World financial news

Rutgers announced Thursday that the new dean at Rutgers School of Business–Camden will be Jaishankar Ganesh.

Ganesh is associate dean for administration and executive education at the University of Central Florida’s College of Business Administration.

He will take over at Rutgers on Aug. 1 for Mitchell Koza, who is stepping down as dean after three years because he wanted to return to the faculty, a college spokesman said.

Rutgers said Ganesh’s “scholarship focuses on issues of marketing management and international marketing strategy, emphasizing such issues as customer satisfaction, retail patronage behavior, and the cross-national diffusion of products easy pay day loans.”

“Dr. Ganesh is an exceptional administrator and scholar, and an energetic visionary,” Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick said. “I am confident that he will help to advance the Rutgers School of Business–Camden to its rightful place as a premier center for education and business development in our region.”

Ganesh, 45, earned a Ph.D. in marketing and international business and an MBA from the University of Houston.

Source

Bank of America Corp. is switching from Fidelity Investments to Hewitt Associates Inc. and Plateau Systems as the Charlotte-based bank’s human-resource service providers, beginning in 2011.

Charlotte-based BofA is currently under contract with Fidelity, which has most of its 2,400 North Carolina employees in the Raleigh-Durham area, for such services. The bank, which ranks No. 5 in Raleigh-Durham market share, says the move will bring cost and operational efficiencies while also providing market-leading technologies to BofA managers and employees.

Under the new agreements, Hewitt will offer human-resources administration, payroll services and health-management administration, as well as information technology. Plateau Systems will provide employee training across BofA’s departments.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Last year, Fidelity cut its investment in its large-client, human-resources administration and payroll-outsourcing business to focus on small and midsized markets. BofA says it evaluated options to continue with its contract with Fidelity but decided to request bids for a new human-resources provider.

Fidelity will continue to administer retirement services for BofA (NYSE:BAC).

Boston-based Fidelity is one of the world’s largest providers of financial services. It offers investment management, retirement planning, brokerage, and human resources and benefits outsourcing services.

Illinois-based Hewitt (NYSE:HEW) markets human-resources consulting and outsourcing services. The company has 23,000 workers in more than 30 countries. Last week, it announced plans to add 463 jobs in Charlotte during the next three years. Hewitt has 534 workers in North Carolina. The vast majority of them are in Charlotte.

The new jobs, primarily in HR and information technology, will be added to the company’s leased operations at University Research Park in north Charlotte.

Virginia-based Plateau Systems is a provider of work-force management technologies.

Source

China overtook the United States in renewable energy investments for the first time ever in 2009, attracting nearly twice as many dollars and becoming the world’s largest market for clean energy projects.

Renewable energy investments in China - mostly wind farms - totaled $34.6 billion in 2009, according to report released Thursday by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In the United States, $18.6 billion was spent.

The report’s authors stressed it was the stable, long-term policies put forth by the Chinese government and easier access to credit that attracted the money, and said the numbers do not bode well for America.

"The United States’ competitive position is at risk in the emerging clean energy economy," Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Environment Group’s Global Warming Campaign, said in a statement.

The report noted that over 700,000 clean energy jobs have been created in the Untied States since 1998, and with so much money being invested in the alternative energy market, this was likely just the beginning.

But with the U.S. losing its dominance in renewable energy, future jobs could be on the line.

Cuttino urged U.S. lawmakers to put a price on carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted from burning fossil fuels. A price on carbon would make fossil fuels more expensive and renewables more competitive. She also said the country needs to mandate that utilities buy a certain percent of their power from renewable sources, and create stable, long-term subsidies for renewable energy.

China uses huge amounts of coal to generate electricity and has famously resisted putting a price on carbon dioxide. But the country does have an aggressive mandate that its utilities use more renewable energy.

There are several bills in Congress that would do what Cuttino is seeking but they face considerable resistance from lawmakers and the general public. Opponents either fear the measures would be too costly to the economy, don’t believe renewable energy is ready for prime time, or don’t think global warming is a major problem.

The investment tallies for China and the United States include all private investments in renewable energy projects, as well as money renewable energy firms raised in stock market offerings, venture capital and private equity deals bad credit pay day loans. They do not include government grants or corporate R&D, which in the United States totaled another $7 billion. How much China spent on government support and corporate R&D was not immediately available.

Globally

Worldwide the report said $162 billion was spent on renewable energy, down just 6.6% from the year before. That compares to a 19% drop in investment in the oil and gas industry, according to the report.

In 2010, Bloomberg New Energy Finance is expecting a 25% increase in renewable energy investments to $200 billion.

