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Dear all,
本来Cliff同学都淡出江湖了，结果Susan同学最近搬家很辛苦～～～所以就代发一天经管的～～～希望大家enjoy～～～
打个小广告，Cliff同学今天刚刚集齐GT两颗龙珠，还在搜集essay、recommendation等等剩下几颗～～最近在看各大学校的网页研究雷达，要搜集龙珠的童鞋跟Cliff同学搭个伴，多多交流噢～～～
Cliff同学QQ：80897298；mail: heathcliffluo(在) gmail.com
闲话打住！上文章啦！今天Speed Time 1是一篇文章；Time2、3是一篇文章；Time4、5是一篇文章……标题拉黑可见……今天的越障虽然长达1300+个字，但其实真是蛮简单的……大家加油哇！
Part I: Speed
Article 1
【Time 1】
Smithfield Deal Sparks Concern in Hong Kong
As a city that gets the vast majority of its food and water from mainland China, Hong Kong is no stranger to food-safety fears. On Thursday, news that China’s Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. had acquired Smithfield Foods Inc. SFD -1.83%─the largest U.S. pork producer and supplier of popular products to Hong Kong─touched off similar anxieties.
Over 90% of Hong Kong’s meat products come from mainland China. But the city’s thriving expat community and demand from many health-conscious locals have also fueled a brisk business in meat imports from places such as North America and Australia, which are seen as a safer alternative.
Winson Chan of Million (Far East) Ltd., which imports mostly U.S. and Canadian meats into Hong Kong, said Thursday that in addition to Smithfield’s pork meat, his company sells several shipping containers full of millions of Smithfield Inc. chicken hot dogs every month. The hot dogs, he said, are a popular breakfast and café food staple in Hong Kong, often served alongside instant noodles. Smithfield Inc. worked together with Million (Far East) Ltd in 2009 to create the product specifically for the Hong Kong market, he said.
“We are very concerned about safety, because our customers are really concerned about food origin. We have to rely on reliable sources,” said Mr. Chan, who said he sells Smithfield products to the city’s two largest grocery chains, PARKnSHOP and Wellcome. “That’s why some of our customers were concerned about the acquisition.”
However, Mr. Chan said that when he spoke to Smithfield representatives to convey such fears yesterday, he was told that the American company’s top management, sales strategy and plant operations wouldn’t change.
“They said, ‘Don’t worry Winson, it’s just like when Hong Kong returned to China.’”
While the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997, it has remained largely self-governing and continues to operate with its own independent political and economic system.
In addition to Smithfield’s pork and chicken products, Shuanghui─China’s largest pork products company─also has a healthy presence in the Hong Kong market. A Shuanghui employee surnamed Zhang said Thursday that the company has been selling products in Hong Kong since 2001, mostly frozen sausages, including “crispy cheese sausage” and “honey crispy sausage,” to local supermarkets and fast food eateries. Based in Henan province, the company is the majority shareholder of China’s largest meat processor, whose company chairman Wan Long has been dubbed “China’s No. 1 Butcher.” According to company statements, Shuanghui slaughters some 15 million pigs a year.
(428)
Resource: WSJ
Article 2
【Time 2】
The New Retirement: Why You Don’t Have to Pay Off Your Mortgage
Low interest rates have changed the game for retirees—but not always in a bad way.
Consider your mortgage. With rates having fallen so far, there may no longer be a pressing need to own your house outright before you call it quits at the office.
This may be of little comfort to millions of savers trying to eke by each month on income from bank deposits paying below 1%. But today’a low rates are a boon to those saddled with a mortgage payment at a time in life when carrying large debts has long been ill-advised.
In 1989, just 26.4% of all households were retired with a mortgage, according to data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. That jumped to 46.5% by 2007, before receding a bit during the recession.
These stats trouble traditionalists, who view owing money on a house in retirement as heresy. After all, paying off a mortgage brings peace of mind, because you know your living expenses have been cut and that your home equity offers a sturdy safety net.
(252)
【Time 3】
Yet clinging to a mortgage in retirement has benefits too, especially with the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage running at just 3.5%. You might be better off keeping the mortgage and investing the money elsewhere, which amounts to borrowing at a tax-deductible 3.5% in order to start a business, invest in stocks, or purchase an income property. Over time, such investments should provide superior returns.
This new calculus assumes that you have the means to pay off your mortgage in the first place. Many folks have been downsized into retirement prematurely and may still hold a mortgage because they can’t do anything about it. But for those with a choice, the basic rule of thumb: If you expect to earn more after tax on your investments than you pay after tax on your mortgage, keep the mortgage. However, if you are a conservative investor and keep your money in bank CDs and Treasury bonds, it is probably better to pay off the housing debt.
Some factors to consider:
Taxes If your source of cash to pay off a mortgage is a 401(k) plan or other tax-advantaged account, keep the mortgage. Taking a large distribution will trigger a tax hit and possibly push you into a higher tax bracket. It might also bump you up to a level where you’ll owe more tax on your Social Security benefits.
Tenure If you are going to sell the house in the next few years anyway, you’ll pay off the mortgage at that time. Keep the mortgage now for added financial flexibility.
