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The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed overview of the China Investment Corporation (CIC) and its structure, investment activities and possible future investments.

This paper uses a case study approach and builds up a picture of sovereign wealth globally and then focuses on the CIC and issues surrounding the fund.

The key implications from the research are that Asian sovereign wealth is going to be increasingly important in global investment. The CICs investment strategy is evolving and becoming evermore sophisticated. As the fund grows this will result in increased demand for local financial services and expertise and so where representative offices are located will impact on those financial centers.

Future research should expand the scope of the analysis to include other sovereign wealth funds and try to map out a comprehensive picture of sovereign wealth around the world.

This is one of the first papers to look at sovereign wealth and is believed to be the first paper to analyze Asian sovereign wealth and the CIC.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Japanese bank “performance” has improved markedly since fiscal 2003 but to caution against over‐optimism.

The methodological approach adopted involves using aggregate balance sheet data dating from around 1990 to identify the trends in industry performance with respect to profitability, asset quality and capital adequacy.

The bursting of the asset price bubble in the early 1990s clearly had a major adverse impact on “performance”, as measured by the above‐mentioned indicators, but, after fiscal 1992, the industry's fortunes began to improve. Problems on each front, however, remain to be resolved.

By identifying the main problems still besetting the Japanese banks, both the industry and their supervisors are given advice as to which areas they need to focus on to improve future bank performance.

The paper clearly explains the nature of, and reasons for, the recent improvement in Japanese bank performance whilst highlighting the areas on which they still have to focus if they are to regain their former glory within the international banking community. It should be of interest to all serious scholars of the Japanese banking system and interested commentators alike.

The paper's aim is to outline and comment on the Court of Appeal case: Secretary of State for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform v. Aaron and Others, October 2008.

The paper outlines the facts surrounding the case and comments on the ruling.

Lord Justice Thomas gave the judgment in this appeal, considering the admissible in disqualification proceedings. However, in relation to the Secretary of State's attempt to rely in evidence on material in the FOS decision and the FSA final notice LJ Thomas ruled that that the implied exception to the strict rule of evidence in Hollington v. Hewthorn did not apply so as to allow their admission in evidence.

The current market crisis has focused the attention of regulatory investigators around the world on the activities of major UK financial institutions in a number of jurisdictions in which they were active.

The paper's aim is to report and comment on two preliminary issues that arose from claims being pursued by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) against Abbey National Treasury Services (ANTS) and NDF Administration Ltd (NDF).

The paper outlines the facts and explains the decision.

The FSCS commenced action against ANTS as assignee of the assigned claims and alleged that ANTS had collaborated with NDF in product development and promotion of the Structured Capital at Risk Products and was liable in negligence and misrepresentation to the investors whose claims it held as assignee. Having considered the arguments, the Judge concluded that FSA did have power to make rules enabling FSCS to take assignment of investor claims.

The issues in this case go to the heart of the funding mechanism of the FSCS. The financing of such compensation schemes is a perennially controversial issue in every jurisdiction that has them.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an updated and critical assessment of the share reforms relevant to Chinese A‐share issuers listed in the two mainland markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen. The reform programme first began in 2005 and has now spread widely across issuers in the two markets. It is therefore timely to assess how effective the reforms have been as well as gauging the ongoing effects of the transformation (of non‐tradable scrip into tradable form) on A‐share prices.

The “Split Share Structure” reform programme represents a major policy initiative in China and potentially opens‐the‐door to large‐scale state‐share disposals. The evidence to date however suggests that the Chinese authorities are primarily concerned with the reconfiguration of the array of share types that presently exist into a more comprehendible, streamlined form. The various checks and balances imposed on controlling shareholders engaged in the transformation of their shares from non‐tradable to tradable form suggest that eventual re‐designation of the holdings into an unfettered tradable type will not necessarily translate to the state's acquiescence in the disposal of such shares. On the contrary, state holdings in the most strategic of assets are likely to be retained more or less intact. Insights are developed by focusing on examples involving major A‐share issuers. In particular, a case study of the Sinopec reform proposal of August/September 2006 is set out to help illuminate the principal features of the reform package. Critical examination of the empirical literature relating to the A‐share price effects of the share reform programme also features.

