High oil prices cause problems by Nina Gotzmannova
Millions and millions years ago the prehistoric zooplankton and algae settled to the bottom of a lake in large quantities. The compression and heating with anoxic conditions had made a black or dark brown liquid. Despite of its color it's called liquid gold and its price is uncountable. Actually, it is countable. New record for barrel of crude oil is almost $ 94. The main cause is the slump of dollar. Early Monday morning euro hit a record high against the dollar and the situation is similar with all major currencies. Analysts are worried if the dollar is weak against other currencies and oil is mostly sold in dollar prices, it will be easier for them to buy too much oil or speculate with the oil. They want to avoid all speculations so the prices must go higher. The prices are as high as $ 93.53 for a barrel. But earlier the price was even higher, $ 93.80 a barrel, setting a new price record. Remarkable is, that in September 2003 the price was under $ 25 for a barrel. In August 2005 it begins to rise, to $ 60 a barrel and in September 2007 the price was over $ 80 a barrel. Comparing with 2003, the increasing is almost triple. But the analysts say that this raising of prices is already caused by speculations. Another boost can come this week if the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, but the prices are not likely to increase more. Or the speculators still didn't say the last wordâ¦
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Merrill Lynch chief to be replaced soon by Corina Ciubotaru
After the mortgage crisis threw the entire American financial system into chaos, the financial companies are starting to plunge into their own personal nightmares. Merrill Lynch said it will fire its chairman and chief executive Stan O'Neal after the company wrote off $8 billion and a net loss of $2.3 billion for the third quarter. During his time in lead of the company, Merrill had its best times and its worst times. In the peak of the market, O'Neal steered it towards riskier bets rather than just safe loans, which made for very high gains, but it also brought it down now, as the market is fragile. Bear Stearns, Citi Financial and Bank of America all suffered great losses during these months, but Merrill's boss is the most likely to leave his job. Merrill Lynch was accused for the losses and for not managing the risks correctly while Mr. O'Neal personally is blamed for apparently intending to sell the company to Wachovia Corp., a transaction that would have brought him $250 million even if he wasn't chosen to run the new company. His replacement will be chosen most likely between Laurence Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock Inc., an asset manager; Gregory Fleming, Merrill's co-president and Bob McCann, the head of the brokerage division. Another rumor is that the three will jointly run the company until a new chairman is chosen to replace O'Neal, who was not very popular after he cut staff and costs as the market was turning.
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Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is basically the bodyguard of the oil industry. It ensures the stability of the oil prices in international oil markets. Since the oil sales worldwide are denominated in US dollars, any change in the value of the dollar against other currencies plays a part in OPECâs decision of how much oil to produce. If the dollarâs value decreases, all the OPEC members get smaller revenues for their oil sales in other currencies. After the euro has been introduced to the world in 1999, Iraq was trying to do its business in euros instead of US dollars. Even OPEC as a whole was considering shifting to this more reliable currency. States like Iran and Venezuela changed their oil exchange currency to euro (according to Global Research). December of 2006 was a disaster for the US dollar; it was surpassed by the euro in terms of combined value of cash in circulation (by $42 billion, according to Wikipedia)! The value of the dollars used to be pretty stable for a long period of time, due to the evaluating system: the value of the gold or silver was converted into relative value in the economy). Why is the price of oil so high? There is a really simple answer â" because demand keeps going up but supply doesnât. Thanks to the horribly low value of dollar, oil producers arenât supplying the world market with enough oil. While the oil production from OPEC members fell, the former Soviet Union areaâs production increased. So the total world oil production might have stagnated, but demand has not â" it is growing, indeed. Simple as the demand and supply model. What is going to change this situation? Thatâs THE question.
