Business and Finance

1901 • John F. Queeny sets up Monsanto Chemical Works in honor of his wife, Olga Monsanto, and begins making saccharin at a St. Louis plant.

1929 • Monsanto buys two companies to enter the rubber chemicals business. It also buys several other chemical companies.

1997 • Monsanto spins off its chemical group as Solutia Inc.

December 2003 • Solutia files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

May 2004 • Solutia promotes Jeffry Quinn to president and CEO after he joined the company in 2003.

May 2007 • Solutia buys the half of Brussels-based Flexsys NV, a supplier of chemicals to the rubber industry, that it didn’t own.

February 2008 • Solutia emerges from bankruptcy.

June 2009 • Solutia sells its nylon business unit.

January 2012 • Eastman Chemical announces plans to acquire Solutia.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch research, Solutia

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Wall Street opened higher Wednesday following reports that the International Monetary Fund could get more cash to help countries struggling to manage their debt.

The Dow Jones industrial average is up 43 points at 12,483 after the first half-hour of trading. That’s an increase of 0.4 percent. Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are the Dow’s leading stocks. BofA rose 2.6 percent, JPMorgan 2 percent.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. jumped 3.5 percent after the investment bank reported earnings that trumped analysts’ expectations. Profit still sank 58 percent in the last three months of 2011, a result of sinking interest rates and volatile financial markets.

Other financial stocks were sharply lower. State Street Corp. dropped 6.5 percent.

Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, said Tuesday that the fund was looking at ways to increase the amount it can lend to countries, partly to deal with Europe’s debt crisis.

The S&P 500 index is up 5 points to 1,298. The Nasdaq is up 16 points, or 0.6 percent, to 2,744.

Yahoo Inc. rose 2 no credit check payday loans.5 percent on news that co-founder Jerry Yang is leaving the struggling Internet company. The departure clears the way for newly hired CEO Scott Thompson to take more radical action to shake up the company.

The Federal Reserve said manufacturing rose 0.9 percent in December, the biggest increase since December 2010. Output surged as companies bought more machines and materials.

Among other stocks making large moves Wednesday:

_ Amphenol Corp. soared 10 percent, the largest gain in the S&P 500. The manufacturer of fiber optic cables reported earnings that beat analysts’ expectations.

_ Linear Technology Corp. jumped 8.3 percent. The Milpitas, Calif.-based circuit maker said it expects revenue to rise between 4 and 8 percent in its third quarter following strong order increases in December and January. It also raised its dividend by a penny to 25 cents per share.

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Global stock markets were mixed Friday on 2011’s last trading day and turned in heavy losses for the year after Europe’s debt crisis and natural disasters battered a struggling global economy. Japan’s benchmark hit its lowest close in three decades.

Benchmark oil hovered below $100 per barrel and the dollar weakened against the yen but rose against the euro.

Asian traders recorded gains for the day Friday but markets in Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong ended the year with double-digit losses.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index, after three straight days of losses, rose 0.4 percent to 8,429.45, but it was the lowest closing since 1982. China’s benchmark gained 1.2 percent to close at 2,199.42 _ still, a 20 percent loss for the year.

European shares were steady or slightly down in early trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 lost 0.2 percent at 5,555.92. Germany’s DAX was marginally down at 5,846.35 and France’s CAC-40 was nearly unchanged at 3,127.34.

Wall Street appeared headed for a lower closing, with Dow Jones industrial futures down 0.2 percent at 12,194 and S&P 500 futures slipping 0.2 percent to 1,255.40.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index gained 0.2 percent to close at 18,434.39.

Australia’s benchmark S&P ASX 200 ended the year at 4,140.4 _ down 0.4 percent on the day and 14.5 percent lower for 2011. A day earlier, South Korea’s benchmark Kospi closed at 1,825.74 on Thursday _ 11 percent down on its last trading session of the year Thursday.

Analysts said global stocks tumbled in lockstep, suffering from the effects of natural disasters, a wobbly recovery in the U.S. _ and an escalating European debt crisis that has resisted repeated measures taken by the region’s governments and financial institutions.

“The big reason is Europe. Europe tried to muddle through without a real solution. They can save a small country like Greece, but they cannot save a big country like Italy. Two trillion euros in foreign debt _ nobody in the world has that kind of money,” said Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong.

