5 Fascinating business facts

1. An airline listing atlast

The recent listing of Medview airlines on the Nigerian stock exchange marked the first such aviation listing since the days of ADC and Albakar. Not very fond memories are held of them today.

Medview hopes to fly a different path at a time of a very troubled economy.

The 50 kobo shares were listed at N1.50 kobo and there is implicit in the offer of a market capitalization of N14.63bn.

The listing by introduction will surely lift the NSE’s market depth.

2.   There are €1.06tn of non-performing loans in the EU banking system, amounting to 5.4 per cent of the sector’s total gross loans — more than treble the level of other large banking sectors, such as Japan and the US. More than a quarter of these are in Italy, which has €276bn of bad loans, and where the government recently oversaw the creation of a bad bank to buy toxic loans from weaker lenders using money collected from stronger institutions.

3.  Overseas investment from China in residential, commercial and industrial property totalled $33bn in 2016, up 53 per cent from a year earlier, according to global real estate group JLL, as Chinese buyers snapped up office buildings, hotels and residential land. The US was the most popular destination for the second consecutive year, drawing $14.3bn of investment, followed by Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Australia. The UK ranked fifth, down one spot from 2015, but in value terms investment rose to $2.2bn, up from $1.8bn in 2015. The UK’s best year was 2014, when it drew $4.9bn to rank first.

4.  Still on China

China exported $1.65tn of goods and services in the first three quarters of 2016, a 7.2 per cent fall from the same period a year before. During the same period the country’s ratio of exports to gross domestic product fell to just 20.2 per cent, compared with a 2006 per cent peak of 38.6 per cent, according to FT calculations. Its export intensity is now a fraction above that of India, which had a comparable figure of 19.4 per cent in the first nine months of 2016, and which is tipped to overtake China, possibly as early as this year. If so, this would be the first time China’s export intensity has fallen below India’s since 1979, shortly after Deng Xiaoping began the deconstruction of Chairman Mao Zedong’s legacy with a call for reform in December 1978. Then, China’s exports amounted to just 6.4 per cent of GDP.”

5.  Remittances sent home by Mexicans living abroad climbed to a record high in 2016 as workers reacted to the shock US election victory of Donald Trump, who has threatened to block such money transfers to pay for his border wall. Mexicans sent home $2.33bn in December, a 6 per cent increase over the amount transferred during the same period in 2015 and is the highest level for that time of the year on record, according to data from Mexico’s central bank. The rise brings the total amount of remittances sent in 2016 to an all time high of $26.97bn, surpassing the previous peak of $26.06bn recorded in 2007.”

 

 

This week’s Humour

The earth provides for every man’s needs but not every man’s greed. – Mahatma Gandhi