There is little evidence to date of significant stock disposals amongst the largest and most strategic of China's issuers. However, for a number of A‐listed issuers, parts of the lock‐up moratoria have already expired or are set to do so in the very near future. Given the precipitous fall in A‐share prices (in Shanghai and Shenzhen) since late 2007, largely wrought by the enveloping global credit‐crunch, the Chinese authorities have an even more compelling case than hitherto to assiduously dampen fears of large‐scale state‐share disposals. Notwithstanding this, at least a small part of the drop in A‐share values during 2008 derives from the building risk‐premium on this issue.

As the trading moratoria on re‐designated shares still applies in most cases, at least in respect of the majority of domestic stock holdings, a clearer picture will not emerge until 2009‐2011 when all such moratoria would have lapsed.

The discussions in this paper help to bring into focus a highly topical issue within the context of the Chinese equity market.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the market entry dynamics of foreign banks in China.

The paper employs multi‐method approaches combining both questionnaires survey data and qualitative interviews. Also, integration of internalization theory (at the macro level) and strategy literature (at firm level).

The paper clarifies why and how foreign banks enter the Chinese market, and strategies adopted to cope with local market dynamics; also, the paper identifies major trends and key competitive advantages of foreign banks.

Major advantages and weaknesses have been identified, which will help foreign entrants to make greater inroads into the domestic banking market. The paper shows how to manage risks and make governance structure more efficient and transparent, which are urgent tasks for policy makers.

The paper utilizes the first nation‐based dataset to investigate the Chinese market, and offers practical implications for local regulators and policy makers and bankers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the market risk disclosure practices among Malaysian listed firms. Specifically, it aims to examine the level of compliance with FRS132: Financial Instruments – Disclosure and Presentation for financial periods beginning or after 2006.

The approach taken is content analysis and coding procedure.

Although a large number of companies have shown compliance with FRS132 in relation to disclosing the financial risk management policy, there are systematic differences across companies in terms of level of details (i.e. qualitative and quantitative) disclosure. Interest rate disclosure was the most mentioned category and the credit risk was the least mentioned category of market risk. There is telling evidence that most Malaysian firms did not engage in hedging any type of market risk over the reporting period of 2006‐2007.

There is a need for some standardized risk reporting format to achieve greater financial transparency to make investors aware of the market risks.

This is believed to be the first study to provide survey findings on the use of derivatives instruments by listed firms in Malaysia.

This paper proposes an efficient test designed to have power against alternatives where the error correction term follows a Markov switching dynamics. The adjustment to long run equilibrium is different in different regimes characterised by the hidden state Markov chain process. Using a general nonlinear MS-ECM framework, we propose an optimal test for the null of no cointegration against an alternative of a globally stationary MS cointegration. The Monte Carlo studies demonstrate that our proposed tests display superior powers compared to the linear tests. In an application to price-dividend relationships, our test is able to find cointegration while linear based tests fail to do so.

Because of the sharply growing interest worldwide of “hard” physical-mechanical robot systems for the execution of on-site construction tasks [i.e. single-task construction robots (STCRs)], the purpose of this study is to equip development projects with a systematic design-management system model that allows to integrate the different needs and aims of stakeholders.

This paper proposes a STCR-technology management system (STCR-TMS) for the complete development cycle of STCR designs. The STCR-TMS is based on established principles from systems engineering and management and STCR-specific activities developed and tested by the authors as standalone elements in previous research work.

The application of the STCR-TMS revealed the practicability of the method and the underlying concepts to provide practical guidance for the development process. Additional findings indicate that the method is sufficiently generic and flexible for application to different types of robots and indifferent world regions. This research has also shown that key activities need to be addressed to increase the practicability of the STCR-TMS.

A unique characteristic of this method is the evolution with each utilization cycle. In addition, individual elements are interchangeable and can be adapted based on external circumstances. These properties allow the TMS to be applied to other fields in construction robotics. With the progression of the verification and validation of the method, know-how and certain elements can be fed into standardization activities (e.g. establishing a management system standard).