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Miscellaneous Economic and Financial Stories
Enormous interest has been generated in the Belgian press by Italian businessman Carlo de Benedetti's attempts to purchase the Société Générale. Il Mondo carries a feature article on the tycoon mentioning the fact that de Benedetti even managed to buy up 4.9% of Hong Kong multi-millionaire Li Ka-Shing.
In the business section of the Rome paper La Repubblica there is an interesting survey on business capitals of the world. Hong Kong appears as number 29 on the list of most expensive cities. It is 70% cheaper to buy a cinema ticket in Hong Kong compared to Tokyo and 60% cheaper to purchase a suit.
An Asian Pacific Institute for Management has just opened in Hamburg and was duly announced by the German economic press. The idea is to help up and coming young managers with an interest in the region.
For the first time the Prince Albert Fund, which finances a Belgian trainee in a Belgian company abroad, is sending a female trainee to Hong Kong (Echo de la Bourse). She will be working for Stella Artois for a twelve month period.
The German financial paper Börsen Zeitung (Frankfurt) covers the sacking of 120 employees of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp in London. There is also news of the Société Générale (Paris) opening an advice bureau in Hong Kong for market surveys, information and commercial ties. The provincial savings banks of the two German provinces are planning to open branches in Hong Kong (Stuttgarter Zeitung). Finally, there are two major articles in the Danish press on the Danish firm Jebsen & Co which has an important Eastern base in the territory.
Toys
There is a lot of concern expressed by the Spanish media about the mass exports of Hong Kong and other South East Asian toys into Spain. With such headlines as "Asian toys invade Spanish market", "Protests from toy manufacturers against mass imports from the Far East", etc, Spanish journalists emphasise the anxiety of the Spanish toy industry, pointing out that toy exports increased by 53% last year. The Italian press is also concerned by the toy "invasion", eg. Hong Kong and Korean dolls, account for 27% of the Italian toy market.
The German press is already covering the Nurenberg Toy Fair (4-10 February). Handelsblatt says that the dollar link has given Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan an unfair advantage. German toy imports were up by 20% in the first eleven months of 1987. The same paper reports that although Hong Kong toy makers are doing well, their greatest worry is "unpaid bills from America". Handelsblatt informs its readers that half of all Hong Kong toys are produced in South China. The same statistic is presented to readers of Ressegna Sindacale, a Rome based magazine. The magazine quotes Edmund Young, Vice President of La Perfekta Toys, "Without China, there would be no toy industry in Hong Kong".
/Textiles