Archives June 2008

Beijing raises minimum salary amid rising prices

The Beijing government announced Friday a plan to raise the minimum salary by 10 percent, as well as to increase subsidies paid to families living below the poverty line to combat the jump in utility costs.

From July 1, the minimum salary for city employees will rise from 730 yuan ($106) to 800 yuan, or 4.6 yuan per hour.

The monthly allowance for families living under the poverty line will climb 60 yuan to 390 yuan, the sharpest increase in the past nine years.

Also increasing is the city’s employment insurance, job-related injury insurance and pension.

The move aimed to offset price increases in rice, vegetable oil and pork, an unnamed Beijing Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau official was quoted by Beijing News.

Although China’s consumer price index (CPI), a main gauge of inflation, eased to 7.7 percent in May with the falling food prices, about 45 percent of people polled in a central bank survey conducted nationwide in June still thought prices were “unacceptably high.”

Planner (mkt244sh)

Job Title: Planner
Report To: Plant Manager
Location: _Shanghai__________
Our client is the world’s largest manufacturer of industrial valuing and related controls and it has a long established history in being involved in projects from the design phase to construction .One of its business units services the worldwide water, industrial process and infrastructure markets with the most comprehensive range of proprietary flow control products and services available from a single source.
It employs approximately 250,000 people around the world, all of whom share an extraordinary commitment to excellence, and operates in over 100 countries throughout the world. With the development in APAC, especially in China, they are looking for talents to join them.

Job Description:
Responsibilities:
1. Ensures the customer deliveries are met by using the ERP system planning process to plan and monitor Customer orders, Forecasts, Vendor performance, and Customer deliveries, and reporting feedback for internal and external use as required.
2. Ensures resources such as inventory are minimised by effective planning of materials and ERP parameters.
3. Contributes to the Sales & Operations Planning process by providing production planning data.
4. Ensures the integrity of the data in the material transactional process by monitoring and communicating with internal and external people where necessary.
5. Contributes to the on-time delivery from vendors by providing vendor schedules where required.
6. Provides timely feedback to ensure any off track situations are reported to Management.
7. Communicate with Shipping Agents and Customs to ensure the paperwork is compliant and to ensure there are no holdups in meeting the Customer’s delivery requirements.
8. Contributes to the overall company performance by effective utilisation of skills, active participation in team meetings, providing suggestions, and reporting to management.
Requirement:
1. Bachelor degree in logistics
2. At least 4+ working years in planning in MNCs
3. Strong thinking and analytical skills, process-oriented, understand business
4. Excellent modeling software skills ( e.g. Excel )
5. Building trust and credibility
6. Good English. Very good social and communication skills. Representative. Very good skills in Words, Excel, Power Point.

Personal Qualities
1. Self-motivated, discipline, high integrity
2. Enjoy and efficient in working with others , especially in complex structure
3. Willingness to engage in open discussion and accept new ideas/ point of view
4. Able to lead and sell his/her own creative ideas, good organization impact
5. Desire and capacity to coach
6. Executive maturity

Critical Job Functional Competencies
1. Performance management and productivity improvement
2. Customer and business development

Critical Job Leadership Competencies
1. Thinking skills
2. Communicates productively
3. Establish priorities
4. Drive for results
5. Collaboration
6. Know the business
7. Integrity

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English to: ‘topjob_mkt244sh@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject MUST you plus the position name ?in either En or Ch ?

Hankou Bank looking for foreign investors

Hankou Bank, which was launched yesterday after the restructuring of city lender Wuhan Commercial Bank, said it plans to introduce foreign strategic investors and go public.

The bank aims to attract one to two foreign lenders as strategic investors to get more capital and improve its equity structure, it said. Sources from the bank said it is in talks with several foreign banking groups.

Hankou Bank plans to achieve a stock listing within the next three to five years, sources told China Daily, without elaborating.

