Welcome to Finance World

Greece

China

The decision by Standard & Poor’s to cut the credit ratings of a number of euro countries and to strip France of its cherished top-tier standing met with a fairly calm market response Monday as attention turned towards Greece’s difficulties in thrashing out a deal with private creditors to reduce the value of their holdings of Greek debt

Europe’s debt crisis will likely remain the focus of attention across markets all week as a number of bond auctions are due at the same time as Greece tries to clinch a debt deal with its cast of creditors.

Monday is the first opportunity for traders to respond to S&P’s move, which came late Friday.

Analysts said the downgrades had been widely expected, especially in the bond markets, so there was very little shock at S&P’s announcement to strip France of its treasured triple-A rating and to cut its view on a raft of other euro countries, including Italy. One bright spot was that Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, retained its triple-A rating and had its outlook upgraded to stable from negative.

“After weeks of prevarication and lots of rumors, Standard and Poor’s finally put markets out of their misery on Friday,” said Michael Hewson, markets analyst at CMC Markets. “The surprise is it took so long.”

As a result, the response in the markets was fairly sanguine. In early trading Monday, the Stoxx 50 index of leading European shares was flat at 2,397 while the euro was up 0.2 percent on the day at $1.2670

A bigger headache for markets at the moment is whether Greece can clinch a deal with its creditors payday loan. Last October, Greece’s partners in the eurozone sanctioned a deal whereby Greece’s creditors agree a deal to reduce the value of their Greek debt holdings so that the country’s debt burden is reduced.

The deal with private investors, known as the Private Sector Involvement, or PSI, aims to reduce Greece’s debt by euro100 billion ($126.5 billion) by swapping private creditors’ bonds for new ones with a lower value. It is a key part of a euro130 billion international bailout, the second one for Greece.

It is expected that talks on the PSI will resume this coming week. On Tuesday, representatives of Greece’s creditors _ the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund _ will visit Greece for yet another round of inspections of its efforts at fiscal and structural reform and negotiations for the next tranche, the seventh, from the first bailout.

Negotiations over the second bailout will start after the PSI deal is clinched. Without a deal, Greece has been told it won’t get the next tranche of money due from its first bailout.

Without that money, Greece would find it more or less impossible to pay a big bond redemption in March and would face the prospect of defaulting on its debts, potentially triggering more mayhem in financial markets.

Source

Businesses increased their stockpiles in November to meet rising consumer demand, a gain that likely boosted economic growth in the final months of last year.

Inventories rose 0.3 percent in November, the Commerce Department said Thursday. That followed October’s 0.8 percent gain. Sales increased 0.3 percent after a 0.6 percent October increase.

Companies are building up their stockpiles again after cutting them over the summer amid fears of another recession. The increase is a positive sign for growth because it means many businesses are filling their shelves in anticipating of higher consumer spending.

Inventories rose in November to a seasonally adjusted $1.55 trillion. That was 17.7 percent above the low hit in the recession year of 2009.

This week, the Federal Reserve issued a report saying the final six weeks of 2011 were among the economy’s best last year. The report pointed to higher holiday and auto sales, along with increased travel.

The job market has brightened, too. Employers added 200,000 jobs in December. And the unemployment rate fell to 8 bad credit personal loan lenders.5 percent, the lowest in nearly three years.

Many analysts predict that economic growth rose to an annual rate of roughly 3 percent in the final three months of 2011. That would be an improvement from the summer, when the annual rate was just 1.8 percent. And it’s much better than the 0.9 percent growth rate in the first six months of 2011.

Many businesses reduced their inventory restocking in the summer after consumer spending slowed last spring in the face of higher food and gas prices. The slowdown, along with supply disruptions caused by March’s earthquake in Japan, weakened U.S. manufacturing and contributed to worries of another recession.

Stockpiles at the wholesale level account for about 27 percent of total business inventories. Stockpiles held by retailers make up about one-third of the total and manufacturing inventories represent about 41 percent of the total.

Source

Delivery companies such as FedEx Corp. (FDX) and United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) added 42,200 jobs to payrolls in December, about a fifth of the total for all employers last month. History indicates the gain will be followed by a similar-sized loss in January.

