Category Archives: International

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The Costs of Panda-monium

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Panda toddler

Friday evening, Washington, D.C. gained a new squealing, wriggling pink mass born for the spotlight. No, it’s not a fiery elected official filibustering on the House floor. It’s a 4.8-ounce baby panda. Approximately the size of a stick of butter, the as-yet-unnamed baby is already a rock star – and deservedly so.

Having grown up in D.C. – and become quite an animal-lover – I admit that I’m fully aboard the panda crazy train. But I’m far from alone. Pandas are a big business for American zoos, and one that does a lot of good.

Simply hosting giant pandas is a massive undertaking for American zoos. From constructing state-of-the-art habitats to administering round-the-clock care and monitoring the development and behavior, our wonderfully furry friends take a lot of care. On top of those basic infrastructure requirements, zoos must also pay to loan pandas from China, adding up to an average of $2.6 million per year per pair – and that’s if they don’t have a cub. With every baby panda born to an American zoo, officials must shell out an additional $600,000 in a one-time “baby tax” to the Chinese government. Add in the fact that almost half of successful panda pregnancies result in twins, and the bears might as well be eating green bills instead of bamboo.

Pandas cost about $500,000 to care for annually, according to Dennis Kelly, chief executive of Zoo Atlanta, one of four American zoos that houses pandas. The zoo’s second most expensive animal, the elephant, require just one fifth as much.

According to the Washington Post, webcams following Tai Shan, the last baby panda raised at the National Zoo, generated 21 million hits in the first year alone. Merchandising sales at the zoo rose dramatically, from $1.7 million in the first half of 2005, before the cub was born, to $3.3 million in the first half of 2006. Tai Shan products accounted for 23 percent of that total. During the first three months the charismatic baby was on display to the public, zoo admission jumped by as much as 50 percent over previous years, National Geographic reported. In fact, while 13,000 timed entry tickets for the panda’s debut were disseminated for free, all were taken within two hours and a secondary market on the Internet charged up to $500 per ticket for the free zoo.

Baby pandas pay big.

After the excitement and devastating loss of a six-day-old panda last year, the National Zoo ramped up its breeding efforts with Mei Xiang, whose new cub is only the third birth for the 15-year-old female. Impregnating pandas in captivity is incredibly challenging, particularly since females only go into estrus about once a year. Baby panda fever began before conception in 2012, with zoo officials live-tweeting Mei Xiang’s artificial insemination procedure for an hour and a half. This time around, baby panda specialists were brought in from China, and two of the zoo’s staff members were sent to China for special training in the care of newborn cubs, the Washington Post reported. Veterinarians also got particularly proactive in their attempts to impregnate Mei Xiang, performing the procedure multiple time with fresh and frozen sperm samples from both the National Zoo’s male, Tian Tian, and the San Diego Zoo’s Gao Gao. As a precaution, officials and volunteers began round-the-clock pregnancy watch and closed the panda house on August 7, when Mei Xiang’s gestation period began to end.

Rigorous breeding programs protect zoos’ investment and capitalize on the potential fanfare over these remarkable and critically endangered animals. Most of the money zoos pay to loan pandas is sent to China to preserve panda habitats, create local environmental education programs near reserves, train conservation professionals, and run reserves that house most of the pandas currently in captivity. Since U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service policies were rewritten in 1998, in order to qualify for panda import permits, American zoos have to design research programs that benefit wild pandas and help China pay for its own panda projects, according to National Geographic. As Fish and Wildlife Service official Ken Stansell told the magazine, “We had to step back and find a way to use our permit process as a conservation tool.”

Zoos are matching the governmental commitment to conservation, and it’s clearly not only about preserving the bottom line. “Nobody would ever commit this kind of money to any other species,” said David Wildt, head of the National Zoo’s reproductive sciences program, in an interview with National Geographic.

High Taxation Tops the List of Biggest Business Risks

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High taxation is the number one risk faced by North American businesses, according to a new survey from Lloyd’s of London.

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Lloyd’s Risk Index 2013, which was also published in 2009 and 2011, surveyed more than 500 C-suite and board-level executives to determine the threats that they were most concerned with. High taxation, which only came in 13th in 2011, took the top spot. Lloyd’s Chief Executive Richard Ward pointed to the increased debate around economic issues and the perception of how corporations pay their taxes as one reason for the increase in concern:

The public scrutiny given to corporate taxation has become increasingly intense over the last two years, with governments and the taxpayer alike demanding greater transparency and changes to legislation. Since 2011, this pressure has clearly been felt by respondents, who now rank the risk of high taxation as their highest overall risk, up from number 13 in 2011. In the U.S., the priority scores given to this risk are particularly high.

