By John Richardson WE have gone beyond a major turning point in world history when many of the certainties we used to be able to depend on simply no longer apply. Just about everyone now accepts that the old certainties relating to China no longer apply. That’s the good news. But the bad news is […]
Asian Chemical Connections
BASF’s Kurt Bock Underlines The Major Changes In China
By John Richardson BASF CEO Kurt Bock has underlined some of the major shifts in the Chinese economy that I have been flagging-up for the last three years. He acknowledged, during a two-day investor event to mark the German chemicals giant’s 150th anniversary, that China’s GDP 2015 growth would likely be below the official estimate And he also […]
Pointing The Finger At Wrong Incentives Won’t Help
By John Richardson PEOPLE do what they have to do to get by and so how we behave largely depends on the incentives that are set for us. To give you just one example, the route to “getting by” – or rather the way to apparently make lots and lots of money now and in […]
Global Chemicals Trade And Swimming Naked
By John Richardson WHAT if your understanding of how the chemicals industry works is no longer valid? This was a theme I covered on Monday when I talked about how the future winners will be those who first of all will be prepared to say, “Look, I was wrong about China”. The next step for […]
Groundhog Day: More Bad China Data Prompts Stimulus Talk
By John Richardson MORE stimulus is on the way, is the consensus view of analysts following yesterday’s release of another disappointing China Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) – the Caixn/Markit preliminary PMI for September, which was at its lowest level since March 2009. This again feels like the film Groundhog Day, where the character played by […]
Another Round of Fed Stimulus Now Even More Likely
By John Richardson I am becoming more and more convinced that more of Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results – is on the way: A fourth round of Fed quantitative easing. This is the way in which I think this will happen: The […]
Global Polyethylene: Short And Long-Term Outlook
By John Richardson THE above chart indicates just how good margins have been in the global polyethylene (PE) business so far this year. Taking just our assessments of integrated high-density PE (HDPE) margins as an example, you can see that: US ethane-based HDPE producers were still way ahead of Europe and Asia up until 18 […]
China: When Fake GDP Numbers Didn’t Really Matter
Do you need to be part of this discussion? Then join me for a free Webinar on 30 September. WE all like to be proved right, of course, as it gives us that warm feeling of satisfaction inside – that sense of approbation. And each us, even the most outwardly assured chemicals industry CEO, […]
China Webinar: Making Good Use Of Your Time
Click here to register and join me for a free 30 September Webinar on how to reshape your China strategy. Here are some the reasons why you should attend…. IT IS one of those plays that is almost too painful to watch, but it is nevertheless disturbingly compelling: Samuel Beckett’s brilliant Waiting for Godot. […]
Narendra Modi: Revisiting The “Toilet Test”
By John Richardson LAST year I set India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi a “toilet test: Would he be able to fulfil his promise of giving every Indian access to a toilet by 2019? I should have actually qualified this question by pointing out that access wasn’t enough, but instead has to be accompanied by a […]
Jump to page: