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Since 2007, more than 600 privately held foreign businesses have merged with U.S. listed shell companies to gain access to NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange. Over 150 of these have been companies from China and the China region.  An SEC representative at a recent institutional investor meeting  indicated that “while the vast majority of these Chinese companies may be legitimate businesses, a growing number of them are proving to have significant accounting deficiencies or being vessels of outright fraud”. Notwithstanding the SEC rulemaking of a few years ago in response to abuses involving shell companies, we are still seeing increasing problems. The   purpose of this article is not to agree or disagree with the statement or the premises behind the statements made but to focus for a brief moment on those who in fact help facilitate the so called “exploitation by certain foreign companies”. Recognize for a moment that and then refocus on productive ways to help companies, including non-US based companies,  seeking the needed capital while unwinding the unproductive strategies that its US advisors have crafted.

In a previous article we discussed the importance of the UN-REDD Programme as well as the obstacles to its further implementation. Recognizing the impact that the retreat of the tropical forests is having on global warming, the United Nations launched the UN-REDD Programme, Reduced Emissions from Degradation and Destruction in 2008 to help support countries REDD+ efforts, which is a mechanism that seeks to align a number of disparate constituencies, giving each an economic reason for maintaining the forest and thus benefiting the environment. The essential goal of the Programme is to make the maintenance of the tropical forest more profitable than its destruction. The REDD mechanism received great support at the recent Conference of the Parties at Copenhagen and was a centerpiece of the resultant Copenhagen Accord. REDD carries benefits with it beyond its carbon emissions focus; loss of forests worldwide has put strains on the lifestyles of local communities and indigenous peoples. Loss adversely impacts biological diversity and ecosystem services.