Guyana has signed a $1 billion agreement with a Canadian-based company for what the government says is the largest private mining investment for the South America country.
Toronto-based Guyana Goldfields Inc. said the Aurora Gold Project agreement signed Friday is the first large-scale gold mining license that Guyana has issued since 1991.
The government said it is expected to create more than 1,900 temporary and permanent jobs and Guyana Goldfields CEO Patrick Sheridan said it is expected to generate $1.6 billion in government revenues at a time of record gold prices.
The company announcement said it will pay a mining royalty of 5 percent when gold sells for $1,000 an ounce and 8 percent when the price is greater. It will also pay a corporate income tax of 30 percent.
The agreement is for 20 years, with provisions for extension.
The company said construction should start early next year and the mine and mill should be operating by early 2014.
Guyana’s government on Friday also announced a $138 million contract with the Beijing-based China Harbor Engineering Co faxless payday loans. to build a new airport terminal and add more than 3,200 feet (1,000 meters) to the main runway at the country’s principal airport, Cheddi Jagan International.
The current 7,400-foot (2,255-meter) runway cannot accommodate fully loaded jumbo jets. A Caribbean Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft that landed late on the runway on July 20 crashed through a fence, breaking in two. No one died.
The two deals come just ahead of Nov. 28 parliamentary elections, and the main opposition coalition complained the airport deal should have been debated by the legislature.
Rupert Roopnarine, the prime ministerial candidate of the Partnership For National Unity, criticized the government for making the deal after Parliament was dissolved for the general election.
Yemen’s embattled president must speed up reforms and begin a transfer of power according to a plan backed by the international community, said a U.N. envoy on Monday.
Jamal Benomar visited Yemen for a week to promote a Gulf-backed proposal that calls for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to transfer power to his vice president in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
Saleh told a TV interviewer that he will sign, but he did not say when.
Saleh has resisted the proposal despite nearly nine months of protests against his 30-year rule. Several times he said he would sign, only to back away at the last minute. Months of international diplomacy has failed to resolve the crisis.
Benomar held meetings with opposition figures on Monday, including Maj. Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who leads a military unit of defectors siding with the opposition and protecting protesters.
Earlier in his trip, Benomar met with Saleh and his deputy.
In a rare interview with foreign media, Saleh told the TV channel France 24 that he would sign the Gulf-backed package, but he would not say when that would happen or what was preventing him from doing so, vaguely noting that there was no time mechanism in the accord online payday loan lenders. The interview was broadcast late Monday.
“Definitely, definitely,” Saleh replied when asked if he intended to leave power. “I believe that anyone who grips on to power is crazy.” He said he would step down 90 days after the agreement goes into effect, but he did not say when that would be.
Mediators and opposition figures have become exasperated with what they see as Saleh’s stalling tactics.
He said that the media was lying when reporting he refused to sign the agreement. He accused armed militias of infiltrating peaceful demonstrations in Yemeni cities.
Pro-Saleh forces regularly engage in deadly clashes with armed tribesmen and military defectors who support the protesters in Yemen’s largest cities, and al-Qaida-linked militants have taken control of entire towns in the country’s restive south.
Security has collapsed across the Arab world’s poorest nation during the nine-month popular uprising.
Kellwood’s chief has indeed been lured away by J.C. Penney.
Michael Kramer, 47, who has been the head of the Town and Country-based apparel company since 2008, will start as chief operating officer of J.C. Penney on December 5. His potential departure had been reported last week.
Kramer said today that the major draw of the new job was Ron Johnson, J.C. Penney’s new chief executive and his former boss at Apple’s retail division, and his vision to revamp the company.
“If this opportunity with Ron wouldn’t have come up, I would still be here moving Kellwood forward,” he said.”If this team can turn J.C. Penney around and restore it back to being America’s favorite store, that will be a story.”
His successor at Kellwood has not yet been determined. But there are a couple of internal candidates being considered for the job, he said.
“I accomplished what I came here to do at Kellwood,” he said, adding that the company is now the most profitable on a percentage basis than it has been in 15 years. Kellwood is a private company and so does not publicly report its results.
