World financial news

Swiss central bank interim Chairman Thomas Jordan

On a quiet afternoon in Manhattan’s East Village, I’m having lunch inside a monastery while Rasanath Dasa, a banker-turned-monk, tells us about the moment he decided to leave Wall Street.

"My desire to work in Wall Street arose back in 1992, when foreign TV first came to India and I watched Charlie Sheen in the movie Wall Street," he tells the group of five who have traveled to his monastery. "For some reason, the images stuck in my head of ‘man, that’s what I really want to do — that fast-paced life.’"

But the religious life also appealed to Dasa. He joined a monastery while he was still hustling deals on Wall Street for his employer, Bank of America. When he started work on a project for Playboy, the stark contrast between his inner life and his day job became too much.

"At the time that the economy was tanking, I was actually making money selling sex," he says.

He’s a slight man who speaks slowly and carefully, pausing to gather his thoughts as he narrates. He’s sharing his story with us thanks to a startup called SideTour. Almost every week, Dasa hosts a lunch for those who want to chat with him about his journey from Wall Street to the monastery.

Forget daily deals on restaurants and spas, or flash sales on designer clothes. The hot e-commerce trend at the moment is selling one-of-a-kind experiences.

Lunch with Dasa — priced at $20 — is just one offering from SideTour’s lineup. Its roster also includes a race down an ice luge with an Olympic medallist (that’s $150) or a cooking session with the host of NBC’s America’s Next Great Restaurant at his West Village townhouse ($35), among dozens of other options. The company takes a 20% cut when customers pay for an event.

SideTour is far from alone in the market. In the U.S., a key competitor is Zozi, which has raised $11 million from investors and currently operates in more than 60 cities. Germany has a whole pack of startups in the field, including Regiondo, Yasuu and Gidsy, which recently expanded into the San Francisco market.

One notable rival, Vayable, offers up experiences around the globe. Launched in April, the service’s tours range from an exploration of an abandoned Soviet hospital in Berlin to an expert-led wine tasting in Paris.

Vayable founder Jamie Wong attributes the interest in selling experiences in part to the rough job market. More people are finding themselves out of work or in need of a second job.

"I think we’re in an era where both the economy and cultural shifts are really dictating this kind of change, where people are moving more towards a freelance type of lifestyle," Wong says.

SideTour founder Vipin Goyal backs that view. He says his startup gives people the opportunity to make money doing what they love.

"It’s a platform for people to share their expertise and monetize that," he says. "It’s a huge opportunity for folks to supplement their income or to create new sources of income for themselves."

Goyal got the idea for SideTour after he and his spouse left their jobs and bought around-the-world plane tickets for a six-month trip.

"In places that we had local folks to share experiences with, it made all the difference," he says. "In places we didn’t, our own experiences were highly dependent on serendipity."

He came home with the desire to build a platform that would help others connect with those kinds of experiences. Investors flocked to the idea: SideTour landed a spot in incubator TechStars’ first New York cohort this summer, and it recently raised $1.5 million in seed funding. Since launching five months ago, SideTour has hosted 70 experiences, with a 90% sell out rate.

So is this a lasting market or a flashy trend?

Both Wong and Goyal cite studies concluding that experiences, not things, are what make people truly happy.

"People are starting to reevaluate — especially in this economic environment — how they’re spending their money," Goyal says. "I think that’s where you see a lot of this focus on experiences." 

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Japan may exempt home purchases from any increase in its sales tax, or reduce the amount of increase, Finance Minister Jun Azumi said.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda aims to double the 5 percent sales tax by 2015 to boost revenue and contain a public debt burden twice the size of Japan

Nigeria, Africa

The federal government is moving ahead with the first auction of offshore petroleum leases in the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon disaster _ despite a lawsuit challenging the sale.

Interior Department spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz said bids will be opened as scheduled on Wednesday in New Orleans.

Four environmental groups are challenging a study used to clear the sale _ but aren’t seeking a federal court order to stop the auction. Instead, an attorney said a judge might decide later to throw out the results if he agrees with the suit.

The sale covers the western Gulf off the coast of Texas. Officials said the auction has attracted 241 bids from 20 companies on 191 tracts.

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Boeing is starting to fly right.

An Indonesian airline’s commitment to buy $21.7 billion worth of new planes is the latest good news for the company after a year when some things could have gone better.

