(MarketWatch) -- Verizon Wireless is reportedly working with software giant Microsoft Corp. to develop a new smart phone device that could rival the popular iPhone.
The market for smart phones may soon heat up. Microsoft is set to team up with Verizon to launch a competitor to Apple's iPhone, according to reports. The new phone would join a crowded arena that contains BlackBerry's Storm and Palm's Pre. (April 28)According to a report by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Microsoft and Verizon are in talks to develop a touch-screen mobile phone that would run on Window's Mobile, Microsoft's mobile device operating system that has seen its position come under attack from devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry, which use competing software platforms.
The report, citing unnamed sources, appeared on WSJ.com on Tuesday afternoon. Both the Journal and MarketWatch are owned by News Corp.
According to the report, Microsoft's new smart phone project is code-named "Pink" and could include the Windows Marketplace for Mobile -- a mobile application store similar to Apple's popular App Store, which just saw its 1 billionth download last week.
Representatives for Verizon refused to comment on the latest rumors.
A spokesman for Microsoft said the company's strategy to provide a software platform for the mobile industry has not changed, but decline to offer further specifics.
The rumors about a Microsoft phone are the latest involving Verizon, which competes closely with AT&T Corp. in the wireless market. AT&T is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone in the U.S.
Read more here
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Boomer Bows Out in Shakeout That Led to Vermont Beard
(Bloomberg) -- In early 2008, David Roberts’s morning routine at the Ridgewood, New Jersey, train station was as unchanged as the view from its platform, which overlooks a downtown anchored by the Daily Treat diner and a 77-year-old movie theater. Roberts would sip coffee, eat a corn muffin, scan the Financial Times and step aboard the 7:50 train.
This was not the same trip he had made for the 14 years he worked for three Wall Street firms. This was a commute to nowhere.
Roberts, 61, was bound for an outplacement center on New York’s East 37th Street, where he pursued job leads and the dream of starting a consulting firm with former colleagues. Like many of his neighbors in Ridgewood, Roberts had been thrown out of work after the credit markets seized up last year, joining thousands of commuters in the competition for jobs that don’t exist anymore.
Roberts, an economist at Dominion Bond Rating Service until January 2008, was fired 13 months after he predicted in a published report the recession that would end his livelihood.
“You can see a train wreck coming,” Roberts says. “But that doesn’t mean you can get out of the way.”
Roberts has suffered through a chain of unanswered job applications, an ill-fated relocation to Washington, and depression. As of April, he had lost or spent more than half of his $1.4 million in savings. One of the few risks he takes with money these days is at the poker table.
26,000 Jobs Lost
Roberts and his wife -- who is battling multiple sclerosis -- are moving to Vermont, where they honeymooned and often vacation. He has grown a gray-and-white beard more befitting the Green Mountains than Wall Street.
Knowing that the money he has left won’t last forever, Roberts must figure out a new way to earn a living. “I don’t know where the income is going to come from,” he says.
Roberts is one of 26,000 people who lost financial services jobs in New York City from January 2008 to March 2009, according to Moody’s Economy.com. Many live in bedroom communities such as Ridgewood -- a Bergen County enclave of 24,300 people 25 miles from Wall Street.
Ridgewood retailers say some stores’ Christmas receipts were off 40 percent last year. As many as 30 stores and restaurants in the business district are for sale. The village government trimmed three building inspectors after a two-year, 46 percent drop in construction activity.
Ramapo Retreat
Nestled in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains, Ridgewood has had a symbiotic relationship with New York’s financial district since the mid-1800s, when tycoons built summer homes there. Commuter trains soon carried dad to the financial jungle while mom stayed home and raised the kids. “It’s for domesticated masters of the universe, a throwback to the 1950s,” says Erik Sorenson, chief executive officer of online career firm Vault.com and a Ridgewood resident.
Ridgewood’s projected median household income for 2009 is $129,394, according to market research firm Nielsen Claritas, which makes it the 17th-most-affluent U.S. community in the 20,000 to 50,000 population range. From 1991 to 2006, the average home sale price more than tripled to $864,000, according to the New Jersey Multiple Listing Service.
