Less than 40% of office workers enjoy summer welfare

FEWER than 40 percent of office workers in Shanghai receive extra benefits during sweltering weather, a number that still surpasses other big cities around the country.

In the past, it was common for employers to hand out free drinks, ice cream and other treats to employees when temperatures rose, but that tradition has disappeared in many office to the discontent of modern office workers, according to a recent survey.

The survey, which was conducted by 51job.com, a Nasdaq-listed human resources company, asked office employees in 15 major Chinese cities, including 676 people in Shanghai, about their company’s summer benefits policy.

About 37 percent of the respondents in the city said that their company offered some relief to employees, a percentage that topped that of other cities.

Pre-paid shopping cards are the most popular summer benefit, according to the survery. Half of the benefit providers distributed a card with an average amount ranging from 800 yuan (US$105) to 1,000 yuan.

Beverages, daily necessities such as towers, suntan lotion and cash allowances are also popular summer, the survey reported.

Quality Control Staff – A Germany Trading Company

Environment
1. German managed trading company with 12 local staff;
2.Usually 1-2 European trainees, very nice and modern working environment and 300sqm office, 250swm warehouse, 80sqm design department, 150sqm quality control room.

Requirements£º
1. Female;
2. Preferred married, older than 28;
3. 3-5 year working experience in quality control;
4. used to travel to factories;
5. Maybe wanting to settle down a little and not travel all the time (might have child, etc.);
6. Familiar with QC reporting;
7. Familiar with factory audits;
8. Familiar with AQL tables and inspection ratios;
9. Fluent in QC related “English” oral and written;
10. Analytical approach;
11. Quality control personality (looks for problems! as in contrast to managers who aim to SOLVE problems).

Description:
1.Works in the office in Jinqiao and does quality control inspections in our company;
2. Travels from time to time, maybe once a week or once in two weeks to factories in Zhejiang and Shanghai;
3. Does reporting about the QC and discussed possible requirements for future orders with purchasing staff and manager (myself).

Products:
1.Almost anything has a logo and from Garments, to accessories, umbrellas, key chains, silk ties, water balls. (Staff would be briefed for our standards for each item!)

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to:
‘topjob_mn174sh#dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)

CIP Sr. Engineer – A Top semiconductor Company

Location: Suzhou
Report to: Report to Section Manager or above
Supervise: senior engineers / engineers

Job Purpose:
To drive for lean implementation in plant wide by conducting workshops and providing guidelines for lean initiatives.

Main tasks
1. Ensure the overall progress of lean culture deployment in plant wide
2. Conduct workshops to help functional department for continuous improvements
3. Conduct lean learning programs
4. Provide consulting for lean projects / initiatives
5. Liaise with Advance office of other sites to ensure standardization and best practice sharing

Required knowledge and skills:
Must have:
1. Good mindset with lean thinking
2. Strong knowledge in Lean tools
3. Good English communication skill and presentation skill
4. Can-do attitude, practical, commitment and passionate

Nice to have –
1. Familiar with semiconductor TMP manufacturing and process
2. Six sigma certificates

Qualifications
1. Bachelor¡¯s degree
2. 5+ years¡¯ working experience
3. Worked for company with successful lean implementation

Dimension
1. 2~5 direct report
2. Lead plant level projects by supervising members from cross department.

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to:
‘topjob_eng066sz#dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)

Technical Manager Die Bonder – A European leading Semi-conductor and electronic company

Location: Shanghai
Report to: Head of S&S China.

