Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
May 15th, 2012 | 
Author: The top executive at Philip Morris International lit up a sale sign following a recent all-time high.
On May 11, Chairman and Chief Executive Louis S. Camilleri sold 70,000 shares of Philip Morris (ticker: PM) for $5,994,800, an average of $85.63 each.
Camilleri’s current direct holdings of 1,610,858 shares represent a stake of less than 1% in the tobacco giant.
This is Camilleri’s first transaction since Sept. 24, 2010, when he exercised options and sold 241,500 shares of the tobacco giant for $13.6 million, an average of $56.12 each.
In an email, the Philip Morris press office writes, “This transaction …
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Dubai: Abu Dhabi fund Aabar Investments has raised its stake in Arabtec Holding to 53 per cent, a market official said yesterday, effectively taking control of Dubai’s largest builder after a failed $1.7 billion (Dh6.25 billion) bid two years ago.
The state-owned fund, which owns stakes in high-profile names such as German carmaker Daimler, commodities trader Glencore and Italy’s UniCredit, had been buying up shares in recent weeks through subsidiaries and owned a 10.45 per cent in Arabtec as at end April.
An official at the Dubai Financial Market said trade done on May 6, and settled on May 8, had lifted Aabar’s position to 53 per cent.
The new shareholder structure will be updated on the bourse’s website today, the official said.
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Economic prospects for the GCC economies look healthier for the next few years than in the initial phase of the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, credit rating agency Standard & Poorâs said yesterday.
âThis is mainly because the geographic distribution of growth between developed and emerging markets â with the latter outperforming the former â that we forecast for the next three to five years should keep oil prices firmly on an upward trajectory,â said Jean-Michel Six, Standard & Poorâs chief economist for Europe.
Strong demand from emerging markets will particularly benefit the GCC economies. More than 70 percent of GCC exports (essentially crude oil) are destined for Japan and the developing Asian countries. âThe GCC economies appear well positioned to benefit from the upward trajectory of oil prices that we foresee over the next five years,â said Six.
The sharp revival in oil production is bolstering external positions in GCC economies. As oil prices recovered in 2010, GCC exports of goods and services rose 25 percent, while imports increased 7 percent. Furthermore, sharp increases in oil production to offset losses in Libya caused GDP growth to accelerate in 2011, to average 7 percent for the GCC as a whole. The rating agency recently said that based on the surge in oil prices GCC states have strong credit rating outlooks.
âOil-rich economies in the Gulf are increasingly pulling ahead of the regionâs other economies, on the back of continuously high oil prices,â said Standard & Poorâs credit analyst Tommy Trask.
Looking ahead, S&P forecasts that GDP growth will moderate somewhat this year and in 2013 â to 5 percent and 4 percent, respectively â as oil production will expand less rapidly in percentage terms than in 2011 when shortages in Libya lifted production in the Gulf.
S&P economists forecast world demand for oil to rise at about one-half the rate of global GDP growth. Based on their projections, S&P sees see oil demand rising by about 1.75 percent a year over the next decade.
According to International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates, world oil supply increases by about 1 percent a year, creating a potential annual deficit between supply and demand of about 700,000 barrels per day. This deficit, S&P says, will likely lead to fast-rising oil prices in the coming decade.
Although some of the unconventional sources of oil extraction such as the production of shale gas and shale oil in the US and Canada are likely to impact oil prices, the rating agency said the high production costs of these new sources will limit their ability to influence oil prices significantly. While production costs in conventional oilfields in the Middle East average about $17 per barrel, US offshore production averaged $52 per barrel.
As high oil prices are expected to support strong economic growth in the Gulf countries over the longer term, S&P anticipates that sustainable growth in the GCC countries would depend on increasing employment in the non-hydrocarbon private sector.
âThe GCC economies face important demographic challenges that in our view can only be met through continuous efforts to diversify their structure away from hydrocarbons,â said Six.
London The pound weakened versus the dollar, extending a second weekly decline, after an industry report showed UK consumer confidence dropped last month as the economy slipped into a double-dip recession.
Sterling declined for the third time in four days versus the US currency as economists at Deutsche Bank AG and BNP Paribas said Bank of England Governor Mervyn King may leave the door open to add more stimulus as Europe’s debt crisis and government spending cuts damp the recovery. Gilts rose before the Debt Management Office sells £2.5 billion (Dh14.76 billion) of bills.
