Business Of Fashion : China’s People’s Daily Slams Medical Beauty Ads, Urges Reg

China’s People’s Daily Slams Medical Beauty Ads, Urges Regulation

China’s People’s Daily newspaper said it was “imperative and urgent” to regulate advertisements bombarding people with recommendations for cosmetic surgery, procedures and treatments, as they had become excessive, and some made false claims.

“From posters at bus stops and in subway, to introductions on social websites and content platforms, from advertisements planted in films and television variety shows, to promotions by live-streamers, medical beauty advertisements are overwhelmingly pervasive,” the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper said in a commentary published on its website.

The People’s Daily said some advertisements associate good looks with “high-quality”, “diligence” and “success”, fabricating stories about “plastic surgery changing one’s destiny” and distorting aesthetic perceptions.

The criticism of the sector comes as Chinese regulators have wielded a wide-ranging crackdown on industries from technology to education to property to strengthen their control over the economy and society after years of runaway growth.

The spate of regulatory activity has raised investors’ concerns over which sectors might come under scrutiny next.

In August, China’s market regulator drafted guidelines to regulate the medical aesthetics sector’s advertising practices, saying that they were prompting societal anxiety over people’s looks.

Demand for plastic surgery or medical aesthetic treatment has boomed in China in recent years with procedures to make one’s eyes wider or nose higher among the most popular. However, they have been criticised for failing to caution people about risks.

In July, a 33-year-old online influencer died from complications after a botched liposuction procedure in a case that was widely reported by media in China.

The market for plastic surgery in China is expected to grow to 300 billion yuan ($46.54 billion) by 2022, state news agency Xinhua reported last month citing a report by the Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics.

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

  • HLF -8.2% (issues downside revenue guidance for Q3 and FY21), AVO -3.2%, ORCL -2.4%, SBRA -1.8% (reaffirms guidance, also to expand relationship with Recovery Centers of America, provides business update)

Other news:

  • JAMF -5.6% (announces private placement of $325 mln in convertible notes)
  • OPEN -5.2% (prices secondary offering of 28.0 mln shares)
  • FIGS -4.4% ( secondary offering of 8,826,703 shares of Class A common stock by Tulco, FIGS' largest stockholder, and certain members of FIGS' management team)
  • BRP -4.3% (to acquire Jacobson, Goldfarb & Scott)
  • MP -3.8% (stock offering)
  • LSI -2.8% (prices offering of 2.5 mln shares of common stock for gross proceeds of ~$306 mln)
  • PAR -2.6% (stock offering and convertible notes offering)

Analyst comments:

  • TASK -1.8% (downgraded to Neutral from Buy at BofA Securities)
  • AEIS -1.4% (downgraded to Neutral from Positive at Susquehanna)
  • AMAT -1.4% (downgraded to Neutral from Positive at Susquehanna)
  • LRCX -1.2% (downgraded to Neutral from Positive at Susquehanna)

>>> US Gapping up

Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:

  • BBW +1.8% (reaffirms guidance in presentation)

Other news:

  • AZRX +11.2% (CEO issues letter to shareholders regarding recent acquisition of First Wave Bio and creation of First Wave BioPharma)
  • AXSM +8% (FDA accepts NDA for migraine treatment AXS-07; PDUFA date set for April 30, 2022)
  • KERN +7.9% (to acquire 365 Cannabis in a $17 mln deal)
  • ZLAB +7.7% (receives Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Bemarituzumab in China)
  • PNT +6.1% (POINT Biopharma and Convergent Therapeutics announce collaboration to evaluate CONV 01-a (Rosopatamab-225Ac) in combination with PNT2002)
  • NRXP +6% (IQV to collaborate with NRXP on potential medical support for novel COVID-19 treatment)
  • AVNT +4.6% (expects double-digit revenue in its composite solutions)
  • SPIR +4.1% (to acquire exactEarth (EXRTF) for approx. $161.2 mln in cash and stock; to be accretive to revs, adj. EBITDA)
  • ANGI +3.6% (report monthly metrics for August)
  • ARAY +3.5% (reports CyberKnife Robotic Radiotherapy Platform is superior to conventional linear accelerators)
  • QTRX +3.3% (FDA expands EUA label for its Simoa SARS-CoV-2 N Protein Antigen Test)
  • GLDD +3% (announces receipt of several major dredging awards totaling $261.3 mln)
  • VCTR +2.3% (reports August AUM)
  • INCY +1.1% (Ruxolitinib Cream data accepted for presentation at EADV)
  • NVCR +1.1% (has entered into a clinical trial collaboration agreement with Roche (RHHBY))
  • MNR +1% (reinitiates exploration of strategic alternatives)
  • RWT +1% (increases dividend)
  • SENS +1% (announces collaboration with the University Hospitals)