Liability Retirement accounts generally enjoy greater protections than a home from bankruptcies and lawsuits. If you suspect trouble, keep the mortgage in order to keep your retirement savings out of harm’s way.
Cash flow If you expect to tap your home equity for living expenses, keep the mortgage. It’s cheaper than paying off your housing debt and turning around to take out a home equity line or reverse mortgage.
Monthly payments You need to be prepared for unforeseen issues like health problems, but also to keep paying for things like property tax and neighborhood association fees. You may also want to start giving money to family. Pay off the mortgage to avoid strain on your monthly budget and to allow you to spend the additional cash flow in a way that makes you happy.
(396)
Resource: Business Time
Article 3
【Time 4】
Why Flickr, Not Facebook, Is the Place to Put Your Photos
What’s the best way to put your pictures on the Internet these days? There are at least two answers to that question.
If you’re just asking which photo sharing service is the most popular, then Facebook is the hands-down winner. People upload roughly 350 million photos to the social network every day.
Snapchat isn’t far behind, at 150 million photos per day. (The difference being that Snapchat photos are hidden—but not deleted, it turns out—up to 10 seconds after you open them.) Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is in third place with 40 million new photos per day.
But if the question is which photo site is the best for annotating, curating, storing, and otherwise managing your photos, the answer is definitely not Facebook. It’s Flickr. I’ve been using the service since 2004—even before it was bought by Yahoo—so I speak from experience.
Measuring by sheer upload volumes, Flickr lost out to Facebook years ago. Flickr users upload a measly 1.4 million photos per day. Mary Meeker, the prominent Internet analyst now at the venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, dramatized the difference in a bar chart from her Internet Trends report this week; Flickr appears as a tiny yellow sliver atop a column dominated by Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram.
（216）
【Time 5】
The lesson seems to be that for most people, the act of sharing a photo is more important than the photo itself. This means Facebook’s sheer reach, with more than 1 billion active users worldwide, gives it a huge advantage. On top of that, years of neglect on the part of Yahoo’s higher-ups meant that Flickr missed out on fundamental changes like the social and mobile revolutions. Things got so bad that I wrote a column in 2011 wondering what comes after Flickr.
But change is in the air. Yahoo’s new leader, Marissa Mayer, thinks Flickr is cool and has sent more resources its way. In December the company finally released an iPhone version of Flickr, which has won much-deserved praise, and this week it followed up with an Android app. Flickr just overhauled the design of its flagship website, making it far easier for users to browse photos. And most astonishing of all, Yahoo announced this week that all Flickr users will get a terabyte of photo storage space, free.
A terabyte is a ginormous amount of data. When Google informed the world back on April 1, 2004, that Gmail users would get 1 gigabyte of free e-mail storage, most people dismissed the extravagant figure as an April Fool’s joke. A terabyte is 1,024 gigabytes—enough to store half a million photos a the 6-megapixel resolution of most smartphones. A hard drive with that much space would cost you $70 to $100.
So here’s my point: Flickr is back. Which is great, because Facebook is a terrible place to store and manage your photos.
(265)
Resources: Xconomy
Part II: Obstacle
Chinese Meat Producer Shuanghui to Buy Smithfield Foods
Chinese meat producer Shuanghui International Holdings Ltd. agreed to acquire Smithfield Foods Inc. SFD +28.42% for about $4.7 billion, striking what would be the largest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese buyer─should it get past what is likely to be heavy regulatory scrutiny.
Shuanghui agreed to pay $34 a share for Smithfield, the world's largest hog farmer and pork processor, marking a 31% premium to its Tuesday closing price of $25.97. Including debt, the deal values the Smithfield, Va.-based company at $7.1 billion.
In a sign that the deal may face more than just regulatory challenges, Smithfield Chairman Joseph Luter said in an interview Wednesday that other bidders for the company may still come forward. 'Lots of people love us,' he said. 'I'll leave it at that.'
Indeed, a person familiar with the matter said that at least one other bidder is considering whether to jump in.
Smithfield owns an array of household names, including Armour, Farmland and Healthy Ones, and its products are sold in 12 countries, according to its website. The company's shares, which have risen steadily in recent years, were ahead 29% at $33.55 in afternoon trading following news of the deal, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
The move by Shuanghui, a company also known as Shineway, would be the biggest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese corporation, according to data compiled by Dealogic, regardless of whether the debt is included in the value. That makes it a landmark development in China's effort to expand beyond its shores as its vast economy booms.
But the country and its companies have often been thwarted in their quest to strike foreign takeover deals in the past─most notably oil company Cnooc Ltd.'s 0883.HK -1.69% effort in 2005 to buy Unocal Corp. for $18.5 billion─amid fears that they could jeopardize U.S. national security.
There is no guarantee that political concerns, fears surrounding Chinese food safety or other factors won't scuttle the deal before it is consummated.
The companies said they would submit the deal voluntarily for review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
'We really believe this transaction doesn't have any national security concerns,' Smithfield CEO Larry Pope said in an interview Wednesday. 'In the end, I think CFIUS will see this as a positive, not a negative,' he said.