Main tasks
1. Customer Satisfaction
Complements Field Service competency to support customers. Acts as local 2nd level of support, after Field Service organization escalates for new installations, as well as installed base
2. Organization
Interface into SBU Die Attach in Singapore and Cham Switzerland in order to enable support from the SBU DA towards the customer and the local Sales & Service Organization. Manages the follow-up with the SBU DA
3. Field Service / Skill transfer
Manages local skill level of the Field Service team through formal training, training-on-the-job and coaching for individual (escalated) cases.
4. Sales / Die Bonder Epoxy Expertise
Provides Die Bonder Epoxy & SST expertise throughout the pre-sales processes to the SAM (Sales Account Manager) and the TSM (Technical Support Manager) to position best and review technical specifications
5. Market Information
Provides regular update of market and competition activities. Delivers input to DA Technology roadmap
6. Reporting
Reporting to LDM locally; reporting to Product Lines in SBU DA functionally.
Requirements:
1. Technical Background (BSc / MSc Engineering Science)
2. Auxiliary training in the ranges mechanical engineering, electro-technology and computer science of advantage
3. Min. 8 years within a technical environment
4. Preferable >3 years in the product support and in handling customers or branch offices
5. Knowledge of processes with a high number of interlaced factors of influence
6. Understanding for precision mechanics and for complex systems (regulated axles, vision)
7. IT knowledge (Office, E-Mail, ..)
8. Good verbal and written English of knowledge
9. Flexible, used to work and live in a dynamic environment (China)
10. Robust Team Player
11. Readiness for travelling (> 25%)

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to:
‘topjob_oth046sh#dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)

Baker & McKenzie’s Profits per Partner Top $1 Million Mark

Baker & McKenzie, the world’s largest law firm, has announced a 20 percent increase in its revenue this year.

The Chicago-based firm is set to announce today that it grossed $1.83 billion in its 2007 fiscal year, which ended June 30. That compared with $1.52 billion in 2006.

The firm will also report that, for the first time, its profits per partner were over the $1 million mark. The firm said it had profits per partner in 2007 of $1.06 million, up 22 percent from the year before.

Chairman John Conroy said Wednesday that he was pleased with the results, which he attributed to a strategic plan the firm adopted three years ago.

Since then, the firm has whittled its practices down to 11 core groups and has focused on deepening its relationships with the types of large multinational clients who can best utilize Baker & McKenzie’s global network. The firm has 3,600 lawyers in 70 offices in 38 countries.

Conroy said the firm was focusing particularly on four key markets: New York, London, China and Japan. “We want to leverage the international positions we’ve had into these prioritized markets,” he said.

He noted that Baker & McKenzie was the largest foreign law firm in China, including Hong Kong, with a total of 240 lawyers.

For such a large firm, Baker & McKenzie has long had a notably modest presence in New York. The firm made a major push into the market in 2005 when it hired most of the New York office of Coudert Brothers. Conroy said the firm had continued to expand through lateral hiring.

“We always knew if we had more critical mass in New York, we could take it to another level,” he said. “This is the year we kicked it into gear.”

Baker & McKenzie’s results come in the wake of earnings announcements by the firms of London’s Magic Circle, which it most resembles in terms of size and geographic sprawl. But those firms, with their strong London-based corporate practices, have generally been more profitable. This year was no exception, with firms like Linklaters and Clifford Chance mostly surpassing $2 billion in revenue and $2 million in profits per partner.

Carrefour China lets staff set up trade union

Retailer Carrefour yesterday announced the opening of a trade union to cover its five outlets in the city. The organization, which is the company’s first in Guangdong Province, will have a branch in each outlet and represent some 590 employees. It will be chaired by Li Wenkai, a department manager at one of the stores.

Pierre Bertholat, vice-president of Carrefour China, said: “We hope the union will play an active role in organizing activities and do its bit to contribute to an invigorated corporate culture and to the protection of the worker’s rights.” Joanna Meng, human resources director, said establishing the trade union was part of its localization strategy.

“Carrefour is witnessing a rapid expansion in China and we will step up efforts to set up trade unions in all of our outlets across the nation,” she said. Carrefour has opened 13 outlets in China this year, taking its total to 100, and plans to open a further 10 by the year’s end.

Zeng Fanqiang, trade union chairman of Guangzhou Development District, where Carrefour’s South China territory is registered, said the setting up of the union was a positive move. “I hope the union will aid Carrefour’s labor-management relations and unite employees,” he said.

More than 70 percent of the province’s 36,200 foreign-funded companies now have a union. Sixty-eight were set up last year. In addition, more than two-thirds of the multinationals represented in the province have established unions, with the remainder expected to do so by the end of the year.