Now that market has reversed. Ridgewood averaged 11.3 home sales a month in the first quarter of 2009, versus 32 in the first quarter of 2007, a 65 percent drop, according to Otteau Valuation Group Inc., a real estate analysis and consulting firm in East Brunswick, NJ.
Read more here
This was not the same trip he had made for the 14 years he worked for three Wall Street firms. This was a commute to nowhere.
Roberts, 61, was bound for an outplacement center on New York’s East 37th Street, where he pursued job leads and the dream of starting a consulting firm with former colleagues. Like many of his neighbors in Ridgewood, Roberts had been thrown out of work after the credit markets seized up last year, joining thousands of commuters in the competition for jobs that don’t exist anymore.
Roberts, an economist at Dominion Bond Rating Service until January 2008, was fired 13 months after he predicted in a published report the recession that would end his livelihood.
“You can see a train wreck coming,” Roberts says. “But that doesn’t mean you can get out of the way.”
Roberts has suffered through a chain of unanswered job applications, an ill-fated relocation to Washington, and depression. As of April, he had lost or spent more than half of his $1.4 million in savings. One of the few risks he takes with money these days is at the poker table.
26,000 Jobs Lost
Roberts and his wife -- who is battling multiple sclerosis -- are moving to Vermont, where they honeymooned and often vacation. He has grown a gray-and-white beard more befitting the Green Mountains than Wall Street.
Knowing that the money he has left won’t last forever, Roberts must figure out a new way to earn a living. “I don’t know where the income is going to come from,” he says.
Roberts is one of 26,000 people who lost financial services jobs in New York City from January 2008 to March 2009, according to Moody’s Economy.com. Many live in bedroom communities such as Ridgewood -- a Bergen County enclave of 24,300 people 25 miles from Wall Street.
Ridgewood retailers say some stores’ Christmas receipts were off 40 percent last year. As many as 30 stores and restaurants in the business district are for sale. The village government trimmed three building inspectors after a two-year, 46 percent drop in construction activity.
Ramapo Retreat
Nestled in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains, Ridgewood has had a symbiotic relationship with New York’s financial district since the mid-1800s, when tycoons built summer homes there. Commuter trains soon carried dad to the financial jungle while mom stayed home and raised the kids. “It’s for domesticated masters of the universe, a throwback to the 1950s,” says Erik Sorenson, chief executive officer of online career firm Vault.com and a Ridgewood resident.
Ridgewood’s projected median household income for 2009 is $129,394, according to market research firm Nielsen Claritas, which makes it the 17th-most-affluent U.S. community in the 20,000 to 50,000 population range. From 1991 to 2006, the average home sale price more than tripled to $864,000, according to the New Jersey Multiple Listing Service.
Now that market has reversed. Ridgewood averaged 11.3 home sales a month in the first quarter of 2009, versus 32 in the first quarter of 2007, a 65 percent drop, according to Otteau Valuation Group Inc., a real estate analysis and consulting firm in East Brunswick, NJ.
Read more here
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Economy in intensive care while G7 squabbles
(MarketWatch) -- Global economic recovery will take coordinated action among all the big economies, the International Monetary Fund warned this week, but as the IMF's spring meeting opens in Washington this weekend, the big economies are still squabbling over who's to blame for the crisis, and who should bear the cost of fixing it.
That's about the shape of things as financial leaders from the Group of Seven and larger Group of 20 gather Friday for the next round of meetings to try to put the global economy back together.
The meetings come only three weeks after President Barack Obama joined his G20 colleagues in London to set the agenda for global recovery.
Although hailed by many at the time, the G20 leaders' agreement now seems to be less than meets the eye.
The leaders could not make progress on further stimulus measures or on new global regulation for the out-of-control financial sector. The one initiative they could all agree on was to give the IMF a ton of new funding to lend to countries in trouble, and the G20 ultimately pledged a headline-grabbing $1.1 trillion in loans and guarantees to the international agency.
