Li Ka-Shing, chairman of property developer Cheung Kong and shipping conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa (r) made his eldest son Victor his deputy chairman.

Among the family-owned businesses in China and India, longevity in the chairman's office is the rule rather than the exception.
According to Businessweek.com, Cheng Yu-teng, chairman of Hong Kong conglomerate New World Development, turns 83 next year. Malaysian-Chinese tycoon Robert Kuok, chairman of Kerry Group, a private company that controls Hong Kong's South China Morning Post as well as the Shangri-La hotel chain, turns 85.
Philippine billionaire Henry Sy, who controls the country's top retailing chain, ShoeMart, will be 84. Basant Kumar Birla, chairman of Mumbai-based Birla Group, which has a hand in a variety of industries including cement, textiles, education, and commodities, will be 87.
Some, such as Hong Kong's richest man, Li Ka-Shing, chairman of property developer Cheung Kong and retail, telecom, and shipping conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, show no signs of retiring.
Li turns 80 in June. Others, such as Taiwan's top industrialist, Formosa Plastics founder Wang Yung-ching, 91 in 2008, have taken steps to give more control to younger executives, but they remain important figures.
There are good business reasons for the old man to stick around, says Simon Ho, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University who studies family-owned businesses.
In many cases, the company's brand is personified by the founder, and after spending decades building up the business, he can't easily hand over power without risking tarnishing that brand.
"A lot of investors are still interested in the firm because the founder is in the position," says Ho. "That reduces uncertainty and makes them feel more confident that he is overseeing the business."
Indeed, it's often the employees and customers who don't want to see a successor. "It takes two hands to clap," says Annie Koh, associate dean of Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University. "It's not just that the founder doesn't want to let go. It's also the people who have worked for the founder and the customers who have the relationship with him. They still want to see the founder's face."
Some tycoons in Asia might try to take a back seat, handing over power to the next generation. However, Koh says that the tactic often doesn't work. "People see that as a smoke screen," she says, "and that behind the scenes he's still the one running the company. On the big issues that count, the founder is still the one who calls the shots."
There are signs, though, that some of Asia's first-generation business tycoons recognize that they need to do more to groom their successors. Bapitist University Professor Ho points to examples of family businesses where the founders resisted allowing the children control.
"The longer he delays, the next generation has less time to learn," says Ho. "That creates even more chaos, and then leads to a power struggle among the sons" after the founder passes away.
In order to ensure stability, some top Asian bosses are planning ahead. Li Ka-shing, for instance, has his oldest son, Victor, as deputy chairman at both Cheung Kong and Hutch. Robert Kuok's son Khoon Loong Kuok is at the helm of the chain of Shangri-La hotels. In 2005, Birla officially designated his two daughters, Jayashree Mohta and Manjushree Khaitan, as his successors. TVB's Sir Run Run doesn't have any children in line to succeed him, but his second wife, Mona Fung, last year became acting managing director.
As these moves show, change will come to Asia's family-run companies. But for now, many ageing founders are in no hurry to step aside.

Cyprus has to import the vast majority of what it consumes.

One common refrain in the Republic of Cyprus is that wages just don't cover the price of goods in the shops--many of which have to be imported. So when the government announced a few years ago that it was going to join the euro from 1 January 2008, many people were worried.
They are a well travelled lot here, and they knew that people in other countries had complained of price rises when the euro came. And that played to the Cypriots' worst fears about what would happen on their island.
According to BBC, several opinion polls in early to mid-2007 showed most Cypriots feared price rises. So the government knew it would have to do a very good job of persuading people that the euro would not be responsible for higher costs. It needed to learn from the mistakes made in other euro-adopting countries.

All Inclusive
The government realized one way it could do this would be to hammer home into its citizens' heads the exact conversion rate from the euro to the Cypriot pound. That way, after January people would know if they were being duped into paying more. Hence the action plans.
For the last six months, every retail outlet has had to display prices in both euros and Cypriot pounds. In even the simplest market stall and kebab shop, the card or label will have two figures on it.
Most shops have also had to display a poster on the wall, showing a whole long list of conversion values between the two currencies. More recently, major public buildings in the capital Nicosia were then draped with huge tarpaulins showing pictures of the new coins and notes.
In October, the government announced it was going to employ 100 inspectors to monitor the price of goods both before and after the introduction of the new currency.
The country's consumer association did something similar--and also got retailers to sign up to a fair pricing agreement for when the euro would come in. From mid-December, every home in the Republic was posted a calculator, that automatically converts a euro price into a Cyprus pound price.

