GUANGZHOU, China—What is being billed as the world’s most energy-efficient skyscraper is being built here in the center of one of China’s smoggiest cities by state-owned China National Tobacco Co.

It is the latest example of a new trend in China’s burgeoning commercial-property market: State-owned businesses in industries as disparate as insurance and tobacco are emerging as developers, putting up the cash to build some of the most eye-catching skyscrapers in the world.

These large corporations are drawn to these projects by potentially lucrative returns and are helped by strong connections and easy access to state bank lending. While these companies typically occupy some of the space they build, they often put much of it on the market to lease to others. China National Tobacco plans to lease out most of the 71 floors in its new project to other tenants.

“We are a tobacco company, but the management is also thinking about the future,” the project’s chief engineer, Hu Baiju, said during an interview.

Ping An Insurance (Group) Co. of China Ltd., one of China’s biggest insurers, already has committed to investing about 25 billion yuan ($3.66 billion) in Chinese property over the next three years through a trust. It is working on what will be one of China’s tallest buildings, in the city of Shenzhen, financing the multibillion-yuan skyscraper entirely with its own capital.

China’s state-owned enterprises also have been shaking up property prices, both at record-breaking government-land auctions and on the secondary office market. Last fall, Agricultural Bank of China paid about US$550 million for a top-grade Shanghai office tower, according to brokers.

“Before 2009, there were relatively few state-owned enterprises involved in land sales and property markets; most concentrated on their own businesses,” said Hing-yin Lee, a Shanghai property broker for Colliers International. Now, he said, “they see that easy profits can be made.”

At the same time, the building techniques Chinese companies are using in these new developments reflect the country’s hope to leapfrog the U.S. by taking the lead in developing new green technologies that have long-term growth potential. The China National Tobacco project has four big wind turbines, solar panels and a dual-layer glass skin that traps sunlight and pipes it into the building’s heating system.

Mark Latham, head of office services for CB Richard Ellis in China, said state-owned enterprises are big employers that are expanding quickly in China, and see constructing and buying landmark buildings as a way to put their “badge” on a high-profile skyline.

“[State-owned enterprises] have the opportunity to acquire sites in prime locations and have the cash or access to cash to be able to develop buildings tailored and customized according to their specific requirements,” Mr. Latham said.

Office vacancy levels are at about 20% in Beijing and 16% in Shanghai. Those are high rates by U.S. and European standards, but the new space is expected to be absorbed quickly thanks to the strong growth of the Chinese economy. Also, much of the vacant space is second rate, so demand for the newly built prime space may be strong.

State-owned enterprises also are keen to show that they are in step with the priorities of national and regional officials, who have made it clear that green companies and those constructing sustainable buildings are going to enjoy more official support.

In the case of the Pearl River Tower, as China National Tobacco’s tower is known, the company’s management decided it would build a landmark environmental building, and four years ago, through a subsidiary company, hired Chicago architects Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP to fashion the world’s first “zero-energy” skyscraper, generating all the energy it needed to operate itself.

Skidmore Owings embedded the tower with triple-glazed facades and solar panels, and chilled radiant ceilings. Its showpiece: four power-generating vertical-axis wind turbines.

“A lot of clients say they want to build something very energy efficient, but in this case, they really followed through with that goal,” said Ame Engelhart, a Hong Kong-based Skidmore associate. Ms. Engelhart said a building like the Pearl River Tower costs about 10% to 15% more than without the energy-efficient features, but said the projected cost savings could mean the building breaks even within five years. The project is expected to be completed in about a year.

Skidmore maintains that the 2.2-million-square-foot tower will consume about 8.76 billion pounds of carbon dioxide over its life cycle, 58% less than a nonenhanced building of the same scale.

The municipal government of Guangzhou’s construction arm, Guangzhou City Construction & Development Co., also is getting in the act, having hired Wilkinson Eyre Architects of London to design a 103-story skyscraper not far from China National Tobacco’s tower.

