Kraft Foods Inc., the second-largest food producer, announced India the strategically important market for further expansion of the company. Kraft's takeover of Cadbury PLC in 2010 permitted the company to access promising Latin American and Asian markets. Indian sales grow by 40% a year. Kraft Foods is going to invest essentially in Indian markets.
India's currency rupee declined to all-time low against USD forcing the local companies to buy dollar despite worries about global crisis. The rupee decreased to 52.50 to the USD on Tuesday, raising fears about new inflation. At the moment inflation in India has fallen by 14% since the beginning of 2011. Recent decline in the rupee value adds to market uncertainty in the country.
South Korea ratified a free-trade agreement with US. The vote on the agreement was organized promptly to escape debates with opposition parties. The trade agreement was accepted by US lawmakers and signed by Barack Obama last month and is expected to come into force in the beginning of the next year.
Brazilian government announced it fins Chevron, US oil company for the oil spill near Rio de Janeiro coast. The amount of fine is $28m. Chevron fully accepted responsibly explaining that it underestimated water pressure while drilling. Chevron may face more fines as investigation into the matter continues, said Izabella Teixeira, Brazilian Environment Minister.
Austria's government is discussing a law on limitation of the foreign investors' ability to take over Australian companies that are of strategic importance. The new regulation will come in force in December, said Christoph Matznetter, spokesman of Social Democratic Party. New regulation will oblige foreign buyers to obtain the government's approval to take over more than 25% of strategic Austrian businesses. EU, the European Economic
Last week ECB purchased sovereign bonds worth €7.986 bn as Italian bonds hit record level and borrowing cost also surged elsewhere in the European region. The ECB did not disclose distribution of debt-purchase amounts by maturity or country. Market pressure forced ECB to renew bond buying in August. On Tuesday ECB claimed to withdraw €194.5 bn from market with a maximum acceptable bid rate at
On Monday Republicans and Democrats announced they did not manage to approve the proposal of budget cuts in order to reduce national deficit by $1.2 trillion in next 10 years. The failure reflects US inability to put his financial system in order. US gridlock come in inappropriate time amid Europe's struggle to end debt crisis. Additionally deadlock implies uncertainty whether officials will support payroll tax reductions or
On Monday the Hungarian national currency fell again versus 17 nation currency and is moving towards record low (317.72 forint per euro) on growing anxiety that the country also will call for a bailout from International Monetary Fund. Euro appreciated against forint extra 0.7% on Monday reaching a 10% increase on a yearly basis.
On Monday commodity value replicated trend of other markets and declined as investors are competing for gaining safe asset in form of cash on increased worries about debt distress across Europe and US. According to Carlos Sanchez, CPM Group's precious metals analyst commodity markets in Europe and US is 3% and 2% off respectively while Asia has lost more than 2%. Oil prices also have diminished
LDK Solar Co., the Xinyu City, China, producer of solar energy products reports about loss in Q3 caused by decline in sales by 30%.The loss is estimated as $114.5 million compared to net profit of $93.4 million in the same period in 2010. The demand was lower than anticipated, said Xiaofeng Peng, Chief Executive. The total sales for the year projected by the company
US, UK and Canada imposed sanctions on Iran as there are growing worries about Iran's nuclear program. UK's banks were forced to discontinue all financial transactions with Iran's credit institutions while Canada plans to ban some exports from Iran like oil and gas. UN report states Iran develops a nuclear weapons; however, Iran claims the nuclear program is only for civil purposes. China and Russia
China's banks reported weaker yuan position for the first time in four years. The outflow indicates that investors' sentiment was impacted by projected slowdown of the China's economy. FDI decreased by 25% in Q3 to $35.9 billion and trade surplus narrowed accounting less than 1.6% of GDP in 2011. Experts project depreciation of the yuan in the following two years.
Despite recent announcement of the supercommittee's failure to implement deficit reduction measures and high volatility of the stock markets many experts claim the US economy shows signs of recovery. Retail sales increased more than expected by 1.1%. In case the trend continues the GDP growth might be more than 3% in last quarter this year. Moreover, the number of unemployment claims decreased from 400,000 to
Xstrata PLC., the world largest coal exporting company, expressed concerns regarding some new details included in a draft of the mining tax law in Australia. The law was discussed earlier by the Australian government and the largest coal miners. However, small companies complained the tax gives advantages to large producers and decreases the tax revenue for the government.
Crude oil futures increased during the Asian hours in Nymex electronic trading. Oil for January delivery edged up 8 cents to $97.01 a barrel. The increase covered losses of the previous session caused by worries about possible decrease of the France's triple A credit rating and US announcement about failure of the supercommittee to implement measures for decreasing deficit.
Germany predicts good holiday shopping session as German consumers prepare to spend 2.7% more on their Christmas gifts and other related goods than last year. According to predictions, Germans might spend approximately €630 per household on decorations, gifts, food and drinks, or about €25 more than other Europeans who plan to spend on average €605. Analysts explain the planned increase in spending with relatively low unemployment
Export-driven Asian economies are likely to be essentially impacted by lower demand caused by turmoil in the US and Europe. The growth in East Asia slows down; the forecast is 8.2% growth this year and 7.8% in 2012, as reported by the World Bank. Asian economies are strongly positioned but to sustain the growth level they have to do their best to stimulate domestic demand,
On Monday trading session European stocks recovered from 6-week low as rating companies restated the US credit rating. Stoxx Europe 600 Index gained 0.9% to 226.77 in London morning trading session after experiencing loss of 3.2% yesterday. Mining companies boosted index with Xstrata Plc (XTA) and Antofagasta Plc (ANTO) both adding 2%.
Japan's Nikkei Stock Average and the Australian S&P/ASX 200 index dropped by 0.9%, South Korea's Kospi lost 0.2%. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index decreased by 1% and the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.9%. Experts claim the investors' sentiment was impacted by developments in the Eurozone and failure of the US supercommittee.
Demonstrations in Egypt have been going on for 3 days. People protest against undemocratic government that fails to improve human rights. Thousands of people organize demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo. More than 26 died in violence and hundreds were injured during these 3 days.
Many technical companies got listed last week. The successful IPO of Groupon Inc. gave a start to more than eight IPOs in the tech industry. When the market shows a sign of recovery, there will be a lot of IPOs, said Scott Sweet, research director of the IPO Boutique. However, the market is still too weak for large number of IPOs to be successful.
UBS AG, the Switzerland's biggest bank announced that Yasuki Matsui, chairman of the investment banking unit in Japan is going to resign. Matsui is the third UBS Japanese executive after Taiji Okusu, Credit Suisse's manager of investment banking and CEO of Credit Suisse Paul Kuo who resigns from European bank this year. UBS did not announce reasons for Matsui resignation. In September UBS reported $2.3
Credit Suisse the second largest Switzerland's bank is planning to reduce about 85 positions within its investment banking division. The job cuts in London and other cities are a part of 2000 job cuts reported in July. This month Credit Suisse claimed to remove 1500 jobs as bank's investment banking division reported for loss in 3rd quarter, the first since 2008. Additionally bank is pressed by
On Monday US stocks experienced a sharp decline as American lawmakers did not manage to reach an agreement on budget cuts that would allow reducing national debt. S&P 500 Index experience losses for a 4th session in a row and closed 1.9% or 22.67 points down. Dow Jones Industrial Average gave up 248.85 points, or 2.1% while Nasdaq Composite Index decreased 49.36 points, or 1.9%. According to