Business and Finance

The European Central Bank left its benchmark interest rate at a record low as policy makers weigh the risks of withdrawing emergency lending measures amid Greece’s fiscal crisis.

The Frankfurt-based ECB kept its key rate at 1 percent, as predicted by all 52 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. President Jean-Claude Trichet has promised to give details on the next step in the ECB’s exit strategy when he holds a press conference at 2:30 p.m. today.

Greece’s soaring budget gap has roiled financial markets and sent bond yields surging in Spain and Portugal, whose deficits have also swelled in the wake of Europe’s worst recession since World War II. The crisis is undermining confidence in the euro area’s economic recovery and complicating the ECB’s plans to scale back the liquidity measures it introduced to nurse the region through the slump.

Trichet must avoid any hint that the ECB will prematurely end its unlimited cash support for euro-area banks, said Colin Ellis, an economist at Daiwa Capital Markets in London. “It could spook markets, push up interest rates and make it more difficult for countries like Greece to finance its debt.”

Greece, which must replenish 20 billion euros of borrowing in April and May, today began selling 10-year bonds.

‘Addicted’

The euro stayed lower against the dollar after the announcement and was down 0.2 percent to $1.3674 as of 1:47 p.m. in Frankfurt.

The Bank of England today left its benchmark rate at a record low of 0.5 percent and kept the target for its bond- purchase program at 200 billion pounds ($302 billion).

The cornerstone of the ECB’s program has been to provide banks with unlimited funding at its key rate in the hope they will lend it on to households and companies. The ECB has already said it will stop giving banks 12 and six-month loans to ensure they don’t become “addicted” to the cheap cash.

Officials will today decide whether to extend the policy of unlimited allotment in its remaining seven-day, one-month and three-month refinancing operations beyond the current guarantee of April 13. Before the global financial crisis, banks were required to bid for funds in auctions.

“Trichet will be very keen to show that the ECB will not have its exit strategy held hostage by the Greek situation,” said Laurent Bilke, a former ECB forecaster who now works for Nomura International Plc in London free credit score. “They always said they would announce the next steps of the exit this month, and they will.”

Demonstrations

The Greek government has announced a series of spending cuts to convince investors it can reduce its budget gap, plans that have prompted protests and strikes. Demonstrators today took over the Finance Ministry building in central Athens and blocked streets in the city.

As well as Greece, ECB policy makers have to take into account the sluggish economic recovery. The central bank in December forecast growth of 0.8 percent this year after a 4.1 percent contraction in 2009. Trichet will present new forecasts today.

“The recovery feels more vulnerable than it did in December, when the ECB initiated the exit,” said Mark Wall, an economist at Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt.

Inflation Muted

Euro-area growth almost ground to a halt in the fourth quarter, the European Union confirmed today. Unemployment held at the highest level in more than 11 years in January and economic confidence unexpectedly weakened in February. The European Commission last month said the economy may fail to gather strength for most of 2010.

The cooling recovery is keeping a lid on prices, reducing the need for the ECB to tighten policy any time soon. Inflation eased to 0.9 percent last month from 1 percent in January. That compares with the ECB’s aim to keep inflation just below 2 percent.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. this week pushed its forecast for the first ECB rate increase into 2011 from the fourth quarter of this year, and said the bank will exit non-standard measures more slowly than previously anticipated.

“The tensions surrounding Greece and the banks in general are likely to inject some concern that a too-fast exit could be dangerous,” Goldman’s chief European economist Erik Nielsen said in a note to investors. “We now believe that they’ll aim for a somewhat more gradual path than the one we have been forecasting for some time.”

Source

Payday loan online - Quick application results in seconds.

A product of Molson Coors Brewing Co. was the prize in a friendly wager between President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper over Sunday's men's ice hockey final between the U.S. and Canada at the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Canada won the game and the gold medal in overtime, 3-2.

Obama had offered to buy Harper a case of Molson Canadian beer in the event of a Canadian victory quick cash. And Harper had wagered a case of Yuengling beer if the Americans had won.

Molson Canadian is a product of Molson Coors, which is headquartered in Denver and Montreal.

Yuengling is made by D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc. of Pottsville, Pa.

Source

Good-bye, Big Blue.

Whoa, calm down there – Biz isn’t talking about IBM. Rather, Biz means the area’s other big blue behemoth: Terminal 1 at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The RDU Airport Authority is making plans to renovate the aging facility in the coming years, and a new outside color will be part of the changes.

“We’re going to paint that blue out,” says Chairman Robb Teer, who adds that a new canopy system probably will be built. “I think that alone will give it a modern twist.”