Analyst comments:

  • JNCE +4.6% (upgraded to Outperform from Mkt Perform at Raymond James)
  • DXC +1.9% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at BofA Securities)
  • LESL +1.3% (upgraded to Buy from Hold at Berenberg)
  • KLAC +0.9% (upgraded to Positive from Neutral at Susquehanna)

FT : Shinsei hires Morgan Stanley for ‘poison pill’ to thwart SBI takeover

Shinsei hires Morgan Stanley for ‘poison pill’ to thwart SBI takeover
Japanese bank seeks to block hostile approach from online financial group

Shinsei Bank has engaged Morgan Stanley to help engineer a “poison pill” takeover defence after the company was left reeling by a $1.1bn hostile stakebuilding approach from Japan’s biggest internet brokerage.

People close to Shinsei said on Tuesday night that the bank was in discussions with its advisers on a large issuance of dilutive new shares in a gambit that used to be part of the corporate Japan playbook, but has been discouraged in recent years by activist shareholders and the country’s own corporate governance code. 

Shinsei’s rising desperation follows an unsolicited bid last week from SBI, the online financial conglomerate that has set its sights on becoming Japan’s newest “megabank” and is run by the iconoclastic Yoshitaka Kitao.

SBI’s unsolicited tender offer, which placed a 38 per cent premium on the value of Shinsei Bank’s shares at their close last Wednesday, was aimed at increasing its stake from the current 20 per cent to 48 per cent.

If successful, SBI would seek to eject Shinsei’s board of directors and replace it with a new one of its choosing, the conglomerate said in a statement issued along with the tender offer.

The surprise strike by SBI follows a series of failed efforts by Kitao to negotiate to create a closer partnership between the two banks via business and capital tie-ups. Instead of deepening its relationship with SBI, Shinsei began talks on a tie-up with SBI’s domestic arch-rival Monex. 

The SBI approach, which has become the latest test of Japan’s stance towards hostile corporate moves, came with Kitao’s blunt criticism of Shinsei’s management, its governance and of its inability to address fundamental flaws in its profitability.

Kitao’s efforts to build the influence and scale of SBI has involved a series of stakebuilding exercises in several of Japan’s weakest regional banks — financial institutions whose overall fragility has become a matter of steadily increasing concern to financial regulators and the Bank of Japan.

Government efforts to encourage defensive mergers among regional banks have struggled. People close to SBI said that Kitao’s strategy of coming to the rescue of the most endangered had won him the support of several senior figures within Japan’s Financial Services Agency.

Shinsei is considering issuing new share rights to existing shareholders, a move that would require approval at an extraordinary shareholder meeting. The aim is to buy time to extend the deadline for SBI’s tender offer, according to one of the people with knowledge of the discussions. The proposal has not formally been approved by the company’s board.

Shinsei was not immediately available for comment. Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

WSJ : DeFi Is Crypto’s Wall Street, Without a Safety Net

DeFi Is Crypto’s Wall Street, Without a Safety Net
Decentralized finance allows crypto enthusiasts a do-it-yourself version of investment banking, bringing high rewards and huge risks

“Trade. Earn. Win.” The happy bunny flipping a pancake and the double- or triple-digit interest rates on offer are closer to the marketing style of Las Vegas than Wall Street. Don’t be fooled: PancakeSwap and its competitors in what’s now known as DeFi, or decentralized finance, are bringing casino capitalism to the crypto masses.

The promised rewards are huge, and the marketing makes it easy. “High APR, low risk” is the pitch for PancakeSwap’s “Syrup Pools,” where anyone can lend money. The annual percentage rates, the APRs, are sweet: On Monday a crypto token called CHESS was promising more than 300% a year, paid in CHESS.

