03.16.10
Posted in .com, hot news, money, top, world of money tagged financial, news, newsreports, people, writing at 7:18 am by carydalton
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and 22 affiliates filed a bankruptcy plan Monday to repay creditors of the failed brokerage firm.
“The proposed plan represents a fair economic resolution for all Lehman creditors and will accelerate recoveries to creditors,” said Bryan Marsal, chief executive and chief restructuring officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings, in a statement.
Has Wall Street dodged the bullet?
Senate Banking Chairman Christopher Dodd unveils details of a bill aimed at overhauling financial regulation. The News Hub discusses the impact on Wall Street. Plus, WSJ’s Darren Everson joins the News Hub to discuss this year’s brackets for the NCAA tournament and potential upsets in the making.
The plan also tries to avoid “unnecessary, extended and expensive litigation that could adversely impact recoveries to creditors,” Lehman Brothers added in its filing fast cash without a hassle. Yet the firm will likely object to many claims and fight with creditors over what they’re owed, according to Dow Jones Newswires.
Lehman collapsed in September 2008 in the largest bankruptcy in history, triggering the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The firm faces about 65,000 claims from creditors totaling about $875 billion.
The plan, filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan, comes on the 18-month anniversary of Lehman’s demise; Monday marked the deadline for filing the plan.
Lehman and affiliates file bankruptcy plan
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03.05.10
Posted in .com, business, economic, news, online tagged events, finance, newsreports, personal, politics at 7:12 am by carydalton
NEW YORK – Shoppers returned to the nation’s malls last month, buying a surprising amount of spring clothing and other items and helping stores post the strongest retail sales since November 2007, a month before the recession began.
The better-than-expected 3.7 percent gain reported Thursday showed that Americans are still thrifty, but they are letting go of some of the frugality brought on by the economic downturn. And many are willing to spend for certain higher-end goods.
Consumers “are now starting to go back to where they had typically shopped” before the recession, said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, who expected a 2 percent gain. “I’m surprised by the broad strength.”
But, he added, there’s still uncertainty about whether such a robust pace can be sustained, particularly later this year when the sales figures are being compared with more stabilized spending patterns.
The February sales report was the third consecutive monthly increase, according to the ICSC. The monthly index excludes Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which stopped reporting monthly sales last year.
Shoppers shrugged off snowstorms and worries about the economy to visit a broad array of merchants, from luxury retailer Nordstrom to middlebrow Macy’s Inc. to discounter Target Corp., which all reported solid sales increases that beat Wall Street analysts’ estimates.
The figures are based on sales at stores open at least a year and are considered a key indicator of a retailer’s health.
Stores in malls, which had seen sales plunge as their customers traded down to cheaper options, are starting to bring shoppers back by offering lower-priced or exclusive items.
Saks Fifth Avenue, for example, is expanding its exclusive merchandise offerings, putting more emphasis on lower prices and expanding its discount Off Fifth chain.
Selia Black, 26, was at the Manhattan Mall in New York on Thursday to find a birthday gift for her sister. She splurged on a $178 jacket at full price at Bebe. A year ago, she would have been scouring for a present that was deeply discounted, she said.
“I’m easing up a little bit, but not totally,” said the Brooklyn woman. She does not work, but her husband is a security guard.
Black says the recession has made her switch from Macy’s to discounters such as Marshall’s, and she planned to keep shopping at discount stores even when the economy recovers.
“You always get the deals,” she said. “But this is something special.”
Dennis Jacobe, chief economist at Gallup, believes shoppers’ thriftiness may have thawed a bit, as shoppers who have jobs are buying a little more. But, he said, frugality has not gone away, based on Gallup’s polls.
“We are in a new normal of spending,” he said low fee payday advance. He cited Gallup surveys taken Feb. 1 to Feb. 3 in which 57 percent of consumers polled said they are spending less. One-third of those surveyed said curtailed spending will be their normal pattern.
Another factor that helped the monthly sales figures look so strong was that February 2009 figures were so awful. Jacobe says spending levels are still well below 2008.
February, sandwiched between post-holiday clearance and spring, is the second-least important month of the year for retailers after January. Analysts see combined data for March and April as a more accurate measure of consumer behavior.
Still, the fact that shoppers were buying full-priced spring clothing was a pleasant surprise in the face of a sharp drop in the monthly Consumer Confidence Index.
Economists pointed to factors that depressed shoppers’ mood last month but did not seem to affect spending: gridlock in Congress over the jobs bill and a dive in the stock market related to worries about Greece’s national debt — not to mention repeated winter storms that buried much of the country in heavy snow.
Most economists say companies need to start hiring significantly in order for spending to keep improving. Unemployment stood at 9.7 percent in January and was expected to increase to 9.8 percent in February. The Labor Department was to report new job figures Friday.
In other encouraging signs for the economy, the Labor Department reported Thursday that new claims for jobless benefits fell last week, reflecting that layoffs may be easing as the economy slowly recovers. Factory orders also rose in January, according to the Commerce Department.
Shoppers are buying food at Wal-Mart and picking up discounted designer clothing at TJ Maxx, but trading up to stores such as Macy’s and Kohl’s for exclusive merchandise, said Craig Johnson, president of retail consultancy Customer Growth Partners.
Target, the nation’s second-largest discounter behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc., said February sales in stores open at least a year rose 2.4 percent as it attracted more customers and more spending per customer. But food and household essentials remained the biggest sellers, with furniture and clothing sales about flat with last year.
Gap, where sales had been led by low-price Old Navy, is starting to see a recovery across all its brands, including upscale Banana Republic, where sales were hurt when the financial meltdown escalated. Sales at namesake Gap stores were flat, but Banana Republic posted a 6 percent gain and Old Navy’s business improved by 5 percent.
