Bloomberg:
- The European Union may seek to impose the same pay restrictions on hedge-fund managers and private-equity firms that it proposed for bankers, Sweden’s financial-markets minister said. The EU added the pay rules to alternative investment fund legislation that is being reviewed in the European Council and European Parliament, Mats Odell, Sweden’s financial markets minister, said at a conference in Stockholm today. The proposals “will be very close” to rules on bankers’ pay, he said.
- Imports of refined copper and copper products by China, the world’s largest user, tumbled 34 percent in October from the previous month as stockpiles built up. Purchases declined to 263,109 metric tons last month, the customs office said today. That’s the lowest monthly total since January’s 232,700 tons, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
- Google Inc.(GOOG) Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said his company’s $750 million purchase of AdMob Inc. will expand sales of ads that appear in applications on smart phones such as the iPhone. “AdMob is clearly the best of its ilk for applications monetization,” Schmidt said yesterday in an interview at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. “We think that’s as strategic as search monetization, which, of course, we’re very good at.” Together, AdMob and Google will be the largest mobile- advertising company, with about 30 percent to 40 percent of the market, according to Karsten Weide, an analyst with researcher IDC in San Mateo, California. The purchase will allow advertisers to get their brands in front of consumers who use games, personal-finance tools and music programs on the iPhone and devices using Google’s Android software, Schmidt said.
- Emerson Electric Co.(EMR) Chief Executive Officer David Farr said the U.S. government is hurting manufacturers with regulation and taxes and his company will continue to focus on growth overseas. “Washington is doing everything in their manpower, capability, to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said today in Chicago at a Baird Industrial Outlook conference. “Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules.” Farr, in his presentation, also said manufacturers are being hurt by taxes and regulation. He said companies will create jobs in India and China, “places where people want the products and where the governments welcome you to actually do something.” Emerson has shed more than 20,000 jobs since the end of 2008 to lower expenses. “What do you think I am going to do?” Farr asked. “I’m not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. They are doing everything possible to destroy jobs.”
- Toll Brothers Inc.(TOL), the largest U.S. luxury homebuilder, gained as much as 14 percent in New York after orders surged 42 percent in the fiscal fourth quarter, cancellations slowed and revenue beat analysts’ estimates. Net contracts climbed to 765 in the three months through October from 539 a year earlier and the cancellation rate dropped to 6.9 percent from 30.2 percent, Horsham, Pennsylvania- based Toll said in a statement yesterday. The shares jumped $2.23 to $20.62 at 9:52 a.m., the biggest gain since Aug. 12. “The surprise was more on the upside,” said David Goldberg, an analyst with UBS Securities LLC in New York. “They did better than we thought.”
- A year before the next U.S. congressional elections, just 52 percent of registered voters want their representatives to Congress to be re-elected, a poll found. That figure is similar to numbers recorded in 2006 and 1994, the last two elections in which control of both houses of Congress changed political parties, according to the survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. In October 2006, 50 percent said they wanted their representatives re-elected, Pew said, and a month later Democrats captured the House and Senate. The number was 49 percent in October 1994, a month before Republicans took over both houses.
Wall Street Journal:
- Face.com is opening its photo-tagging system, based on facial-recognition technology, to Facebook members Wednesday. Photo Tagger, which launched to a limited group of users in July, scans a user’s photo albums on the social-networking site, then lets him tag faces it identifies. It groups multiple shots of each person, making it easy to tag large albums, and users can also adjust or remove incorrectly tagged pictures. Once a member has been identified, the app prompts him or her to approve the tag — a crucial privacy step, since he or she may not want to be labeled in a photo. It also works with a member’s current photo-privacy settings on Facebook.
- There’s a new sign Windows 7 is off to a strong start: Web surfers have started moving to the operating system much more quickly than they did its troubled predecessor, Windows Vista. A new research report says Windows 7 on Saturday surpassed 4 percent of all devices visiting Web sites that day, a little over two weeks after the commercial launch of the product. It took Windows Vista, in contrast, about seven months to pass 4 percent after it was introduced to businesses in November 2006, according to the report from Net Applications, a firm that tracks online usage.
CNBC:
- Funny Business reader Rick Ambrose has been "divinely inspired" to rewrite the Lord's Prayer as the 'Lloyd's Prayer': Our Chairman, Who Art At Goldman, Blankfein Be Thy Name. The Rally's Come. God's Work Be Done, We Have No Fear Of Correction. Give Us This Day Our Daily Gains, And Bankrupt Our Nearest Competitors, Just As You Taught Lehman And Bear A Lesson. And Bring Us Not Under Indictment. For Thine Is The Treasury, The House And The Senate Forever And Ever. Goldman.
NYPost:
- As Clear Channel Communications sets the stage to launch its fourth debt restructuring plan, some of the company's biggest lenders are trying to seize control of the company's outdoor unit in order to further squeeze the radio and billboard giant. According to sources familiar with the matter, Leon Black's Apollo Management and Blackstone Group's GSO Capital are quietly buying up shares in Clear Channel Outdoor(CCO), the financially struggling company's publicly traded outdoor unit, in order to crimp the parent company's ability to keep using the outdoor unit as its personal ATM.
- Hearst Corp., is sitting on a $1 billion war chest, insiders say -- one reason it has tapped an investment banker as its new chief financial officer. Mitchell Scherzer, it was announced Monday, will replace retiring Senior Vice President Ronald Doerfler. The move is seen to signal a more aggressive acquisition strategy by company Chairman and CEO Frank Bennack, who wants to fulfill the Hearst family mandate to find new revenue streams in digital and non-traditional media.