The pound fell 0.2 per cent to $1.6110 in early London trading, headed for a weekly loss of 0.3 per cent. The UK currency fell to $1.6067 on May 9, the lowest level since April 20. Sterling was little changed at 80.22 pence per euro, after rising to 79.97 pence, the strongest since November 2008.
An index of consumer sentiment dropped to 44 from 53 in March, the Nationwide Building Society said. A gauge of Britons’ outlook for the economy fell to 60 in April from 73 in March, Nationwide said. A measure of whether it’s a good time to make a major purchase declined to 75 from 86.
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By ELLEN E. SCHULTZ
When should you start taking Social Security benefits?
It is one of the toughest retirement decisions seniors will have to make: whether to take benefits early, wait till their full retirement age or delay them to age 70. Each has its pros and cons, and a mistake can cost thousands of dollars.
Consider Patty Duke. When the former TV star turned 65 years old in December, she appeared in a series of public-service announcements touting how simple it is to apply for benefits online, in your pajamas.
![[24retire]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BF-AC505_24reti_DV_20120323155851.jpg)
Everett Collection
Patty Duke, shown circa 1964, filed for benefits one year early.
The problem is that Ms. Duke was born in 1946, so for Social Security purposes her full retirement age is 66. By applying one year early, she has reduced her monthly benefit by 6.7%—for life. The announcements don’t mention this.
“The decision about when to collect benefits is a personal one,” says a spokesman for the Social Security Administration. “It is not a video about when to retire, but rather how to apply for retirement benefits online.”
The rules are laid out in detail on the Social Security website (www.socialsecurity.gov), which also offers calculators and tables. If you are helping your parents or other family members wrestle with the issue, here is how a few different scenarios play out.
Taking benefits early. You can begin collecting Social Security at age 62, though the benefits will be reduced if taken before full retirement age: 65 for people born before 1937, and 66 for those born between 1943 and 1954. From 1955 to 1960, full retirement age creeps up in intervals, until it reaches 67 for those born in 1960 and later. For example, if you were born in 1957, it is 66 and six months.
The reduction can be significant. If your full retirement age is 66 and you begin taking benefits at age 62, your payment will be reduced by about 25%.
For some people—generally those who aren’t working and in poor health—taking benefits early makes sense. Although the benefit is reduced, they will be ahead in real dollars until about age 78, says Peter Young, an attorney in Mill Valley, Calif., who specializes in Social Security.
Working and taking benefits early. If you are working and have so-called earned income—earnings from wages or self-employment—it might not make sense to take Social Security early. That is because for every $2 dollars they earn that exceeds a threshold—$14,640 in 2012—you will forfeit $1 in benefits.
For example, if you earn a mere $30,640, you will forfeit $8,000 in benefits. It doesn’t take much income to zero out your benefit for that year altogether.
Taking benefits early and later returning to work. What if you begin taking benefits early and subsequently return to work before your full retirement age?
Yes, your benefit will be cut, but what few people realize is that the earnings reduction isn’t a permanent loss.
The benefit will be recalculated when you reach full retirement age, and any month your benefit was reduced by even $1 is removed from the early retirement reduction calculation, Mr. Young points out.
Say you begin receiving Social Security at age 62, and before you reach full retirement age at 66 you forfeit benefits in 24 months because of the earnings test. At 66, your benefit will be recalculated as though you had begun taking it only two years early, not four.
One strategy for those who expect their earned income will always exceed the earnings threshold is filing for benefits at age 62 but each year submitting an earnings estimate that zeros out your benefit, Mr. Young says.
When you reach full retirement age, your benefit won’t be reduced. Meanwhile, you will have had peace of mind knowing that if you suddenly stopped working, you could begin your benefits immediately, without the typical wait of several months.
Delaying benefits. Still, if you can afford to delay Social Security until past full retirement age, it might make sense to do so. That is because your benefit will increase because of “delayed retirement credits” of 8% for each full year benefits are delayed, up to age 70.
For example, someone born between 1943 and 1954 who delays his benefit until age 70 will have a benefit worth 132% of the benefit he would have had at age 66, thanks to the credits. This increases any spousal survivor benefit as well. (Such benefits are 50% of your benefit at full retirement age.)
If your tax rate is high, it also might make sense to delay benefits: Social Security payments are considered taxable income.