Earlier this week, Emirates Airlines ordered $18 billion worth of 777s. Both deals come shortly after Boeing finally began delivering its two newest planes, the next-generation 787 and the latest version of the iconic 747.

Just a year ago, the outlook was dicier.

The new 787 was already running nearly three years late when an electrical fire on a test plane in November 2010 forced it to suspend flight tests. The revamped 747 was running late, too. And Airbus announced plans to put a new engine on its A320, making the plane more fuel efficient and a more potent competitor to Boeing’s 737.

The Airbus move forced Boeing to switch gears and offer a new-engine version of its 737 rather than build an all-new plane as it had originally expected to do.

Boeing needed some successes, and it found them in Asia and the Middle East, where rising wealth is turning more people into travelers.

Boeing expects demand for 11,450 planes in the Asia-Pacific region over the next 20 years, more than in any other part of the world. That number includes planes made by Boeing and competitors such as Airbus and new entrants into the market. Airbus has already booked 1,268 firm orders for its A320neo, so named for its “new engine option.”

The commitment by Indonesia’s Lion Air announced on Thursday is for 230 Boeing 737s. Lion Air also has options for 150 more planes, valued at $14 billion, bringing the deal’s total potential value to $35 billion.

The order would be Boeing’s largest ever in terms of both volume and dollars.

“This order is a big deal,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Robert Stallard wrote in a research note to clients. The deal “gives a meaningful boost to Boeing’s backlog.”

Most of the planes are the 737 Max, a new version of Boeing’s most popular plane with more fuel-efficient engines. It won’t be delivered to its first customer until 2017. Boeing has said it has about 600 commitments for the 737 Max.

But the Lion Air deal is not a certainty. The airline still has to finalize the order, and it’s struggling no teletrek payday advance. The Jakarta Post reported in August that Lion Air was ordered to ground 13 planes so it would have more in reserve because it had too many late flights.

“There’s always a risk that a deal’s going to fall through,” Citi analyst Jason Gursky said. “It’s a brutal industry, and when we go through periods of slower economic growth, there will be failures. It’s Boeing’s job to pick the winners and losers. But I think they’re pretty agnostic right now as to who they sell to.”

Gursky said Boeing went on “order holiday” in 2011 because it didn’t have a product to sell. That has changed now that it decided to put a new engine on the 737. He expects Boeing’s deliveries to increase by 27 percent next year, compared with a 9 percent increase at Airbus.

“That’s why we think this year is going to be the year of Boeing,” he said.

Even before Lion Air announced its plans, Boeing has been ramping up production to try to meet demand for the 737 as well as the 777, a larger plane used mostly on international routes. It already has a backlog of 2,191 737s that have been ordered by airlines around the world but not yet built.

Boeing already completes about one 737 every day in Renton, Wash. It is raising that to 42 per month in 2014. It has not yet said whether the 737 Max will be assembled in Renton or somewhere else, perhaps in South Carolina, where it is opening a second assembly line for its new 787.

Boeing already employs some 80,000 people in Washington state. Gursky, the analyst, has written that the biggest risk to Boeing’s planned rate increases appears to be its ability to hire the thousands of new workers it will need.

Lion Air already has orders for 125 more Boeing 737-900ERs. Its fleet currently stands at 73 planes, according to Airfleets.net. Sixty-five of those are Boeing 737s.

Also Thursday, Boeing said that aircraft leasing company Aviation Capital Group had ordered 20 of its 737-800s and committed to buy 35 of the planned 737 Max.

Shares of Chicago-based Boeing fell 25 cents Thursday to close at $66.09.

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Wells Fargo 6,126

Edward Jones 4,965

Citigroup 3,800

U.S. Bancorp 3,750

Bank of America 2,815

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The influential Russia finance minister who was just ousted by President Dmitry Medvedev is warning that Russia’s budget is overextended.

Alexei Kudrin was forced out Monday after a public spat with Medvedev.

In a statement, Kudrin says over the past several months despite his numerous objections “decisions were taken on budget policies that without doubt have increased budget risks.”

He said those included “excessive commitments in the defense sector and social sector that will inevitably affect the entire national economy.”

Kudrin said wanted to resign in February but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin asked him to stay on. Putin on Tuesday appointed one of Kudrin’s deputies, Anton Siluanov, to serve as acting finance minister.

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