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Strategies & Market Trends : True face of China -- A Modern Kaleidoscope -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (2996)	3/14/2008 10:01:50 AM
From: hui zhou	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12464

Bear Stern(BSC) crashes. I think CITIC invest $1 billion in this crap. Look like S & P don't know what they are talking about yesterday. Some people say Fannie Mae may even have a risk for bankruptcy. I made some very quick trade both long and short.

To: RealMuLan who wrote (2996)	3/14/2008 11:52:12 AM
From: hui zhou	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12464

The Carlyle Group yesterday admitted that it had failed to save its troubled $22bn mortgage-backed securities fund less than eight months after floating the heavily leveraged vehicle on Euronext Amsterdam. The US private equity group has quietly pulled the plug on a Chinese Christmas tree factory it acquired six years ago. Boto International, once the world's largest manufacturer of artificial Christmas trees, was forced into receivership by creditors at the end of last year, people familiar with the matter confirmed yesterday. Carlyle declined to comment on the closure. Boto had been struggling with soaring costs for plastics and metal, its two most important raw materials, since at least 2006, when the company negotiated a restructuring of its $154m debt. Based in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese special economic zone and manufacturing centre bordering Hong Kong, Boto also had to contend with higher labour costs and industrial action. The company's 1,000-odd workers staged a brief strike in May last year and also took their grievances to Hong Kong in January, to claim back pay, severance and other compensation. Carlyle paid $130m in 2002 to acquire a controlling interest in the tree operations of Hong Kong-listed Boto International Holdings, leaving the listed vehicle with an unprofitable computer animation business. At the time, Boto management was pilloried for selling its cash cow at what David Webb, an independent investor and corporate governance activist, called a “dramatic undervaluation”. In a corporate governance report, CLSA, the Hong Kong investment bank, said the Boto transaction was a “major corporate governance blot for Hong Kong”. Mr Webb said Boto's recent closure did not vindicate the original sale, arguing the company could have continued to thrive. “From all the facts we knew at the time it was a bad sale,” Mr Webb said. “Clearly people are still buying artificial Christmas trees. Christmas hasn't been abolished yet.”