AFP - World oil prices firmed on Wednesday before the eagerly-awaited weekly snapshot on US energy inventories in leading consumer the United States.
AP - The maker of Jack Daniel's whiskey and Korbel champagne says its fiscal third-quarter profit slipped, pinched by higher expenses.
BusinessWeek - It's no secret that small businesses in the U.S. face difficulties accessing credit. According to a survey of a random sample of 751 small businesses conducted by Gallup at the end of 2009 for the National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation, 44% of small businesses seeking credit in 2009 received only some or none of the money they sought. This level of credit access compares poorly with mid-2000, when nine of every 10 companies seeking credit received it. While there is broad agreement that a small business credit problem exists, there is less consensus about its causes. ...
AP - Swiss Reinsurance Co. said Wednesday that the strong earthquake in Chile last month will cost the insurance industry $4-7 billion, an estimate shared by its Germany-based rival Munich Re AG.
Reuters - After a growth spurt at the end of 2009, the U.S. economy will slow in the months ahead, keeping the Federal Reserve from raising borrowing costs until the final three months of the year, a Reuters poll showed.
The Anglo-Dutch oil major said it is no longer selling gasoline to Iran, the latest company to make such a move during threats of tougher sanctions against the Islamic republic.
Reuters - U.S. mortgage applications nudged up last week, reflecting increased demand for home purchase loans even as interest rates trekked higher, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.
AP - The head of Portugal's debt agency says a euro990 million ($1.34 billion) bond auction was oversubscribed, suggesting the government's austerity plan has eased market concerns about the country's high debts.
AFP - Europe's leading stock markets nudged higher on Wednesday as traders awaited key US economic data and assessed the latest batch of company results.
AP - OPEC has raised its projections for oil demand growth this year by 100,000 barrels per day, but stresses that gains could be eroded if the U.S. government scales back on stimulus efforts before the country's economy fully recovers.
AP - Investors are continuing to search for direction Wednesday, after two days of relatively flat trading. Stock futures edged higher.
AP - Economists believe that the federal budget deficit through the first five months of the budget year is running at a record-breaking pace, with the February imbalance likely to climb to the highest level this fiscal year.
China's exports expanded strongly for the third straight month in February, though they slipped slightly from January, showing the recovery remains tentative.
AP - Belgian insurer Fortis Holding said Wednesday that Dutch regulators fined it euro576,000 ($781,000) for giving incorrect information about the financial situation of Fortis bank, months before it nearly collapsed and sought government rescue.
AP - Greek unions say nationwide strikes will shut down all public services, closing schools, customs and tax offices, halting public transport and grounding flights for 24 hours.
China Mobile said it agreed to buy a 20% stake in Shanghai Pudong Development Bank for $5.83 billion as the mobile operator seeks to expand into mobile payment services.
AP - Official data shows German January exports improved 0.2 percent compared with January 2009 but declined a sharp 6.3 percent from December.
Reuters - Stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Wednesday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.07 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.09 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.25 percent.
AP - Rich countries must strengthen financial market regulation and bring down their oversized government deficits, two of the biggest new challenges to have arisen from the global economic crisis, the OECD said Wednesday.
The European Commission said British Airways, American Airlines and Iberia have offered to give away take-off and landing slots at London and New York airports to get EU clearance for their airline alliance.
AP - EU regulators say British Airways, American Airlines and Iberia are offering to give away take-off and landing slots at London and New York airports to soothe European Union antitrust concerns.
Reuters - Infosys Technologies, India's No. 2 software services exporter, is seeing a rise in outsourcing deal flows due to a recovery in the global economy, a top official said on Wednesday.
Munich Re said fourth-quarter net profit surged due to lower claims for natural disasters, an improved investment result and higher premium income.
Billions of dollars in corporate bonds sold to retail investors come with an unusual provision that could be used to generate a fast profit. There's just one catch: Investors must team up to buy the bonds with someone who is about to die.
AFP - Leading shares nudged lower at the start of trade on Wednesday amid continuing uncertainty over Europe's economic outlook.
Reuters - China is setting up a new agency to help streamline its trade negotiating bureaucracy as the world's third-largest economy faces a growing number of commercial disputes.
AP - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warns that the U.K. may suffer another economic downturn, including a possible dip back into recession.
AP - Highlights of Senate legislation extending unemployment insurance and expired tax breaks:
AP - Legislation blending help for the jobless with popular tax breaks for businesses and individuals is slated to pass the Senate Wednesday over protests from conservatives who say it adds too much to the $12.5 trillion national debt.