The 750 million yuan building, set to open in October as the Guangzhou International Finance Center, features high-efficiency chilled water systems and heat recovery design, an air-conditioning system that recycles condensed water, built-in carbon dioxide sensors and double-glazed windows.
By JONATHAN CHENG

TORONTO — Writer-director Jason Reitman readily admits he can identify with the blithe loner who lives out of a carry-on bag and fires people for a living in the romantic comedy-drama “Up in the Air.”
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But the 32-year-old filmmaker is also honest enough to admit he knows nothing of what it feels like to lose a job.

It was easy directing George Clooney as Ryan Bingham, a guy who flies from city to city, sacking employees for downsizing corporations and reveling in his mobile lifestyle, free of such excess baggage as family, personal commitments or a home mortgage.

“The sad thing about me is that I actually do agree with these characters of mine,” Reitman said during a roundtable interview with reporters in September at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Reitman is no stranger to sympathetic anti-heroes, having found the human side of tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) in 2005’s “Thank You for Smoking.”

“So, that’s the heartbreaker, saddest probably for my wife, who has to be married to me, is that I probably do think like Nick Naylor of ‘Thank You for Smoking,’ and I do think like Ryan Bingham of this movie. And that’s why I like to bring humanity to them. I like to bring humanity to the characters that are vilified in other people’s movies.”

As an example, Reitman said he’s not a fan of Michael Mann’s “The Insider,” a fact-based film about a tobacco industry whistleblower. Beating up on “big tobacco” is too easy for the likes of Reitman. He’d rather find good in a seemingly unscrupulous spinmeister.

Same goes for Clooney’s self-centered, self-indulgent corporate terminator in “Up in the Air,” whose biggest goal in life is to accrue 10 million miles in the air and become a member of the world’s most elite frequent flier club.

“Certainly there’s tons of films about main characters who believe in the idea of family,” Reitman said. “I’d much rather hero-ize the man who says, ‘No, no, life is much better alone; you have it all wrong.’ And often I’m just dealing with a part of me that actually feels those things, or at least is tempted.

“I’m married, I love my wife, my daughter’s incredible, but I would be lying if I didn’t say every once in a while I’ve thought about the idea, when I’m walking through the airport, what if I hopped on that plane to who knows where, and I just landed with nothing and nobody, and just started fresh. And I think just as Ryan Bingham says, I think there is something exhilarating about that concept. I would have to imagine there’s a part of every person that feels that way. It’s easier for me to write that almost as a personal diary.”

An Oscar nominee for directing 2007’s “Juno,” Jason Reitman, son of director Ivan Reitman, confesses he was much more cynical when he first started adapting “Up in the Air” for the screen from a novel by Walter Kirn.

“I started writing this as a 24-year-old who was satirical and libertarian and unmarried when I started writing the first act,” he said. “We were in an economic boom, and I was a satirical writer. I was writing a satire, and the original firing scenes were satirical scenes. They were funny scenes.”

But Jason Reitman’s life has changed since then, and so has the economic climate.

“(The firing scenes) stopped being funny,” he said, “and I realized I needed to make those scenes more dramatic. I just simply knew I did not have the life experience to make these scenes as authentic as possible. And I thought the only way to make this feel real is to use real people.”

To that end, the production company ran newspaper ads in Detroit and St. Louis, two cities hardest hit by the economic downturn, looking for people who had been fired from their jobs and were willing to relive the experience in front of a motion picture camera. So, many of the men and women Clooney’s character fires in the film are real people, re-enacting their real-life reactions when they were handed their pink slips. Some show quiet resignation; others shout angrily or weep or throw tantrums or all of the above.

And their pain is obviously real.

“I don’t know what it’s like to be 53 years old, to have done the same job for half your life, and to suddenly think, ‘OK, I live in a city where half the population does what I do, and we’ve all lost our jobs, so it’s not exactly like I can go find another job (snapping his fingers) like that,’” Reitman said. “I have too much respect for all the people who went through that situation, to sit there and try to come up with bull—- dialogue that just doesn’t pay tribute to how scary that must be.”

Travel and accommodations provided by Paramount Pictures.

Reynolds American Inc. has officially launched the biggest recycling project in its history.
The company has put its historic former headquarters on the market, hiring Commercial Realty Advisors of Winston-Salem as the broker.

