Ikea Group plans to open three new stores in China in its new financial year, according to Angela Zhu, Country Retail Manager of Ikea Retail China. The group would also enhance its distribution networks and e-commerce presence in the country. Ikea’s revenue in China, in its full 2017 financial year to August 10, surged 14% to more than CNY13.2 billion. Zhu said the new stores will be located in Guangzhou in Guangdong province, Tianjin municipality and Xuzhou in Jiangsu province. Next year marks the 20th year for the Swedish company in China, where it already operates 24 stores. In the financial year to August 10, more than 90 million people visited its stores in China, an increase of 11%, Zhu said. Moreover, its China country website – ikea.cn – had 75 million visits last year, representing growth of 24%. Multi-distribution channels would continue to be the focus of Ikea China, Zhu added. This year, the company has opened three new stores in Nantong in Jiangsu province, Harbin in Heilongjiang province, and Jinan in Shandong province. In March, Ikea opened its first pickup and order outlet in Beijing, a smaller store compared with the 30,000 to 40,000 square meter regular Ikea stores. The area of a pickup and order point is only 3,000 square meters, the China Daily reports.

In the coming weeks, fuel assemblies will be loaded into the AP1000 nuclear reactor in Sanmen, Zhejiang province. It will become the world’s first meltdown-proof nuclear power plant. The AP1000 “is a simple, genius solution to reduce the risk of nuclear meltdown,” said Xian Jiaotong University’s Nuclear Science Professor Shan Jianqiang, the author of several university papers on reactor safety and operations. The start of operations at Sanmen will be a shot in the arm for the nuclear industry. The AP1000 was designed and made by Toshiba Corp’s Westinghouse Electric subsidiary. China has 20 nuclear power plants under construction, more than any other country.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) is tipping state-owned multi-business conglomerates as solid, future long-term bets. Based on a study of 380 listed Chinese conglomerates, or their listed subsidiaries, the firm found state-owned conglomerates’ total shareholder returns (TSR) over a ten-year period (2006-15) actually beat their western and Japanese counterparts. TSR combines share price appreciation and dividends paid to show the total return to shareholders expressed as an annualized percentage. BCG measured relative TSR, that divides benchmark returns, to measure how stocks outperform or underperform the overall market. The result is that Chinese conglomerates’ relative TSR registered a median 3.4%, beating the U.S.’s 0.6%, the UK’s 3%, and Japan’s -1.7%, which BCG attributed to China’s overall strong economic growth and corporate revenue expansion in the past decade. BCG then examined how performance varies across different ownership. And contrary to public perception, state-owned conglomerates generally outperformed private ones, it said. Multi-business state-owned conglomerates such as Cofco Group, China Merchants Group and China Resources beat all other types, BCG said.

Hong Kong’s financial industry professionals are still divided over how they can reorganize the city’s stock exchange to make it the world’s most attractive place for startups and technology firms to raise capital, even as the first round of a public consultation process drew to a close on August 18. Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing (HKEX), the operator of Asia’s third-largest equity bourse by market capitalization and overseer of the consultation, has proposed the establishment of a third board to provide a listing avenue for companies with dual share structures, as well as those with no profit track record. Accountants, bankers, brokers and lawyers are divided over whether a third board is needed, in addition to the existing main board and the growth enterprises market (GEM) for startups. “We received a lot of comments already, and we expect to receive more,” said Charles Li, Chief Executive of HKEX. “If the market supports it, we will have another round of consultation of detail regulations. If all would gain support, I would hope to see the new board to start in the first half of next year”. At stake is how Hong Kong can make its bourse attractive enough as a fund-raising destination in competition with New York, Shanghai or Singapore and other global markets, especially for startups and so-called new economy companies in financial technology, e-commerce and biotechnology, the South China Morning Post reports.

China will officially start operation of the world’s fastest train service next month, knocking an hour off the 1,318 km journey between Beijing and Shanghai. Seven pairs of bullet trains – named Fuxing, which means rejuvenation – will start operating from September 21. At present, the fastest trains in China, which have their top speed capped at 300 km/h, are named Hexie, or Harmony. China had briefly tried a maximum speed of 350 km/h, but a deadly train crash in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, in 2011 forced the railway authorities to reduce the upper speed limit. Bullet trains have now become a key export product for China, so the government is keen to increase their speed. The Beijing-Shanghai high-speed route is one of the most popular, with around 600 million passengers since it opened in 2011, and it is also one of the most profitable in China. The operator of the route made a profit of CNY6.6 billion in 2015. According to the current train schedule, the fastest bullet train running between the cities takes four hours and 55 minutes, and most bullet trains take around 5½ hours. A one-way ticket costs CNY553 for a regular seat and CNY933 for a first-class seat. It is not known whether China Railway will raise ticket prices after the speed is increased. Authorities tested the 350 km/h services on some parts of the line last month and the results convinced officials they would be able to run at higher speeds along the whole line, the South China Morning Post reports.