Retail sales post strongest gains since late 2007
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02.12.10
Posted in Free blog Tips, economic, money, news, top tagged economics, economy, finance, marketing, newsreports at 11:12 am by carydalton
RIGA, Latvia — The tiny Baltic states have pursued closer integration with Europe with enormous zeal. But the price of monetary union may be giving them pause.
Economists and ordinary citizens alike are watching the protests rumbling through the streets of Athens and the slow response to Greece’s problems coming out of Brussels.
“Countries like Estonia and Latvia were once desperate to get in,” said Alf Vanags, director of the Baltic International Center for Economic Policy Studies in Riga. “The euro is not looking so attractive now.”
Latvia has been on track to adopt the euro in 2014, as has Lithuania, with Estonia eyeing its inclusion by 2011.
These governments have reason to fear that, like Athens, they will be caught in a vise: unable to pay for expensive social programs demanded by citizens while staying within the euro zone’s debt limits.
Enthusiastic for years about adopting the euro, Latvia had undertaken painful austerity measures. Even as the global economy contracted, the government slashed spending. The program included cuts of 50 percent or more in the salaries of public-sector employees and a 40 percent reduction in hospital budgets.
The result, many economists say, has been deepening unemployment and the worst recession of any country in the 27-nation European Union.
Latvia’s gross domestic product has declined by an estimated 24 percent since the recession began — a steeper drop than America’s during the Great Depression.
To keep a faltering country’s economy in line with the euro “is a tall and very unpleasant order,” Mr. Vanags said.
One of the constraints of joining the euro zone would be that Latvia would be unable to devalue its currency by printing more money. The current members of the euro zone that are weaker, like Spain and Portugal, are feeling such constraints now.
Despite some negative effects, devaluations have helped many countries over the years, giving a lift to their economies by making foreign goods more expensive and domestic goods more attractive.
Latvia has already taken some steps that limit its ability to bolster its economy. Since 2004, the Latvian central bank has pegged its currency, the lat, to the euro, to prepare for adhering to the common currency.
In 2008, Latvia accepted austerity as a condition of a bailout led by the International Monetary Fund that allowed it to remain on track to adopt the euro. After sharply cutting salaries in the public sector, the government encouraged the private sector to do the same. The policy, in fact, worked to balance the trade deficit. But the country is now being severely hurt by the very policies needed to get into the euro zone.
Andris Liepins, deputy minister of economy in Latvia, said in an interview that Latvia remained committed to a currency peg and to adopting the euro short term personal loan. “Greece’s problems are temporary,” he said. “Greece needs the same reforms as Latvia.”
The austerity programs imposed by the I.M.F., Mr. Liepins said, would help Latvia’s economy restructure over the long term, by cutting health care outlays and encouraging companies to become more efficient. Devaluing the currency would help only in the short term, he said. It would also push more homeowners to default on their mortgages, which are often denominated in foreign currencies. “We would lose competitiveness as an economy,” he said.
The policies should be judged three or four years from now, he said, when policies like encouraging outsourcing has made companies more competitive while creating opportunity for new small business.
Latvia’s economy contracted an extraordinary 18 percent in 2009, according to preliminary figures. If the number holds, it would mark the sharpest contraction in the world, though it followed what was widely regarded as an unsustainable burst of growth just before the global crisis.
Casting about for ways to raise cash during the crisis, the Latvian government grasped at times at unconventional methods.
In January, it auctioned off a ghost town along with an abandoned Soviet radar base called Skrunda-1 for 1.5 million lats ($2.89 million).
A Russian company bought it.
The economy began growing slowly in the fourth quarter of last year. Rating agencies also noted an improved outlook on the country’s creditworthiness.
Still, the government’s reliance on layoffs and deep wage cuts has not been popular.
But the response has been more measured in the Baltic countries so far than in Greece, struggling with public employee strikes and protests.
Slava Ushakov, who had a small business, sympathizes with the employees of the Greek government. When his business failed in the recession, Mr. Ushakov took a job chipping ice from city sidewalks under a government work program.
When he slipped and broke a rib, his already meager pay was docked for the days that he had missed. So now he comes to work injured. “I just wrapped it,” Mr. Ushakov said, lifting his sweater and gingerly touching bandages.
The work program, designed by the World Bank and partly financed by the European Union, pays Mr. Ushakov 100 lats ($192) a month. Still, the jobs are coveted, in a sign of the depth of troubles in Europe’s most recession-plagued economy.
“I am still working every day,” Mr. Ushakov said. He added that these days in Latvia, “if you want to buy a chicken, you have to think pretty highly of yourself.”
With Greece’s Woes, Nations Rethink Push Into Euro Zone
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02.11.10
Posted in .com, All, money, online, top tagged economics, finance, marketing, newsreports, writing at 5:48 am by carydalton
BRUSSELS — The crisis in Greece brought Europe’s leaders together on one issue Wednesday: The need for emergency action to keep the problem from infecting Europe’s other weak economies. But an accord on who will take the lead — and how — appeared uncertain.
European officials face greater urgency to devise a bailout for Greece after fears its government might default caused a recent slump in financial markets worldwide.
A phalanx of European leaders put on a unified show of support ahead of a Thursday summit meeting in Brussels, where the heads of all European Union governments and the finance ministers of the 16 countries that use the euro are scheduled to appear. Together with the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, the officials agreed Wednesday that they could no longer allow uncertainty about the future of Greece — and the euro zone — to disturb global investors.
“The point of no return has been passed,” said one diplomat involved in negotiations over a possible European bailout of Greece. “We have to do something or announce something.”
But some officials said the meeting might achieve little more than a political statement, leaving details to be worked out later by finance ministers.
German officials also insisted that no formal decision had been made.
Stocks on Wall Street fell Wednesday, partly on worries that European politicians may not find a quick resolution to the crisis.
