Sony has warned that it will make a $1.2bn loss this year, having previously forecast a $0.8bn profit for the year to March. Reasons for the change include “slowing demand for consumer electronics”, the strong yen, and the floods in Thailand that have disrupted parts supplies. It says something about the accelerating impact of climate …
Continue reading “Sony warns of $1bn loss, citing Thai floods”
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 …
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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”
The EU wants to prevent speculation on credit defaults by banning short- or naked-selling of Credit Default Swaps. Unintended consequences could be either that the entities that wanted to take the short positions would then switch to shorting other instruments, such as government bonds or bank equity, which pushes government borrowing costs up. And/or that …
Continue reading “Banking regulation may have negative side-effects”