LexisNexis(TM) Academic - Document

Copyright 2005 The Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (London, England)

August 30, 2005 Tuesday
London Edition 1

SECTION: COMPANIES ASIA-PACIFIC; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 749 words

HEADLINE: Wall Street learns tricks of the China trade Investment banks have discovered that to win advisory mandates in China, strong ties are no longer enough, says Francesco Guerrera

BYLINE: By FRANCESCO GUERRERA

BODY:


At the beginning of the year, a high-powered team from a Wall Street bank flew into China to look into investing in two of the country's four largest lenders - Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Bank of China.

After a week of meetings, as the leader of this taskforce was preparing to leave Beijing, his phone rang.

To his surprise, at the other end of the line was an official from China Construction Bank - another "Big Four" state lender and an arch-rival of ICBC and BoC - asking the foreign investment bank to consider a potential investment.

Such unashamed desire by China's troubled financial groups, and their political masters, to attract funds and expertise from foreign rivals ahead of overseas listings is forcing investment banks to overhaul their approach to the country.

After China began to privatise its industries, "bulge bracket" institutions quickly learnt that to win lucrative and prestigious equity mandates they had to start early. By getting close to the top company executives and by hosting banquets for the right government officials in the years before the deal, they were able to show the commitment needed to win coveted initial public offerings.

One veteran China banker says IPOs "were never won in the months before the deal, they were won and lost in the years beforehand".

Stake purchases were left to strategic investors such as the global oil majors that spent billions of dollars to buy into their Chinese rivals - PetroChina, CNOOC and Sinopec - ahead of their IPOs.

But recent multi-million dollar acquisitions of equity holdings by investment banks appear to suggest that in China, a capital injection can be as valuable as first-mover advantage. This month, Merrill Lynch took part in a Dollars 3.1bn consortium headed by Royal Bank of Scotland that bought a 10 per cent stake in BoC.

UBS is also believed to be close to buying a stake of some Dollars 500m in the lender, while Credit Suisse is considering a similar-sized investment in CCB. Goldman Sachs, together with German insurer Allianz, wants to buy a holding worth as much as Dollars 2bn in ICBC.

All banks strenuously deny any link between such purchases and equity mandates, arguing that they must judge the investments on their merits because IPO fees are much lower than the amounts spent on the holdings. Yet, the unwritten rule is that putting up capital strengthens a bank's case for IPO work.

HSBC, which invested Dollars 1.7bn in Bank of Communications and another Dollars 600m in insurer Ping An ahead of their IPOs, was duly selected as a lead adviser on both listings. Conversely, in June Citigroup was ousted from CCB's Dollars 5bn IPO amid accusations it had gone back on a pledge to buy a stake.

Analysts argue that the financial sector is in a unique position in the drive to privatisation because investment banks are seen as both advisers and strategic investors.

But Chinese banks' hunger for foreign help to rectify the financial and managerial mistakes of decades of government-directed policies is adding to the competitive pressures.

Goldman Sachs' interest in ICBC, for example, threatens to derail CSFB's long-standing plan to advise China's largest bank, and could be behind the Swiss group's move to lobby aggressively for a role in CCB's listing.

For its part, Goldman Sachs saw its strong links with BoC threatened by Merrill Lynch's investment until last week, when it won the mandate for the Chinese bank's listing.

But the crucial issue for Wall Street firms and their shareholders is whether investing in Chinese banks makes financial sense, regardless of the mandates.

With strategic investors such as RBS in BoC, and Bank of America in CCB having priority on joint ventures in areas such as credit cards and mortgages, investment banks may be left with little more than private equity positions.

Goldman Sachs made that clear by charging its venture capital arm with the ICBC talks. Others, such as Merrill Lynch and CSFB, privately concede their main hope is to sell their Chinese stakes at a profit in years to come.

That may be a lucrative tactic, given the heady rises seen in overseas-listed Chinese stocks. But it also raises Wall Street's stakes, and risks, in China.

As a senior executive from an investment bank that has not bought into a Chinese "Big Four" lender says: "It is fine to say these are private equity investments, but can they achieve private equity returns (of 20-30 per cent of the original sum) or would the capital be better deployed elsewhere?"

LOAD-DATE: August 29, 2005

LexisNexis(TM) Academic - Document

Financial Times (London, England)

August 30, 2005 Tuesday
London Edition 1

SECTION: BUSINESS LIFE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1236 words

HEADLINE: China's companies count down to lift off GLOBALISATION: Richard McGregor examines some of the most successful Chinese brands, which were ranked on innovation, quality, management and trustworthiness in an FT survey

BYLINE: By RICHARD MCGREGOR

DATELINE: BEIJING

BODY:


Along with targets for power output, coal production and the like, laid out in the country's five-year economic plans, China's leaders now set themselves benchmarks for establishing global brands.

