London Business Matters - Asia Weathers The Economic Storm

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Your business

London Business Matters Notes from a journey to Nepal and South East Asia

Asia weathers the economic storm LBM editor Peter Bishop recently visited Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore in pursuit of various LCCI international trade projects. This is his Asian diary.

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IRST stop Kathmandu to deliver the latest workshops in the EU-funded ECIBON programme – Enhancing the Capacity of Business Organisations in Intermediary Business Organisations. Infrastructure is one of the topics, and developments in transport and communications are debated with government officials. Some incredible statistics emerge, for example in some parts of Nepal there is a 13 day hike to the nearest road. When there are roads they are generally sub-standard. During my last visit

it took ten hours to drive the 125 miles from Kathmandu to the second city, Pokhara – I flew back to the capital in 35 minutes, air travel being vastly more efficient. There is currently just one rail track, 30 miles across the Nepal – India border but there are ambitious plans to build new rail and road links connecting Nepalese towns as well as India and China. I was told by Dhruba Raj Regmi of the Ministry of Physical Planning that the roads would connect with the massive Trans-Asian highway project linking Iran with Singapore, which left me wondering how they would deal with the left and right road systems.

in the news and as a recent traveller from an affected area I was singled out for some less-than-tough questions about my health and Mexican connections, and given an emergency phone number to ring if my condition changed for the worse. I was feeling fine however and looking forward to a night in the Shangri-La hotel (see review on page 16).

Fierce competition They drive on the left in Nepal but it’s not always obvious as there is fierce competition for space on narrow roads from cars, two wheelers, lorries, pedestrians and cows. But even my experienced taxi driver looked surprised when our progress to Lazimpat was impeded by an elephant on the road. From Nepal’s redbrick Tribhuvan International airport I flew with Thai Airways to the vast glass and steel structure of Suvarnabhumi airport (pictured above right) in Bangkok. Swine flu was

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I was still a weekend away from the World ATA Carnet meeting and World Chambers Congress, both taking place in Kuala Lumpur, and had decided to use the time to travel down the Malaysian Peninsular by train, Paul Theroux-style. Just over £20 bought me a ticket on the overnight train from Bangkok to Butterworth, with chicken and a bottle of Singha beer for dinner, and a fried

egg for breakfast. In between I slept on the widest, most comfortable train berth I’ve experienced, and gazed out from the South Korean-made train at row after row of palm oil and rubber trees. I took the short ferry ride from Butterworth to Penang, the first British possession in Southeast Asia, with a view of the graceful suspension bridge which connects the island with the mainland, and headed for Traders Hotel in Georgetown, another Shangri-La group hotel up for review. That evening I walked to the colonial part of town to meet an old friend in the tautologically-named Eastern & Oriental Hotel (below), set up by the American Sarkies brothers in the 1880s, a couple of years before they opened Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

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July/August 2009

11

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HIPS – an update

“I visited a shipbroker’s office on the 25th floor of One Raffle’s Quay and looked down on the hundreds of boats laying off the world’s largest port or negotiating the Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s busiest seaways”

Iconic The next day, my duties fulfilled at the Traders, I headed south to KL through more rubber and palm oil plantations and long stretches of building work where much-need additional rail tracks were under construction. My first engagement in the capital was to attend a dinner of the World Chambers Federation executive committee at the Petroleum Club in the iconic Petronas Towers (left), hosted by ICC chairman Victor Fung, a former Harvard Business School professor and a major player on the Hong Kong business scene. Over the next few days I chaired a meeting of the World ATA Carnet Council, ran two seminars on the Carnet document itself (‘the passport for goods’), signed a memorandum of understanding on behalf of LCCI with the Kuala Lumpur Malay Chamber of Commerce (above), and attended a number of sessions of the World Chambers Congress, including the opening ceremony which featured a special message from Bill Clinton.

the outside, a pleasant quasi-hotel within. I had a drink with Patrick Moody, the highly-personable Deputy High Commissioner, in the Elizabethan bar which looks on to the tennis court and swimming pool. I had earlier breakfasted with Boyd McCleary, the British High Commissioner, who demonstrated a vast knowledge of the business set-up and opportunities in Malaysia and a keen appetite to get British companies more involved. [Readers should refer to the feature on page 14 of the

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Another round of meetings took me to the British High Commission, a compound on

May 09 issue of London Business Matters for more on this.] London Chamber of Commerce members of course have an additional channel to business in the region thanks to our links with the KL Malay Chamber. The Chamber’s International Affairs Chief is Tharmapalan Karthigasu, known to all as ‘Tharma’, who is a mine of information on the country’s recent economic history and briefed me in the wonderful surroundings of the Royal Selangor Club in Merdeka Square. It is generally agreed that the foundation for Malaysia’s current prosperity was laid by former Prime Minister Dr.Mahathir bin Mohamad, known as the ‘Father of Modernisation’. Between 1981 and 2003 he diversified the country’s economic base which had been too dependent on world commodity prices, privatised the utilities – you can now drink the tap water with impunity – and commissioned the breathtaking Petronas Towers which put KL firmly on the world map. He also introduced the monorail system which took me to KL Sentral (sic) railway station for the last leg of my journey down the Malaysian Peninsula to Singapore. On the island I visited a shipbroker’s office on the 25th f loor of One Raff le’s Quay and looked down on the hundreds of boats laying off the world’s largest port or negotiating the Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s busiest seaways. Later that day I went to one of Asia’s biggest shopping centres in Orchard Road where eager shoppers were being made to queue outside shops for fear of overcrowding – I haven’t noticed that in Oxford Street recently. Indeed the amount of economic activity I witnessed from Bangkok down to the tip of the peninsula gave no hint that this was a region in recession. Even in Kathmandu I was told that their economic barometer – the number of tourists, especially trekkers – was set fair. Back in London after a 13 hour f light there seemed to be heavier traffic than usual. More evidence that the congestion charge, based on the Singapore model, was not working? No, we were in day one of a tube strike, Bob Crow’s welcome to Britain.

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It’s been over two years since the introduction of Home Information packs ( HIPS) for all residential property situated in England and Wales. HIPS were introduced with a view to making the house buying process more transparent by providing the buyer with some information at the marketing stage of the transaction. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that buyers are not that interested in seeing a HIP and they are not speeding up the conveyancing process.

2009 Changes

Nevertheless, some important changes have been made to HIPS their introduction in 2007. Since 6th April 2009, it is now compulsory for all residential property being placed on the market to have a HIP in place. Prior to this date, it was acceptable for a property to be placed on the market without a HIP being made available, provided the HIP had been commissioned. Furthermore, prior to the 6th April 2009, it wasn’t necessary to have a standard form of questionnaire included in the HIP. Now, a HIP must contain a brand new form called a Property Information Questionnaire which has to be completed by the seller. If the property being sold is leasehold, additional information needs to be supplied as well. It should be stressed that this form is not a substitute for the Property Information Form (and Leasehold Information Form if appropriate) which the seller’s solicitors will send to their client for completion. These forms, together with the information contained in the HIP will form part of the documentation that the seller’s solicitors will send to the buyer’s solicitors at the outset of the transaction. This documentation will also include a Fittings and Contents Form, completed by the seller, which will state which items in the property are included in the sale price, are excluded from the sale or are available by separate negotiation. Andrew Flint is a partner and Head of the Residential Conveyancing Department at Colman Coyle. If you are buying or selling a property and would like more information on HIPS please contact Andrew at andrew.flint@colmancoyle. com or 020 7354 3000.