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Square Feet: Across China, Skyscrapers Brush the Heavens

August 27, 2013 by

China is home to 60 of the world’s 100 tallest buildings now under construction. But the skyward aspirations of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province, have inspired incredulity tinged with hostility.

Broad Group, a manufacturer based here in Changsha, has been planning to erect the world’s tallest building here this winter, and in record time. The 202-story “Sky City” is supposed to be assembled in only four months from factory-built modules of steel and concrete early next year on the city’s outskirts. The digging of foundations began on July 20.

But the project’s scale and speed have set off a burst of national introspection in recent days about whether Chinese municipal leaders and developers have gone too far in their increasingly manic reach for the skies.

“The vanity of some local government officials has determined the skylines of cities,” an editorial in the People’s Daily newspaper, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece, said on Aug. 12.

On Tuesday, the tycoon behind the project said in a telephone interview that he had ordered a pause in work at the site while waiting for further approvals from regulators in Beijing.

“It’s because of all the concern in the media and on the Internet, the government is a little wary and has slowed down the process,” said Zhang Yue, the chairman of the Broad Group.

But he vowed to finish the building, saying that he expected a delay of no more than two to three months, with completion of the building in June or July next year instead of the original plan of finishing it in April. Workers have already dug a large hole in the ground for the foundations and have just laid a four-lane road to the site to bring in heavy equipment.

“No matter how high the obstacles, I will for certain overcome them to make sure this project is completed,” Mr. Zhang said. He declined to identify who in Beijing had delayed his project, but said that he had not been asked to make any adjustments to the design.

David Scott, a prominent structural engineer in London who has worked on many extremely tall buildings, said that regulatory delays were a periodic problem for such projects all over the world, but could usually be overcome.

Local officials here say that while they have transferred the land for Sky City to Broad Group and have been installing electricity and water lines for the project, final approval for the project is still “in progress” from building safety experts in Beijing.

The blueprints for Sky City call for a stack of long, skinny rectangles that taper to a narrow top, like a very tall and angular wedding cake. It bears a blocky resemblance to the 110-story Willis Tower in Chicago, formerly the Sears Tower, which was the world’s tallest building until 1998 but is now being left in the shade by numerous rivals.

Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Chongqing, each similar in population to metropolitan New York, are now finishing one building apiece that will top the Willis Tower.

Wuhan, the size of greater Houston, is erecting two buildings taller than the Willis Tower and Tianjin, the size of metropolitan Chicago, is constructing three, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the Chicago nonprofit that tracks skyscraper bragging rights.

Ambitious local officials, together with state-owned companies and state-owned banks, stand behind most of these projects, raising fears that taxpayers may eventually pick up the bill if projects prove uneconomical.

“If you let the market decide, I don’t think a lot of these tall buildings would proceed,” said Chau Kwong Wing, a professor of real estate and construction at Hong Kong University. Despite public concerns, there is no sign so far that any of the many very tall buildings under construction in China has been canceled by regulators in Beijing, he and Mr. Zhang both noted.

Hilda Wang contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/realestate/commercial/across-china-skyscrapers-brush-the-heavens.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Stocks Finish the Day Mixed After Weak Housing Report

January 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Stocks were mixed on Monday, lifted by good economic data on the manufacturing industry but held down by a report that the rate of home sales fell short of expectations.

The government said before trading began that orders for long-lasting goods rose in December by 4.6 percent, helped by a 10 percent gain in orders for new aircraft. The durable goods report was a sign of strength for the manufacturing sector, a crucial driver of economic growth.

A half-hour after trading began, the National Association of Realtors said its index of pending home sales fell in December, suggesting sales of previously occupied homes could slow. The report was weaker than many economists had expected.

The Dow closed down 14.05 points, or 0.1 percent, at 13,881.93. The Standard Poor’s 500-stock index fell 2.78 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,500.18. The Nasdaq composite index added 4.59 points, or 0.15 percent, to 3,154.30.

The heavy equipment maker Caterpillar said separately that its fourth-quarter net income exceeded analysts’ expectations after adjusting for the cost of a soured deal to buy a Chinese maker of roofing supports for mines. Caterpillar said it took a big charge in the quarter because the Chinese company had misrepresented its finances.

Caterpillar was the biggest gainer in the Dow Jones industrial average, closing up $1.87, or 2 percent, at $97.45.