After high taxation, the rest of the top five risks cited were:

  • loss of customer/cancelled orders
  • cyber risk
  • price of material inputs
  • excessively strict regulation

Of these, only the loss of customers was a top 5 risk in 2011:

The survey findings seems to indicate that large companies are more prepared for these risks than their smaller counterparts. But since the balance sheets of smaller companies are more vulnerable, they especially need to find ways to address these issues. Overall however, Ward warned against taking a short-term outlook and said it will take “expert risk management” to insulate companies from these threats.

“With business tax in the spotlight and rising up the political agenda, executives are understandably concerned. Yet the danger is that an emphasis on near-term, operational issues comes at the expense of significant, strategic decisions that have previously exercised business leaders.

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With the timetable for global economic recovery likely to be much longer than we hoped, a focus on long-term sustainability and effective risk management should be a priority for boards across the world.

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Recent Anti-Pollution Activism Underscores Importance of Community Relations

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Since the beginning of May, anti-pollution activism has been directed against several industrial projects in Chengdu, Kunming and Shanghai, China. The level of opposition has prompted street demonstrations and varying levels of response by local authorities.

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While foreign companies have not been involved in the latest examples of environmental activism, past incidents have targeted foreign companies. The latest incidents underscore the importance of early and effective two-way communication with local communities before undertaking a new industrial project.

In May, residents opposing two major industrial projects in Chengdu and Kunming stepped up their anti-pollution activism by holding protests on May 4 and May 16. Authorities in the city were also concerned that protests could occur during the opening of the China-South Asia Expo, which took place in the city June 6-10.

On May 4, media reports indicated that hundreds of protesters converged at Nan Ping Plaza in Kunming’s city center to protest plans to construct a paraxylene (PX) plant at an industrial zone in Anning city, approximately 45 kilometers southwest of Kunming.

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Also on May 4, local authorities in Chengdu reportedly increased security in the city’s downtown Tianfu Plaza to prevent anti-pollution activists from holding protests over a major refinery and petrochemical facility local authorities have been planning to construct in nearby Pengzhou. According to the South China Morning Post, the increased police presence effectively deterred protesters from holding a rally.

Meanwhile, in Shanghai’s Songjiang district, local residents also held a demonstration outside the main district government office on May 1 in opposition to a previously planned battery factory at a local industrial park. The company behind the project has since cancelled its plans, ending local opposition.

Growing Environmental Activism

These latest anti-pollution protests highlight an ongoing trend of local communities exposing potential pollution issues to environmental authorities. The scale of pollution in China, especially in major industrial areas, is a huge challenge for China’s leadership.

State media reported this week that Ministry of Environmental Protection statistics from last year revealed that 58% of underground water at the ministry’s monitoring sites around the country had been categorized as polluted or extremely polluted. The statistics also revealed that 298 million rural residents do not have access to safe drinking water. Activism and calls for greater efforts to clean up decades of pollution caused by China’s rapid industrial growth have mounted in recent months, accompanied by China’s new leadership transition.

Environmental authorities have tried to respond, but the extent of the problem will likely require years to make substantial progress in cleaning up the environment. In May, environmental authorities reported that they punished 15 factories for air and water pollution violations in the first quarter of this year. Given the scale of the problem, this number appears relatively low.

The Role of Social Media and Street Protests

The increased awareness and activism, especially in urban and suburban areas, combined with the limits of enforcement, have given rise to local communities resorting to social media to expose concerns about pollution. In some cases, local opposition has escalated to street protests if local governments are perceived as slow to respond.

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In May, local media reported that environmental authorities would investigate suspected water pollution at the Dabai Bay Industrial Zone in Shanghai’s Pudong New District. The posting of pictures online that showed blue sewage water discharged into a local river reportedly prompted local authorities to take action.

Recent protests, including some that have turned violent, have prompted local governments to suspend or cancel certain projects. The latest protests, especially against a major battery factory planned for construction in Shanghai’s Songjiang Industrial Park, have highlighted concerns about the transparency of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process and the input of local communities. According to media reports, local authorities have decided that the planned production site of the battery factory would not engage in chemical processes which can produce pollution. Instead, the project originally planned to focus on lithium cell production and battery assembly.

