Welcome to the 2004 property recovery!

Here are a few Lai See observations:

Bidding for the first and the most expensive site in Ho Man Tin began at 2.30pm and went on for just under two hours, outlasting the afternoon equity trading session, before it was sold for $9.42 billion.

The record for the longest and most expensive auction is still the two hours and 15 minutes it took Sino Land to secure a site in Siu Sai Wan for $11.8 billion in March 1997.

Yesterday's property stocks ran in tandem with bidding for the Ho Man Tin site for the first hour, but once the price went past the $7.5 billion mark and there were only three bidders left (the anonymous Nos 20, 6 and 11), stock market punters got cold feet.

Investors were uncertain who was going to pay this sky-high price of more than $5,476 per sqft. Was it Sino Land, a company that has a track record of writing big cheques to the government at the wrong time? Or perhaps the highly geared New World Development or Wharf (Holdings)?

Later, everyone was relieved to learn that it was the two biggest landlords - Cheung Kong (Holdings) and Sun Hung Kai Properties.

However, we're not so sure that makes it a happy ending.

inventive incentives

Insurance is about incentives. In recent years, when the economic outlook was gloomy, local insurance companies such as AIA gave 10,000 mobile phone handsets to its agents, while those of New York Life were rewarded with palm pilots.

Now, with the market growing at a stellar 47 per cent in the first half, insurance agents/financial planners can look forward to the real thing - money.

ING, which announced 41 per cent growth in new business in the first eight months, will reward its 200 staff with a 21/2-month bonus by the end of the year.

This is one month more than last year and the most since the turn of the century.

Hold the celebrations though. If ING is any indication of the way the industry is going, the outlook for the second half is not particularly positive.

Coming from a Sars-free high base last year presents a challenge to further industry growth, especially when the Chinese insurance authorities, who have been ordered to help cool the economy since the summer, have been placing 'caveat emptor' notices in mainland newspapers to stifle illegal life insurance activities.

Some leading insurance companies had flat or even negative business premium growth in the third quarter, but the overall picture should become clearer next month when full details are released.

There is an industry axiom that says: It is never wrong to buy life insurance.

By the same token, it is never wrong to buy insurance stocks.

girl power

Bankers are Tung Chee-hwa's favourite people, so it was no surprise when the chief executive appointed Legislative Council member and Asia Financial director Bernard Chan Charnwut and former China Securities Regulatory Commission vice-chairwoman Laura Cha Shih May-lun to his Executive Council yesterday.

Two weeks ago, Mrs Cha was appointed an independent non-executive director of both the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp and Johnson Electric Holdings.

Mrs Cha is not the only powerful woman connected to the HSBC Group. She follows in the footsteps of former executive councillor Rosanna Wong Yick-ming and Baroness Lydia Dunn (pictured), who has been a non-executive director since 1990.

No wonder it's the biggest bank in town.

black gold goes green

The environment is like water - it does not mix well with oil.

So it seems a little strange that Sinopec Zhenhai Refining & Chemical should be named as one of the four State Environmental Friendly Enterprises by the State Environmental Protection Administration of China.

A spokesman for Sinopec Zhenhai Refining, which produces diesel, petrol and jet fuel, said it was not an easy title to have.