While Teer insists that the authority hasn’t chosen a replacement color, he says beige and silver are being considered.

Hmmph. That’s a little boring, don’t you think? And Biz bets that Airport Director John Brantley, an N.C. State grad, would prefer something in the red family.

Source

Dubai’s not the only onetime highflier that risks drowning in debt.

The Middle East city-state’s investment arm, Dubai World, is working with creditors to restructure $26 billion of debt it took on in a multiyear, global property binge.

Last week, markets briefly panicked after the firm signaled that it couldn’t make its debt payments and the Dubai government said that it wouldn’t step in.

While Dubai’s problems appear for now to be under control, there is no shortage of other nations suffering a combination of plunging income and outsize borrowings that could soon demand attention.

Greece is running a budget deficit expected to exceed 12% of gross domestic product this year. Another country on the bubble is Romania, which is holding a presidential runoff election Saturday whose outcome is key to securing additional aid from lenders led by the International Monetary Fund.

So far, aid agencies like the IMF and the European Union have provided emergency funding to limit the depth of the economic downturns in troubled nations such as Hungary, Ukraine and Latvia. The IMF said in September it has made $163 billion of lending commitments since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

But with economies everywhere under duress and investors fearful about the risks being assumed by free-spending governments, it is only a matter of time until the next chapter in the global debt crisis unfolds.

"The question that’s being tested around the world is, what is the limit to the support that has been offered to these stressed countries?" said Mary Stokes, an economist who watches developing Europe for RGE Monitor, the analysis Web site run by New York University economist Nouriel Roubini.

Greece is one of those at risk of failing that test. The southern European state, with a long history of loose finances, is coming under attack in the credit markets for its excessive spending.

The Greek government’s cost of borrowing money has surged following a rating agency downgrade early in 2009. The cost of insuring its government bonds against default has soared tenfold since the financial crisis started brewing in 2007.

Greek voters responded by toppling the government and putting in place an administration that proposed cutting the budget deficit by a quarter next year. Still, even the improved budget projects a budget deficit equal to more than 9% of GDP - triple the oft-ignored European Union limit.

Some observers say that Greece may have no choice but to go hat in hand to the EU, which has already provided ample support to Greek banks via cheap loans. But the finance minister of the newly elected socialist government, George Papaconstantinou, insists no request for a bailout is on the way.

Papaconstantinou pleaded instead in an op-ed piece Monday in the Wall Street Journal that "what Greece needs from its partners is, in effect, a ’suspension of disbelief.’ "

If Greece is the most humid debt hot spot after Dubai right now, others aren’t far behind. The export-dependent states of Latvia and Ukraine continue to struggle even with IMF support. And though the bigger economies of Spain and Ireland are much better diversified, they too are struggling to contain the damage of massive housing bubbles earlier this decade.

Even the biggest, most creditworthy borrowers aren’t beyond reproach following a year of record stimulus spending. Credit Derivatives Research’s government risk index has jumped almost 50% off its mid-September low, amid rising concern about fiscal imbalances in Japan, the United States and the U.K.

Yet the budget problem in the U.S. hardly counts as a crisis in itself. Federal debt held by the public is expected to soar to 60% of GDP at the end of fiscal 2010 from 41% at the end of last year, but that’s well below the triple digit readings being taken in some of the distressed nations and in Japan.

The bigger potential problem for the United States is the cost of servicing all that debt over coming years, and whether all that spending might dampen economic growth.

Federal interest payments already amount to 1% of GDP, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and could hit 2.5% of GDP by 2020 unless lawmakers make changes.

In any case, the lesson many people are taking out of the Dubai episode is that with asset values having fallen and debt levels still high, we can expect to see more unhappy surprises in coming months.

"Dubai was very likely NOT the last in the series of post-credit-bubble aftershocks," Gluskin Sheff economist David Rosenberg wrote in a note to clients.  

Source

State Treasurer Ben Westlund on Tuesday announced a $5 million investment in Marquam Hill Capital.

The Beaverton firm is launching a venture capital fund that will help Portland-area businesses connect with researchers at Oregon Health & Science University. The money is expected to help launch medical-related startup businesses developing products for the prevention and treatment of cancer.

The $5 million investment was made through the Oregon Growth Account, which is managed by the state treasurer.

Created in 1995, the Growth Account invests a portion of Oregon Lottery money in Oregon businesses.

To date, the program has invested roughly $93 million of state money. As of March, it had generated $18 million in earnings.

The investment is contingent on the Marquam Hill Capital Fund raising an additional $20 million.