Although local protests have resulted in the suspension of some major projects, the importance of local GDP growth and the development of industry present challenges to local governments. The importance of the battery factory to the development of Songjiang’s auto industry prompted the local government to initially try to strike a balance between economic development and pollution concerns. According to a local resident, authorities placed notices within at least one residential community in the district to inform them of the government’s latest decision about the project. This could be an indication that the local government understood the need for greater communication with the public. It may have also been an attempt to counter a relatively well-organized online opposition campaign created by residents concerned about their health and the potential for declining property values.

Proactive Risk Mitigation

Although foreign companies typically operate at a high standard of environmental protection, the communications and community involvement aspects of an industrial project will likely become increasingly important. As residential communities and industrial areas expand and encroach on each other in suburban areas of major cities, local residents’ environmental concerns will continue to rise.

Foreign companies can encourage local governments and industrial parks to ensure the transparency of the EIA process is upheld on their project and that extensive two-way dialogue is conducted with local residents. Foreign companies should also emphasize clean technologies and other processes used to treat waste. Using similar projects in other parts of the world as examples of the high standard of their operations can also be an effective component of a campaign. Management should also be prepared for some residents to demand compensation during the community relations process.

Lastly, companies should develop contingency plans in the event that an accident occurs after a project has started operation. Plans to address this type of contingency should include increased security measures as part of a response due to the potential for strong local reactions, including protests directed against the project.

The Risks and Opportunities of Doing Business in Brazil

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China and India get the lion share of the headlines when it comes to emerging markets. But Brazil presents plenty of opportunities for the right companies.

Bryan Tedford, senior vice president of foreign casualty for ACE, gave a presentation on the nation’s potential and challenges for businesses today at the RIMS 2013 Conference & Exhibition in Los Angeles.

He noted that, as the world’s fifth-most-populous nation and seventh largest economy, Brazil is in a “fantastic position for economic growth over the next few years.” It has a strong, growing middle class that fuels a large domestic demand, which separates it from some of the other oft-discussed emerging markets. Tedford also highlighted the nation’s strong trade relationship with the United States, which he said actually sells about $11 billion more in goods and services to Brazil than Brazil sends back.

The nation also weathered the economic downturn better than most and has very little natural disaster exposure relative to many other growing economiesStill, there are plenty of challenges.

With a land area that is nearly as large as continental Europe, there is an imbalance of economic distribution in cities. This means that the opportunities for foreign companies reside mostly in crowded markets full of established competition. There is also a large informal economy in areas both urban and rural that can limit sales potential.

It doesn’t help that the legal and regulatory environment is very protective of Brazilian companies. In practice, new entities are very difficult to set up. “You really need to have some friends in Brazil … before you can really go after it,” said Tedford. “Having strong personal and business relationships seems to be the key for U.S. companies succeeding in Brazil.”

One way to make friends, says Tedford, is to give a small gift or token at a first meeting. Even offering something that may seem trite can be seen as a welcome gesture.

But don’t expect even friends to be punctual. “The conception of time is, I’ll say, liberal,” said Tedford. Don’t be surprised if an 8 a.m. breakfast meetings doesn’t start until 9:15. Perhaps it’s the traffic. Transportation and logistics can be a nightmare, so don’t expect to get anywhere quickly. The drive from the airport to São Paulo, for example, can take hours.

As far as more-business-related concerns, Brazil has strict liability rules that can make it difficult to deal with issues like a defective products and employment practices. There is also a short statue of limitations compared to the rest of South America, which can make it tricky to find time to deal with issues that must be addressed quickly.

In at least a few sectors, however, these are all mere inconveniences compared to the wealth of opportunity.

The agriculture industry has been booming in recent years, and this is only likely to increase. Sugar cane is especially enticing given the growth of the ethanol market.

The expansion of Petrobras, a Brazilian oil conglomerate that Forbes lists as the world’s 20th-largest company, may present even more chances for foreign companies to cash in. It is estimated that the nation will spend some $250 billion on contracts after the massive off-shore oil deposits discovered a few years ago, said Tedford. There will be a ton of new rigs and construction projects to be had.

There is also a tech boom. Brazilians are one of the largest purchasers of mobile phones, tablets and electronics among the emerging markets, says Tedford. This surging demand means more IT jobs and more infrastructure.

They also have another tendency: responding to direct-mail marketing offers. Brazil has a very good postage system, and it is helping move some of the economy outside of the cities. Companies in on the secret are able to make direct sales and raise brand awareness.