin

A Chinese human rights activist has been in a holding pattern at Japan's Narita airport for three weeks, saying mainland authorities repeatedly blocked his attempts to fly home to Shanghai.  

Feng Zheng Hu, 55, has been sleeping on an airport couch at Narita's Gate 31 since Nov. 4, a situation reminiscent of the Tom Hanks' film, "The Terminal"  although in Feng's case, he can stay in Japan.

"I have a visa to stay in Japan," Feng told Reuters at the airport this week. "But this time, police in Shanghai used violent measures and sent me here. It was like kidnapping. That's why I'm protesting and refusing to leave the airport. I want to return to my own country."

The former Shanghai university professor said he was jailed in China for "illegal business activity", after writing a book in 2001 about Japanese companies operating there.

"I published a book in China in the past and received a three-year sentence. It's a major injustice. Since then, I've been working for freedom of publishing in China." 

He says he has been blocked from returning home eight times this year alone.

Narita officials are at a loss on how to deal with Feng, who refuses to enter Japan, living in a limbo area between an arrival terminal and passport control, while eating food donated by arriving passengers and calling attention to his plight by wearing a shirt covered with scrawled slogans.

China's foreign ministry declined to comment on the case this week, and neither Feng nor airport staff were willing to say when his lengthy layover would end.

Highlights from this week's Thomson Reuters Investment Banking Scorecard:

6TH LARGEST IPO OF THE YEAR
In this week’s second largest ECM transaction Sands China, the Macau operations of US based Las Vegas Sands raised $2.5 billion on the Hong Kong stock exchange. It is the 6th largest IPO of the year and the second of its kind in a couple of months after Wynn Macau, a subsidiary of US based Wynn Resorts raised $1.9 billion in September.
Follow On activity is up 35% when compared to the same period last year with $528 billion and it also accounts for 75% of total ECM activity so far this year.

GLOBAL CORPORATE BOND ISSUANCE UP
The top two bonds issued this week are both investment grade corporate debt issues which are both above the $1 billion mark. UNEDIC and CDP Financials with $5.9 billion and $4.9 billion.
Global corporate bonds reached $2.4 trillion so far this year up 11% when compared to the same period last year. Corporate bond issuance also makes up 46% of total bond activity this year.

M&A HITS 5 MONTH-HIGH
Global announced M&A in November totaled $234 billion and marks the second busiest monthly level of activity of the last twelve months after June 2009 ($275 billion).
There were ten transactions in excess of $1 billion announced this week, including the $1.7 billion takeover of UK based JPMorgan Cazenove by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Auto maker General Motors is grappling with the future of its European units Saab and Opel after one sale collapsed and the other was pulled, targeting the bulk of its 9,000 job cuts at Opel's German factories.

Bookseller Borders UK called in the administrators yesterday, adding its name to a growing list of failed British high street retailers. Administrator MCR is hoping to sell the business, bought by Valco (the private equity arm of turnaround specialist Hilco) in July this year, as a going concern.

Lachlan Murdoch, son of News Corp chief executive Rupert Murdoch, sold some $27.6 million of his shares in his father's company as he bought 50 percent of Daily Mail & General Trust's radio operations in Australia.

For the latest deals news from Reuters, click here.

And here’s the top stories from elsewhere (some external links may require subscription):

Concerns over Dubai World's debt dominated the news as stocks around the world tumbled and markets struggled to get to grips with the extent of the problem in the absence of solid information, says the Financial Times.

Siemens AG's hearing aids business, valued at up to 3 billion euros, is drawing interest from private equity firms including KKR and BC Partners, Bloomberg writes.

Want to be sexy? Then don't eat meat, says Taiwanese star Barbie Hsu.

"Vegetarians make chicks happy" is a new People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) campaign fronted by Hsu, better known in the Chinese speaking world as "Big S".

PETA hope the actress, who shot to fame in the hit Taiwanese soap opera "Meteor Garden", will appeal to younger Chinese.

The beauty and the beast will appear in magazines and on websites in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong over the next few weeks.

Video credit: Wang Shubing

Photo credit: Jason Lee

Blog credit: Lena Baudach

Jesus Christ may have visited an English town now renowned for a raucous modern-day music festival to meet ancient druids, a new film argues.  "And Did Those Feet" explores the theory that Jesus accompanied Joseph of Arimathea on a visit to the area around the southern English town of Glastonbury.

(Photo: At the end of Glastonbury Festival 2009, 29 June 2009/Luke MacGregor)

The Glastonbury Festival held on a farm near the town draws some of the 21st century's biggest music stars such as Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z, Neil Young and U2 to the world's largest open air music and arts festival.

Church of Scotland Minister and researcher for the film Gordon Strachan argues that Jesus may have come to Britain to further his education because the area was a stronghold of the ancient druids, then associated with ancient wisdom.

