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In 1996, Albert Chan Chu-wai filed with the High Court a petition to wind up the parent company of Playmate and its associate, Prestige Property. Net assets of the two companies was HK$3.39 billion as of December 1995.

Albert was the seond-largest shareholder in the parent company - Chansam Investments. Albert is son of Sam Chan and elder brother of managing director Thomas Chan Chun-ho. Albert owned 32.5 per cent in Chansam through his company Waddington, but Thomas had a controlling 57.5 per cent stake in Chansam through Panchi Holdings. Thomas held a bigger stake in Chansam after he bought the holdings from their other brother, Allen, and sister, Karen.

"In fact, for years, the Detroit automakers lost money on most of their small cars, which they built mainly to push up their fleetwide mileage ratings." http://mobile.businessinsider.com/heres-why-the-governments-tough-new-fuel-economy-standards-are-good-for-drivers-and-the-auto-industry-2012-8

But a $15,000 compact simply couldn’t make money with labor that expensive. “They were basically offending new car buyers in the entry-level and ‘move-up’ segments,” Rather than continue to make unloved and low-margin small cars, one sensible option would have been to stop making them, or drastically scale back production and concentrate on higher-margin trucks and SUVs. Two obstacles prevented that. One was the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard, which requires the average fuel efficiency of a carmaker’s fleet, weighted for sales, to be above a certain level.... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-04/gm-ford-and-chrysler-the-detroit-three-are-back-right

Light trucks turned out to be very profitable for the Detroit automakers From tail fins to hybrids: How Detroit lost its dominance of the U.S. auto market by Thomas H. Klier

https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/inthetank.pdf

Ford’s Margins: It’s All About the Trucks selling more of these [smaller] vehicles — and hybrids like the Ford C-Max — can hurt overall profit margins each Ford F-series truck at between $8,000 and $10,000. Compare that to $2,500 in pretax profit in North America per vehicle sold and it is easy to see that the trucks contribute an outsized share of Ford’s overall profitability. http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/01/29/fords-margins-its-all-about-the-trucks/

since trucks and larger cars get poorer gas mileage than smaller cars these companies are pushed to produce cars that will better their overall fuel efficiency. http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/14/ford-autos-gm-intelligent-investing-toyota.html

car companies have sophisticated pricing strategies that involve all sorts of cross-subsidization. For example, American manufacturers until recently sold small cars at small profit margins while selling large cars and trucks at huge margins. https://baselinescenario.com/2009/05/21/the-economics-of-cafe/

Help: Why Are SUVs More Profitable? Small cars help manufacturers meet their CAFE targets ... The customer lifetime theory: The goal is to get a loyal customer for life https://baselinescenario.com/2009/06/02/help-why-are-suvs-more-profitable/

How Google avoided a British tax bill of £450m

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1237322/Google-paid-tax-UK-1-6bn-advertising-revenues-year-accounts-reveal.html by Daily Mail reporter

December 21, 2009 Google avoided paying £450million in corporation tax on its £1.6billion earnings from advertising in Britain last year.

Accounts show the company paid HM Revenue and Customs only £141,519 on other earnings.

Google managed to avoid paying millions here because its European headquarters is in Dublin - and advertising earnings from customers in Britain are funnelled through to the Irish subsidiary.

Accountants say that if the £1.6billion advertising revenue stayed in Britain, it would be subject to corporation tax at 28-30 per cent rather than the 15 per cent levy in Ireland.

Google's bill would have been up to £450million.

But even the accounts for its Irish operation show a low tax bill. While Google is not accused of any wrongdoing, the tax it paid in 2008 was just £6.7million.

Spokesman Peter Barron said: 'Google makes a big investment in the UK, with more than 800 employees, and we make a substantial contribution to local and national taxation.

'But the fact is that our European headquarters is in Dublin. We comply fully with the tax laws in all the countries in which we operate.

'It would be wrong to think of Google's revenues from UK advertisers as solely the result of operations carried out locally.'

Skyhook sued Google last fall in state court in Massachusetts, charging that Google interfered with Skyhook's contractual business relationship with Motorola by pressuring the phone manufacturer to use Google's location service exclusively instead of allowing both Google and Skyhook's location services to run on Motorola phones.

Skyhook, which still provides location services for Apple devices like the iPod Touch running older versions of its operating system, also sued Google for patent infringement in federal court and claims in the state suit that it suffered damages "that exceed tens of millions of dollars."

HF Trading - Commodities and currencies market An increase in computerized, high-speed trading in commodities and currencies has coincided with a series of "flash crashes" in those markets.

