Policemen watch as visitors line up outside Galaxy Macau, the latest resort in Macau, before it opens for business yesterday. Some of the world’s biggest casino operators are betting that Chinese who like to gamble, shop and dine will spark growth over the next few years in Macau, the world’s biggest gambling spot. The city has so far relied heavily on China’s young and wealthy for casino revenues, which totaled US$24 billion in 2010.

THE Galaxy Macau, a multibillion-dollar casino resort complex, opened yesterday as Macau aims to draw a broader mix of visitors than the high-rolling Chinese mainland tourists who have helped the city become the world’s most lucrative gambling market.

The Galaxy Entertainment Group’s US$1.9 billion casino is the only one scheduled to open in the southern Chinese city this year. It has 450 gambling tables and 1,500 slot machines.

Three hotels, including one run by Singapore’s Banyan Tree and another by Japan’s Okura, have 2,200 rooms. One of the biggest resort-style attractions is a 4,000 square-meter wave pool that generates waves as high as 1.5 meters splashing onto an artificial beach built with 350 tons of white sand.

Tropical and Japanese gardens, a Japanese tea pavilion, a Scottish whiskey bar, 50 restaurants, a private members’ club and a shopping street are other draws. A nine-screen 3D movie theater is set to open later this year.

The launch of Macau’s 34th casino comes as the city seeks to diversify its economy away from gambling after years of searing growth that helped it overtake Las Vegas as the world’s top casino market. It now aims to draw visitors with cultural and entertainment attractions as well as gambling.

Macau’s economy has boomed since a four-decade casino monopoly was broken up in 2002, opening the way for American and Australian operators to enter the market with local partners. Monthly casino revenues so far in 2011 have grown by at least 33 percent, after surging by more than half last year to US$23.5 billion.

The Las Vegas strip, in contrast, raked in US$5.8 billion in revenue in 2010.

The company said it expects a third of visitors to be high-rollers while the rest will be mass market.

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Wang Yincheng, president of PICC P&C, said on Saturday that in order to achieve this, the insurer seeks to increase annual premium volumes to 300 billion yuan (US$46.15 billion).

The company, which ranked No. 8 in the global non-life insurance market in 2009, witnessed a 192.3 percent jump in its 2010 net profit to 5.21 billion yuan year on year, while sales revenue increased 28.8 percent to 154.31 billion yuan from a year ago.

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The report, which cited sources close to the process, said this possible RBS stake sale would target institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia.

Officials at the British Treasury could not be immediately reached for comment on the report.

The government accumulated a stake of 83 percent in RBS and around 40 percent in Lloyds after bailing out both banks with billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money during the credit crisis.

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Thailand’s biggest conglomerate launched the Bazaar of Lotus in Xintiandi, some six months after it had been planning to launch a high-end brand in Shanghai “to enrich our business structure,” said Kunioka Michio, senior vice president of marketing.

Several food sellers offering a diversity of tastes will also operate stalls in the 3,200 square meters of Bazaar of Lotus, which also include areas for recreation and relaxation such as musical performances, according to the company. Kunioka said that 70 percent of the food sold in Bazaar are imported.

“Competition is already fierce among high-end supermarkets in Shanghai,” said Kunioka. “Thus we chose to test the water with a hybrid model.”

The CP Group, which started supermarket operations in China in 1997, plans to expand the Bazaar model to more inland cities as their spending power grows. It now has over 70 CP Lotus supermarkets across the country.

Overseas supermarket chains are keen to capture a slice of Shanghai’s high-end retail business to cater to rising consumer demand. They include City Shop and City Super, ParknShop’s Taste, and China Resources Vanguard’s Ole’.

Retail sales of consumer goods in Shanghai reached 161.8 billion yuan (US$24.9 billion) in the first quarter, 12.9 percent higher from last year, the city’s statistics bureau said in April.

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Thailand’s biggest conglomerate launched the Bazaar of Lotus in Xintiandi, some six months after it had been planning to launch a high-end brand in Shanghai “to enrich our business structure,” said Kunioka Michio, senior vice president of marketing.

