jueves, 22 de diciembre de 2011

Business Day

Gold eases as euro zone debt concerns persist

In the summer months gold rose strongly in times of risk aversion as investors sought it out as a safe haven, it is now moving more in line with assets seen as higher risk, like stocks and the euro, which tend to rise at the dollar’s expense

JAN HARVEY

Published: 2011/12/22 05:02:01 PM

Gold was down a touch on Thursday, recovering from early lows as the euro rose versus the dollar but struggling to gain traction as concerns over the depth of the euro zone crisis simmered and traders held off taking new positions ahead of year-end.

Spot gold was down 0,1% at $1 613,39 an ounce at 1256 GMT, recovering from an earlier low of $1 602,04. Prices are well off the record $1 920,30 an ounce they hit in early September, but remain up 13% on the year.

While in the summer months gold rose strongly in times of risk aversion as investors sought it out as a safe haven, it is now moving more in line with assets seen as higher risk, like stocks and the euro, which tend to rise at the dollar’s expense.

"People are not looking at gold as a safe haven, and that is one of the reasons for this lacklustre performance," said Commerzbank analyst Eugen Weinberg. "I wouldn’t be surprised to see further weakness in gold prices going forward."

"The price increase before was also due to speculative interest, and that seems to be abating, which I find healthy.

Gold will be forming a bottom in the coming months, and due to the higher risks ahead, I think prices are likely to increase."

Stock markets rose in Europe, led by banking stocks, and the euro climbed as buyers hoped the nearly half a trillion euros in three-year funds that banks borrowed on Wednesday from the European Central Bank will ease current funding strains.

Safe-haven German government bonds eased a touch. Despite the cautious optimism that is lifting the markets, concerns remain that the euro zone debt crisis could worsen.

"While (the loan) may buy vulnerable banks some time, it is certainly no solution to the wider problem of slow or no growth," said CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson.

"Furthermore the failure to deal with the failing banks also puts the good banks under pressure, as there is no discernible way to distinguish them."

The threat of mass credit ratings downgrades for euro zone countries is still hanging over the market, with Standard & Poor’s yet to announce if it will cut ratings on any of the 15 countries it has on credit watch negative.

US gold futures for February delivery were up 80 cents an ounce at $1 614,50.

British Airways owner IAG seals deal to buy BMI for £172.5m

British Airways-owner International Airlines Group has seen off rival bidder Virgin Atlantic to land BMI in a mooted £172.5m deal that will give it more than half the take-off and landing slots at Heathrow.

By Alistair Osborne and Amy Wilson

8:25AM GMT 22 Dec 2011

Buying the heavily loss-making BMI from Germany’s Lufthansa will add 56 slot pairs to IAG’s portfolio at Britain’s premier airport, raising its share from about 44pc to 53pc.

However, it is dependent on regulatory clearance and Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson promised a dog fight over the deal as he urged European competition authorities to block it.

Confirming Virgin had withdrawn its own putative bid, Sir Richard said: "This deal simply cuts consumer choice and screws the travelling public. BA is already dominant at Heathrow and their removal of BMI just tightens their stranglehold at the world’s busiest international airport.”

Willie Walsh, IAG chief executive, said he paid no attention to Sir Richard’s comments as he spoke of “an urgent need to restructure” BMI, which has proved a disastrous acquisition for Lufthansa. The airline reported an operating loss of €154m in the nine months to September 30.

Mr Walsh said revamping the airline would “mean some job losses” but added: “IAG’s purchase of BMI will protect more British jobs than if the airline had been closed and had its Heathrow slots sold off. There will be restructuring costs spread over three years but these will be significantly lower in total than BMI’s current annual losses.”

He said IAG would be able to use BMI’s “slot portfolio more efficiently”, providing “the option to launch new longhaul routes to key trading nations while supporting our broad domestic and shorthaul network”.
IAG, which was formed last year from the merger of BA and Spain’s Iberia, is only interested in BMI’s mainline business. It warned that it would cut its price by a “significant” amount if Lufthansa failed to offload low-fare operation Bmibaby before any deal completes. The German carrier is already in advanced talks to sell BMI Regional.
Some analysts believe that Lufthansa could effectively pay IAG to take the business off its hands if it buys the entire BMI business. Lufthansa is already being forced to keep the group’s £125m pension deficit.
IAG, which today signed a “binding agreement” over the deal, said it expects the takeover to add to earnings per share by 2014 and increase target 2015 operating profits of €1.5bn by more than €100m.
Edward Stanford, an analyst at Oriel Securities, said: “Competition clearance is not in our view a foregone conclusion and some undertakings may be required. However we believe that the balance of probabilities is in favour of this being given the go-ahead.”
Lufthansa was forced to buy BMI in 2009 when its former owner, the now Lord Glendonbrook, exercised a put option that saw him pocket £223m.
IAG shares rose 3.2 to 148.3p in mid morning trading. Lufthansa rose 15 cents to €9.18.

