There's a hilarious scrap going on behind the scenes in the Hong Kong newspaper industry. It all started when this newspaper ran an article on the highest paid executives of listed companies in Hong Kong, suggesting that Ma Ching-kwan of the Oriental Daily News group came top with an estimated $30 million a year.
An Australian newspaper called the Daily Telegraph then re-told the story, earlier this month, emphasising two facts. Mr Ma is an Australian citizen, and he is the nephew of 'White Powder' Ma, a gentleman who moved from Hong Kong to Taiwan after being accused of being a heroin trafficker.
It was clear that the Ma family would not have appreciated the Telegraph version, but at least it was limited to the gweilo community far away, right? Wrong. A shortened version of this tale was then printed in the Australian edition of the Sing Tao Daily , popular with the Chinese community there.
Meanwhile in Hong Kong . . . in the past few days, a spate of articles has appeared in the Oriental Daily News , Hong Kong, discussing the role of Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par (patriarchs of the Sing Tao empire) during World War II, when some businessmen collaborated with the enemy.
This mystified many Hong Kong people, who were given no indication of why these old allegations were being unearthed.
Yesterday, the Hong Kong Standard (part of the Sing Tao group) devoted a page to reprinting all the articles in the chain except ours, to show how the animosity built up.
With a bit of luck, newspapers like those will eventually fill up all their pages slagging off each other, and the rest of us can get on with our lives. Doncha just love the terminology that financial types use? Pauline Gately, regional strategist at Merrill Lynch, told Reuters yesterday: 'In Thailand, some of the stale bulls that have been sitting on long positions in the market are selling.' Stale bull on a long position? Put me right off my beef jerky. Nigel Farmer of Bowden Dewar McFadzean recently signed a lease on an apartment in Beijing.