“Europe will enter a lost decade, a decade of no solutions and no growth,” he said. “Maybe except in Germany, their machinery is still selling.”

Japan’s benchmark plunged after the March 11 tsunami and earthquake disaster that destroyed huge chunks of the island nation’s northeastern region, left 20,000 people dead or missing and set off the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

Disaster damage extended to key suppliers for major companies like Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Corp., which suffered production disruptions. The Thai flooding that followed caused similar problems for automakers, including Honda Motor Co., but on a smaller scale.

The Tokyo market also saw two big-name brands lose much of their value.

One was Tokyo Electric Power Co., the utility that runs Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, where at least three reactors went into meltdown after tsunami destroyed backup generators to keep power going at the plant.

Some officials say TEPCO may have to be nationalized because of ballooning losses and the costs to bring the reactors under control and compensate victims.

Another was camera and medical equipment maker Olympus Corp., whose offices have been raided by criminal investigators after fabricated accounting to cover up massive investment losses came to light no fax payday loans.

A British executive, who has since resigned from the board, was first to draw attention to the dubious investments, and has become a celebrity figure raising questions about old-style Japanese management.

Across the board, Japanese companies have been slammed by the rising value of the yen, which erodes the value of revenue from exports.

The Nikkei lost nearly a fifth of its value over the past year. It nose-dived right after the disaster, recouped some of those losses in July, but then started a decline that has the benchmark hovering at below the March value.

China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index lost 21 percent in 2011 as the impact of Beijing’s multibillion-dollar stimulus faded and the government tightened curbs on lending and investment to cool blistering economic growth.

The flood of state spending and bank lending after the 2008 crisis fueled a surge in real estate and stock prices. In 2010, Beijing responded by clamping down on credit and real estate speculation to cool inflation and soaring housing prices.

Beijing is trying to steer growth to a more sustainable level after 2010’s explosive 10.3 percent expansion. Growth eased to 9.1 percent in the three months ending in September, down from 9.5 percent the previous quarter.

Chinese leaders have promised to ease credit to help exporters and smaller companies cope with falling global demand and weaker domestic growth. But they say most controls will remain in place. That has disappointed stock traders who are hoping for interest rate cuts and looser controls on bank lending. They have responded in recent weeks by dumping stocks and moving some money to U.S. and European markets.

The benchmark Hang Seng Index slipped in the second half of the year as concerns over Europe accelerated, sending it to a 2011 low in early October before bouncing slightly to end the year at a 20 percent loss.

Hong Kong is Chinese territory, but its financial markets are open to foreign companies and investors, which made it a popular destination this year for foreign companies looking to go public, drawn by the prospect of raising their brand profiles with China’s newly wealthy as growth flags in their home markets.

Italian fashion house Prada was one of the biggest names to list in Hong Kong, with an initial public offering in June that raised $2.5 billion, making it the sixth-biggest IPO globally this year, according to deal tracking service Dealogic.

Other foreign companies that took out primary or secondary listings in Hong Kong include MGM China Holdings Ltd., the Macau casino arm of MGM Resorts International, luggage maker Samsonite S.A. and U.S. luxury handbag maker Coach Inc. However, the slumping market means share prices for many companies that went public are ending the year lower than IPO price.

Benchmark crude for February delivery fell 28 cents to $99.37 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract added 29 cents to settle at $99.65 in New York on Thursday.

In currency trading, the dollar fell to 77.58 yen from 77.65 yen late Thursday in New York. The euro fell to $1.2913 from $1.2939.

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Regulators on Friday closed small banks in Florida and Arizona, boosting to 92 the number of bank failures in the U.S. this year.

The number of closures has fallen sharply this year as banks have worked their way through the bad debt accumulated in the recession. By this time last year, regulators had shuttered 157 banks.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Premier Community Bank of the Emerald Coast, based in Crestview, Fla., with $126 million in assets and $112 million in deposits, and Phoenix-based Western National Bank, with $162.9 million in assets and $144.5 million in deposits.

Summit Bank, based in Panama City, Fla., agreed to assume the loans and other assets as well as the deposits of Premier Community Bank. In addition, the FDIC and Summit Bank agreed to share losses on $98 million of Premier Community Bank’s assets.

Washington Federal, based in Seattle, is acquiring the assets and deposits of Western National Bank.

The failure of Premier Community Bank of the Emerald Coast is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $31.2 million; that of Western National Bank is expected to cost $37.6 million.