CNN Money

Louis C.K. tops $1 million in sales of $5 comedy special

By Julianne Pepitone @CNNMoneyTech December 22, 2011: 1:16 PM ET

Louis C.K. announced his $1 million sales milestone during a chat with talk show host Jimmy Fallon.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Comedian Louis C.K. was annoyed that he never saw a royalty check from sales of his standup specials through traditional outlets like DVD or iTunes. So he produced his own recent special, sold it online directly to fans for $5 -- and made a cool million in just 10 days.
Louis C.K. announced the sales milestone on Wednesday night's episode of "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon."

Louis C.K. began selling the special, filmed at New York's Beacon Theater, on December 10. He put up a simple website that directed customers to "buy the thing" through eBay's (EBAY, Fortune 500) PayPal for $5. A footnote explained that the file has "no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever."
Louis C.K. called it an "experiment" when he launched the sale. Wednesday's $1 million milestone showed that it's paying off.
Jimmy Fallon asked: "You just said 'Hey, everyone who wants to see the show, you give five bucks'?"
Louis C.K. paid to produce the special "out of my own money," he responded. "So I had it. And I said, I can just give it to people for a little bit of money."
A friend told him "everyone's going to steal it...so I just wrote a note that said, you know, please don't do it," Louis C.K. said, as the audience laughed. "And they didn't. So it made a lot of money."
Louis C.K. said he was shocked as he watched the orders come in -- and then began to feel guilty about the amount he'd netted.
"I've never had a million dollars all at once. I grew up pretty poor and I was like, this is not even my money," he said. "This is just a five-dollar impulse that 220,000 people had, and now I have it. And I felt uncomfortable about having that much money."
So Louis C.K. set aside $250,000 to cover the cost of the expenses of producing the special, then doled out another $250,000 in bonuses for his staffers.
He then donated $280,000 to five charities: The Fistula Foundation, The Pablove Foundation, charity: water, Kiva and Green Chimneys.
"I was going to [donate] $100,000, but it's like blackjack -- I just kept dishing it out," he told Fallon.
That leaves $220,000 left over.
"Some of that will pay my rent and will care for my childen [sic]. The rest I will do terrible, horrible things with and none of that is any of your business," Louis C.K. wrote in a statement posted on his website.
A $220,000 profit is plenty, he added.
"I never viewed money as being 'my money' I always saw it as 'The money.' It's a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system," he wrote. "If I make another million, I'll give more of it away."

First Published: December 22, 2011: 1:11 PM ET

San Francisco Business Times

Lucid Imagination loses one CEO, hires another

San Francisco Business Times by Steven E.F. Brown, Web Editor

Date: Thursday, December 22, 2011, 11:15am PST

Search technology software company Lucid Imagination Inc. hired a new CEO this week, but didn’t say what happened to the previous one.
The Redwood City company used to be led by Eric Gries, who was quoted as CEO in a late May press release from Lucid Imagination. But by July, company press releases started quoting the company’s president and chief operating officer, Frank Calderon, instead.
On Tuesday Lucid Imagination named Paul Doscher as CEO -- he worked in the past at Exalead S.A. and at Jaspersoft Corp. He also worked at VMWare Inc. (NYSE: VMW) and at Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL).
“Doscher will lead Lucid Imagination to its next phase of growth,” said the company’s press release, which made no mention of Gries at all.
Lucid Imagination didn’t respond to phone and email requests for information about Gries’ departure, specifically when and why it occurred.

World Trade Organization

21 December 2011

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE

Australia donates AUD 14 million to WTO development programmes

At the 8th WTO Ministerial Conference of 15-17 December 2011, Australia announced it will give three donations to WTO development programmes. Australia will offer a donation of AUD 8 million to the Doha Development Agenda Global Trust Fund (DDAGTF) for 2011-2015, a grant of AUD 3 million to the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) and will make a contribution of AUD 3 million to the International Trade Centre (ITC).

This assistance is intended to build the capacity of developing and least developed countries (LDCs) to negotiate effectively within the WTO. It will also enable them to enhance their ability to participate effectively in the wold economy, using trade as a tool for development.
A first donation of AUD 8 million was offered to the Doha Development Agenda Global Trust Fund. This contribution will be used to finance WTO technical assistance activities targeted especially at the needs of developing and least-developed countries, as well as economies in transition. The aim is to enhance their ability to participate effectively in the WTO negotiations and ensure they fully benefit from the results achieved during these negotiations.
A second donation of AUD 3 million was granted to the Enhanced Integrated Framework, a programme that works in support of sustainable trade and development outcomes for LDCs thereby helping them integrate into the global trading system.
A third donation of AUD 3 million was granted to the International Trade Centre (ITC) to assist developing and least developed countries build technical skills needed to benefit from global trade.
“I welcome this donation which illustrates Australia’s commitment to help least developed countries integrate in the global economy and take better advantage of the multilateral trading system” declared WTO Director General Pascal Lamy.
Australia’s Ambassador Tim Yeend said “Australia believes that trade continues to be a critical engine for economic growth, development, and poverty reduction, especially in the world’s poorest countries. By building trade capacity in a range of critical areas, the WTO can help LDCs reap the full benefits of an open, rules-based multilateral trading system.”