Since he arrived at Kellwood, Kramer has helped restructure the company and steered it on a path to acquire a number of designer brands such as Rebecca Taylor, Scotch & Soda, and Adam. Kellwood had previously been known mostly for its moderately-priced brands like Sag Harbor and private-label clothes for outlets like Walmart.
“Mike will help ensure that J.C. Penney is a strong partner to our suppliers, which will be essential to our success as we set out to re-imagine the department store experience,” Johnson said in a statement.
Johnson has also recruited other former Apple colleagues to be part of his team at J.C. Penney. Daniel Walker, a former Apple executive, will be chief talent officer at J.C. Penney. And he has lured Michael Francis, who had been chief marketing officer at Target, to be J.C. Penney’s president.
But even though Kramer is taking the new job, he may stick around St. Louis. His wife and children like it in St. Louis, he said, so he may commute to Texas (where J.C. Penney is based) during the week and come back to St. Louis on the weekends.
Greece’s finance minister is breaking ranks with Prime Minister George Papandreou over his call to hold a referendum on a hard-fought European debt deal to rescue the country’s economy.
Evangelos Venizelos issued a written statement Thursday on returning from an emergency meeting in Cannes, France, where he accompanied Prime Minister George Papandreou for meetings with top European officials.
After the meeting, the French and Germany leaders said a Greek vote would decide whether the country stays in the eurozone, and vowed Athens would not get critical bailout funds until after the vote free credit score online.
Venizelos said Greece’s position within the euro was a “historic conquest” of the country that “cannot be put in doubt” and “cannot depend on a referendum.”
Bank of America is nixing its plans to charge a $5 debit card fee.
The bank says in a statement that the decision to scrap the plan came after listening to customer feedback in recent weeks.
The news comes after other major banks, including Chase and Wells Fargo, said last week that they were canceling tests of similar fees.
“Our customers’ voices are most important to us. As a result, we are not currently charging the fee and will not be moving forward with any additional plans to do so,” David Darnell, co-chief operating officer, said in a release.
The about-face by the banking industry comes amid growing public anger over fees. A movement to get customers to switch to credit unions had marked this Saturday as “Bank Transfer Day.”
As Europe’s leaders struggle toward a solution to its debt crisis, hopes are growing that cash-rich China will take a major role in a rescue _ expectations that are likely to be dashed.
On Friday, the chief executive of Europe’s bailout fund visits Beijing to talk to potential investors. Beijing has expressed sympathy for the 27-nation European Union, its biggest trading partner, but has yet to commit any cash.
Joining in a bailout could help Beijing in its campaign to join the top ranks of governments that manage the global economy _ a leadership role that many around the world have been urging China to take.
So far, Beijing has promised to help only by continuing business as usual, trading with Europe and stockpiling some of China’s multibillion-dollar trade surpluses in the safest European government bonds.
“For China, this could be a very big break in its efforts to take the seat at the head of the table in the international monetary hierarchy,” said Carl Weinberg of High Frequency Economics in a report.
Still, getting directly involved would put Chinese leaders in a position that is fraught with political risk _ spending public funds to bail out European countries that despite their debt crisis are still far richer than China per person.
Managers of China’s sovereign wealth fund, a potential investor, have tried to maintain an image as careful financial guardians after they faced criticism when early investments abroad failed to perform well.
During a visit to Paris this month, the Chinese fund’s chairman said Europeans should “respect yourself” and stop “expecting charity from China.”
European leaders are looking for investors outside the 17 nations that use the euro common currency, including sovereign wealth funds, for a fund to backstop the main bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility.
That is part of a complex plan under development to have the EFSF act as an insurer for bonds issued by weaker governments such as Italy and Spain, making them more attractive to investors.
The head of the EFSF, Klaus Regling, is due to explain the insurance scheme during his visit Friday to Beijing.
On Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was set to telephone his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao.
Even if China contributes, Beijing needs to limit its risk, said Huang Wei, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank. She said that could mean the best Europe could hope for is a Chinese purchase of bonds guaranteed by the region’s stronger governments.