AP - Nationalized mortgage lender Northern Rock said Wednesday that it returned to profit in the second half of 2009 as interest income rose and losses on loans fell.
Reuters - Chinese exports and imports grew faster than expected in February, underlining the momentum behind the world's third-largest economy and reinforcing the case for a rise in the yuan.
AFP - GM Daewoo, the South Korean unit of struggling US auto giant General Motors, said Wednesday it intends to return to profit this year and currently needs no further financial support from creditors.
Reuters - British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sees risks to the economic recovery and says it is not the moment to change course as he prepares for an election by June.
AP - Derivatives have become a dirty word.
Cable operators are petitioning the FCC to prohibit broadcasters from yanking channels during fee negotiations, as happened in the recent Cablevision-Disney dispute over ABC.
Actress Lindsay Lohan has sued an arm of E*Trade Financial, alleging the company misappropriated her name and personality in a recent TV ad.
AFP - The United States said it would expose "troublesome" foreign trade barriers in a strategy to prise open markets for doubling American exports to ease an unemployment crisis at home.
Reuters - Asian stocks hovered near six-week highs on Wednesday as Chinese data showed exports and imports in February were better than expected, while the euro and the pound suffered on renewed concerns about Europe's fiscal problems.
Hundreds of thousands of residents of Port-au-Prince's tent cities remain to be relocated before hard rains begin next month.
Highly rated companies offered about $12 billion in new bonds after a $12 billion day Monday, as they take advantage of low borrowing costs and investor appetite.
Some big U.S. business groups announced a multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign aimed at defeating the Democrats' health-care legislation.
A $1.3 billion loan offering from International Lease Finance Corp. has met with strong investor demand, which will enable the aircraft-leasing unit of AIG raise fresh funds to repay some of its maturing debt.
Debt-laden Ireland is winning applause for adopting severe measures that Greece has put off, but pay cuts and tax hikes have put public servants in some unusual binds.
Just in time for the spring house-hunting season, smart-phone applications that provide information to home buyers are proliferating.
Bank of America plans to announce that it is eliminating $35 overdraft fees on debit-card purchases as the bank tries to stay ahead of a sweeping round of regulations.
Afghan battle scenes with Hollywood-style special effects are staged by a company in San Diego to help U.S. soldiers prepare for deployments.
Robert Halderman, a former CBS news producer, admitted he tried to extort $2 million from late-night talk-show host David Letterman.
If his company merges with Stanley Works, Black & Decker's CEO is in line for a pay package that could be worth over $89 million after three years.
Asian stock markets were mixed Wednesday, with stocks drifting as investors looked to cues later in the week. In Australia, Aurox Resources powered higher on news of a merger with Atlas Iron.
Betsey Wright, an outspoken death-penalty opponent charged with trying to smuggle contraband to a death-row inmate, will ask a state court to allow a videotaped deposition of the man before he is executed.
AP - The chief economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who is an expert on the financial instruments that figured largely in the 2008 crisis, is leaving his position for the private sector.
Bond underwriters handling the Obama administration-backed Build America bonds have collected more than $1 billion in fees so far.
RBS's U.S. global banking and markets unit increased staff levels by 4% last year and plans to continue hiring, in an illustration of how insulated its transatlantic business has been from a departure of employees in the U.K.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer creditors are signaling that they would rather convert their debt to equity than sell for an unsatisfactory price.
Prosecutors equipped several cooperating witnesses with recording devices to try to obtain information about targets in the Galleon insider-trading probe.
AP - Boston Beer Co.'s fourth-quarter profit more than doubled as it shipped out more beer and its profit margin grew and write-downs fell, the company said Tuesday after the market closed.
AP - Chip maker Texas Instruments Inc.'s CEO's compensation edged up in 2009, according to calculations by the Associated Press, a recession year that proved difficult for the chipmaker.
AP - A YEAR LATER: The Dow Jones industrial average is up 61.4 percent since it closed at a 12-year low of 6,547 on March 9, 2009. On paper, U.S. stocks have gained about $5.7 trillion but are still down about $5.5 trillion from the peak in October 2007.
AP - Financial companies led stocks higher Tuesday on the one-year anniversary of the market's hitting a 12-year low. The gain in bank stocks came as traders reacted to rumors that the government might prohibit the trades known as short sales in the stocks of companies it owns. Such a move would be aimed at preventing sharp drops in stocks including Citigroup Inc. and American International Group Inc.
AP - Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market:
AP - The Associated Press has found the chief executive of drugmaker Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. saw his 2009 compensation fall by 22 percent amid the recession.
