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Western Union’s Q4 profit jumps to USD452.3m

by on February 8, 2012

menafn.com…

(MENAFN) Western Union Co. said that due to higher sales, net income in the fourth quarter almost doubled to USD452.3 million, from USD242.6 million in 2010′s same period, reported AP. The money …

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Western Union’s Q4 profit jumps to USD452.3m

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Liz Ryan: Get Some Branding Mileage Out of Your LinkedIn Headline

by Liz Ryan on January 12, 2012

Huffington Post…

I grabbed a few LinkedIn headlines (real ones, from people I’m not connected to) in order to rewrite them. Here are the old headlines, and my suggested replacements: Old LinkedIn Headline: Wile E. Coyote Innovative, customer-focused business professional Wile E. has forgotten that when a LinkedIn user searches the 100+million-member LinkedIn database, the search results show up in the form of names and headlines. The only things that LinkedIn user — the one who conducted the search — is going to learn about Wile E. (or any LinkedIn user) are the user’s name and his or her LinkedIn headline. Wile E.’s old headline (“Innovative, customer-focused business professional”) isn’t doing Wile E. any favors. Anyone could say he or she is innovative and customer-focused. That’s pretty much like saying “I breathe oxygen.” We can do better. New LinkedIn Headline: Wile E. Coyote Marketing Manager (50/50 mix of traditional and social) taking consulting projects & exploring startup assignments You get 120 characters, including spaces, for your LinkedIn headline. Wile E.’s new headline squeaks in under the wire, character-count-wise. Now, when somebody performs a search on the LinkedIn user database and comes up with Wile E.’s name, he or she will learn something useful — namely, that Wile is a Marketing guy and a startup-focused one, at that — from the headline, and have an incentive to click through the list of search results to Wile E.’s full LinkedIn profile. What’s the lesson? Don’t make empty boasts (Resourceful! Innovative!) in your branding, and don’t use the term “business professional” — it’s dreck. It means nothing. Here’s another headline: Old LinkedIn Headline: Ziggy Stardust Nonprofit professional with expertise in communications, health, grantmaking, program development and planning Yikes! “Nonprofit professional” isn’t much of an improvement over “business professional,” and this LinkedIn user gives us a tedious list of tasks he’s performed. That is unfortunate branding. We could go one step down in granularity and say “I get up, I go to work, I drive a car, I use the microwave. I take showers.” We can’t tell what this person is about, or why he or she does the work s/he does. We get no sense of the person behind the profile. We want to know what you do for your employers or clients from a business standpoint — what sorts of pain you solve for them, in other words. We want to know what impact you;ve had on their businesses. Otherwise, you look like someone who does what he or she is told, and performs tasks as some manager (or a written job description) dictates. That’s not you standing in your power, not by a long stretch. Let’s rewrite Ziggy’s headline: Ziggy Stardust Not-for-profit Program Manager passionate about building buzz and participation for important causes and securing the grant and donor funding to carry them out Now we get a sense of Ziggy’s personal mission, and how he views his work. There’s more heft coming through the words when Zig frames up his experience (and future direction) rather than breaking down his amazing background into task-y sub-functions and duties. Lesson: don’t minimize your accomplishments by taking the context out of the story. Even in a brief LinkedIn headline, you can get across more power than you think. Take a look at your own LinkedIn headline. Is it doing the heavy lifting for you that it should be? If not, leave your current headline in a comment below, and I’ll give you suggestions for strengthening it.

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Liz Ryan: Get Some Branding Mileage Out of Your LinkedIn Headline

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W. David Stephenson: Open Government Data: Not Just Good Policy, But Economically Sound

January 10, 2012

One of the easiest targets for budget cutters in a recession is governmental initiatives to make data both accessible to the public and easy to work with. For example, the budget for the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Electronic Government Initiatives was cut from $34 million in FY2010 to $8 million in FY2011. Recently Congress asked NOAA to consider charging other federal agencies for data that has historically been provided free of charge. However, as Sen. Tom Carper pointed out when the OMB funds were cut, these reductions can be ” penny wise and pound foolish,” because the programs in question help identify “wasteful and duplicative spending.” In fact, the growing number of creative ways that open data can be used to meet the need to cut governmental waste, reduce governmental operating costs and boost entrepreneurial opportunity during hard times mean there’s a solid economic — let alone, good government — argument to be made that open data initiatives should probably be increased, not cut. A variety of examples demonstrate the benefits of making data accessible and in forms in which it can be easily used: Reduce inefficiency . One of the innovations threatened by the spending cuts for the Electronic Government Initiatives’ is the ITDashboard, which revealed more than $3 billion in inefficient government IT spending. As I have written previously , if Congress were to pass Rep. Darrell Issa’s DATA bill requiring all government agencies to report publicly using consistent government-wide data standards, this might spark a conversion within government agencies to , what I call, the “one report,” also doing all of their routine internal reporting using the same standards, such as the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), which could radically reduce government costs by increasing inter-agency cooperation, giving government workers real-time data to make better decisions, and reducing data errors. Spark entrepreneurial activity : One of the few bright spots during the recession has been the staggering number of location-based apps and services that have been created, such as FourSquare, or Asthmapolis — which helps asthma sufferers track what locations may trigger an attack. We may forget that it has only been since the year 2000 that entrepreneurs have been able to capitalize on the U.S. government’s GPS signals to create them. Since government agencies routinely collect data about a wide range of economic activity, it’s impossible to predict how many new applications and services widespread availability of this other information could spark. Rebuild public faith in government : When I did corporate crisis management I counseled clients to adopt a “don’t trust us, track us” mentality. Whether it’s a corporation caught polluting or a government agency that’s not delivering efficient services, the public has become rightly skeptical about protestations that “we get it, and we’ll be different from now on.” Instead of asking us to have faith in their sudden conversion, smart officials realize that public confidence must be earned through transparency. That’s why the Obama Administration’s ITDashboard site is so powerful: it takes metrics for evaluating whether government initiatives are meeting their deadlines, and makes them public. That not only satisfies public demands for transparency, but can serve as a powerful motivator for agencies whose projects are lagging: get the program on track or be prepared to have it scrutinized by Congressional committees and/or terminated (and perhaps your job as well in the aftermath) by agency administrators.’ Harness the wisdom of crowds . When Boston’s MBTA released the data about trains and buses’ real-time location, a wide variety of developers came up with innovative apps based on that data. It’s no reflection on government employees to say they probably never would have come up with those apps themselves: they have too many responsibilities already, plus opening the data to the public means that individuals with a strong interest in the subject and distinctive way of addressing it can fill the gap — at no expense to taxpayers! Reduce the cost of business regulations. Reducing the cost to businesses of complying with government regulations is a key concern of conservatives worldwide. The innovative Standard Business Reporting initiatives in the Netherlands and Australia can potentially cut a company’s cost of compliance by 25 percent– while potentially improving the quality of government oversight at the same time. Fortunately, it appears that government agencies worldwide are starting to get it about the benefits of open data — nearly 100 new government data APIs were released last year — however I think the pace will accelerate if it isn’t just good government transparency advocates making this point. It’s time for those on both the right and left concerned about the cost and efficiency of government to join in: opening up data makes hard economic sense as well.

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Bank Mistake May Cost Foreclosure Lawyer Her Home

January 6, 2012

Christine Jackson’s three-bedroom wood-frame home in Indianapolis is in danger of foreclosure. It’s not because she can’t afford her mortgage, but because of a bank error, she said. While millions of U.S. home loans have sunk into default or foreclosure since 2007 because owners can’t keep up with payments, Jackson’s situation is different. Thousands of homeowners from all walks of life have complained that the major banks that service their mortgages have made frequent errors in calculating their loans. These errors include slapping unnecessary inspection fees onto accounts, misapplying payments in violation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guidelines and “force-placing” expensive insurance on homes that are already insured. Jackson knows all this all too well because she is a lawyer who represents homeowners trying to stave off foreclosure. Often, those clients have claimed that their bank or mortgage servicer made a mistake in tabulating the cost of their loan, triggering a wrongful default. Jackson, 54, a former fraud investigator for the Internal Revenue Service, now understands firsthand the frustration that her clients feel. JPMorgan Chase & Co., the bank that services Jackson’s mortgage, has declared her loan in default, blocked access to her online account and threatened foreclosure if she doesn’t pay late charges that she said are unwarranted. Her once sterling credit is ruined and she could lose her home if the mess isn’t resolved, Jackson said in a recent interview. Jackson blames her situation on an extra annual insurance premium that she said Chase deducted from her account in 2009 on top of her usual payment. The overcharge triggered a series of account miscalculations, eventually leading to default, according to Jackson. “I’m disgusted with the whole thing,” she said. “My credit is trashed. I have nothing at all to finance my business. I might have to file for bankruptcy.” Banks’ servicing arms manage all aspects of a borrower’s home loan, from collecting payments for the owners of the mortgage to pursuing a foreclosure if a loan is in default for too long. Since the housing market crashed in 2007, banks and some standalone mortgage servicers have struggled to keep up with an unprecedented wave of foreclosures, without much success. A group of state attorneys general is trying to craft a blanket settlement with several large financial institutions following allegations that these banks filed false and “robo-signed” affidavits in foreclosure proceedings. Also, the biggest banks and independent servicers agreed in November as part of a consent order with federal regulators to give homeowners with residences involved in a foreclosure action from Jan. 1, 2009, to Dec. 31, 2010, the option of an independent audit of their loan account to resolve cases like Jackson’s. Regulators have boasted that the move could grant more than 4 million borrowers a chance to have their accounts examined by qualified auditors. But Jackson doesn’t qualify for such a review because her troubles don’t fit within the designated time frame and her home hasn’t been foreclosed on. That’s also the case for many of the estimated 3 million U.S. homeowners whose loans are in default or some stage of foreclosure. Jackson, who with her husband had their house built in 1997, said in February 2009 the mortgage servicing arm of JPMorgan Chase withdrew $1,422 from her escrow account to pay her annual homeowners insurance premium. The next month, Chase withdrew $838 from her escrow — again to pay her annual insurance premium; the second amount was the correct amount, Jackson claimed. At the end of 2009, Chase recalculated the amount needed to fund the following year’s insurance premium, adding $1,422 and $838 together and incorrectly increasing Jackson’s required monthly payment, Jackson claimed. Since Jackson’s monthly payment was automatically deducted from her bank account, she did not notice until the end of 2010 that she was paying an extra $108 each month, she said. Jackson finally noticed the mistake when she logged onto her account online, she said, noting that she called a Chase representative who promised to fix the problem. Instead, things got worse. In January 2011 she received eight letters from Chase stating that her previous month’s payment was insufficient and that her loan was now in default. Jackson, whose clients have had similar problems, has coined a term for her situation: phantom default. Jackson has spent dozens of hours on the phone and sending letters in an attempt to resolve the problem with Chase, to no avail, she said. She is now ready to pay home loan payments she has withheld over the past year, provided the bank repair her credit, reimburse her for damages and costs, and waive all the late and default fees, which she estimated total several thousand dollars, she said. Thomas Kelly, a Chase spokesman, said that while he could not comment on the details of Jackson’s situation, “we work with customers individually when there is confusion or dispute about payments.” Other homeowners have also complained of banks making errors with insurance premium. In 2010, a Mississippi federal bankruptcy judge ordered American Home Mortgage Servicing to pay Glen Cothern’s legal expenses as a result of the “obvious mental anxiety, stress, and frustration” he suffered when the servicer charged him for insurance he didn’t need, triggering two wrongful foreclosures and a customer-care experience termed “Kafka-esque” by the judge. New Orleans bankruptcy attorney Greta Brouphy saw her monthly mortgage payment balloon after Chase deducted two $3,200 annual insurance premiums in one year and imposed costly forced-place insurance on top of that. Brouphy spent a year trying to get the situation sorted out at her local Chase branch. “The loan officer should invite me to his kid’s birthday party because I spent so much time with him,” Brouphy said. Finally, a federal judge intervened. “I’m about to choke somebody,” Brouphy recalled saying to New Orleans bankruptcy judge Elizabeth Magner after court one day. Magner, who has developed a national reputation for sanctioning servicers for their behavior, gave Brouphy the phone number of a Chase lawyer, who quickly cleared things up. Jackson hasn’t been as fortunate. “Regardless of my knowledge of the law and my connections, my account has not been corrected, all my credit has been reduced, and I cannot get any operating loans for my business, which is fatal when you work on a contingent basis,” she said. Bank of America Corp. and other lenders cancelled lines of credit for Jackson totaling more than $100,000 that she needs to finance cases. She closed her law office and moved into her home. She even canceled her $260 subscription to a legal research website. Jackson, who worked for the IRS for 18 years, said she has paired down her client roll to just 10 and is considering moving with her husband to Mexico and abandoning law altogether. That’s bad news for any Indiana homeowner who might have wanted to tap her experience in navigating this type of bureaucratic nightmare. The little apartment on Lake Chapala near Guadalajara that Jackson has rented several times for a few hundred dollars a month beckons, she said. “The stress has made me ill,” she said. “I don’t need this.” Here are some other awkward foreclosure stories from last year:

