- ICBC Won’t Repay Troubled China Trust Product, Official Says. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. is rejecting calls to bail out a troubled 3 billion-yuan ($495 million) trust product, a bank official with knowledge of the matter said, stoking concern that the nation’s first default on such high-yield investments may be looming. ICBC, which distributed the product sold by a trust company to raise funds for Shanxi Zhenfu Energy Group, won’t assume primary responsibility after the coal miner collapsed, according to the executive, who asked not be identified while negotiations continue. China’s largest bank may be forced to repay investors, most of whom were Beijing-based ICBC’s own private banking clients, Guangzhou Daily reported yesterday.
- European Stocks Climb as Commodity Producers, Accor Rise. European stocks rose to their highest level in six years as mining companies rallied, and a report showed builders started work on more houses in the U.S. last month than economists had forecast. Glencore Xstrata Plc and Rio Tinto Group both climbed at least 1.5 percent, pushing a gauge of commodity producers to its biggest three-day gain since August. Accor SA rose 1.6 percent as Europe’s largest hotel operator said that 2013 profit probably reached the upper end of its forecast. Royal Dutch Shell Plc slipped after saying that higher exploration costs and lower volumes will hurt fourth-quarter earnings. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index added 0.6 percent to 335.82 at the close.
- Citigroup(C) Cuts 950 Mortgage-Servicing Jobs. Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-biggest U.S. bank by assets, is cutting 950 jobs in default mortgage servicing after selling some business to Fannie Mae.
- Schlumberger(SLB) Earnings Advance as Customers Boost Spending. Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB), the largest oilfield-services provider, said fourth-quarter profit rose 22 percent as customers spent more in the search for harder-to-reach deposits around the globe.
- Obama’s Plan Leaves Unanswered Questions. The U.S. government would no longer store nearly every American’s phone records, under major intelligence reforms laid out Friday by President Barack Obama. But someone would. And who that will be remains a mystery. The phone companies don’t want to do it, and communications experts caution that it may be a difficult technical matter to get those companies to combine their data sets in a way that is useful to government counter-terrorism programs. The president spoke is broad terms – about the terror dangers that led to the growth of bulk surveillance programs, the potential risks those programs create, and the challenges of privacy in the digital age.
- Al Qaeda asks Iraqis for support in fight against government. Members of Al Qaeda's branch in Iraq handed out pamphlets in Fallujah on Thursday, urging people to take up arms and back them in their weekslong fight against government troops for control of the city.
ZeroHedge:
- Turkish Lira Has Collapsed 10% To Record Low Since Fed Taper; External Funding Needs Remain High. (graph)
- An Update On The Housing "Recovery". (graph)
- "Euphoric"-er. (graph)
- Paul Singer To Warn Of Derivatives Catastrophe At Davos. Paul Singer’s speech and later debate on the topic “Are Markets Safer Now?” is expected to shake the very foundation of the elite event, according to a letter to investors reviewed by ValueWalk. “We can only assume that the reason the global financial system is still… overleveraged, opaque, reliant upon the implicit and explicit support of governments for its very existence… is that fixing the problem would be too painful for powerful special interest groups,” the rough draft says, setting up for the next warning and pointing to government bailouts and the political lobbying machine that ensures they remain intact.
NY Times:
- Hurdles Remain for Apple(AAPL) in China Despite New Deal. Apple is counting on a long-awaited agreement with China Mobile, the world’s largest cellular operator, to reverse its fortunes in China. But the initial reception was muted on Friday, when customers were finally able to buy iPhones from China Mobile. Instead of the round-the-block lines that have greeted Apple product introductions in China and other countries in the past, only about a dozen customers showed up to buy iPhones at the opening of a store in Beijing – despite the presence of a special guest, the Apple chief executive, Timothy D. Cook.
- At least six US merchants suffering Target(TGT)-style attacks: Report. The cyber security firm IntelCrawler said on Friday that it has uncovered six ongoing attacks at merchants across the United States whose credit card processing systems are infected with the same type of malicious software used to steal data from some 40 million credit cards at Target Inc.
- Brazil's jobless rate revised up under new methodology. The new report, called PNAD Continua, showed Brazil's average jobless rate stood at 7.4 percent in 2012 and 7.7 percent in the first half of 2013, government statistics agency IBGE said on Friday. Under a previous methodology that included only six major metropolitan areas, Brazil's average unemployment rate was estimated at 5.5 percent in 2012 and 5.7 percent in the first half of 2013.
- Spain's bad loans ratio reaches new record high at 13.08 pct in Nov. Spanish banks' bad loans as a percentage of total lending reached a fresh record high of 13.08 percent in November, up from 12.99 pct in October, Bank of Spain data showed on Friday. The ratio has been steadily climbing as households and small companies struggle with debts and as banks, fighting to improve their own capital quality ahead of Europe-wide stress tests, rein in lending. Bad debts rose month on month by 1.5 billion euros ($2.04 billion) to 192.5 billion euros in November. Total credit, meanwhile, rose slightly by 2.6 billion euros to 1.47 trillion euros, the data showed.
No comments:
Post a Comment