KILL THE COMPETITION
Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're saying, what they're saying, from Michael Beh
Tuesday, January 26, 0730 GMT
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Top stories
The Times: David Smith, the British chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, left the UK's largest carmaker amid fears of a growing rift with its unions.
Wall Street Journal: Apple, the iPhone maker, reported a 50 per cent rise in profit and a 32 per cent rise in revenue for the fourth quarter.
The Daily Telegraph: The UK economy will take until 2012 to recover, despite the end of Britain's worst recession since the 1930s, warned the CBI, the business group.
Comment
David Wighton in The Times: It is easy to see why Land Securities thinks property derivatives would add value.
Damian Reece in The Daily Telegraph: Today's end of recession is not the same as the start of growth.
Andrew Ross Sorkin in the New York Times: We are no closer to any sort of global financial regulator, let alone serious cooperation among countries about reform.
Upside
The Times: Concerns over a possible debt crisis in Greece eased after huge demand for the Greek Government's first bond issue of this year emerged.
Wall Street Journal: President Barack Obama will propose a three-year freeze on $447 billion (£275 billion) of discretionary spending to tackle the deficit.
New York Times: Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, the huge middle-class housing complexes in Manhattan, were turned over to creditors.
Downside
The Times: The Church of England suffered a £40 million ($65 million) loss on an investment in a New York apartment complex.
Wall Street Journal: US sales of existing homes plunged last month, raising fears the housing market will not recover when government support stops.
The Times: US hedge fund managers sued Porsche for $1 billion (£620 million), accusing the sports car maker of lying about its intention to take over Volkswagen.
Mergers and shakers
The Times: Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, signed a lucrative contract with Lansdowne Partners, a hedge fund that bet on the collapse of Northern Rock.
The Daily Telegraph: Anurag Dikshit, a PartyGaming founder, cut his ties with the online gaming firm after selling his remaining £114 million ($185 million) stake.
Wall Street Journal: US authorities imposed major conditions on the merger of Live Nation, the concert promoter, and Ticketmaster Entertainment, the ticket-seller.
Around Asia
The Times: The European competition regulator launched an investigation of mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billion's iron ore joint venture in Australia.
The Daily Telegraph: Chinalco, the Chinese aluminium producer, plans to snap up worldwide copper resources while prices are low.
Wall Street Journal: South Korea's economic expansion slowed in the fourth quarter of last year but jumped from a year earlier.
Look ahead
New York Times: General Motors, the car giant, will retire its remaining $5.7 billion (£3.5 billion) in debt to the US federal government by June.
The Times: DP World, the Dubai-owned group that bought the P&O international ports business, is on course for its London flotation in June.
New York Times: Ericsson, the world's biggest maker of mobile-phone networking equipment, plans to cut 1,500 jobs this year.
MARKETS
FTSE 100 5,260.31 down 0.8% (Monday close)
Dow 10,196.86 up 0.2% (close)
S&P 500 1,096.78 up 0.5% (close)
Nasdaq 2,210.80 up 0.3% (close)
Nikkei 10,525.96 up 0.1% (latest)
Hang Seng 20,526.66 down 0.4% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $1.6243/1.1475 euros (latest)
Euro $1.4155 (latest)
Commodities
Brent crude $73.26 down 43 cents (latest)
West Texas crude $74.87 down 39 cents (latest)
Gold $1102.80 up $6(latest)
New York
Reuters: US stocks snapped a three-day slide on signs that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would win a second term. After the bell, iPod maker Apple rose 1.9 per cent on sharp gains in quarterly revenue and profit. Chipmaker Texas Instruments fell 1.2 per cent after it reported its fourth-quarter results. In regular trade, computer maker IBM rose 0.5 per cent and printer maker Hewlett-Packard rose 1.6 per cent. Homebuilder Toll Brothers fell 0.7 per cent on lower house sales. Shares of natural resource companies rebounded. Steel company AK Steel Holding rose 5.4 per cent on a higher price forecast.
Asia
Bloomberg: Asian stocks fluctuated in morning trade as gains in copper, oil and gold prices boosted commodity producers, countering declines by telecommunications companies. Mitsubishi, a Japanese commodities-trading company, rose 1.2 per cent. Nippon Oil, Japan's biggest refiner, rose 1.4 per cent and Japan Petroleum Exploration, the oil driller, rose 0.8 per cent. Elpida Memory rose 2.9 per cent and Shin-Etsu Chemical, the world's largest maker of silicon wafers, rose 1.9 percent after results from Texas Instruments, the US chipmaker, beat estimates. Pioneer, the electronics maker, rose 5.1 per cent on an analyst's upgrade. KDDI, The Japanese mobile phone operator, fell 7 per cent after announcing the purchase of a stake in Jupiter Telecommunications, a cable-television operator. Jupiter fell 7.2 per cent. Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Japan's largest fixed-line phone operator, fell 0.8 per cent to 3,920 yen. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index was little changed at 121.50 in morning trade.
Michael Beh
michaelwbeh@gmail.com
London
After last week's frenzied sell off in the wake of President Obama's crack down Wall Street, financials rebounded yesterday. Barclays gained 1.7 per cent after Exane BNP Paribas suggested the stock had been unfairly sold off and that it wasn't likely to suffer too much from US proposals to limit proprietary trading. The broker also said Standard Chartered, up 1.2 per cent, had been unfairly hit. Hwever, gains for the financial sector failed to lift the FTSE 100, which closed down 42.68 points at 5260.31 amid falls for miners. Xstrata lost 2 per cent on continued worries about Chinese demand. Esewhere, British Land rose 1.5 per cent after UBS upgraded its rating on the property group to buy saying its portfolio was well placed for a recovery.
Peter Stiff
Peter.Stiff@the-times.co.uk