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European Retail Feeling The Pain Of Austerity Measures

January 6, 2012

BRUSSELS — Retails sales in the 17-nation eurozone dropped in November, official statistics showed Friday, as consumers felt the bite of austerity measures and feared the currency union could slip deeper into crisis. Retail sales in the eurozone fell 0.8 percent compared with October and were down 2.5 percent from November 2010, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency. The steepest declines were seen in Portugal, which had to be bailed out in April and where sales fell 2.6 percent during the month and were down a massive 9.2 percent from a year earlier. But even in richer states like Germany and the Netherlands, consumers were more reluctant to part with their money, with retail sales slipping 0.9 percent in both countries during November. That shows how the eurozone’s worsening debt crisis is taking its toll even on countries with strong economies. For the whole European Union, which includes non-euro members like the U.K. and Sweden, November retail sales dropped 0.6 percent from October and 1.3 percent compared with a year earlier. Consumers appear worried by high unemployment, which remained stuck at 10.3 percent in November – unchanged from October but above the 10 percent seen a year earlier – and a darkening outlook on the economy. The weak data also underlines how many people found themselves in a worse position at the end of 2011 than at the end of 2010 – when there were hopes that the continent was turning a corner after two difficult years brought on by the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008. Spain’s unemployment rate was highest at 22.9 percent, up from 20.4 percent a year earlier. That’s more than four times as high as in Austria, where only 4 percent of people were looking for work. For the whole EU, the unemployment rate remained at 9.8 percent. The dark mood is set to continue in the eurozone, with a Eurostat economic sentiment indicator falling 0.5 of a point to 93.3 in December, far below the long-term average of 100. Italy and Spain, the eurozone’s third and forth largest economies which have been pulled into the eye of the crisis in recent months, grew especially pessimistic about the economy. Economic sentiment fell 4.6 points in Italy and 1.3 points in Spain. In the 27 EU countries, economic sentiment was down 0.8 point at 92.

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Chrysler Adding More Jobs In Detroit Plants

January 5, 2012

Ahead of the North American International Auto Show, one of the big three Detroit automakers is announcing increased production in the Motor City. Chrysler announced Thursday it would add a third shift to its Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit to handle production of the Jeep Grand Cherokee there. The automaker announced last month that it would reopen the Conner plant to produce the SRT Viper . Together, the plants will provide 1,250 new jobs for both salaried and hourly workers. “We believe that investing in Detroit is not only the right thing to do, but it is a smart thing to do as we work to write the next chapter in our shared history,” said Chrysler Group Chairman and CEO Sergio Marchionne, in a release. Chrysler on Wednesday announced a 37 percent sales gain for December , and 26 percent for the year.

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Steve Blank: Why the Movie Industry Can’t Innovate and the Result Is SOPA

January 4, 2012

This year the movie industry made $30 billion (1/3 in the U.S. ) from box-office revenue. But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion . Where did the other $57 billion come from? From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business: pay-per view TV, cable and satellite channels, video rentals, DVD sales, online subscriptions and digital downloads. The Movie Industry and Technology Progress The music and movie business has been consistently wrong in its claims that new platforms and channels would be the end of its businesses. In each case, the new technology produced a new market far larger than the impact it had on the existing market. 1920′s – the record business complained about radio. The argument was because radio is free, you can’t compete with free. No one was ever going to buy music again. 1940′s – movie studios had to divest their distribution channel – they owned over 50% of the movie theaters in the U.S. “It’s all over,” complained the studios. In fact, the number of screens went from 17,000 in 1948 to 38,000 today. 1950′s – broadcast television was free; the threat was cable television. Studios argued that their free TV content couldn’t compete with paid. 1970′s – Video Cassette Recorders (VCR’s) were going to be the end of the movie business. The movie businesses and its lobbying arm MPAA fought it with “end of the world” hyperbola. The reality? After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket. With a new channel of distribution, home movie rentals surpassed movie theater tickets. 1998 – the MPAA got congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DCMA), making it illegal for you to make a digital copy of a DVD that you actually purchased. 2000 – Digital Video Recorders (DVR) like TiVo allowing consumer to skip commercials was going to be the end of the TV business. DVR’s reignite interest in TV. 2006 – broadcasters sued Cablevision (and lost) to prevent the launch of a cloud-based DVR to its customers. Today it’s the Internet that’s going to put the studios out of business. Sound familiar? Why was the movie industry consistently wrong? And why do they continue to fight new technology? Technology Innovation The movie industry was born with a single technical standard — 35mm film, and for decades had a single way to distribute its content — movie theaters ( which until 1948 the studios owned ). It was 75 years until studios had to deal with technology changing their platform and distribution channel. And when it happened (cable, VCR’s, DVD’s, DVR’s, the Internet), it was a relentless onslaught. The studios responded by trying to shut down the new technology and/or distribution channels through legislation and the courts. Regulation/Legislation But why does the movie business think their solution is in Washington and legislation? History and success. In the 1920′s individual states were beginning to censor movies and the federal government was threatening to do so as well. The studios set up their own self-censorship and rating system keeping most sex and politics off the screen for 40 years. Never again wanting to be at the losing side of a political battle they created the movie industry’s lobbying arm, MPAA . By the 1960′s, the MPPA achieved regulatory capture (where an industry co-opts the very people who are regulating it) when they hired Jack Valenti , who ran the studios’ lobbying efforts for the next 38 years. Ironically, it was Valenti’s skill in hobbling competitive innovation that negated any need for studios to develop agility, vision and technology leadership. Management of Innovation The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to existing markets , particularly to content/copyright owners whose sell through well-established distribution channels. The incumbents tend to have short-sighted goals and often fail to recognize that more money can be made on new platforms and distribution channels. In an industry facing constant technology shifts the exec staff and boards of the studios have lawyers, MBAs and financial managers, but no management skill in dealing with disruption. So they rely on lobbying ( $110 million a year), lawsuits, campaign contributions (wonder why the President won’t be vetoing SOPA? ) and Public Relations. Ironically, the six major movie studios have a great technology lab in Silicon Valley with projects in streaming rights , Video On Demand, Ultraviolet , etc. But lacking the support from the studio CEOs or boards, the lab languishes in the backwaters of the studios’ strategy. Instead of leading with new technology, the studios lead with litigation, legislation and lobbying. (Imagine if the $110 million/year spent on lobbying went to disruptive innovation .) Piracy One of the claims that studios make is that they need legislation to stop piracy. The fact is piracy is rampant in all forms of commerce. Video games and software have been targets since their inception. Grocery and retail stores euphemistically call it shrinkage. Credit card companies call it fraud. But none use regulation as often as the movie studios to solve a business problem. And none are so willing to do collateral damage to other innovative industries (VCRs, DVRs, cloud storage and now the Internet itself.) The studios don’t even pretend that this legislation benefits consumers. It’s all about protecting short-term profit. SOPA When lawyers, MBAs and financial managers run your industry and your lobbyists are ex-Senators , understanding technology and innovation is not one of your core capabilities. The SOPA bill (and DNS blocking ) is what happens when someone with the title of anti-piracy or copyright lawyer has greater clout than your head of new technology. SOPA gives corporations unprecedented power to censor almost any site on the Internet. History has shown that time and market forces provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology is a video recorder, a personal computer, an MP3 player or now the Net. It’s prudent for courts and congress to e xercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude . What the music and movie industry should be doing in Washington is promoting legislation to adapt copyright law to new technology– and then leading the transition to the new platforms. The U.S. State Department has been championing the Internet Freedom initiative across the world. Secretary of State Clinton said, “…when ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled, and people constrained in their choices, the Internet is diminished for all of us.” It’s too bad the head of the MPAA — an ex-senator — made a mockery of her words when he wondered ” why our online censorship can’t be like China ?” We wonder, “Why can’t the film industry innovate like Silicon Valley?” Lessons Learned Studios are run by financial managers who have no corporate DNA to exploit disruptive innovation Studio anti-piracy/copyright lawyers trump their technologists Studios have no concern about collateral damage as long as it optimizes their revenue Studios110M/year lobbying and political donations trump consumer objections Politicians votes will follow the money unless it will cost them an election Steve Blank’s blog: www.steveblank.com

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Bill Gross Gives A ‘Paranormal’ Prediction

January 4, 2012

NEW YORK (Katya Wachtel) – Bill Gross, the manager of the world’s largest bond fund, is sounding like a Wall Street ghost-hunter in his latest investment letter. Calling the current market environment “paranormal,” Gross said this year will be characterized by “credit and zero-bound interest rate risk” and less incentives for lenders to extend credit. Gross, who managers PIMCO’s $244 billion Total Return bond fund, said the financial markets this year will continue to delever but sees a gloomy future ahead. “It’s as if the Earth now has two moons instead of one and both are growing in size like a cancerous tumor that may threaten the financial tides, oceans and economic life as we have known it for the past half century,” Gross said in an investment letter released on PIMCO’s website on Wednesday. “Welcome to 2012.” Last year was a humbling one for the PIMCO chief, as a bad bet against U.S. Treasuries led to an unusual “mea culpa” letter to investors. Treasuries were the best-performing bond class in 2011. His fund saw redemptions of $5 billion in 2011, one of the first times investors pulled money from Gross’s portfolio. In the letter, Gross said “paranormal” was a more fitting description for the current economic environment than the phrase “New Normal,” coined several years ago by his chief co-investment officer Mohamed El-Erian to describe a world of low-growth and high unemployment. This year, Gross argues that process will get messier. “We are left with zero-bound yields and creditors that trust no one and very few countries. The financial markets are slowly imploding – delevering – because there’s too much paper and too little trust,” he said. Those factors may lead financial markets to experience “the fat-left-tailed possibility of unforeseen – delevering – or the fat-right-tailed possibility of central bank inflationary expansion.” Gross told investors they should lower their return expectations for 2012, predicting 2 percent to 5 percent returns on investments in stocks, bonds and commodities. (Reporting By Katya Wachtel; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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JPMorgan Chase Sued Over Allegedly Misrepresenting Mortgage Loans

