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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stitch who wrote (2777)	3/30/1998 9:14:00 AM
From: Worswick	Respond to of 9980

Further to your Holbrook post Stitch. It is odious to be an Asian person - Ramsey is right saying the people of Kerala are as different from the Aleuts as anyone possibly can be - to look at Western fat cats/bankers and think that these people have "Asian's" deeper interests at heart. However, one should go a step further. One has to climb over the xenophobic "Asian" idea that one people have inalienable "superiority" over others. Look at the tragic history of the Jews and look no further. Look to see where "chosen people" have walked. Towards the brink. Look at then at the tragic example of Japan in the 1910-1945 period. Look at Germany. Look at Britain... after two world wars...with probably half of her brightest and best dead on the altar of arrogance... with currency controls on the pound into the 1970's...was there ever a more arrogant, foolish group than the British imperialists? One of the curiosities of our time are the Korean mountain climber group. Percentage wise more Koreans have lost thier lives at altitude than perhaps any other gourp. Arrogance. Sheer arrogance. A belief that they were special... like the Mahdist's at Omdurman who thought that their religion was proof against British bullets. What is brewing up for so many disparate ASian groups is the following in the enclosed article. I wonder how so many people arrived at the same bus stop at the same moment? How do you think? Guessing time. Arrogance? Asian values? Bad luck? The evil western and Japanese bankers who forced debt onto hapless lendors? Just look at credit card debt here. Are we bulletproof? Maybe we are all in the same boat here. Does anyone Ramsey in the lifeboat really think the "Asian" with the wet rag over his head trying to keep off the beating is in any better moral shape? Hubris anyone? For Private Use Only (C) Conglomerates tighten grip on bank lending AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in Seoul South Korean conglomerates strengthened their domination of bank loans last year, as a record wave of bankruptcies battered smaller firms. The financial supervisory board estimated domestic bank loans extended to the country's 66 top conglomerates last year at 126.88 trillion won (about HK$712.05 billion), up 32.2 per cent from a year ago. Loans to the top 10 family run industrial giants rose 42.6 per cent year-on-year to 85.4 trillion won last year, it said. The Hyundai Group topped the list with 19 trillion won, followed by Samsung Group's 17.3 trillion won. The Daewoo Group was third with 15.1 trillion won, ahead of the LG Group which accounted for 10.9 trillion won. The money owed by Hyundai and nine other conglomerates accounted for 19.3 per cent of total credits extended by South Korean financial institutions last year. The top 30 conglomerates absorbed 111.2 trillion won in bank loans last year, up 43 per cent from 1996, the board said, warning that loans should be tightly controlled to reduce the groups' high debt-equity ratios. The Korea Stock Exchange has estimated the debts of the top 30 groups, with 143 firms in their fold, at 247.69 trillion won, against a combined capital of 5.12 trillion won at the end of December. As a result, their average debt-equity ratio jumped from 332.7 per cent in 1996 to 449.4 per cent last year. The supervisory board said that conglomerates borrowed heavily from banks at home and abroad to fend off last year's currency crisis and recession. From April 1, all 66 conglomerates would be put on the watch list to control their credit, the supervisory board said, urging them to peg debts at less than two times their total assets by the end of next year, or face credit cuts. The conglomerates have been required to drastically reduce their debts. But they have moved slowly, complaining that industrial reforms had been blocked by high interest rates, huge tax burdens and declining earnings. The Federation of Korean Industries, a conglomerate lobbying club, said last week large firms would suffer a domestic sales contraction this year for the first time in 17 years. But most conglomerates have ignored widespread calls to help small companies, many of them their own subcontractors, from a credit squeeze caused mainly by their monopoly of loans. The central Bank of Korea said that 8,226 corporations, mostly small and medium-sized, went bankrupt last year, against 5,157 a year ago. In the first two months this year, 3,099 corporations, including 15 large firms, collapsed, it said.