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Leaders of Japan Inc. believe they have learnt a lesson from the global economic crisis — namely that the U.S. business model with its eye on short-term gains has failed and it’s time to return to longer-term strategies.

Recent remarks by corporate chiefs from companies like Suzuki Motor Corp and Chugai Pharmaceutical Co underscore a desire of Japan’s corporate leaders to reject pressure from what they see as short-term interests to concentrate on more sustainable returns.

In one of the most public displays of the current corporate zeitgeist, Osamu Suzuki, who has steered Suzuki for the last 30 years published an essay in February rejecting what he saw as short-term interests tied to earnings.

His views often attract attention, as analysts credit him for having turned his company into a globally-competitive carmaker by making inroads into India decades before it boomed, and expanding revenue more than tenfold.

Arguing against calls from some securities analysts to depreciate the company’s factories gradually so that near-term earnings would not suffer as much, Suzuki said the automaker’s long-term interests were better served by writing down the cost quickly.

“I have no intention of changing our three-year depreciation policy for our production facilities. We follow the principle of gloom first and ease later,” he wrote.

Suzuki’s stance and those of other corporate chieftains pit them against fund managers, whose industry is welded to producing quarterly returns and who fear corporate Japan may return to its habits of old — ignoring the shareholder.

“There are still many companies in Japan which feel no compunction about hurting shareholder values,” said Takaaki Umezawa, head of the Japanese arm of U health insurance plans.S. consulting firm AT Kearney.

SPECTACULAR FAILURE

Japan only adopted compulsory quarterly reporting five years ago. Some, like Honda Motor Co, introduced the concept as early as 1979, but Toyota Motor Corp — a standard bearer for much of corporate Japan — did not begin until 2003.

The shift brought much grumbling from corporate executives, who worried that the focus on quarterly earnings and share price performance would not reflect the realities of doing business — a view that has never really gone away.

Motoki Ozaki, the head of household products and cosmetics maker Kao Corp makes a similar argument to Suzuki’s, shrugging off calls from investors for the company’s non-Japan Asian operations to start showing a profit.

Its Asian operations could be profitable now, but Kao has chosen to plough huge sums into marketing, aiming for a large jump in revenue and profits long-term, he said.

The emphasis on long-term sustainable returns versus short-term profits comes up time and time again, bolstered by the view that amid the spectacular failure of companies like Lehman Brothers and General Motors Corp GMGMQ.PK, the U.S. corporate model has gone fundamentally wrong.

“At Harvard, people are apparently debating what lessons the U.S. should learn from the ongoing crisis. Perhaps there’ll be a movement to correct the ways of companies, share prices and profits,” Osamu Nagayama, president of Chugai, a unit of Swiss drugmaker Roche, told reporters in March. 

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Toronto’s existing home market surprised economists with a better-than-expected resurgence in June. But a look at major markets across Canada shows that other cities across the country also had a similar — if not more spectacular rebound in that month.

Toronto’s stellar 27 per cent increase in sales in June compared to last year, was outdone by sales in Greater Vancouver and Calgary according to figures compiled by ReMax Ontario Atlantic Canada in a report today.

"More balanced market conditions have emerged, effectively ending the stranglehold that buyers had on the market over the past six to eight months," said ReMax. "Low interest rates and increased affordability have served to stimulate market activity."

ReMax’s research is a preview of the Canadian Real Estate Association’s national figures. Those numbers, expected out tomorrow, give a snapshot of how the entire Canadian market is performing.

Vancouver was the top performer in June with sales up by an eye-catching 76 per cent. The city recorded the second-best month on record with 4,259 sales, compared to 4,333 sales in June of 2005 cash advances.

While the market is largely balanced, bidding wars have emerged in some areas. In Kitsilano, about 50 per cent of housing is selling in multiple offers.

In Calgary, sales of 3,047 homes last month resulted in a 28 per cent jump from the same time last year.

"With increasing competition among first time buyers the supply of starter homes is tightening," said ReMax.

In third place Toronto, the 10,955 units sold in June came close to the historic record of 11,146 units of May 2007. Still, having the second-best month ever in terms of sales is not a bad feat in the middle of a recession.