January 3, 2012

JPMorgan Chase & Co has been sued for $95 million by the trustee for securities marketed in 2005 by the former Bear Stearns Cos over alleged misrepresentations regarding the underlying mortgage loans. US Bank NA wants to force JPMorgan to buy back the mortgage loans because of alleged breaches of representations and warranties regarding the Bear Stearns Asset Backed Securities Trust 2005-4, for which it serves as trustee. It also said JPMorgan has refused to provide the underlying loan, as the trust documents require, so it can investigate the extent of the alleged breaches. The unit of US Bancorp said it made its request at the direction of a majority certificate holder in the trust. US Bank also sued Bear Stearns and its former EMC Mortgage Corp unit. JPMorgan bought Bear Stearns in 2008. A JPMorgan spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit was filed on Friday in the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, and publicly docketed on Tuesday. It is one of many lawsuits seeking to hold banks responsible for investor losses over mortgages that may have been toxic, defective or improperly underwritten. The case is Bear Stearns Asset Backed Securities Trust 2005-4 v. EMC Mortgage Corp et al, New York State Supreme Court, New York County, No. 650003/2012. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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The Latest Sign That The Economy Is Gaining Steam

January 3, 2012

WASHINGTON, Jan 3 (Reuters) – U.S. construction spending surged to a near 1-1/2 year high in November as investment in public and private projects rose solidly, cementing expectations of strong economic growth in the fourth quarter. Construction spending increased 1.2 percent to an annual rate of $807.1 billion, the highest level since June 2010, the Commerce Department said on Tuesday. Spending in October was revised to a 0.2 percent fall, after initially reported as a 0.8 percent rise. Economists polled by Reuters had expected construction spending to rise 0.5 percent in November. Overall construction spending was up 0.5 percent compared to November 2010. Private construction spending rose 1.0 percent, advancing for a fourth straight month. Spending on residential projects increased 2.0 percent, with solid gains in both multifamily and single family homes. The housing market is showing some signs of recovery, with builders breaking more ground on new projects to meet growing demand for rental apartments. It is becoming less of a drag on the economy and is expected to significantly add to growth in 2012. Private nonresidential construction was flat in November after declining 0.6 percent the prior month. Spending on public sector construction rebounded 1.7 percent in November as outlays on federal projects jumped 5.3 percent after dropping 7.5 percent in October. State and local government spending rose 1.3 percent after falling 1.2 percent the prior month. (Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Neil Stempleman)

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Cigarette Maker Launches Tobacco Rights Website

January 2, 2012

RICHMOND, Va. — Cigarette maker Altria Group is giving consumers a new place to find out about tobacco-related public policy issues. The owner of the nation’s largest cigarette maker, Philip Morris USA, has launched a website called Citizens for Tobacco Rights. The website has information on both state and federal tobacco issues such as taxes, smoking bans and other regulation. It also provides consumers with a way to take action on tobacco-related issues. Altria, based in Richmond, Va., says it believes it is important for adult tobacco consumers to make their voices heard on issues that affect them. The company also owns Black and Mild cigar maker John Middleton, and U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, which makes Skoal and Copenhagen branded products. ___ Online:

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Office Cleaners, Building Owners Get To Yes

December 31, 2011

New York office cleaners and building owners reached a tentative four-year labor agreement late Friday, averting a potential New Year’s Day strike. The agreement, which covers more than 22,000 New York City office cleaners represented by the Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, will give the cleaners a nearly 6 percent wage increase over the life of the contract. Each worker will also receive cash bonuses totally $1,100. The contract, which union members must ratify, maintains employer-paid family health care coverage. “The new contract is not just an important victory for office cleaners and their families, but for our economy and our city,” said Hector Figueroa, secretary-treasurer of SEIU Local 32BJ, in a statement. “In these tough times the workers who keep New York City’s corporate offices and landmark buildings clean and well maintained have stood up for the good middle class jobs our economy and our city needs.” Building owners had sought to create a two-tier wage system under which new hires would never earn as much as current union members. They also wanted to eliminate a system of automatic employee contributions to the union’s political fund. Neither proposal is part of the union’s final agreement with building owners, said Kwame Patterson, a spokesman with SEIU Local 32BJ. Unionized building workers clean and maintain about 1,500 buildings in New York, including landmarks such as Rockefeller Center, the MetLife Building, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, the Port Authority and the Time Warner Center, along with educational institutions such as New York University and The New School. New York building cleaners had threatened to establish picket lines in major cities around the country and had collected pledges from unionized cleaners elsewhere and other organized labor not to cross those picket lines. Such tactics would have expanded the effects of a potential strike beyond New York City, left thousands of buildings without needed staff and involved at least 100,000 workers. “We are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement with the union that protects workers’ wages and benefits, and provides crucial cost-savings to building owners, who have been battered in this deep recession,” said Howard Rothschild, president of the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, the group negotiating on behalf of building owners with the union. In the last three months, Local 32BJ has reached new, multi-year contracts for more than 50,000 workers in Connecticut, New Jersey and Virginia. In 2012, SEIU is set to renegotiate contracts for another 155,000 cleaners across the United States. With more than 120,000 members, including 70,000 in New York state, SEIU Local 32BJ is the largest property-service workers union in the country and the largest private-sector union in the state.

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Retailers Hoping For ‘Mega Monday’ Of Huge Sales

December 26, 2011

Retailers were bracing for a busy day on Monday, as a day off for many Americans and warm, dry weather were expected to entice shoppers looking for deep discounts. Chains were also hoping that shoppers coming in to redeem the millions of gift cards given as presents might be willing to spend a bit more cash of their own. Many chains were still relying on the lure of bargains to bring in shoppers on the day after Christmas. Office Depot Inc advertised its “Ultimate After Christmas Sale,” with stores opening at 8 a.m., while Carter’s Inc , the children’s apparel retailer, promoted discounts of up to 70 percent. It was the first time in six years that the day after Christmas fell on a Monday. Some dubbed it “Mega Monday” as the day takes on more prominence for shoppers, especially those who have the day off. This year, December 26 is expected to be the third busiest day in terms of foot traffic, trailing Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and Saturday, December 17, according to ShopperTrak, which measures retail and mall foot traffic. ShopperTrak predicted that up to 60 percent more shoppers will visit stores on December 26 than on the same day last year. Early checks at major shopping areas in Chicago and New York showed that Americans may have slept in a bit later than they did the day after Thanksgiving. Retailers lured shoppers with midnight and early morning sales on Black Friday, while store hours on “Mega Monday” were more typical of a usual day. Chicago’s Michigan Avenue was not crowded at 9 a.m. local time (10 a.m. EST). The Toys R Us store in New York’s Times Square was open on Monday morning, but at about 9:20 a.m. EST was not busy by the store’s standards. Sales people predicted it would get busier later in the day, and one said that so far, people were not doing much returning. Retailers could sell as much as $29 billion worth of merchandise on Monday, according to Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, who had predicted strong holiday sales before the season began. Sales at the $29 million level would even outpace the $27 billion in sales Johnson saw on Black Friday. Four in 10 Americans plan on hitting stores over the next few days, while 46 percent have no plans to shop, according to a poll from Consumer Reports. Of those who said they planned to shop, 82 percent said the biggest draw was post-holiday sales, 47 percent wanted to redeem gift cards, and 31 expected to return gifts. “The vast majority of Americans who will be shopping this week are predictably looking for post-holiday blowout sales,” said Tod Marks, Consumer Reports senior editor. “And those who aren’t shopping this week are predictably all shopped-out and low on money and patience.” Retailers hope that people coming in to redeem gift cards will buy merchandise at full price and spend more than the value of the cards they are using. Another Consumer Reports poll found that 113 million Americans received gift cards last holiday season, and that 62 percent of adults planned to give them as gifts this year. (Reporting by Jessica Wohl in Chicago; Additional reporting by Dena Aubin in New York and James Kelleher in Chicago; Editing by Leslie Adler) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Cutting Federal Deficit Via Building Sales Doesn’t Sit Well With Homeless Advocates

December 20, 2011

In Boston, an 11-story building near the city’s financial district beckons homeless veterans with a range of assistance programs, including medical attention, job training and temporary apartments, all under one roof. The building used to belong to the Veterans Administration, but today it’s home to the New England Center for Homeless Veterans, a nonprofit agency that moved in not long after the passage of a landmark 1987 law aimed at increasing the availability of services and facilities to help homeless people. Under that law, the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act , nonprofit organizations that serve the homeless have the right to take over unneeded federal buildings before the government puts them up for sale. In the near quarter century since the adoption of the act, nonprofits have claimed about 500 former federal buildings. But now the benefits of that law are colliding headlong into the contemporary realities of the federal budget deficit . The Obama administration is seeking to accelerate the sale of unused federal buildings in a push to generate $15 billion in revenue and savings over the next decade. Homeless relief organizations say a swifter sales process will bypass their shot at claiming buildings, limiting their ability to help vulnerable Americans just as stubbornly high unemployment and an extended foreclosure crisis puts growing numbers of people on the street. “This idea is billed as a common-sense no-brainer, a painless way to reduce the debt,” said Jeremy Rosen, policy director at the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, an advocacy group. “But that’s false — utterly false — when the needs are so great.” By seemingly any measure, homelessness is growing in the United States, while afflicting an increasingly broad slice of the country’s population. This week, a study released by the the National Center on Family Homelessness found that 1.6 million American children — or one in 45 — are homeless. On any given night, more than 100,000 military veterans are homeless , according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. Finding affordable space for homeless service organizations to expand their programs and offer shelter has always been a challenge. These days, with demand for services soaring, agencies can scarcely afford to lose opportunities to claim free buildings or warehouses, Rosen said. “What we’re seeing is kids around the country living in cars and families living week to week in motels,” Rosen said. “This is a time when we should really be focused on finding a way to make these properties work for families.” Under the traditional system that has governed implementation of the McKinney-Vento Act, federal agencies identify unused and unneeded properties every three months. The Department of Housing and Urban Development then evaluates which may be suitable for use as a homeless shelter, free clinic, food pantry or other community space. The Department of Health and Human Services then takes applications from organizations seeking to claim the properties free of charge. The process has proven slow and cumbersome, giving federal agencies a disincentive to put properties on the list, said Danny Werfel, federal controller in the White House Office of Management and Budget. As a result many properties have languished, sitting vacant and unused on valuable land. A heating plant occupying a two-acre parcel of land in the high-rent Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., has sat unused for more than a decade, Werfel said. The plant sits near a small, privately-owned townhouse that recently fetched $900,000. The administration now has the heating plant on the market, aiming to turn its considerable value into cash that can be used to trim the federal deficit. “What’s happened with that facility is exactly what we want to prevent,” Werfel said. “We don’t want there to be a situation in which a property of that size and value is sitting on our books.” President Obama last summer ordered federal agencies to sell federal buildings and reduce energy expenses in order to save $3 billion. Since then federal agencies have generated $1.5 billion in savings through such sales, according to the White House. Now the administration is seeking to formalize an accelerated process of real estate sales, but they’re contending with legal challenges from homeless advocates. Under the approach the administration has proposed a board of experts would identify the country’s most valuable surplus properties. Much like the commission that identifies which military bases are to close , the board would send a list of valuable properties to Congress to be fast-tracked for sale. Congress would have the option to vote for or against the entire package, eliminating the possibility that a congressman or vocal constituent could lobby for one particular property or another to remain in the federal government’s hands or be sold, Werfel said. The White House also claims that its proposal would also likely expand the list of properties available to nonprofit agencies. To implement the President’s plan, cut through the red tape and politics that continue to hinder efforts to get rid of unneeded federal property across the country, legislative action is required, said Moria Mack, an Office of Management and Budget spokesperson. Congress is expected to vote on at least one bill in January. If the law does not change, a case pending in a Washington, D.C., federal court could could also prevent the administration from implementing a new approach. Nonprofit agencies, schools and other organizations would lose their first dibs on these properties, but could still put in applications for the buildings, with the federal government ultimately deciding whether to sell or give away the assets. The federal surplus building inventory currently includes 1.1 million properties , Werfel said. So far this fiscal year, the government has sold 63 properties, earning $34 million in the process. In the last four fiscal years, homeless service agencies have successfully vied for 9 buildings. In Boston, the New England Center for Homeless Veterans points to its own mammoth building as proof that the old system has played a crucial role. The nonprofit serves over 1,000 veterans each year and right now is transforming more of its emergency bed space into temporary apartments. “We understand now that’s what a lot of our veterans need to truly stabilize their lives,” said Andy McCawley, the organization’s president and CEO. “We’re fortunate because we have the space to make that change.” This post has been updated to include comment from Moria Mack, a spokesperson from the Office of Management and Budget.

