Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Covering reality

A major deal come unstuck in China, and the FT raises important  questions about the big names involved:
The bank at the center of the deal is CDB Bank, which the FT calls a policy bank, meaning that it drives policy agendas. It is run by Chen Yuan, a princeling, in the nomenclature used for sons of powerful Communist party leaders.

Ping An, the company from which HSBC was trying to exit, is believed to have 2 bn dollars worth of investment by the family of Premier Wen Jiabao.

Clearly, HSBC got caught in the internal squabbles of the party!

That apart, what stuck me is that such shenanigans clearly lie at the bottom of the twists and turns in, say, the Sahara imbroglio, and its involvement in the funding of UP political leaders. Yet, not one paper has even hinted at these..

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4287c68e-5a57-11e2-bc93-00144feab49a.html#axzz2HRdfr6YX


Shows how weak our press is.

This also shows up in its lack of coverage of the HSBC laundering issue. But more of that later...