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BP will pay for all environment destroying by Nina Gotzmannova
The Earth and nature is the most precious thing the mankind has. Destroying them is the worst thing that we can do, because until the scientists wonât find a way how to live in space bases, we are dependant on life on this planet. Dangerous pollution is mostly caused by big industrial companies, which may care about the environment, but in case of accidents they are completely clueless. Now itâs time for them to pay. BP, one of the worldsâ largest private sector energy companies, will finally pay for its faults. In 2005 exploded one of the BPâs largest oil refineries in Texas, causing 15 deaths and major menace of nature around. In 2006 they had spilled more than one million liters of oil in Alaska because of the corrosion of the pipeline in Prudhoe Bay. On October 16 they had spilled 2,000 gallons of methanol again in Prudhoe Bay. The company will pay $ 373 million, $ 303 million in civil and criminal penalties, $ 50 million criminal fine for the Texas refinery explosion and $ 20 million criminal fine for the Alaskan oil spilling. They have already paid $ 1.6 billion to the victims of Texas explosion, but no money will ever return the dead back to world, allow 170 injured people to lead the same life as before and most of all, turn back time in the case of nature disaster. BP was among ten worst companies in 2001 and 2006 because of their non-environmental behavior. In 1991 they were named as the most polluting company in the United States. In 1997 and 1998 they had caused more than one hundred oil spills. Is it still that good to be rich?
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The Bank of America, the nation's second largest bank, after on 18 October at the third-quarter report revealed a 32 percent profit drop, decides to cut back losses. Obviously, the first ones that suffer are the employees because they will hit the sack, they represent the sinking fund. Therefore on Wednesday it announced 3000 will be eliminated, representing less than 2 percent of the bank's staff. The CEO Kenneth Lewis laid the entire fault on the bank's problems and traders' faults. Because Charlotte-based bank reported that profits declined from $5.42 billion to 3.7 billion, it will go through a strategic overview of the investment banking affairs. Gene Taylor, head of Global Corporate and Investment Banking, was one of the fortunate 3000 who will hit the sack; he will retire after working 30 years for the bank and let Brian Moynihan, who ran the company's Global Wealth and Investment Management business to give it a try. Although the firings don't represent a big percent of the total number of employees, it will take place at all levels, but mostly in the banking area, business lending, treasury services, and capital markets and advisory services. An example that no one is immune to the cutting of jobs, Chris Hentemann, head of Bank of America's global structured products unit was fired last week. Due to the fact that products like mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities and related trading, especially subprime mortgage, had a very big losses this summer, Hentemann was the escaping goat, even though it was a problem at global level, caused by rising defaults and foreclosures discouraged investors. The layoffs are something habitual for the bank especially under Lewis leadership since 2001. Therefore in 2004 it registered a record of 12500 cut positions due to the FleetBoston Financial acquisition. Also the restructuring that followed added another 4500 firings. When it acquired in 2006 credit card issuer MBNA Corp. the bank cut 6000 jobs, while at the purchase of LaSalle Bank Corp. it plans a 4000 jobs elimination. The 30 cents drop in the share price of Bank of America it's not surprising due to the fact that most of the banks registered losses: Charlotte-based Wachovia Corp., which saw its third-quarter profit fall 10 percent; Citigroup Inc., the nation's largest bank, third-quarter profit fell 57 percent to $2.38 billion, etc. This piece of news is bad not only for those that are now unemployed, but also for the entire economy that is still shaking as a consequence of the high oil prices, unstable stock market and inflation. Stay connectedâ¦more to come.
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Royal Mail workers end the strike by Nina Gotzmannova
Old British movies and TV series have something in common. The main character usually gets the morning post and the evening post and reads them carefully by sipping the first morning tea with milk or later in the evening with cucumber sandwiches. Actually several movie plots were based on the right timing of postal delivery. But the postal service is not that easy as it seems and the Royal Mail, how the name of the national postal service in United Kingdom is, has to employ thousands employees to fulfill the strict quality criteria. But the employees were not that enthusiastic about their work conditions as the general public about their services and they decided to strike. On Monday the Communication Workers Union signed a deal with Royal Mail that will bring postal employees better work conditions. They reached several benefits they were striking for. Several of them are for example increasing of the basic pay, increasing of the overtime pay, final salary pension scheme and more. The postal service stopped only for 48 hours and let the country in chaos of not delivered bills, letters and mostly business letters. In the post offices all over the country is lying over 60 millions undelivered mail items. According to Royal Mail annual report, since March 2005 to March 2006 they delivered 84 million items every working day. That means every of the 60 million UK residents, counting also toddlers and kids up to six years, received at least one letter daily and full third of them received another one. Unfortunately in the report is not a mention whether the most part are bills or private card and letters.
