Sohu Financial Platform Exposed to Kaisa Bankruptcy

A twist in the Kaisa bankruptcy story: a subsidiary has a loan on Sohu's financial website.

Kaisa Can’t Say If It Plans to Meet Deadline for Bond Coupon

Souyidai, the financial platform of Chinese search engine Sohu.com, pledged on Jan. 6 to make full payment if Kaisa’s two subsidiaries, which are acting as guarantors, can’t repay principal or interest on a 68.11 million yuan ($11 million) wealth management product sold through the site.

21st CBH: “首付贷”产品受累佳兆业事件 搜易贷承诺兜底

Search easy loan announcement, found easy loan with Shenzhen Kaisa on September 16, 2014 signed the "launch" down payment loan "with real estate sales," bundled services "cooperation agreement" (Contract No.: SZ-QT-YXHT- 2014-105), followed by books and supplemental agreement the two sides confirmed the four properties in three is "locked" signed a cooperation on real estate.

China mircoblog wars

In China, competing Twitter-like services are known as 微薄 (wéibó), which literally translates as micro blog. A Twitter knockoff named Fanfou (饭否) was shut down during the Xinjiang riots last year and to the best of my knowledge, it lost its first-mover advantage. Sina (SINA) appears to have taken the lead, with 56% of the microblog market. It's service was running off of its Sina.com domain, but this week it launched Weibo.com to give the service its own identity.

Tencent (0700.HK) has also stepped into the market though, and it is a heavy hitter. It's QQ messaging service is a monster, with over 600 million registered users and concurrent users peaking at over 100 million. It also offers music, streaming TV and movies, games and more through the platform. It also has social networking services and has now added microblogs. Tencent basically offers everything you can imagine and more, although it seems many of the components are not most popular.

Tencent isn't the only competitor. NetEase (NTES), Sohu (SOHU) and Baidu (BIDU) are among those looking to take market share. One battle tactic is the capture of celebrity microblogs, who attract millions of followers.
China’s Microblogging Celebs Blow Past Western Stars
Rumor: Baidu to Overhaul Microblog Platform, Poach Celebrities

Here is an in-depth Chinese article covering the topic: 微博之战——争夺中国人的“意见”与“关系”

Shanda Hits All-Time Intraday High

Shanda Interactive (SNDA), a stock I've owned since 2004, just hit a new all-time intraday high at close to $46 per share. The last time it traded that high was late December 2004 and early January 2005. The stock has gone on a tear this year, up about 35%—similar to the mainland market, though they have not traded in tandem.

There's a lot of interest in Chinese internet gaming stocks, with Sohu.com's (SOHU) spin-off of Changyou (CYOU).

At least as of 1 PM, Shanda's 7% intraday move was not replicated by its competitors. The9 (NCTY) was down 6.62% as of this writing.

Update: Shanda closed at an all-time high. It finished the day up 5.7% to $45.07, on double the 3-month average volume.