Eddie in action

It's good to see my friend Eddie Choi back at his blogging desk. Like me, he has been blogging 'lightly' for a couple of months but his Marketing, Technology, and Entrepreneurial Experience - Blog by Tradedot blog is now back in action. There have already been a couple of very interesting posts: "Bring Sexy Back to B2B" is an interesting piece on how several leading trade fair companies are beginning to look more innovatively at their e-marketing with the help of Eddie's company, Frontiers Digital.

Now, today, he has posted on Global Sources' 'cyber-squatting' on the cantonfair.com domain name...and running a site on it. All's fair in love and war and, as Eddie points out, "Domain name is like real estate. If you own it, you own it". And, nobody ever accused Global Sources of not fighting for its corner very keenly!

I sold my old gold commode

I was going to restrict myself to one post a day (I know - it's been more like one a month the last few weeks), but couldn't resist this one. The heading comes from one of the comments to a Wall Street Journal blog piece on the name change at my friend David Zhong's Millionaire Fair in Shanghai. That event, franchised from its Dutch founders, is now to be known as "The Fair".

I think that's quite cool. According to the China Journal "its focus will shift from the extravagant luxury goods and lavish parties of yore to a more modest sounding “roundtable on China’s well-being and charity.”

Visa restrictions coming to an end?

One of the more unfortunate side-effects of China's desire to pull off a 'perfect' Olympic games was the clamp down on issuing visas to foreigners. It is not untypical of Chinese bureaucrats to take sledge hammer sized solutions to walnut sized problems and this is a case in point with all regular travel to the country having been seriously disrupted for several months. This has caused a slow down in a lot of regular business activity and has impacted foreign visitor attendance at those events outside Beijing which were allowed to continue.

Now, I see from Fons Tuinstra's blog, that word is that this will all be rolled back once the current Paralympics are finished and after the 1st October National Day holidays. He is quoting from Dezan Shira's China Briefing which says the Public Security Bureau has indicated that:

Beginning in the second week of October, China will start issuing one year multi-entry F visas, making it far more convenient for those traveling to China on business to enter the country. The new measures will assist with the various trade shows, such as the Canton Trade Fair, that China traditionally holds during the Autumn.

Interesting that the change of tune should be linked to exhibitions. It suggests that those in power are, contrary to popular opinion, aware of the very negative impact that the visa policy has had on business.

Watch out JCK

UBM's David Levin kicked off day 2 of the FIPP/ABM conference in New York with a compelling presentation of the company's strategy and performance. Challenged to explain "what happened to CMP", he had a few of the big media brand bosses squirming when he argued that small is beautiful and that the media brands themselves are not really relevant to the customers.

He told the 290 delegates that he was on his way to Asia for the Shanghai Furniture Fair and for CMP Asia's September Jewellery Fair in Hong Kong. Despite the revolting jewellery associations, he says that the CMP team has "JCK in it's sights" and plans to become the world's largest within a year or so.

I asked him if he was planning to follow the lead he has set in the US and Europe, breaking up CMP into what he calls "Tiger" and "Lion" companies. No Dragons in Asia yet it seems. As the Asian business has always been mainly an events one, he said it was different and doesn't need to be broken up....
Sent via BlackBerry.

Avoiding PIGS

I'm now in New York where I shall be attending next week's FIPP/ABM B2B industry meeting which is usually very worthwhile.

A couple of things catching my eye here: firstly, the news that Alibaba Group is merging it's online advertising business Alimama with its eBay killing auction site Taobao is intriguing. On the surface, there's not much to link those two other than the fact that they both fall outside the listed Alibaba.com B2B business. Is another IPO in the making? That would be one explanation.

Then, I noticed an interesting piece on ExpoWeb about a new research study undertaken by my old friend Denzil Rankine of AMR for the boutique investment bank DeSilve + Philips. The piece reports on a panel which discussed AMR's research at the bank's recent conference in New York. The research proposes (and I agree) that events are likely to be much more resilient in these currently-straitened economic times than other forms of media. They also predict that M&A will hold up in this sector which must be a great relief to them all.

What really caught my eye, though, was a remark attributed to Richard Kerr, head of group development for CMP's parent, United Business Media plc. "UBM's Kerr", Expoweb says, "outlined conditions in the Middle East, India and China, and added that he avoids “the PIGS—Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain.” I think he should be careful about what's been added to his soup if he decides to dine in any Portuguese, Italian, Greek or Spanish restaurants in the near future.

Confusing everybody

I've arrived in England now where things are beginning to look a touch misty and autumnal. Kids in this country go back to school tomorrow. Heathrow was altogether less chaotic than predicted yesterday. Something not quite right there.

Something not quite right as well with the world's perception of the China financial information stocks. Once again, supposed experts (harumph!) have confused China Finance Online (JRJC) for a serious company and the two listed arms of Xinhua Finance for one another.