The erstwhile Wuhan Commercial Bank, which had 88 branches in this capital city of Hubei province, had total assets of almost 37 billion yuan ($5.38 billion) and a registered capital of 568.4 million yuan by the end of last year. Its capital adequacy ratio stood at 12.17 percent at that time.

Hankou Bank said it will expand its businesses into other regions in a drive to become a national lender.

The bank has obtained the go-ahead from the China Banking Regulatory Commission to open a branch in Ezhou, a smaller city in Hubei, in the second half of this year. It also aims to set up outlets in other provinces next year.

Many other city commercial banks, such as those in Beijing, Nanjing, Ningbo, Tianjin, Dalian, Chengdu and Chongqing, have been renamed and are expanding their businesses into other regions as part of China’s banking reforms. Three lenders in Beijing, Nanjing and Ningbo have gone public.

The launch of Hankou Bank is also part of efforts of Wuhan, the biggest city in Central China, to become a regional financial center.

According to a plan unveiled by the Wuhan government in March, assets of rural credit cooperatives in Wuhan and eight other cities in Hubei will be integrated to form a new bank, named Wuhan Rural Commercial Bank.

Local authorities will also encourage private investors to run small and medium-sized shareholding banks.

There are five foreign banking groups and 19 domestic lenders with branches in Wuhan.

IBM Responds To Labor Dispute In China

IBM (IBM) China has made a response to the labor dispute in China, saying that it continued to provide economic and medical assistance to the employee after his submission of an application for resignation, but it has not made any comment on the judgment made by Shanghai Pudong New Zone Labor Arbitration Commission which asked it to fulfill the labor contract with the Chinese employee and pay him CNY57332 in compensation.

IBM Shanghai’s public relations department has sent a statement to Sina.com in which they say that they provided economic and medical assistance to the employee with depression after he filed a resignation application, and they won’t make any comment in detail as the case is still being decided.

Previously, Chinese media quoted the employee who said he would insist IBM carry out the arbitration result and would ask to go back to work in the company though he had not been contacted by the company following SPNZLAC’s judgment.

According to Sina.com, the unnamed employee signed a five-year labor contract with IBM in 2006 after his graduation from a famous university in Hubei Province and began to work as an R&D engineer for IBM Shanghai. However, because of the heavy work pressure at IBM, the employee soon was diagnosed with depression. After that, he submitted a resignation application to IBM to give him time to cure his illness, but IBM proposed he change the resignation into an extended sick leave. When the employee’s health returned and he asked to go back to IBM with the doctor’s suggestion of working while receiving therapy, his request was turned down by IBM. After a number of fruitless negotiations with IBM’s top management on resuming his duties, his health became worse. He even once attempted suicide after a meeting with the company’s top management.

On February 27, 2008, IBM Shanghai issued a notice to the employee, saying that the company would terminate the labor contract with him because he had broken the company’s disciplines and seriously affected the company’s normal work order. Believing that IBM China was discriminating against him for his depression, the employee has now sued, asking for IBM to continue fulfilling the labor contract with him, compensate him for past salary and pay him emotional compensation.

Taiwan Strait air links to have big implications for HR: agency

The opening of direct air links across the Taiwan Strait may reshape human resource maps in Taiwan and China, an online employment service provider predicted Sunday. If direct cross-strait air links are launched, beginning with weekend charter flights, the number of Taiwanese working in China on a divided-time basis or Taiwanese engineers working in China on weekends and holidays would grow dramatically, a 104 JOB BANK official predicted.

* More people in Taiwan are now thinking about working in China because of unfavorable trends in Taiwan’s job market and the soon-to-be-opened direct weekend charters, said Huang Chih-yao, a 104 Job Bank executive in charge of “headhunting for China.”

* According to a survey conducted by 104 Job Bank in May, the number of Taiwanese workers seeking job opportunities in China averaged 20,000 per day by the end of May, the highest number since early 2006.

Pay high, but not through the nose

How much is too much?