Inventory is down about 30 per cent from the same time last year. Fewer listings and a lower supply of available homes has resulted in multiple offers in some areas. The strongest demand is for homes in the $300,000 to $600,000 range, says ReMax.

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A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc computer programmer accused of stealing secret trading codes from the financial firm has been released from federal custody after posting bail, authorities said Monday.

Sergey Aleynikov, 39, was arrested by the FBI Friday and charged with “theft of trade secrets.” He met the terms of his $750,000 bail and was released Monday, said FBI spokesman James Margolin.

Aleynikov is accused of misusing computer codes that belong to his former employer, a New York-based financial institution that authorities did not identify in court papers but sources say is Goldman Sachs.

A transcript of Aleynikov’s appearance before U.S. Magistrate Kevin Nathaniel Fox in Manhattan Saturday also shows that Aleynikov worked for Goldman.

His lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, said at that proceeding that Aleynikov told authorities after his arrest that he did not intend to sell the information or use it “contrary to my employment agreement with Goldman Sachs.”

Goldman has not seen its business or clients harmed by the purported computer breach, a source familiar with the situation said Monday. The firm declined to comment.

The case could shed light on the workings of intricate trading systems developed by Goldman. It also raises questions about the security of lucrative Wall Street proprietary trading operations.

However, the New York Stock Exchange said Monday there was no connection between the alleged security breach and an error that dropped Goldman from a trading report the NYSE issued last week cash advance lenders.

Aleynikov, a Russian immigrant living in New Jersey, was arrested Friday night as he got off a flight at Newark Liberty International Airport, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.

Aleynikov had been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Terms of his bail required a $750,000 personal recognizance bond to be secured by three financially responsible people.

His bail also included $75,000 in cash, and Aleynikov was ordered to surrender his travel documents and not to access the computer data at issue in the case.

A preliminary hearing was scheduled for August 3.

A “For Sale” sign stood on the lawn of Aleynikov’s home on Monday night in Little Falls, New Jersey. The vacated two-story Colonial-style home, whose open mailbox had letters peeking out, was listed as “priced to sell” in an online advertisement by an area real estate agency.

Authorities contend Aleynikov stole codes used for sophisticated automated stock and commodities trading. They say Aleynikov, who earned $400,000 a year at Goldman, improperly copied proprietary computer code and then uploaded it to a computer server in Germany. 

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Talks between The Boston Globe and its unions to prevent the U.S. newspaper from shutting down stopped early Monday morning after a midnight deadline passed, and it was unclear when they would resume.

An hour after the midnight deadline passed, negotiations had broken down, but likely will resume sometime during the night, a source familiar with the matter, but not authorized to discuss it, told Reuters.

That source and another source familiar with the matter indicated that the bargaining process likely will continue throughout the night, and that word on a decision about what will happen to the Globe will wait until after daybreak in the United States.

Just before the deadline, the Globe’s parent company, The New York Times Co, ratcheted up the pressure on unions at the Globe, threatening to close the paper within weeks if they do not deliver big cost cuts.

The Times, the Globe’s parent company, said it would file a notice with the U.S. government on Monday that says it will shut down the paper if it cannot get millions of dollars in concessions from its unions.

It had set a Sunday midnight deadline for four unions to find $20 million in cost cuts at the Globe. Earlier it had set Friday as the deadline, but extended it after reporting Saturday that it had made progress.

If the Globe’s management and the unions fail to reach an agreement, one of the most well known and largest U.S. newspapers could close, leaving Boston without a daily, full-service general newspaper of comparable size.

The 137-year-old Globe is a mainstay of New England news consumers. The paper is the 17th largest in the United States by daily paid circulation, according to the U payday cash advance.S. Audit Bureau of Circulations. On Sundays, a day that many U.S. residents spend reading their papers, it ranks 13th.

The Times said it would file notice under the Workers Readjustment and Retraining Notification act, which requires 60 days advance notice before closing a business. The move is the toughest pressure yet that the Times has applied.

“Filing the WARN notice is a difficult step that we would like to avoid,” said a statement issued by the Globe. “But, unfortunately, given the state of the negotiations, it is one we must be prepared to take.”