Price Moves
In a pretty unfortunate piece of timing for the authorities, earlier in December they had to announce that year-on-year consumer price inflation rose to 3.5 percent in November from 3 percent in October.
Some individual prices have risen by far more, with healthcare costs climbing by 6.9 percent, transport by 6.6 percent, and hotels and restaurants by 6.1 percent.
The upwards pressure on prices has meant that, at its last very meeting in December, the Cypriot Central Bank kept its main interest rate on hold at 4.5 percent.
Analysts said that with the introduction of the euro it would have dearly liked to bring the borrowing costs more into line with the European Central Bank (ECB) rate of 4 percent, but that was not possible.
Cypriots are obviously keen at the moment to spend their money, and it does have some benefits. The economy is growing almost twice as fast as the European average. But the flip side of higher-than-ideal inflation is hurting business.
Alternative Efficiencies
Take Zorbas Fine Foods, one of the biggest private employers on the island that runs 50 or so shops selling anything from cakes, biscuits to ready meals.
It is expanding into wholesale too, having just won the contract to provide the local McDonald's with their buns and Cyprus Airways with bread rolls.
However, chief financial officer Michael Michael says the cost of doing business is rising very fast.
"Almost all of our products are made of flour," he explains. "The wheat price has gone up 100 percent in the last year. So that has hit us a lot.Ó
Cyprus is, of course, an island, and is relatively detached from the rest of the EU. It is nearer Lebanon than it is to any other EU state. So it has to import the vast majority of what it consumes.
At a time when the price of many of those goods is rising fast, this affects them more than other more self- sufficient countries.

Despite 2007's letdown, many analysts remain surprisingly optimistic about corporate earnings in 2008.

The US has ended 2007 with a whine rather than a whimper.
It is tough to keep track of what's collapsing faster, home prices or the dollar, and the financial market crisis caused by it has many seers talking recession in 2008, reported Bloomberg.com.
As always, that delicious negativity receives the lion's share of media attention. But, in many ways, this past year was a pretty good one. The Top 10 pieces of happy economic news in 2007 are as followed.
1) Equity markets posted solid gains and price multiples are still low. As of last Friday morning, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had gained about 7 percent for the year, while yielding about 2.25 percent, providing investors with a total return of more than 9 percent.
The Nasdaq Composite Index had climbed more than 10 percent, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index had provided a total return in the 5.5 percent range.
2) Households are wealthier. In part because of rising equity markets, household net worth increased in 2007, according to the latest numbers from the Federal Reserve.
3) Congress did nothing. Gridlock has historically been good for the US economy for a simple reason: New laws are invariably worse than the ones they replace.
4) The Federal Reserve did something. From interest rate reductions to the introduction of a new auction mechanism to get needed reserves to struggling banks, the Fed has responded to the weakening economy with multiple policy moves.
5) The world economy had another blow-out year. According to the latest Moody's Economy.com forecast, world gross domestic product grew by 3.9 percent in 2007 after rising 3.6 percent in 2006.
6) The trade deficit declined. As US trading partners become wealthier, they demand more of US products. At the same time, the weaker dollar has made US exports cheaper.
7) Even in the face of the housing-market bust, economic growth was solid.
8) Job creation was robust. According to the latest jobs report, which covers data through November, the US economy added 1.3 million jobs on net in 2007. The unemployment rate was 4.6 percent in January, and finished the year a smidgen higher at 4.7 percent.
9) The federal budget deficit declined. According to the Congressional Budget Office's monthly budget review, the federal budget deficit was only $163 billion for fiscal 2007, a large decline from the $248 billion deficit in 2006.
10) Inflation risk is low. Although energy prices surged, core inflation was up only 2.3 percent for the year ended in November, about half a percentage point lower than it was in late 2006.
This is great news, making it relatively risk-less for the Fed to cut interest rates next year if there are more signs of trouble.

A highly anticipated year of triumph for China now looks increasingly fraught with economic risks. Unlike in the past when communist leaders dreaded that a sluggish economy might bring about social unrest, this time around economic risks come from rapid growth.
As reported by Ipsnews.net, Chinese mandarins fear the economy is expanding too quickly, fuelling runaway inflation and poor investment choices that might cost them dearly in the future. Chinese enterprises across a range of sectors have poured money into expanding production over the past few years, driving up capacity, squeezing profit margins and forcing some to take out new loans to pay their costs.
After a decade of breakneck economic growth, Chinese leaders declared in December they were ready to shift from a "prudent" monetary policy to a "tight" one to prevent the economy from overheating. What is more, the Central Communist Party School, which polled party leaders across the country in the same month, released a survey showing they now feared rising prices have become a bigger social threat than corruption and income disparity.
The public seems to share the sentiment. An end-of-year survey by the central bank found that a record
65 percent of households expected prices to go on rising next year, while the proportion that thought prices were already too high and difficult to accept jumped from 23 percent, this time last year, to 48 percent.
The grudge among ordinary people in Beijing is that the recent jump in prices from food to fuel, to housing and stocks is related to the Olympic Games this year when the government wants to present a first-rate city to the world.
The hosting of the Olympics by China continues to be seen as a national high point and many are immensely proud of the honour. But economic realities are beginning to bite hard. Some old Beijingers worry they might be forced to leave the city if life in the capital becomes unbearably expensive as a consequence of the Olympic event.
China's inflation rate reached 6.9 percent in November, the highest in 11 years. The big contributors were food prices, which jumped 18.2 percent, and fuel prices, which climbed 5.5 percent as the Chinese government raised controlled retail prices for gasoline and diesel.
Some analysts continue to deny that stubborn inflation this year is a real factor, insisting instead it is a function solely of unusual increases in meat and other food prices.