The message from the top is that the work of cultivating and building brands in the modern economy is not just one for the enterprises themselves, but for the government as well.

Lin Zongtang, director of the National Commission for Brands Promotion, has stated publicly that the creation of top-brand products is in need of government guidance and support, adding: "I believe we will eventually bring up our own international brands, just as we successfully launched the Shenzhou-5 spaceship."

Today, the Financial Times publishes the results of a survey, conducted with McKinsey, the management consultancy, to find out what business people around the world consider to bethe strongest corporate brand among Chinese companies. Readers were asked to rate companies in categories that included quality, trustworthiness, innovation and management as well as branding.

Many of the companies that topped the survey may have had a leg up from the government, but their trajectory has not been nearly as spectacular as that of China's first space flight.

Haier, for example, the Qingdao-based white goods and home appliances company voted the survey's number one brand by readers worldwide, is no longer the shooting star of the Chinese corporate world that it was in the late 1990s.

Haier has struggled to maintain profitability in the face of competition from Chinese and foreign rivals in the consumer goods market. It has also become embroiled in a dispute with the central government over its ownership, which has hampered management flexibility.

Haier has been effectively privately managed for many years, under Zhang Ruimin, its legendary, long-time chairman, but has not been able to escape the clutches of state ownership under the local city government.

Nevertheless, its pioneering emphasis on quality in China and its early ventures overseas, especially into segments of the US white goods market, still gives it great traction as a brand.

Haier says it established its brand image in three deliberates stages, the first two at home, between 1984 and 1998, when it went from being a favourite of consumers to what is known locally as a "Chinese famous brand", officially recognised by the government. In plain English, this means that Haier became a household name at home, before venturing abroad in 1998.

Haier calls its overseas strategy "difficult first, then easy". In other words, it decided to start in developed countries such as the US, before targeting poorer developing nations that might have been a more obvious initial fit for its cheap products.

The next step is to become a "mainstream brand" in developed countries, a strategy that was set back when it withdrew recently from the bidding for the well-known, but fading, US whitegoods company Maytag.

Haier is a well-known enterprise, but awareness of a company alone does not make it a successful brand, according to the survey's parameters. Indeed, many companies such as the Bank of China and Shanghai Auto - recently a bidder for MG Rover - rated ahead of Haier in awareness, but lagged it in innovation, trustworthiness and other metrics used by the survey.

Yu Mingyang, the director of the research institute of branding strategy at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, called Haier China's "most internationalised company".

"Unlike Petrochina and Baosteel (China's largest oil and steel companies respectively), which are expanding overseas through virtue of political power, Haier develops its brand according to market practice," says Professor Yu. Its main challenge now is to wean itself off reliance on Mr Zhang's leadership and internationalise its management. "Haier has only opened a window in the international market," he says. "It is lagging way behind in integrating global resources compared to Samsung and the like."

The company rated second in the FT survey, Lenovo, the first Chinese company to acquire a global technology business, might be forgiven for thinking that it will soon surpass Haier in the minds of foreign managers and consumers as the flagship Chinese brand.

Lenovo has almost bedded down last year's brave purchase of IBM's personal computer division, and is now drawing up a new global brand strategy that will use both the US company's Think trademark and its own corporate name for mainstream offerings.Lenovo intends to advertise in the US and elsewhereto establish a recognised corporate name, Yang Yuanqing, the Lenovo chairman, said in an interview withthe FT.

Mr Yang said some colleagues had been concerned that marketing IBM's Thinkpad laptop computers as made by Lenovo might put off buyers, "However, re-search showed that such doubts were not removed by just using Thinkpad without making clear what company produced the product, so it's better to be clear that the company's name is Lenovo."

The third-ranked brand on the list, China Mobile, seems a curious choice initially. How does a company with no operations in western countries be rated as a top Chinese brand by foreigners?

In some respects, this reflects the survey's biases - including its focus on a company's overall corporate brand, not just its products or services - and the developing view of China's economy among foreign executives and fund managers.

CCTV, the national broadcaster, also ranks in the top 10, not because foreign executives avidly watch its English-language channel at home in the US, but because they recognise its power in the local media market.