"Leaders love to give the IMF an assignment when they don't know what else to do," said Timothy Adams, a former Treasury undersecretary of international affairs in the Bush administration.
There is plenty of skepticism about this initiative.
More money for the IMF is nice, but it is "hardy going to solve the world's crisis," said Desmond Lachman, a former IMF official and now an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
Experts question the $1 trillion figure, saying it relies on double-counting.
And even a smaller amount is by no means assured.
"The big question this weekend is whether the amount of resources announced at G20 will be translated into firm commitments," said Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow on the global economy at the Brookings Institute, and a former IMF official.
A "complicated tussle" has broken out at the IMF between the industrial nations and emerging countries, Prasad said.
Read more here
That's about the shape of things as financial leaders from the Group of Seven and larger Group of 20 gather Friday for the next round of meetings to try to put the global economy back together.
The meetings come only three weeks after President Barack Obama joined his G20 colleagues in London to set the agenda for global recovery.
Although hailed by many at the time, the G20 leaders' agreement now seems to be less than meets the eye.
The leaders could not make progress on further stimulus measures or on new global regulation for the out-of-control financial sector. The one initiative they could all agree on was to give the IMF a ton of new funding to lend to countries in trouble, and the G20 ultimately pledged a headline-grabbing $1.1 trillion in loans and guarantees to the international agency.
"Leaders love to give the IMF an assignment when they don't know what else to do," said Timothy Adams, a former Treasury undersecretary of international affairs in the Bush administration.
There is plenty of skepticism about this initiative.
More money for the IMF is nice, but it is "hardy going to solve the world's crisis," said Desmond Lachman, a former IMF official and now an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.
Experts question the $1 trillion figure, saying it relies on double-counting.
And even a smaller amount is by no means assured.
"The big question this weekend is whether the amount of resources announced at G20 will be translated into firm commitments," said Eswar Prasad, a senior fellow on the global economy at the Brookings Institute, and a former IMF official.
A "complicated tussle" has broken out at the IMF between the industrial nations and emerging countries, Prasad said.
Read more here
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
James Hardie’s Asbestos Victims Fund May Not Meet Future Claims
(Bloomberg) -- James Hardie Industries NV’s fund to compensate asbestos victims may be unable to pay all claims within two years after the U.S. housing recession trimmed the company’s earnings for six straight quarters.
James Hardie, the biggest seller of home siding in the U.S., isn’t likely to contribute to the fund in the year ending March 31, 2010, as the worst economic slump since the Great Depression weighs on U.S. home sales, the Netherlands-based company said today. The Australian-based fund may be forced to pay victims in installments rather than lump sums.
It’s the second time a James Hardie fund has run short of money to compensate asbestos victims. A New South Wales state court today found former board members misled investors over the cost of compensating people sickened by asbestos, which the company used in its products for more than 60 years.
“Nobody expected the U.S. downturn to be as severe as it has been,” Dallas Booth, chief executive officer of the Asbestos Injuries Compensation Fund Ltd., said in a phone interview. “We think we’ve got around two years of funding available in the trust.”
James Hardie fell 4.5 percent to A$4.26 at 1:47 p.m. in Sydney on the Australian stock exchange. The stock has fallen 29 percent in the past year.
Court Case
The entire 2001 board of James Hardie approved a press release containing misleading statements about asbestos compensation, the New South Wales supreme court found today, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on its Web site. The court will hold a further hearing to determine whether seven former executives have any reason to be excused from being declared to have broken the corporate law, the report said.
“We are still working our way through the findings and are unable to comment further at this stage,” Sean O’Sullivan, a Sydney-based spokesman for James Hardie said today by phone.
The company started using asbestos in Australia in the 1920s. The fibrous mineral, used to make brake pads and fiber cement sheets for housing, has been linked to lung cancer and mesothelioma, a form of cancer affecting the chest or abdomen. James Hardie began to phase out blue asbestos in 1968 and all products were asbestos-free by 1986.
