Federal regulators are moving to sell the remnants of failed IndyMac Bank before year-end, mopping up from the second-largest bank failure this year.
It was unclear whether the government would sell it off as a whole or in pieces. IndyMac had about $32 billion in assets when it was seized by the FDIC. Its collapse is expected to cost the federal bank insurance fund $8 payday loan.9 billion. Final bids for its assets were due Dec. 15.
Nintendo Co Ltd said sales of its Wii game console more than doubled during the week of Thanksgiving in the United States, apparently defying the retail gloom of the global economic crisis.
President Satoru Iwata told Reuters in an interview that Wii sales more than doubled to about 800,000 units during the week of Thanksgiving, from about 350,000 units a year earlier.
While Iwata did not give specific dates, he said the sales were measured over a seven-day period that included both Thanksgiving and the so-called Black Friday for U.S. retailers, which is the traditional start of the holiday shopping season and when retailers rack up their biggest sales of the year.
“Fortunately for us a lot of shoppers put our products at the top of their list,” Iwata said on Monday.
He said sales of its DS handheld game player were up about 20 percent year-on-year during the holiday period. European Wii sales so far this holiday season have outstripped last year’s, he said.
“We are shooting for quite big numbers as our annual (unit) sales targets. But we are not in a situation where it is getting difficult to hit that target or our plans are getting off track,” Iwata said.
Nintendo, locked in a three-way battle with Sony Corp and Microsoft Corp in the global video game industry, aims to sell 27.5 million units of the Wii in the year to end-March, up 48 percent from a year earlier.
Since 2002, Iwata has focused on expanding the overall gaming population by launching game machines and software like the ‘Wii Fit’ home exercise game, rather than competing head-on with Sony and Microsoft in enhancing the speed and power of game consoles fast pay day loan.
That strategy appears to have paid off handsomely as the Wii is outselling Sony’s PlayStation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 by a large margin, allowing Nintendo to forecast an operating profit more than three times as big as Sony’s.
“When similar products are on store shelves, price competition is inevitable. Nintendo has been trying to steer clear of that direction and create a market of our own,” Iwata said. “Our effort in the past is now bearing fruit.”
NOT OUT OF STEAM
Worldwide Wii sales came to 34.6 million units at end-September, against about 16.8 million for the PlayStation 3 and about 22.5 million for Microsoft Corp’s Xbox 360.
“The competition stage is over,” Nomura Securities analyst Yuta Sakurai said. “The spread on shipment volumes is so large that it’s not even worth talking about it. They aren’t rivals.”
For a graphic on hardware sales by Nintendo and its rivals, click here
Iwata said people tended to pick video games even when their budget was tight as they were affordable.
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."
The Conference Board of Canada says its consumer confidence index fell again this month, losing 2.9 points to 71.
The think-tank’s latest poll, conducted between Nov. 6 and Nov. 13, found the largest one-month decline on record for consumer sentiment in the Prairie region. Confidence also sagged in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, but edged up slightly in Atlantic Canada.
Conference Board economist Paul Darby says consumer sentiment "has fallen to depths previously reached only in 1982 and 1990, which were both periods of recession in Canada."
Darby notes that "ongoing troubles in equity markets undoubtedly had a negative effect on consumers’ view of their family financial situations and future job prospects in their communities businesscards."
He did find one area of optimism: 25.9 per cent of those polled said now is a good time to make a major purchase, up slightly from October, which Darby said "may indicate that the slide in the index is bottoming out."
The Conference Board poll claims a 95 per cent likelihood of being accurate within 2.2 percentage points.
It’s time for a fresh approach to communication.
Companies should make it clear regarding what comes with your credit card besides reward points or cash rebates.
This week, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada and MasterCard Canada released a model plain-language credit card application form.
When asked to test the redesigned form, consumers had the same reaction, says FCAC commissioner Ursula Menke: "Oh, my goodness, I didn’t understand this before."
People who had used credit cards for years said they were willing, and even eager, to seek out additional information.
What would you see if companies tried to educate you about your rights?
Here’s a guide to what’s in the model application.
Right on top of the first page, you find out all the rates you will be charged (such as 18 per cent for purchases, 20 per cent for cash advances, 4.9 per cent for balance transfers for six months and 20 per cent after six months).
There’s no interest charged only if you pay this month’s balance in full by the due date and you’ve also paid last month’s balance in full by the due date. (This two-month method of calculating interest on new purchases has been adopted by most credit card issuers.)
There’s no interest-free period for balance transfers. Say you transferred $5,000 to a new credit card on June 2. The interest on the balance transfer will be calculated from June 2 – even if the bill arrives July 15.
There’s no interest-free period and the interest is calculated from the day you get the cash advance free credit score.
Getting a cash advance will cost you $2 inside Canada and $4 outside Canada (in addition to interest paid).
A bounced cheque costs you $25; an extra copy of your monthly statement is $2; going over your credit limit is $20; and for transactions made outside Canada, you pay an extra 2.5 per cent of the amount in Canadian dollars.
The bank will give access to your personal information to other organizations, such as credit reporting agencies, bank affiliates and selected service providers.
For me, the privacy statement was the real eye-opener.
I didn’t realize how much latitude they had to share your personal information with companies selling unrelated products – and, of course, to profit by doing so.
Menke said she hoped credit card issuers would adopt a plain-language application. "It’s in the companies’ financial interest that people know what they’re getting into."
I disagree. Credit card issuers make their contracts almost unreadable for a reason – they’re happier if you don’t know what you’re getting into.