Florida has been one of the hardest-hit states for bank failures. Regulators closed 29 banks in Florida last year. The failure of Premier Community Bank brought to 13 the number of Florida lenders shut down this year

California, Georgia and Illinois also have seen large numbers of bank failures.

In all of 2010, regulators seized 157 banks, the most in any year since the savings and loan crisis two decades ago. Those failures cost around $23 billion. The FDIC has said 2010 likely was the high-water mark for bank failures from the Great Recession.

In 2009, there were 140 bank failures that cost the insurance fund about $36 billion, a higher price tag than in 2010 because the banks involved were bigger on average. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008, the year the financial crisis struck with force; only three were closed in 2007.

From 2008 through 2010, bank failures cost the fund $76.8 billion. The FDIC expects failures from 2011 through 2015 to cost $19 billion.

The deposit insurance fund fell into the red in 2009. With failures slowing, the FDIC’s fund balance turned positive in the second quarter of this year; it stood at $7.8 billion as of Sept. 30.

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WORKING OUT: After 15 years in Chicago, Sarah Dorsey Tourville is back in her hometown to open the 34th franchise of The Dailey Method, a national network of fitness studios.

Tourville’s studio, in the Village at Schneithorst at 1560 South Lindbergh Boulevard, will officially open tomorrow but is the location for a private cocktail reception tonight.

Tourville, who is former KTRS (AM 550) honcho Tim Dorsey’s eldest daughter, has been the head of ESPN’s ad sales for the Midwest the past 10 years.

She’ll be giving up that job at the end of the year to permanently relocate in St payday loans for self employed. Louis with her two children, Lilly, 4, and Ben, 2 ½. Her ex-husband is also moving here to be close to their children, Tourville said.

Tourville is offering special discounts and packages - such as six weeks of free classes for $100 — over the weekend to celebrate the opening of the studio. She added that proceeds from the opening events will go to St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

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New polymer banknotes demand that all money-handling machines in the country be upgraded at a cost of $75-100 million, the Bank of Canada estimates.

That compares to $20-30 million for the last conversion in 2004-2006, bank spokesperson Julie Girard said Tuesday.

Libya’s transitional leaders have vowed to work with the International Criminal Court and with the United Nations in investigating alleged crimes committed by Moammar Gadhafi’s recently captured son and one-time heir apparent, the court’s prosecutor said Thursday.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told The Associated Press that the court received the formal pledge in a letter from National Transitional Council chairman Mustafa Abdul-Jalil. He gave the AP a copy of the letter in an English translation.

Moreno-Ocampo said he was satisfied with that move, which appears to settle a dispute between the international court and Libyan authorities over which body should try Seif al-Islam Gadhafi with crimes against humanity.

Libya is obliged by a UN Security Council resolution to work with the ICC, but that does not necessarily preclude a trial in Libya. If the court determines that the country has a functioning legal system that will give Seif al-Islam a fair trial on substantially the same charges as were filed before it, it can leave the case with Libya.

Moreno-Ocampo said the most important thing is for Seif al-Islam, whom he called the “face of the old regime,” to face justice.

It “is very important for the world and for Libya to understand what happened here, how they attacked these people, how they killed these people,” Moreno-Ocampo said.

The ICC has charged both Seif al-Islam and the Gadhafi-era intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi with crimes against humanity for unleashing the brutal crackdown on an uprising that began in February and spiraled into a civil war.

Moreno-Ocampo said he understood that it’s “a matter of national pride” for Libya’s leaders to try Gadhafi’s son themselves because they want to prove to the world that they are capable of holding a fair trial payday lenders.

He said investigations are under way into the alleged crimes committed by Gadhafi’s son and that he believed it would be ready for trial “in a few months.”

In his letter to the court, Libya’s Abdul-Jalil pledged to “fully cooperate” with the ICC and the UN Security Council.

But he asserts that the Libyan judiciary has “primary responsibility” to try Seif al-Islam, the only Gadhafi family member in Libyan custody.

The letter is addressed to a presiding judge at the court in The Hague, Sanji Mmasenono Monageng.

Seif al-Islam is being held by fighters from the Libyan town of Zintan, who flew him there after his capture in southern Libya on Saturday. The International Committee of the Red Cross visited Seif al-Islam there on Tuesday and said he appeared to be in good health.