A crucial point in the discussions is whether the government in Athens should be offered loan guarantees or given additional loans to help meet a looming debt payment, or whether there should be a pledge to buy Greek government bonds should the need arise. Investors like the concept of having one or several creditworthy nations, like Germany, guaranteeing the debts of a poorer nation, although such a move would be largely without precedent.
Germany and France are expected to have to take the lead on any emergency solution, especially after European officials rejected allowing Greece to go the International Monetary Fund — which often provides financial aid to emerging markets — for help. Going to the fund is considered a highly undesirable option for any of the 16 countries that use the euro currency. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany intend to hold a joint news conference after the summit meeting.
It is “no longer considered an option not to act,” said a French official involved in the talks.
Officials are worried about the “moral hazard” of any Europe-backed solution for Greece: If one country is bailed out by the others, investors will expect a similar response should other weak economies that use the euro, including Portugal and Spain, fall into serious trouble.
And then there are questions about how to apply any commitments so that the weaker governments would be pressured to deliver painful economic overhauls freecreditreport.
The talks, which included a discussion of what steps Greece might be required or even forced to take to deal with its own financial problems, came as Greek citizens demonstrated in protest against austerity measures so far announced by the government, which many market participants think are far from adequate.
“At this junction they will have to support Greece,” Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Center for European Reform, said of Europe’s politicians. “If you have encouraged the markets to believe that support is forthcoming and then it is not, we will see a backlash” in financial markets.
Though Mr. Tilford said the markets would ideally like to see some form of guarantee extended to Greek loans, he added that this would probably be too much for the government in Berlin. The most likely outcome was a loan facility extended on condition that changes were undertaken by the government in Athens. It would also need to apply to other countries facing similar ills.
Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of the Bruegel research institute in Brussels said that whatever officials decide Thursday, it was important to lay out markers — including what assistance they would take, what would activate it and who would provide it — so that markets could understand how aid would be given.
The summit meeting Thursday was called by Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, to try to draw up a longer-term economic strategy for the European Union to modernize its economy by 2020, an agenda that has been overshadowed by the euro zone debt crisis.
Stocks rose across most of Europe on Wednesday, with the euro-zone benchmark Dow Jones Euro Stoxx 50 index gaining 1.2 percent. The euro slipped as conflicting comments from European leaders showed the bloc was still moving hesitantly toward concrete measures. The 16-nation currency traded at $1.3733 late Wednesday in Europe.
Greek government debt rallied for a second consecutive day, with the yield on the government’s benchmark 10-year bond — which spiked as high as 7.2 percent on Jan. 28 — dropping at one point below 6 percent for the first time in a month. Italian, Irish, Spanish and Portuguese bonds also gained. The cost of insuring government debts against default through credit default swaps also fell.
Charles Diebel, head of European rate strategy at Nomura International, said a default was not imminent in Greece. But without European Union support Greek bond yields will rise so high that Athens would find it very difficult to sell debt when it needs to refinance in a few months.
“It’s a question of confidence, not fundamentals,” Mr. Diebel said.
Nicholas Kulish contributed reporting from Berlin.
Europe Agrees to Aid Greece, but Is Unsure of How to Help
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02.08.10
Posted in .com, money, shortly, top, world of money tagged finance, newsreports, opinion, politics, world at 5:18 am by carydalton
NEW YORK – Betty White plays football, babies talk about “milkaholics” and a house made of Bud Light cans falls slowly apart. It must be the Super Bowl — or at least the advertising showcase that entertains amid the gridiron action.
The commercials from such advertisers as Anheuser-Busch and Coca-Cola got off to a funny start Sunday night on CBS.
Villanova marketing Professor Charles R. Taylor said the light-hearted tone is working this year because the ads still manage to tell people what the brands stand for. That marks a turn from last year, when some ads took a more somber tone amid the still-deepening recession.
Not every commercial was strictly humorous. Automaker Toyota aired several ads before and after the game to reassure worried owners after its recalls connected with accelerator problems.
A commercial by conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, perhaps the most-discussed ad leading up to the game, hinted at a serious subject, although it, too, had a punchline. Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother talk about her difficult pregnancy with him — implying an antiabortion message, because she had been advised to have an abortion for medical reasons — but ended with Tebow tackling his mom and saying the family must be “tough.”
Taylor said he had been disappointed in at least the past five Super Bowls in terms of the effectiveness of ads in connecting with products, but this year he’s pleased. Advertisers pay dearly for the airtime — from $2.5 million to more than $3 million per 30 seconds — and marketers say ads work best when they focus on the product, as well as entertaining.
He cited a commercial by tiremaker Bridgestone featuring men carrying a whale in the back of their truck, and another by Dove launching its new men’s skin-care line. They were winners, he said, because they manage to entertain while telling people about the brands. The ad for Dove tells the story of boy growing into a man and the signal events in a man’s life.
“So far from what I’ve seen I’m quite positively impressed, more than I thought I would be,” he said.
A first Super Bowl ad by Google — which rarely advertises on television — told an affecting story of a budding relationship through a series of Google searches, beginning with “study abroad” and “how to impress a French woman” and ending with “churches in Paris” and “how to assemble a crib personal business card.”
That was one of the few strong ads this year, said Laura Ries, president of marketing consulting firm Ries & Ries outside Atlanta.
She figured people would most likely end up talking about the game between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianpolis Colts — which was close until the waning minutes — rather than ads. Often, it’s the other way around.
“It’s very, very difficult to be entertaining in a place like the Super Bowl and have a connection to your brand,” she said. “The home runs here are few and far between.”
Other highlights include a series of ads by restaurant chain Denny’s, which showed chickens nervous about all the eggs they’d have to lay when the company gives out free Grand Slam breakfasts again this year.