Mr. Pope said the company will contact its customers in coming days to get their reaction to the deal. 'I'm sure there will be concerns from some of our customers,' he said.
During a conference call with analysts, Mr. Pope stressed that the deal was about exporting more of Smithfield's meat─to China and elsewhere in Asia─and not importing Chinese pork. Currently, about 25% of Smithfield's exports are to China.
'There will be no impact on how we do business operationally in America,' Mr. Pope said on a conference call. 'This transaction is good for our business and for the producers and suppliers for whom we work.'
A union representing 16,000 Smithfield employees Wednesday signaled it supported the company's proposed sale.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union is 'pleased' that current Smithfield management will stay in place and that all collective bargaining agreements will remain in place, union president Joseph Hansen said in a statement.
There's little argument to be made that pork is a critical part of the national infrastructure in the U.S., a person familiar with Shuanghui International said. The company also believes that being privately owned, not state-controlled, will help ease any potential concerns in Washington.
Founded in 1936, Smithfield had a market capitalization of $3.6 billion as of Tuesday's close.
Under Mr. Pope, Smithfield has expanded its packaged-meats brands, such as Eckrich sausage and Smithfield bacon, to garner higher profit margins. The company has long been a big player in selling hams and other fresh pork products for grocers' meat cases, but those meats─often sold under the grocer's brand─carry lower profit margins than packaged, branded meats.
Smithfield has ratcheted up its spending on advertising to become a bigger player in packaged meats, where it lacks the national brand recognition of rivals like Hillshire Brands Co. HSH -0.85% and Hormel Foods Corp. HRL -2.04% The company's pork brands largely have a regional following.
Smithfield notched a marketing deal in 2011 with auto-racing legend Richard Petty's Nascar team, and Mr. Pope said the arrangement fits nicely with his company's products because many male racing fans are the type of men who like its hot dogs and bacon.
But the company stumbled in 2008 and 2009, suffering rare losses, as its hog farms faced a big run-up in grain costs as the burgeoning U.S. ethanol industry led to higher prices for corn. Smithfield also faced an industrywide glut of hogs, pressuring prices for pork. Smithfield's shares tumbled to below $6 a share and it had to raise new capital, including selling a 5% stake to Chinese state-owned food company Cofco Ltd.
During part of that period, when some analysts feared the company would file for bankruptcy, Mr. Pope said in a 2012 interview, he slept so little that his doctor had to prescribe sleeping medication. 'He told me, 'Larry, I've got to get you to sleep or you're going to have a heart attack.'
The deal comes on the heels of agitation from a large Smithfield shareholder, Continental Grain Co., to split up the company.
Continental Grain, which together with several related parties recently owned about 6% of Smithfield, has said the board should consider separating into three businesses: hog production, fresh pork and packaged-meats production, and international pork operations.
Mr. Pope said in the interview that he has had a relationship with Shuanghui long before Continental started pushing for change. Shuanghui looked at some of Continental's proposals and disagreed with them, he said.
Mr. Pope said on the conference call that Smithfield first broached the idea of a deal with Shuanghui about four years ago and has had discussions with the Chinese company since then, but 'pricing has always been an issue.'
Mr. Pope, a longtime Smithfield executive, became CEO in 2006, filling the shoes of the company's longtime leader, Mr. Luter, who was the architect of its strategy to become vertically integrated, snapping up hog farms along with its pork-processing plants. Under Mr. Luter, the company's shares soared over three decades.
Shuanghui, based in Henan province in central China, is the majority shareholder of China's largest meat processor, Henan Shuanghui Investment & Development Co., 000895.SZ +1.47% which is publicly listed in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. Shuanghui sells products under the English name Shineway.
Shuanghui Chairman Wan Long, 72, is known there as 'China's No. 1 Butcher,' because of the company's statements that it slaughters more than 15 million pigs per year.
Like many of China's top business leaders, Mr. Wan has cultivated political connections in Beijing. For the past 15 years he has been a member of China's National People's Congress, a national-level rubber-stamp legislature that meets once a year to formalize measures proposed by leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. China's largest pork producer by output also has ties to the West. A consortium that includes Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS +1.35% acquired control of a Shuanghui affiliate in 2006 for about two billion yuan ($327 million), and a Goldman Sachs fund still owns a 5.2% direct stake, according to a recent filing by Shuanghui's listed unit.
Like many of China's largest food companies, Shuanghui gets much of its products from private farmers. The practice has come under scrutiny in China amid a spate of food scandals in which poorly regulated small farms played a role. In interviews, Mr. Wan has said he wants to increase the amount of pigs that come from company-owned farms. In the press release confirming the deal, the companies stressed they would 'retain world-leading food safety and quality control standards.'
Barclays BARC.LN -1.57% PLC bankers are advising Smithfield, while Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and McGuireWoods LLP are serving as its legal counsel. Morgan Stanley MS +1.01% is advising Shuanghui, while Paul Hastings LLP and Troutman Sanders LLP are its legal counsel.
(1376)
Resources: WSJ
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发表于 2013-5-31 22:40:15
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