If you talk to a Ping An Insurance shareholder, you are likely to be told the 66 million yuan ($9.45 million) pay package for its chairman Ma Mingzhe is way too much. An executive headhunter might have a completely different take, pointing out that top execs of 500 of the largest US companies averaged $12.8 million last year. As China gets increasingly integrated into the global economy, the headhunter will reason, such apparently exorbitant salaries for top management are only natural.

This year saw a flurry of angry postings on Chinese websites by shareholders incensed at what they felt were obscenely high salaries for those running their companies. Not just Ma, the pre-tax package of three Ping An executives was over 45 million yuan each while that for another five was over 10 million yuan.

Shareholders of five domestic banks fumed at the pay disclosures that showed Shenzhen Development Bank Chairman Frank Newman’s pre-tax income rose to 22.9 million yuan in 2007 from 9.95 million yuan the previous year. That of China Minsheng Banking Corp President Dong Wenbiao surged to 17.5 million yuan compared with 4.5 million in 2006.

The annual reports of all 14 Shanghai-listed banks have also shown substantial raises for top managers. Employees complain the fruits of the 71.8 percent average profit rise in these banks last year were mostly devoured by the top bosses. While the banks’ average pay has spiraled, they say it’s mainly because top executives’ salaries have risen steeply, with no dramatic advances in salaries of the rank and file.

In the case of Ping An, particularly, what rankled with shareholders was that executive pay skyrocketed even as the company’s shares plummeted. Ping An shares fell from a peak of nearly 150 yuan in October to around 50 yuan in April. In a Sina.com survey, 93 percent of the respondents thus understandably said they did not approve of the company’s executive pay practices.

The controversy also comes amid widespread concern about rising income disparity in China. But executive pay is hardly an issue restricted to a socialist state used to egalitarian wages trying to come to grips with the rewards of individualism that capitalism institutes. The United States, the high priest of modern-day capitalism, has been similarly tormented by the vagaries of executive pay.

Individual shareholders and institutional investors alike have been campaigning this year for a “say on pay” at nearly 100 of the top US companies including Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobil, General Electric and Wal-Mart. The demand: a provision to allow shareholders to vote on top executives’ pay.

Across the Atlantic, where many countries have already institutionalized shareholders’ say on pay, a chunk of GlaxoSmithKline, Shell and HSBC investors refused to vote for the pay proposal for top bosses.

Both in the US and Europe, the issue has transcended the business sphere to become a hot-button political issue. EU finance ministers recently called excessive executive pay a “social scourge”, blaming it for unwarranted risk-taking causing the financial turmoil. In the US, presidential candidate Barack Obama has been railing against corporate fat cats and backing the demand for shareholder say in executive pay.

In Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs, Harvard professor Rakesh Khurana explains how the opacity of the process of hiring external CEOs and the misplaced priorities thereof – such as picking someone with “star power” rather than one with real knowledge of the industry – leads to excessive CEO compensation. As China sets about aligning its business practices with the industrialized West, it would do well to avoid such pitfalls.

But excessive restrictions on executive pay might at the same time weigh down the country in the quest for global talents, thus undermining its competitiveness. Institutional checks and balances like encouraging shareholder activism are a much safer bet. Moderation in policy must never be lost sight of in the pursuit of moderation in pay.

China’s domestic auto sales set to grow

China’s domestic automobile sales are expected to grow 15 percent to hit 10 million units this year, backed by strong demand for passenger cars, an official with the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said on Saturday.

China’s fast-growing economy has created a sound environment for the development of the automobile industry, Dong Yang, vice chairman of the association, said at an industry meeting held in the coastal city of Yantai in eastern Shandong Province.

Despite slower growth in business vehicles sales, demand for passenger cars remained robust, he said.

The government will speed up restructuring the industry by detailing standards on security, environment protection and energy saving, Dong said.

He noted the declining trend in auto prices will be reversed as a result of the sharp rise in prices of raw materials such as iron and steel.

The association’s latest data showed that more than 4.3 million vehicles were sold in the first five months of this year, a jump of 17 percent from the same period last year.

Foreign trade surges at Shanghai port

Imports and exports continued to surge at Shanghai port, with the volume totaling 245.5 billion U.S. dollars in the first five months of 2008.