The 22-story building has been the headquarters of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. since it debuted as an innovative architectural and engineering masterpiece in April 1929. The building also served as the home for various commercial and retail businesses from its opening until the early 1980s.

In October 2008, Reynolds said it planned to consolidate its downtown employees, both Reynolds American Inc. and the subsidiary, into the neighboring Plaza Building by early 2010. That goal recently was accomplished.

The decision to vacate the building came shortly after Reynolds said it was eliminating 570 jobs, mostly white collar, as part of a continuing effort of trying to balance consumer demand for its products with company size.

The Reynolds Building is valued at $12.3 million, according to Forsyth County tax records.

Reynolds has said it is open to selling and leasing the building, which has at least 240,000 square feet of mostly Class B office space. Commercial real-estate developers say that the building has the potential for mixed use, including residential units.

David Howard, a spokesman for Reynolds, said that the company chose the broker because it “has the background, expertise and local knowledge needed for this project.”

Among Commercial Realty’s projects have been representing the buyer of the Park Building and taking over leasing of that building, brokering the Hillcrest golf course land transaction and the selling of the Fieldcrest Cannon building in Greensboro.

The broker will work with Jones Lang LaSalle, an international commercial-realty company based in Chicago, to evaluate and market the building.

“Over the next several months, the broker will evaluate possible uses of the building that will take into account not only its practical usage, but its historic significance to the community and the role it might play in downtown development in Winston-Salem,” Howard said.

John Reese II, the managing partner for Commercial Realty, said that the two real-estate companies will spend up to 60 days to “determine the best and highest use of the building.”

“The canvass is totally blank right now,” he said.

The building is being entered into a competitive market for downtown office space.

There is about 100,000 square feet of space available in the Wachovia Center, which has 600,000 square feet.

There also is 204,000 square feet of space in Winston Tower Main, which has about 436,000 square feet, and all 268,708 square feet in Winston Tower Church, according to the Web site of Magnolia Partners, which manages the buildings.

“With the building being an iconic part of Winston-Salem, we believe there will be considerable options for adaptive reuse,” Reese said.

Howard said that Reynolds will consider whatever recommendations that the real-estate companies make, including upgrading office space to Class A specifications.

The decision by Reynolds marks another change in the evolution of Winston-Salem’s economy, said Gayle Anderson, the chief executive and president of the Winston-Salem Chamber of Commerce.

“There is excitement in the community about the re-development potential of this building,” Anderson said. “Until more specifics are known, it’s difficult to predict how it might be seen in the marketplace. We look forward to seeing their plans and working with them.”

The building is not on the National Register of Historic Places, company spokeswoman Maura Payne said.

However, the building represented the culmination of a downtown construction spree during the 1920s. The job of designing the building went to Shreve & Lamb. The Winston-Salem Journal reported at the time that the architectural firm was asked to produce “an effect of conservatism along with attractiveness, but to avoid flashiness.”

According to a centennial edition of the Journal published in 1997, “city residents could be forgiven for wondering whether the architects followed the directive.”

“Gray-brown marble from Missouri, black marble from Belgium and buff-colored marble from France covered the walls and floor. The ceiling was festooned with gold leaves, and the grillwork, elevator doors and door frames were bright, gleaming brass.”

The building, which at the time was the tallest south of Baltimore, won a national architectural award. A gigantic version of it would rise from the sidewalks of Manhattan as the Empire State Building, another Shreve & Lamb design.

By Richard Craver
November 23, 2009

The 16th Asian Games, part of the worldwide Olympic movement and governed by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), will be “going smokeless” with firm prohibitions on the sale of tobacco products and tobacco sponsorship of the Games.

The Asian Games are the second largest sports event in the world after the Summer Olympic Games.

Governed by the Olympic Council of Asia, the 16th Asian Games follows all mandates of the International Olympic Committee in which Games’ organizers are prohibited from accepting sponsorship of the Games by tobacco manufactures.

Organizers are also prohibited from allowing the sale of cigarettes or tobacco products at any athletic venue.

“Preparations of smoking control for the 16th Asian Games are in full swing in the host city of Guangzhou,” said Hu Bingjie, deputy director of the Medical Services Department of the Guangzhou Asian Games Organizing Committee (GAGOC), and Zhao Hong, director of the Office of the Guangzhou Patriotic Health Campaign Committee.