A top topic on Twitter was “green police” — the name of an ad by carmaker Audi pushing its new diesel-fueled vehicle the TDI. Using word play on Cheap Trick’s “Dream Police” — “Green” police officers deal with people making questionable environmental decisions. A man is arrested for choosing a plastic bag at the grocery store, for example.
But not all ads were winners.
Taylor said an ad by Boost Mobile, Sprint’s prepaid cellular phone service, didn’t work because it depended too heavily on the 1985 Chicago Bears’ “Super Bowl Shuffle,” a reference that could be too old for the brand’s buyers.
An ad by Kia for its Sorento SUV will be remembered for its story of a whimsical joyride taken by children’s toys — but people won’t likely remember the brand behind the ad, Ries said.
Celebrities weren’t as plentiful in this year’s Super Bowl. Notable sightings include Charles Barkley rapping for Taco Bell, Betty White and Abe Vigoda playing football for Mars’ Snickers brand and Beyonce for low-price television brand Vizio.
A promotion for CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman” was memorable because its punchline was spoken by Jay Leno, whose show will again be squaring off with Letterman in the fall.
Letterman, sitting on a couch with Oprah Winfrey, says “This is the worst Super Bowl party ever.”
Leno replies that Letterman’s “just saying that because I’m here.”
Super Bowl ads: Betty White, Bud Light, big laughs
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02.05.10
Posted in economic, news, online, shortly, world of money tagged economics, economy, newsreports, world, writing at 11:36 am by carydalton
PARIS — European markets slipped again Friday, after a sharp sell-off in Asia, amid continued worries about government debt in several European countries and about the state of the U.S. labor market.
The main markets in Europe had fallen between 1 and 2 percent in mid-morning trading, following sharper declines in Asia and on Wall Street Thursday. The Nikkei 225, Japan’s main market gauge, sagged 2.9 percent Friday.
Investor nervousness drew money into the Swiss franc, traditionally seen as safe have during times of distress, driving its value up against the euro to a 15-month high — and prompting a reported intervention by the Swiss National Bank.
The main worry in Europe remained the ability of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain to rein in their rising deficits, which have been surging in the wake of national stimulus programs and after years of poor fiscal management.
“The market wants to accelerate an issue that the authorities were hoping that time would heal,” Deutsche Bank analysts said in a research note Friday. It added that the European authorities “will be forced to show more of their hands over the coming weeks or months,” suggesting financial support or guarantees from other euro countries was becoming more likely.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year bonds of Spain, Portugal., Ireland and Greece moved higher Friday, while those of Germany and France eased, suggesting funds were still flowing from the peripheral members of the euro-zone into the big core countries.
The FTSE-100 and the CAC-40 were both down more than 1.3 percent, paring sharper early gains, while the AEX index shed 1.7 percent in Amsterdam.
Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 0.3 percent, suggesting a weaker start on Wall Street.
Adding to the anxiety was a bleaker-than-expected report on unemployment claims in the United States on Thursday, which once again spotlighted the fact the American recovery has yet to feed through to the beleaguered jobs market.
These jitters helped send the Dow Jones industrial index down 2.61 percent by the close of trade Thursday in New York, also dragging markets in the Asia-Pacific region down Friday.
Traders in Europe were also anticipating the release later Friday of the broad U.S. employment report for January.
Asian economies may be expanding more rapidly than those of the United States and Europe — Australia’s central bank on Friday said it expected economic growth there to continue to accelerate — but its stock markets also remain susceptible to global investor jitters fast cash loans.
In mainland China, the Shanghai Composite index sagged 1.9 percent. The market has dropped about 10 percent this year amid investor concerns that the authorities are now curbing bank loan growth in a bid to temper inflation.
The Straits Times index in Singapore lost 1.8 percent by late afternoon, while the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong and the Kospi in South Korea sagged more than 3 percent. The Taiex index in Taiwan ended down 4.3 percent.
In Australia, the main market gauge fell 2.3 percent.
“The ongoing weakness in the markets is largely due to sovereign default risk in the West, but this has even affected the developing markets in Asia,” said Puru Saxena, chief executive of Puru Saxena Wealth Management in Hong Kong in a note Friday.
Amid the worried about a possible bond defaults, the euro continued to weaken against the dollar and other currencies.
The euro was quoted at $1.3683 in London trading. In November, it was trading above $1.50.
Earlier in the day euro fell to a recent low of 1.4559 Swiss francs.
Reuters quoted several currency traders as saying the Swiss National Bank had been selling its currency during Asian trading. The central bank declined to comment.
The central bank has previously intervened to fight deflation and counter the risk of recession.
A research note from the European Equity Strategy at Barclays Capital said the greatest risks for stock investors lie with banks, telecommunication companies and utilities. It recommended investors switch into healthcare and food and beverages.
In London, ICAP, the largest broker of transactions between banks, fell 17 percent after cutting its profit forecast. Banco Santander of Spain fell 2.1 percent in Madrid, where the broader stock index was down 2 percent.
Rio Tinto Group, the mining giant, declined 3.6 percent.
In Tokyo, shares in Toyota bucked the downward trend, eking out a gain of 1.2 percent after upbeat results for the final quarter of 2009, released after the close of trade on Thursday.
But the car manufacturer’s troubles over the recalls of millions of cars are weighing heavily, and have caused the stock to plunge more than 20 percent since a recent high on Jan. 21.
Markets Sag in Europe After Sharp Sell-Off in Asia
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01.31.10
Posted in All, economic, money, online, top tagged All, blogs, markets, newsreports, opinion at 7:48 am by carydalton
LONDON – As captain of England’s national team, John Terry is used to appearing in the sports pages. But on Saturday, his picture was splashed across the front pages of Britain’s newspapers, and not because of his skill on the field.