The U.S. housing market has plunged more than 75 percent from its peak in early 2006, James Hardie Chief Executive Officer Louis Gries said today in the statement. The company got about 75 percent of its net sales in the first nine months of fiscal 2009 from the U.S., he said.
“The trust fund can only spend the monies that it has available,” Booth said. “We are certainly hopeful that with the turn around James Hardie will be in a position to resume payments at a level which will be sufficient.”
Read more here
James Hardie, the biggest seller of home siding in the U.S., isn’t likely to contribute to the fund in the year ending March 31, 2010, as the worst economic slump since the Great Depression weighs on U.S. home sales, the Netherlands-based company said today. The Australian-based fund may be forced to pay victims in installments rather than lump sums.
It’s the second time a James Hardie fund has run short of money to compensate asbestos victims. A New South Wales state court today found former board members misled investors over the cost of compensating people sickened by asbestos, which the company used in its products for more than 60 years.
“Nobody expected the U.S. downturn to be as severe as it has been,” Dallas Booth, chief executive officer of the Asbestos Injuries Compensation Fund Ltd., said in a phone interview. “We think we’ve got around two years of funding available in the trust.”
James Hardie fell 4.5 percent to A$4.26 at 1:47 p.m. in Sydney on the Australian stock exchange. The stock has fallen 29 percent in the past year.
Court Case
The entire 2001 board of James Hardie approved a press release containing misleading statements about asbestos compensation, the New South Wales supreme court found today, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on its Web site. The court will hold a further hearing to determine whether seven former executives have any reason to be excused from being declared to have broken the corporate law, the report said.
“We are still working our way through the findings and are unable to comment further at this stage,” Sean O’Sullivan, a Sydney-based spokesman for James Hardie said today by phone.
The company started using asbestos in Australia in the 1920s. The fibrous mineral, used to make brake pads and fiber cement sheets for housing, has been linked to lung cancer and mesothelioma, a form of cancer affecting the chest or abdomen. James Hardie began to phase out blue asbestos in 1968 and all products were asbestos-free by 1986.
The U.S. housing market has plunged more than 75 percent from its peak in early 2006, James Hardie Chief Executive Officer Louis Gries said today in the statement. The company got about 75 percent of its net sales in the first nine months of fiscal 2009 from the U.S., he said.
“The trust fund can only spend the monies that it has available,” Booth said. “We are certainly hopeful that with the turn around James Hardie will be in a position to resume payments at a level which will be sufficient.”
Read more here
Monday, April 20, 2009
Google IPO Manager Sees No Return to Stock Sale Days of 1999
(Bloomberg) -- Don’t take last week’s two initial public offerings to mean it’s 1999 again.
It has been 10 months since two IPOs have happened in one week. Rosetta Stone Inc., a language-instruction software company, and Bridgepoint Education Inc., which offers college courses over the Internet, both went public last week.
The trouble is, neither of those companies come from the slowest part of the U.S. IPO market, venture capital-backed technology companies with less than $100 million in revenue. Nor did this year’s third IPO, Mead Johnson Nutrition Co., a unit of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which Bristol sold in February.
All three share sales involved established companies, said Lise Buyer, who helped run Google Inc.’s 2004 IPO. Rosetta Stone and Bridgepoint both have annual sales of more than $200 million. Mead Johnson Nutrition had sales of almost $3 billion in 2008.
“People are being rational: There’s no need to take unwarranted risk,” said Buyer, who now runs Portola Valley, California-based Class V Group, a consulting firm for companies preparing for IPOs. Instead, investors are buying shares of established companies, taking advantage of the 36 percent decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in the past year.
For startups, IPOs generate cash that lets them invest in new products, as well as build credibility with customers, said Gajus Worthington, chief executive officer of Fluidigm Corp., a South San Francisco, California-based biotech company.
Zero Effort
Worthington canceled his company’s IPO last September, shortly after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt, and isn’t planning to try a share sale again soon. He’s wooing corporate partners to get research money for the company’s new genetic-testing product instead.
