Japan spent about £38bn today, selling yen to weaken its currency (which has gained 41% against the dollar and 47% against the euro since early 2008). The government is worried that a continuing strong yen would hurt exporters, encourage manufacturers to shift production overseas, hurting jobs, and thus have a triple negative impact on domestic …
Continue reading “Japan weakens yen, as outlook remains complex, volatile”
An interesting article here talking about north America (including Canada)’s resurgence in home-grown energy, mostly from ‘tight oil’ — extracted with gas from shale rock formations, using the fracking process.
Over the last three months Samsung has passed Apple as the largest manufacturer of smartphones, shipping an estimated 27.8m handsets compared with Apple’s 17.1m (in a total market of around 117m sets). What makes this even more remarkable is that sales have increased four-fold over the past year. How has Samsung been able to do achieve …
Owing to Thailand’s recent floods, the country’s central bank has slashed its growth forecast for 2011 from 4.1% to 2.6%. That may not sound like much. But remember that it is now October, so most of the growth in the year has already happened (barring seasonal fluctuations for Christmas). That means output in the last …
Continue reading “Climate change can have severe impacts on business”
WPP has cut its sales growth forecasts for 2011, though margins have improved (implying that costs have been cut significantly). Chief executive, Sir Martin Sorrell, is expecting growth of around 3%-4% in 2012 (down on 4%-6% in 2011), though 2013 may present a greater challenge “when a newly elected president will finally have to deal …
Continue reading “WPP sees growth in 2012, challenges in 2013”
This is less a newsfeed item and more a blog post, connecting up some ideas to do with changing our thinking about. First, China has been approached to help with the eurozone crisis. A member of China’s central bank monetary policy committee, a Professor Li, said: “It is in China’s … interest to help Europe because they …
If there is one thing that is critical to business it is change. Every product or service sold helps a customer to create change. Whether it’s a hedge trimmer that helps them to change from a messy garder to a tidy one; a sandwich that changes them from feeling hungry to feeling full; a haircut …
News that private investors will accept a 50% reduction in the face value of their loans to Greece, and that that country will be able to reduce its debt to 120% of GDP by 2020, were met by a rise in stock markets to around the levels of early August. Banking shares performed especially well. …
ABB, seen with other infrastructure and engineering groups as a bellwether of global economic conditions, has posted profits and sales up in the third quarter, benefitting from acquisitions, foreign exchange (FX) movements, and cost cutting and in spite of price pressures. Revenues showed a slight increase after acquisitions FX were taken into account. The order backlog …
The modernisation of China continues apace, as measured by the number of citizens with access to the Internet, which has transformed western lifestyles and economies. China now has over half a billion people using the Internet, more than twice the number using it in the US, and more than the entire population of the EU. Growth in …
Continue reading “China has more internet users than population of EU”