Source

Wilfrid Sio was suspicious when he got an email from PayPal, with a subject line saying account verification.

"Congratulations! You have been chosen by the Online Department to take part in our survey. In return, we will credit $99 to your account, just for your time."

Instead of clicking on the link in the email, he wrote to me instead.

Send it to spoof@paypal.com, I told him.

The company’s response: "You’re right – it was a phishing attempt and we’re working on stopping the fraud. By reporting the problem, you’ve made a difference."

Phishing (pronounced fishing) is a fraud designed to steal your identity. It uses false pretenses to get you to disclose sensitive personal information, such as credit card numbers or account passwords.

A common scam involves sending a fraudulent email that claims to be from a well-known company. Phishing can also be carried out in person, over the phone, through fraudulent pop-up windows and websites.

How do you spot a phishing email?

There are some telltale signs, which I verified by comparing Sio’s spoof against a genuine PayPal email I received recently (telling me the credit card used for my account had expired).

• Generic greeting. A typical phishing email will have a generic greeting, such as "Dear User." The spoof was addressed to "Dear client, PayPal." All real PayPal emails will use your first and last name.
• False sense of urgency. A phishing email will try to deceive you by saying you will be in jeopardy if your account is not updated right away. The spoof said the survey deadline was Nov. 30, three weeks after the mailing date, to avoid losing out on the $99 credit.
• Fake links. A phishing email will have a link that looks legitimate, but may send you to a fraudulent website. The spoof had a link to www.xcyg.net, which preceded the PayPal name and led me to Beijing Sunrise Technology Co. Ltd. (almost entirely in Chinese). Always check where a link is going before you click and if it looks suspicious, don’t click it.

Eric Hagedorn, an experienced eBay seller, says you should never sign into your PayPal account from a link provided by an email, no matter what the email says.

"This is how 90 per cent of all PayPal accounts get hacked – the person gives away their password to a fake PayPal site."

Always log into PayPal by opening a new browser and typing in the following, https://www.paypal.com/ca.

The term "https" should precede any web address (or URL) where you enter personal information. The "s" stands for secure. If you don’t see "https," you’re not in a secure web session and you should not enter data.

Now there’s an extra layer of security for the 8 million registered PayPal accounts in Canada – a foolproof system to prevent your account from being hacked.

The PayPal security key, which costs $5, has two forms. You can carry a small device, the size of a credit card, which lets you create a unique six-digit security code each time you log into your account. Or you can sign up to get unique security codes sent by text message to your mobile phone.

"With this in place, you can give your passwords to hackers and they’ll still be unable to break into your account," Hagedorn says.

PayPal, owned by eBay Inc., accounted for 31 per cent of company revenues in the last quarter. It’s now accepted by other online retailers such as Dell and La Senza.

Next Sunday, I’ll look at prepaid credit cards and problems that can arise when using them online.

eroseman@thestar.ca

Source

Qwest Communications International Inc posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit and boosted its full-year outlook as it planned more cut costs, sending its shares up 3.4 percent.

While the telephone operator’s quarterly revenue fell 9.6 percent, slightly steeper than analysts had expected, investors cheered Qwest’s ability to rein in costs.

“They’re shrinking their way to greatness here,” said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Chris King. “It continues to be a cost-cutting story.”

Like bigger phone companies AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, Qwest has been losing home phone customers to cable rivals and to wireless, as some consumers forsake landlines to depend entirely on cellphones.

Qwest reported a third-quarter net profit of $136 million, or 8 cents per share, compared with $145 million, or 8 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding unusual items, earnings per share would have been 9 cents compared with the average analyst estimate of 7 cents, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

In the quarter, Qwest’s cost of sales fell to $932 million from $1.23 billion a year ago.

Revenue fell to $3.05 billion, compared to the average Street estimate of $3.07 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The company said “wireless substitution, increased unemployment, low business formation and soft housing trends” in its 14-state operating region cut into revenue faxless payday advance.

However, Qwest forecast full-year adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization to be at the upper end of its previous target of $4.25 billion to $4.4 billion.

Qwest also cut its capital spending target for the year to $1.6 billion or lower, from its previous budget of $1.7 billion or lower, and raised its estimate for full-year adjusted free cash flow to a range of $1.6 billion to $1.7 billion, from the previous target of $1.5 billion to $1.6 billion.

“Qwest’s numbers were generally in line and slightly better on the outlook,” said Piper Jaffray analyst Christopher Larsen. “The name of the game for Qwest this quarter and for the rest of the year is strong cost cutting.”