A High Court judge lifted a court order Friday that had prevented the media from reporting allegations about Terry’s private life — a so-called “super injunction” which barred publication that any order even existed.
The court order related to a story about the 29-year-old Terry, who is married with two children, and his ties with another woman whom the judge did not name.
After the injunction was lifted, it wasn’t just the country’s famously racy tabloids that published page after page about the football (soccer) star — some of Britain’s more conservative broadsheet newspapers followed the story as well for its long-term impact on the country’s strict media laws.
Ambi Sitham, a media lawyer, called High Court judge Michael Tugendhat’s decision “hugely significant,” and said while those with legitimate privacy concerns would continue to be protected, people trying to escape scrutiny for other reasons won’t find relief in the courts.
“It’s a big red flag for high-profile people, who are increasingly using privacy law to keep sordid details out of the press,” she said.
In December, a similar injunction barred journalists in Britain from publishing material about Tiger Woods, even blocking the media from revealing the details of the order itself. Woods has since confessed to marital infidelities, lost millions as sponsorship deals evaporated, taken an unspecified amount of time off from professional golf and disappeared from public view.
Terry, whose past bad boy antics have been frequently chronicled by the press, never had the saintly reputation of Woods. Still, he is one of the sport’s highest-paid stars playing the world’s most popular game for one of the most renowned clubs — Chelsea — in the English Premier League, the world’s wealthiest.
Britain doesn’t have a formal privacy law, but is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights. That guarantees the right to respect for privacy and family life, and this clause has been used repeatedly by celebrities to fight media exposes.
The position of England captain is highly prestigious in Britain — David Beckham was the team’s previous leader. Terry had been working on his image after a series of damaging incidents and last year was named “Dad of the Year” by a condiments company.
The injunction was granted Jan. 22 after Terry learned that a newspaper was about to publish a story about his private life.
Tugendhat, however, said Terry appeared more concerned about the effect that publication of the allegations might have on his public image rather than his private life, saying the “claim is essentially a business matter.”
Terry — who is identified as LNS in the judgment — has several sponsorship deals on top of his reported weekly salary of 170,000 pounds ($275,000; euro197,000) with Chelsea.
“I have reached the view that it is likely that the nub of LNS’s complaint in this case is the protection of reputation, and not of any other aspect of LNS’s private life,” the judgment says payday loan in advance. “The real basis for the concern of LNS is likely to be the impact of any adverse publicity upon the business of earning sponsorship and similar income.”
The judge did say the woman in question was “a famous person” but not from the sporting world — and not as famous as Terry. British papers on Saturday reported that the woman was a model who already had a son with one of Terry’s former teammates, a player who may also be chosen for England’s World Cup team.
His team, Chelsea, has called the situation “a personal matter” and said they would give Terry and his family “all the support they need in dealing with it.”
Much speculation Saturday focused on how the allegations could affect Terry’s position on the England team and its run at the World Cup this summer in South Africa. Coach Fabio Capello has instilled a strict disciplinary code within the squad, and could pull the captaincy from Terry if he thought his off-field behavior might affect the team.
“The daily headlines will continue to question his fitness to lead. In Fleet Street parlance, this story has legs and will run and run,” sports columnist Henry Winter wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “If it seems that Terry’s conduct and continued ownership of the captain’s armband affects morale going into a World Cup, then Capello has no choice. Terry should go.”
Terry has played for Chelsea his entire career. The Blues fended off an attempt by Manchester City to sign him last year by giving him a pay rise that reportedly made him the highest-paid player in the Premier League.
Appointed Chelsea captain in 2004, he has won two Premier League titles, three FA Cups and two League Cups in the most successful period in the club’s history.
He was first choice in central defense for England at the 2004 European Championship and 2006 World Cup, after which he was named national team captain when Beckham relinquished the role.
But allegations of off-field transgressions have followed him throughout his career. He was fined by Chelsea after he and three teammates drunkenly abused American guests at a hotel the day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Terry has also been ejected from nightclubs and newspapers have accused him of infidelities several times.
But Terry has retained the England captaincy, even after the country’s failure to reach the 2008 European Championship, and appeared in advertisements for Samsung and sportswear manufacturer Umbro.
Despite speculation that he might hide out after all the bad publicity, Terry started in his team’s game Saturday. He was booed by fans but scored the winning goal in Chelsea’s 2-1 victory over Burnley, keeping his team on top of the Premier League.
“He is a fantastic player,” Chelsea coach Carlo Ancelotti said after the game. “That is his private life. He is about work. We don’t have to say nothing because he is very professional.”
___
Associated Press sports writer Stuart Condie contributed to this report from London.
UK court lifts media ban on soccer star’s life
Hot News: Toyota to Issue a Fix for Recalled Cars
Permalink
12.24.09
Posted in Free blog Tips, business, hot news, news, shortly tagged All, markets, newsreports, politics, writing at 11:36 am by carydalton
LONDON (MarketWatch) — European shares tentatively gained on Thursday, up for the fourth straight day, with miners getting a lift from an uptick in commodity prices in an abbreviated session ahead of the Christmas break.
The French CAC-40 index rose 0.1% to 3,913.45 and the U.K. FTSE 100 index advanced 0.2% to 5,384.91.
The German stock market is closed on Thursday. Euronext markets close at 1pm GMT while the British stock market closes at 12.30pm GMT. All European equity markets are closed Friday.
Asian shares advanced on Thursday while U.S. stock futures were pointing to slight gains on Wall Street with Dow Jones Industrial Average futures up 22 points.
French and British share markets both closed with gains on Wednesday, with the CAC-40 index hitting a new 2009 high and the U.K. FTSE 100 index coming close, and both equity markets are up more than 21% year-to-date.
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Miners have been one of the driving factors behind that move amid signs that the global economy is on the path to recovery and basic resources firms posted solid gains again on Thursday.
