Foreign investors willing to test Indonesian climate
Waiting for new foreign investment announcements in Indonesia is like waiting for a London bus. Nothing comes for ages and then a flood arrives.
This week France’s Eramet and Mitsubishi of Japan announced a $4.6bn nickel project in Indonesia with Antam, a local company. Textile manufacturers said $650m of textile orders were moving to Indonesia from China. And Volkswagen, the German carmaker, said it planned to open an assembly plant.
Is Indonesia finally walking its talk of improving the investment climate? In some respects the situation has improved; the time it takes to open a new business has come down and corruption is being tackled.
But a litany of evidence exists to support the naysayers. Washington has just added Indonesia to its blacklist of intellectual property rights violators.
Meanwhile, there has been no sign of the promised review of the “negative investment list” of sectors in which foreigners are banned or restricted from entering. And, under the guise of fighting smuggling, Jakarta has introduced a raft of measures that have prompted several countries to raise protectionist questions at the World Trade Organisation.
So why do people still come? Miners have little choice and others see the 240m population as too big to ignore, particularly since the country is riding out the global slowdown better than most of its rivals.
Ringing the changes
Didier Lombard, the chief executive of France Telecom, was once described as a “big pussy cat, but one with sharp claws”.
And it seems the cat’s claws have been out in recent weeks as Mr Lombard fought a whispering campaign that would have had the 67-year-old ex-technocrat step down before his mandate ends in 2011, for little obvious reason. His management of France’s sixth-largest company over the past four years is widely regarded to have been successful. On Thursday, the battle seemed over as the group revealed it had chosen the man to succeed Mr Lombard – but not until his mandate was over. Stephane Richard, adviser to French finance minister Christine Lagarde and friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy, is expected to move to France Telecom before the end of the summer but as second-in-command.
At first glance, the reshuffle has all the attributes of the traditional French stitch-up, where loyal civil servants are often rewarded with plum jobs in the country’s top companies.
In fact, it may well have been a bit of fancy footwork on the part of Mr Lombard, who has, with Mr Richard, found an effective weapon to silence the politically influential whisperers who were pushing their own candidates on a much tighter timetable. By recommending one of the president’s favourite civil servants Mr Lombard ensured there could be little government objection to his preferred succession plan.
But he may also have been helped by the government’s own clumsy attempts to put another trusted presidential adviser into a corporate position.
President Sarkozy was accused of disregarding the law after his former adviser François Perol was named as the new head of a banking group to be created from the merger of mutuals Banque Populaire and Caisse dâ Epargne.
Mr Perol was the very civil servant who had helped the banks negotiate the merger, a fact Mr Sarkozy did not seem to think was the business of France’s independent Ethics Committee. Mr Perol’s nomination is currently the subject of law suits.
The controversy has made the government a bit gun-shy when it comes to naming new candidates.
So, finding a solution whereby Mr Richard will have to spend two years inside France Telecom learning the ropes before he is named executive chairman seems to be a fair compromise.
Taxing decisions
Word has it that the UK’s recent decision to increase the top rate of personal income tax to 50 per cent added a little spice to the latest meetings between Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, and top financial executives to discuss the competitiveness of the country’s financial services industry.
As Sir Win Bischoff, co-chair of the competitiveness group, put it on Thursday, the industry would like tax to be competitive, predictable and stable.
The group’s conclusions on tax are among the most inconclusive in the report. Each gentle thrust about minimising the tax burden meets a riposte – in language presumably inspired by a cash-strapped Treasury – about the need “from time to time” for tax rates to “vary as a result of fiscal pressures”. Well, this is that time. It is the taxpayer, after all, who has bailed out the banking system. The grandees of high finance can hardly complain.
This week France’s Eramet and Mitsubishi of Japan announced a $4.6bn nickel project in Indonesia with Antam, a local company. Textile manufacturers said $650m of textile orders were moving to Indonesia from China. And Volkswagen, the German carmaker, said it planned to open an assembly plant.
Is Indonesia finally walking its talk of improving the investment climate? In some respects the situation has improved; the time it takes to open a new business has come down and corruption is being tackled.
But a litany of evidence exists to support the naysayers. Washington has just added Indonesia to its blacklist of intellectual property rights violators.
Meanwhile, there has been no sign of the promised review of the “negative investment list” of sectors in which foreigners are banned or restricted from entering. And, under the guise of fighting smuggling, Jakarta has introduced a raft of measures that have prompted several countries to raise protectionist questions at the World Trade Organisation.
So why do people still come? Miners have little choice and others see the 240m population as too big to ignore, particularly since the country is riding out the global slowdown better than most of its rivals.
Ringing the changes
Didier Lombard, the chief executive of France Telecom, was once described as a “big pussy cat, but one with sharp claws”.
And it seems the cat’s claws have been out in recent weeks as Mr Lombard fought a whispering campaign that would have had the 67-year-old ex-technocrat step down before his mandate ends in 2011, for little obvious reason. His management of France’s sixth-largest company over the past four years is widely regarded to have been successful. On Thursday, the battle seemed over as the group revealed it had chosen the man to succeed Mr Lombard – but not until his mandate was over. Stephane Richard, adviser to French finance minister Christine Lagarde and friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy, is expected to move to France Telecom before the end of the summer but as second-in-command.
At first glance, the reshuffle has all the attributes of the traditional French stitch-up, where loyal civil servants are often rewarded with plum jobs in the country’s top companies.
In fact, it may well have been a bit of fancy footwork on the part of Mr Lombard, who has, with Mr Richard, found an effective weapon to silence the politically influential whisperers who were pushing their own candidates on a much tighter timetable. By recommending one of the president’s favourite civil servants Mr Lombard ensured there could be little government objection to his preferred succession plan.
But he may also have been helped by the government’s own clumsy attempts to put another trusted presidential adviser into a corporate position.
President Sarkozy was accused of disregarding the law after his former adviser François Perol was named as the new head of a banking group to be created from the merger of mutuals Banque Populaire and Caisse dâ Epargne.
Mr Perol was the very civil servant who had helped the banks negotiate the merger, a fact Mr Sarkozy did not seem to think was the business of France’s independent Ethics Committee. Mr Perol’s nomination is currently the subject of law suits.
The controversy has made the government a bit gun-shy when it comes to naming new candidates.
So, finding a solution whereby Mr Richard will have to spend two years inside France Telecom learning the ropes before he is named executive chairman seems to be a fair compromise.
Taxing decisions
Word has it that the UK’s recent decision to increase the top rate of personal income tax to 50 per cent added a little spice to the latest meetings between Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, and top financial executives to discuss the competitiveness of the country’s financial services industry.
As Sir Win Bischoff, co-chair of the competitiveness group, put it on Thursday, the industry would like tax to be competitive, predictable and stable.
The group’s conclusions on tax are among the most inconclusive in the report. Each gentle thrust about minimising the tax burden meets a riposte – in language presumably inspired by a cash-strapped Treasury – about the need “from time to time” for tax rates to “vary as a result of fiscal pressures”. Well, this is that time. It is the taxpayer, after all, who has bailed out the banking system. The grandees of high finance can hardly complain.