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Sony Handheld Sales Fall Short Of Rival

December 20, 2011

TOKYO (Reuters) – Sony Corp shifted 321,400 units of the PlayStation Vita, its new handheld game device, in Japan in its first two days on sale, research firm Enterbrain said on Tuesday. That falls short of rival Nintendo Co Ltd’s 3DS, which sold 371,000 in its first two days, Enterbrain said. Sales of the 3DS, however, slumped weeks after the launch, forcing Nintendo to slash the price and crushing its profit outlook for the year. Sony seeks to avoid suffering a similar fate by offering a big slate of 24 games for the Vita at launch. But executives admit the real challenge will come in maintaining sales over the next few years. Fans in Japan lined up to be among the first to pick up the latest portable game device, which kicked off a global rollout on Saturday. The Vita will be launched in the United States and Europe in February. Sony’s previous portable game device, the PS Portable, sold 166,000 units on the first day of sales in 2004. It has sold 73 million units to date. (Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

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NYC Probe Finds Internet Is ‘A Vast, Unregulated’ Illegal Gun Market

December 14, 2011

A New York City undercover investigation heralded as the first of its kind has found a “vast and largely unregulated market for illegal guns” on the Internet, and the worst offender is a website that has gotten mixed up with the law before: Craigslist. In the report released Wednesday, entitled, ” Point, Click, Fire: An Investigation of Illegal Online Gun Sales ,” investigators found that sellers on Craigslist agreed 82 percent of the time to sell guns to a purchaser who admitted they probably couldn’t pass a background check. Not that anyone is supposed to be selling guns on Craigslist. The website, which depends on self-policing, claims to ban firearms sales yet thousands of guns were found listed for sale there, according to the report. In contrast, investigators were unable to find a single firearm for sale on eBay, which prohibited gun sales in 1999 and “appears to effectively enforce its policy” by removing weapons listed for sale and threatening to restrict or suspend accounts that violate the rules. The results of the report are set to be announced Wednesday by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a long-time gun control advocate who co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns , as well as Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and other officials. More than 4,000 websites offer guns for sale, according to the Department of Justice. As the new report illustrates, the anonymity of the Internet has spurred huge growth in online sales. “Criminal buyers who once had to purchase in person can now prowl hundreds of thousands of listings to find unscrupulous sellers. Negotiations can be conducted from the discreet remove of a phone call or an email exchange,” it said. Federally licensed firearms dealers are required to conduct background checks on all buyers, whether in person or online. But unlicensed “private sellers” are exempt from conducting background checks. This so-called “gun show loophole,” along with the Internet, now accounts for about 40 percent of U.S. sales, fueling what law enforcement officials say is a huge black market for illegal guns. One online gun dealer was linked to both the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre that killed 32 people and the mass mass shooting at Northern Illinois University in 2008 that left five dead. Guns purchased illegally online also have been linked to police shootings, gun trafficking and sales to minors. The report’s findings could give new meaning to the term ” Craigslist killers ,” a category of criminals who in recent years have found and lured their victims on the popular classified advertising website. In the New York investigation, a team of 15 undercover agents surfed the Internet over a period of 18 days to capture audio and video recordings of online gun sellers blatantly skirting the law that bars the sale of firearms to felons, the mentally ill, domestic abusers and other prohibited buyers. The investigators examined 125 private sellers in 14 states who advertised on 10 different websites. They found more than 25,000 guns for sale on those sites alone. City investigators posing as illegal purchasers asked five sellers to meet in person to exchange cash for guns. All five agreed, selling investigators four handguns and a semi-automatic assault rifle while being recorded with hidden cameras. Among the findings: 62 percent of private gun sellers — 77 of 125 online sellers contacted — agreed to sell a firearm to a buyer who said he probably couldn’t pass a background check. Besides Craigslist, unlicensed sellers also offered arms at alarmingly high rates with no questions asked at Armslist , Gunlistings , Glocktalk and the classified section of Utah news website KSL.com . Sellers in five Southern states — Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Carolina and Virginia — were the worst offenders, followed closely by dealers in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Texas. Midwest sellers have the best record, with 48 private sellers refusing to make illegal sales. The report recommended Congress pass a long-stalled bill that would close the online and gun show loophole to allow background checks for all gun sales, a measure the National Rifle Association has fought for years. It also said the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives should conduct sting operations against online websites that do not require buyers or sellers to identify themselves, and urged the Bureau to better track guns bought online that are later used to commit crimes. Websites such as Craigslist, it said, should tighten self-policing policies.

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OECD: Europe Must Act To Stop Youth Jobs Crisis

December 13, 2011

PARIS (Anna Maria Jakubek) – Europe must invest in jobs for young people despite the reigning climate of austerity or risk long-term consequences for growth and competitiveness, an international panel of employment experts said on Tuesday. With youth jobless rates across the European Union averaging an alarmingly high 20 percent, governments need to fight the trend by stimulating growth, creating jobs and training youths, said the researchers from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Jobless rates among young people vary widely across the 27-member bloc, rising as high as 45 percent in Spain in the second quarter versus 7 percent in the Netherlands. Some countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, have kept youth unemployment low thanks in part to apprenticeship and mentoring programs which the OECD said should not count as spending items in national budgets. “It’s an investment for the present, an investment for the future, so I think that while we are thinking about where to cut, we have to bear this in mind,” said Stefano Scarpetta, deputy director of the OECD’s employment division, speaking at a two-day conference at the Paris-based body. Not only do governments need to increase benefits for the unemployed, but they should also help to reintegrate jobless youths into the labor market by helping them look for jobs and training them to work in new sectors, the panel said. “This should not be just passive income support and then the young person stays at home waiting for a job to come,” Scarpetta said. High jobless rates have dogged Europe for decades. But youth unemployment has emerged as a particular concern during the European debt crisis as companies in countries with high labor costs eschewed making new hires. While overall EU unemployment hit 9.8 percent at the end of October 2011, the rate for youths has risen at a much faster pace, to 22 percent in October 2011 from 16 percent in 2007, according to the European Commission. The struggle to find jobs was not confined to the unskilled and poorly educated, the panel said. “People with higher education are just not getting jobs, and we can’t allow that sort of waste of the investment in education skills to start to evaporate away in terms of hopelessness, frustration,” said John Evans, general secretary of the OECD advisory on union issues. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Chuck E. Cheese Fined For Multiple Child Labor Law Violations

December 13, 2011

Chuck E. Cheese, that famed birthday party venue “where a kid can be a kid,” has allegedly been forcing some children to grow up a bit too fast. The U.S. Department of Labor fined nine San Francisco-area Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurants a total of $28,000 for allowing 16 young workers to operate on-site trash compactors in violation of the law, according to the Los Angeles Times . The eateries also allowed two minors to run a dough-mixing machine illegally. The Fair Labor Standards Act sets the minimum wage for most non-agricultural work at age 14, but it does prohibit youth from working in manufacturing, mining or performing other “hazardous jobs.” But it appears the restaurants have learned their lesson. Officials at CEC Entertainment Inc., the Irving, Texas-based owner of Chuck E. Cheese’s, are now telling teen workers not to operate the equipment and have put stickers on the machines warning minors not to use them, according to the San Francisco Chronicle . Brenda Holloway, a spokeswoman for the company, told the Chronicle that there were some regulations that the CEC hadn’t been aware of previously. “As soon as we were made aware of that, we did correct the deficiencies and paid our fines,” Holloway told the Chronicle . “We’re walking the straight and narrow now.” The Labor Department has collected more than $650,000 in back pay and penalties from 271 south Florida restaurants for labor law violations including breaking child labor provisions, according to a press release. A Connecticut family fought back in 2010 when the Labor Department accused them of violating child labor laws by allowing their children to work in the family pizzeria, according to ABC News. The Chuck E. Cheese news comes as child labor regulations have been thrust back into the national spotlight thanks to Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. Gingrich, a former House Speaker, has proposed putting poor children to work as janitors in their schools to help them learn a proper “work habit.” This isn’t the first scandal at Chuck E. Cheese this year. A photo surfaced in July of what appeared to be a mascot pointing his middle finger at a camera while next to a child. In 2010, a Chuck E. Cheese manager was accused by female employees of sexist and derogatory comments.

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National Home Sales Figures To Be Lowered Dating Back To 2007: NAR

December 12, 2011

WASHINGTON — National home sales figures will be lowered dating back to 2007 after the private trade group that collects them said the numbers were too high. The National Association of Realtors said Monday it will release the downward revisions for previously occupied homes on Dec. 21. Among the reasons for the inflated figures, the Realtors group says: changes in the way the Census Bureau collects data, population shifts and some sales being counted twice. Last year’s total sales figure of 4.91 million was the worst in 13 years. The Realtors consulted with several government and private housing market experts, including the Federal Reserve, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Home Builders, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and CoreLogic, the California-based data firm that first raised doubts about the annual numbers earlier this year. CoreLogic estimated that the Realtors group overstated sales in 2010 by at least 15 percent. The changing numbers could impact how economists view data from the trade group. It could also affect companies who use the figures for hiring and expansion plans.

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‘We Became A Bank Of America Symbol’