The Korea Times

12-22-2011 16:16

2% of employees earn over W100 mil. per year

By Kim Jae-won

The number of Koreans who earned more than 100 million won (about $86,000) annually increased by more than 42 percent in 2010, official figures showed Thursday.

The 279,000 employees earning 100 million won a year, which for Koreans has long been a symbol of making it big, accounted for 1.8 percent of the country’s wage earners that year, when the average worker was taking home 26.4 million won, according to the National Tax Service (NTS).

``The number of people earning more than 100 million won increased by more than 83,000 in 2010. The economy’s recovery from the global financial crisis that hit in 2008 explains this sharp gain,’’ a NTS official said.

If this explanation has any value, than the number of highly-paid workers will likely fall for 2011 as the country has been experiencing a sharp pullback in economic growth with the eurozone debt crisis headlining a mix of negatives threatening the fragile recovery.

The Korean economy grew by 6.2 percent in 2010, but the pace of expansion will likely be in the 3 to 4 percent range this year and next.

Foreign residents employed by Korean companies earned an average of 17.5 million won for 2010, pointing to a significant income gap with Korean nationals. A total of 400,000 reported a combined 7 trillion won in annual income, the NTS said.

Around 33 percent of those earning more than 100 million won were hired in the manufacturing sector, while another 21 percent of them worked for financial companies and nearly 15 percent of them for services companies.

By region, Ulsan, an industrial center for automobiles and heavy industries, was home to the country’s best-compensated workers, with the average annual income measured at 34 million won.

Workers in Seoul were earning 30 million won a year while those in Gyeonggi Province took home 26 million won. Workers in Jeju earned the least at 22 million won.

Among the self-employed, those making between 40 and 100 million won was the most active charitable group, accounting for 30.8 percent of all who gave money and 30 percent of donations.

By tax office, Yeongdeungpo Tax Office in Seoul where major brokerages are based, topped the collection list with 12.3 trillion won pushing Namdaemun, which collected 11.1 trillion won, to second place. Namdaemun, where the headquarters of big conglomerates are based, had topped the list for the previous five years.

The Guardian

Stock markets recover after crucial Italy vote

Mario Monti's survival after Italian senate approves austerity package boosts optimism, but Greece is hit by new protests

Katie Allen and Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 December 2011 18.44 GMT
Article history

Hearse owners protest in central Athens, Greece, over a change in the status of their vehicles imposed by the government which has raised their tax bills. Photograph: Alkis Konstantinidis/EPA

Stock markets around Europe regained some poise on Thursday after Italy's new leader survived a make-or-break vote on his austerity plan and investors snapped up bank shares after emergency funds for the financial system were made available. Mario Monti's decision to link an Italian senate vote on his €33bn (£27.5bn) budget package to a vote of confidence risked plunging the country into fresh political chaos. But in the event he managed to get the plan approved and will now set about balancing Italy's budget by 2013. The programme includes higher VAT rates, a local housing tax, health spending cuts, an increase in the state pension age to 66, and a higher retirement age.Trade unions said the burden would fall heavily on the poorest in Italian society. There were signs of growing discontent in Greece, where hearse owners became the latest to demonstrate their grievances, by staging protest drives through the country's two main cities. They are worried that a sharp rise in annual road taxes could put them out of business. The protesters say their cars have been reclassified as private instead of business vehicles, which means they will pay up to six times more in road tax. "How can you call a hearse a regular car? Our passengers are deceased," said protester Aris Karvounidis, a member of the Funeral Services Association of Northern Greece. But the tone was somewhat more upbeat on financial markets, where the FTSE 100 added 1.3%, France's CAC40 gained 1.4% and Germany's DAX rose 1.1%. Banking stocks were in demand as investors reassessed the strong take-up of loans from the European Central Bank on Wednesday as at least providing some liquidity, even if it did highlight the precarious state of the financial sector. There was some defrosting of Franco-British relations, which had grown strained following David Cameron's EU veto and French comments on Britain's suitability for a credit downgrade. Alain Juppé, the French foreign minister, called time on the war of words. He said recent comments by president Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-Pierre Jouyet, head of France's financial regulator, went "further than their authors wished". Sarkozy is said to have described David Cameron as a "stubborn child" and Jouyet said Britain's right were the "stupidest in the world". Juppé also sought to calm EU break-up jitters, adding: "We will not allow the European Union to unravel. The explosion of the euro would be the end of the EU. It would spell catastrophe that could end up for the worst." The Bank of England's governor, Mervyn King, did little to downplay concerns about the sovereign debt crisis. Speaking in Frankfurt, he highlighted worries about the resilience of the financial system and "deteriorating growth prospects". "Dependence on central banks has risen and signs are intensifying that stressed financial conditions are passing through to the real economy," he told a press conference in his role as vice-chairman of the European Systemic Risk Board.