In the second quarter of this year, net profit was 159 million yuan, with net revenues increased 27 percent to 476 million yuan. But gross margin stayed at 77 percent with a decrease of 2% quarter-on-quarter.

Chief executive officer of Ctrip, Fan Min said, they were glad with the solid profit they have achieved in this period. Although they faced challenges, they managed to consolidate their competitive strength and would continue to improve their service for customers, expand sales and marketing channels so as to extend their leadership.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

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It was the subsidiary company of Sinopec Group, Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corp (SIPC), that settled the deal. On June 24th, Sinopec in Beijing claimed that they would pay C$52.80 ($45) per share to buy the corporation, in cash.

They declared that buying this company will help SIPC to reach its goal of thriving in the market of West Africa and Iraq, enhancing its business in the whole world and making its offshore oil and gas assets portfolio more flexible. Besides, Addax Petroleum has great exploration potential, which will contribute to SIPC’s promising future, especially its offshore deepwater exploration projects.

Though Addax is based in Geneva, its shares are sold in Toronto and London. At the end of 2008, this company had 536 million barrels of oil reserves, including the present and the estimated ones, with the mean production of about 140,000 barrels of oil everyday, which means the annual production is 7 millions tons.  

Most of Addax’s oil and gas assets are located in West Africa and the Middle East, and the most important ones are in Nigeria. From January to March, as the company said, it produced 134,730 barrels of oil per day. At least 75% of its production was from the assets in Nigeria.

Before the day Addax declared that it was taken over by Sinopec, the price of C$52.80 per share is at a 47 percent premium to Addax’s closing share price on June 5. Experts said that Sinopec’s purchase was “wise”, because the oil and gas assets had been reducing in value, due to the worldwide economic recession.

According to Lin Baoqiang, director of the China Center for Energy Economics Research of Xiamen University, it is good time for Chinese oil companies to make overseas investment for the current low price. The price of crude oil has declined more than 50 percent comparing with the $147 per barrel of last July.

Analysts said this deal indicates that the largest refiner in Asia, Sinopec is to further expand its upstream assets abroad. Han Xiaoping, energy analyst with Beijing Falcon Pioneer Technology Co. said that Sinopec’s deal also conforms to the government’s energy strategy to diversify China’s energy supplies.

As China’s imported oil accounts for nearly half of the total oil consumption, specialists have called for a diversified source of oil importing to search for more sustainable supplies.

In recent years, Sinopec, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) and China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), China’s three major oil companies, have all speeded up their overseas expansion.

It is reported that China’s largest oil producer, CNPC, is negotiating with Mongolia this month about exploration and production opportunities. According to Bloomberg News’s interview of Galsan Batsukh, Mongolia’s ambassador to China, the talks will cover investing on a refinery as well as transportation and storage facilities. He said a pipeline from Mongolia to the bordering Chinese province of Inner Mongolia is included in the long-term plans.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.

Both Mountain Partners Group and the managing director of Navi Capital Yang Lei would give their efforts to establish the Taishan Angel Fund, the first-round capital of which would be ＄20 to ＄30 million.

This time the average amount to invest to single company would be about ＄500,000,  much lower comparing with $2-3 million before.

The global financial crisis made many capital investment companies change their plans from focusing on pre-IPO companies to start-up companies, said Cornelius Boersch, founder of Mountain Partners.

He said the Taishan Angel Fund would focus on the areas which were highly affected by the economic crisis, such as hi-technology, new media and telecommunications.

The invested companies will benefit a lot from the excellent services provided by this Fund. It would provide sufficient capital, advanced technologies and much more convenient channels to China market, Yang said.

Yang was once the CEO of Linktone, a NASDAQ-listed company. During 11 months of this position, he changed the fortune of this company and gained a great success.

He was the man who got the Linktone to be NASDAQ-listed company and made the valuation of the company increase 20 times.

The Moutain partners Group was established by Cornelius Boersch and Daniel S Wenzel in 2004.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.

During the 2009 Hewitt Best Employers in China session on March 26th, 10 companies said that they have plans for recruitment this year.

The CEO of McDonald’s China, Jeffrey Schwartz said that McDonald’s was ambitious on the Chinese market. Meanwhile, 175 new restaurants will be opened in China, which will create around 10,000 hob opportunities this year.

Xie Wenjian, CEO of Johnson&Johnson Medical China, said that it was good to use talent in this hard time, and he also added that the current situation made them easier to have good staff with an affordable price.

Xie also said that they thought that it was a great chance for those companies to grow in China because of the government’s medical welfare policy. In the first 2 months, Johnson&Johnson Medical has employed about 100 university students and it will continue this plan throughout this year.

US car giant General Motors (GM) claimed that it would expand the staff number in China while it is cutting jobs in the other part of the world now. “Without accurate new job numbers, GE will hire more people in China especially in research sector.” said Kevin E Wale, president, GM China.