Officials with the governing National Transitional Council also had reported that former intelligence chief al-Senoussi, who also is wanted by France over the 1989 bombing of French airliner, was captured over the weekend in the southern city of Sabha and was being held in a secret location.

However, senior Libyan officials have cast doubt on the claim.

Moreno-Ocampo said Libyan authorities told him they could not confirm that al-Senoussi was really arrested.

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Spain’s next prime minister is a lusterless career politician who thrives on ambiguity _ rarely revealing what he thinks.

With results Sunday night showing that his conservative Popular Party crushed the ruling Socialist party and won a big parliamentary majority, Mariano Rajoy may finally be forced to show his hand.

Rajoy inherits a devastating economic downturn that has caused unemployment to swell to more than 21 percent, and comes as similar financial crises in fellow EU nations like Greece and Italy threaten to combine with Spain’s woes and drag down the global economy.

As Rajoy, 56, begins forming the next government Monday, all eyes will be on whether the gray-bearded, bespectacled leader will finally unveil a clear political vision or continue to dodge efforts to pin him down.

Many see him as a the perfect caricature of his native region _ Galicia. The people of the misty and rainy northwestern region are legendary for pokerfaced obscurity. According to a Spanish saying, when you meet a Galician on the stairs you can never tell if he’s going up or down.

“He is a Galician. They say things but you have to read between the lines,” said Rodrigo Herrero, 48, a villa caretaker.

“He’s not spontaneous or extroverted like other politicians,” added Herrero. “He lacks that friendliness and touch of charm.”

Others says there is a hidden side.

“He’s a master because he achieves his aims without apparently doing anything,” Xavier Pomes, a Catalan politician and friend of Rajoy, told El Pais, Spain’s leading newspaper.

“He’s sensible, frank. Some see him as indolent and indecisive but in reality he’s reflexive,” said Pomes.

But true to his cagey character, Rajoy has so far made little known of his plans. And with bond interest rates soaring and stock markets jittery, he is not likely to have any more time to dawdle or fudge.

In a lengthy interview in El Pais on Thursday, Rajoy said that barring pensions, “cuts will have to be made wherever they can.” But the paper pointed out that he “maintained his ambiguity on what sacrifices Spaniards will face.”

Eurasia Group analyst Antonio Barroso expects Rajoy to initially go for a “shock and awe strategy” with “quick policy changes in an effort to impress markets and his European partners, and boost Spanish credibility.”

That would also dispel questions about his own credibility.

Rajoy, a property registrar by training, held four ministerial portfolios _ among them education and interior _ in the governments of Jose Maria Aznar between 1996 and 2004. But being hand-picked as party leader in 2003 by Aznar set Rajoy up for years to accusations that he was never actually elected by those in his party, a smear that weakened his attempts to shake himself free of Aznar’s shadow.

Sunday’s ballot was third-time lucky for Rajoy. He lost general elections in 2004 and 2008 against Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who is now deeply unpopular and did not seek re-election this time. In many ways, it’s a tribute to his dogged determination to survive.

In 2004, Rajoy was also strongly tipped to win. But he lost amid voter outrage over the Madrid terror bombings by Islamic militants three days before the election. The massacre killed 191 people direct payday lenders. Rajoy and his party had initially blamed Basque separatists and continued to do so even as evidence of Islamic involvement emerged.

The party was devastated by the defeat and Rajoy had to battle to keep it unified amid divisions between moderate and more conservative factions. The 2008 loss, although not as severe, exacerbated his tenuous position, thrusting even normally friendly rightist media against him.

But Rajoy fought on, skillfully remaining silent while his party and the media were ablaze with the succession debate. His efforts bore fruit at a party congress in June when his candidacy as leader _ albeit the only one presented _ was backed by 84 percent of delegates.

A cycling and sports enthusiast, Rajoy has freely acknowledged he reads little and prefers light sports dailies to mainstream newspapers or literature. However, sensing he may soon be representing Spain on the international stage, he is now studying English, a language none of his predecessors has ever managed to command.

At 24, he suffered a serious car accident that left his face badly scarred, reportedly the reason he grew the beard.

Stiff in manner, Rajoy has never topped popularity polls and is not known for imagination or charm. In a recent TV debate with his Socialist opponent Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, Rajoy almost never took his eyes off prepared notes. Nevertheless he scraped through the near two-hour clash, skirting questions and shedding no light on his program.