This time, it's the Motley Fool, rarely more wisely named. Maybe because JRJC is listed on NASDAQ they think it must be important. If Xinhua Finance (which is also in the financial information business) weren't listed on the oddly named Tokyo Mothers' Board, maybe it would earn more of the attention it deserves. Instead, that wonderful East Coast arrogance assumes that NASDAQ-listed subsidiary, Xinhua Finance Media (XFML) must be more important than its parent. Surely, the thinking must go, these nice folk over in China must realise New York is more important than Japan, that actually little of importance in the world takes place outside the Five Boroughs, except of course when the Yankees are playing away games...

XFML actually has little to do with financial information and is more a general China media play. Xinhua Finance is a much bigger company and altogether more convincing than JRJC, but don't tell the Motley Fool because they think "You can think of the company [JRJC] as analogous to the finance arm of Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO), or to MarketWatch, part of the Dow Jones family of services at News Corp". It's not, but if they can get the ill-informed but opinionated investment advisors to think that, good for them.

It'll be alright....

I'm in Cologne for UFI's Intenational Summer University programme and, at dinner last night in the Chocolate Museum (where, by the way, peppery black chocolate makes an interesting alternative to peanuts with cocktails), I heard again the general relief and, to some extent, suprise in the trade fair industry that it's so far doing OK.

There was a lot of nervousness at the beginning of the year that economic downturn would mean that 2008 was a really flat year. In most markets, so far, this hasn't really been the case. It's at worst solid and, in some cases, doing really well. Hmmmm. Will this last. That's now the question and I can sense the corporate types already rehearsing their budget padding speeches for the upcoming 2009 reviews. "Worst is yet to come boss"....

Meanwhile, Alibaba has reported a 136% surge in first half net profits. Revenues are up just 48% though, so I guess the collective Ali-belts have been tightened in the last six months. Mind you, given the generally skinny waists up there in Hangzhou, there can't be too many notches left to tighten.

Swinging back into action

I haven't been on holiday this whole time...honestly. Firstly, it was an unexpected trip to Cyprus for an interesting little project. Then I was admittedly, on holiday (sailing in Croatia a real highlight). But, the blog has, I'm afraid, taken a long summer break. Sorry to our regulars about that.

World economic downturn notwithstanding, this has been a very busy month or so for us. I'm now back on the road again, this time in Germany. T-mobile has equipped the country's nifty ICE trains with wireless broadband. So, I'm writing this at something like 150 km/h between Frankfurt and Cologne.

It's hard to know what to write about first; CMP's little spot of bother with feisty jewellers, Alibaba's Jack Ma telling his staff to prepare for economic winter or a little flurry of acquisition activity by Guangzhou-based Global Markets (including acquiring Tradeeasy for $1.5 mn).

The events businesses including the not-for-sale Reed Exhibitions are all reporting decent growth despite fears of a bad year.

We'll try to get back to regular posting even as this trip takes us through Germany, the UK and the US, where we'll end up at the FIPP/ABM B2B conference in New York City.

G'day Beijing

I had missed interesting activity in China by those tele-boys from down-under, Telstra. According to "Now we are talking", the company has "acquired 55 per cent of two Chinese internet businesses with leading positions in the fast-growing online auto and digital device advertising sectors".

The businesses concerned are Norstar Media and Autohome/PCPop. No price was disclosed. Norstar, the post continues, "operates the popular auto site Che168.com and leading digital device site IT168.com" while "Autohome/PCPop operates the leading auto site Autohome.com.cn and popular digital device site PCPop.com".

The piece goes on to mention that Telstra had already bought 51% of the real estate site SouFun back in 2006.

Meanwhile, it may be "Hyvä aamu Beijing" for those fun Finns from Nokia. Staying on the telco/media theme, we see that they're linking-up with Baidu for a new mobile search service. According to the report "Baidu will provide a China mobile search platform for Nokia's new 'Widsets' service, and the product will be pre-loaded in Nokia handsets".

The boundaries between the telcos and media really are blurring rapidly. Long discussed, finally happening.

The Motley Fool is confused

It's not suprising really, but people are muddling their Xinhua Finance and Xinhua Finance Media (XFML). Now, nobody's going to accuse the Motley Fool of being the world's most reliable source of investment advice, but this one's a real ******'s muddle.

They're comparing the NASDAQ-listed XFML with the NASDAQ-listed China Finance Online. That would be all well and good if they were in the same line of business, but they're not. The company with which the comparison should be made is the Tokyo Mothers-listed Xinhua Finance (parent of XFML). And Xinhua Finance is a much better business than the vastly over-rated China Finance Online in our humble opinion.

XFML is a mini-media conglomerate in the making. CEO Fredy Bush describes it as "a leading media group in China with nationwide access to the upwardly mobile demographic. Through its synergistic business groups, Broadcast, Print and Advertising, XFMedia offers a total solution empowering clients at every stage of the media process and connecting them with their target audience. Its unique platform covers a wide range of media assets, including television, radio, newspaper, magazine, outdoor, online and other media assets".

XFML trades on NASDAQ at a p.e. of around 9.
Xinhua Finance trades in Tokyo at a bargain p.e. of 4.4.
China Finance has no p.e. because it has never made any money.

Beware the Fool.