December 7, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO — To hear Netflix CEO Reed Hastings tell it, the bone-headed decisions that have dragged down the Internet’s leading video subscription service during the past five months eventually will be forgotten like a bad movie made by a great film director. Shaking off the stigma of a massive flop won’t be easy, a challenge Hastings acknowledged late Tuesday when he spoke at a UBS investor conference in New York. After his host mentioned the mystique surrounding Hastings as Netflix’s fortunes soared a year ago, Hastings quipped: “Now, it’s just pity.” The self-deprecating humor prefaced a 45-minute treatise on why Hastings believes Netflix will overcome its recent adversity and remain at the forefront of a shift that increasingly will turn watching Internet-distributed video into one of the world’s most popular pastimes. This coming as high-speed connections, mobile devices and more sophisticated televisions become commonplace. His long-term vision calls for Netflix to be selling Internet video subscriptions at prices starting at $8 per month in most markets outside of China. “If you fundamentally believe Internet video will change the world in 20 years, we are the leading play on that basis,” Hastings boasted. He quickly added a caveat: “As long as we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot anymore.” Hastings sounded like he intends to stick around to lead the way, despite questions about recent moves that triggered a customer backlash and a staggering decline in Netflix’s stock price that has wiped out three-fourths, or about $12.5 billion, of the company’s market value in five months. Netflix Inc. shares closed Tuesday at $68.14, down from a peak of nearly $305 in July when the company infuriated its U.S. subscribers by announcing plans to raise its prices by as much as 60 percent. The sell-off has surprised and humbled Hastings, who revealed on stage that he had curtailed his sales of his Netflix holdings earlier this year because he was convinced the stock would quickly hit $1,000. Hastings said his biggest mistake was trying to phase out Netflix’s once-trailblazing DVD-by-mail rental service more quickly than millions of customers wanted. He and his management team concluded a few years ago DVDs that are destined to obsolescence, so they began concentrating on streaming video over high-speed Internet connections. Ending Netflix’s practice of bundling DVD-by-mail and Internet streaming subscriptions together so people are forced to buy them separately was meant to push more households into weaning themselves from discs. Customers instead saw the move as a betrayal by a greedy company and canceled their subscriptions in droves. “We became a sort of a Bank of America symbol, which is super unfortunate,” Hastings said Tuesday in comments monitored on a webcast. “We berate ourselves tremendously for that lack of insight because it didn’t need to be that way. But, you know, in three or five years, we aren’t going to remember it. It’s going to be: `Did we succeed at streaming?’ That’s all people are going to care about in three or five years. So we are not losing too much sleep over it. We are charging ahead.” There’s damage to repair along the way. Netflix entered October with 800,000 fewer U.S. subscribers than it had at the start of July, and the company has said there have been additional defections in the past two months, although the number hasn’t been quantified. The result: Netflix isn’t bringing in as much money as it hoped to pay for an expansion in in Latin America and Great Britain and cover rising fees to license movies and TV shows for its video-streaming library. The shortfall will saddle it with a loss next year, the first time that has happened in a decade. Hastings said he expects Netflix to enjoy robust subscriber growth next year, although he doubts the company will be able to match its performance during the first six months of this year when it added nearly 5 million subscribers. Virtually of the company’s future growth is expected to come from streaming-only subscriptions. “DVD will do whatever it will do,” Hastings said. “We are not going to hurt it, but we aren’t putting a lot of time and energy into it.” Netflix ended September with 25.3 million subscribers worldwide, including 23.8 million in the U.S. Nearly 14 million of the U.S subscriptions included a DVD-by-mail plan. To ensure it will have enough money to finance its ambitions, Netflix recently raised $400 million by issuing convertible debt to one of its major stockholders and selling 2.86 million discounted shares. That stock sale further irritated investors because Netflix spent nearly $200 million buying back 900,000 shares of its stock at an average price of $218 during the first nine months of the year. Hastings said Netflix probably could have gotten by without the extra money, but he decided to raise the extra cash to avoid a “crisis of confidence” among the company’s suppliers, including movie and TV studios that license their video and sell their DVDs to the company. Increasing competition is another major concern hanging over Netflix. Amazon.com Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Dish Network Corp. are already offering subscription packages that include Internet video. Verizon Communication Inc. declined to comment on reports it may also enter the market. Hastings said he doubted Verizon will make much of a dent unless it is prepared to pay between $1 billion and $2 billion annually to obtain the rights to professionally produced video. Right now, Hasting said, only Netflix and Time Warner Inc.’s HBO pay channel have made that kind of commitment. “If they are not willing to invest at those levels, it pretty hard to compete with us or HBO,” Hastings said. He went a step further, branding HBO as Netflix’s biggest rival now that the channel as expanded beyond cable TV with an on-the-go application for Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad, as well as devices running on Google Inc.’s Android software. The app is free, but viewing content on the devices still requires an HBO cable subscription. “It will be a little bit of an arms race with us,” Hastings said of HBO. “Hopefully, we will end up both creating amazing consumer experiences and end up pushing the bar in a positive way for each other.”

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Online Shopping Sales Continue To Surge

December 5, 2011

NEW YORK — U.S. shoppers are still spending heavily online after a record-busting “Cyber Monday,” research firm comScore Inc. said Sunday. The firm, which tracks Web use, found shoppers spent nearly $6 billion online on Monday through Friday last week, a record. On Cyber Monday itself, sales reached $1.25 billion, the biggest online shopping day in history. Online sales on Tuesday and Wednesday also broke $1 billion. Cyber Monday sales topped $1 billion for the first time last year. ComScore says online sales are up 15 percent to $18.7 billion in November and the first two days of December, compared with the same period last year. The holiday shopping season can make up to 40 percent of retailers’ annual revenue. This year’s holiday shopping has risen with help from discounting and promotions. Free shipping also appears to be a big draw, applying to 63 percent of sales, up from 52 percent a year ago. “Consumers have come to expect free shipping during the holiday promotion periods, and retailers, in turn, have realized that they must offer this incentive,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni in a statement. Online shopping accounts for between 8 and 10 percent of overall holiday spending, by various estimates. ComScore’s spending figures exclude travel, auctions and large corporate purchases. Spending on items including clothing, general merchandise, toys and electronics and in department stores, rose 4.7 percent to $125 billion in the Oct. 30 to Nov. 26 period, according to MasterCard Advisor’s SpendingPulse. That includes online buying and spending in physical stores.

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Biggest Online Shopping Day Ever

November 29, 2011

NEW YORK — Online shoppers spent record amounts on the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, making it the biggest online shopping day in history. Online sales rose 22 percent to $1.25 billion on “Cyber Monday,” when retailers ramp up online promotions, according to research firm comScore Inc. That makes it the biggest online shopping day ever, the research firm said. A year ago, “Cyber Monday” sales topped $1 billion for the first time IBM Benchmark, another company that tracks online sales, reported a 33 percent rise. The average order rose 2.6 percent to $193.24 this year, according to IBM Benchmark. It didn’t give total dollar sales numbers for comparison. The company said about 80 percent of retailers offered online deals. The Cyber Monday numbers point to Americans’ growing comfort with using their personal computers, tablets and smartphones to shop. Over the past few years, big chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, have offered more and better incentives, like hourly deals and free shipping, to capitalize on that trend. It’s important for retailers to make a good showing during the holiday shopping season, a time when they can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue. “Retailers that adopted a smarter approach to commerce, one that allowed them to swiftly adjust to the shifting shopping habits of their customers, whether in-store, online or via their mobile device, were able to fully benefit from this day and the entire holiday weekend, said John Squire, chief strategy officer, IBM Smarter Commerce. About 6.6 percent of online shoppers used a mobile device to shop, up from 2.3 percent last year. Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad were the top mobile devices for retail traffic, with Android devices coming in third. Web traffic rose 28 percent on Monday, according to another firm, online content-delivery firm Akamai. The peak was at 9 p.m. Eastern when shoppers across the country were online. The numbers echo a strong shopper showing in brick-and-mortar stores over the holiday weekend. A record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day holiday weekend starting on Thanksgiving Day, up from 212 million last year, according to the National Retail Federation trade group. And sales on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, rose 7 percent to $11.4 billion, the largest amount ever spent, according to ShopperTrak, which gathers stores’ data. A clearer picture of how holiday sales are shaping up will come on Thursday, when major retailers report November sales. The term “Cyber Monday” was coined in 2005 by The National Retail Federation to encourage Americans to shop online on the Monday after Thanksgiving. It is not always the busiest online shopping day, but in recent years sales on the day have increased as retailers offer more deals specifically for Cyber Monday.

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Cyber Monday Smashes Records

November 28, 2011

NEW YORK — Shoppers seem to be just as enthusiastic about shopping on their computers and smartphones on Cyber Monday as they were about finding deals over the weekend. Online sales on Cyber Monday, which was started in 2005 by a retail trade group to encourage Americans to shop online on the Monday after Thanksgiving, were up mid-afternoon by 15 percent from a year ago, according to data from IBM Benchmark. Meanwhile, sales from mobile devices were up 7.4 percent. The group did not give dollar amounts. The Cyber Monday numbers point to Americans’ growing comfort with using their personal computers, tablets and smartphones to shop. Over the past few years, big chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, have been offering more and better incentives like hourly deals and free shipping, to capitalize on that trend. It’s important for retailers to make a good showing during the holiday shopping season, a time when they can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue. On Monday, Amazon.com offered its bigger, more expensive Kindle DX for $259, or $120 off the regular price. The Express clothing chain was giving 30 percent off and free shipping on all online orders. And Wal-Mart, which has been calling the holiday “Cyber Week” in ads, was offering an LG 47-inch LED TV for $879, or $320 off the regular price. “Cyber Monday is far more exciting to me than Black Friday,” says Jamie Minoso, a 40-year-old English teacher from Alabama. “I do not enjoy the traffic and chaos involved in shopping at a mall.” To be sure, the strong start to Cyber Monday, created by a unit of The National Retail Federation, follows an even stronger kickoff to the holiday shopping season over the weekend. Americans shopped in record numbers, driven by earlier store openings and a push by retailers for online sales. A record 226 million shoppers visited stores and websites during the four-day holiday weekend starting on Thanksgiving Day, up from 212 million last year, according to the NRF. And sales on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, rose 7 percent to $11.4 billion, the largest amount ever spent, according to ShopperTrak, which gathers stores’ data. Online sales were strong even over the weekend. Thirty-eight percent of all purchases were made online this year, up from 31 percent to 32 percent last year, says Sherif Mityas, partner in the retail practice of A.T. Kearney, who believes the increase was due to heavy promotions. Barneys, for instance, offered 40 percent off on its website on Thanksgiving Day, a day before it began its sales in stores. And Barnes & Noble offered 40 percent to 75 percent off online products, discounts that weren’t available in store. “Retailers are doing a good job of creating more excitement online in ways they can’t do in store,” Mityas says. “They’re creating that excitement of, `I’ve got to get that special deal,” that is really spurring traffic.’” It won’t be clear how well retailers will ultimately fare on Cyber Monday until Tuesday. But last year, sales on the day topped $1 billion for the first time, making it the heaviest day of online spending ever. Ahead of this week’s “Cyber Monday,” the NRF says nearly 80 percent of retailers plan to offer special promotions. And a record 122.9 million of Americans are expected to shop on the day, up from 106.9 million who shopped on “Cyber Monday” last year, according to a survey conducted for Shop.org. By early afternoon on Monday, traffic was up about 37 percent year-over-year, according to Akamai, an online content delivery company. Akamai says it expects online traffic to peak at about 9 p.m. Traffic has been up substantially since the Monday before Thanksgiving as retailers promoted online deals earlier than ever, says Lelah Manz, Akamai’s chief strategist of commerce. “There has been a huge volume of promotional activity being driven by daily deal sites, Facebook and other social networking sites,” she says.

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Dan Solin: The Citigroup Settlement: Legal Fiction Exposed

November 1, 2011

There are times when I have a very jaded view of the judicial system in this country. The O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony verdicts showed that justice is not always done in criminal cases. Civil cases are much worse. The securities industry routinely victimizes its clients with impunity. A cozy mandatory arbitration system administered by FINRA, which is basically a shill for the securities industry, often serves the interest of its benefactors at the expense of its clients. If investors recover anything, it’s typically a fraction of what they deserve. Hopefully, mandatory arbitration for all consumers will be banned by Congress, but I am not optimistic. In last week’s blog , I wrote about the proposed settlement with Citigroup over its sale of $1 billion in toxic housing debt. Citigroup allegedly didn’t tell the investors who bought this debt that it exercised significant influence over the selection of $500 million of the assets in the portfolio and then took a short position against those assets. The investors lost everything. Citigroup pocketed $34 million for structuring and marketing the transaction and an additional $126 million by betting against the interest of its investors. The proposed settlement involved the payment by Citigroup of $285 million. As is customary in these cases, Citigroup did not admit to any wrongdoing. This legal fiction permits companies to defend against civil lawsuits arising out of this conduct, and forces plaintiffs in those cases to relitigate the issue of liability. Settlements of this sort are required to be submitted to the Federal Courts, where Judges routinely sign off on them without further inquiry. Not U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff. Judge Rakoff is a Clinton appointee who joined the federal bench in 1996. He was previously a federal prosecutor and a defense attorney in white collar criminal cases. He has a long history of asking prickly questions about settlements with big Wall Street firms, and the Citigroup case was no exception. He wants an explanation of how Citigroup can be accused of serious securities fraud, but not be required to admit or deny wrongdoing. The response will be interesting. To the average citizen, engaging in the kind of conduct alleged in the Citigroup complaint looks like fraud. If they are guilty, why shouldn’t they admit their guilt? He would like to know if the public interest would be better served by a trial, which would determine conclusively whether the charges are true. He is right. Either Citigroup should admit its guilt or there should be a trial where all the evidence will be made public and a jury can determine guilt or innocence. He is concerned that the amount of the proposed $95 million penalty might not have deterrent effect. It won’t. It is a drop in the bucket for Citigroup, which reported third quarter 2011 revenues of $20.8 billion. Here’s his real zinger: Why is the penalty in this case to be paid in large part by Citigroup and its shareholders rather than by the “culpable individual offenders acting for the corporation.” There is no good reason why those who engage in this kind of conduct should not be personally responsible for the consequences of their actions. Finally, he asks how this alleged conduct can be characterized as mere negligence rather than fraud. It clearly is fraud. You don’t “negligently” fail to disclose this kind of conduct. Judge Rakoff should be commended for taking on a system that encourages fleecing of investors by their “trusted” advisors. Usually, the only penalty is a slap on the wrist, which actually encourages repeat behavior of this sort. Exposing the legal fiction of these settlements is a service to all investors. Dan Solin is the author of the New York Times best sellers The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read , The Smartest 401(k) Book You’ll Ever Read , and The Smartest Retirement Book You’ll Ever Read . His new book, The Smartest Portfolio You’ll Ever Own , was released in September, 2011.The views set forth in this blog are the opinions of the author alone and may not represent the views of any firm or entity with whom he is affiliated. The data, information, and content on this blog are for information, education, and non-commercial purposes only. Returns from index funds do not represent the performance of any investment advisory firm. The information on this blog does not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice and is limited to the dissemination of opinions on investing. No reader should construe these opinions as an offer of advisory services. Readers who require investment advice should retain the services of a competent investment professional. The information on this blog is not an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any securities or class of securities mentioned herein. Furthermore, the information on this blog should not be construed as an offer of advisory services. Please note that the author does not recommend specific securities nor is he responsible for comments made by persons posting on this blog.