“I’m not putting any effort now -- zero -- into anything related to an IPO,” Worthington said. “When people and institutions I met last year say they’re interested in IPOs again, I’ll believe it.”
Statistics paint the same picture.
Four companies registered to go public in the U.S. during the first quarter, compared with about 76 in the same period in 2007, according to Bloomberg data. Only 26 companies backed by venture capitalists are in pre-IPO registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association in Arlington, Virginia. And many companies that are registered don’t really intend to go public, Heesen said.
‘I’m Clean’
“Quite a number registered to tell potential acquirers, ‘I’ve made it through the SEC gauntlet, I’m clean, please buy me,’” Heesen said. “VCs have their heads down so much they aren’t even thinking about IPOs.”
Shareholders are conservative about what IPOs they invest in and how much they pay, Buyer said.
Bridgepoint, which opened on its first trading day at $10.50 a share on April 15, held its IPO after cutting the price from a previous range of $14 to $16.
“The issue at Bridgepoint had everything to do with price,” said Kathleen Smith, a principal at Greenwich, Connecticut-based Renaissance Capital LLC, in a Bloomberg Television interview. The firm runs an IPO-focused mutual fund. “They cut the price, which is what needed to be done.”
Bridgepoint, based in San Diego, earned $26.4 million on sales of $218.3 million last year, according to regulatory filings. At $10.50, the company was valued at about $550 million, giving it a price-to-earnings ratio of about 80.
Read more here
It has been 10 months since two IPOs have happened in one week. Rosetta Stone Inc., a language-instruction software company, and Bridgepoint Education Inc., which offers college courses over the Internet, both went public last week.
The trouble is, neither of those companies come from the slowest part of the U.S. IPO market, venture capital-backed technology companies with less than $100 million in revenue. Nor did this year’s third IPO, Mead Johnson Nutrition Co., a unit of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., which Bristol sold in February.
All three share sales involved established companies, said Lise Buyer, who helped run Google Inc.’s 2004 IPO. Rosetta Stone and Bridgepoint both have annual sales of more than $200 million. Mead Johnson Nutrition had sales of almost $3 billion in 2008.
“People are being rational: There’s no need to take unwarranted risk,” said Buyer, who now runs Portola Valley, California-based Class V Group, a consulting firm for companies preparing for IPOs. Instead, investors are buying shares of established companies, taking advantage of the 36 percent decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in the past year.
For startups, IPOs generate cash that lets them invest in new products, as well as build credibility with customers, said Gajus Worthington, chief executive officer of Fluidigm Corp., a South San Francisco, California-based biotech company.
Zero Effort
Worthington canceled his company’s IPO last September, shortly after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt, and isn’t planning to try a share sale again soon. He’s wooing corporate partners to get research money for the company’s new genetic-testing product instead.
“I’m not putting any effort now -- zero -- into anything related to an IPO,” Worthington said. “When people and institutions I met last year say they’re interested in IPOs again, I’ll believe it.”
Statistics paint the same picture.
Four companies registered to go public in the U.S. during the first quarter, compared with about 76 in the same period in 2007, according to Bloomberg data. Only 26 companies backed by venture capitalists are in pre-IPO registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association in Arlington, Virginia. And many companies that are registered don’t really intend to go public, Heesen said.
‘I’m Clean’
“Quite a number registered to tell potential acquirers, ‘I’ve made it through the SEC gauntlet, I’m clean, please buy me,’” Heesen said. “VCs have their heads down so much they aren’t even thinking about IPOs.”
Shareholders are conservative about what IPOs they invest in and how much they pay, Buyer said.
Bridgepoint, which opened on its first trading day at $10.50 a share on April 15, held its IPO after cutting the price from a previous range of $14 to $16.
“The issue at Bridgepoint had everything to do with price,” said Kathleen Smith, a principal at Greenwich, Connecticut-based Renaissance Capital LLC, in a Bloomberg Television interview. The firm runs an IPO-focused mutual fund. “They cut the price, which is what needed to be done.”