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Apple's figures top most analysts' predictions once again by Corina Ciubotaru
The iPhone, as you probably know, is a product with many functions. It works as a telephone, a media player or a storage unit with a touchscreen, and recently word is out that is became the driving force behind Apple's fantastic fourth quarter. 1.12 million units were sold since June out of a total of 1.39 million since its release, and Apple officials claim it took more than two years for the iPod to reach such numbers. The iPhone's price cut was apparently a major incentive for buyers, and the new iPod Touch is expected to be a hit during the holiday season, when the company from Palo Alto might top analysts' expectations once again. Apple's stock rose by $3.94 and closed at $174.36, after doubling its value since January and there's no sign of the company slowing down in the next years, as they plan to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. The Macs are also doing better in sales and all this profit is doing wonders for their exclusive carrier for the iPhone, AT&T, whose profit also rose by 41 percent to $3.1 billion. Apple's own earnings reached $904 million during the last quarter, with 2.16 million Macs sold and a current slice of 8 percent of the PC market. For the entire year, the company's sales reached a staggering $3.5 billion, up from $1.99 billion last year and at an earning rate of $1.01 per share this quarter, they effortlessly beat most optimistic analysts' expectations of 86 cents a share.
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Google's numbers looking good in the third quarter by Corina Ciubotaru
Google's third quarter results are out now and they are full of good news for the search company. They've surpassed Cisco Systems as the most valuable company in Silicon Valley and their results exceed all analysts' expectations. Even in a time when their number of employees rose like never before in such a short while, Google managed to make $1.07 billion in profit after taxes, compared to $733.4 million in the same period last year. The company's stock price rose by $100 during the past month and ended Tuesday at $639.62, followed by a rise of $7.38 in after-hours trading. Revenues amounted to $4.23 billion, a 57 percent jump as more companies turn to the Internet rather than other types of advertising. Google has also managed to increase the difference between it and its next competitor in the online search market Yahoo, which is currently handling four times less searches and whose employees generated half as much revenue during the first nine months of this year and roughly six times less profit. For the future, Google's most well-known plan is to buy online ad broker Double Click for $3.1 billion. The purchase is currently under revision by antitrust commissions in the E.U. and the U.S. and under heavy criticism by privacy advocates, since it would give Google access to an enormous tank of information about Internet users. The deal was expected to close by early 2008 but it now all depends on the antitrust investigation; Google has always stated its involvement in keeping user information private, this privacy being one of the company's key parts of the business model.
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The BBC will cut 2,500 jobs in the next 5 years by Corina Ciubotaru
The BBC, Britain's national broadcasting company, has announced major staff cuts due to its need to adapt to the new digital side of entertainment. The cuts amount to 8 percent of staff or 2,500 jobs that would be lost in the course of five years, especially in the news and current affairs departments. Over these five years, a number of 700 jobs will be created to suit areas like online television, which appeals much more to young viewers. Also regarding the Internet part of the business, an additional site, bbc.com will be created apart from bbc.co.uk, to carry advertising to users outside of Britain, while the company's currently separated television, radio and online departments will merge. BBC union members threatened to call a strike unless management stop sending letters requesting voluntary redundancy, and already presenters like Bill Oddie and Dermot Murnaghan have found themselves useless in the new scheme; Murnaghan has announced he is leaving for Sky. Director general Mark Thompson's plans for a radical reform in the BBC also benefit from the support of taxpayers' association, the BBC Trust. The company is funded by taxes on every television owner, which amount to 135.5 pounds yearly and the director thinks payers deserve what's best for their money. The creation of original-content shows will also be reduced by 10 percent as the BBC will now be more focused on the quality of their programs. The company also plans to sell its West London headquarters by the end of financial year 2012/13.