No one can deny Sunday’s victory came easy, with his opponents in the governing Socialist party crippled by their inability to cope with the economic crisis.

Over the past two years, Rajoy used the crisis to perfection in weekly parliamentary debates, hammering away relentlessly at the Zapatero government’s perceived incompetence.

But careful not to scare potential voters, Rajoy remained virtually mute on what he would do differently besides pledging to make things easier for small and medium-sized businesses _ which provide 80 percent of employment in Spain _ and indicating he will carry out the labor market and social welfare system reforms he deems necessary.

Outside the economy, he has traditionally been a close ally of the Catholic Church on moral and social issues and has repeatedly said he will revise Spain’s abortion law. His party has also appealed the country’s gay marriage law before the Constitutional Court. Both bills were considered key achievements of the Zapatero governments.

In the past, he has demanded strict law-and-order measures to control immigration and education reforms to improve one of Europe’s worst dropout rates.

A lover of Cuban cigars, Rajoy has also suggested he may ease Spain’s anti-smoking ban in the workplace.

On foreign policy, he is likely to try to win back the special friend status Aznar held with U.S. while taking a less open approach than Zapatero to some of the more radically left-leaning governments of Latin America such as Cuba and Venezuela.

____

Jorge Sainz contributed to this report.

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The latest evidence that the economy is making steady gains emerged Friday from a gauge of future economic activity, which rose in October at the fastest pace in eight months.

A string of better-than-expected economic reports this month has led some analysts to revise up their forecasts for growth. Still, they caution that their brighter outlook remains under threat from Europe’s financial crisis.

“Things are looking better than we thought they would _ not great, but better,” said David Wyss, former chief economist at Standard & Poor’s.

The most recent sign was Friday’s report by the Conference Board that its index of leading economic indicators surged 0.9 percent last month. It was the index’s best showing since February. And it was far faster than the increases of 0.1 percent September and 0.3 percent in August.

The index is designed to predict economic activity. The October figure marked the sixth straight increase.

The jump reflected gains in nine of the index’s 10 components. Leading the way: a surge in permits for home construction; a narrower gap between short- and long-term interest rates that suggested less concern about inflation; a recovery in stock prices; and growth in the U.S. money supply.

A longer average workweek and fewer applications for unemployment benefits also contributed to the rise in the index.

All told, the components of the index signaled that the economy is steadily, if still slowly, strengthening.

On Thursday, the government reported further improvement in the number of people seeking unemployment benefits for the first time. The number fell to 388,000, the fewest since April.

In October, the economy added a net total of 80,000 jobs. It was the 13th straight month of gains. Still, the additional jobs were fewer than the roughly 125,000 that are needed each month just to keep up with population growth.

Many economists said the October gain in the leading indicators offered further assurance that the economy is in no imminent danger of slipping back into a recession, so long as Europe doesn’t fall into a severe downturn.

“This was a very positive reading for the leading indicators,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The economy seems to be holding its own.”

Steven Wood, chief economist at Insight Economics, said the string of positive readings suggests “the economy should continue to experience at least moderate growth over the next six to nine months.”

In the first six months of the year, the economy grew at an annual rate of just 0.9 percent. Growth expanded to a 2.5 percent rate in the July-September quarter.

Before this month, many economists had estimated that growth in the current October-December quarter would roughly match the 2.5 percent pace of the July-September period. But in recent days, based on the healthier economic news, some analysts have boosted their forecasts.

This week, the government said retail sales in October and factory production were picking up. U.S. builders started slightly fewer homes in October. But building permits, a gauge of future construction, surged nearly 11 percent. That gain was led by a 30 percent increase in apartment permits, to their highest level in three years.

Wyss said he expected the annual growth rate in the current quarter to amount to about 3 percent, up from his earlier expectation of 2.5 percent. Economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co. are also expecting a 3 percent growth rate for the October-December period.

Wyss said one reason for his increased optimism is that he thinks a modest rebound in consumer spending will trigger companies to restock depleted shelves.

Even so, an economy growing at a 3 percent rate would still fall shy of the 4 percent to 5 percent pace that economists say is needed to significantly reduce the unemployment rate, which remains stuck at 9 percent.

And without stronger job gains, analysts say consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of economic activity, will remain constrained.

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