Married couples have additional planning opportunities. When one spouse is receiving benefits and is over full retirement age, he can suspend his benefits at any time up to age 70. When his spouse reaches full retirement age, she can then file for the spousal benefit and delay taking her own benefits, which will increase with delayed retirement credits. She can then switch to her own benefit at age 70, if it is higher.
Changing course. It isn’t too late for Ms. Duke to change her mind. If you have been receiving benefits for less than a year, you are allowed to withdraw your Social Security application, repay all the benefits and reapply at a future date. You do this only once, however.
Write to Ellen E. Schultz at ellen.schultz@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared March 24, 2012, on page B9 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: How to Time Social Security.
Server virtualisation offers tremendous benefits for enterprise IT organizations – server consolidation, hardware abstraction, and internal clouds deliver a high degree of operational efficiency. However, today, server virtualisation is not used pervasively in the production enterprise data center. Some of the barriers preventing wide-spread adoption of existing proprietary virtualisation solutions are performance, scalability, security, cost, and ecosystem challenges.
This Red Hat white paper describes the performance and scaling of Oracle running in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 guests on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 host with the KVM hypervisor.
The host was deployed on an HP ProLiant DL370 G6 server equipped with 48 GB of RAM and comprising dual sockets each with a 3.2GHz Intel Xeon W5580 Nehalem processor with support for hyper-threading technology, totaling eight cores and 16 hyper-threads. The workload used was a common Oracle Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) workload.
Contents:
- Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation (RHEV) Overview
- Kernel-based Virtualisation Machine (KVM)
- Scaling-Up the Memory and vCPUs
- Consolidated Virtualization Efficiency
Banking with an Islamic covered card, instead of a credit card, offers peace of mind and has become popular among Muslims and Non-Muslims alike. But the UAE’s Shari’ah-retail banking landscape also shows that the debris of the global financial crisis has not yet been swept away.
In the first-half of 2011, the UAE‘s Islamic retail banks have been busy in promoting new products and services. In January, Noor Islamic Bank opened its largest branch for Islamic insurances Noor Takaful.
Ajman Bank has recently launched the Mahra Ladies Banking as “around a quarter of the UAE‘s private wealth is controlled by women,” Maryam Al Shorafa, Head of Ajman Bank’s Ladies Banking, told AMEinfo.com. Dubai Bank, one of the smallest local banks in the UAE, has also just opened a new branch at Dubai’s prestigious Jumeira Road. People who drive down the road from the famous Jumeira Mosque to Burj Al Arab can’t miss the huge building near the “Miraj” Islamic Art Centre.
Also in June, Dubai Islamic Bank launched access to a new Shari’ah-compliant fund, the Prudential Shari’ah Opportunities – Asia Pacific Equity Fund. And Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) offers 25% discounts on online transactions for those who open an online brokerage account, along with the chance to win an iPad.
Search for stability
But behind the glittering façade, question marks, here and there, remain. On May 16, the Dubai government took over control over Dubai Bank in order to “ensure all depositors’ interests are safe”. Before this move, Dubai Bank was jointly owned by Emaar Properties and Dubai Holding at 30% and 70%, respectively. It remains unclear whether Dubai Bank will be sold or merged with another Islamic bank.
Dubai’s Noor Islamic Bank has repeatedly denied any intention to merge with other local Islamic banks. Noor apparently had to postpone its foreign expansion plans, as Group CEO Hussain Al-Qemzi said in January. Noor Islamic Bank also closed its branch in Dubai Media City, but opened the Noor Takaful Center at Sheikh Zayed Road near the same-named Dubai metro station. According to Dr. Ahmed Al-Janahi, Managing Directorat Noor Takaful, “sales of Islamic insurances doubled in 2010″.
Despite having obviously financing issues, at Dubai Bank holders of a “Kunooz Account” still have a chance to win Dhs1m every month and Dhs30,000 every day (accept on Fridays, Saturdays and on holidays) “For every Dhs1,000 in your account, you could win one of three daily prizes of Dhs10,000 (excluding Fridays, Saturdays and Public Holidays). For every Dhs5,000 in your account you could win the Grand Monthly Prize of Dhs1m,” the offer posted on the banks’ website says. That means, the bank distributes around Dhs20m per year to lucky customers.