Guangzhou’s efforts on smoking controls are aimed at creating a safe, clean, and healthy environment for the upcoming Asian Games.

19 November 2009

Stores owners explained that they earn 40% from all tobacco sales because of contraband cigarettes.
Statistics showed that in 2007 that 21% of all cigarettes being sold were illegal, and then they grew to 32% in 2008. But in 2009 illegal cigarettes raised more than 50%.

Dave Bryans, Ontario Convenience Stores Association president said: “It’s growing in double digits every day. Today it’s a crisis for convenience stores, neighborhoods, schools and society.”

Researchers showed in a recent study that some 13% of high school students who are daily smokers regularly smoke illegal cigarettes. For example in Ontario was found that nearly 22% of youth smokers usually light up illegal cigarettes. Young people who smoke contraband cigarettes also smoke significantly more than their peers who smoke other brands, the study found also.

Bryans added that those cigarettes are sold from original reserves. And the cheap price makes it even more luring for young people to experiment and pick up the habit.

And not only children but even adults are turning to the contraband cigarettes because of their low prices.

But for convenience stores it’s having a major impact on sales. For example at Bridgeport Variety in Port Colborne, owner Joe Lyu said some 80% of his sales come from tobacco and he has seen a 40% drop in those sales.

Today contraband cigarettes began a serious problem which needs to be solved for not to hurt the small business of convenience stores and especially to not affect the children’s health.

For example Canada is being plenty with untested, unregulated and untaxed cigarettes which are also robbing the government of more than $1 billion every year.

Contraband cigarettes are more of “the straw that broke the camel’s back” for convenience stores, argued researchers.

Not only tobacco products are sell at low prices but also a lot of chain stores and gas stations sell groceries and other products with a policy of low margins for to get a higher volume of customers.

THE National Assembly adopted the Tobacco Products Control Bill with one amendment on Thursday, the last sitting day of the year.

The Bill will now go to the National Council, the House of Review. In a moment of rare agreement between the opposition and the benches of the ruling Swapo Party, Members agreed to a small, but important change of words in Clause 3, which originally stipulated that a member of the umbrella labour movement NUNW, should sit on one of the supervisory boards to be created once the bill is promulgated.

Tsudao Gurirab of the official opposition party CoD proposed that the words should be changed to “a member of organised labour” and thus would avoid the name of a specific labour union.

“For the first the Member talks sense and I agree,” said Deputy Health Minister Petrina Haingura. The House then adopted the amendment and the Tobacco Products Control Bill was passed.

Parliament went into recess about five weeks earlier than planned because MPs wanted to go and campaign for the upcoming elections.

The National Assembly will again convene on February 9 next year, which is also the Day of the Constitution in Namibia. It will then be 20 years since the Constituent Assembly had adopted the final draft of the country’s Constitution in 1990.

By Brigitte Weidlich, 12 October 2009, Allafrica

LONDON – Imperial Tobacco yesterday issued a full-year update that reassured the market on various points. In particular, there was some concern at the half-year results that the company would not raise the full-year dividend by as much as everyone had expected.

The shares stands at just over 11 times forecast earnings for 2009, compared with British American Tobacco on 13 times. On an enterprise value measure – which includes the company’s debt – to EBITDA Imperial is also at a discount to BAT. The stock yields a healthy 4.2%. Hold on for further gains says the Telegraph.

JD Sports Fashion is moving away from the sports retail pack. The chain, which sells sporty casual wear, yesterday said that first-half profit was up by 14pc, ahead of even the most optimistic forecasts. At a time when rivals like JJB Sports and Sports Direct are flagging, JD is leagues ahead. Trading on 7.6 times next year’s earnings, the stock yields 2.17pc. A strong buy says the Telegraph.

At 594p, up by one quarter since July, JD shares have little to drive them higher for now. However, at seven times earnings, neither can they be deemed too steep. Hold on says the Times.

JD has shrugged off the recession and will get a boost from sales of England football shirts during next year’s World Cup. And given its good behaviour over recent years, its shares look a safer option for investors than betting on glory for the national squad. Buy adds the Independent.