AFP - Cisco Systems on Tuesday unveiled super-fast Internet hardware that promises to boost US competitiveness and bolster economic recovery by moving mountains of data at astounding speeds.
AP - The chief economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who is an expert on the financial instruments that figured largely in the 2008 crisis, is leaving his position for the private sector.
Reuters - A former stock loan trader at Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp in New York received well over $100,000 of cash kickbacks by steering orders to other brokerage firms, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday.
AP - The Kroger Co. is sacrificing some profits to court financially strapped shoppers who are buying more groceries at lower prices, counting on them to keep coming back when better economic days finally arrive.
AP - Northgate Minerals Corp., a Canadian copper and gold mining company, said Tuesday it reversed a profit and posted a fourth-quarter net loss largely because of an $83.5 million impairment charge.
AP - Steel Dynamics Inc. on Tuesday issued a first-quarter earnings outlook that mostly fell below analysts' estimates, citing weakness in its structural steel and fabrication operations.
AP - In headlines for a March 4 story and headlines and a story March 5 about Cooper Companies Inc., The Associated Press reported erroneously the fiscal period for the company's earnings. The company reported fiscal results for the first quarter, not the fourth quarter. The March 5 story was datelined New York.
Reuters - Democratic efforts to spur job creation advanced in Congress Tuesday as a $149 billion package of tax breaks and unemployment aid cleared a procedural hurdle in the Senate.
Reuters - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's chief economist, James Overdahl, will be leaving at the end of the month, he said on Tuesday.
Reuters - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's chief economist, James Overdahl, will be leaving at the end of the month, he said on Tuesday.
AP - Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. reported fourth quarter and annual earnings Tuesday:
AP - United Technologies Corp. cut CEO Louis Chenevert's compensation nearly 19 percent last year, according to a document it filed with federal regulators. The company praised his performance but said the recession hurt the conglomerate, especially its aerospace business.
AFP - The FTSE 100 stock exchange slipped fractionally on Tuesday after a bout of cautious trading due to uncertainty over Europe's economic outlook and poor earnings reports, analysts said.
AP - A look at economic developments and activity in major stock markets around the world Tuesday:
AP - A look at economic developments and activity in major stock markets around the world Tuesday:
Reuters - U.S. consumer confidence fell in March to its lowest level in a year, as high unemployment and the ways in which the government is using taxpayer money draw mounting apprehension in households, a research group said on Tuesday.
Reuters - Weak U.S. labor markets are likely to justify easy money policies for quite a while longer, a top Federal Reserve official said on Tuesday.
BusinessWeek - Who got us into this mess? It's not just greedy mortgage lenders and irresponsible economists who are responsible for the current financial crisis. Leaders, so called, have played a role too, by not managing their companies and so being detached from what was going on in them. And behind much of this has been an educational process that encouraged such detachment. As I've argued at length in my book, Managers not MBAs, the MBA is fine education -- but in the functions of business, not the exercise of managing. ...
BusinessWeek - A first semester in business school is probably best summed up through some sort of interpretive dance.Refusing to be confined to words only, I am supplementing this entry with music."My B-school Playlist" (downloadable here) is a song collection recapping my first semester. 1) Jordin Sparks, Battlefield Business school is the most intense thing I have done -- and that includes fleeing a war-torn country. The pace of classes is brutal and the amount of learning intense. As a career-switcher, I've had to add researching companies and pursuing informational interviews to my plate. ...
BusinessWeek - Change is a dominant feature of business schools. Curricula change, new courses are added or dropped every year, professors come and go, and entire programs are born, evolve, or die. But until recently one thing that hasn't changed much in many years is the application process: A paper application, set deadlines, interviews, and recommendations are still its component parts. Today, though, that process is beginning to undergo a transformation. Some applications have become more inclusive by accepting GRE and IELTS scores, in addition to the more traditional GMAT and TOEFL scores. ...
AP - Stock futures are falling, a year after the stock market hit bottom.
AFP - Europe's leading stock markets dropped in morning trade on Tuesday as investors reacted to poor earnings news on the grim anniversary of global indices striking multi-year low points.
Reuters - Stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Tuesday, with futures for the S&P 500 down 0.36 percent, Dow Jones futures down 0.26 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures down 0.23 percent at 1049 GMT (5:49 a.m. ET).
AP - German carmaker Audi AG says its 2009 net income fell 39 percent to euro1.35 billion ($1.8 billion) as the economic downturn cut demand for its cars.
AP - Russia's largest steelmaker Severstal on Tuesday posted a $162 million net loss in the fourth quarter of 2009 but signalled confidence in the year ahead.