Merck & Co. said Thursday it has revamped its research operations to make them more productive, has started a new four-pronged business strategy to increase revenue and profit and has some exciting drugs on the horizon.

The drugmaker also boosted its quarterly dividend by 4 cents to 42 cents per share this quarter _ the first increase since 2004. That was just before Merck pulled painkiller Vioxx from the market because it increased heart attack and stroke risk. Merck’s shares rose sharply.

Merck’s pipeline of experimental drugs includes what could be several important new medicines for patients and shareholders, company executives told analysts during a daylong business briefing at Merck headquarters in Whitehouse Station, N.J. And Merck, the world’s No. 3 drugmaker by revenue, has eight new products for which it will seek U.S. approval in 2012 or 2013.

That’s just in the nick of time. Merck already has been hurt by competition from generic versions of blockbuster osteoporosis, blood pressure and cholesterol drugs, like its rivals. Next August, its current top seller, $5 billion-a-year allergy and asthma drug Singulair, gets hit by U.S. generic competition.

CEO Kenneth Frazier said the company hopes to keep 2012 revenue about the same as this year’s. In this year’s first nine months, it has increased sales by 5 percent, or nearly $2 billion, to about $35.8 billion.

Merck has gotten five new drugs approved this year, including breakthrough hepatitis C drug Victrelis and the first combination pill for people with both diabetes and high cholesterol, Juvisync. It also has applied to regulators for five more approvals. Those include a long-acting diabetes pill and a combination cholesterol drug.

Merck plans in 2012 and 2013 to seek U.S. approval for eight more medicines, including drugs for chronic insomnia, hardening of the arteries, osteoporosis and reversal of anesthesia, plus two allergy medicines and an improved version of its blockbuster cervical cancer vaccine Gardasil. Altogether, it has 19 medicines in late-stage testing.

Many of those came from Merck’s November 2009 acquisition of Schering-Plough Corp no fax pay day loan. Frazier said the integration has enabled the combined company to reduce costs by $2.8 billion. Merck has done that partly by eliminating 16,000 jobs out of the combined 106,000 the two companies had right before the deal.

Frazier outlined the company’s new business strategy, which includes growing medicine sales in emerging and other key markets, expanding its consumer and animal health businesses, launching new drugs and boosting sales of existing ones, and managing spending tightly.

Merck also has trimmed the number of diseases for which it does research, developed computer models and other ways to decide much earlier whether to scrap or continue testing of experimental drugs, and made other changes to address one of the industry’s biggest challenges _ getting more bang for the billions companies pour into trying to create new drugs.

“The new research strategy and operating model that we’ve been implementing over the past few years is now in place,” research head Peter Kim told about 130 analysts. “These changes position us for long-term growth with a sustainable return on investment.”

He said Merck has two experimental drugs that could transform patient care. One, called anacetrapib, is in final-stage testing for hardening of the arteries.

The other, known only as MK-8931, is in early testing for Alzheimer’s disease. Kim told reporters that while it’s still just a hypothesis that it will work, if it pans out “it’s going to have a dramatic impact on medicine.”

Merck also is developing more combination diabetes drugs, just five years after launching its first, Januvia, now the best-selling pill for Type 2 diabetes.

Merck shares rose $1.18, or 3.5 percent, to close at $34.97, outpacing the 1 percent gain in the Dow Jones industrial average.

Source

This year’s annual construction industry awards by the Associated General Contractors of St. Louis includes for the first time specialty contractor awards in 10 areas and a Specialty Contractor of the Year Award.

The 14th annual Keystone Awards announced at a banquet Thursday night went to nine contractors chosen from nearly 30 finalists. Educational facilities, hospitals, apartments and data centers were among the project recognized, as well as industrial and heavy construction work. Also recognized were the projects’ owners.

Keystone Awards are not based on a project’s beauty, the AGC said. Instead, they recognize a contractor’s success in achieving solutions despite construction challenges.

General contractor members of the AGC determined the Special Contractor Awards based on the winners’ ability to stay within budgets and their overall experiences with the specialty contractor. The specialty contractor receiving the most votes by general contractors was also presented the Specialty Contractor of the Year award. That distinction went to Waterhout Construction Inc.