China markets bloom for foreign banks

SHANGHAI, China (Reuters) — China’s money market is an opaque, primitive place where fund flows are dominated by a few big state-run banks, and there’s not even a standard commonly accepted yield curve.

But for Raymond Hui, Head of Treasury for China at Societe Generale and one of Shanghai’s most experienced foreign bank traders, the market is starting to deliver on the promise that brought him here four years ago.

“The market is getting more open and transparent. Foreign banks’ involvement is larger and deeper,” says the Hong Kong native, who joined SG to set up its Shanghai dealing room in 2003.

“The price discovery system is now much more efficient because of the central bank’s new market making system — and this has made both foreign and Chinese banks more interested in fixed income, increasing bill and bond trading.”

Hui’s experience suggests millions of dollars spent by foreign banks to break into the Chinese money market, and years of frustration due to regulatory obstacles and the difficulty of training staff may finally be proving worthwhile.

When Hui arrived in Shanghai in 2003, he recalls, it was difficult even to get accurate price quotes from the market. Foreign banks, without knowledge of some of the biggest fund flows, were largely relegated to the sidelines.

“Chinese bank dealers all know each other, and debt trading information was only passed around their circle,” says Hui, who is in his 40s and worked for Japanese and European banks in Hong Kong before joining SG.

Even basic trades such as interest rate swaps, bond forward deals, bond short-selling and open-ended bond repurchase agreements did not exist.

Authorities have opened all of those areas over the past couple of years, though restrictions, red tape and lack of familiarity still keep volumes low in most.

A big development came in February when the central bank expanded its system of interbank market makers in bonds, letting the top 80 bond trading firms in China apply. Previously, only the 20 most active spot traders had this status.

This stimulated turnover and gave foreign banks a bigger role. Foreign banks held 0.9 percent of the 10.6 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) of outstanding Chinese bonds in July — a big rise from 0.4 percent at the end of 2006, official data shows.

Four years ago, there were only a couple of overseas bankers at foreign institutions in Shanghai focusing on treasury and derivatives trade, traders say.

That has risen to about 30 now. Including local staff, foreign banks’ treasury operations are estimated to employ several hundred people — a far cry from the thousands in London or New York but enough to make them a force in the market.

SG’s Shanghai treasury operation has expanded from one person when Hui arrived to eight, and he is about to add another sales person.

Key to growth is the way in which new money market products have increased interaction between Chinese and foreign banks as they leverage off each others’ strengths, Hui says.

Foreign banks are keen to make markets in new products because of their superior knowledge, gained from overseas, of the technical aspects. Chinese banks have the advantage of a big base of end users through huge domestic branch networks.

A growing two-way flow of staff between foreign and local banks, while a headache for personnel managers, is making trade easier by spreading both local knowledge and foreign expertise.

A bear market in bonds since early this year, as the central bank tightens monetary policy, may actually be helping develop the money market by making the old buy-and-hold strategy of Chinese banks less attractive.

Foreign banks have been able to jump in to make money from changing spreads along and between curves, and from arbitrage trades involving IRS and forex swap deals.

Hui expects the market to deepen further in the next few years as authorities introduce products such as bond futures, interest rate futures and forward rate agreements, which could smooth distortions in yield curves through arbitrage.

An expected surge in corporate bond issuance, after Beijing said this year the securities regulator would take over supervising that market, will be another opportunity.

But the biggest spur to foreign banks may be their incorporation within China, which lets them conduct yuan retail banking business and open more branches.

More than 10 foreign banks have incorporated locally this year and about a dozen more, including SG, are in the process of obtaining approval.

Though foreign banks will probably always have much smaller Chinese branch networks than the local giants, they will be able to expand their deposit bases and issue yuan bonds — obtaining funds for investment in the money market.

“I believe one of the factors that attracted us to take the local incorporation step is the ability to issue bonds,” Hui says, adding that SG has no concrete plan for a bond issue. E-mail to a friend

McDonald’s raises wages in China

BEIJING – US fast-food giant McDonald’s says it will raise the salaries of its workers, including part-time employees, at its 800-plus Chinese outlets, effective from September 1.