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It is not surprising that Apple is the third-largest overall music retailer in the United States and dominates the download music market. After the huge success the company has with its newest product, the iPhone, and the increasing number of Apple clients, the piece of news of lowering its prices for songs sold online without copy-protection from 1 dollar and 29 cents to 99 cents will surely not let people gasping in amazement. Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris stated that the reduction is not a strategy to beat competition that already was charging less, like Amazon.com which sells tracks through its online music store opened in September at prices varying from 89 to 99 cents and it has no anti-copying software locks. The reasons given by Kerris sound wonderful and are propaganda that says everything is made in the customer benefit. But if it will increase sales, I think no one will mind. For us, the clients, it's good to have reductions, no matter of what kind and the reason, as long as our pocket will not be all shacked up and will make savings. Apple started with good news since May when it began selling track without copy-protection software, otherwise called DRM- digital rights management. DRM refers to access control technologies used by publishers and other copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. The difference between digital rights management and copy protection is that DRM refers to creative media, while the latter one to software. Furthermore, the benefit of the first is that the music can be played on any music player and not only on Apple iPods. Everything sounds terrific until now and I guess that the fact that Apple charges 99 cents for copy-protected tracks makes it even better. It's about time to have some sales from Apple, keeping in mind that we are so faithful customers. Don't go awayâ¦more to come!
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Snocap Inc. is the first in line provider of digital licenssing and copyright management services for the digital music marketplace. Through its Digital Registry artists and labels can promote and sell their music using digital retailers or their own unique artist store. Therefore retailers are having a growing inventory and will be able to offer more music to fans all over the world. It is backed by Ron Conway, Morgenthaler Ventures, WaldenVC, and Court Square Ventures. Snocap CEO Rusty Rueff said in a statement this Friday that the work force was cut to nearly half in order to focus on a strategy to sell the company. So, the San Francisco-based company's staff was reduced from 57 to 26, because the new sbest thing for the company is to be integrated in a larger entity. Furthermore the firm already had drawn interests from several other companies. The remaining staff will handle the core products, including its MyStores business that makes possible for the MySpace users to download music using their MySpace web pages. The company was founded in 2002 by Shawn Fanning, who was also the founder of Napster online file-sharing as a college student. However he is no longer active in the firm's activity, although he is still a member of the board of directors. Things haven't changed much, economy still leads people and many fall victims of the enterprise changes- cuts. More than half of the Snocap's staff- people with a family, with children to support- are now unemployed and looking for a new work place. We are keeping our fingers crossed for them and also we are waiting for further news from the company. Good luck!
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Yahoo's 100 day review is not looking good by Corina Ciubotaru
It's been 100 days since Yahoo has a new chief executive in the person of Jerry Yang and the company has just ended a little review to check what has been done right and what could be improved. The conclusions are somewhat bad, in the sense that the search engine initiative would probably be better off left alone to vanish and be replaced by Google's searches. It's still a point that Yahoo managers are clinging to when they should be focusing on more important aspects of their business, like maybe social networking; their attempts in this field have so far been shy but they have great potential, since the website combines information from a variety of fields, from real estate to weather. Financial analysts believe that reorganizing the management structure isn't enough to put the company back on top of its game, and since the main rival Google has grown five times as fast during the last year, they may very well be right. Yahoo's revenue has grown by only 10 percent over the last year and analysts are advising investors to hold back until the company figures out what it needs to do next; a sale to one of its bigger partners, like AT&T or News Corp should not come as a shock, but analysts predict the company would be worth more if sold in pieces than as a whole. Whatever the management decides for the future, Yahoo could be rescued if new opportunities are recognized and taken advantage of.
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Tesco will offer products with carbon label by Nina Gotzmannova
Climate change is a hot topic all around the world. People are worried about pollution, ozone hole and everything possible ruining the precious nature. Now Tesco will join the Carbon Trust, company created by UK government to help business organizations to reduce their emission of carbon dioxide into atmosphere. Tesco will measure the carbon footprints of several well picked products. They should measure about 30 products, divided into five categories, such as tomatoes, orange juice or light bulbs. In their wrapping will be included a carbon label, a sign which will show the amount of carbon footprint embodied in a product in bringing it into shelf. The less carbon footprint it is, the better. This carbon label is the world's firs carbon label and was brought to the market in March 2007. Since then companies like Walker Crisps, Innocent Smoothies or Boots plc shampoos have included the label into their products. The intention is to help companies about their decisions how to produce and what to bring to the customers, and also help customers to decide which product they want to pick up from the shelf and buy. It seems like the green issues and the number of people concerned about this topic is growing every day. The choices of a shopper are influenced by things like food miles, if the food was raised in an organic farm or whether is it local produced. Companies interested in having carbon labels on their products can do several things how to achieve that. Some of them are improving the energy efficiency and developing low carbon technology.