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Mafia Takes Over Publicly Traded Company

November 1, 2011

As Occupy Wall Street protestors chant about the criminals in the boardroom, actual thieves — including men associated with the mafia — have spent years quietly running FirstPlus Financial Group (FPFX), a Texas-based company and a one-time subprime lender that boasted former Vice President Dan Quayle as a board member, and used NFL Hall of Famer Dan Marino in its ads. On Tuesday, Nicodermo S. Scarfo, a made man within the Lucchese organized crime family, was arrested at his home. He’s one of 13 men charged with the illegal takeover of the publicly traded company, among other racketeering charges. “The defendants gave new meaning to ‘corporate takeover,’ ” said U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman.

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Apple Slams iPhone Rumors

October 19, 2011

By Poornima Gupta and Edwin Chan SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc stunned Wall Street by reporting results that missed expectations for the first time in years, blaming rumors of the new iPhone for hurting demand in the September quarter. Shares of Apple fell 7 percent in extended trading on Tuesday, wiping some $27 billion off the value of the world’s largest technology company. It was Apple’s first quarterly earnings under Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took over from Steve Jobs in August at a critical juncture for the company. Apple is battling Google Inc in the mobile arena, as well as other challengers such as Samsung and Amazon.com Inc. “Investors are going to start to speculate that there is change under way now that Jobs is gone, and that there’s trouble ahead. We don’t share that point,” said Channing Smith, co-manager at Capital Advisors Growth Fund, which holds Apple shares. “The iPhone is where the weakness was and it’s an explainable one. The strong demand for the iPhone 4S set up strong demand for the holiday season.” Apple said it sold 17.07 million iPhones in its fiscal fourth quarter ended September 24 — well short of the roughly 20 million forecast by analysts. The iPhone is Apple’s flagship product, yielding some 40 percent of annual sales. Revenue rose 39 percent to $28.27 billion, lower than the average analyst estimate of $29.69 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. It was the first time Apple missed revenue expectations since the fiscal fourth quarter of 2008. Net profit was $6.62 billion, or $7.05 a share. That fell shy of expectations for earnings of $7.39 per share. The last time Apple missed EPS estimates was in the first quarter of 2001, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. “Expectations for this company were red-hot, that is why we downgraded it,” said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis, who lowered his rating on the shares days before. “The reality is their business is not an annuity. They have to sell their quarter’s worth of revenue every 90 days.” “They had a big upgrade cycle with the iPhone, the numbers came in weak. They need to set records every time they report to keep up the momentum.” Apple executives said consumers had postponed purchase decisions until the crucial holiday quarter because of speculation that a new phone was on the way. Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S in early October, and it hit stores last Friday. Apple — which typically offers projections so conservative they are disregarded — on Tuesday forecast December quarter revenue and earnings above Wall Street’s estimates. “There’s no question this was a transition quarter ahead of the 4S,” said WP Stewart portfolio manager Michael Walker. “With the early pace of iPhone 4S sales, my guess is that disappointment is relatively short-lived.” “I’m not going to call Q3 a throwaway quarter for iPhones, but it was definitely a transition.” A PERIOD OF TRANSITION Cook started his first earnings conference call as CEO by honoring Jobs, who died on October 5 after a years-long battle against pancreatic cancer. He said he was “very confident” of posting record iPhone sales in the current quarter. The company moved 4 million iPhone 4S units — more than double its predecessor — in its first three days, despite lukewarm reviews. Another area for optimism for Apple was iPads. The company moved 11.12 million units during the quarter despite attempts by various manufacturers, including Samsung, to capture a slice of the tablet market. Now Amazon.com has also entered the fray with its Kindle Fire tablet. Acknowledging the competition, Cook said it was “reasonable to say” none of Apple’s rivals have gained any traction, and he expected the tablet market to be bigger than personal computer in the long term. Cook also told analysts that Greater China — mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan — was becoming an all-important region for Apple as it has “quickly become No. 2 on our list of top revenue countries very, very quickly.” Revenue from the region increased four-fold to $4.5 billion during the quarter. The new CEO fielded questions on Apple’s cash pile of over $81 billion, saying the money provided flexibility for acquisitions and investing in the supply chain. “That said, I’m not religious about holding cash or not holding it,” he added. “It’s a topic for the board on an ongoing basis.” Apple’s Mac sales saw a large spike during the September quarter but it failed to lift earnings. Apple sold 4.89 million Macs, up 27 percent from a year ago. Gross margin came to 40.3 percent — a tad higher than Wall Street’s forecast of 39.74 percent. International sales accounted for 63 percent of the quarter’s revenue. “We expected iPhone sales to decline in the September quarter from the June quarter as a result of the announcements we made … in June, where we said we would launch iOS 5 and iCloud in fall,” Peter Oppenheimer, Chief Financial Officer, said in an interview with Reuters. “That basically created the rumor of the day across the September quarter, especially at the end.” Apple said it expected December quarter earnings of $9.30 a share on revenue of about $37 billion. Wall Street is projecting $9.01 for the period, but it was unclear if that was comparable. “What is interesting is the guidance is less conservative than usual for their next quarter. It’s a timing issue, where it looks like the business that people thought would be in the September quarter is occurring in the December quarter,” said Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu. Apple shares fell to $394.78 in after-hours trading, after closing at $422.24 on the Nasdaq. (Additional reporting by Edwin Chan in Los Angeles, Liana Baker and Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Gary Hill, Bernard Orr) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions

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Ex-Googler Flees Groupon–Back To Google

September 24, 2011

‪ ‬ By Kara Swisher In a blog it just posted, Groupon said its recently hired COO, Margo Georgiadis, “has decided to return to Google (her former employer) in a new role as President, Americas.” She was only hired in April , just months before the company filed to go public. Georgiadis was previously VP of Global Sales at Google. (Interesting way to get a better title at the search giant, Margo!) Georgiadis was in charge of the company’s global sales, marketing and operations at the Chicago-based social buying service. Sources said that the hiring did not gel on either side. It might not be Georgiadis’ fault. She replaced Rob Solomon , who was in his job for one year. And here’s another: PR hire Brad Williams , a longtime Silicon Valley communications exec, who was there and then gone in what felt like 23 minutes. It seems Groupon does not like Silicon Valley types or, perhaps, vice versa. Since its IPO filing, in fact, it feels as if it has been a non-stop circus disaster at Groupon. That has included immense controversy about its sketchy accounting, huge slugs of venture funding going to its founders and a lot of worries about its growth. Today, in a Friday late afternoon dumping of bad news in hopes that no one notices (I do), Groupon also amended its S-1 public offering filing once again to change revenue metrics and also add a controversial internal letter that CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason sent to employees to counter its many and growing critics. There appear to be many more shoes dropping soon, said sources, so stay tuned. Until then, here’s the whole and very terse — for Mason — post : Update on the Groupon Team As a fast-growing company, we’ve done a lot of hiring this year, including on our senior executive team. Since the beginning of this year, we’ve made a total of 8 additions — that’s 57% of the total executive team. It would have been great if I could say that we batted 1,000%, but that’s rarely the case; after five months at Groupon, Margo Georgiadis, our COO, has decided to return to Google (her former employer) in a new role as President, Americas. We’ve built a fantastic team that has proven itself highly capable, so this change won’t have an impact on operations. In fact, we are using it as an opportunity to reorganize in a way that reflects our evolving strategic priorities. Sales, Channels, International, and Marketing will now report directly to me. Here’s a note from Margo: “Groupon is a great company and I feel privileged to have worked there even for a short time. It was a hard decision to leave as the company is on a terrific path. I have complete confidence in the team’s ability to realize its mission.” We wish her well. Via Uh-Oh: Groupon Loses New COO, Who’s Going Back to Google on AllThingsD . More from AllThingsD: More: Groupon Amends Its S-1 IPO Filing — Again! — Over Accounting Issues and CEO Letter Yahoo’s Dueling Internal Memos: Board, Followed by CEO, Spam Employees in Race to Explain From Cradle to, Well, You Know: The Creepy Factor of Facebook’s Timeline

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Back To School Shopping Fails To Boost August Retail Sales

September 14, 2011

Growth in retail sales stalled in August, hurt by a pitched battle over spending in Congress and raising fresh questions about the country’s ability to steer clear of a double-dip recession. Sales were unchanged from a month earlier, a Commerce Department report showed on Wednesday. It was a weaker reading than expected and sales growth during June and July were revised downward. Consumer confidence plunged in August after a bruising battle over the budget slammed stock prices and pushed the nation to the brink of default. “The consumer reacted to the debt ceiling, the downgrade and the equity market swoon by basically hunkering down and not spending,” said Tom Porcelli, senior U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets in New York. Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, and the data suggests growth in the first two months of the third quarter was weaker than many economists expected. Congress let a debate over spending go down to the wire early last month, nearly leaving the government unable to pay its bills. The country’s debt was then downgraded by a major rating agency. Major stock indexes opened up and Treasury debt prices fell after the head of the European Commission said it would soon present options for the introduction of euro area bonds, a move investors have seen as helping address the region’s crisis. RECESSION FEARS A Reuters poll showed economists see a nearly one-in-three chance the United States could reenter recession and many economists expect the Fed will unveil new measures to boost growth following its Sept 20-21 policy review. A separate report from the Labor Department showed U.S. producer prices were unchanged in August, held down by a drop in energy goods costs. The producer price report sends the Fed mixed signals about price pressures, with energy costs abating but core prices showing some pass-through of recent surges in energy and food costs. President Barack Obama is lobbying Congress to approve a stimulus plan delivered to lawmakers on Monday. Economic growth slowed sharply during the first half of the year, and the economy is vulnerable to potential shocks like an escalation of Europe’s debt crisis. “(The data) shows the slowdown in the economy is real,” said Steven Ricchiuto, chief economist at Mizuho Securities in New York. On Wednesday, Moody’s cut the credit ratings of two French banks because of exposure to debt from troubled Greece, while the European Commission signaled it would soon present options on how the euro zone might issue bonds jointly — a measure that would be aimed at propping up the zone’s weaker members. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tried to shore up confidence in Europe’s ability to solve its crisis, saying they had the financial and economic capacity to do so. In the retail sales report, an increase in sales of electronics, gasoline and food was balanced with drops in purchases of cars, furniture and clothes. Spending at restaurants and bars also dipped. Stripping out sales of gasoline, autos and building materials, so-called core retail sales rose 0.1 percent in August, pointing to some resilience. Excluding just autos, sales also were up 0.1 percent. INVENTORY GROWTH SLOWS Business inventories rose slightly less than expected in July, suggesting firms remained cautious about future demand at the start of the third quarter. Inventories climbed 0.4 percent, following an upwardly revised 0.4 percent rise in June, the Commerce Department said in another report on Wednesday. Economists had expected a rise of 0.5 percent in July. (Additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal in Washington and Richard Leong and Emily Flitter in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci and Neil Stempleman) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Amazon, California Lawmakers Cut A Deal

