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
Friday, January 29, 0730 GMT
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Top stories
The Times: Ben Bernanke won a second term as Federal Reserve chairman following the closest-ever Senate vote for a US central bank head.
Daily Telegraph: Germany triggered a near-panic flight from southern European debt markets by warning that there will be no EU bail-outs.
The Times: BP is preparing for a boardroom shake-up as the oil group's quarterly profit surged 80 per cent to $4.7 billion (£2.9 billion).
Comment
David Wighton in The Times: Zug, the Swiss canton, is one of the most aggressive contestants in the competition to offer the lowest level of personal taxation for hard-pressed bankers.
Damian Reece in the Daily Telegraph: The Archie Norman/Adam Crozier double bill seems exactly the sort of reality TV that ITV needs.
Hamish McRae in The Independent: The humiliation of Greece will expose cracks in the eurozone that will not easily be papered over.
Upside
The Times: Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, reported fourth-quarter profit rose 71 per cent to $384 million (£238 million).
The Times: Microsoft reported record sales of its new Windows 7 operating system, which helped the software giant post a 60 per cent increase in quarterly profit.
The Times: Ford Motor Company, the only big US carmaker to avoid bankruptcy last year, reported its first annual profit since 2005.
Downside
The Times: Toyota will recall up to eight million cars worldwide, including 1 million in Britain, because of a potentially dangerous defect.
The Times: AstraZeneca, the UK's second largest drugs company, will cut 8,000 jobs worldwide, including 1,500 in Britain and will outsource more research and development.
The Times: Sir David Jones will step down as chairman of JJB Sports, the sportswear retailer, because of ill health.
Mergers and shakers
The Times: ITV, the broadcaster, ended its long-running hunt for a chief executive by appointing Adam Crozier, the Royal Mail chief executive.
Financial Times: JPMorgan Chase is launching a global business aimed at selling loans and commercial banking services to multinational corporations.
The Times: Joe Lewis, the Bahamas-based billionaire, staged a shareholder coup to put his nominees in charge of Mitchells & Butlers, the pubs operator.
Around Asia
Bloomberg: Japan's industrial production rose and unemployment rate fell in December, signalling a continued recovery.
Financial Times: Li Keqiang, the man poised to become China's next premier in 2012, defended China's record in pursuing balanced growth in Davos.
Wall Street Journal: South Korea's Samsung Electronics swung to an operating profit in the fourth quarter and expects profitability to improve.
Look ahead
Daily Telegraph: Gold is now "the ultimate bubble", billionaire investor George Soros declared, sparking fears that prices may soon suffer a tumble.
The Independent: The leaders of oil giants BP and Royal Dutch Shell pledged to rebuild Iraq's oil industry and make it the world's biggest oil producer over the next decade.
Reuters: The US Federal Reserve held interest rates at almost zero but traders increased their bets that rates would rise in the third quarter.
MARKETS
FTSE 100 5,145.74 down 1.4% (Thursday close)
Dow 10,120.46 down 1.1% (close)
S&P 500 1,084.53 down 1.2% (close)
Nasdaq 2,179.00 down 1.9% (close)
Nikkei 10,252.16 down 1.6% (latest)
Hang Seng 20,142.41 down 1.1% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $1.6143/1.1579 euros (latest)
Euro $1.3942 (latest)
Commodities
Brent crude $72.20 up 7 cents (latest)
West Texas crude $73.74 up 10 cents (latest)
Gold $1083.60 down $1.20 (latest)
New York
Reuters: US stocks dropped as poor outlooks from Motorola and Qualcomm dented optimism in the technology sector while worries about Greece's fiscal health dragged on sentiment. Qualcomm fell 14.2 per cent and Motorola fell 12.4 per cent after both companies' earnings and outlooks fell short of expectations. 3M, maker of Post-It notes and Scotch tape, fell 1.9 per cent despite reporting stronger-than-expected earnings. Procter & Gamble rose 1.4 per cent after its second-quarter earnings beat expectations and it raised its sales outlook for the year.
Asia
Bloomberg: Asian stocks fell in morning trade, dragging the MSCI Asia Pacific Index to its biggest weekly decline since March, after the yen appreciated and metal prices tumbled. Panasonic, the electronics maker, fell 1.9 per cent and rival Sony fell 1.6 per cent. Elpida Memory, Japan's biggest computer-memory maker, fell 6.6 per cent after profit missed analyst predictions. Advantest, the world's biggest maker of memory-chip testers, fell 8.6 per cent after forecasting a wider-than estimated full-year loss. Rio Tinto, the world's No. 3 miner, fell 3.5 per cent and BHP, the largest, fell 2.5 per cent in Sydney. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index slumped 1 per cent to 117.94 in early trade.
Michael Beh
michaelwbeh@gmail.com
London
Investors found some cheer in the pubs yesterday after Merrill Lynch argued the market was wrongly taking a glass half empty view on the sector's prospect for the year ahead.
Shares in all the pubs group rallied despite the FTSE falling heavily as the broker said that while investors were pricing in 2010's challenges such as higher taxes and a fragile economy they were yet to see the benefits of this summer's World Cup, rising property prices and minimum pricing rules on alcohol could offset price competition from supermarkets. Greene King led the FTSE 250 up 3.4 per cent and Enterprise Inns rose 3 per cent.
The FTSE 100 dropped 71.73 points to 5,145.74 after weaker than expected US economic data.
Carnival was the biggest riser, up 1.6 per cent, after the cruise group's peer Royal Caribbean reported better than expected results.
AstraZeneca was the biggest blue chip faller, losing 4.6 per cent, after its fourth quarter earnings missed forecasts and it gave a downbeat outlook.
Peter Stiff
Peter.Stiff@the-times.co.uk