Asia, with economies that were less severely hit by the recession and easier access to money, saw a 37% increase in investments in 2009. In Europe and America’s harder hit economies and tighter capital markets, investments dropped 16% and 33% respectively.

In relation to the size of its economy, Spain saw the largest investment, 0.71% of its gross domestic product went into clean energy. Spain was followed by the United Kingdom, China and Brazil. The United States ranked 11th.

Most of the money spent on renewable energy is in the form of power projects, wind farms, solar arrays or other things that actually produce electricity. Only a small part is spent on R&D or capitalizing start-up companies.

Yet when it comes to innovation, the United States is still the world’s leader. The country attracted 60% of all venture capital money spent on renewable energy worldwide. Venture capital generally goes to start-up firms that hold the most promise for future technologies.

"We’re very good at creating companies," John Woolard, chief executive at solar power firm BrightSource Energy, said on a conference call discussing the report. "We’re not doing a very good job creating markets."  

Source

For those who expect a brutal jobs market and a nervous consumer to threaten the economic recovery this year, a rally in the retail sector is a surprising bright spot.

Even with the market’s most recent run up, the Dow Jones industrial average has gained a modest 3% year to date, while the S&P 500 is up just 4% and the Nasdaq composite has risen a mere 4.6%.

Meanwhile, the retail sector has been staging a stealth rally, with the S&P Retail (RLX) index jumping more than 8% from the start of the year and the Morgan Stanley retail index surging more than 14%. Individual stocks have been even more buoyant, with many of the best performers in the S&P 500, the S&P MidCap 400 and S&P SmallCap 600 coming from the retail sector.

"I think it has to be seen as a good sign," said Bernard McGinn, chief executive of McGinn Investment Management.

He said the stock gains suggest that retailers have become more efficient since the recession. And that has translated into improving sales and profits. On top of that, consumers are starting to loosen their purse strings.

"They’re not spending anywhere near the levels of three years ago, but they are spending more than we thought they would," he said.

A perception that the sector is stabilizing and that the economic recovery will pick up later in the year has brought in some big buyers. But many investors remain wary of the buoyancy in the retail sector amid bets that the current pickup in spending can’t last, particularly with unemployment continuing to rise.

"The gains in consumer discretionary and the retail sector mean people are banking on a powerful recovery that we don’t think is going to happen," said Ben Halliburton, chief investment officer at Tradition Capital Management.

He said he’d rather be in the consumer staples sector because those stocks have a global presence and aren’t tied to the U.S. consumer. Some of the year-to-date winners in that sector include Tyson Foods (TSN, Fortune 500) (+42%), Dr Pepper Snapple Group (DPS, Fortune 500) (+24%) and PepsiCo (PEP, Fortune 500) (+9%).

The fact that many individual investors are unwilling to jump into the retail sector with both feet could also be seen as a positive indicator, from a contrarian viewpoint no fax cash advances.

"Retailers are up a lot, but the overall sentiment is negative and a lot of people are still betting against the stocks," said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer’s Investment Research.

"When you have something helping to lead the market higher yet people are throwing their hands up, that can be a good thing," he explained. "That skepticism can keep driving the stocks higher."

Sales drive stock growth

Still, improving store sales have been translating into share growth for many of the nation’s largest publicly-traded retailers.

December and January same-store sales rose by a larger than expected pace, significant as the two months include the critical holiday period. Easter sales are also expected to have risen 2%. Same-store sales is a retail industry metric that measures stores that have been open a year or more.

Considering the level of insecurity about the economy, the willingness of Americans to spend even moderately more than a year ago is a step in the right direction.

Clothing retailers have spiked 17% year-to-date, led by Ross Stores (ROST, Fortune 500) (up 25.4%) and Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) (up 24.6%). General merchandisers are up 12%, including Family Dollar Stores (FDO, Fortune 500) (up 27.3%) and Big Lots (BIG, Fortune 500) (up 24.2%). Big department chains are up 11%, including Macy’s (M, Fortune 500) (up 28.6%) and Sears Holdings (SHLD, Fortune 500) (up 24.7%).

Discounters have been outperforming their luxury brethren, unsurprising in a post-recession economy. But the sector as a whole has also been holding up well, despite middling consumer sentiment and an unemployment rate that stood at 9.7% last month.

Aside from traditional retail, consumer discretionary, the category that also includes restaurants, hotels and casinos, is up 8% from the start of the year. That makes it the second-best performing sector this year, narrowly trailing industrials, which include Dow stocks Boeing (BA, Fortune 500) (+29%) and General Electric (GE, Fortune 500) (up 15%). 