Shanghai Customs statistics showed the trade volume was 26.6 percent up year on year, 7.4 percentage points higher than that of same period of last year.

With this volume, Shanghai port did about one-quarter of the country’s foreign trade, said a source.

In a breakdown, exports totaled 155.73 billion U.S. dollars, up 28.2 percent, and imports made up 89.77 billion U.S. dollars, up 23.9 percent, of which, imports under general trade accounted for 35.2 billion U.S. dollars, up 28.2 percent from a year ago but 3.2 percentage points faster.

Foreign trade peaked in May at Shanghai port to hit 51.86 billion U.S. dollars, up 35.6 percent from the same month a year ago.

The lion’s share of the foreign trade at Shanghai port was done by overseas financed ventures, followed by state-owned companies and private Chinese businesses.

The European Union (EU) remained the port’s top trading partner, followed by the United States, Japan, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and Africa.

China Mobile’s upgrade bid

BEIJING, June 18 — China Mobile has invested heavily in upgrading networks to consolidate its leading position in both 2G and 3G eras, Shanghai Daily learned yesterday.

The world’s biggest mobile carriers by subscribers has signed two IT companies to upgrade the networks, including its trial 3G network, during Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan’s visit to the United States for the economic summit.

Alcatel-Lucent, the world’s biggest telecom equipment maker, said it had signed a 1 billion U.S. dollars framework agreement for 2008 with China Mobile to provide mobile communication equipment and services.

The agreement was secured through Alcatel-Lucent’s flagship company in China, Alcatel Shanghai Bell.

“We are delighted to be selected to continue providing solutions and services to China Mobile. China Mobile is one of our company’s main strategic cooperation partners,” Olivia Qiu, Alcatel Shanghai Bell’s president, said.

The agreement signing ceremony was witnessed by Wang in Washington.

Under the frame agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will provide China Mobile with mobile core and wireless network solutions, TD-SCDMA equipment, applications, transmission and IP router equipment and the related services.

Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems Inc also announced a framework agreement with China Mobile on IT products and services projects in 2008. Sun will provide China Mobile with IT products and relevant services at an estimated price of some 34.8 million dollars.

Hong Kong’s Unemployment Rate Holds at Decade Low

Hong Kong’s jobless rate stayed at the lowest level in a decade, helping domestic consumption to sustain economic growth as the export outlook dims.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for the three months ended May 31 was unchanged at 3.3 percent, the government said today on its Web site. That matched the median estimate of 14 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

“The strong labor market will continue to support the economy,” said Michael Dai, senior economist at Bank of China (Hong Kong) Ltd. “There have been big salary increases across the board and that’s encouraging consumption.”

Hong Kong’s economy grew 7.1 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the fastest pace in two years. The expansion for the year may slow to between 4 percent and 5 percent as export demand weakens, the government said last month.

World economic growth will probably slow to 2.7 percent in 2008 from 3.7 percent last year on rising food and energy prices and the subprime credit crisis, the World Bank said last week.

Hong Kong’s household spending rose 7.9 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier.

The labor market remained buoyant, Matthew Cheung, the Secretary for Labor and Welfare, said in today’s statement.

Increased competition for labor has pushed salaries higher and added to inflation in the city. Wages climbed 2.7 percent in December. Figures for March are due this month.

Price Increases

Producer prices jumped 5.8 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, the most on record. Consumer prices rose 5.4 percent in April, more than double the 2 percent pace for all of 2007.

For the year starting in April, salaries for civil servants were raised by 6.3 percent for the upper pay group and by 5.29 percent for middle and lower pay groups.

Stock market declines and a faltering global economy may erode business and consumer confidence. The key Hang Seng Index has fallen 17 percent this year.

A survey this quarter of 807 employers in the city showed a decline in the proportion who said they expected to add workers in the following quarter. The drop was from 33 percent to 30 percent, U.S.-based recruitment company Manpower Inc. said.