Several food sellers offering a diversity of tastes will also operate stalls in the 3,200 square meters of Bazaar of Lotus, which also include areas for recreation and relaxation such as musical performances, according to the company. Kunioka said that 70 percent of the food sold in Bazaar are imported.

“Competition is already fierce among high-end supermarkets in Shanghai,” said Kunioka. “Thus we chose to test the water with a hybrid model.”

The CP Group, which started supermarket operations in China in 1997, plans to expand the Bazaar model to more inland cities as their spending power grows. It now has over 70 CP Lotus supermarkets across the country.

Overseas supermarket chains are keen to capture a slice of Shanghai’s high-end retail business to cater to rising consumer demand. They include City Shop and City Super, ParknShop’s Taste, and China Resources Vanguard’s Ole’.

Retail sales of consumer goods in Shanghai reached 161.8 billion yuan (US$24.9 billion) in the first quarter, 12.9 percent higher from last year, the city’s statistics bureau said in April.

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Image of article Bullet trains offer speedy alternative and challenge to Chinese airlines

The trial operation of the high-speed railway linking Shanghai and Beijing is ramping up the competition between bullet trains and airlines, with the latter confronting the threat its passenger numbers will tumble on their most profitable domestic routes.

More than 60 percent of the civil aviation market may be affected by the advent of high-speed rail in China.

A month-long trial of the Shanghai-Beijing high-speed railway started on May 11. The new service is expected to be fully operational by the end of June.The fastest journey along the 1,318-kilometer route from Shanghai’s Hongqiao Railway Station to Beijing South Railway Station took four hours and 48 minutes, with trains traveling at speeds of up to 300 kilometers an hour.

The flight from Shanghai to Beijing takes only two hours, but the time doesn’t include airport check-in lines, security procedures, plane delays, bad weather or possible other hiccups. Adding all these it can take up to five hours to make the trip by air.

Luo Zhuping, board secretary of China Eastern Airlines, said he isn’t too worried about high-speed train competition. Businessmen are the carrier’s main passengers on the Shanghai-Beijing route, he said, and they care more about travel experience than ticket price.

“I would still choose to go by plane on business trips, not only because of it’s faster but also because I can get the fare reimbursed and I collect frequent-flier credits,” said Joshua Xu, who works as a foreign consultant in Shanghai.

“However, I would consider taking bullet trains for leisure trips if the fares are lower than air tickets,” he added.

Discussions are still going on for ticket prices for high-speed train services. Rail authorities insist that fares will be “comparable” to those charged by airlines.

To prepare for the competition, airlines offer various discounts on airfares. The standard price of a single air ticket between Shanghai and Beijing is 1,290 yuan (US$199). There’s speculation that the fare for the bullet train will be half that.

“Passenger demand is high between Shanghai and Beijing and demand is still growing, so the two transport systems don’t need to worry too much about load factors,” said Xie Li, a professor at the Civil Aviation Management Institute of China. “But airlines need to improve punctuality and in-flight services to retain high-end passengers and core competitiveness.”

It’s not just the lucrative Shanghai-Beijing route that’s fanning competition in transport. That route represents only about 10 percent of the country’s grand design for high-speed rail. By 2012, China’s high-speed rail network is forecast to expand to 13,000 kilometers.

The Ministry of Railways has announced that 745.5 billion yuan will be spent on high-speed rail this year.

The fast expansion of bullet trains has already had repercussions for air travel. China Southern Airlines and Lucky Air recently stopped flying between Wuhan and Nanjing after bullet trains started linking the cities.

Some airlines have curtailed or halted services on routes between Wuhan and Nanchang, Shanghai and Zhengzhou, Xi’an and Zhengzhou, Wuhan and Yichang, Wuhan and Xiangyang, and Chengdu and Chongqing because of rail competition.

About 66 percent of respondents in a survey of 1,030 people conducted by Sina.com said they would prefer to take high-speed trains rather than airplanes.