Steelmaker ArcelorMittal climbed 1.1%, helping the Dutch AEX index to advance 0.2% to 333.47.
Shares of silver miner Fresnillo climbed 1.8% and shares of diversified mining giant BHP Billiton rose 0.6% in London.
In the commodity markets, gold futures were up $11.80 at $1,105.80 an ounce while oil futures gained 43 cents to $77.10 a barrel in electronic trading.
In the currency markets, the euro advanced 0.4% against the dollar, trading at $1.4384. Sterling also gained ground against the greenback, up 0.3% at $1.6002.
Real estate developers were also advancing, with Unibail-Rodamco up 1.2% in Paris and Land Securities up 0.9% in London.
Still, financials were pulling back after recent gains, with Fortis shares down 0.8% and Standard Chartered shares down 0.2%.
Europe Markets: Miners lift Europe shares ahead of holiday
Hot News: Personal spending and income rise in November
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12.23.09
Posted in .com, All, news, online, world of money tagged economics, financial, news, newsreports, politics at 5:30 am by carydalton
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Sometimes, a little history gives you perspective. That’s why as 2010 comes to a close, it’s useful remembering what we were worrying about a year ago.
Gosh, we were more nervous than Lloyd Blankfein and Henry Paulson when the jury returned at the end of their trials.
Wall Street seemed like a place full of uncertainty at the end of 2009. Skeptics wondered whether the Dow Jones Industrial Average recovery to 10,000 was warranted, a concern that seems silly now, with most everyone abandoning the market for gold.
To be fair, there was no way investors of a year ago could have known the banks would collapse, this time for good, just three months into the year. It was a shock to the system, but one that helped people see value in precious metals and how foolhardy investing in innovation, industry and real estate truly are.
Also, working hard and saving money were overrated 12 months ago.
Consider the era, though. At the end of the decade, health-care reform was still being batted about in Congress. It looked as if any action would be watered down and expensive. Now, we have universal coverage from the state that pays for itself.
Had Ted Kennedy lived another 12 months, he might have made it another 12 years — if he could have stomached the 200% tax on fast food, cigarettes, alcoholic beverages and the elimination of health-industry lobbying.
A year ago, Afghanistan loomed as another Vietnam. That was until Wall Street’s best and brightest, lured by the nation’s lack of bonus restrictions and pay caps, began flocking to the country. This brought some social stability, but at a substantial price: The beach house shortage shows no signs of easing and takeout from the Four Seasons still costs well into five figures.
Revving up the earth
It seems equally as strange today, with the polar ice caps expanding at the fastest rate in centuries, that we worried about global warming. Or, maybe the fear was warranted. It’s hard to tell after China effectively traded our debt for the highly efficient and cheap solar panels produced by a company that finally got its stimulus money.
China’s reduction in carbon emissions combined with Chevy Volts, Ford Electric Explorers and the iCar started a reversal of the planet’s damage and, more importantly, shut up Al Gore and fueled a U.S. recovery.
Speaking of which, was it only a year ago that General Motors was limping along on a government bailout? Look at where it is today: scheduled to repay taxpayers early and at a substantial profit, giving hope that with the combined windfall from the bank asset liquidation, we will balance the federal budget in two years and eliminate all government debt in a decade instant personal loans guaranteed.
That prospect, too, has fueled a recovery in the dollar, which combined with nonexistent demand should have pushed oil prices into single digits. It didn’t happen, of course. Goldman Sachs analysts put a $300 price target on light sweet crude in August, a level prices broke through, even though inventories were so high Saudi Arabia sank under its own weight.
Overemployment
That global emergency would have cured the nation’s jobs ills if they already hadn’t been eliminated by the massive hiring by companies that make gold-laminated wind turbines, high-speed rail systems, transporters and hydrogen-powered leaf blowers. These new professions helped offset the losses among columnists, economists, financial advisers and credit officers and other unnecessary professions.
When unemployment hit 0.8% in October, President Obama bowed to pressure, mostly from Lou Dobbs, and opened the borders to immigrants.
It was a turnaround only rivaled by Lehman Brothers Chief Executive Dick Fuld and Bear Stearns Cos. chief Jimmy Cayne. Together they set a record for fundraising to back their prescient investments in Antarctica apartment complexes and the recently legalized marijuana farming.
It wasn’t all good news. As expected, the newspaper industry died, save for those unwanted shoppers. Most people didn’t notice, they figured it was just another delivery glitch at the old folks’ home.
There were misperceptions too. A year ago, Tiger Woods looked like a serial womanizer, not the philanthropist and golf promoter we know today who took it upon himself to give lessons to even the most uninterested of students, turning them into PGA-caliber players and giving them new careers.
And even though Wall Street effectively disappeared and was remade, the Treasury Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission spent 2010 doing what they did in 2009: talking about a new regulatory framework and how Washington would police naked-short selling and high frequency trading.
They did so even though the industry had moved on to just plain trading naked and trading so fast it made the speed traders of yesteryear look slow.
Some things never change.
David Weidner’s Writing on the Wall: The ghost of Wall Street future
Hot News: Financial Stocks: Financials up as investors cheer State Street buy
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12.17.09
Posted in .com, All, money, shortly, world of money tagged finance, money, newsreports, people, work at 2:18 am by carydalton
SHANGHAI, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) — All the gold mined so far totaled163,000 tonnes across the world, an official with the World Gold Council (WGC) said here Wednesday.
Albert L.H. Cheng, managing director of WGC’s fareast area, said in a lecture about this year’s gold market that 83,600 tonnes of the total amount had been used in making jewelries, while individual investment activities accounted for 27,300 tonnes.
Gold reserves held by countries occupied 28,700 tonnes and 19,700 tonnes went to industrial production or other uses, he cited statistics from WGC as saying online payday loans.