Total access lines fell about 11 percent in the quarter, with the biggest decline coming in its consumer business, Qwest said.

“We are optimistic about our prospects as the economy begins to improve in the quarters ahead,” Qwest Chief Executive Edward Mueller said in the earnings statement.

Qwest shares rose 3.4 percent, or 12 cents, in premarket trade to $3.57.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Derek Caney)

Read more

Japanese Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii issued his clearest warning yet that his nation is open to intervening in the currency market even as the Group of Seven declined to criticize the tumbling dollar.

“If currencies show some excessive moves in a biased direction, we will take action,” Fujii said Oct. 3 in Istanbul after a meeting of G-7 finance ministers and central bankers. He declined to say if the yen is now trading in such a way.

Fujii’s position has shifted since his initial remarks on taking office last month, when he opposed seeking a “weak” yen and selling the currency which last week rose to an eight-month high of 88.24 against the dollar. The gain is threatening the profits of exporters from Canon Inc. to Toyota Motor Corp.

The change in stance reflects a slide in the dollar that has sparked concern from Canada to France over the potential impact on economic recoveries. While the G-7 stopped short of issuing a specific call for a stronger U.S. currency, Fujii’s language raises the risk of the first currency-market action by a G-7 nation since 2004.

“Japan is thinking more about the currency’s effect on the real economy, and if necessary they’ll intervene,” Gerard Lyons, the London-based chief economist of Standard Chartered Bank, said in Istanbul. “For now they seem to want to talk it down, but eventually they’ll have to do something about it.”

Comments ‘Misunderstood’

Fujii, 77, said last month he opposed stepping into the foreign-exchange market in principle, before revising that comment to say he wasn’t an advocate of a strong currency and that Japan was open to acting should the market move “abnormally.” Fujii said in Istanbul that his early comments about the yen “have been a bit misunderstood,” and that currencies should be set by markets.

Fujii is confusing traders and likely still wants the yen to gain as the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, which won power in August, tries to refocus the economy toward domestic demand and away from exports, said Stephen Jen, a managing director at BlueGold Capital Management LLP in London.

“I doubt Finance Minister Fujii will materially change his stance until Japan is pushed deep into recession,” Jen said.

Japan hasn’t entered the foreign exchange market since the central bank, at the request of the Finance Ministry, sold a record 14.8 trillion yen ($164 billion) in the first quarter of 2004 to restrain the currency. In his first tenure as finance chief, from August 1993 until June 1994, Fujii oversaw more than 1.3 trillion yen ($15 billion) of yen sales. The G-7 hasn’t intervened as a group since September 2000.

Export-Driven Recovery

The yen’s appreciation threatens to undermine Japan’s export-driven economic recovery as the jobless rate hovers near a record high and deflation continues. Tokyo-based Canon, the country’s biggest maker of office equipment, estimates every 1 yen appreciation against the dollar will lower its second-half operating profit by 4.2 billion yen.

The “current level around 90 yen is a bit painful,” Yukitoshi Funo, executive vice president of Toyota City-based Toyota, the world’s largest seller of hybrid autos, said on Sept. 25. “I think the yen should be a little weaker.”

Fujii struck a different tone than his G-7 colleagues, who repeated that “excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates have adverse implications for economic and financial stability no teletrack payday loans.”

That means further declines in the dollar are likely, said Sophia Drossos, co-head for global foreign exchange strategy at Morgan Stanley in New York. In April 2008, the G-7 spoke out against a declining dollar by complaining about “sharp fluctuations in major currencies.”

Recognizing Limitations

“If the G-7 wanted to push back more forcefully, they could have,” said Drossos, a former manager of the Federal Reserve’s foreign-exchange portfolio. “Since they didn’t, they may be tolerant of recent moves or they may recognize their limitations in slowing recent trends.”

The dollar may also be undermined as governments and central bankers seek to tackle so-called imbalances such as the U.S. trade deficit and China’s current-account surplus, said Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit Group in London.

“This inevitably validates dollar weakness” he said. “This was an impossible circle for the G-7 to square.”

Still, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said after the meeting that there is a need for a “strong dollar.” U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told reporters that “it is very important to the United States that we continue to have a strong dollar.”

Pressure on China

The G-7 kept pressure on China to allow greater flexibility in the yuan in the interest of smoothing out lopsided flows of trade and investment. While the dollar has dropped 14 percent against a basket of seven currencies since early March, it has gained 0.3 percent against the yuan, which is managed by Chinese authorities.

That is handing Chinese exporters an advantage in overseas markets and forcing other nations to shoulder the burden of the dollar’s dive.