“It’s really exciting for our association to have the opportunity to highlight some of the tremendous projects completed by our members while at the same time honoring our specialty contractors for their contributions to the success of any project,” said Leonard Toenjes, AGC’s president. “More than ever in today’s competitive and challenging construction environment, collaboration is the key to making a successful project happen.”

The remaining 2011 awards:

General Contractor/Construction Manager/Prime Contractor

Project $45 million or more

Paric Corp.

Project

Nixon touts trade deal

As interest rates on certificates of deposit continue their downward slog, annuities, money market accounts and even interest-bearing checking accounts are all emerging as attractive alternatives.

In the past 24 months, the amount invested in CDs nationally dropped nearly 30 percent, while those in locally based banks tumbled 40 percent. For the 75 banks based in St. Louis tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, CD deposits totaled $10.48 billion at the end of June, down from $17.6 billion when CD interest rates in mid-2009.

There’s no secret why: The national and local average for a 5-year CD this week came with a 1.26 annual percentage yield, below inflation and down from about 4 percent in 2008.

So what’s an investor to do?

Many investors are ditching CDs in search of better returns or investments that provide better liquidity, such as money market accounts. CDs have long been viewed as a relatively safe place to invest money without the volatility of stock market swings, as the funds are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. But CDs also come with a catch

Asian stock markets rose Monday after Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke’s prediction that the U.S. economy will eventually return to full health fueled gains on Wall Street.

Oil prices lingered above $85 a barrel in Asia after Hurricane Irene did little damage to refineries along the U.S. East Coast. The dollar was higher against the yen but lower against the euro.

Market optimism was fueled after a highly anticipated speech by Bernanke at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. While he announced no new economic stimulus measures _ as some investors had hoped _ he did leave open the possibility of more action if another recession looks likely. He also emphasized the strengths of the U.S. economy and said the job market will recover in the long run.

“People came to realize that Bernanke is very confident about the economy,” said Jackson Wong, vice president at Tanrich Securities in Hong Kong. “People were reluctant to get into the market. Now they are jumping back in.”

Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.6 percent to 8,846.32. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 1.9 percent to 4,277.70 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.5 percent to 19,879.51.

Hong Kong-listed Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner by capacity, jumped 5.7 percent after announcing that first-half profit rose 12 percent as higher oil, gas and chemicals revenues helped offset a loss in its refining business. The results for the company, also known as China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., were better than analysts had forecast.

South Korea’s Kopsi index jumped 2.8 percent to 1,829.09. Leading shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. soared 8.4 percent. Hynix Semiconductor, the world’s second-largest memory chip maker, jumped 7.5 percent on brighter chip price forecasts, Yonhap News agency said. Refinery SK Innovation rose 6.5 percent.

Gold-related shares rose after prices of the precious metal rebounded Friday after a volatile week instant payday loans. Newcrest Mining Ltd., Australia’s largest gold miner, rose 2.1 percent. Hong Kong-listed Zijin, China’s top gold miner, was 1.7 percent higher. Hong Kong jewelry chain Chow Sang Sang Holdings gained 6.4 percent.

Other Australian metals shares rose on the back of higher commodities prices. BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s largest mining company, rose 1.7 percent. Rio Tinto Ltd. gained 2.4 percent.

Mainland Chinese shares dipped, however, amid reports that the central bank is considering further increases to banks’ required reserves. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.5 percent to 1,163.99 and the smaller Shenzhen Composite Index was 1.1 percent down to 2,584.40.

On Friday, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.2 percent to close at 11,284.54. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 1.5 percent to 1,176.80. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index rose 2.5 percent to 2,479.85.

The Fed has said it plans to keep short-term interest rates low until mid-2013. Low rates on investments like bonds make higher-risk bets such as stocks more attractive.

The U.S. economy is still hobbled by a depressed housing market, high oil prices and fears that the European debt crisis will deteriorate into a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.

Benchmark oil for October delivery was up 18 cents to $85.55 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Crude rose 7 cents to settle at $85.37 on Friday.

In London, Brent crude for October delivery was down 33 cents at $111.10 on the ICE Futures exchange.

In currencies, the euro was up at $1.4497 from $1.4484 in late trading in New York. The dollar rose to 76.73 yen from 76.66 yen.

Source