September 8, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California lawmakers rushed to write a bill to give Amazon.com Inc a one-year reprieve from collecting certain sales taxes in exchange for dropping its ballot measure campaign to undo the tax, aides said on Thursday. The bill would put in writing the terms of a “handshake” agreement reached Wednesday between representatives of the Seattle-based Internet retailer, its brick-and-mortar opponents and lawmakers in a meeting called by legislative leaders. The measure covers the collection of sales taxes on orders through its affiliates in the state. Top lawmakers called the meeting after Democrats pushing a bill to block Amazon’s ballot measure effort –, aimed at the recently enacted sales tax — concluded they would not be able to win the necessary votes from Republicans for the legislation by Friday, when the legislature’s session ends. Under terms of the deal, Amazon will drop its ballot measure campaign and begin collecting sales tax on orders made by its California shoppers next September if federal legislation on online sales taxes that applies to all states fails to take shape by the end of next July. A representative of the Amazon campaign was not immediately available to comment on the agreement, which Democrats who control the legislature are likely to support. “They get a little more time and we get this thing resolved,” an aide to state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said. Republicans were waiting to see the agreement’s details in print before saying whether they would support it and send the bill to Democratic Governor Jerry Brown, aides said. Lawmakers may see the legislation by Thursday evening. Amazon had recently proposed to lawmakers a hiring spree of 7,000 jobs in California if the state put the sales tax on hold for two years. The offer fell flat with Democrats, who had pressed in state budget talks earlier this year for new revenue to help balance the state’s books, which eventually required close a shortfall of $10 billion. Amazon shares lost 1.2 percent to $217.38 Thursday in Nasdaq. (Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions

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Minnesota Shutdown Sees Light At The End Of The Tunnel (LATEST UPDATES)

July 15, 2011

The post and live blog below are a collaboration between Patch and HuffPost reporters. Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton and top Republicans struck a deal Thursday to end a budget impasse that prompted the state government to shut down, with the Democratic governor giving up on raising taxes. The agreement came after a three-hour negotiating session that followed Dayton’s announcement of his offer earlier in the day. If details are worked out and approved by state legislators, it would end the shutdown over how to resolve a $5 billion deficit that has lasted two weeks so far. Dayton said the government would be back in business “very soon,” but didn’t say exactly when. The two sides agreed on a proposal that would raise $1.4 billion in new revenue, half by delaying state aid checks to school districts and the other half by selling tobacco payment bonds. It was a big sacrifice by Dayton, who had made new income taxes a central plank in his campaign last year and the centerpiece of his budget. Republicans said they agreed to drop a list of policy changes and a plan to cut the state workforce by 15 percent. “It was about making sure that we get a deal that we can all be disappointed in, but a deal that is done, a budget that was balanced, a state that was back to work,” said Republican House Speaker Kurt Zellers, who appeared with Dayton and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch after the private meeting. The glum looks on their faces testified to a hard bargain. “Nobody is going to be happy with this, which is the essence of real compromise,” Dayton said. The date of a special legislative session to pass a budget and end the shutdown has not been set. Some terms of the deal still need to be filled in. Below, a live blog of the latest developments to unfold in Minnesota.

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Don McNay: The Peril of Prejudging Your Customers

July 7, 2011

Two friends, who are jewelry shopping went into locally owned store here in Kentucky. They were treated with respect by a knowledgeable sales person. They then decided to compare by going to a nationally owned chain. The salesman at the chain asked them where they were from. When they mentioned an economically challenged city outside of Lexington, the salesman immediately blew them off. He didn’t want to talk to them and then pointed them the cheapest stuff in the store. Guess who got the business? It reminds me Julia Roberts on Rodeo Drive in the scene in Pretty Woman . If the salesman is working on commission, he missed one that would have made his house payment. Or his car payment. Probably both. In this economy, I can’t imagine how anyone would look down their nose at a potential customer but I see it all the time. I see it at car dealerships, restaurants, and all kinds of places that ought to know better. You can’t judge a person by the clothes they wear or the city they live in. People with real money are usually the last to flash it. As Dr. Thomas Stanley pointed out in the Millionaire Next Door , people with real wealth are more likely to drive pickup trucks than BMW’s. One of my friends is one of the most successful medical malpractice attorneys in the United States. He and his wife decided they needed a new bed. He rolled out of bed on a Saturday, unshaven and in old clothes, and went to a furniture store. They started looking at beds suited for their very expensive home. The salesman came over in horror and tried to steer my buddy to stuff that people would buy for entry level houses or apartment. My friend went to every expensive bed in the place. Tested them by diving on them and rolling around. Walked out and got what he wanted another store. I do a lot of business in small towns that don’t have much of a social registry. One of my friends who fixes up junked cars and drives them as a primary vehicle is one of the wealthiest people I know. He reveals in the fact that no one knows about his wealth. He used to tell people he was a janitor. He got ignored by a lot of sales people. The ones that did talk to him made a ton of money over the years. A simple but good lesson to learn. Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC of Richmond Kentucky is an award-winning financial columnist and Huffington Post Contributor. McNay founded McNay Settlement Group, a structured settlement and financial consulting firm, in 1983, and Kentucky Guardianship Administrators LLC in 2000. McNay has Master’s Degrees from Vanderbilt and the American College and is in the Hall of Distinguished Alumni of Eastern Kentucky University. McNay has written two books. Most recent is Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You Win The Lottery. McNay is a Quarter Century member of the Million Dollar Round Table and has four professional designations in the financial services field.

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Australian Trade Surplus Falls from Previous Reading; Higher Retail Sales Keep Optimism

June 2, 2011

Australian Trade Surplus Falls from Previous Reading; Higher Retail Sales Keep Optimism

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Choosing A Joint Venture Partner For Success

May 31, 2011

05:31Www.goetzwidmann.de www.godmodeoff.de.vu. Joint venture commercial real estate . 07:51Examples of how rates of returns are increased by using joint ventures in commercial real estate . www.mdcrei.com …

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Greece Could Make Big Money By Selling State Assets: ECB

May 28, 2011

ATHENS/BERLIN (Angeliki Koutantou and Annika Breidthardt) – Greece could raise up to six times more than planned by selling state assets, an ECB policymaker said, as the country’s leader renewed efforts to forge a political consensus on new austerity measures. Echoing earlier views from the IMF, European Central Bank Board member Juergen Stark said on Saturday that Greece’s privatization program was nowhere near ambitious enough. The program — part of a broader package of fiscal reforms to help stave off fiscal meltdown — is intended to raise 50 billion euros by 2015 “The Greek government has shares in listed companies, it owns real estate. Experts estimate the sales potential (from privatizations) at up to 300 billion euros ($429.5 billion),” Stark told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag. The ailing euro zone state, whose debt burden stands at around 330 billion euros, needs to garner support from opposition parties for fiscal reforms before the European Union and International Monetary Fund will free up more payments from a bailout package. EU officials have asked Athens to step up privatizations urgently and suggested setting up a trustee institution to help oversee the process, similar to the body that privatized East German companies after the fall of communism. But the EU has not asked to play a major role in the asset sales and is only offering its expertise, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said on Saturday [ID:nLDE74R01U] Stark, who also reiterated ECB opposition to any form of Greek debt restructuring, echoed the IMF in his comments on asset sales. The fund’s European department director, Antonio Borges, said earlier this month the 50 billion euros cited as a figure for proceeds represented “probably less than 20 percent of all the assets the Greeks could privatize. “A part of these assets must be mobilized to lower the debt level. Furthermore, privatizations cause more efficiency in the entire economy,” Stark was quoted as saying on Saturday. STILL SEEKING CONSENSUS Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Friday failed to broker a consensus for the government’s austerity program and reforms, including privatization, across various political parties. On Saturday, he said there was still common ground with opposition parties on austerity policies and he hoped they would respond to his call for consensus on the way ahead. “I believe there are several points we converge on,” he told reporters, a day after opposition parties rejected his call for backing. “I will not stop seeking consensus. I hope several political forces respond so that we help ourselves exit this crisis in a faster and stronger way.” The opposition has rejected proposed tax increases to help reduce the budget deficit, arguing instead for tax cuts to revive economic growth. The IMF has said it cannot release its part of a 12 billion euro aid tranche to Greece next month unless European partners guarantee they will meet Greece’ funding needs for the next 12 months, something Germany and other north European creditors are unwilling to do without major Greek concessions. (Writing by Annika Breidthardt; Editing by John Stonestreet) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Ron Ashkenas: Teams That Only Think They Collaborate

May 27, 2011

Like death and taxes , one of the inevitable realities of organizational life is the periodic ” team challenge .” For such a project, the team is assigned to accomplish something beyond what they currently do or have done before. For a top management group, it might be the requirement to reduce overall expenses or headcount by 20%; for a sales or business development team, the goal might be to increase revenues by 10% in the next quarter; and for a product development team the focus could be on accelerating a market launch by two months. The varieties are endless, but the collective theme is that people working together — each with their own responsibilities — need to achieve a common result. These situations call for collaboration — which should be the fastest and most effective way to get results . But surprisingly over the years I have seen teams respond to these kinds of challenges in three basic ways (only one of which is truly collaborative): First is what I call compliance . This is when each team member independently responds to the challenge by taking action in her own area. In other words, everyone on the team complies with the need to do something, but avoids working together. For example, I once worked with a divisional leadership team that was required to reduce overall headcount by 10% to meet the corporation’s goals. With very little discussion, each person agreed to cut 10% of the people from their own function and report the numbers back to the divisional controller. While this “spread the pain evenly” approach indeed met the corporate requirement, there was probably a better way. The second response is cooperation . Here again each person develops and implements his own plans, but in this case shares what he is doing with the group. While there is some amount of joint discussion, the focus is still on individual actions rather than a collective strategy. For example, when one technology company needed to increase its sales performance, the districts were all given significantly higher targets. The district managers then went about achieving these targets in different ways. Some increased individual sales quotas across the board, others reallocated resources to higher-potential customers, and still others focused on closing the gap with services contracts. The managers shared these approaches on their weekly calls, and gave each other feedback. But they never created a joint strategy to leverage their combined resources, ideas, and talents. In the end, while some districts hit their targets, the overall numbers were disappointing. In both of the cases described here, true collaboration might have led to a more robust and effective outcome. In the headcount example, the leadership team might have identified specific areas where headcount could be reduced by more than 10%, considered ways of consolidating similar activities into shared service centers, or any number of other possibilities. In the sales example, the district managers might have reallocated resources across districts, created joint campaigns for particular products, or brainstormed many other ideas that could have been quickly tested and possibly scaled. What’s interesting is that neither team consciously decided not to collaborate. Instead they did what came naturally, which is to work either completely or partially on their own. The reality is that true collaboration is difficult. It requires subordinating individual goals to collective achievement; it means engaging in tough, emotional give-and-take discussions with colleagues about strategies and ideas; and it often leads to working in new ways that may not be comfortable or easy. So given these difficulties, most teams find it easier to talk about collaboration rather than do it. It doesn’t have to be this way. Teams can address their challenges through true collaboration, and by doing so can achieve outstanding results. The starting point however is to make a conscious — and collective — decision to go beyond compliance and cooperation. Have you been on teams that engaged in true collaboration? What did it take to make it happen? Cross-Posted from Harvard Business Online