“I don’t think the Chinese government will invest directly in sovereign debt, such as Greek debt, because that’s very dangerous,” she said.
Still, China’s robust economy and $3.2 trillion in foreign reserves have fueled hopes in weaker economies that Beijing might emerge as a last-minute alternative to European aid and austerity measures that have fueled protests guaranteed online personal loans.
“You will hear some less-serious people in Ireland or Greece say, We don’t need you Europeans with your conditions because the Chinese will bail us out,” said Katinka Barysch, an analyst at the Centre for European Reform, a think tank in London.
But the vast scale of Europe’s needs _ as much as 1 to 2 trillion euros for the bailout fund _ makes that unrealistic, Barysch said.
“This is just not something the Chinese will give them,” she said.
China’s foreign and finance ministries did not respond Thursday to questions about whether Beijing would contribute to a bailout and the status of talks with Europe.
Asked on Wednesday about a possible Chinese role in a European bailout, foreign ministry Jiang Yu expressed hope the crisis could be resolved by the EU.
“I believe the Chinese side, with an open attitude, will discuss with the European side multiple ways of cooperation,” Jiang said.
Some Europeans are looking to Chinese companies, still financially strong after the 2008 global crisis battered Western business, as potential buyers of public assets such as power companies that might be sold to raise money.
But Chinese buyers that picked up European companies and other assets earlier at fire-sale prices have run into trouble managing them. They have shifted to pricier but more reliable blue-chip acquisitions such as China National BlueStar Corp.’s purchase this year of Norway’s Elkem, a maker of silicon and carbon parts, for a hefty $2 billion.
Chinese help also might carry a political cost, which has sparked unease for some in Europe.
Last month, Wen Jiabao repeated Beijing’s longstanding appeal to Europe to grant it market economy status _ a move that would make it harder for European companies to press trade complaints against Chinese rivals _ though he refrained from linking it directly to possible Chinese help in the debt crisis.
The top EU economic official, Olli Rehn, has distanced himself from a proposal floated by Brazil for China and other developing countries to jointly contribute.
“That would however have very far-reaching political consequences,” Rehn said in an Oct. 21 interview with Handelsblatt, a German business newspaper.
“It would mean that the Chinese, the Russians and Brazilians would indirectly have a place at the table in the eurozone,” Rehn said. “Such a decision would have strategic significance that is not to be underestimated.”
Stock indexes closed at the highest point since the U.S. debt limit showdown in August Monday. The market was driven higher by a round of big corporate takeovers and reports that Europe’s bailout fund will be larger than originally thought. The Nasdaq composite turned positive for the year.
Netflix Inc. plunged 22 percent in after-hours trading after the DVD-by-mail and video streaming company forecast a sharp drop in fourth-quarter profits.
Investors are still waiting for a resolution to Europe’s debt problems. European leaders said they made progress at a weekend summit and plan to unveil concrete plans for containing the crisis by Wednesday.
The Dow was up about 40 points in the first hour of trading but moved steadily higher through midday following reports that Europe’s takeover fund will be greatly expanded. It finished with a gain of 104.83 points, or 0.9 percent, at 11,913.62.
“The market is expecting that there will be some kind of deal worked out Wednesday,” when European financial ministers are scheduled to meet, said Uri Landesman, president of Platinum Partners. “If there’s not a deal by then, the market is going down significantly.”
Even with concerns about Europe, U.S. companies are still reporting bigger profits. “Although there is a good deal of economic and political uncertainty in the world, we are not seeing it much in our business at this point,” Caterpillar Chief Executive Doug Oberhelman said.
The maker of construction equipment reported a 44 percent surge in income, more than Wall Street analysts were expecting, thanks to strong growth in exports. The company said it expected the global economy to continue recovering, albeit slowly. Caterpillar jumped 5 percent, the most of the 30 companies in the Dow.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose to 1,254.19. That is just 3.45 points, or 0.3 percent, below where it started the year. It’s the highest close for the S&P 500 since Aug. 3, just as Washington was resolving a showdown over raising the country’s borrowing limit. If the S&P 500 finishes the year with a gain, it will be its biggest turnaround since 1984.