Source

Sales of Apple Inc.'s iPad tablet computers are reportedly on a pace that could beat the debut sales of the iPhone.

The Wall Street Journal cited estimates from unnamed sources on Thursday who said Apple has sold hundreds of thousands of iPads since orders began on Friday.

It quoted one person it said is "familiar with the matter" that Apple could sell more iPads in its first three months than it sold iPhones in its first three months personal loans for people with bad credit.

The Journal reported that as the April 3 delivery of the first iPads approaches, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is still working to secure content for the devices.

Among the features it said it still being negotiated with media companies is a price cut on TV shows that people can be downloaded onto the device.

Source

Cisco unveiled a new Internet technology Tuesday that it says will provide the ultra-fast data speeds necessary to stay ahead of users’ rapidly growing online video demands.

The new technology, known as "CRS-3," is a network routing system that will be able to offer downloads of up to 322 Terabits per second, according to the company.

Translation: Well in Cisco terms, the router will be able to provide download speeds of 1 Gigabit per second for everyone in San Francisco, download the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in 1 second and stream every movie ever created in less than 4 minutes.

Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers acknowledged that many skeptics will say that those speeds and network capacity are not necessary, but he argued that the fast-growing media usage on mobile phones will ultimately demand it.

"I know this is not that exciting to the average consumer right now, but it is the foundation for future speeds," Chambers said in a Web cast Tuesday. "When it comes to mobile devices, I want to get any video, anytime and be able to share that on any device in your living room. The foundation of that is the CRS-3."

Wireless providers have reported a sharp increase in data downloads as more consumers buy smartphones, and they are quickly scrambling to update their networks to increase capacity for growing data traffic. AT&T (T, Fortune 500), which saw its network traffic grow 40% in 2009, said Tuesday that it has run a successful test of the CRS-3 under a partnership deal with Cisco free online credit report.

It’s not just mobile that’s growing. Streaming video services like YouTube are now offering high-definition video, and broadcast networks and cable companies continue to put more of their content on the Internet.

"Cisco has set a new bar for network performance," said Zeus Kerravala, research fellow at Yankee Group. "Many may think we’ll never need that much bandwidth, but the enterprise future of mobile TV, streaming media, YouTube, telepresence and 3-D HD TV surely demands it."

Cisco said the CRS-3 will triple the speed of its predecessor, the CRS-1, and it will offer speeds of up to 12-times faster than the next fastest product on the market. The company invested $1.6 billion in the technology and will begin selling the routers at $90,000. The networking company said it expects the CRS-3 will be available in the fall.

The announcement comes a week after Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) announced it would test a super-fast broadband network in a U.S. city, and it is a week before the FCC will reveal its plan to increase broadband speeds and access for Americans.

Shares of Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500), which were up 4% on Monday ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, fell about 1% in midday trading. Shares fell sharply immediately following the announcement in a "sell on the news" move, but managed to recover some lost ground. 

Source

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown has filled one of the several key vacancies in his administration - without leaving City Hall.

Brown tapped Brendan Mehaffy as the executive director of the Buffalo Office of Strategic Planning, one of the city's primary economic development agencies.

Mehaffy is an attorney in Buffalo's law department. With his appointment, effective March 29, he will be paid $82,257 annually.

Mehaffy replaces the embattled Brian Reilly, who resigned late last year. The department had been run on an interim basis by Drew Eszak, a respected planner.

Brown said he hopes Mehaffy's appointment will bring some stability to a Buffalo office that has been something of a revolving door. Last year, Brown recruited Buffalo native Michael Kimelberg to head the department, but Kimelberg - in a surprise move -decided to remain in Seattle.

Mehaffy's appointment comes just weeks after Brown pledged to update Buffalo's antiquated zoning codes and to merge the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency and Buffalo Economic Renaissance Corp. into a single, one-stop entity.

"This is an exciting time in our city's history with a variety of development projects changing the city's landscape," Mehaffy said.

Mehaffy holds a bachelor's degree in economics from SUNY Binghamton, a master's degree in urban regional planning from the London School of Economics and is a graduate of the University at Buffalo's School of Law.

"His knowledge of land use planning and project development was honed through both his academic and professional experiences," Brown said. "Brendan has been the city's point person on several high profile projects, including negotiations with the county to return the operation and maintenance of city parks back to Buffalo."

The Buffalo Niagara Partnership, who helped Brown with his search, recommended Mehaffy.