An estimated of 26,000 tonnes of gold deposit remained undeveloped, and the resource will run out for 10 years based on the current mining speed, he said.
Mined gold totals 163,000 tonnes worldwide: WGC
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12.16.09
Posted in .com, Free blog Tips, money, online, top tagged business, economics, economy, newsreports, politics at 6:06 pm by carydalton
MOSCOW — Yegor T. Gaidar, the economist who oversaw the largest-ever transition from Communism to capitalism as the first finance minister of post-Soviet Russia, only to be vilified by his countrymen for the decade of poverty that followed, died on Wednesday, Russian news agencies reported. He was 53 years old.
The cause was likely a blood clot, Interfax reported. The news agency quoted police officials who said Mr. Gaidar had died at his country home in the Odintsovo region outside of Moscow early Wednesday.
Rising to power in a generation that first strove to reform the Soviet Union from within but instead wound up presiding over its collapse, Mr. Gaidar began his career in a branch of the Soviet planning bureaucracy studying possible reforms for the creaking command economy.
But, as finance minister in charge of one of the great blank slates of economic history after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Gaidar decided to rapidly liberalize prices and begin privatizing state industry, rather than continue gradual reforms of the type he had been studying.
It was a decision he said he never regretted. The changes pushed millions of Russian into a life of penury but also laid the foundation for Russia’s economic boom during the past decade.
Until the end, Mr. Gaidar remained unapologetic for his role in laying to rest the Communist economic system.
In later academic writing he attributed the collapse not only to the rigidity of the command economy but also to something more prosaic — a cyclical downturn in global oil prices in the late 1980s that created an unsustainably large trade deficit for the Soviet Union by crimping revenues from its principal export commodity, crude oil.
“Generally, economic history of the last 200 years at least shows that private property is better, if it doesn’t touch essential problems of security of the state,” Mr. Gaidar said in an interview last year. “Nothing in Russian recent economic history demonstrates that this is wrong.”
A man of the Russian elite — Mr. Gaidar’s great-grandfather and grandfather were both famous authors of fairy tales and children’s stories — Mr. Gaidar became minister of economy and finance in November 1991, two months before the Soviet Union collapsed.
His tenure was brief, lasting until February, 1992, two months into the new Russia.
But it was long enough to set in motion the economic reforms that dominated the following two decades.
Relying partly on Western advisers, Mr. Gaidar decided on so-called “shock therapy” methods then in vogue for overhauling state-dominated economies, first tested in Latin America cash advance payday loans.
Mr. Gaidar later served as an acting prime minister before he was dismissed by President Boris N. Yeltsin in late 1992.
By then, it was already clear that austerity measures needed to balance the disastrous late Soviet trade deficits and service the public sector debt were having a huge political impact.
The extreme hardships recalled those of the Great Depression in the United States and wound up thwarting the expectations of rapid improvement in people’s lives with the introduction of capitalism.
The fallout lingers, darkening many Russians’ perception of both capitalism and democracy and, in turn, easing the consolidation of state power under Vladimir V. Putin, who succeeded Mr. Yeltsin as president and is now prime minister.
After retiring from government, Mr. Gaidar headed a Moscow think tank, the Institute of Economy in Transition, until his death.
The interplay of economic and political change remained an overarching theme of his academic work.
In his book “Collapse of an Empire,” Mr. Gaidar argued that the Soviet government turned to West European bank lending in the mid-1980s as the value of crude oil exports plunged. That set in play a dynamic that undermined the country even before pro-democracy uprisings began in the former satellite states of eastern Europe.
The Soviets’ lack of a hard currency reserve led to dependence on Western lending and limited the Kremlin’s options when nationalist movements broke out. Any forceful response would surely have prompted Western banks and governments to call in their credit lines, which were propping up the Soviet government by allowing food imports.
This balance-of-payments shock also prompted the sweeping privatizations, liberalization of consumer prices and introduction of a convertible currency in the early 1990s — measures that ultimately put the Russian economy on a modern footing.
The reforms implemented by Mr. Gaidar, and a later wave of changes he advocated in the wake of the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, prepared Russia for the oil price collapse last autumn, when strong state reserves cushioned the impact on the balance of payments and propped up the budget.
Mr. Gaidar is survived by a daughter, Maria Gaidar, who works as an aide to a liberal-leaning provincial governor.
Russia’s Market Reform Architect Dies
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12.04.09
Posted in All, economic, money, news, shortly tagged finance, financial, news, newsreports, opinion at 11:36 am by carydalton
The French capital sprawls over an older version of itself, a vast warren of tunnels and stone chambers, many dating from the Middle Ages and now housing anything from pantries to jazz bars. After the gold vaults of the Bank of France (and the alleged lair of the Phantom of the Opera), perhaps the most famous piece of subterranean Paris real estate is the wine cellar at La Tour d’Argent.
Seven stories below La Tour’s dining area overlooking Notre Dame, the cellar stretches for 27 rooms and holds 450,000 bottles. Of that immense collection, a modest 4 percent — or 18,000 bottles — will be sold Monday and Tuesday in a public auction, the first known sale of its kind since the restaurant began in 1582.
“It’s wines that we felt we had a lot of, but that we could keep selling for years,” said David Ridgway, head sommelier of La Tour. Although some lots date from the 19th century, many are bottles that Mr. Ridgway has bought since he began in 1981.
“We bought them when we were working a lot more, before the 35-hour week,” Mr. Ridgway said, referring to a law France passed in 2000 limiting the number of hours per week an employee could work before earning overtime, which has complicated the staffing of some businesses. “Working less means selling less wine,” he said.
There are other reasons why bottles are not moving as quickly. La Tour, despite its 400-page wine list, global reputation and storied past, has lost two of its three Michelin stars in the past 13 years. The restaurant has reduced how much it serves, in an attempt to put quality over quantity and regain standing.