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U.S. Pending Home Sales Nose Dive, Down 11.6 Percent in April

May 27, 2011

U.S. Pending Home Sales Nose Dive, Down 11.6 Percent in April

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John Adriatico Joins BCS, Inc. to Focus on New Business Development Initiative

May 26, 2011

Business Continuity Solutions, Inc. (BCS) Continues to Roll Out Its Business Plan, Hires John Adriatico to Focus on Large Account, New Business Development Sales for BCS Backup and Disaster Recovery Products and Services

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Australian Power And Gas Company Limited (ASX:APK) Appoints Mr David Goadby As General Manager Of Sales And Marketing

May 26, 2011

Australian Power And Gas Company Limited (ASX:APK) Appoints Mr David Goadby As General Manager Of Sales And Marketing

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Company Unfairly Fired Worker Over His Facebook Posts, Say Feds

May 24, 2011

WASHINGTON — The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced today that it has filed a complaint alleging that a Chicago-area car dealership wrongfully fired an employee after he posted commentary critical of the company on his Facebook page. The complaint is the latest in a string of moves by the labor board indicating that it wants to clarify workers’ rights when it comes to Facebook and labor law. In the Illinois case, a car salesman at Karl Knauz BMW , in Lake Bluff, took to Facebook to complain about the lame food and drinks served at a dealership event promoting a new BMW model. He and a few co-workers apparently felt that Sam’s Club hot dogs and bottled water were no way to hype a luxury car — and they thought their sales might suffer because of it. The salesman’s critical commentary included photographic evidence of the unremarkable snacks. At the behest of management, the employee pulled down his post the following week, but he was later fired for it anyway. In its complaint, the NLRB counsel argues that the Facebook posting is “protected concerted activity” — that’s labor-speak for things your employer can’t retaliate against you for. The case suggests, once again, that the labor board views Facebook and other social networking sites as a kind of open forum where employees should feel free to discuss working conditions without fear of being punished. Just last week, the labor board ruled that a Buffalo, N.Y., nonprofit wrongfully fired five of its workers after they criticized their employer in postings on Facebook. In that case, a worker at Hispanics United hopped on Facebook and floated a colleague’s allegation that employees at the nonprofit didn’t do enough to help their clients. The post drew some heated commentary from other employees, and management later canned five of them, saying their comments amounted to harassment of the employee who originally criticized co-workers. In a case brought by the NLRB last fall, an employee at a Connecticut ambulance company was fired after disparaging her boss on Facebook . The case was settled in February, and the company, American Medical Response, agreed to no longer discipline employees for discussing their working conditions on Facebook or elsewhere. An NLRB spokesperson says that in the wake of the American Medical Response case, the agency has received a number of complaints regarding firings due to Facebook posts. Barring a settlement between the car dealership and the feds, the Illinois case will go before an administrative law judge in July. When asked about the complaint over the phone, a manager at Karl Knauz BMW said, “I don’t know anything about that.” UPDATE: According to trade publication Dealer Communications , a lawyer for the dealership disputes the NLRB’s complaint , saying the worker was fired for reasons other than criticizing his employer in a Facebook posting.

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Echopass Continues Dramatic Expansion With Appointment of Enterprise Sales Leader

May 24, 2011

Respected Industry Sales Executive to Head Echopass Enterprise Sales Group

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U.S New Home Sales probably fell close to a record low in April…

May 24, 2011

U.S New Home Sales probably fell close to a record low in April…

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U.S. New Home Sales Surge Past Expectations

May 24, 2011

U.S. New Home Sales Surge Past Expectations

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EUR/USD: Trading the U.S. New Home Sales Report

May 23, 2011

EUR/USD: Trading the U.S. New Home Sales Report

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Polycom Appoints Key Leaders in Sales and Marketing to Expand Growth Strategy in Unified Communications

May 19, 2011

Promotes Key Sales Leaders Leveraging Asia Pacific Success; Adds Depth and Breadth in Marketing

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Gold Scams On The Rise

May 18, 2011

NEW YORK — Last year, Brian Gurl spent some time reading about the state of the U.S. economy. He kept hearing about the gargantuan size of the federal debt and the threat of inflation on TV. Gurl is approaching retirement age, so he and his wife needed safe investments. The couple decided on gold. “We approached several companies. But it was American Precious Metals who were the most aggressive,” said Gurl, who invested about $100,000 with the company last Fall. “They just sounded very expert.” In the span of a few months, the couple lost about $60,000, Gurl said. Last week, a Florida U.S. District Court issued a temporary injunction barring American Precious Metals from doing business, freezing its assets and putting the company in the hands of a court-appointed receiver. The case against American Precious Metals marks the third gold-related case brought by the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission since March. The agency has also issued a fraud advisory for investors interested in precious metals. 2011, it seems, is the year of commodities and companies prepared to capitalize on investor anxiety. The soaring prices of all sorts of commodities, uncertainty about the broader economy and the low interest rates banks are paying on savings has drawn both companies and investors to precious metals, said Brad Barber, a professor of finance at the University of California Davis. “It’s always easy to sell an investment — real or fraudulent — when it’s earned really high returns recently,” Barber said. “People tend to think they are getting in on the ground floor, but in fact the elevator may have already gone up and may be on its way down.” Institutional and individual investors hungry to make up losses suffered during the recession, people looking for a safe investment with potentially large returns and those concerned about the economy’s stability have all scrambled to join the gold profit party. Together they have created what many analysts insist is a bubble sure to burst. Gold prices — which reached about $1,495 an ounce on Wednesday — have hit and nearly returned to record highs this year. Yet with public interest in gold remaining high, precious metals scams have begun to proliferate. In March the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that in the last three years nearly 50 companies selling precious metals investments have opened in just two Florida counties. This month, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that companies targeting Minnesota seniors persuaded gold coin investors to pay for their purchases with reverse mortgages . Last year, Goldline, a company that advertised during the “Glenn Beck Show” — and had the good fortune of Beck suggesting on air that gold was a good investment — also became the subject of two state-level investigations. Beck has described the investigations as government efforts to eliminate opportunities to buy gold. In a pair of companion cases, the CFTC and FTC have accused American Precious Metals of targeting investors — particularly senior citizens — across the country with a combination of high-pressure and illegal sales tactics and misleading and fraudulent claims. “What these telemarketers said in general is … you can’t lose, you’re going to make money,” said Sana Chriss, an FTC attorney working on the case. “Well that just isn’t true. The value of everything can change. At one point it was real estate that was the hot and infallible area and then we had the bust there. Before that it was tech stocks.” At American Precious Metals, the sales pitch usually began with a world event, Chriss said. Peruvian miners were on strike, rendering the world’s silver supply suddenly short of demand. Silver prices would skyrocket tomorrow, went one pitch. The value of the U.S. dollar was sliding. But gold bar and uncirculated coins will always retain their value. In fact, gold prices are flirting with record highs and were certain to keep climbing, said another. American Precious Metals telemarketers rounded out each story with the same high-pressure sales pitch, according to court documents. Only the utterly unwise would pass on the company’s super-safe precious metals investments, the telemarketers claimed. The approach worked well enough to bilk as much as $37 million from investors, according to court documents filed this month in U.S. District Court by the FTC. A hearing that could lead to the permanent closure of American Precious Metals is scheduled for next week. Andrea and Harry Tanner Jr., the husband and wife owner-manager team behind American Precious Metals, did not respond to a request for comment left at their home. The company’s other owner, Sammy Goldman, could not be reached for comment. Both Goldman and Harry Tanner have been the targets of previous regulatory action. Between 1982 and 2006, Goldman was listed as a principal or an executive at companies that were the subject of regulatory action bought by the CFTC and National Futures Association, an industry trade group and self-regulatory body, according to court documents. In 2000, the NFA charged Tanner with making false and deceptive sales solicitations. Tanner agreed to a $5,000 fine and a requirement that he record his conversations with customers over a six month period, according to court documents. In 2006, the trade group expelled Tanner permanently and fined him $100,000. The NFA had found Tanner made misleading and deceptive sales calls to potential investors. Just months after his NFA expulsion, Tanner set up American Precious Metals and hired several sales people who had also been disciplined for deceiving customers about investments, according to court documents. By early January 2010, American Precious Metals had nearly 400 customers who thought they owned gold, silver, platinum and palladium. Gurl can not speak in detail about his interactions with American Precious Metals because he and his wife filed suit against the company in December. He did say they thought their money would be used to buy gold and other precious metals. But the federal agencies that shut down American Precious Metals this month say that the company never purchased any physical quantities of any precious metal, according to court documents. Instead, the company moved investor funds between a series of accounts in the United States and the United Kingdom. American Precious Metals also allegedly converted a large portion of each customer’s investment into a loan. Customers were then charged fees, commissions and interest that totaled about 40 percent of their total investment, according to court documents. Investors were encouraged to keep contributing. If they refused, their accounts were closed. And if an investor asked to take possession of the gold or other metals, he or she was assured the goods were safely stored. Shipping, security and other costs associated with delivery would simply chip away at the customer’s account balance, the company said, according to court documents. “What that really meant is that people invested large sums of money, paid all sorts of fees and interest and got very small amounts back when the accounts were closed,” said Chriss. “One consumer put in maybe $40,000. I think she got back $100 in the end.”

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Most Fed Officials Want To Raise Rates Before Selling Assets

May 18, 2011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Most Federal Reserve officials prefer to raise benchmark interest rates before selling assets when the time comes to tighten policy, minutes of their April meeting showed on Wednesday. During an extensive discussion of how the central bank might pull back its massive support for the world’s largest economy, officials agreed they would eventual shrink the Fed’s much expanded portfolio over the medium term, and that getting rid of mortgage-related debt would be a priority. “A majority of participants preferred that sales of agency securities come after the first increase in the (Fed’s) target for short-term interest rates,” the Fed said. “And many of those participants also expressed a preference that the sales proceed relatively gradually, returning (Fed holdings) to all Treasury securities over perhaps five years,” the minutes said. Discussion of the removal of monetary stimulus should not be seen as an indication the Fed is ready to start down that road any time soon, policy makers said. (Reporting by Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Neil Stempleman) Copyright 2010 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Market Leader Names Joe White Vice President of Sales and Service

May 17, 2011

Proven Business Leader With Track Record of Sales Success Becomes Third Senior Executive to Join Rapidly-Growing Company in Past Nine Months

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Travel Assistance Veteran Joins Europ Assistance USA

May 17, 2011

Gary Tice Named Corporate Sales Manager

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Scott Gish Joins Cambridge NanoTech Executive Team

May 17, 2011

CAMBRIDGE, MA–(Marketwire – May 17, 2011) – Cambridge NanoTech at the cutting-edge of nanotechnology development, is pleased to announce the addition of Scott Gish as Vice President of Sales. Prior to joining Cambridge NanoTech, Mr. Gish served as Vice President of Sales at Veeco Instruments and later held the positions of Vice President Global Sales and Business Development and of Marketing & Corporate Communications at Photronics Incorporated. Scott brings to Cambridge NanoTech extensive experience in the solar, semiconductor, and data storage industries as well as significant sales leadership serving vacuum-based processing equipment markets.

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Properties Previously Bought at Peak Exerting Downward Pressure on Current Prices

May 17, 2011

The commercial real estate market is continuing to adjust from “bubble” prices as 70.2% of the acquisitions made from 2005-2007 and subsequently sold in the first quarter of 2011 sold at a lower price, according to the latest release of CoStar’s Commercial Repeat Sales Indices (CCRSI). Comparatively, 40.5% of acquisitions made before 2005 and subsequently sold in the first quarter of 2011 sold at a lower price. 55% of the first quarter 2011 sales…

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