Brown still has to fill other high level administrative vacancies including police and fire chief.

Source

Only 20 percent of Oregonians have earthquake insurance, even though Oregon is among the states at highest risk for a major earthquake, according to a survey by the state Department of Consumer and Business Services.

Standard home owner policies do not cover earthquakes, but optional earthquake coverage is readily available and relatively inexpensive, the department said.

“Consumers may want to think about their ability to rebuild if their house is destroyed in an earthquake,” said Cory Streisinger, director of the Department of Consumer and Business Services. “Insurance should be weighed as part of other earthquake preparations.”

Jan. 25 will mark the 310th anniversary of the last major Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, magnitude 9.0, centered 75 miles offshore. That temblor damaged the coastline from Northern California to Southern British Columbia, according to the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.

A 10,000-year geologic record shows these mega-quakes occur every 300 to 600 years, putting Oregon within the window of a major earthquake, said James Roddey, state earth sciences information officer.

Damaging earthquakes have also occurred within the past 16 years in different parts of the state, causing tens of millions of dollars worth of damage.

The Department of Consumer and Business Services Insurance Division last year surveyed 20 insurance companies that account for 80 percent of the home owner insurance premiums in the state.

It found:

• Home owners generally can buy earthquake insurance as an addition to their policy or as a separate policy. The few companies that do not offer earthquake insurance in Oregon typically refer clients to a company that sells stand-alone earthquake policies.
• Earthquake coverage is relatively inexpensive — often less than $300 a year for a $300,000 wood-frame home. Masonry homes are more expensive to insure.
• Owners of older houses may need to bolt their homes to the foundation or make other seismic upgrades before they can buy earthquake insurance.

Earthquake coverage generally features high deductibles. These typically amount to 10 percent or 15 percent of the amount covered by insurance. A home owner with a house insured for $300,000 and a 10 percent deductible would pay $30,000 before the policy would pay. Coverage for contents is separate.

Source

The Supreme Court again Monday turned away the latest challenge to Chrysler’s bankruptcy and sale to Italian automaker Fiat.

The justices declined an appeal filed by three Indiana state pension funds which hold a portion of Chrysler’s nearly $7 billion in secured debt. The court said the issue is moot since the Chrysler sale was formally completed six months ago.

The three funds — representing police officers and teachers — sought greater compensation for their share of the debt.

A federal appeals court — as well as a bankruptcy judge — approved the sale of the Chrysler assets.

The financially troubled domestic automaker had filed for bankruptcy April 30, and at the time pinned its future on the restructuring plan pushed by the White House.

Chrysler had been trying to leave behind its debt as part of the Chapter 11 process, a step that would wipe out much of the Indiana pension funds’ holdings.

The funds held about $42 million, or less than 1%, of Chrysler’s debt.

Lawyers for the funds argued to the Supreme Court that the Obama administration improperly used money from a federal bailout to help Chrysler. That money was designed, they say, to help only struggling financial institutions payday loan lenders.

Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock said the pension funds are secured creditors and, therefore, deserved a say in the outcome. They said they were no longer were seeking to block the sale but simply wanted to recover money for their investors.

Both Chrysler and the federal government said the sale to the Italian automaker had to be completed quickly to ensure domestic jobs were not lost and to keep Chrysler financially afloat for the long term.

The Justice Department, in a filing with the high court, said the president had the authority to tap into the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to help Chrysler. "As an economic matter … blocking the transaction would undoubtedly have grave consequences," wrote Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

The deal with Fiat and Chrysler was finalized in June, but legal appeals continued. The new company for now is to be owned jointly by the federal government, an autoworker’s union retiree fund and Fiat.

The case is Indiana State Police Pension Trust v. Chrysler LLC (09-285). 

Source

The Bank of Canada is widely expected to keep its hands off interest rates Tuesday, holding them at near zero and committing to do so until at least July, despite growing evidence the economy is kicking back to life.

Fears of prolonged economic stagnation eased Friday with a report showing employers hired five times as many workers as expected. The data supported the Bank of Canada's view that economic growth will speed up in the fourth quarter after a disappointing third quarter, when it barely crept out of recession with tepid 0.4 per cent annualized growth.

All 12 of Canada's primary securities dealers forecast the central bank would hold its overnight target rate unchanged at 0.25 per cent at its final policy-setting meeting of the year. The bank releases its rate decision and accompanying statement at 9 a.m. ET.

Two-thirds of the traders think the bank will follow through on its pledge to hold rates at that level through mid-2010, conditional on inflation staying on track.

Reuters News Agency

Source