The Nasdaq composite rose 61.98, or 2.3 percent, to 2,699.44. The gains turned the Nasdaq positive for the year. The S&P 500 is the only major market index that remains lower than where it started the year.
The Russell 2000 index of small companies rose 3 payday loans.3 percent as investors moved money into higher-risk assets.
Netflix sank 21.6 percent post-market trading after forecasting fourth-quarter income that was far below what analysts were expecting. Through Monday’s close the stock had plunged 59 percent since July 12, when it raised prices and announced a plan to break its DVD-by-mail business into a separate company. The company abandoned the plan after it triggered a revolt among subscribers.
Other major U.S. companies due to report earnings this week include UPS Inc., Ford Motor Co. and Procter & Gamble.
Analysts expect companies in the S&P 500 to report earnings growth of 14 percent for the third quarter, according to data provider FactSet. They expect a 10 percent gain in revenue.
Expenses are also expected to climb. Higher costs for raw materials helped drag down income 8 percent at Kimberly-Clark Corp., which reported results Monday. The stock fell 5 percent. The company is a major consumer products maker whose brands include Huggies and Kleenex.
Higher costs also hurt cigarette maker Lorillard, which reported a 3 percent drop in income. Lorillard’s stock fell 0.6 percent.
A series of corporate deals helped lift the market, said Phil Orlando, chief equity strategist at Federated Investors. “This is telling us that companies think stocks are cheap, and they’re willing to spend some of the cash that’s sitting around on their balance sheets,” he said.
Deals announced included:
_ HealthSpring Inc. jumped 34 percent after Cigna Corp. said it will buy the health insurer for about $3.8 billion in cash. Cigna rose 1.4 percent.
_ RightNow Technologies Inc. gained 19 percent after Oracle Corp. said it will buy the tech service company for about $1.5 billion. Oracle rose 2.3 percent.
_ Mattel Inc. rose 2 percent after it agreed to buy Hit Entertainment, the owner of the Thomas & Friends and Barney brands, for $680 million in cash.
_ The J.M. Smucker Co. added 0.7 percent after it bought most of Sara Lee Corp.’s North American foodservice coffee operations for about $350 million.
Five shares rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was average at 4.2 billion shares.
France’s finance minister said Tuesday that 2012 growth may be lower than estimated, a day after a leading agency warned that it may put the country’s cherished triple-A rating on notice for a possible downgrade.
Ahead of the 2012 budget debate in parliament, Finance Minister Francois Baroin warned on France-2 television that the growth estimate of 1.5 percent for next year was “probably too high.”
He blamed the risk of a global slowdown, which he said could be “very vast” and “severe.”
Baroin said the government would “put everything in place to avoid falling into a recession… and to protect our country from a downgrade” of its triple A rating, a day after Moody’s said it was assessing the country.
However, Baroin said he wouldn’t change the forecast just yet, especially in the run-up to the meeting of eurozone leaders in Brussels this Sunday and the early November meeting of the Group of 20 leaders from the industrial and developing world.
“If we are capable in the next two weeks of …. measures powerful enough to stop speculation so that we can make people understand that we will not let 60 years of European construction collapse … then I will have no worries, there will be growth in 2012 and 1.5 percent will be achieved,” he said.
Being the eurozone’s second largest economy, France could well have a big bill to pay for sorting out Europe’s debt crisis.
It’s in that context that Moody’s said it will be studying whether to put France’s rating on notice for a possible downgrade over the next three months. It said it will focus in on the government’s ability to implement its fiscal and economic reforms as well as any other potential adverse economic or financial market developments.
It said the French government has much less room for maneuver in terms if stretching its balance sheet than it had in 2008 Low fee payday loans.
“France may face a number of challenges in the coming months _ for example, the possible need to provide additional support to other European sovereigns or to its own banking system, which could give rise to significant new liabilities for the government’s balance sheet,” Moody’s said.
Moody’s warning comes ahead of Sunday’s meeting of eurozone leaders in Brussels. For days, markets have been hopeful that they would unveil a comprehensive solution to Europe’s debt crisis that would include a big ramp up in the bailout fund, a recapitalization of a large segment of the banking sector and a strategy for Greece.
