Many news organizations around the world have been cutting back on staff, resources and coverage. But a new media outfit backed by one of Hong Kong’s most prominent businessmen is bucking that trend, The New York Times’s Bettina Wassener reported.
Cai Business Indepth, known as CBID, is aiming to become a major provider of reliable financial news and analysis, in English, about one of the world’s largest and most complex economies: China. (“Cai” means finance in Mandarin.)
CBID’s baseline product — a daily wrap-up of the main business stories in greater China — was initiated Monday on the company’s Web site, www.cbid.com.
An advertising campaign will follow this week, and a suite of other products — like industry and regional reports and economic data — is planned in the coming months.
CBID hired about 30 reporters, many of them recruited from other media outlets.
Another 30 have been added at a partner publication, The Hong Kong Economic Journal, a Chinese-language daily, to provide English-language content for CBID.
And a similar number are dedicated to CBID under the umbrella of Caijing, a highly respected business magazine based in Beijing.
These partnerships and a focus on greater China should set CBID apart from larger but more diversified international news wires, said James Ogilvy-Stuart, the venture’s chief executive. His career includes a stint as the head of Asia for the Nasdaq stock market and 17 years at Bloomberg.
“There is no shortage of information about China, but only a small subset of that ever sees the light of day in English,” Mr. Ogilvy-Stuart said in an interview on Monday. “We set ourselves the task of addressing that, of creating a much clearer picture, and to bring transparency to what’s going on in the Chinese economy.”
CBID’s revenue will come mostly through subscriptions rather than advertising, Mr. Ogilvy-Stuart said. A 12-month subscription, for example, will cost $250 a month, and a three-month subscription will be $300 a month, according to the company’s Web site. For now, the company is offering free two-week trials.
“We are unashamedly focused on the institutional corporate community — we are at the premium end of what is a niche market,” Mr. Ogilvy-Stuart said. “We have a one-way bet on China.”
CBID would not discuss its ownership structure. But the service’s founders and backers, including Richard Li, who is chairman of PCCW, the main Hong Kong telecommunications company, are convinced that they are onto a winner.
The global downturn has thrust fast-growing Asia into the limelight as an engine of world growth, prompting an influx of investment by businesses seeking to capitalize on booming economies and on the rising affluence of Asia’s billions of consumers.
“The demand for business intelligence, due diligence, advice and information is almost inexhaustible in Asia,” said Gavin Greenwood of Allan & Associates, a security and political consulting firm based in Hong Kong.
Other firms also say they have seen a big increase in global interest in Asia in the last three years.
“European and American companies and investors acutely feel the need to understand the market better and are actively looking for suppliers, customers and potential business partners in the region,” said David Legg, managing director for Europe and Asia of theGerson Lehrman Group, which puts regional and industrial experts in touch with investors.
Copal Partners, whose 1,000 employees, mostly based in India, provide research and analysis services for banks, hedge funds and private equity firms, also has seen its Asia-related work soar.
Copal’s Mandarin-speaking team has doubled to 40 in the last 12 months, and China-related work, virtually nonexistent two years ago, now makes up 10 percent of revenue, according to its chief executive, Rishi Khosla.
“We’ve seen a substantial increase in demand for country analysis and corporate enquiry work in China in the last couple of years,” Ben Wootliff, who heads the corporate enquiries team of the political and security consulting firm, Control Risks Group, in Shanghai, said in an interview on Monday. “This is partly because the financial crisis has accelerated the inflow of investments here and partly because clients have become increasingly aware of the challenges and potential risks they face in doing business here.”
These, he said, include fraud and corruption and information and intellectual-property issues, policy and regulation, and, especially for firms with major long-term strategic exposure to China, wider political concerns like trade and diplomatic issues with the United States and European Union.
In the last two years, Control Risks’ China-related revenue has grown sharply, and the company is increasing its professional staff based in China by 25 percent this year.
Via financial times