For London property developer Minerva, yesterday was, in part, payback time. The group’s shares shot up by 25.4% after the company, which is responsible for the redevelopment of the Walbrook and St Botolphs, announced that it had refinanced a debt pile of more than Ј750m. Hold on to Minerva shares if you own them. Don’t rush to buy otherwise says the Independent.

Synchronica makes software to sell to mobile networks so that people with normal, non-”smart” phones can have always-on email on their handsets. Synchronica stock looks undervalued – with a PE ratio of less than 10 times against a sectoral average of 16 – and the prospects are good. Buy says the Independent.

You might not guess from yesterday’s numbers that Ricardo is an engineering consultant to the motor industry. Full-year revenues were down 2%, pre-tax profits up 1%and earnings per share ahead 13%. Equally, Ricardo’s order book is no lower than it was a year ago. It added trading in the first six months of its new financial year will be “substantially lower” than the last, but on a longer term view the Times says buy on 14 times current year forecasts and yielding nearly 4%.

The scope for CVS Group, Britain’s biggest owner of veterinary practices, to acquire practices, which can be funded from cashflow, is undiminished. At 167p, or 11 times earnings, hold on says the Times.


© 23 Sep 2009 Sharecast

Kretek are ousted from the US while American tobacco interests merrily peddle their wares overseas
Indonesians should turn their attention away from Malaysian theft of their culture to American maltreatment of a rather different national icon – the kretek cigarette.

As of October 1 it will become a criminal offense in the supposedly free United States to sell kretek, the clove-enhanced cigarette dear to most Indonesian smokers and increasingly to foreigners. Indonesia should take this behavior to the World Trade Organisation. The country which in the name of free trade has for decades ensured that its tobacco companies are foisted on the world has the temerity to ban somebody else’s exports to the US.

It should be acknowledged that kretek are no picnic, and that the US ban goes well beyond kretek to other tobacco products as well. According to studies, kretek are made up of 60 to 80 percent tobacco, 20 t0 40 percent ground cloves, clove oil and other additives, although the studies point out that they do not contain the thousands of toxic chemicals that conventional cigarettes are packed with.

This ban is not being done to protect domestic commercial interests. Kretek sales in the US are scarcely big enough to worry the big companies. They account for less than 1 percent of US cigarette sales. The ban on kretek is a product of an out-of-control US Food and Drug Administration which has been given authoritarian powers to declare tobacco products illegal, though illogically it cannot ban pure tobacco products, which take in US$1.5 billion in US exports annually according to the latest data.

In this case it is resorting to banning “flavored” cigarettes on the theory that flavoring adds to their appeal to the young. But this being the US, where big companies can buy their way around rules imposed by self-assuming health bureaucrats, menthol is exempted from the US flavoring ban. American tobacco purveyors sell plenty of menthol cigarettes, and they sell more of them to the young. According to US statistics, in 2006 almost 44 percent of smokers aged 12 to 17 years smoked menthol cigarettes, 36 percent aged 18 to 24 reported smoking menthol cigarettes and more than 30 percent of those over 35 reported smoking them.

Perhaps significantly, the small market for kretek in the US is dominated by Djarum, which is still Indonesian-owned and not a US concern. The multinational giants meanwhile have already moved on Indonesia, with Philip Morris acquiring Sampoerna, and British American Tobacco Indonesia, long a local manufacturer of white cigarettes, acquiring Bentoel. Ironically, back in 2004 Philip Morris had not opposed a proposed ban on kretek in the US for the cynical reason that it did not make any.

The hypocrisy of the US is stunning. According to a study by Frank J. Chaloupka and Adit Laixuthai for the National Bureau of Economic Research, the US in the 1980s and 1990s used Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act to force open the cigarette markets of Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand. “Estimates from fixed-effects models indicate that the market share of US cigarettes in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Thailand increased dramatically after the agreements as consumers switched from the brands produced by domestic monopolies to the brands of US cigarette producers,” Chaloupka and Laixuthai wrote. “In addition, simulations based on the regression results indicate that per capita cigarette consumption in 1991 in the four affected countries was nearly 10 percent higher than it would have been had the markets remained closed to U.S. cigarettes.”