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What a beautiful color, amazing design and it's stylish, too! Yes, I'm definitely buying an iPod Nano. However, every single final decision is preceded by a thorough process of evaluating, thinking and rethinking the product. So I start asking my co-workers whom I saw a couple of times with white headphones. Where did you get it, mate? Are you glad you got it? Does it break? How much stuff can you fit on there? Oh wow, you mean complete movies - stored in this?! Oh, OK, I'm just going for a 4GB. Susan interrupts our manly session: I hate how the headphones break all the time, but it's worth it and you can get it cheapest at Wal-Mart. Marilyn from the compartment to the left shrieks: Noo, my niece got it on eBay because Wal-Mart had poorer selection!! An price war starts. The boss enters the room after overhearing some curses. Why don't you go ahead and compare the prices online? Suddenly the pffice becomes silent and empty & with everyone crowded in my compartment around my desk. Pieces of advice come from everyone, everyone knows a better comparison site, everyone has tried the best comparison site and many have tried majority of comparison sites and have been misled by them. Some seem trustworthy; they were launched during the dot-com bubble boom in 1998. They tell us the price of a Nano in my town varies from $79 up to $229. And it's the same product all in all! $79 at ASK Electronics. Few other sites confirm this. I look up the location of the nearest ASK store and run in for my treasure. I get what I want, I pay a great price. Three days after my sister announces she got an iPod for $59 via some webpage. That drives me mad and I verify every piece of information I get x-times ever since.
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Boeing will begin delivering the 787 six months later than scheduled by Corina Ciubotaru
American airplane manufacturer Boeing announced a delay in the delivery date of its new 787 Dreamliner. Minor technical problems from suppliers added up to a point where the company had to produce many parts of the airplane in-house, so for the time being there is a six-month delay, but the business is not expected to suffer great loss in terms of profit. 15 of the 50 customers that have ordered planes will be affected by the delay but the orders have delivery dates well into 2013. The first 787 has been completed and is now being tested and it is the first plane from Boeing since 1995 saw the release of the 777. It is made of new materials such as carbon fiber, some of which is being supplied by Japanese firm Toray under a 16 year contract worth at least $6 billion. Toray and Boeing have had no complaints about each other but the delay announcement is estimated to affect other suppliers like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy whose stock prices have fallen after the decision was made public. Rolls Royce, which manufactures the airplane's engine, estimates it will not be affected this year or the next. Companies that have ordered planes from Boeing include Northwest Airlines (18 jets), British Airways, Qantas (65 jets), All Nippon Airways (50 jets) and Japan Airline Corp (35 jets). A total of 700 787s are expected to be delivered worldwide by 2009, but some analysts are skeptical about this possibility given the delays.
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eBay has it's own social networks by Corina Ciubotaru
Following recent figures showing a slowing growth, eBay has decided to change tactics and become friendlier to the customer. With the new Neighborhoods, the auction site will provide customers with the means to discuss products and review them through other means than the existing text forum, and will try to group together people with the same interests. A central theme seems to be the trick behind the most successful social networks like MySpace, and eBay is planning to take advantage that people go there to shop and establish something like an online cafe where they can meet and make friends. In its 12 years of existence, eBay gathered more than 14,000 employees and has become Google's largest online advertiser, bought Skype and grown to the point where it expects revenues of $7.6 billion this year. It's one of the biggest online companies in the online world and it's run by a woman CEO called Meg Whitman, who wants the company to mature at its own pace. Mrs. Whitman is a Harvard graduate, a self-made billionaire and one of the seven women mentioned always in Time magazine's list of World's Most Influential People. The acquisition of Skype was the first step towards adulthood, now it was time to go the extra mile and join the networking business, which is a move that company bosses firmly believe in. It brings together previously existing parts of the site, including eBay blogs, product listings, guides and reviews, in over 600 neighborhoods created so far.