The Globe was once one of the top U.S. papers in its scope, with a strong international, national and local reporting staff that rivaled that of the biggest U.S. dailies, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The New York Times.

In recent years it was forced to cut back on operations, as advertising declines that have affected nearly every U.S. paper

hit the Globe particularly hard.

The Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe’s biggest union, said earlier Sunday evening that it proposed cuts that exceed the $10 million that the Times has demanded of it.

“This proposal was the product of arduous deliberations,” a guild statement said, calling its offers “tremendous sacrifices.” It declined to make details available until its members had a chance to review them. 

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TLC Vision Corp., which last month reported a $95.4 million fourth-quarter loss, said its CEO has left the company through a mutual agreement with its board of directors.

The eye-surgery corporation, with U.S. headquarters in Chesterfield, would not give a reason for Chief Executive James Wachtman’s departure. TLC Vision said Wachtman, who had the job since 2004, also has resigned from the board. The company’s main headquarters is in Mississauga, Ontario.

"It is Mr. Wachtman’s intention to pursue other interests," TLC said in a statement. Wachtman could not be reached for comment.

Before becoming CEO, Wachtman was president and chief operating officer of the company. TLC Vision was formed in 2002 through a merger of TLC Laser Eye Centers and Laser Vision Centers. Wachtman had held executive positions with Laser Vision since 1996.

When TLC reported earnings in March, it doubted it could comply with loan agreements for the balance of 2009 unless they were amended no teletrack payday loan. Based on its loan issues, Ernst & Young, TLC’s outside auditor, said it would raise concerns about the company’s viability in its opinion on 2008 fiscal financial results.

However, this month TLC said lenders granted a limited waiver for defaults, and the company is now working toward a permanent solution.

As part of Thursday’s announcement, TLC said it has created a chief restructuring officer position and has formed a three-person office of the chairman. The latter is comprised of Warren Rustand, chairman of the board; James Tiffany, the newly appointed TLC president and chief operating officer; and Michael Gries, the chief restructuring officer. Tiffany had been president of Sightpath Medical, a TLC subsidiary, and Gries also will remain a principal of a New York City financial advisory firm.

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Statistics Canada collects, analyzes and publishes a kaleidoscope of data, from population estimates to processed cheese production.

Economists, the government and industry groups always keep a close eye on reports from the central statistical agency. But aside from a few key releases, it rarely garners major headlines or much public attention.

Until now. Certain Statistics Canada reports have become widely anticipated news events as the economy spirals down. While forecasters bicker over where the economy is going, the federal agency tells us with detached authority where it has been. Predictably, the news isn’t good. Jobs are evaporating, the economy is contracting and crucial export markets are drying up.

But in a country as large as Canada, how is it possible to tally these numbers with any certainty?

Take the latest unemployment figures, which showed Canada lost 129,000 jobs in January, far more than economists had predicted.

That report, released Feb. 6, was the result of a survey taken in mid-January of about 110,000 people, aged 15 and older, living in 54,000 households selected to be representative of the country’s population. The agency dispatched about 1,500 interviewers to question subjects on their employment situation – or, increasingly, their unemployment situation.

Interviewers usually start with telephone calls. But if they don’t get through, they visit households to get the information they need. Resistance is futile: along with the census, the labour force survey is the only other mandatory household survey in Canada.

"The reason for that is that this is a big indicator of what’s going on in the economy," said Danielle Zietsma, an economist with the labour force survey at Statistics Canada.

But not all Canadians are considered to be potential respondents. Aboriginals living on reserves are excluded because of "serious challenges" in interviewing those in remote communities in the short window for collecting data, Statistics Canada said. Full-time members of the military, prison inmates and nursing homes residents are also left out.

The numbers are considered final when they are published, although once a year the agency tweaks monthly seasonally adjusted numbers going back several years based on new adjustment factors. Seasonal adjustment removes normal fluctuations expected in particular months – for example, the influx of university students into the job market every May.

But some months, the change in overall employment may not mean much. Statistics Canada considers a movement of less than 28,000 jobs "little changed." Anything more is deemed statistically significant.

