Commentary

A key role of the finance team in any commercial organisation is to co-ordinate the annual budgeting or fiscal planning process and then to provide regular updates on progress towards the attainment of that plan.

Let’s face it: those developed economies, that once were the ones spinning the globe including Japan, are currently fire-fighting their daily affairs of debt crisis, unemployment and so on. Emerging markets like South America, China, India and Indonesia are now taking the lead with unprecedented growth surge.

It all started in the 1980s when Outsourcing first come into sight in the IT industry. This was the time when companies acknowledged the benefits of having IT service partners in development of complex systems, and improved the way that a business process or service is managed. It paved the way for advent of a new genre of business approach, termed “Outsourcing” and in today’s world it has become an entity, important at that, enhancing every business system.

The Islamic banking sector is one of the fastest growing segments in global banking, growing at an estimated 15-20% p.a.

Over the last few months, investors have frequently expressed to me their concerns about the change of leadership in Beijing likely to take place in the autumn of this year and what that might mean for the pace of reform in China’s economy and markets.

IBS has recently come out with its Sales League Tables for the year ended December 2011. The analysis has shown that IT vendors concentrating on the APAC market have moved up significantly.

Although asset management is considered the most consistently profitable business in financial services, there has been extreme volatility in the degree to which individual firms capture profits.

With the outlook of slow growth in the coming years, banks across Asia need to aim for significant structural changes to their cost base. This can be a challenge, however there are lessons from the experiences of other industries such as the European postal industry for example.

It was a financial services seminar with the agenda focused on recognising the triggers for the current financial environment. On the aside were two senior bankers who were not too comfortable that the previous session speaker tried to impress that banks were not having an adequate governance process inspite of the existence of an appropriate risk and compliance management system.

The Financial Times and other media outlets reported yesterday that the Chinese authorities plan to “instruct” banks to roll over their credits to local governments. If confirmed, such a move would both ease the debt burden on local governments and prevent a possible wave of defaults on bank balance sheets as these loans come due over the next 1-3 years (banks have been forbidden from rolling over or extending new loans to local governments). The policy would not be a complete surprise, as the CBRC hinted last October that a move of this kind was under consideration. According to such reports, banks may extend the maturity of their loans by up to four years. We estimate that outstanding local government debt amounts to RMB 14.7 trillion, of which one-fifth may come due this year (based on figures reported by the National Accounting Office), and the remainder through 2014.

Across Asia, investment fund transaction processing methods and distribution models differ markedly. The reason is that domestic investment fund markets have matured according to individual market needs.

The unfolding scandal in Tokyo involving pension investment management firm AIJ Investment Advisors Co. is depressingly predictable.

BKPM (Indonesia Investment Coordination Board) expects foreign investments to grow to USD 19,2 billion in 2012 from USD 18,7 billion.

The banking community of the Asia Pacific region continues to impress with its commitment to the branch.

Every time a new way of paying for something has arrived – credit and debit cards, internet payments, contactless cards, mobile phone payments – the imminent death of cash has been announced. It sounds a reasonable prediction to make given the convenience of these new methods.

With the dark clouds of a recession looming on the horizon, conservation measures will be the default procedure by Asian companies for the next 12 months.