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Concessions wanted. Reward: 73,000 job positions. by Barbie Kunkelova
Competition is a tough thing, you have to struggle with it every day of your business career. During the recent 37 years General Motors had no problems with overcoming this issue. They had to do some adjustments in order to survive and be prosperous, but lower salaries or health insurances of the thousands of its employees are along with bad ads among the last things on a giant automaker's mind. However, as the input of the numerous foreign competitors increased and their influence over the world market became stronger, GM leaders came to the point of realizing that they are going to need few concessions from the UAW afterall. Since their previous 4-year contract expired a few days ago, they need to negotiate about the next one. GM needs few concessions. Now that the contract is becoming a reality, everyone is worried about the details & in fact, we're only humans. The GM workers are devoted to their jobs and willing to help the company cut the costs, as USA Today states. What a horrible sight, to watch 73,000 people not being able to go to work in the morning, what a horrible thought of 82 assembly plants being shut down and wasted for several days. For it's definitely not an easy task to go back after such a huge strike (think of cleaning up after a hurricane). But there was no other way to get the desired actions from the UAW. Job security is the main issue because none of the other stuff matters if you don't have a job. This contract is supposed to help GM to restructure, eliminate gaps it has compared to the automaking market, increase the wages and health insurance and, last but definitely not least, gain its powers for the fight against Japanese competitors. Yes, and be prosperous.
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I think this is the first question on everyone's mind after the announce made on Monday by eBay spokesman Hani Durzy. Zennstrom, a Swedish entrepreneur, co-founder and chief executive of eBay's Skype division is stepping down. The main concern is if the $1.43 billion in charges for the Internet phone service division was the reason or not. According to Durzy it wasn't. The official statement revealed that Niklas has some new projects and wants to spend more time on them. The write-down in the value of Skype of $900 million and the charges of impayment proved that eBay Inc one of the world's largest e-commerce companies, overvalued it at 2.6 billion dollars. Moreover on Monday Durzy also announced a on-time payout to the shareholders of $530 million due to the 2005 agreement when they promised $1.7 billion if Skype hit specific targets in 2008 and 2009. Niklas Zennstrom will remain non-executive chairman of Skype's board and taking care of some new projects like Joost, an Internet TV service he started in 2006 and will be launched at the end of the year. The temporary Skype CEO will be EBay chief strategy officer Michael van Swaaij, formerly vice president for European operations, until it is officially named another one that Russell Reynolds Associates is hired to search. Skype President Henry Gomez will return to eBay as senior vice president for corporate affairs. eBay's share rose and I firmly advise everyone to buy, buy now....there is no safer thing than it. Therefore Skype still has a long way until sinking.
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Bain Capital Partners to buy out 3Com by Delia Cruceru
The U.S. network equipment maker and IBM's biggest partner in VoIP telephony software, 3Com will be acquired for $2.2 billion by Bain Capital Partners, a large private equity firm, and Huawei Technologies, a Chinese manufacturer of telecommunications equipment. According to The Wall Street Journal the offer values 3Com at more than $5 per share, citing a person familiar with the matter. 3Com was founded in 1979 by Bob Metcalfe who invented Ethernet networking that linked computers turning it into a successful company. In 1997 they purchased the modem maker U.S. Robotics for $6.6 billion in a try to take on networking giant Cisco Systems. "By going private, 3Com also hopes to free itself from markets' short-term financial expectations" said Edgar Masri, president and chief executive of the Marlborough, Mass.-based company. "As a private company, we will be able to focus on our long-term strategic objectives." Marsi didn't disclosed what stake Huawei will have in 3Com, an issue discussed by U.S. politicians, complaining about Chinese firms buying stakes of U.S. companies, particularly technology firms. "For Huawei, maybe they just rethought whether it was smart to lose out in the joint venture bidding," said Rich Smith, an analyst with The Motley Fool, referring to the joint venture H3C, bought by 3Com from Huawei with $882 million for 49 pct. in November 2006. On the Wall Street shares for 3Com rose 32.6 percent to $4.88 in premarket trade.
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