Bridgepoint, based in San Diego, earned $26.4 million on sales of $218.3 million last year, according to regulatory filings. At $10.50, the company was valued at about $550 million, giving it a price-to-earnings ratio of about 80.
Read more here
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Yellen says policymakers need to pop bubbles
(MarketWatch) -- San Francisco Federal Reserve President Janet Yellen said late Tuesday that central banks need to deal with bubbles in asset prices before they get too big, although monetary policy may not be the best tool for the job.
Letting them go unchecked "can lead to grave consequences," she said in prepared remarks for a conference held in honor of economist Hyman Minsky in New York.
"Episodes of exuberance, like the ones that led to our bond and house-price bubbles, can be time bombs that cause catastrophic damage to the economy when they explode," said Yellen, a voting member this year of the Federal Open Market Committee.
The FOMC has cut interest rates close to 0% and, by buying up debt and making special bank loans, has pumped about $1 trillion into the U.S. financial sector. It meets against next week.
"I would not advocate making it a regular practice to use monetary policy to lean against asset-price bubbles," she said. "However, recent experience has made me more open to action."
At the moment, U.S. markets are still dealing with the aftermath of the housing-price bubble.
Over the past year, plunging home prices -- directly or indirectly --- sent some of Wall Street's trademark firms into the hands of liquidators or the U.S. government and shut down whole sections of the bond and money markets. Credit access has started to thaw this year, but many business and consumers borrowers are still finding it hard to borrow.
On Thursday, reports showed an economy still struggling to turn around.
First-time claims for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week, dropping to their lowest level since January. The Philadelphia Fed's manufacturing index improved much more than expected in April
Read more here
Letting them go unchecked "can lead to grave consequences," she said in prepared remarks for a conference held in honor of economist Hyman Minsky in New York.
"Episodes of exuberance, like the ones that led to our bond and house-price bubbles, can be time bombs that cause catastrophic damage to the economy when they explode," said Yellen, a voting member this year of the Federal Open Market Committee.
The FOMC has cut interest rates close to 0% and, by buying up debt and making special bank loans, has pumped about $1 trillion into the U.S. financial sector. It meets against next week.
"I would not advocate making it a regular practice to use monetary policy to lean against asset-price bubbles," she said. "However, recent experience has made me more open to action."
At the moment, U.S. markets are still dealing with the aftermath of the housing-price bubble.
Over the past year, plunging home prices -- directly or indirectly --- sent some of Wall Street's trademark firms into the hands of liquidators or the U.S. government and shut down whole sections of the bond and money markets. Credit access has started to thaw this year, but many business and consumers borrowers are still finding it hard to borrow.
On Thursday, reports showed an economy still struggling to turn around.
First-time claims for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week, dropping to their lowest level since January. The Philadelphia Fed's manufacturing index improved much more than expected in April
Read more here
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Citigroup tries to stop the bleeding
(CNNMoney.com) -- The latest crop of quarterly numbers from the banking industry has proven promising so far. But with every harvest, there's always bound to be a few rotten apples in the bunch.
This quarter, it's likely to once again be Citigroup.
Analysts predict that the embattled bank will be one of only a few major financial institutions to record a net loss this quarter. Citigroup is scheduled to deliver its first-quarter results before Friday's opening bell.
According to current consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters, Wall Street is forecasting a loss of $1.39 billion, or 34 cents a share.
If Citigroup does post a loss, it would be the sixth consecutive quarter of red ink. The New York City-based bank has lost more than $28 billion since the credit markets began to unravel in late 2007.
But shares of Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), which briefly traded below $1 a share in early March, have soared in recent weeks along with the rest of the banking sector. The stock was trading at about $3.80 as of Wednesday afternoon.
Part of the rise can be attributed to relatively impressive results across the rest of the industry. Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) blew past Wall Street estimates when it reported a profit of $1.8 billion earlier this week. Last week, Wells Fargo said it anticipated a profit of $3 billion this quarter, much more than expected.