Another closely watched economic report from Statistics Canada is gross domestic product, or GDP, the total value of goods and services produced in Canada instant payday loans completely online.

It is important because a recession is often defined as two consecutive quarters of falling GDP. Most economists think that when the final numbers are in – the last GDP figures Statistics Canada released were from November – they will show the economy shrank in the last quarter of 2008 and continued to contract at least through the first quarter of this year.

Statistics Canada calculates GDP using a range of surveys, including retail sales, wholesale trade, manufacturing, employment payrolls and hours, the labour force survey, quarterly financial statistics and international trade data.

On a monthly basis, the agency tallies up GDP by industry. But it uses three different methods to arrive at quarterly numbers. One measures the income of households, corporations, government and the foreign sector using various measures. Another gauges expenditures. The third method measures what each industry produces by assessing how much "value-added" they put into their production.

"In theory, these three numbers should be equal, but they’re never equal" for statistical reasons, said Bernard Lefrançois, chief of monthly GDP by industry at Statistics Canada. "So we have a big process of reconciliation of the three ways of measuring GDP, and this is how we end up with a final number."

Even then, the figures still aren’t set in stone. "We put out the numbers with the best information we have at the moment we produce them," Lefrançois said. But the agency sometimes revises its GDP statistics to take into account new information. "It takes quite a number of years before they’re really final," he added.

Economists say both unemployment and GDP numbers should be treated with some caution.

The labour force survey, for example, "is only as good as the answers that are provided by people who are surveyed," said Derek Holt, vice-president of Scotia Capital Economics. "Some key questions in that survey can critically depend on how people choose to describe their own conditions."

For example, an auto worker who expects to be called back to work might not count herself as unemployed at first, but her answer might change if a temporary plant idling lasts longer than anticipated.

GDP numbers also rely on samples, and can be subject to revisions, Holt noted. "You can get both the sign and the magnitude completely wrong on the first pass. It’s not common, but it’s certainly not unheard of."

The important thing is to focus on trends, rather than month-to-month volatility, he said.

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Ford Motor reported that its ongoing losses soared in the fourth quarter, but the company reiterated it still does not need the federal bailout already received by its two U.S. rivals.

Ford reported a net loss of $5.9 billion, or $2.46 a share, up from a loss of $2.8 billion in the same quarter a year ago.

For the full year, Ford lost $14.6 billion, and the company has now lost nearly $30 billion over the past three years.

Excluding special items, losses were $3.3 billion, or $1.37 a share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters were forecasting a loss of $1.30 a share on this basis.

Ford (F, Fortune 500) burned through $5.5 billion in cash during the quarter. That left the company with gross cash of $13.4 billion as of the end of 2008.

The company said it will burn through cash again this year, but added that it does not anticipate needing to receive federal help "barring a significantly deeper economic downturn or a significant industry event, such as the bankruptcy of a major competitor that causes disruption to the company’s supply base, dealers or creditors."

Instead, Ford said it will draw on its available credit lines to receive an additional $10.1 billion in cash on Feb. 3.

"Ford went to the credit markets two years ago when they were functioning normally and obtained the funding necessary - including our credit lines - to support our product transformation and restructuring," said Ford CEO Alan Mulally in a statement.

"Given the instability of the capital markets with the uncertain state of the global economy, we believe it is prudent to draw these credit facilities at this time," Mulally added.

Separately, the company’s Ford Credit arm confirmed that it was eliminating 1,200 jobs, or about 20% of its staff, due to lower sales. In addition to suffering from weak demand for vehicles, Ford also sold its Jaguar, Land Rover and Mazda brands last year.

Production cuts and weak sales ahead

Ford’s automotive operations reported a loss in every region but South America during the fourth quarter. Worldwide vehicle sales plunged 31% from a year ago, to 1.1 million. Total sales dropped 36%, to $29.2 billion, but they did top Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $27 billion.

Ford signaled it is expecting continued weak sales in the first quarter, as it trimmed its first quarter production plans by 30,000 vehicles, 7% below its previous guidance. It will now make only 400,000 cars and trucks during the quarter, down 42% from what it made during the first three months of 2008.