About 95% of McDonald’s China “crew” will see a pay increase of 12-56%, or an average of 30%, said Jeffrey Schwartz, chief executive officer of McDonald’s (China) Co Ltd. The remaining 5% are already being “paid very well”. This will involve about 45,000 full-time and part-time workers, including students.

McDonald’s has broadly three types of employees: crew, or the non-managerial staff serving at its outlets; managers; and administrative staff. “We have raised salaries in China many times, but this is the first time there is such a large increase covering so many people,” Schwartz said.

The announcement comes a few months after media reports about McDonald’s and other foreign fast-food operators such as KFC paying their part-time staff less than the local minimum wages (see China’s part-time McWorkers exploited , Asia Times Online, April 20).

But Schwartz said the company’s decision to raise pay has nothing to do with the pay-related bad press it has been getting. “We have been looking at a wage increase for a year. The issue [reports of low pay] only reminded us that we need to move more quickly.”

Under the new wage initiative, pay for McDonald’s “crew” across China will be “much higher than the local minimum levels”.

“It will be 15% higher in both Beijing and Guangzhou, and 12% higher in Shanghai,” said Susanna Li, vice president of McDonald’s China human resources. For example, full-time workers in Guangzhou will see their monthly wages rise 21% to 1,072 yuan ($142).

Though the Labor Bureau of South China’s Guangdong province clarified in June that McDonald’s had complied with the regulations set by the local government, the issue of underpaying part-time employees has dented the company’s image. Many workers had claimed they were receiving the city’s legal minimum wage of 7.50 yuan an hour.

And that’s the last thing McDonald’s would like to see. “China contributes 2% of McDonald’s global sales, which is a significant amount. Annually, McDonald’s opens 100 new stores in China,” Schwartz said. “We don’t want to be thought of in that [negative] way. We want to be the best employer in China.”

McDonald’s managers, who account for 14% of its total local staff, are not included in the wage-increase program, but they have benefited from the “profit-award program” that started last year.

In 2006, 80% of the fast-food giant’s Chinese managers received a bonus of up to twice their annual salary.

(Asia Pulse/Xinhua Information Center)

China: Big Pharma’s new New Jersey

The big drugmakers are pouring money into the People’s Republic, but product recalls cast a shadow.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — U.S. drugmakers are investing heavily in China, but experts say the People’s Republic needs to cast off its image as a maker of toxic recalls before it can rival New Jersey – home of half of the world’s top 10 pharmaceutical companies – as a big hub for Big Pharma.

China’s strong domestic market for pharmaceuticals has fueled interest from Western investors, who find the allure of cheap labor irresistible. The Chinese drug market is red hot, with sales jumping 12.3 percent in 2006 to $13.4 billion, according to IMS Health. Sales are projected to more than double by 2010.

Western drugmakers and biotechs – Merck (Charts, Fortune 500), Wyeth (Charts, Fortune 500), Eli Lilly & Co., (Charts, Fortune 500) Schering-Plough (Charts, Fortune 500), Novartis (Charts), Sanofi-Aventis, Biomed and Genentech, to name a few – are ramping up investments in China, as well as in India and Singapore, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers analyst Dan Bartholomew.

In addition, China, India and Singapore have their own home-grown industries, while South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines are rapidly increasing healthcare spending.

“The tide towards production in pan-Asia is something that’s not going to stop,” said Bartholomew. “It’s just a question of the measures that are put in place to do it the right way.”

Mattel recalls over 9M toys
But all is not well in the People’s Republic. In recent months, “Made in China” has become synonymous with faulty products, including counterfeit toothpaste containing dangerous levels of a chemical found in antifreeze, car tires with a tendency to disintegrate, and toys coated with dangerous lead paint.

U.S. companies have announced the recall of millions of Chinese-made toys, the most recent being Tuesday’s announcement of more than 9 million Mattel Inc. (Charts, Fortune 500) toys.

Also this summer, the “Made in China” stamp has been marred by two high-profile deaths: the suicide of Zhang Shuhong of Hong Kong, contract manufacturer for Mattel, and the execution of Zheng Xiaoyu, former chief of China’s State Food and Drug Administration, for accepting bribes to approve drugs.