The Business Insider:
- Investors have been pouring into Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) this year. $108 billion flowed into ETFs year to date, $24 billion of which came during the last three months. Yet while investors have been pouring into commodity, fixed income, and global equity ETFs, one very important category has remained a complete pariah -- U.S. Stocks. Despite the stock market rally we've witnessed during the last three months, money has continued to flow out of U.S. equity ETFs. Thus while some might be able to argue that the crowd has jumped into commodities, fixed income, and global equities, it's pretty hard to say that investors are in love with stocks again.
- Foreign-Currency Buyers Making Huge, Bulk Purchases Of Distressed Florida Condos.
LA Times:
- A state blue-ribbon panel unanimously approved landmark fishing restrictions Tuesday for Southern California, creating a patchwork of havens for marine life designed to replenish the seas while leaving some waters open for anglers. The plan, approved 5 to 0 during a meeting at which emotions boiled over briefly into shouting and shoving, was a compromise intended to sustain the 250-mile coastline's environmental as well as economic health -- forged during a year of contentious negotiations between conservationists and fishing interests. any move to close waters to fishermen has been strongly resisted by both the fishing industry and recreational boaters. On Tuesday, representatives of both groups, many of them wearing black T-shirts, turned out at the panel's meeting and predicted job losses and business closures.
Lloyd’s List:
- The number of ships being ordered in China dropped 63% in October, citing data from the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Rassmussen:
- After being knocked out of first place last month for the first time in nearly two years, the economy is back as the issue voters view as most important. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 85% of voters consider the issue of the economy as very important, topping a list of 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports.
Politico:
- The sudden spasm of intense debate over abortion on Capitol Hill this week threatens not only to stall the passage of health care legislation, but also to shatter the delicate cease-fire that has governed the abortion issue during the Obama era. After months of dodging high-profile confrontations over abortion, Democrats — including President Barack Obama — find themselves faced with a stark set of alternatives: Support a bill that imposes limits on access to abortion or demand one that might, however indirectly, fund the procedure with taxpayer money. It's the kind of decision point the White House and Democratic leaders have consistently attempted to avoid.
iPhone J.D.:
- The Am Law Tech Survey 2009 was just released, and I was curious how the iPhone would rank on the list. In the 2008, only 5% of the firms reported having attorneys using an iPhone. While that percentage was low, I cannot say that it was surprising. Although the iPhone was released back in 2007, it wasn't until the iPhone 3G was released in mid-2008 with support for Microsoft Exchange and third party apps that most larger companies, including law firms, started to adopt the iPhone. Thus, at the time that the Am Law Tech Survey 2008 was being conducted, successful law firms were just starting to look at iPhones. The 2008 survey revealed that virtually all of the law firms had attorneys using a Blackberry (98%) while a good number of law firms had attorneys using Windows Mobile (30%) and Palm OS (14%). The 2009 survey reports a huge jump in iPhone use. Whereas 5% of the Am Law 200 law firms reported attorneys using iPhones in 2008, 55% were supporting iPhone use in 2009.
Reuters:
- United Parcel Service Inc (UPS), the world's largest package delivery service, expects growth in its volumes next year as the global economy gradually recovers, its chief said on Wednesday. UPS CEO Scott Davis told Reuters the company will hike shipping rates for 2010, which follows a similar move by rival Fedex (FDX), and it will announce the size of the hike later this month. "I think we will go back to see positive volumes next year as the economy improves," Scott said in an interview, ahead of a meeting of Asia-Pacific corporate and political leaders in Singapore. Davis told a business luncheon earlier on Wednesday that a global economic recovery will happen in a gradual manner. "I believe the recovery is real, but it is gradual. It is sustainable but vulnerable." He said this will lead the U.S. holiday season to be slightly better than expected. "Most people, the consensus, are saying it is going to be a pretty flat holiday in the U.S. I think it will be slightly better than that," he added.
- Graphics chipmaker Nvidia Corp (NVDA) is seeing strong demand for its products, helped by a recovery in the global economy, its chief executive said on Wednesday. "We have supply constraints across board," Jen-Hsun Huang told reporters in the Indian city of Bangalore. "And the reason for that is demand just spiked up very, very quickly and we are seeing robust demand across the board." He said the company was seeing recovery from all geographies, including U.S. and Europe. Nvidia last week forecast fourth quarter revenue to be up about 2 percent from the third quarter, well above Wall Street expectations, and said its new server and mobile chips were gaining momentum.
Financial Times:
- Another slew of Chinese data, another load of raised eyebrows. Evidence of accelerating retail sales or fixed-asset investment might be taken at face value elsewhere, but these are two of China’s least reliable indicators. Seasoned China-watchers accept that not everything adds up in the data-gathering business. The total of first-half gross domestic product figures released individually by China’s 31 provinces and municipalities, for example, was almost 10 per cent higher than the national figure put out by the National Bureau of Statistics. But some inputs to those sums are flakier than others. A 33.1 per cent year-on-year rise in urban fixed-asset investment, as reported by the NBS on Wednesday, does not necessarily mean that investment rose by 33.1 per cent. As John Makin of the American Enterprise Institute think-tank points out, “investment” by central-government planners is counted on the basis of funds disbursed for projects, regardless of whether those funds have actually been spent. Similarly, retail sales figures – up 16.2 per cent – are not a useful proxy for household consumption as they basically track shipments to retailers, lumping in all kinds of government and corporate spending.
- Hedgebay’s Secondary Market Indicator shows the average premium or discount (below 100 - the Net Asset Value) paid for hedge funds that trade in the secondary market. It’s basically a sentiment indicator for hedge fund investors, but it can also be interpreted as an an indicator of the cost of liquidity (the liquidity premium, or how much investors will demand in exchange for going into a fund which presumably has some sort of lock-up).
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