Archive for category Business
Median Pay For Top Executives
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business, Favourites on Июль 8th, 2011
The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent.
Total C.E.O. pay hasn’t quite returned to its heady, prerecession levels — but it certainly seems headed there. Despite the soft economy, weak home prices and persistently high unemployment, some top executives are already making more than they were before the economy soured.
Pay skyrocketed last year because many companies brought back cash bonuses, says Aaron Boyd, head of research at Equilar. Cash bonuses, as opposed to those awarded in stock options, jumped by an astounding 38 percent, the final numbers show.
Granted, many American corporations did well last year. Profits were up substantially. As a result, many companies are sharing the wealth, at least with their executives. “We’re seeing a lot of that reflected in the pay,” Mr. Boyd says.
And at a time of so much tumult in the media business, it might be surprising that some executives in media and communications were among the most richly rewarded last year. Read the rest of this entry »
Western Union Is Said to Be Nearing $1 Billion Purchase of Travelex Unit
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business on Июль 5th, 2011
Western Union Co. (WU), the world’s largest money-transfer firm, is in talks to buy a division of Apax Partners LLP’s Travelex foreign-exchange business for about $1 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Western Union, based in Englewood, Colorado, may announce an agreement to acquire Travelex’s global business-payments unit as early as next week, said the people, who didn’t wish to be named because the talks are private.
A deal would help Western Union Chief Executive Officer Hikmet Ersek, 50, add revenue from corporate transactions overseas. Consumer-to-consumer services provided 84 percent of the firm’s $1.28 billion revenue in the first quarter, according to the company’s financial report. Travelex describes its business-payments unit as the world’s largest non-bank provider of foreign exchange and risk solutions.
“This business does have good margin characteristics,” said James Friedman, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group in New York who has a “positive” rating on Western Union shares. “It certainly has the potential to be more lucrative than the consumer. The fee per transaction is really huge.”
Susquehanna facilitates trading in Western Union shares, which gained 21 cents, or 1.1 percent, to $20.24 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Read the rest of this entry »
NBC Wins TV Rights to 4 Olympics for $4.38 Billion
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business on Июнь 8th, 2011
NBC extended its Olympic reign until 2020 as Comcast, its parent company, agreed Tuesday to acquire the rights to the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia; the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro; and the next two Olympics, in unspecified cities. NBC bid $4.38 billion for United States broadcast rights for the four Olympics.
It was NBC’s first Olympic deal since 1988 without Dick Ebersol, the head of NBC Sports, who resigned last month after helping to engineer eight winning bids. The victory was a sign that Comcast saw the value of continuing the relationship with the Olympics, with its powerful impact in prime time.
ESPN bid $1.4 billion for the 2014 and 2016 Games; Fox put in bids for two Olympics and for four Olympics.
The auction took place at International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland, generally following the same procedure it did eight years ago. At the time, NBC agreed to pay $2 billion to carry last year’s Winter Games in Vancouver and next year’s Summer Games in London. Fox bid $1.3 billion and ESPN offered to share revenues with the I.O.C. but never specified a dollar figure. NBC won easily, and General Electric, then the network’s parent company, added $200 million for a global Olympic sponsorship. Read the rest of this entry »
G.M. Is Still Hopeful for Payback to Government
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business on Июнь 7th, 2011
The chief executive of General Motors said on Tuesday that he hoped the federal government would be able to sell its stake in the automaker soon, and expressed concern about the country’s economic recovery.
The executive, Daniel F. Akerson, said that G.M. was working to maximize its payback to taxpayers, but that the government did not make a bad investment even if it did not recover the full amount given to the company.
“At some level, the government’s got to decide: are they an investor or were they trying to save the industry?” Mr. Akerson told reporters ahead of G.M.’s first annual stockholder meeting since its 2009 government-financed bankruptcy.
A report last week by the White House National Economic Council concluded that the government would probably have to write off about $14 billion of the $80 billion spent rescuing the auto industry by the Bush and Obama administrations.
Mr. Akerson said that a G.M. liquidation would have saddled taxpayers with more than $17 billion in pension liabilities. G.M. has cut its pension shortfall in half since 2009, he said, adding that he wanted the plan to be fully financed during his tenure as chief executive. Read the rest of this entry »
Trump’s school faces investigation
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business on Май 25th, 2011
The New York State attorney general’s office is investigating whether Donald Trump’s for-profit business school, the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative (formerly known as Trump University), is engaging in illegal business practices, the New York Times reports.
Trump’s is not the only company coming under the microscope — the effort is part of a broader inquiry into for-profit education, which is also examining Career Education Corporation, Corinthian Colleges, Lincoln Educational Services, and Bridgepoint Education.
But the school — which is known to charge up to $35,000 a course — has its share of unsatisfied alums. Last year four former students sued the company in a federal court in California, seeking class-action status. New York and Maryland also forced Trump to drop the word “university” from its title, prompting the name change. In 2010, the Better Business Bureau gave it a D-minus, its second lowest score, after getting 23 complaints. That has to hurt.
Recently, the school has suspended new classes in order to revise its curriculum. What could bring academic integrity back to “Trump U”? More of the Donald, obviously. “The one thing is that they really wanted me involved, instead of the teachers,” Trump said in an interview last week. Read the rest of this entry »
Strauss-Kahn hotel says unaware of prior assaults
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business on Май 17th, 2011
The management of the New York hotel where IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is alleged to have sexually assaulted a chambermaid is unaware of any prior attempted assaults, the Sofitel hotel chain said on Monday.