Depositor incentives
Asked by AMEinfo.com why the Kunooz raffle scheme is halal, Dubai Bank responded: “Deposits received by our customers in Kunooz are part of Mudaraba pool, which are invested in Shariah compliant investments.” Under the Islamic financing structure of Mudaraba, the investors (Dubai Bank’s customers in this case) provide money to an entrepreneur (Dubai Bank) in order to finance a specific project. “Therefore the return on Mudaraba pool investments are shared with the deposit holders according to the terms and conditions of Kunooz product,” a Dubai Bank spokesperson explained.
While gambling is haram in Islam, this raffle is approved as halal, because each customer does a contribution to the well-being of the bank by paying money into the account. At Islamic banks, customer accounts are not regarded as the banks’ liability like at conventional financial institutions, but are added to the bank’s own capital as both parties share profits and losses.
ADIB tries to attract clients with a similar saving scheme, called a Ghina savings account. Every time a client saves Dhs20,000 on his Ghina account, he or she gets a raffle coupon every month. There are three winners per year for Dhs2m per year, three for Dhs500,000 and 250 winners for Dhs10,000. Nevertheless, ADIB is apparently in a much better shape than Dubai bank. Its net earnings in the first quarter of 2011 soared 17% year-on-year to Dhs339.3m. ADIB shares, listed at the ADX in Abu Dhabi, have advanced 16% during the first half-year.
As the UAE is still overbanked (more than 50 banks serve 8.2m people) consolidation in the industry will be inevitable, and this trend will not stop at Islamic financial institutions.
By ANGUS LOTEN
Small businesses in Oklahoma City may be less frustrated with local regulations than small businesses elsewhere.
Local business owners gave Oklahoma City top marks for “overall regulatory friendliness” – including health and safety, environmental and labor rules, according to the survey of 6,000 small firms by Thumbtack.com, an online marketplace for local services, such as general contracting, plumbers and florists.
The city received a grade of A-plus. By contrast, San Francisco and New York both received Ds, at least from this sample of business owners.
Oklahoma City also ranked high for low hiring costs, lighter licensing regulations and more robust networking programs.
The online poll asked business owners to rank the most and least friendly states and cities for small business in more than a dozen categories.
Dallas-Fort Worth, Tex., came in second for least burdensome regulations, followed by San Antonio and Austin.
Across the board, business owners who responded to the survey were nearly twice as concerned with onerous licensing issues, at state and city levels, than tax rates.
Sacramento, Calif., and Albuquerque, N.M., had the least small-business friendly regulations, both receiving Fs in taxes, among other factors—at least, according to this group.
Among states, Idaho, Texas and South Carolina ranked highest, in the eyes of the small business owners.
However, the ranking excluded Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming, because those states received fewer than 10 responses apiece in the survey.
The survey also didn’t ask businesses for their views on local crime rates, for instance.
Thumbtack.com says it decided to undertake the survey because most of its customers are small businesses. It worked in partnership with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to develop the survey.
In fact, here’s a profile in the Wall Street Journal in November on Thumbtack.
Readers, please share your comments. How would you rank your city and state in terms of small-business regulations?
The original Prototype was one of the cooler roleplaying/action games of 2009, notable for your character’s ability to perform a flying sidekick on a helicopter.
Prototype 2 builds on its predecessor by adding new abilities and taking the plot deeper. It retains the gruesome aspects of the first game and, if anything, cranks up the power of them. This is most definitely not a game for kids.
The Prototype line has a very grim, urban superhero setting. It’s got far more in common with Blade than Spiderman. There’s no hint of spandex to be seen.
Your character is infected with a genetically modified virus which kills most people, or turns them into zombies, but grants you blood-powered abilities. You can run up the side of buildings, glide through the air, leap tall buildings and fight like crazy.
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The owner of Currys and PC World, Dixons Retail, has enjoyed a strong end to its financial year.
The company said sales for the 16 weeks to 28 April rose 8% in the UK and Ireland.
Dixons says full-year pre-tax profits will be between £65m and £70m, which is at the top end of expectations.
In its trading statement, Dixons said its Knowhow service, which installs and repairs products, had proved to be popular.
"Our overall group performance across the year has been slightly better than we anticipated. We saw a strong end to the year particularly in the UK and Nordics," said Sebastian James, Dixons' chief executive.
But like other UK firms, he warned that trading conditions remained difficult.
"The consumer environment remains uncertain in many of our markets and we continue to plan cautiously and manage costs aggressively."