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☕️ The Loke Updates: Bus lane abuse, LRT performance improvement, LRT3 competion status
US second-biggest land owner goes to Chinese tycoon. S.Korea bans the sale, consumption of dog meat. British Foreign Minister: Israel "might" have breached int'l law.
The Coffee Break
January 10, 2024
1. MARKET SUMMARY 📈
Information as of 0730 UTC+8 on Jan 10, 2024.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 Stock Average climbed to its highest in 33 years since the nation’s bubble economy era in the early 1990s. The index closed at 33,763.18, a level unseen since Mar 1990, lifted by a rebound in tech stocks. Nikkei 225 had an awesome 2023 — up by more than 25%.
Fun fact: At the height of the madness of the bubble economy era, the value of the 3.41 sq km Imperial Palace in Tokyo was worth more than all the real estate in California. Tokyo real estate could sell as much as USD139,000 (RM645k) per square foot, which was nearly 350x more than the equivalent space in Manhattan. Read more other crazy facts about the Japanese bubble economy here.
2. NUMBERS AT A GLANCE 🔢
ESG has been the “in” thing for a while now, but Malaysian companies are still struggling to get the ball rolling despite their ESG aspirations. According to the 2023 Schneider Electric Sustainability Survey, while 95% of Malaysian companies have set sustainability goals or targets, only 49% have actually implemented a comprehensive sustainability strategy.
Chinese tycoon Chen Tianqiao, who founded Shanda Interactive, an online gaming company, turned out to be the second-biggest owner of US land, owning 198,000 acres of Oregon timberland. This also makes him the 82nd-largest property owner in the country. The biggest foreign owner of US land is the Irving family of Canada, with over 1.2 mil acres of Maine timberland. Based on recent data from the Department of Agriculture, Chinese entities own the equivalent of 0.03% of all US farmland.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, in collaboration with Vornado Realty Trust and Rudin Management, has reached a deal to purchase air rights from a historic Manhattan cathedral. The agreement involves paying USD312.50 per square foot for development rights ranging from 315,000 to 525,000 square feet on Park Avenue, potentially totalling up to USD164 mil (RM761.5 mil) — literally paying a truckload for just air. This transaction is part of their plans to construct a new 1.7 million-square-foot skyscraper in the renowned Manhattan district, with the building possibly reaching a height of 1,350 feet. What are air rights?