Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're
saying, what they're saying, what you should be thinking
Top stories
The Times: Yahoo! announced a 19 per cent fall in profit, increasing
the pressure to complete a deal
with a rival such as Microsoft.
Telegraph: BP will withdraw its
last 60 staff seconded to TNK-BP in a major blow in its fight for
control of the Russian joint venture.
New York Times: Troubles at mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
have pushed mortgage rates higher
and could push the housing market even lower.
Comment
Carl Mortished in The Times: Food processing is an unsexy sector but it
is about to have its day .
Jeff Randall in the Telegraph: If Chancellor Alistair Darling really
wants to protect the City’s preeminence as a financial centre, he
should resign .
Yalman Onaran in Bloomberg: Lehman Brothers is in the eye of what may
be the fiercest storm to have hit
the investment bank in its 150-year history.
Upside
Reuters: Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest defence contractor,
reported a better-than-expected 13
per cent increase in quarterly profit.
The Independent: Hermès, the French luxury goods brand, reported sales
rose 12 per cent in the second quarter.
The Times: Edues, a sub-prime lender, is offering a discount of 8 per
cent to homeowners who repay their
mortgage early in a new sign of credit turmoil.
Downside
The Times: Floors-2-Go, Britain's biggest wood and laminates flooring
retailer, called in the administrators
after sales collapsed.
Telegraph: Arun Sarin will quit as
Vodafone chief executive after shares in the world’s largest mobile
phone network fell 14 per cent on the back of a profit warning.
Financial Times: SunTrust sold its
$2 billion stake in Coca-Cola that the Atlanta-based bank, which keeps
the secret recipe for Coke, had owned for almost 90 years.
Mergers and shakers
The Times: Lion Capital, the owner of Weetabix, bought
Findus and Young’s , the frozen food businesses, for £1.1 billion
($2.2 billion).
Financial Times: TPG Capital, the US private equity group, is considering
a bid for Paragon , a mortgage lender, just weeks after dumping a rescue
plan for Bradford & Bingley.
Reuters: Charles Schwab, a pioneer of the discount brokerage, will again
step down as chief executive of the company that bears his name.
Around Asia
The Times: Abu Dhabi will buy a major
stake in General Electric and start an $8 billion (£4 billion) finance
joint venture in the Middle East and Africa.
Bloomberg: BHP Billiton’s fourth-quarter iron ore output rose
15 per cent to a record, driven by demand from China.
Reuters: Toyota may cut its
2008 global vehicle sales target by as much as 350,000 units.
Look ahead
Telegraph: BSkyB will launch an online
subscription music service later this year and has signed the world's
largest music group, Universal, as its first partner.
New York Times: Asia’s central bankers will consider the worst
inflationary threat in at least a decade when they hold their annual
conference on Monday, July 28.
Bloomberg: Hyundai Motor Co, South Korea's largest automaker, is
expected to report its best quarterly
profit in more than two years on Thursday.
MARKETS
FTSE 100 5,364.10 down 0.7% (Tuesday close)
Dow 11,602.50 up 1.2% (close)
S&P 500 1,277.00 up 1.4% (close)
Nasdaq 2,303.96 up 1.1% (close)
Nikkei 13,351.02 up 1.3% (latest)
Hang Seng 22,991.86 up 2.1% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $1.9935/1.2619 euros (latest)
Euro $1.5797 (latest)
Commodities
West Texas crude $127.99 down 43 cents (latest)
Gold $947.90 down 60 cents (latest)
New York
Reuters: US stocks rose more
than 1 per cent as oil prices slid, taking the edge off a raft of
disappointing earnings. Consumer stocks and airlines gained on the oil
price. Coca-Cola rose 3.5 per cent, Wal-Mart gained 3.1 per
cent and an index of airline stocks, .XAL, surged 22 per cent. A depressing
profit report from American Express saw its shares fall 7.1 per cent.
Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar was a bright spot on the reporting
front and its shares rose 2.4 per cent. In regular trade, internet company Yahoo!
fell 1.3 per cent, but its shares edged up 0.8 per cent after hours
after it posted a 19 per cent fall in net profit, in line with expectations.
Asia
Bloomberg: Asian stocks rose
in morning trade, sending the regional benchmark to a three-week high. Macquarie
Group, Australia's biggest securities firm, climbed 14 per cent after
reporting a solid start to the year. Falling oil prices lifted carmakers and
airlines. Toyota rose 0.8 per cent, Honda rose 3.6 per cent, Korean
Air Lines rose 4.8 per cent, Air New Zealand rose 4.4 per cent
and Qantas rose 8 per cent. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index gained 1.8
per cent to 135.39 in morning trade.
Michael Beh
michaelwbeh@gmail.com
London
Lonmin, the platinum miner in South Africa, defied a falling mining
sector gaining 5 per cent on talk of a £34.50 bid from Xstrata.
But some traders put Lonmin’s gains down to a trading statement from platinum
distributor Johnson Matthey, up 70p to £17.38, which said sales of
autocatalysts - which use the metal - were well ahead as Asian demand was
making up for a slump in the US.
The FTSE 100 closed down 40.2 at 5364.1 as rising oil stocks were unable to
offset another sell off in the mining and bank sector and gloomy trading
statements from Vodafone, down 14 per cent and Enterprise Inns,
off 13 per cent.
It was Vodafone blaming the economic downtown for falling demand that took a
toll on telecoms stocks, until now seen as relatively resilient to a
downtown. Carphone Warehouse fell 6 per cent and BT lost 4
per cent.
Enterprise said beer sales were falling but failed to quantify the slump, and
also said it was having to cut rents for tenants. That took 10 per cent off
indebted Punch Taverns to 240p.
Barclays fell 3 per cent after rival credit card issuer American
Express unveiled a profit slump.
Robert Lindsay
robert.lindsay@thetimes.co.uk
AGENDA
INTERIMS
GlaxoSmithKline (Q2)
Galiform
Informa
FINALS
Renishaw
Thomson Intermedia
Touchstone Group
Zetar
AGMs
Aqua Bounty Technologies
Caffyns
Eurasia Mining
Finsbury Worldwide
Halfords
Helical Bar
Kryso Resources
Pactolus Hungarian Property
Screen Technology Group
Sepura
Tate & Lyle
Viatrade
VT Group
EGMs
None scheduled
PRODUCTION & EXPLORATION
BHP Billiton (June qtr)
TRADING STATEMENTS
Daily Mail & General Trust (Q3)
Halfords
Holidaybreak
International Personal Finance
ECONOMICS
Bank of England minutes (0930 BST)
BBA June mortgage lending/approvals (0930 BST)
CBI Quarterly Industrial Trends survey (1100 BST)
Sign up for The Times
To receive Kill the Competition click here
To sign up for Top stories you missed while you were away click here
Keep up with the day's top stories click here
Need to Know, the essential daily business guide sector by sector click here