Citigroup has also signaled to Wall Street that its own fortunes may be improving. Last month, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit wrote in an internal memo to the company's staff that the bank was profitable during the first two months of 2009.
A modest improvement in capital markets activity, a surge in mortgage refinancings and a massive gap between the rates at which banks borrow money and make loans should be a huge boon for banks like Citigroup and rivals such as JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500).
Read more at CNNMoney
This quarter, it's likely to once again be Citigroup.
Analysts predict that the embattled bank will be one of only a few major financial institutions to record a net loss this quarter. Citigroup is scheduled to deliver its first-quarter results before Friday's opening bell.
According to current consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters, Wall Street is forecasting a loss of $1.39 billion, or 34 cents a share.
If Citigroup does post a loss, it would be the sixth consecutive quarter of red ink. The New York City-based bank has lost more than $28 billion since the credit markets began to unravel in late 2007.
But shares of Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), which briefly traded below $1 a share in early March, have soared in recent weeks along with the rest of the banking sector. The stock was trading at about $3.80 as of Wednesday afternoon.
Part of the rise can be attributed to relatively impressive results across the rest of the industry. Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) blew past Wall Street estimates when it reported a profit of $1.8 billion earlier this week. Last week, Wells Fargo said it anticipated a profit of $3 billion this quarter, much more than expected.
Citigroup has also signaled to Wall Street that its own fortunes may be improving. Last month, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit wrote in an internal memo to the company's staff that the bank was profitable during the first two months of 2009.
A modest improvement in capital markets activity, a surge in mortgage refinancings and a massive gap between the rates at which banks borrow money and make loans should be a huge boon for banks like Citigroup and rivals such as JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500).
Read more at CNNMoney
Infosys shares hurt by weak earnings forecast
(MarketWatch) -- Infosys Technologies on Wednesday reported a better-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, but its shares tumbled after the company forecast a decline in earnings for the current financial year, citing the impact of the global economic crisis on its clients.
India's second largest software exporter, which gets nearly 90% of its business from U.S. and European clients, reported net income of 16.13 billion rupees ($329 million) for the January-March period, from 12.49 billion rupees in the year-earlier quarter, helped by the rupee's weakness against the U.S. dollar.
Revenue increased 24% to 56.35 billion rupees as the company acquired 37 new clients, offsetting the impact of a fall in billing rates.
Citigroup said in a note to clients that the fourth-quarter results were below expectations in terms of business volume and pricing, and that higher non-operating income helped the company beat consensus estimates.
The forecast for the current financial year highlighted that "the outlook for the sector is still challenging," the report said. For the sector, the forecast meant that there were "no first signs of bottoming out," while the extent of the pricing pressure was "not factored into most estimates."
Read more at MarketWatch
India's second largest software exporter, which gets nearly 90% of its business from U.S. and European clients, reported net income of 16.13 billion rupees ($329 million) for the January-March period, from 12.49 billion rupees in the year-earlier quarter, helped by the rupee's weakness against the U.S. dollar.
Revenue increased 24% to 56.35 billion rupees as the company acquired 37 new clients, offsetting the impact of a fall in billing rates.
Citigroup said in a note to clients that the fourth-quarter results were below expectations in terms of business volume and pricing, and that higher non-operating income helped the company beat consensus estimates.
The forecast for the current financial year highlighted that "the outlook for the sector is still challenging," the report said. For the sector, the forecast meant that there were "no first signs of bottoming out," while the extent of the pricing pressure was "not factored into most estimates."
Read more at MarketWatch
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Angola inflation up at 13.71 pct y/y in March
(Reuters) - Angola's inflation quickened to 13.71 percent year-on-year in March from 13.48 percent in February, on the back of rising transportation costs, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Tuesday.
Month-on-month inflation stood at 0.93 percent in March compared to 1.03 percent February.
Read more at Reuters
Month-on-month inflation stood at 0.93 percent in March compared to 1.03 percent February.
Read more at Reuters
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