China’s State Food and Drug Administration has vowed to invest more than $1 billion through 2010 to strengthen its food and drug safety program. But there’s a question concerning whether this is enough.

“The Chinese FDA just doesn’t have the infrastructure,” said Les Funtleyder, drug analyst for Miller Tabak. “They don’t have the hundreds of inspectors who go out [to check factories.] They don’t have the training. Until they bring things up to speed, I’m not sure the [U.S.] FDA is going to just accept drugs made in China.”

That hasn’t stopped Pfizer, Baxter, Bayer and Roche from investing in Chinese manufacturing. Big Pharma is lured by a strong local market and the possibility of cheap manufacturing for eventual export.

FDA accuses Pfizer of false advertising
Dan Bartholomew of PricewaterhouseCoopers added that much of the recent outside interest in China, such as $100 million investments from Novartis and AstraZeneca, is for research and development because clinical trials are comparatively cheap to run in Asia.

This is despite the region’s laissez-faire attitude to patents and intellectual property. Even in China, where “IP” (as the Americans call it) has long been considered a foreign concept, strides have been made to protect the patent-holders.

In 2006, a Beijing court ruled in favor of Pfizer in a patent dispute over Viagra, and this sent a strong positive message to U.S. drugmakers, said Bartholomew. The analyst claimed that R&D investments from Novartis, AstraZeneca and other Western drugmakers are a “huge statement” that their property will be protected.

The investments could be stepping stones to manufacturing, said Bartholomew, who projects that Chinese factories could be making drugs for the U.S. market within five years.

But analysts said this would only happen if aggressive measures are taken – by outside investors – to ensure sound product quality, and also to cut down on counterfeiting. Otherwise, legitimate manufacturers could have their brand-names misappropriated for use on dangerous and illegal copies, as occurred in the recent abuse of the Colgate brand by toothpaste counterfeiters.

But China-U.S.business relations can be notoriously complex, and quality control to meet the standards of U.S. regulators could take a bite out of the benefits of cheap labor.

“The bureaucracy in China is going to be less flexible and more serpentine [than U.S. regulators] and will take longer to get change and cooperation for change to really occur,” said Robert Toomey, drug analyst for E.K. Riley Investments. “I think it comes down to economics. Is the need for cheaper labor offset by the need for more oversight of the process?”

The specter of a Vioxx-style recall hangs heavily over the prospect of Chinese-made exports to the U.S., analysts said, and it could spell big trouble for the industry.

“All it will take is one contaminated batch of drugs from China and your pharma company will have really big problems,” said Funtleyder of Miller Tabak. “Given the skepticism around China, I’m not sure that a production facility in the continent to ship back here is worth doing.”

Standard Chartered expands China biz

Standard Chartered Bank, one of the first foreign banks to incorporate in China, is planning a 66 percent increase in staff and to expand its branches by a third by the end of the year.

“We are on track with our branch expansion, with 30 locations in 15 Chinese cities, and still plan to have about 40 locations by the year end, subject to the regulatory approvals,” said group chief executive Peter Sands in a statement on the bank’s mid-term business report.

The bank planned to recruit another 1,400 people to bring staff numbers in China to 3,500, Sands added.

Standard Chartered has opened an operations center in Tianjin, a municipality striving to become an economic center in north China.

Sands said Standard Chartered in China more than doubled its income in the first half, without giving details.

The bank’s first-half operating income rose 28 percent to 5.2 billion US dollars and total assets jumped 25 percent to 297 billion dollars, the report revealed.

The London-based bank, which does most of its business in Asia, and three other foreign-funded banks — HSBC, Citibank and Bank of East Asia — officially began business in China four months ago as the first locally incorporated overseas financial companies approved by China’s banking regulator.
It means that the four banks can compete with their Chinese counterparts on an equal footing, analysts say.

Foreign banks were previously restricted to offering foreign-currency services to individuals, although they could provide both local and foreign-currency services to companies.

China fully opened its banking sector to foreign banks in December last year in line with its commitments to the World Trade Organization.