However, on Monday German officials sought to downplay market expectations and the market mood has turned sour once again. France’s CAC-40 index of leading shares was underperforming its main peers in Europe on Tuesday, trading 1.7 percent lower as against the 0.6 percent fall on the German DAX.
Ahead of the meeting on Sunday in Brussels, the markets will be closely monitoring comments from all round Europe.
Jan Kees de Jager, the Netherlands finance minister, said the meeting needs to produce concrete results even though his counterpart in Germany, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said Monday that the weekend summit would not provide a “definitive solution.”
De Jager is quoted in Germany’s Die Welt newspaper Tuesday as saying that the markets “are awaiting a long-term solution. The overall package must involve a wide-reaching and irreversible agreement over enhanced controls in the eurozone in the future.”
____
David Rising in Berlin contributed to this story.
BlackBerry services buzzed back to life across the world Thursday, after a three-day outage that interrupted email messages and Internet services for millions of customers.
Research In Motion Ltd., the Canadian company that makes the phones, posted a statement that says services are improving.
Many BlackBerry users have been unable to send and receive emails and messages in an outage that started Monday in Europe. Web browsers haven’t been working either. On Thursday morning, BlackBerry users on Twitter and online forums were reporting that their phones were buzzing with incoming messages again.
RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis apologized for the outage in a video posted to the company’s site Thursday morning.
“It’s too soon to say that this issue is fully resolved,” Lazaridis said. “I’d like to give you an estimated time of full recovery around the world, but I cannot do this with certainty at this time.”
A crucial link in BlackBerry’s European network failed Monday, and a backup also failed. Although the underlying issues were quickly repaired, the system had built up a backlog of emails and messages that needed to be wound down. Meanwhile, messages destined for Europe were piling up at BlackBerry data centers in the rest of world. By Wednesday, the outage had spread to the U.S. and Canada, slowing service to a crawl there.
RIM shares were down 35 cents, or 1.5 percent, at $23.53 in premarket trading in New York. Investors have taken the outage in stride, figuring that it’s only one of many problems RIM is facing. The shares are up slightly since the outage began.
The maker of BlackBerry smartphones says the problems that have plagued users worldwide were caused by a core switch failure within the company’s infrastructure.
Research in Motion Ltd. says that a transition to a back-up switch did not function as tested, causing a large backlog of data.
In an update Tuesday, it said it is now working to clear the backlog and restore normal service as soon as possible.
Large numbers of BlackBerry users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, Brazil, Chile and Argentina are experiencing problems for a second day, with many unable to access email and messaging services.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
LONDON (AP) _ BlackBerry’s woes spread on Tuesday as the smartphone’s maker reported service disruptions for a second straight day in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and fresh problems in Latin America and India.
Research in Motion Ltd., which makes BlackBerry devices, acknowledged there were ongoing problems Tuesday, hours after it said services were operating normally and the cause of delays in subscriber services a day earlier had been resolved.
“Some users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, India, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina are experiencing messaging and browsing delays,” the company said in a statement, adding that it is “working to restore normal service as quickly as possible payday loans.”
Research in Motion Ltd. also apologized for “any inconvenience,” as Twitter and the Internet lit up with condemnation over a delayed response to problems some users had reported for hours.
In Britain, Vodafone UK told customers via Twitter that service was not fully restored. Rival T-Mobile UK blamed “a European-wide outage on the BlackBerry network” which it said was affecting all mobile operators. There were also reports of problems elsewhere in Europe, such as Spain.
In addition, the disruptions were experienced in the Middle East and Africa.
Etisalat, which operates in the United Arab Emirates, apologized for “the further interruption” to Blackberry services, “once again due to RIM problems.”
And Kenya’s Safaricom Ltd. said on Twitter that its Blackberry customers were experiencing a “technical fault,” while South Africa’s Vodacom told subscribers the issues were affecting multiple networks and countries.
There were no reports of any problems in the U.S.
Angry smartphone users took to Twitter to vent frustration with the company and bemoaned the loss of their messaging capabilities, questioning why the company took so long to restore services.
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