The speed of growth is truly extraordinary, as DeFi barely existed until last year. The CAKE tokens issued by PancakeSwap and others from DeFi competitors such as Uniswap and Aave are together worth $120 billion, according to CoinMarketCap. More than $7 billion has been locked up just in one part of DeFi, “yield farming,” the crypto jargon for financing market making.

DeFi is both wonderful and scary. The innovation—made possible by smart contracts, which can automatically move crypto around based on rules enshrined in computer code—has allowed crypto enthusiasts to replicate pretty much all the functions of Wall Street for crypto, without needing Wall Street.

Market making, or yield farming, is among the most basic. Prime brokerage, the bank units that serve hedge funds, has reappeared as DeFi’s collateralized lending, allowing speculators to pile on leverage or short a token they want to bet against by borrowing and selling it. Interest-rate swaps and basis swaps are increasingly common as people use debt to arbitrage between exchanges, DeFi providers and different cryptocurrencies.

Even structured credit has appeared. The CHESS token that pays so much was created this summer as the core of Tranchess, designed to allow leveraged bets on bitcoin by splitting up a fund into high- and low-risk tranches. The principle is similar to CDOs, or collateralized debt obligations—only instead of the subprime mortgages at the heart of the 2007 CDO collapse, this holds bitcoin.

The only way for the ordinary investor to take part in Wall Street’s prime brokerage, market making, structured credit or lending activities is to buy shares in an investment bank. DeFi offers the opportunity to do it yourself, without the cost of investment bankers, executives or regulators.

The flip side of being given easy access to Wall Street’s methods of making trading profits is you also get easy access to Wall Street’s trading losses, often without any sort of warning, and, at least for now, no regulation.

All of DeFi comes with two basic risks that much of Wall Street has been designed to minimize: fraud and operational mistakes. Fraud is so common that there’s even crypto jargon for it: “Rug pulls” are when the issuers of high-paying tokens simply abscond with the money.

Operational risk is huge, with the smart contracts that govern DeFi frequently found to have loopholes that allow scammers to make off with the assets, or design flaws that throw the asset into a spiral of decline.


It’s not only these two risks that matter, of course. The customer is on their own in navigating the other main dangers of DeFi: credit, liquidity and currency risks. These risks are played down or not even mentioned by DeFi platforms, leaving investors to rely on asking for advice on Reddit. Sometimes that advice is great, other times not so much. The boosterism is embedded in the DeFi terms: The calculated risk of losing money on market making is widely known, bizarrely, as “impermanent loss,” even though it is money that’s gone forever once you withdraw your funds.

The libertarian in me likes the idea of people learning to make their own mistakes. I don’t like the proliferation of scams, and I hate the marketing of DeFi as though it is an alternative to a bank account. It isn’t, because bank accounts come with federal insurance, while DeFi comes with large hidden risks. But I love the idea that ordinary savers are forced to understand complex financial problems, instead of being cosseted into ignorance by the state.

The economist in me is bothered by the waste. DeFi is beautiful and innovative, but ultimately it is totally self-absorbed, all about providing different ways for people to speculate on cryptocurrencies. Maybe one day DeFi will find a real use, being deployed with stocks, bonds or a central-bank digital currency. That hasn’t happened yet, though.

It is my inner historian that’s braced for disaster. Every major financial innovation led to far too much leverage and a blow-up before being tamed by regulators, and opening up Wall Street-style trades to the wider public is a major financial innovation.

For now, I’m reassured by the minimal links between crypto and the real economy, and it isn’t obvious how a major DeFi problem would rebound back to mainstream finance. Even with its rapid growth, DeFi is probably still too small to pose a serious threat—except to those lending their money without understanding that high rewards are possible only because they come with high risks.

>>> US Early premarket gappers

Early premarket gappers

  • Gapping up:
    • KERN +9.1%, NRXP +8.7%, AVNT +4.6%, ANGI +3.6%, GLDD +3%, QTRX +1.9%, SENS +1.3%, INCY +1.1%, MNR +1%, RWT +1%, LMT +0.5%, IAC +0.5%
  • Gapping down:
    • HLF -9.7%, PAR -5.7%, OPEN -5.7%, JAMF -5.6%, BRP -4.4%, AVO -3.6%, MP -3.4%, LSI -2.9%, ORCL -1.8%, SBRA -1.8%, VNE -1%, TSLA -0.6%