By communicating with customers at a Grade 5 level and disclosing all the ways they can make money at your expense, they’re opening themselves up to questions about how their businesses work.
Of course, I’d like to be proven wrong by seeing a bank adopt this model application right away.
Ellen Roseman’s column appears Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Email eroseman@thestar.ca.
Microsoft Corp. plans to invest $60 million in South Korea over the next three years, President Lee Myung-bak’s office said Monday.
In a statement, the presidential Blue House said Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) CEO Steve Ballmer spoke of the plan during a meeting with Lee at the president’s office.
The money will be invested in areas including training and new business cultivation, the statement said.
Korean-language press materials released by Microsoft mentioned the projects but made no mention of the investment amount.
Separately, Microsoft, South Korea’s Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group and South Korea’s Institute for Information Technology Advancement opened a center to develop information technology products and services focused on automobiles.
The opening of the Automotive IT Innovation Center follows an agreement in May by Microsoft and the world’s fifth-largest automotive group to cooperate in developing next-generation in-car information and entertainment systems, Kia Motors Corp cash till payday. said in a press release.
"Microsoft and Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group share a similar vision for the role that information technology will play in connecting people to information, communications and entertainment while they are in their cars," Ballmer said, according to the release.
Also, Ballmer and Nam Yong, CEO of LG Electronics Inc., signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at strategic collaboration in the area of mobile convergence, LG said.
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.
General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC may be forced into bankruptcy by slowing economies and dwindling U.S. auto sales, Standard & Poor’s analyst Robert Schulz said yesterday.
The companies said they have no plans to seek bankruptcy protection.
But the assessment underscored the pressure on the industry as the worsening credit crisis makes it harder for buyers to get loans and dealers to finance their operations. U.S. industry-wide sales tumbled 27 per cent in September, the most in 17 years.
S&P said yesterday that it may further trim credit ratings for GM and Ford on forecasts for 2009 auto demand to fall to its lowest level since 1992.
"Macro factors could overwhelm them at some point" even with the three biggest U.S. automakers committed to turnarounds, said Schulz, S&P’s lead automotive credit analyst.
GM, which has said it will idle assembly factories in Oshawa, Janesville, Wis., and Toluca, Mexico, by 2010, is likely to announce further production cuts and possible plant closures as early as next week as it deals with the sales slump and a collapse in its stock price, sources told Associated Press.
A source said the cuts likely will hit engine, transmission and stamping operations.
With all three companies working to boost cash, any bankruptcy filing would be a last resort, not a "strategic" decision, said Schulz.
He said the "trigger" for a forced restructuring under bankruptcy protection would be based on the automakers’ ability to preserve liquidity as sales decline.
GM shares will fall further, Barclays Capital analyst Brian Johnson said in a report yesterday, reducing his stock price for the Detroit-based automaker to $4 (U.S.)
"With auto sales stalled in the U.S. and beginning to contract in the rest of the world, we believe GM’s cash needs are increasing," wrote Johnson.
GM and Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford lost a combined $24.1 billion last quarter. GM last posted an annual profit in 2004, while Ford hasn’t had a full-year profit since 2005.
Shares in Swiss bank UBS AG took a new tumble on Monday, falling further than a hard-hit banking sector after reports it will have to write down another $5 billion on its risky investments in the second half of the year.
News that lack of liquidity had forced U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers (LEH.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to file for bankruptcy protection dragged down financial sector stocks worldwide.
Without quoting sources, Swiss paper Sonntags Zeitung said UBS (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Europe’s hardest hit bank in the financial market turmoil, would have to write down another $5 billion on its risky investments in the second half.
The paper said it expected UBS to update the market before an October 2 shareholder meeting. UBS declined to comment.
“The bad news is that the banking crisis is not over and that there are still lots of bad credits around,” Claude Zehnder, head of research for technical trading at Zuercher Kantonalbank, said.
“Also, the possibility has arisen this weekend of further writedowns,” he added.
UBS announced last month writedowns had climbed a further $5 billion in the second quarter to top $42 billion, and said it was splitting the investment bank that had dragged it into the red from its core wealth management business.
UBS shares were down 10.1 percent at 21.14 Swiss francs at 0815 GMT, underperforming the DJ Stoxx European banks index , which was down 5.8 percent http://fcrwizard.com. UBS shares had rallied recently after losing two-thirds of their value in the last year.
Africa may be a needy continent but this need offers rich rewards for businesses that are daring, innovative and flexible enough to grapple with poor infrastructure, underdeveloped markets and volatile politics.
This is the premise of a new book, “Africa Rising: How 900 Million African Consumers Can Offer More Than You Think” (Wharton School Publishing, $29.99).
Author Vijay Mahajan, who holds the John P. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business at McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, debunks traditional stereotypes about a continent that is starting to beep ever louder on the radars of global investors.
His book, published this month, is built around interviews with African and expatriate business people across the continent, including producers of consumer goods, alcohol, soft drinks, airline firms and retailers.
“(Many entrepreneurs) were tired of the media reporting too many negative stories about Africa .. faxless payday loans. if something happened in one country, all Africa was on fire. They were saying ‘how come our story doesn’t get out?’” he told Reuters in an interview.
High commodity prices, greater political stability in many countries, fewer wars, better communications and economic growth of around 6.5 percent have helped lure new investment, often from China and other emerging countries, primarily for resources such as oil and gas.
Mahajan says Africa’s 900 million plus people in 53 countries offer much as a market — they need to eat, they need clean water, clothing and medicine and they want cell phones, bicycles and computers.
If Africa were a single country, according to World Bank data, it would have had $978 billion total gross national income in 2006, placing it ahead of India.
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