"There's no reason why Jesus shouldn't have come," Strachan told Reuters. "Glastonbury was very important in the ancient times, the tradition goes back to pre-Christian times ...  He probably came by boat with the traders. He had plenty of time and nobody knows what he did before he was 30."

Read the whole story here.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

   LONDON, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Britain's Financial Services Authority (FSA) has appointed five senior "corporate panthers" to prowl the city of London and help it judge the competence of top banking executives and improve governance.
   The FSA named Dominic Cadbury, Sarah Hogg, Colin Marshall, Brian Pitman and David Scholey to bulk up its clout and aid its quest to improve banking practices, supervise senior banking executives and quiz financial candidates applying for top jobs.
   "These new advisors have extensive experience acting on the boards of major companies and in senior policy positions and will bring valuable insight to the work the FSA is pursuing on governance," said Hector Sants, the FSA's chief executive.
   The FSA first appointed a group dubbed the "grey panthers" around a decade ago to its insurance division in the wake of the collapses of insurance companies.
   The new panthers, who are established business figures and less likely to be intimidated by bank grandees, will help the FSA judge the competence and capability of those applying for and holding influential banking positions.
   But one lawyer said the appointments sounded "a bit chummy and old fashioned". 
   "The problem with this approach is that it can be self-referential," he noted. "It's winding the clock back to how the city (of London) was 40 or 50 years ago."
   Cadbury is a former chief executive and chairman of eponymous confectionery giant Cadbury <CBRY.L>, Hogg is a non-executive chairman of private equity firm 3i Group <III.L> and senior independent director of BG Group.
   Marshall is a non-executive chairman of Nomura International, an investment bank, Pitman is senior independent director of phone retailer and service provider Carphone Warehouse <CPW.L> and a senior adviser at bank Morgan Stanley <MS.N> and Scholey is an adviser to Swiss bank UBS <UBSN.VX>. (Reporting by Kirstin Ridley, editing by Will Waterman) ((kirstin.ridley@thomsonreuters.com; +44 207 542 7987; Reuters Messaging: kirstin.ridley.reuters.com@reuters.net)) 
 Keywords: FSA APPOINTMENTS/  
  
Thursday, 26 November 2009 16:17:17RTRS [nGEE5AP1RW] {C}ENDS

   By Jane Baird
   LONDON, Nov 26 (Reuters) - The London Stock Exchange <LSE.L> halted trading for more than three hours on Thursday because of technical glitches, while it placed all order-driven securities in an auction call period.
   Trading resumed at 1400 GMT, following an auction call period that started shortly after 1030 GMT.
   "Our decision was a result of customer feedback," said an LSE spokesman. "Some customers were experiencing connection issues while others were not, and customers requested for the market to be put into auction status so that there would be a level playing field."
   But Chi-X Europe, the LSE's leading rival, said the exchange's decision to put its market into auction status prevented the routing of trades to other venues.
   "The auction status hampered investors' ability to trade by not enabling participants to seek a reference price on another venue," the multilateral trading facility (MTF) said in a statement.
   Chi-X said the LSE should have halted trading, as it did on Nov. 9 during a partial system failure, because that would have allowed firms' trading systems to switch to other venues.
   The LSE spokesman denied the Chi-X claim.
   The auction process "had the effect of halting trading but allowed clients to continue to interact with orders on the system", the LSE said in a later statement.
   An investor was critical of the way LSE, Chi-X and many brokerage firms handled the breakdown.
   "The LSE should have had an auction process for a half-hour, not more than three hours," said Adrian Fitzpatrick, European head of centralised dealing for Aegon Asset Management.
   He said that while Chi-X had a point, they and the brokers should have developed contingency plans to handle such a situation.
   