The Dow and the S. P. 500 are approaching their closing highs, reached on Oct. 9, 2007. The Dow is about 282 points below its high of 14,164.53; the S. P. is 65 points below its record of 1,565.

Economic data may be less likely to support the indexes because traders have become harder to impress as the data strengthened in recent weeks, said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist with the PNC Asset Management Group.

“Before, even if you came in just at expectations, that was like a victory,” he said. Because of the market’s recent upturn, he said, “you get less of a pop for just making the numbers.”

The oil company Hess was the biggest gainer in the S. P. 500, adding 6.1 percent after the company said it planned to sell its terminal network in the United States, close its New Jersey refinery and shift its focus to exploration and production.

Interest rates were steady. The Treasury’s benchmark 10-year note fell 4/32, to 97 flat, and the yield rose to 1.97 percent from 1.95 percent late Friday.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/business/daily-stock-market-activity.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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The High Cost of Failing Artificial Hips

December 28, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Medical and legal experts estimate the hip failures may cost taxpayers, insurers, employers and others billions of dollars in coming years, contributing to the soaring cost of health care. The financial fallout is expected to be unusually large and complex because the episode involves a class of products, not a single device or just one company.

The case of Thomas Dougherty represents one particularly costly example. He spent five months this year without a left hip, largely stuck on a recliner watching his medical bills soar.

In August, Mr. Dougherty underwent an operation to replace a failed artificial hip, but his pelvis fractured soon afterward. The replacement hip was abandoned and then a serious infection set in. Some of the bills: $400,776 in charges related to hospitalizations, and $28,081 in doctors’ bills.

“I’m sitting here on a La-Z-Boy meant for someone who is 80 and I’m 55,” said Mr. Dougherty, who lives in Groveland, Ill., and works at Caterpillar, the heavy equipment manufacturer. His bills are “five times as much” as he paid for his home.

The so-called metal-on-metal hips like Mr. Dougherty’s, ones in which a device’s ball and joint are made of metal, are failing at high rates within a few years instead of lasting 15 years or more, as artificial joints normally do. The wear of metal parts against each other is generating debris that is damaging tissue and, in some cases, crippling patients.

The incidents have set off a financial scramble. Recently, lawsuits and complaints against makers of all-metal replacement hips passed the 5,000 mark. Insurers are alerting patients that they plan to recover their expenses from any settlement money that patients receive. Medicare is also expected to try to recover its costs.

While his insurer has covered his bills so far, Mr. Dougherty said he was preparing to sue his surgeon, who may have implanted the device incorrectly, and Johnson Johnson, which produced his artificial hip, to help recoup some of the insurer’s money.

“All these payers want to be paid back,” said Matt Garretson, the founding partner of the Garretson Resolution Group, a firm in Cincinnati that manages product liability cases.

Until a recent sharp decline, all-metal implants accounted for nearly one-third of the estimated 250,000 hip replacements performed each year in the United States. Some 500,000 patients have received an all-metal replacement hip, according to one estimate. A new study found that no new artificial hip or knee introduced during a recent five-year period — implants that included some of the all-metal hips — were more durable than older devices, and 30 percent were worse.

One troubled all-metal model, implanted in 40,000 patients in the United States, was recalled last year by the DePuy division of Johnson Johnson. As of October, some 3,500 patients had filed a lawsuit involving that device.

There is no data on the number of all-metal hips that have failed prematurely in this country because the outcomes of orthopedic procedures are not formally tracked by the government or private companies.

But extrapolating from overseas data and the estimate of metal hip use here, tens of thousands of patients in the United States may have to undergo operations over the next decade to replace the implants, said Dr. Art Sedrakyan, a researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University, who is studying the hip problem.

A decade ago, Sulzer Orthopedics paid a record $1 billion to settle claims by 6,800 patients who received artificial hips and knees that were contaminated with industrial oil during the manufacturing process. “We have been dwarfed by this,” said Teresa Ford, a lawyer who worked at Sulzer at the time and is now in private practice.

Device producers have taken differing stances to covering patient expenses. Zimmer Holdings, which says its all-metal implants are safe, has settled hundreds of patient claims, lawyers involved in those cases say. Also, DePuy is covering costs related to the device it recalled last year, the A.S.R., or Articular Surface Replacement.

DePuy would not comment on how much it had paid in recall-related costs. But a spokeswoman, Mindy Tinsley, said in a statement that DePuy was working with patients and insurers.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=8965486b501ef3c3c5e08b9343d4f4b9

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