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, a Michigan think tank, said the sharp cuts in production at Ford and elsewhere are signs of an important change in thinking in the U low fee payday loans.S. auto industry that may allow them to ride out the current crisis.

"What we are seeing is a level of discipline to cut inventory that we have not seen before," said Cole. That could lead to higher prices for vehicles, as automakers no longer have to offer large cash-back offers and other inducements to move unsold vehicles.

"The quickest way to return to profitability is through reduced incentives," he said.

But Cole said that the outlook for sales remains grim for at least the next few months, and that the industry will need to see a second-half rebound if their turnaround plans are to be successful.

Healthier than its Big 3 rivals

Ford’s access to credit and cash on-hand puts it in a far better financial position than General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) and Chrysler LLC, who both needed loans from the federal government to avoid falling below the minimum cash level they needed to continue operations.

Ford had asked for a $9 billion line of credit from Congress at the same time GM and Chrysler were appealing for help last month. Congress did not approve such financial assistance, forcing the Treasury Department to step in and give the loans to GM and Chrysler late last year.

But the company did announce a slightly more conservative sales target for 2009. When it presented its turnaround plan to Congress in December, Ford said it expected 2009 U.S. industrywide sales of about 12.5 million vehicles, including medium- and heavy-duty trucks. On Thursday, the company said it now anticipates sales of between 11.5 million to 12.5 million vehicles this year.

"It’s very volatile," said chief financial officer Lewis Booth when asked during a conference call about the change in sales guidance. Mulally added that January sales were shaping up to be as bad as December, when industrywide sales tumbled 36% from a year earlier.

Ford also said it is continuing to take steps to reduce costs.

The company announced it had reached an agreement with the United Auto Workers union to eliminate the jobs bank, which guarantees nearly full pay for UAW members who lose their jobs.

Ford said management and the union are working on details of implementing that agreement. GM announced a similar deal Wednesday, and there were reports Monday that Chrysler had also reached such a deal with the UAW.

Asked about other negotiations with the union or creditors to cut costs, Mulally said Ford is in ongoing talks with all major "stakeholders" of the company and that he was "very pleased by the response." But he would not give more details about those negotiations. 

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It’s rare for Anheuser-Busch to sell one of its company-owned beer distributorships. It’s rarer still for the company to sell to an outsider, someone who is not already involved in carrying A-B’s beer.

But sell it will. The St. Louis-based unit of Belgian brewer Anheuser-Busch InBev will sell its Western Beverage Co., a huge wholesale operation based in Eugene, Ore., to Todd Epsten.

Epsten is the CEO of Major Brands Inc., a massive Missouri wine and liquor operation based near the Maplewood exit off Interstate 44.

Now, Epsten is forming a new company called Major Eagle Inc. to buy Western Beverage, which churns out an estimated 6 million to 7 million case equivalents per year and reportedly ranks among A-B’s top 25 distributorships.

Major Eagle will purchase A-B’s 56 percent stake in Western Beverage as well as the 44 percent stake held by other shareholders. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Epsten said he was excited about the prospect of being "in the beer business in an even larger way, and being part of the A-B network no fax pay day loans."

Anheuser-Busch has traditionally liked to own a few distributorships to give the company a better sense of how things are going in the market.

In a statement, Tony Short, Anheuser-Busch’s vice president of business and wholesaler development, stressed that the transaction "was under consideration for several months prior to the close of the A-B InBev merger."

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Automakers may be pushing forward on plans to introduce plug-in vehicles within the next few years, but the drive toward electric transportation could hit a yellow light if the grid isn’t prepared to handle the extra load. And it’s not just about having enough power generation to support the charging of hundreds of thousands of cars plugged into a wall socket.

David O’Brien, president and chief executive officer of Toronto Hydro Corp., said the wires in distribution networks can behave in strange ways when major changes are introduced to the system.

"I’m going to be the first guy in line to buy an electric car, and by God it’s about time," he said. "But people forget that our electricity system is designed around what we do today. It’s not a forward-thinking grid."

For example, during the hottest days of the summer, power lines can overheat and short out unless they get a chance in the evening to cool down, which tends to be the case overnight when there’s a smaller load on the system.