   SMART ORDER ROUTING NEEDED
   "In the U.S. this doesn't happen, because you have smart order routing, and it (trading) would automatically move to the MTFs that would be generating prices," Fitzpatrick said.
   In Europe, at least a few brokers were able to switch off their connection to the exchange, but a lot of brokers do not have genuine smart order routing that allows such a switch, he said.
   In September last year the LSE suffered its worst systems failure in eight years, causing the share market to suspend trading for about seven hours, infuriating its users.
   One London fund manager said the LSE breakdown came at yet another inconvenient time, when the market was stirred by the Dubai debt crisis.
   LSE Chief Executive Xavier Rolet said, "We are working hard to ensure this doesn't happen again ahead of switching (to a new trading platform next year)."
   A system breakdown can be a very bad event for the LSE "in the current market environment where there is so much competition and the LSE is trying to win back institutional customers", said Axel Pierron, a senior analyst at Celent.
   "It could push market participants who didn't have access to other liquidity pools such as Chi-X or Turquoise to show them that they need a back-up solution," he added.
   But that is not what happened on Thursday, said Fitzpatrick, who predicted that volume of trading would be tiny for the day.
   "For the MTFs, it should have been mannah from heaven, but they have all struggled today to make a price," he said.
   "The only way you could do it is by looking at comparable stocks in Europe, put a limit order on and put it in a couple of dark pools and hope you start getting ticked off (trades executed)," he added.
   Pierron said it would be interesting to see how much volume on Thursday went to regulated MTFs and how much to the unregulated over-the-counter side.
   Chi-X called on the the LSE to close the market when failures occur in future to allow trading to continue.
   "To a certain extent it is fair for Chi-X to complain about the situation, and one can imagine that they will eventually benefit from it," Pierron said.
   But "issuers come into play as well, and some of them could be concerned if the LSE closed its market that Chi-X would become the relevant trading venue for their issue," he added. (With additional reporting by Daisy Ku, editing by Will Waterman)
 ((jane.baird@thomsonreuters.com, Reuters Messaging: jane.baird.reuters.com@reuters.net, +442075422471))
 Keywords: LSE/CHI X 
  
Thursday, 26 November 2009 18:55:35RTRS [nGEE5AP19I] {C}ENDS

    HONG KONG, Nov 27 (Reuters) - A Hong Kong court has jailed four investors for conspiring to boost the share price of a listed company, underscoring the city's increasingly assertive financial sector oversight.
   The case involved a conspiracy to manipulate shares of Asia Standard Hotel Group Ltd (ASH Group) <0292.HK> in 2005, which helped boost the firm's share price by 78 percent and its market capitalisation by HK$4 billion ($516 million), said Hong Kong's financial sector watchdog.
   The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), which spearheaded the investigation, said the four had "effectively rigged the market" and "provided a false picture of the depth and liquidity" of ASH's shares by actively trading the stock through scores of brokerage accounts.
   Following an earlier conviction, a district court in Hong Kong sentenced the alleged head of the conspiracy, Chan Chin Yuen, to 30 months in jail. Three others, including Chan's brother and sister-in-law, were given 26 months.
   "This was a conspiracy to rip money out of the hands of innocent investors and is the largest market manipulation case brought before a court in Hong Kong," said Mark Steward, the SFC's Executive Director of Enforcement.
   Hong Kong's SFC has pursued an aggressive campaign amid the financial crisis to combat insider trading and other market abuses, which recently snared Morgan Stanley Managing Director Du Jun along with a score of others over the past year or so.
   Steward said the sentence "sends the clearest possible deterrent message to those who wrongly think they can get away with defrauding the market and the investing public. The message is that they can't get away with it, they will be caught and they will go to jail." (Reporting by James Pomfret; Editing by Valerie Lee) ((james.pomfret@thomsonreuters.com; +852 2843 6390; Reuters Messaging: james.pomfret.reuters.com@reuters.net)) ((If you have a query or comment on this story, send an email to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)) ($1=7.750 Hong Kong Dollar)
Keywords: SFC HONGKONG/MANIPULATION
  
Friday, 27 November 2009 00:51:14RTRS [nHKG29240 ] {C}ENDS

Hedge fund stories from the past 24 hours from Reuters and elsewhere:

Paulson deepens recovery bet - Seeking Alpha

Brussels trying to choke London - Telegraph blogs

UK pension scheme urged towards hedgies - Reuters

New problem, Old solution - WSJ

Insurance giants lumber into AIFM debate - ABI

Before the triangular symbol taught us to recycle, reduce and reuse, recycling in Taiwan worked this way:

Early morning or late at night, a man riding a tricycle trailed a small wagon and his long shadow through an alley piled with waste under a lone street light. He collected the brown glass Taiwan Beer bottles, from a wedding banquet, possibly, and placed them into his wagon. Sometimes he hollered “Empty wine bottles for sale?”

People who make a living out of recycled waste are still visible on the island of 35,000 square kilometres, crammed with a population of 23 million.

Today, plastic bottles are turned into blankets for disaster relief. The Taiwan Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation has been collecting plastic bottles from Taipei, a city of 2.6 million, for the past three years and converting them into about 244,000 polyester blankets intended for disaster zones. Read a related story here.

As the information age welcomes higher processing speeds and flashy designs, hundreds of old computers are phased out on a daily basis in Taiwan, the island that hosts some of the world's largest PC makers. After the very valuable gold and silver are taken out, the discarded PC boards in computers are made into beautiful sculptures at the Super Dragon Technology Inc. Read more about the computer art here.

Other appliances from televisions and refrigerators to furniture and bicycles are also neatly recycled by the government.

Photo credit: Pichi Chuang
Video credit: Ben Tai