Archive for August 6th, 2009

Recent quarterly reports from the utilities sector shot expectations for a near-term industry turnaround as demand deterioration was even worse than expected. The handful of companies that managed to beat estimates did so by aggressively cutting costs and hiking rates. Call after call, executives warned of continued pricing weakness with no meaningful improvement until at… »

ING is short of cash to repay its debt-10 billion euros , acquired at the height of the financial crisis last year-to the Dutch government. How will it come up with the cash? On Thursday, ahead of the giant insurer’s second quarter results next week, a note by Merrill Lynch-Bank of America suggested the company… »

Wall Street may be encouraged by the waning level of job losses on Friday, but it will mean little to Americans stuck in unemployment lines and struggling to make ends meet.On Friday, the U.S. Labor Department is expected to announce that the national unemployment rate rose to 9.7% in July, as 300,000 Americans lost their… »

As the world’s market participants crane their necks to see signs of economic revival, the European Central Bank is staying stubbornly subdued about the matter. In its latest rate-setting decision the ECB left interest rates on hold at 1%, and barely raised its outlook for the euro-zone economy, saying that the pace of contraction was… »

Just how badly do network operators need the Apple iPhone to grow in Britain? O2 is the only operator to offer the in-demand handset, and its second-quarter customer additions were strong – 252,268 – at a time when rivals T-Mobile and Vodafone are actually losing customers. T-Mobile especially is feeling the pressure after parent company… »

Don’t be fooled. Car sales in the U.K. rose for the first time since April 2008, thanks to the positive push given by scrapping incentives following similar initiatives elsewhere in Europe. But the impact is likely to be short-lived.Analysts at Credit Suisse said on Thursday they still preferred premium car markets, which haven’t been benefited… »

This week hasn’t been kind to the nation’s publicly traded home builders, a group that built its collective tract home at ground zero of the subprime mortgage detonation. On Monday, Pulte Homes had the unpleasant task of reporting an even worse quarterly loss than last year. Then, on Tuesday morning, D.R. Horton surprised investors with… »

It’s not easy being Commerzbank. Whereas other European heavyweights like Barclays, Societe Generale and BNP Paribas have reported strong second-quarter profits, boosted by a turnaround in investment banking, the German lender’s heavier dependence on retail banking resulted in a second-quarter 1 billion loss on Thursday. And with Europe’s biggest economy expected to shrink 6% this… »

Britain has recently been reveling in positive economic data that gave the impression its economy was suddenly and inexplicably on the mend. But the Bank of England smartly put a stop to all that on Thursday. The British central bank is expanding its quantitative easing program by a larger-than-expected 50 billion pounds , to further… »

Anglo-Dutch firm Unilever delivered what investors wanted on Thursday-a surprisingly good 2% rise in second-quarter volumes-but at what cost? The household goods company’s earnings sank 15% over the year, almost on par with rival Procter & Gamble’s disappointing profits drop, after it spent more on advertising and held back from hiking prices too much. Is… »