There are only two private companies in the top 10, Sohu and Sina, two of China's top internet portals, tied at tenth place. But despite the government's role in companies and Mr Lin's determination to help steer them to the top, a majority of the enterprises in the 30-strong list has taken in foreign investors, or raised money in overseas capital markets, or both.

For many, the phenomenon of Chinese brands is closely tracking the development of companies and products in Japan and South Korea.

However, Miles Young, Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather Asia Pacific, says the conventional wisdom that the Chinese will follow the path set by the Japanese and South Koreans in some kind of "apostolic succession" understates the power of Chinese brands.

He sees Japanese and South Korean brands as representing those countries' distinctive huge conglomerates as much as they do individual products. As a result, he says, those brands do not have the "emotional connection" that brands do in the classic western sense.

"The Chinese have bought into the western concept of brands hook, line and sinker, from the early days," says Mr Young, who adds this instinct has been reinforced by the opening of the economy under World Trade Organisation rules.

"They reason that if you can't be protected by laws (post-WTO), then maybe you can be protected by consumer affection," he says.

China's weakness, even in its home market, remains the refusal of companies to spend money on qualitative research - in other words, getting to know consumers better. "Foreigners win by using better research so they better understand consumers," says Mr Young.

This is something that Mr Lin might contemplate, as he and other government experts prepare to launch the next Chinese brand through space and into global markets.

LOAD-DATE: August 29, 2005

??????? > ???? > ??

??????? > ???? > ??
网络知识产权风暴：非法下载终结篇
2005-08-29 10:20:34 来源: 21世纪经济报道 作者：雷中辉 　　
　
　　一场因网络知识产权保护引发的风暴悄然来临！

　　8月15日，网易公司宣布暂停MP3搜索服务，这是第一家因为知识产权问题而放弃提供MP3搜索服务的网络公司。

　　与此同时，上海步升音乐文化传播公司将搜索引擎服务商百度告上法院，指控其提供的MP3搜索服务侵权，这也是我国首例因为搜索引擎产生的音乐传播侵权诉讼。另外，提供数码版权管理的源泉公司也要求百度删除提供盗版流行歌曲的网站链接。

　　一场更大的监管风暴还在酝酿之中。8月19日，文化部、公安部、国家版权局、信息产业部、国家工商行政管理局五部委相关部门共聚一堂，召开了一个主题就是严打网络非法下载的讨论会。

　　参与此次会议的人士向本报透露，从今年9月开始，上述五部委将就网络非法下载内容如音乐、影视、软件实行清理整治，严厉打击那些没有经过授权而提供相关内容的网站，“此次专项治理的重点是盗版音乐、软件的下载”。

　　搜索成众矢之的？

　　网易的新闻发言人否认了事先得到有关部门将严查网络非法下载消息的可能。她解释称，MP3搜索虽然能带来很大的流量，但是该服务是建立在影响到别人利益之上的，“网易暂时停止MP3搜索服务，会在歌曲和歌手的权益得到保障时再开展该服务”。

　　消息发布后，网易股票在16日下跌2.3美元，但仍维持在76美元的高价位。网易新闻发言人解释，网易此前的MP3搜索因为免费所以并不带来收入，因此对网易的影响并不大。

　　相对网易这种并不以搜索作为主要收入来源的门户而言，市场人士普遍认为，越来越多的知识产权诉讼和即将到来的专项治理，将对Google、百度、搜狗、一搜、中搜等专业搜索服务提供商带来沉重打击。

　　这些搜索引擎服务提供商无一例外地设有MP3音乐搜索的频道。根据Alexa提供的流量统计，全球最大的中文搜索引擎百度，其MP3搜索占其搜索总流量的22％。

　　网络非法下载近年来已呈燎原之势。根据CNNIC第16次中国互联网调查报告显示，有超过45％的网民每天使用互联网下载音乐、超过37％的网民经常使用互联网下载影视。而在这其中，几乎所有的音乐和影视都是由未曾授权的网站提供。

　　事实上，因为盗版泛滥，全球唱片业2004年的损失在45亿美元之巨，而2005年这一数字则更加扩大。IFPI(国际唱片业协会)组织的人士警告说：“没有控制的唱片下载，已经成为唱片业最大的威胁。”他透露说，目前在网上有大约一亿首歌曲，而网民使用得最多的便是通过搜索的得到的结果。

　　记者就五部委专项整治行动致电部分网站，所有受访人士均出言谨慎。百度副总裁梁冬强调，“对于百度来说，百度只提供MP3搜索，不提供下载。”