According to the Wall Street Journal, trades by high-frequency traders account for 28% of the total volume in the futures markets, which include currencies and commodities, increase from 22% in 2009. These traders now account for 53% of stock-market trading volume, down from 61% in 2009. The growth of computerized and high-frequency trading has led to the exit of human market makers in both the commodities and currency markets, who can match buyers and sellers and provide liquidity to the market. That role is now more and more played by computer programs. If those program traders pull back from the market, then big "buy" or "sell" orders can lead to sudden, big swings. It increases the probability of surprise distortions same as the equity markets, according to a professional investor.

In February, the sugar market took a dive of 6% in just one second. On March 1. Cocoa-futures prices dropped 13% in seconds on the IntercontinentalExchange Inc. after orders to sell hundreds of cocoa contracts overcame the market. Cocoa plunged $450 to a low of $3,217 a metric ton before rebound quickly. The sell orders were considered unusually large for a market which typically handles about 20,000 contracts a day. These big moves are blamed as the unintended consequences of an influx of high-frequency and algorithmic traders. The dollar tumbled against the yen at 5 p.m. in New York on March 16, as some major banks closed down their electronic-trading to handoff to the Asian market colleagues. A surge of buy orders for the yen flooded the market. The U.S. dollar fell 5% against the Japanese yen in minutes, one of its biggest moves ever.

According to a former cocoa trader: ' "The electronic platform is too fast; it doesn't slow things down" like humans would. '

In the first four months of 2011, the combined average daily trading volume in the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market fell 15% from 2010, at an average of 6.3 billion shares a day. Trading volume has been declining throughout the year, April's daily average of 5.8 billion shares marks the slowest month since May 2008.

One major reason for the drop in volumes is a decrease of sharp movements in stock prices during the period from 2008 to the first half of 2010, as reflected in the decline in the Chicago Board Options Exchange volatility index, also called the VIX, which fell to its lowest level in April 2011 since July 2007.

The decreases in volatility and volume are bad for high-frequency traders, whose generally rely on small profits from tiny differences between the buy and sell orders within a fraction of a second. A number of hedge funds that use computer-driven strategies called statistical arbitrage are reportedly scaling back such trading or shut down altogether because of poor returns in recent years also contribute to lower volume.

To some degree, the recent volumes of trading activity are simply more natural levels than during the financial crisis and its aftermath. The levels of trading from 2008 and into the early part of 2010 "were really natural-disaster volumes" for the financial markets as investors responded to the crisis. Some described those lofty levels of trading activity were never an accurate picture of demand among investors to buy or sell stocks. It was a reflection of computer-driven traders passing securities back and forth between day-trading hedge funds. The flash crash exposed this phantom liquidity.

High-frequency trading firms are increasingly active in markets like stock futures and currencies, where volatility remains high.

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Toyota Motor Manufacturing Canada Inc., announced that it will spend $27 million at its Cambridge assembly plant to help the automaker cut energy costs and reduce demand on the local and provincial power grids.

When completed in 2015, the Combined Heat and Power project will benefit the environment and community, as well as generate competitive cost savings for Toyota, the automaker said. About one-third of the automaker’s energy use will be off the grid, according to Pete Leonard, facility’s manager at Toyota’s Cambridge and Woodstock plants.

Combined Heat and Power, or cogeneration, is the process in which a single fuel source, such as natural gas, is used to produce both electrical and thermal energy. The basic principle of cogeneration is that generating electricity produces heat; cogeneration equipment captures that heat and uses it to supply hot water, steam, space heating — even cooling. This makes the process highly efficient, Toyota said.

“For the community and the environment, it will reduce emissions and save enough energy each year to power more than 7,400 homes,” Brian Krinock, TMMC president, said in a statement. “For Toyota, the increased efficiency is substantial and will result in a major cost savings for our company, helping us stay competitive in the global manufacturing landscape.”

Leonard said the automaker’s Canadian operations are the first Toyota plants in North America to undertake the energy-saving initiative. “Some of the Japanese plants have similar initiatives,” he added.

Toyota also announced plans to add a community service component to the development. A greenhouse will be constructed, which will tap the heat produced by the cogeneration project to produce vegetables for local non-profit organizations. “This is a natural extension of the Giving Garden initiative our team members started several years ago” said Krinock. “Now we’ll be able to support them on a year-round basis.”

Toyota worked on the initiative with Cambridge and North Dumfries Hydro.

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First Capital Securities Co Ltd

First Capital, one of China’s few listed private brokers, tied up with JPMorgan to set up JP Morgan First Capital Securities Co in 2010. JPMorgan sold its 33.3 percent stake in the JV to First Capital in December 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-firstcapital-m-a-jd-com/chinas-jd-com-unit-eyes-1-5-billion-stake-in-first-capital-sources-idUSKCN1BQ0FU