Nearly half of the respondents agreed that the expansion of high-speed railways would adversely affect the civil aviation industry.

“Competition would be healthy because airlines will be cornered and have to improve services and reduce ticket prices,” one respondent said in the survey.

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This would mark the first direct flights from China to Georgia, with a flying time of five hours and 15 minutes. The flights will depart from Urumqi on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and return the next morning.

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Restored operations are limited to online gaming, chat and music streaming services. Sony said it aimed to fully restore the PlayStation Network by the end of May.

Sony also began yesterday a phased restoration of its Qriocity movie and music services which share the PlayStation Network’s server, said Sony Computer Entertainment Inc spokesman Satoshi Fukuoka.

Limited services will also resume in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the Middle East, and Sony said it will start restoring the service for users in Asia soon.

Sony’s PlayStation network is a system that links gamers worldwide in live play. Sony shut it down on April 20 after discovering a hacker attack and said personal data, including credit card numbers, may have been stolen. But the firm said yesterday it had not got any reports of the stolen data being used illegally.

Kazuo Hirai, chief of Sony Corp’s PlayStation video game unit, said in a statement the company has beefed up security measures to protect customers’ personal data. He offered “sincere regret” for any inconvenience caused.

While the partial service allows users to enjoy video games and online chat, Sony said consumers still cannot buy video games or other content by using credit cards.

“While we understand the importance of getting our services back online, we did not rush to do so at the expense of extensively and aggressively testing our enhanced security measures,” Hirai said.

Of the 100 million user accounts, Sony said 92 million can access the limited PlayStation network service.

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A bid from the Canadian financial institutions could represent a more palatable alternative for opponents of the LSE proposal, many of whom are concerned about control of the country’s largest stock market falling into foreign hands.

Legislators and other elected officials in Ontario, the province where Toronto is located, want assurances that the city will not lose its status as a world financial center. The latest proposal, announced by TMX in a statement on Saturday, could address those concerns.

“Now Canadians have a Canadian alternative to look at that points to the strength of our financial services sector,” said Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, an early opponent of LSE’s takeover bid.

As if to emphasize the Canadian identity of the banks and pension administrators making the proposal, they have taken the name Maple Group Acquisition Corp – evoking the country’s most patriotic symbol, the maple leaf.

The Maple Group includes four of Canada’s largest banks – Toronto Dominion Bank, National Bank of Canada, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Nova Scotia – and pension funds from the provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Alberta, a source with knowledge of the deal told Reuters.

Canada’s two other largest banks, Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank of Canada, are advisers in the LSE-TMX deal, and support it.

The offers are part of a wave of consolidation in the global exchange industry. Two bidders are courting NYSE Euronext, while Australia last month rejected an offer for its main exchange from the Singapore Exchange on nationalistic grounds.

The same fate could await the LSE. It must pass muster with a series of provincial regulators, including the Ontario Securities Commission. The final and perhaps most formidable hurdle is a federal review under the Investment Canada Act.

For approval, the government must certify that a deal carries a net benefit for Canada.

BHP Billiton’s US$39 billion bid for Potash Corp, the world’s largest fertilizer maker, fell victim to such a review last year.

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The Shanghai Composite Index closed generally flat last week, edging up by just 0.02 percent to 2,871.03 after data released by China’s top statistics bureau revealed faster inflation and lower industrial output in April.

Figures released last Tuesday by China’s customs also showed imports grew at a slower rate as the government’s tight monetary policies have crimped domestic demand.

“The consumer price index is likely to hit 5.5 percent in May,” said Caitong Securities in a note. “The market is still struggling with a rapidly-growing inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and tight liquidity.” The CPI is a broad measure of inflation.

The brokerage predicted the stock index may gain slightly this week, led by banks and energy producers.

Analysts forecast the index at between 2,750 and 2,950 points.

It recommended investors look at stocks in the consumer goods and new energy sectors as the market “is looking to overcome the negative impact (of the monetary tightening policies).”

It said as all companies have released their earnings reports, ”we expect no negative news in the market in the short term.”

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