• AirAsia Maverick Turns Venture Capitalist to Seed Southeast Asia

    March 12, 2019 By in Uncategorized Leave a comment

    Fast cars, fast planes, fast football (of the British kind) — and now, fast money. Tony Fernandes has always had a maverick streak.

    Asia’s answer to Richard Branson, the billionaire behind the Virgin empire, Fernandes has taken pride in taking on the big boys in aviation, and winning. Now the co-founder of AirAsia (AIABF) is taking on Silicon Valley.

    Like SoftBank Corp.’s (SFTBY) founder Masayoshi Son, Fernandes is a self-made pioneer in Asia, a continent known for its family money more than its entrepreneurs. And like Softbank and Son, he is now setting up a venture-capital fund to invest in startups.

    Neither 21st century tycoon exactly shuns the spotlight, either. SoftBank, backed by billions in Saudi funding, has aspirations to take on the world through its Vision Fund.

    AirAsia’s aim is more modest, and set squarely on its home market in Southeast Asia, a grounded and sensible start.

    AirAsia transferred its digital businesses into a new entity, RedBeat Ventures, in the middle of last year. It announced this week that it will partner with arguably Silicon Valley’s most-successful accelerator, 500 Startups, and set up a venture-capital fund, RedBeat Capital.

    AirAsia is Asia’s most-successful budget airline. In a continent where collusion between “rivals” on prices and routes has been commonplace, it has fought for a place for itself by flying out of secondary airports in major cities to keep costs down.

    That works, and then some. AirAsia reportedly has the lowest operational costs in the world for an airline, with a unit cost, per available seat kilometer, of 3.5 U.S. cents. That means it breaks even if its flights are only half-full (52% full, to be precise).

    RedBeat Capital will be based in San Francisco, and will seek to “develop a travel-technology ecosystem,” according to Fernandes. Its remit is to find startups worthy of investment in travel, lifestyle, logistics and fintech for Southeast Asia.

    Click here to read the rest of the story on Real Money at TheStreet.com.

  • The View From Asia: Trump-Xi Deal Is Just a Temporary Truce

    December 4, 2018 By in Business, China, Feature, Geopolitics, Investment, Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
    The View From Asia: Trump-Xi Deal Is Just a Temporary Truce

    This story originally appeared on TheStreet.com.

    It was over Argentinian steak that Chinese President Xi Jinping and his U.S. counterpart President Donald Trump hashed out a trade truce in Buenos Aires over the weekend. But it is Chinese factory owners who will be most relieved.

    Xi and Trump agreed for a ceasefire in their increasingly fraught war, meaning U.S. tariffs will not raise from 10% to 25% on Jan. 1, as planned, with further talks to hash out future trade to come.

    Here in Asia, we are well aware that this is only a temporary truce. Hostilities have only been suspended for 90 days. Trump continues to play both roles in the good cop/bad cop routine with Xi, sweet talking Xi in person. That kind of “face” goes down very well in China, where both the government and the people at large are desperate for recognition on the world stage.

    No doubt, the agreement has eased immediate fears, which were undoubtedly unsettling investors in Asia. Emerging markets in particular have been paying a heavy price, more so as investors try to reduce risk than because of any direct effects from the trade war.

    I’m writing this from Jakarta, and the Indonesian rupiah has been shaken like a palm-oil plant in a typhoon by potential disruptions to economic growth in the region, as well as U.S. interest rates rising. Earlier this year, the rupiah sank to levels last seen during the Asian financial crisis 20 years ago.

    … click here to read the rest of the story.

  • Trump Takes on China in Trade, but Is Wrong With His Attack

    November 10, 2017 By in Business, China, Geopolitics, Politics Leave a comment
    Trump Takes on China in Trade, but Is Wrong With His Attack

    U.S. President Donald Trump stood side by side with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday, despite the fact that Trump continues to depict — wrongly — the China-U.S. trade relationship as toe-to-toe.

    That relationship is “one-sided and unfair,” Trump said in a joint address in Beijing. There’s the “shockingly high” trade deficit to consider, he explained. There’s also the $300 billion in the theft of U.S. intellectual property and forced technology transfer that the United States suffers every year, per U.S. government figures.

    Trump has, to be fair, delivered on this, the most-important trip of his presidency. He has conveyed more precisely in person his message that the United States is disadvantaged by its trade with China and Japan. He’s wrong, but he’s right to express himself so clearly when he previously fudged the point when meeting the leaders of those countries on home soil.

    At least he won applause from the assembled Chinese and U.S. executives in attendance to hear the two leaders speak. It was for a back-handed compliment.

    “I don’t blame China,” Trump conceded, pausing when clapping began. “Who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the benefit of its citizens? I give China great credit.” Cue more applause.

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  • China’s New Leaders Are No Threat to President Xi

    October 26, 2017 By in Asia, China, Communist Party, Geopolitics, Politics Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
    China’s New Leaders Are No Threat to President Xi

    China’s new roster of top leaders have shuffled into their places on the red carpet for their curtain call, the procession leaving no question as to who is in charge. President Xi Jinping has been reappointed to head the Communist Party, with no one waiting in the wings as his nominated heir.

    What’s more, not one of the new members of the Politburo Standing Committee, China’s cabinet, is under the age of 60, meaning none of them is likely to succeed Xi when and if he stands down at the end of his second term in 2022.

    It’s a highly unusual move, unprecedented in recent years, leaving Xi to continue his push for reform and fight against corruption unquestioned. Critics worry that Xi’s “rule” has evolved into a dictatorship, the president eliminating rivals who question his positions and squelching stories about his family’s amassed wealth.

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