In the report Hewitt Associates said that good staff can enhance human resource cultures which can be helpful for the productivity.

The elements for an employee to work harder are regarded as the most important change in the 2009 report. While 2 years age, in 2007, the top three elements were: career development, salary and performance management. But this year, they have been replaced by career ideal, salary and career opportunity.

The deputy managing director of Hewitt, Xu Feng, said that this kind of change reflects that the employees are paying more attention on whether their own values can be fulfilled in the company instead of focusing on the promotion or salary.

Human resource directors at the meeting expressed that cutting costs in non-human capital areas such as travel and other expenses should be advocated rather than cutting salaries.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.

Senior company executives forecasted that there would be 30 percent growth in sales as sales rose to 3.3 billion yuan in 2008.

Jeffrey, chief executive officer, Novartis China said that 2008 is the best year in their sales in recent years, in spite of the financial turmoil.

This year, a global sales growth of five percent is Novartis’ target. According to Li, the proportion of Novartis’ global sales in China is one percent.

2.26 billion yuan has already been invested and more will be laid in establishing infrastructure, research and development (R&D) and marketing, the CEO said.

The sharp contrast is that during other multinationals are cutting jobs, 20 percent more staff are planned to be hire by the company for the expansion plans in China.

The company will focus on the talent training. Li showed that the company would spend double money on talent training.

From this year, Novartis China will pay more attention to Local community clinics in China in order to benefit from China medical reform program.

It will help train doctors and instruct patients at the clinics. What is more, diagnosis and therapy standards for commonly and frequently encountered diseases will be popularized in public by Novartis China.

In 2008, Novartis China started the establishment of its R&D center in Shanghai, which is the third biggest within the group and ranks top in Asia.

Li added that Novartis is the only foreign pharmaceutical company to integrate comprehensive fundamental research work in China.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs granted the honour of the 2008 China Charity Award to Novartis China for donating cash and drugs worth more than 15 million yuan during the Sichuan earthquake.

The primary school in Sichuan, constructed with 1 million yuan which was donated by the employees from Novartis China is expected to put into use later this year.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.

The virtual assistant industry is booming. Most of virtual assistants aren’t physically located in the same place as their employers. They communicate with their employers via email, phone, Instant messaging tools and fax. Most of them are typically self employed and work at home. The services they provide are limited by individuals’ education and expertise. Most of them only provide secretarial service. The reliability and quality of service are highly unpredictable.

BPOVIA takes the concept of virtual assistant to next level by transforming this self employed, work-at-home practice to more serious business. All BPOVIA virtual assistants are full-time employees working in the central service center in China. BPOVIA brings corporate employee management, state-of-the-art IT infrastructure and sophisticated project management system together to ensure the high quality, reliable and cost-effective service.

BPOVIA is also one of the first virtual assistant firms who can provide one-stop solution of essential business services like secretarial task, website design, graphic design, internet research, market research, data entry, accounting, CAD, word processing etc. BPOVIA can handle almost all the tasks which do not need physical presence.

The hourly rate of BPOVIA is only $10 per hour or less. Clients can purchase BPOVIA service hours Pay-As-You-Go, or signup for monthly plan. There are no setup fee, no termination fee. The typical clients of BPOVIA are small and medium sized companies, solo entrepreneur and busy individuals. They find BPOVIA can not only help them save cost, some have even found that work done by virtual assistants may be of better quality than what they were used to getting from their in-house employees.

“Being selected a Red Herring 100 Global winner shows that our hard work has been noticed and acknowledged by the world.” said James Huang, CEO of BPOVIA. “Virtual assistant and telecommuting are reinventing the traditional notion of a job. BPOVIA gives businesses and individuals access to an on-demand, scalable workforce. We are very proud that BPOVIA is the first and only Virtual Assistant service provider in the world who has ever won such a prestigious award. We will try our best to help our clients run their business professionally and efficiently with minimum overhead and liabilities.”

As the financial crisis gets closer to the workers’ daily life in Shanghai, the white collar and some gold-collar workers are like toast of the town, feel the pressure from all sectors.

A Shanghai white-collar worker of an American company told us his company has relieved 10 percent of the staff, and there would be more layoffs after the Chinese lunar New Year holidays. The unnamed employee also said that during every day’s work recently, his colleagues are talking about who will be the next one to leave the company.

The latest entrants to the jobless club Miss Xu who used to work in a foreign-funded real estate company as a human resource manager in Shanghai complained to us: " Our company has laid off staff since the middle of December and around 55 percent of the original staff lost their jobs in this financial crisis and I also get laid off with two months’ salary as termination pay.

According to the statistical data of Shanghai government shows that the country’s heavy reliance on export, labor-intensive industries creates a ripple-down effect and industries related to trading, finance and economics, It, communications, banking, consultancies, media firms etc are all facing cost cuts.