AP - German mail and logistics company Deutsche Post AG says its net loss for the fourth quarter narrowed to euro283 million ($385 million) largely because of a cost savings program.
AP - H&R Block Inc. on Monday said its fiscal third quarter profit rose 7 percent, as lower costs offset a revenue drop that stemmed from handling fewer returns.
AP - Asian stock markets were little changed early Tuesday, taking a breather after gains Monday fueled by a better-than-expected jobs report from the U.S.
AP - Casey's General Stores reported Monday that its profit grew 23 percent in the third quarter, though bad weather hampered business.
AP - Alamo Group Inc. harvested a fourth-quarter profit as the mowing equipment manufacturer's agricultural division got a boost from a recently completed acquisition.
AP - French drug developer Flamel Technologies SA posted a larger net loss Monday as higher revenue wasn't enough to make up for higher expenses.
AP - MODEST MOVES: Stocks ended mixed after insurer American International Group Inc. reached a deal to sell one of its major foreign divisions to MetLife Inc. for $15.5 billion. Investors see buyouts as a sign of confidence in the economy.
AP - Stocks ended mixed after a new round of mergers and acquisitions raised some hope for the economy. Financial shares rose after insurer American International Group Inc. reached a deal to sell one of its major foreign divisions to MetLife Inc. for $15.5 billion. Meanwhile, health care stocks fell after President Barack Obama called for passage of health care legislation.
AP - Among the earnings stories for Monday, March 8, from AP Financial News:
AP - Stocks that moved substantially or traded heavily Monday on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Stock Market:
AFP - The FTSE 100 stock exchange inched higher on Monday as a rally brought on by better-than-expected US jobs data petered out due to uncertainty about Europe's economic outlook.
BusinessWeek - When numbers are the political weapon of choice, the Republicans turn to Paul Ryan to do their fighting. In prepping for the Feb. 25 televised health-care showdown with President Barack Obama, it was Ryan, a representative from southern Wisconsin's rolling hills and industrial enclaves, who was tasked with challenging the math of the Administration's $2.3 trillion health-care overhaul. At 40, and already on his sixth term, Ryan has the right mix of freshness and experience for the moment. ...
AP - Among the earnings stories for Friday, March 5, from AP Financial News:
AP - Blount International Inc., which makers chains for saws, said Friday that its fourth-quarter earnings fell 6 percent as one-time costs outweighed a gain in sales.
AP - Standard Motor Products Inc. said Friday that its fourth-quarter loss narrowed on higher sales to auto parts suppliers and lower costs.
AP - PCTEL Inc., a supplier of wireless service-related products, reported that it narrowed its loss in the fourth quarter because
AP - Medallion Financial Corp., a finance company serving the taxicab industry, said Friday it swung to a $5.8 million loss in the fourth quarter as it made allowances for investments that are no longer being pursued.
AP - Medical equipment maker HealthTronics Inc. reported a narrower fourth-quarter loss compared to a year earlier, when it absorbed $144 million in impairment charges.
BusinessWeek - When the Class of 2010 enrolled in college four years ago, majoring in business seemed the best route to securing a plum job at graduation. Seniors were graduating with two and three job offers, starting salaries averaged close to $50,000, and big signing bonuses and benefits packages were typical. Then came the Great Recession. Students returned from summer internships without job offers. And those lucky enough to land a position had to settle for lower salaries than they had expected.
BusinessWeek - The S&P 500 information technology index rose 61% in 2009, so it's reasonable to ask if, in 2010, tech stocks have anywhere to go but down. Dig into the data, though, and you'll find reason for optimism. Prices are at about the same level they were in early 2008, and after recent boosts in earnings forecasts, the companies trade at about 14.8 times projected earnings, down from 16.9 two years ago.
BusinessWeek - To identify the top undergraduate business programs, Bloomberg BusinessWeek uses a methodology that includes nine measures of student satisfaction, postgraduation outcomes, and academic quality. This year we started with 139 programs that were eligible for ranking, including virtually all of the schools from our 2009 ranking plus six new schools that met our eligibility requirements. ...
BusinessWeek - Kristin Davie misses her freedom. The 22-year-old has been living with her parents in Colonia, N.J., since graduating from Marist College in May. She and two friends set a deadline of September to find jobs and a New York City apartment they could afford to share. September's long gone, and she's still at home. Davie left her first job, where she was unhappy; now she has a new one. "I'm hoping we'll be in the city by the end of April," she says.
AP - ArcSight, a provider of network security software and services, said Thursday that its fiscal third-quarter profit fell 57 percent as higher operating expenses overshadowed growth in product and maintenance sales.