　　梁冬进一步表示：“用户并不知道，在他点击某个链接的同时，他已经到了另一个网站了。百度并不提供下载的内容，百度只是一个搜索工具，许多人误认为他所下载的音乐来自百度。”

　　搜狐副总裁、搜狗搜索创始人王建军也对记者表示，由于许多唱片公司并不清楚这些盗版音乐的源头，故而对搜索服务商提出删除链接等要求，“搜狗提供的MP3搜索同样占有很大的流量份额，但是由于MP3内容并非由搜狗提供，因此国家打击非法下载真正的用意是清源头，而非针对搜索服务。”

　　一个引人关注的事实是，因为涉嫌侵犯知识产权，Google此前在停止了其图书馆搜索服务。

　　“特别301评估报告”之后

上述知情人士称，从9月开始的打击网络非法下载的治理行动，将同去年全国范围内打击网络色情的时间一样，历时4个月在年底结束。

　　一个背景是，今年4月底，美国发布中国知识产权“特别301评估报告”，将中国放入“重点观察国家”名单，并继续保留在306监督国家名单中，这意味着美国对中国知识产权保护状况的关注升级。美国甚至威胁将通过WTO组织要求中国履行知识产权保护承诺。为此，中国政府成立的知识产权协调小组多次同美国政府进行副总理级别的会谈。

　　7月11日，中美双方宣布，在刚刚结束的第16届中美商贸联委会上就知识产权等问题达成了协议。其中，在这次会议上，中方向美方做出将严厉打击网络(网吧)盗版的专项治理活动的承诺。

　　而今年5月，信息产业部已经要求各地在6月30日前将所有境内网站进行备案和登记。上半年，文化部牵头的五部委则对网络游戏中涉嫌非法和不文明的行为进行了整顿。

　　“有法可依，同时也是兑现承诺，另外，近来国内外许多唱片公司纷纷向涉嫌侵权盗版的网站提起诉讼，各项条件具备之后，打击网络盗版侵权的行动开始就能更加顺利。”一位多年从事知识产权保护的律师告诉记者。

　　王建军承认，政府的这一专项活动，会对搜索引擎的使用流量带来影响，“但这种状况不是让搜索服务提供商删除链接就能真正得到改善的。何况网上也有已经授权的音乐下载，还有收费的音乐下载”。

　　梁冬则向记者表示，近期，百度正在同国内外各大唱片公司进行协商，多数唱片公司已经同百度达成了谅解条款，“音乐的网络销售是一种潮流，唱片公司也应该顺应市场的变化”。

　　搜索背后的盗版者

多数法律界人士认为，搜索服务商如果只提供搜索而不提供内容，判定其侵权的可能性很小，政府开展的专项治理应更多倾向那些提供盗版内容的网站。

　　由于五部委联合打击非法下载的具体行动方案还未出台，如何确保行动的效果成为了关注的焦点。文化部一位官员告诉记者，如果采取去年的打击网络色情的群众运动形式来执行本次行动，恐怕不很现实，“仍旧需要依照法律来严格限制这类侵犯知识产权的行为”。

　　今年的4月30日，国家版权局局长石宗源和信息产业部部长王旭东签发了我国第一部网络著作权行政管理规章《互联网著作权行政保护办法》。5月30日起，这部行政性质的法规正式实施。

　　这个保护办法共19条，国家版权局版权司副司长许超介绍，这个保护办法主要规范的对象，是在互联网信息服务活动中，根据互联网内容提供者的指令，通过互联网自动提供作品、录音录像制品等内容的上载、存储、链接或搜索等功能，且对存储或传输的内容不进行任何编辑、修改或选择的行为。

　　办法特别指出，由于互联网信息服务提供者难以对互联网内容提供者所提供的内容尽到全面审查义务，因此不对互联网上侵犯著作权的行为承担过重的法律责任。只有在明知互联网内容提供者通过互联网实施侵犯他人著作权的行为，或者虽不明知，但接到著作权人的通知后未采取移除相关内容，同时损害公共利益的情况下，才承担行政法律责任。

　　“如果该法规真正执行下去，网络盗版的现状将得到明显的改善，对我们这些搜索服务商来说，更是好事。因为今后的音乐搜索就有了同唱片公司合作收费的可能。”王建军说。

　　业界人士所担心的是，专项治理所针对的多是境内的非法音乐网站，而如果是存储内容在境外的网站，国内互联网仍可以访问并下载，这是一个执行起来非常困难的问题。有趋势表明，许多个人网站鉴于国内监管实力的增强而开始往国外搬迁。而由于网络带宽的增加，这种跨国下载的方式并不影响速度。