23 Kasım 2015 Pazartesi

My Tokyo

One of my earliest job was at Nomura Securities in Sydney but I get to travel to Tokyo HQ with clients many times. I know many people have been to Japan, esp Tokyo ... and some are starting to venture into the nicer cities such as Kyoto, Osaka and Sapporo.

When in Tokyo, we tend to do the usual tourist stuff: Disneyland, Shinjuku, Shibuya ... temples, etc...

Here are a few of my favourite things to do whenever in Tokyo:

1) Sumo Tour: Tokyo Tournament & Chanko Dinner Plan (12,700 yen)

Its an amazing, short, 4 hour tour by JapaniCan. If you love Sumo you would be extra happy, even if you do not, its an amazing way to get in touch and experience it firsthand.

Sumo tournaments go around the major cities, they rotate and I think there are 6 tournaments, with Tokyo hosting it twice a year. Each time, its about two weeks long, and you just pick a day, hopefully it coincides with your trip.

http://www.japanican.com/en/tour/detail/F560_/?aff=SEM

STEP 1Choose a Date

Choose a tour departure date from the calendar to continue to the next step.

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
27	28	29	30	31	1 ×	2 ×
3 ×	4 ×	5 ×	6 ×	7 ×	8 ×	9 ×
10 ○	11 △	12 ○	13 ○	14 ○	15 ○	16 ○
17 ○	18 ○	19 ○	20 ○	21 ○	22 ○	23 ○
24 ○	25 ×	26 ×	27 ×	28 ×	29 ×	30 ×
31 ×	1	2	3	4	5	6

○…Seats available
△…Few seats available
×…Not available

The tour starts with a gallery tour inside the stadium dedicated to the history and past champs, an eye opener. Then you can go to the mess hall where they serve the exact lunch that Sumo wrestlers have (albeit smaller portion) all day. You then watch the rituals and the fights for about 3 hours, its fun. Then you may join the after competition Chanko dinner (again what the Sumo wrestlers have usually) or opt out.

2) Tokyo Blue Note Jazz

Think of the Frank Sinatra / Dean Martin nightclub days in intimate jazz clubs ... thats Tokyo Blue Note, its classy, very well designed, intimate and romantic. Whenever you are in Tokyo, check out their schedule of events, maybe you can find some artists you'd like to watch. Or just go and be adventurous. It has a set dinner that is pretty good before the music starts. I have managed to catch Pablo Cruise, Roberta Flack and Christopher Cross performing here before.

http://www.bluenote.co.jp/jp/about/

20159
10
11
12
20161
2
3
4
5
6

1 tue.

YOSHIKO KISHINO 20th anniversary tour -Anthology-

Music charge ¥6,000

2 wed.	SAM MOORE -80th Anniversary Celebration-with special guest TORTOISE MATSUMOTO (12.2 wed.), THE GOSPELLERS (12.3 thu.)
3 thu.

Music charge ¥13,500

4 fri.

＜追加公演＞ SAM MOORE -80th Anniversary Celebration- with special guest ROY(THE BAWDIES) (12.4 fri.)

Music charge ¥13,500

5 sat.	TITO JACKSON from JACKSON 5
6 sun.

Music charge ¥9,500

7 mon.

TOKU “Dear Mr. Sinatra” Special Stage

Music charge ¥7,000

8 tue.	THE LEGENDARY COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA directed by SCOTTY BARNHART - A Very Swingin’ Basie Christmas -
9 wed.
10 thu.
11 fri.[OFF]
12 sat.

Music charge ¥8,900

13 sun.

HIROSHI TACHI “JUST ONE NIGHT”

Music charge ¥13,000

14 mon.	HIROMI THE TRIO PROJECT featuring Anthony Jackson & Simon Phillips
15 tue.
16 wed.
17 thu.
18 fri.
19 sat.
20 sun.

Music charge ¥8,900

21 mon.	AKIKO WADA -WADASOUL-
22 tue.

Music charge ¥13,000

23 wed.	Christmas Evening with LALAH HATHAWAY
24 thu.
25 fri.

Music charge ¥8,800

26 sat.	INCOGNITO
27 sun.

Music charge ¥9,500

28 mon.

熱帯JAZZ楽団 THE 忘年会LIVE 2015

Music charge ¥7,800

29 tue.	INCOGNITO
30 wed.
31 thu.

Music charge ¥9,500

3) Cafe Anniversaire, Omotesando

Possibly my favourite cafe in Tokyo. Its perched right in the middle of the slope in Omotesando (the new Ginza). That slope alone has the prettiest luxury shops on it. Its a wonderful stroll and its nice to window shop or you could spend literally thousands in 20 minutes. That road alone has a lot of classy diversity and energy about it. Lovely trees and foilage paints the sidewalks.

People walking their beautiful dogs (expensive to keep dogs in Tokyo), its Parisian chic meets gentle classy Tokyo high class.

But its not all snobbery. Right in the middle is Cafe Anniversarie, and itsactually borders the small lane that leads to a quaint romantic church.

"The café is part of a wedding factory, including a faux chapel situated beyond an arched passageway. On certain days, once every hour, newlywed couples pop out of the chapel and promenade through the archway heralded by the café trumpeter and his female accompaniest on the electric organ. Customers at the outside tables are given handbells to ring congratulations to the passing couple."

... and you can witness 2 to 3 weddings parties coming out of the church on weekends within an hour or two. Its kinda fun but Japanese being Japanese, they actually can schedule 3 or 4 weddings within a few hours. So, while drinking coffee, you are greeted by boisterous happy people wishing the couple well, along the lane.