BusinessWeek - Chat: Mar. 4, at 5 p.m. EST Guests: Louis Lavelle, associate editor, and Geoff Gloeckler, staff editor at Bloomberg BusinessWeek Is your undergraduate business program ranked No. 1? Find out at the live rankings countdown chat on Thursday, Mar. 4, at 5 p.m. EST. Bloomberg BusinessWeek editors Louis Lavelle and Geoff Gloeckler will reveal the top undergraduate business programs for 2010 and answer your questions about everything from the rankings methodology to the surprises they discovered. Lavelle and Gloeckler are editors who focus on business schools coverage for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. ...
BusinessWeek - I returned from my trip to Portugal -- a much needed three-day vacation from school -- on Nov. 11 in such good spirits that the Paris train strike that doubled my travel time home seemed comical. With a refreshed motivation and eye-sparkling memories of my travel adventures with some of my new friends, I returned to HEC Paris (HEC Paris Full-Time MBA Profile) and commenced my five-week countdown. Before the semester's end at noon on Dec. 18, I faced seven exams, two presentations, and one project. On Dec. ...
BusinessWeek - Posted on Harvard Business Review: February 25, 2010 2:35 PM
BusinessWeek - When Deborah Merrill-Sands became dean of Simmons College's School of Management in 2004, she quickly got to work on the school's effort to become accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Obtaining accreditation was a crucial step for the women's college, which competes with several other accredited business schools in the crowded Boston education market. She wanted to counteract any perception that the school didn't offer as rigorous a curriculum as its coed neighbors. ...
BusinessWeek - You can read lots of career books and plot myriad strategies with a coach, but the key to reinvention is this: stop agonizing and do something. That's the view of Herminia Ibarra, professor of organizational behavior at international business school INSEAD and author of Working Identity. In Ibarra's view, people reinvent through trial and error. But does that messy path to change, seen in sunnier times, still work in these days of financial uncertainty? Amy Feldman spoke with Ibarra, who is working on a second book about leadership and identity. Excerpts from their conversation are below.
BusinessWeek - A writers' strike. A pink slip. The death of loved ones. For Marla Ginsburg, Todd Morris, and Kate Curran, these things sparked near-complete reinventions of their working selves. It's a process many Americans are wrestling with as the economic downturn seals off traditional career paths and forces workers, especially older ones, to get more creative about making a living. The financial trade-offs can be huge, but so can the satisfaction of taking a risk and landing on a new path. Here's how three people re-created their careers after professional or personal setbacks.
BusinessWeek - One of the hallmarks of the Wake Forest University Schools of Business Full-time MBA program is the emphasis on teamwork. Your success in the program is directly affected by your ability to work with your team to accomplish assignments throughout the year. In particular, one project proved to be both our greatest challenge and our greatest opportunity for growth: the Talent Management Project, part of our organizational behavior (OB) class. OB is typically dismissed by business students as the "touchy feely" class. ...
BusinessWeek - American International Group will long be remembered as the towering insurance and financial services company that almost deep-sixed the U.S. economy. Following a near-death experience in 2008, the insurer has required a series of government bailouts totaling $182.3 billion. So here, for a change, is some news about AIG that won't make you cringe: The company is showing signs of a turnaround.
BusinessWeek - In Washington's current state of dysfunction, everyone has a favorite hyper-partisan moment. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor's moment came at a White House meeting with congressional leaders on day three of the new Administration. He handed President Barack Obama a list of ideas to fix the economy. Pointing to a small business tax-cut item, Obama said: "We disagree on tax policy." When Cantor tried to justify his own position, Obama responded: "Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won."
BusinessWeek - Beijing - Jack Rodman has cashed in on property busts from Los Angeles to Tokyo, buying and selling soured loans and counseling other investors. Now he's convinced the Beijing real estate market is about to tumble. Rodman figures about half of the city's commercial space is vacant, and to prove it he keeps a slide show of 55 empty office buildings in the Chinese capital on his computer. There are an additional dozen, he says, that he hasn't had time to photograph. ...
BusinessWeek - (This story has been corrected to clarify the disadvantages faced by co-op program participants in the ninth paragraph.)
BusinessWeek - MBA programs have taken a lot of criticism over the last year or two. According to naysayers, they are guilty of many crimes: teaching the wrong financial models, riding roughshod over risk management, sidestepping business ethics, overheating the managerial job market, hiding from the real world, and cloistering students in academe.As a result, so the script goes, we have a generation of business leaders tainted by greed and short-term thinking.Hence, the recent global economic crisis. ...