A white paper released in January by Shanghai Human Resources Consulting Association predicted that the first-half of 2009 would see negative growth in new positions at Shanghai’s foreign companies and privately-owned firms.

The white paper also shows that the 7000 foreign companies survive in Shanghai showed that 48 enterprises had already started feeling the effects of the crisis.

A total amount of 2,218 employees were laid off or 0.79 percent of the entire staff. And even worse the situation will not get better until the second-half.

With the cutting off of employees the employments dispute cases had jumped to 30 percent of all cases. To protect the legal rights of employees, Shanghai government had asked those enterprises which cut more than 20 jobs or more than 10 percent of the entire staff to file a report with the local trade union or notify all staff 30 days before the final decision. This requirement is also in keeping with state council’s recent guidelines.

This policy can help the workers secure their own benefits and show the responsibilities to the enterprises which are particularly valuable in the financial crisis. But also Shanghai government also knows that if the small-sized enterprises do not cut jobs they will soon or later out of business, so the government also provide a better business environment, free credit controls, and reduce business costs.

Miss Xu is stilling looking for a new job after having been cut for two months. She has to lower her salary expectations and increase his job search field in order to get a new job quickly. Meanwhile, information from the HR company shows that even in the crisis the enterprises are still looking for talent workers as always.

Total 282,210

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.

Guotai Jun’an Securities Co, one of the largest brokerages in China, is the very firm that the public attack most, as it’s reported that, for 2008 in which great losses hit the financial services and a drop of 24.24 percent in net profit fell on the company, it’s ready to grant big hope in the rise of wage to its executive.

As one of the largest firms in the country (about 3,200 employees) in both regular brokerage services and an investor in other companies, Guotai Jun’an was condemned by the Chinese media for its decision that 3.2 billion yuan ($470 million) would be spent on “compensation and welfare expenses” for the past year, 57 percent higher than its compensation budget at the beginning of the year. Take a move State broadcaster China Central Television for example, it remarked the decision as the one that “causing harmful social influence”.

It would be beyond anyone’s imagination if the compensation and welfare expenses are the only directions in which the total amount mentioned goes. That means the staff would get 1 million yuan each, tantamount 88 times an average urban worker’s annual income in 2007.

Forty-four brokerage and financial companies are exposed to have spent 20.9 billion yuan in compensation last year, some of which even spent 400,000 yuan on their staff on average. However, top executives in financial forms are usually paid much higher than the regular staff does. Among those executives, the pay as high as 66 million in 2007 for Ma Mingzhe, chairman of Ping An Insurance (Group) Co, aroused heat discussion and severe denouncement on the Internet.

A netizen-oriented survey has become a more powerful trigger of the public anger. The survey indicates that around 90 percent of the netizens criticize Guotai Jun’an’s action with such words as “outrageous” and “disgraceful”. And the company is so immoral and incredible that it is also compared to robbery in 2008 in which stock investors suffered an average of 200,000 yuan each.

“The compensation policy in State-owned companies should not be handled at will,” said Professor Li Shuguang with China University of Political Science and Law. As far as we know the top two shareholders with more than half of stocks of the Guotai Jun’an in hand are working in Shanghai State-owned Assets Management Co and Central Huijin Investment Co. respectively, and both are state sectors.

The Ministry of Finance, in the coming Friday, would issue a new set of principles in the evaluation of performances of state-sectors financial institution and it would be added to the compensation plan. And it was on the Jan 13 that it also publicized an announcement that had certain restriction on the state-sector financial companies’ stock option incentives and employee stock ownership plans. In addition, advice was given that the enlarging income gaps should be taken into consideration before any appropriate action was to be taken.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.

This news has been posted on the company’s website. Moreover, at the town hall meeting of the company, the plans were being discussed by CEO Vikram Pandit in New York on Nov 17 with employees.

In October, the company had already announced that it was eliminating about 22,000 jobs from the level of 2007, when the headcount reached its peak of 375,000 at the end of the year. The company said that the total headcount is being reduced by 20 percent.

Including a loss of $2.8 billion during the third quarter, the New York-based bank has posted four straight quarterly losses.

Are you interested in the business opportunities in China?

China is one of the world’s great growth markets and is likely to be for many years to come. Foreign companies often face difficulties in assessing Chinese market demand and enacting effective strategies because of the language barriers, culture differences, and high expense.

BPOVIA is the leading virtual assistant and Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) service provider in China. BPOVIA is the only virtual assistant company ever been nominated for the prestigious “Red Herring 100 Asia” Awards 2008. Combines international perspective with local know-how, BPOVIA can provide our clients China business development service and help our clients doing successful business in China.

Please visit http://www.BPOVIA.com/ for details about our service.