“We all need to have our currencies fluctuate” if their relative values are to be set by the market, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said in an interview yesterday. He added: “There’s clearly upward pressure on the Canadian dollar.”

Lagarde said she was “struck” by Chinese pledges to bolster domestic demand. It was “very precise language” that, if followed, will help “address global imbalances” and “have consequences on exchange rates,” she said.

‘Fragile’ Recovery

G-7 officials said the global economic recovery is “fragile” and promised to maintain stimulus programs until growth takes hold. They met in Turkey before this week’s annual meetings of the International Monetary and World Bank and a week after the G-20 leaders named that forum as the primary arena for international economic policy-making.

The transfer of power toward the G-20, which includes emerging markets such as China and Brazil, prompted the G-7 finance officials to say they would tighten the schedule of their meetings, work more in parallel with G-20 events and issue statements only on merit. G-20 finance chiefs will meet next month in Scotland.

“We agreed that we want to work more informally again in the future, taking a step back to what it used to be like in the past,” said German Deputy Finance Minister Joerg Asmussen.

Source

In a victory for Boeing, a preliminary World Trade Organization panel is likely to rule on Friday that European governments illegally subsidized Airbus aircraft, the Wall Street Journal said, citing trade officials, lawyers and executives from both sides.

The expected ruling in the biggest trade dispute in the WTO’s nearly 15-year history has been years in the making.

Britain three weeks ago pledged 340 million pounds ($553.5 million) in loans to help Airbus develop the A350 widebody passenger jet, which is intended to compete with Boeing’s much-delayed 787 Dreamliner.

Germany would provide 1.1 billion euros ($1.57 billion) and France 1.4 billion euros ($2.0 billion), German and French officials have said.

Last week, a Ted Austell, Boeing’s vice president for government operations, told reporters that he hoped the expected ruling would force European governments to reconsider plans to help finance the A350.

Boeing and Airbus could not be immediately reached for comment by Reuters.

($1=.6143 Pound =.7006 Euro)

(Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Read more

Ontario teachers have upped their bet on Toronto sports fans, setting off a new round of speculation about the value of the city’s hockey, basketball and soccer teams.

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan said yesterday it is buying a further 7.7 per cent stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment from media company CTVglobemedia.

That will leave Teachers’ with a 66 per cent stake in the Toronto Maple Leafs, Raptors, Toronto FC and the Marlies, plus the Air Canada Centre, BMO Field and Ricoh Coliseum.

The owner with the second-largest stake is businessman and MLSE chairman Larry Tanenbaum, who also increased his significant stake when he bought 7.7 per cent from CTVglobemedia in February.

In a release, Ivan Fecan, president of CTVglobemedia, said the broadcaster-publisher sold at a profit but said nothing about the sale or purchase price.

"The time is right for us to exit and redeploy the proceeds from this sale to pay down debt," Fecan revealed.

Like other media companies in Canada, CTV is faced with declining advertising revenue. Meanwhile, its lenders will require it to keep debt service costs in line with cash flow.

It has been a constant guessing game to determine the market value of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment.

Forbes business magazine estimated last November the Leafs were the most valuable hockey franchise in North America at $449 million (U.S.) and the Raptors the 17th most valuable basketball franchise at $310 million. Part of those estimates included the value of the Air Canada Centre, estimating it was worth about $228 million free credit report without a credit card. So, those three assets were supposedly worth $876 million (U.S.), or about $1.07 billion (Canadian) at the time.

The only public disclosure from an insider is contained in the 2008 annual report of the Ontario Teachers’ Plan.

The report reveals the pension plan put a total value of $1.58 billion in private Canadian equity holdings. It held a 25 per cent stake in CTVglobemedia and, at the time, a 58 per cent stake in MLSE, plus an undisclosed number of other companies worth less than $100 million each.

Any estimate of the value of these firms would be based on old data in a period of rapidly deteriorating ad revenue. An estimate at time of sale would be complicated further by the fact the buyers are part-owners of the motivated seller.

Pension plan executives would have had an interest in propping up CTVglobemedia while, at the same time, assigning a significant value to Maple Leaf Sports.

Spokespersons for CTVglobemedia and Ontario Teachers’ both declined comment beyond what was in their release. All parties would have committed to keep the private transaction, well, private.

Tanenbaum chose not to return a telephone call, as did Eugene Melnyk, owner of Ontario’s other major league hockey team, the Ottawa Senators franchise.

A spokesperson for would-be franchise purchaser Jim Balsillie, co-CEO of Research In Motion, said he would not talk to the press.

Source