Strauss-Kahn was denied bail on attempted rape and other criminal charges on Monday, and New York prosecutors said they were investigating whether he may have engaged in similar conduct once before.
«Sofitel management has put in place strict procedures and a special number open to anybody who wants to bring attention to specific facts and this has been in place for a year,» Sofitel said in a statement issued in Paris.
«The management has no knowledge of prior assault attempts.»
The luxury Sofitel chain is owned by France’s Accor (ACCP.PA), the largest hotel group in Europe.
Source: Reuters.
Wal-Mart shrinks stores to help grow its business
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business on Май 16th, 2011
Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) is testing smaller stores in both inner cities and rural settings as it hopes to reach new customers even while trying to stem a slide in sales at existing U.S. stores. Sales at U.S. discount stores open at least a year are expected to have fallen for the eighth consecutive quarter when the world’s largest retailer reports earnings on Tuesday.
Wal-Mart, with roughly 9,030 stores, is best known for huge supercenters filled with everything from food to fishing rods. Now it is trying out a variety of formats, including tests of «Walmart Express» stores that are about 15,000 square feet. The performance of those new stores will show whether the behemoth used to running stores about 10 times that size has the smarts to go small.
«Up to this point the highest-return vehicle has always been that supercenter,» said Morgan, Keegan & Co analyst John Lawrence, who has followed Wal-Mart since the 1980s. «They’re going to put some of these up and then we’ll see how it goes.»
Smaller stores would allow Wal-Mart to reach customers who do not live near one of its 3,809 or so U.S. stores. But drugstores such as Walgreen Co (WAG.N) and low-priced chains such as Dollar General Corp (DG.N) already flood the market, especially in urban locales. Read the rest of this entry »
Facebook Is Overvalued at $50 Billion in Global Poll Signaling Tech Bubble
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business, Favourites on Февраль 8th, 2011
Facebook Inc. isn’t worth $50 billion, according to a poll of global investors that shows skepticism about Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s recent estimate of the largest social-networking site’s value and concern that a bubble may be forming in the technology sector.
Sixty-nine percent of investors say Facebook is overvalued after Goldman Sachs invested $450 million in a deal that put the company’s worth at $50 billion, according to the quarterly poll of 1,000 Bloomberg customers who are investors, traders or analysts. Only 10 percent of respondents say Facebook’s valuation is appropriate; 4 percent say it’s worth more.
The Bloomberg Global Poll conducted Jan. 21-24 shows that investors disagree with Goldman Sachs’ assessment that Facebook is worth more than Web pioneers such as Yahoo! Inc., the biggest web portal, and EBay Inc., owner of the biggest online retail marketplace. Palo Alto, California-based Facebook surpassed Yahoo! in October as the third most visited website in the world.
“Those investing in Facebook, expecting it to be the next Google, might be in for some bad news along the way,” says poll respondent John J. Lee, a portfolio manager at PGB Trust & Investments in Morristown, New Jersey. Mountain View, California-based Google went public in August 2004 and the shares more than tripled in the first year to $279.99 from $85. The stock price averaged $617.2 this month. Read the rest of this entry »
Our Picks For Inflation Protection
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business, Favourites on Декабрь 15th, 2010
If there’s a small silver lining amid the current economic malaise, it’s that inflation has been pretty muted.
But investors ignore inflation at their own peril. Even if massive amounts of government stimulus don’t prompt inflation, there’s still the possibility of price spikes here in the United States as a result of still-red-hot economic growth in emerging markets. Widespread rising prices, in turn, could amount to erosion in the purchasing power of any assets you’ve managed to save or invest. By the time you start tapping your portfolio to meet your income needs, those dollars could be worth a lot more than they are right now.
That’s why it’s so important to ensure that your portfolio is adequately protected against inflation. Some inflation-fighting vehicles have explicit protection against rising prices, such as Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities. Others, such as stocks, protect against inflation indirectly.
Here’s an overview of the key vehicles with inflation-fighting attributes, as well as some of Morningstar’s top picks within those groups.
Inflation-Protected Bonds Read the rest of this entry »
3 Companies That May Not Exist By The 2012 Elections
Posted by Oksana Grebenjuk in Business, Favourites on Ноябрь 12th, 2010
We have just gotten through the 2010 election season. Now everyone is turning their attention to 2012. On that note, let’s take a look at a few companies that I believe will not be alive during the next economic cycle. These companies are struggling to stay alive and their stock prices reflect their dire circumstances.
Rite Aid Inc. (RAD)
First up is a once prominent national chain that is now struggling to remain relevant. No, it’s not Blockbuster. It’s Rite Aid! The company has been under intense pressure since its failed merger with Albertson’s. Rite Aid is crumbling under its massive debt burden and declining sales. Same stores sales are down nearly 2% and have declined for 17 straight months. While CVS Caremark Corp. (CVS) and Walgreens (WAG) are raking in profits, Rite Aid is drowning in red ink.
First Mariner Bancorp (FMAR)
Next up is a local banking institution in my home state of Maryland. This stock has been in a freefall for two years. The bank has been doing a better job recently of raising revenue but the company still has not returned to profitability. The company has been under the intense scrutiny of bank regulators for the last year. Shares have recently dropped below $1 and the stock is facing delisting. With so many banks failing each week, it’s hard to see how the bank will remain afloat over the next year. Read the rest of this entry »
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Big Banks Easing Terms on Loans Deemed as Risks
6 Июль 2011
Euro Area Backs Greek Aid, Looks to New Bailout
4 Июль 2011
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29 Июнь 2011
Obama takes flak for tapping emergency oil reserves
28 Июнь 2011
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