Some Shanghai news

- Two luxury hotel chains have quietly stopped their hotel projects in Shanghai. One is Hilton and the other is Dubai's Jumeirah. Both new hotels are located in the HK developed XinTianDi. This area, last year's residential apartment was selling close to RMB110,000 per sq meter. I hate to know how much these two hotel chains have paid for the piece of land.

- Overall hotel occupancy rate in Shanghai is way down. Hitlon is about 50% as of yesterday. Others are slashing their room rates. During the Chinese New Year, one luxury hotel chain actually slashed its room rate from RMB3,000.00 to RMB9,00.00. No name was mentioned in the news article on that. Because of the economic downturn, smaller franchises are giving out free vouchers for rooms. The news article further has further pointed out that expect some hotel chains to fail by the end of this year. (Ummm... why do I still see people buying expensive vehicles? Like this morning, I saw someone test driving a Bentley coup; where are all those money coming from if there is a crisis?)

- And we have a water problem here. Three districts are affected: Baoshan, Putou and Pudong. In Pudong, one of the area is heavily populated with foreigners. A foreigner ghetto so to speak. Saline water intrusion (Salt Tide). When river water flow is not enough, the sea water flows back into the river where the source of drinking usually is located for big cities. Normally, this happens at drought affected areas, like the summer time in the Pearl Delta area - Macau, Hong Kong. This problem will last for 5 to 6 days or as much as a month.

- Just came back from a meeting with ReGen Asset Management company here. This company claimed a return of 41% last year for its clients. The minimum investment amount is RMB1.0 Million, based in RMB. This fund offers to Chinese Nationals only. The new one will open in soon and close in May. It only accepts 50 new investors. The fee structure for one year is 2% management fee. Front-end loaded. 1.5% fee to the trust and then a 20% Performance bonus to the management company. Investor can only withdraw money after one year. Sounds too good to be true? Stanford, Madoff?