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Howard Winn

No-show agri-business firm reaps what it sows
Whatever you think of China Green (Holdings), it established a precedent on Thursday by being the first company not to show up to an analysts' meeting. Plenty of them have been postponed before, but they usually give some advance warning.
China Green booked a large room at the Conrad and it was only after about 100 analysts had been sat there for 40 minutes that a man from Hill and Knowlton showed up and told them it was off.
We hear the rush for the exit and the lifts was most unseemly.
China Green, which is in agri-business, has quite a big following among fund managers so its lack of communication had quite a big impact on its stock yesterday.
Analysts have always been impressed with its profit growth which, one analyst told Lai See, would have made Enron proud. Despite the ups and downs of prices for vegetables, fertiliser and so on, China Green was able to crank out steady margins year after year.
Its management clearly has a sense of humour. When the stock plummeted 45 per cent, it issued the standard notice to the stock exchange saying the board 'wishes to state that it was not aware of any reasons for such movement'.
But there were at least three reasons: firstly, the management did not show up to the analysts' meeting; secondly, the company did not publish its results; and thirdly, a representative from the company belatedly spoke to some broking houses by phone yesterday morning and said he expected the stock to fall.
The company says it intends to announce its results on Monday but no meetings have been announced. If the results aren't announced on Monday, the stock is likely to be suspended since it will have breached the four-month period companies are allowed in Hong Kong. Most other places in Asia allow just two months.
 Monk on board is good karma
We were surprised to see a Buddhist monk at the Asia Mining Club dinner recently. As the name suggests, the recently founded club aims to bring together people with an interest in mining.
However, it turns out that well-respected Lama Khen Bu Kun Ga Sang Bo Rinpoche  is an independent non-executive director on the board of  Yinfu Gold Corp, a Wyoming-registered public company currently trading on the  over-the-counter market. Yinfu owns gold-mining and exploration concessions in Shandong and Guangdong provinces. 
The Lama has been helping the company with its corporate and social responsibility aims and the hope is that he will bring good fortune on Yinfu's various projects. He will no doubt be familiar with the writing of His Eminence Gyaltsab Rinpoche  and in particular the Prayer for a Swift Return.
We'll all be rooned 
People are getting twitchy about the economy and uncertainty is in the air. 
Even if we weren't heading for a double dip, it looks as if some people are determined to talk us into one.
So cash and fixed-income securities are king. According to EPFR global data, an aggregate US$7.1 billion was redeemed from equity funds in the week to last Wednesday, and bond funds absorbed US$5.2 billion.
Analysts say there are three main reasons for the flows into safe-haven investments: the US economy, the US economy and the US economy.
Laurence Copeland, finance professor at Cardiff University business school, is a bear. 
He predicts a new crisis 'may be next week, next month or next year, but the longer the reckoning is delayed, the more drastic and painful it is likely to be'.  
'It will be triggered by a drastic rerating of US (and possibly British) debt, as it suddenly dawns on those who speak the language of Confucius and the Koran that those who speak the language of Shakespeare cannot necessarily be trusted to repay their debts - at least, not in hard currency.'
He says gold has further to rise, but rejects US treasuries as grossly overpriced, sees Australia, Canada and New Zealand as lower-risk and says '10-year Australian government debt yielding nearly five per cent shines like a good deed in a wicked world'.
In other words, the end of the world is nigh, so buy food, gold and bonds and stay away from Anglo Saxon investments with the possible exception of Canada and the Down Under economies.
Nasdaq chief defies myth
One of the great myths in the mining industry is that if a woman goes down a mine, she brings bad luck to that mine. This belief is widely held in China and women do not go down mines.
However, Rebecca Smith,  Nasdaq's Asia managing director, has broken with tradition and is believed to be the first Western women to go down a mine in China, possibly the first woman. She visited one of Yinfu's mines in Shandong recently and so far - fingers crossed - the mine has suffered no ill-effects. Interestingly, Yinfu has decided not to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange but is to list on Nasdaq.
It has already reserved the propitious stock code 'Yin'.



Lai See