The food and coffee are very good at the cafe, too many dishes to mention. During winter, sit outside as they have nice heaters surrounding the tables, watch the world go by.

20 Kasım 2015 Cuma

Banking in Crisis Wins the Wadsworth Prize

My book Banking in Crisis has recently been awarded the Wadsworth Prize by the Business Archives Council for the best business history book published in 2014. The list of previous winners can be viewed here. At the awards ceremony at Lloyds last week, the chair of the judging panel, Professor Richard Roberts, said the following:

Early on, Judith Rowbotham helpfully defined the book that should emerge as the winner as Q: ‘the book that we all felt it would puzzle everybody if it DIDN’T win.’ And the book that meets that criterion is: Banking in Crisis: The Rise and Fall of British Banking Stability, 1800 to the Present, by John Turner. Why was that? Well, this is both an original and an important book. It provides a lucid analysis and critique of the development of British banking over the last two centuries. It is the culmination and synthesis of a decade and a half of research on aspects of the history of banking, and of bank corporate structure, management and ownership. Banking in Crisis elucidates with admirable clarity complex financial concepts and debates as context for discussion of the long-term development of British banking. It presents original analyses of the significance of British banking crises and the lengthy stability of British banking over the 120 years from 1878 to 2007-8. It deploys history to propose reforms to the governance of banking to restore banking stability. Pessimistically, it concludes that a reversion to crises, as characterised British banking in the first half of the 19^th century, is probably the new normal. In sum, it is a book that is original, insightful, persuasive, timely and highly readable. So, our congratulations to John Turner.

6 Kasım 2015 Cuma

English Speakers

While English might not be the language that is used by the most people on earth, it is the most important international business language. If you are doing research, you will find most works being in English already.

The English Proficiency Index has just released statistics on where English is learned around the world and quality of teaching to find the countries with the highest proficiency of English as a second language:

Malaysia should never need to debate on the need to use English is Maths and Sciences, plus boost up the teaching of the English language, and reading of important novels and literature. It is a critical part of being connected to the world.

Imagine a pure Malay speaker, and another who commands both Malay and English well. Imagine how they would be using the internet - socially, for researching, for reading of articles, for communicating with friends and family, etc... one would be swimming in a pond, while other has the oceans of the world to dive into, for fun, for knowledge, ... the English language allows for options to be available to them who can use them well.

Look at the table, why are we even on that table ... when you are a small country without a critical mass of consumers ... you need English to attract investments, to sell, to gain knowledge, to participate etc...

Yes, there are countries that do well with little or paying scant attention to English - China, Japan, South Korea, Russia... etc.. thats because their population base is big enough.

There have been prominent scientists, CEOs and high standing managers at global multinationals ... from Malaysia ... without English, those roles would never be an option for them.

30 Ekim 2015 Cuma

Problems with Stress Testing

Since the 2008 financial crisis, banks around the globe have been subject to stress testing. The concept of stress testing is found in engineering (can bridges withstand wind speeds of x mph?), computer science, cardiology, birthing, nuclear power plants, etc.. In banking, the idea of stress testing is whether a bank can remain insolvent under certain economic scenarios (e.g., a fall in house prices, a rise in unemployment etc) and how it would fare if a 'tail event' were to hit the banking system (e.g., the failure of a major financial institution). Central banks conduct these tests to ensure that banks have enough capital to absorb losses which may occur under any of these circumstances. Below is a Bank of England video which explains how they go about stress testing banks.

However, I have two issues with stress tests. First, stress testing makes banking stability akin to an engineering problem. But stress tests cannot pick up or model how human behaviour changes in reaction to changes in economic conditions or tail events. Second, the stress testing approach views capital as a cushion to absorb losses. As I argue in Banking in Crisis, this ex post view of bank capital is not the way our ancestors viewed bank capital - they viewed it in an ex ante sense i.e., bank capital constrains banks from taking excess risk and encourages decision-makers to act in a prudent fashion.

23 Ekim 2015 Cuma

[Budget 2016] The "Diabetes-Free" Budget...

As expected, the Budget 2016 this round will concentrating on how to increase revenue of Government and spending cut due to lower oil revenue and subdued economic situation be it locally or globally.

Well, this is a "diabetes-free" budget without any "sugar" being dished out. Generally, it's not something to cheer about especially to those high income earners and businesses. In summary, please refer to below self-explained picture:

It's not so good to earn too much next year onward. High income earners are "forced" to care more about the society by paying more tax.

For those who have family and children, you are the main beneficiary of the budget this round. With higher tax relief being given, you can save more tax and hopefully this could help you to cope with rising cost of raising a child :)

BR1M is going to continue for another year (until the next election?) and with higher amount. Anyway, the quantum of Rm50 increase could really help you to counter the effect of GST ???

This will be another impact to businesses in Malaysia, especially to SME / SMI. Based on statistic, the most heavily affected industries will be manufacturing and plantation sectors. Glove makers (Top Glove, Supermax, Hartalega...) and planters (Sime Darby, Felda, IOI Corp...) would had some hard time moving forward.

22 Ekim 2015 Perşembe

Whither the Chinese Economy?

Tomorrow evening I will be speaking to the Mandarin Speakers Association in Belfast. The title of my talk is: Whither the Chinese Economy? My talk will very much be an outsider's perspective on the Chinese economy. I will also provide a long-run perspective by placing China's recent growth in the context of its long-run economic performance. In my talk I will be addressing the following three questions:

1. Why was China a laggard among major economies by 1800 and why did it remain so?
2. Why has China experienced unprecedented economic growth since 1978?
3. Can China avoid the 'Argentina trap'?