"If we start plugging in a bunch of cars overnight then you don’t let the system cool down enough," O’Brien said. He added that the overnight load will get even greater as the province moves to time-of-use power pricing and more people have an incentive to run power-hungry appliances at night.

It’s not a showstopper, he said, but an example of what needs to be considered as we move toward electric transportation. Companies such as General Motors, Toyota, Nissan and Ford have all announced plans to come out with plug-in cars within the next few years.

"We’ve got a couple of years now to get the industries together and start talking about how we’re going to make it work."

Included in this discussion should be ways to allow more small-scale renewable energy, such as solar and wind, onto a grid that was designed to push electricity to consumers – not take it from them, O’Brien said payday loans online. "We have to rethink our whole transmission and distribution systems," he said.

Even before these trends take hold, Toronto Hydro has been seeing an increase in the frequency and duration of outages in pockets of its network, mostly in Scarborough, Etobicoke and North York.

O’Brien said 35 per cent of the utility’s network is "beyond its life expectancy."

A $1.3 billion, 10-year rebuilding plan approved by the Ontario Energy Board will bring that figure down to only 25 per cent. Getting it to 10 per cent will take several billions of dollars, he added.

Alongside this renewal, Toronto Hydro is also preparing its customers for the introduction of time-of-use pricing in 2009, when electricity use during peak times will cost a premium and off-peak use will be rewarded with a discount.

The idea is to encourage people to shift electricity use from peak to off-peak times so overall demand is more evenly distributed throughout the day and the grid operates more efficiently. The utility has so far installed 550,000 "smart meters" and is reading information from about 400,000 of them.

A year from now all 670,000 meters will be installed and operational. Some customers are already being directed to a website that lets them get a sense of what their hydro bill will look like once time-of-use rates are formally introduced.

"I think 2009 will be a very interesting year," O’Brien said. "We’ll do a pilot project starting with 10,000 customers and over a period of time transition them (to time-of-use pricing). It will be an evolutionary process, but I see next year as the big start."

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Gasoline prices extended their slide, dropping more than 4 cents a gallon and coming within 25 cents of breaching the $3 level, according to a daily survey of credit card swipes releases Sunday.

The average price of unleaded regular fell to $3.247 a gallon nationwide, down 4.4 cents from $3.291, according to the Daily Fuel Gauge Report issued by motorist group AAA. That brings the two-day total decline to 10.3 cents.

The decline comes as hurricane season winds down and oil prices drop because demand is likely to weaken as the economy slows.

Gas prices dropped a record amount in the last two weeks, falling by more than 35 cents a gallon, the publisher of a separate survey said Sunday.

Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the nationwide Lundberg Survey of gasoline prices, said the average price for self-serve unleaded across the United States dropped to $3.31 a gallon - the largest decline in the six-decade history of the survey.

"This could be one the largest drops in history," Lundberg said.

Lundberg’s survey looks at about 5,000 gas stations around the nation, tallying an average gas price for regular-grade unleaded gasoline.

Before the latest survey, the record drop tallied by surveyors came after Hurricane Katrina in October 2005, when national gas prices dropped 25 cents a gallon, Lundberg said.

The price has now tumbled nearly 87 cents, or 21%, below the record $4 cheap payday advance.114 set July 17. And it’s down about 43 cents from a month ago, but still remains some 49 cents, or 19%, higher from a year ago.

The average price has dropped below $3 a gallon in six states: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma, where gas was selling for $2.83 a gallon, on average.

Gasoline is highest in Alaska, at $4.133 a gallon, with Hawaii - at $4.079 - the only other state above $4 a gallon.

Gasoline prices had surged during the highly traveled summer season and as a series of hurricanes battered oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. But with hurricane season nearly over, prices began their slide.

Oil prices also have been moving sharply lower amid fears that the economic crisis, which has deepened globally, will have a severely adverse effect on demand.

Crude plunged to a 13-month low on Friday, ending down $8.89 to $77.49 a barrel. That’s a far cry from the $147.27 a barrel seen in July.

And since oil prices make up about half of the price of gasoline, the slide in crude S good news for drivers.

The survey is conducted for AAA by Oil Price Information Service from credit card swipes at more than 85,000 service stations nationwide.  

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