Yet it is also suffering — like other establishments in Paris — from the retreat of tourism with the financial crisis. There were 10 percent fewer tourists in the first half of the year, according to the French office of tourism, with numbers picking up again only in late summer.
That is nothing to the pillaging of La Tour d’Argent during the 1789 revolution. Or the flooding of the wine cellar in the late 1980s, when the Seine overflowed and the lower “cave” had water up to the hips. Or the ruin of Nazi occupation. In the book “Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure,” Don and Petie Kladstrup recount how in June 1940, an emissary from Field Marshal Hermann Göring came and asked to see the cellar.
The Nazis carted off 80,000 bottles in the first disorderly months of the occupation, but 20,000 more had been hidden behind a false brick wall built hastily by Claude Terrail, who ran the restaurant until 2003, before leaving it in the hands of his son, André.
The auction’s most expensive bottles date from just one year before the French revolution — and are not wine at all, but a 1788 vieux Cognac Clos de Griffier, whose price has been estimated to be between €2,500 and €3,000, or $3,700 and $4,500, apiece fast cash.
The last such bottle was sold to a Japanese businessman in 1984 for 140,000 francs, or about €36,000. Once he bought it, he told the restaurant he would have paid double. “One reason for this sale is to have a vague idea of what they are worth,” Mr. Ridgway said.
The most expensive wine will be a bottle of Corton, a red Burgundy vintage 1895, its label blurred with mold and its price estimated at €1,000 to €1,200.
“Of course it’s partly financial,” Mr. Ridgway said of the auction. “We’re hoping for a round million — anything above that is good.” He also said that people’s tastes had changed in his 28 years there. “I may have been looking too far afield,” he said. In the future, “there may be less Languedoc,” a region that, while it produces fine vintages, was long infamous for its “piquette,” or biting wine.
The bottles were moved over five weeks from their unlit cellar of Champagne limestone to the skylights and chandeliers of the Salons Hoche, a reception hall where the auction will be held.
It is the business of restaurants to keep well-aged wine on hand. They have a sommelier to visit vineyards, chat with winegrowers and make sure guests are served something pleasing. But that — like much else — is changing.
“It’s sad,” said Joshua Adler, a young sommelier at Spring Boutique, a wine shop in Paris, “because it represents a change in how people do business. It’s the caviste’s job to age wine, keep it in the ideal condition, and pass it on to the customer at the right moment.”
Instead, it’s being offered to buyers — collectors and their agents who will no doubt be bidding on the 19th-century bottles; commercial outlets thinking to arbitrage the spread between auction block and shop window; and bargain hunters and the curious. Unlike the bottles at many wine auctions, there is little doubt that this stock has been well cared for.
These bottles, said Alexis Velliet, who will auction the lot for the auction house Piasa, “you can buy with your eyes closed.”
Mr. Ridgway said all of the bottles ought to be good for another 5 years, and most for 10. Nevertheless, he said, “this is a sale for drinkers, not for keepers.”
A Famed Paris Restaurant to Auction Its Wines
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12.02.09
Posted in .com, All, economic, hot news, news tagged All, economy, newsreports, world, writing at 1:47 am by carydalton
LONDON (MarketWatch) — European shares kicked off the final month of the year with gains on fading worries about the potential impact of Dubai’s debt woes on the global economy.
The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index rose 2.7% to close at 245.58 in a move led by cyclical plays.
The index, however, is still below the close of 247.96 recorded before news was released that Dubai World requested a six-month suspension of its debt payments. Dubai World is now in talks to restructure some of that debt. Read more on Dubai.
European banks are seen as having more exposure to the Middle East than Asian or U.S. lenders, and the sector advanced Tuesday. Shares of HSBC Holdings rose 2.7%, and the Royal Bank of Scotland gained 3.3%.
Hard-hit Greek banks also rose, with the National Bank of Greece rising 9.6% in Athens.
KBC shares added 8% in Brussels after Morgan Stanley initiated coverage on the lender with an overweight rating and added it to its best ideas portfolio.
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On a regional level, the U.K. FTSE 100 index rose 2.3% to settle at 5,312.17. The German DAX index climbed 2.7% to close at 5,776.61, and the French CAC-40 index rose 2.6% to end at 3,775.74.
U.S. stocks rose even as a key manufacturing gauge missed expectations.
A gauge of euro-zone manufacturing activity in November was revised higher, while the U low interest auto loans.K. gauge showed a smaller-than-anticipated expansion.
Auto makers were generally stronger as, according to Citi, funding concerns at their financial-services arms have diminished. Fiat rose 5.3% after it was upped to buy from hold, and Volkswagen preference shares , which Citi recommended, rose 5.3%.
VW common shares , on which Citi reduced its price target, fell 0.7%.
Shares of French media conglomerate Vivendi rose 4%. General Electric Co. has reached a tentative agreement to buy partner Vivendi’s stake in NBC Universal for $5.8 billion, according to reports Monday. Read more about the NBC Universal deal.
Alstom shares rose 6.7% and Schneider Electric shares were up 3.8% after the firms said they submitted a bid to buy the transmission and distribution assets of Areva for an equity value of $2.29 billion. Areva said that was its preferred bid, despite higher offers from both GE and Toshiba.
“We think there will be some relief in the terms of the deal, in particular that Alstom/Schneider look as though they will pay what was broadly expected by the market for the assets,” said Peter Caldwell, an analyst at Barclays Wealth.
Areva shares fell 0.5%.
Bulgari fell 2.8% as the group’s vice chairman, Nicola Bulgari, sold a 1.33% stake to institutional investors. The company said the share sale was to finance personal projects.
Europe Markets: European shares start December with gains
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