Sure enough, Japan remains the biggest importer of US manufactured tobacco products, spending US$954 million on US cigarettes annually, followed by Saudi Arabia, Israel, Lebanon and, improbably, Iran at No. 5 despite the restraints on trade between the two countries.

The ban is also a blow, albeit a minor one, to the hand-rolled kretek industry which provides for thousands of poor Indonesians. It suggests a do-gooding zealotry on the part of the anti-smoking lobby worthy if not of the Taliban at least of Malaysia’s beer-banning fanatics – and without even a religious text to rely on.

In fact smoking disease patterns suggest that American-style flue-cured, Virginia tobacco with chemical additives which are the most dangerous cigarettes – certainly compared with the air-cured black tobacco ones such as France’s traditional Gauloises cigarettes and Gitanes.

The ban on kretek is discriminatory. One can be sure that if cloves were grown in the US there would be no such ban. As it is, Indonesians might think a reasonable riposte would be to ban all US-brand name colas until the kretek ban is lifted. After all, who knows what noxious substances are in Coca-Cola? The formula is a secret.

Asiasentinel

CHICAGO/NEW YORK, – A group including some top U.S. tobacco companies filed a federal lawsuit on Monday to block provisions of a new tobacco law, arguing it violated their free speech rights under the U.S. constitution.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co, a unit of Reynolds American Inc (RAI.N) that makes Camel and Winston cigarettes, and Lorillard Inc (LO.N), which sells the Newport menthol brand, were among those seeking to void parts of the law.

Altria Group Inc (MO.N), which makes Marlboro cigarettes and is the largest U.S. tobacco company, is not involved in the case after breaking with rivals to support the law.

The legislation signed on June 22 gives the Food and Drug Administration broad powers for the first time over cigarettes and other tobacco products [ID:nN22512674].

It calls for larger warnings on cigarette packages, restricts vending machine sales, bans most flavored products and curbs print advertisements targeting children. The FDA also has final say over new products and marketing claims such as “light” and “low tar.”

While not challenging the FDA’s authority to regulate tobacco products, tobacco companies say the law goes too far in limiting their commercial speech rights in light of existing bans on television and radio advertisements.

“Even prior to the act, plaintiffs had few avenues of communication for speaking to their adult consumers,” the companies said in the lawsuit filed in a federal court in Kentucky. “The act imposes sweeping and unprecedented restrictions that effectively foreclose those avenues of communication that remain.”

The companies are asking the court to overturn bans on the warning labels, using color and graphics in labels and advertising, some outdoor advertising and sponsorships of sporting and other events.

While commercial speech has less constitutional protection than other speech, the government still faces a high hurdle in trying to restrict it, legal experts said.

“The Supreme Court has rejected the rationale that it is okay to ban tobacco advertising to protect children,” Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA School of Law in Los Angeles.

“It has generally held that for advertising of products not legal for children, such as alcohol and tobacco, we cannot just say, ‘children may see an ad and therefore try to get the product illegally.’”

GOOD CASE?

Proponents said the FDA legislation would help curb youth smoking, but legal experts have questioned whether that would make the restrictions legal.
Even one opponent of the tobacco industry said the companies could have a good case.

“The tobacco companies have a very legitimate claim based on the Supreme Court’s own rulings,” Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences at Boston University’s School of Public Health.

“I question why the crafters of the legislation did not deal with the First Amendment issue appropriately,” he added. “A ruling for the companies would negate a good portion of this legislation.”

Edward Sweda, chief attorney for the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, said the tobacco companies already agreed to some advertising restrictions as part of a landmark legal settlement with U.S. states in 1998.

“I am highly doubtful that the Reynolds, Lorillard lawsuit will be ultimately successful,” he said.

Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include cigarette maker Commonwealth Brands Inc; tobacco retailer Discount Tobacco city & Lottery Inc and National Tobacco Co.

A representative for the FDA said the agency does not comment on pending lawsuits.

The case is Commonwealth Brands Inc vs. United States, U.S. District Court, Western District of Kentucky (Bowling Green), No. 09-117. (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington, D.C.; editing by John Wallace and Andre Grenon)


© Reuters