”Standard Chartered Posts Record Profit”
Standard Chartered, the Asia-focused bank, today revealed full-year profits up 19% and income up to over $16 billion.
The bank reported a net profit of $2.13 billion for July December, based on Reuters calculations,
up from $1.4 billion a year earlier and in line with expectations for a $2.14 billion net profit.
Chief Executive Officer Peter Sands, whose bank gets most of its profit from Asia’s growing economies, said regulation poses the biggest threat as global lenders grapple with stricter capital rules.
A U.K. bank levy set to take effect this year will cost Standard Chartered $180 million after tax in 2011.
We believe we can continue to deliver double-digit growth in income in 2011 and beyond,” Chief Executive Peter Sands said in a statement.
”Former Goldman Sachs Board Member Rajat Gupta Charged By SEC With Insider Trading”
The Securities and Exchange Commission said -
Federal regulators have charged a former Goldman Sachs board member with insider trading, saying he provided confidential information to the central figure in a major hedge fund probe.
According to the SEC, Gupta allegedly tipped off Rajaratnam immediately after Goldman’s board approved Berkshire’s investment in Goldman Sachs.
That same day, just minutes before the market close, Rajaratnam allegedly arranged for Galleon funds to purchase more than 175,000 Goldman shares.
Rajaratnam used the inside information to trade on behalf of some of Galleon’s hedge funds, or shared the information with others at his firm who then traded on it ahead of public announcements by the firms. ]]>
”Videogames, Brazil Drive Vivendi”
Vivendi SA posted a 4.4 percent increase in 2010 profit, aided by demand for video-games titles such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, and the company’s operations in Brazil.
Investors will also be on the lookout for any update on Vivendi’s planned purchase of Vodafone’s 44 percent stake in telecoms brand SFR. Vivendi owns the rest.
The group posted profit of €559 million ($772 million), or €0.45 per share, against a loss of €958 million, or €0.78 per share, in the same period a year ago. Revenue rose 5.3% to €8 billion, against €7.6 billion in the year-ago period.
Activision Blizzard’s new releases Call of Duty – Black Ops, Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty and World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm were the main driving force of this strong performance.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has reported a 43 percent jump in fourth-quarter profit thanks to the strong performance of BNSF railroad and a paper gain of $1.4 billion on the company’s derivative contracts and investments.Buffett said Saturday in his annual letter that the acquisition of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad was the highlight of 2010 for his Omaha, Neb.,-based company.
A good portion of the quarter’s improvement came from a corner of the Omaha, Neb., company that Mr. Buffett has advised shareholders to ignore: Berkshire’s derivative portfolio. The gains, which Mr. Buffett says are an accounting matter, don’t bring in any additional funds to invest—just as significant losses on the derivatives in 2008 didn’t result in any money going out the door.
Berkshire’s revenue grew nearly 20 percent to $36.2 billion from $30.2 billion last year.
Berkshire reported $4.38 billion net income, or $2,656 per Class A share, in the fourth quarter. That’s up from the $3.1 billion net income, or $1,969 per Class A share, a year ago.
After a decade of delays and embarrassing missteps, the Air Force is poised to award one of the biggest contracts in military history — a $35 billion deal to build nearly 200 giant airborne refueling tankers — to either Chicago-based Boeing Co. or European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company.The decision will be announced at the Pentagon after the financial markets close on Thursday and it is certain to set off celebrations in the states where the tanker will be manufactured.
The decision will be announced at the Pentagon after the financial markets close on Thursday and it is certain to set off celebrations in the states where the tanker will be manufactured.
If Boeing wins, production would occur in Everett, Wash., Wichita, Kan., and several other states. If EADS wins, the tanker would be assembled in Mobile, Ala., at a long-shuttered military base. The two companies say either way, some 50,000 jobs would be created in a recession-weary nation.
The contract has generated some of the fiercest and costliest lobbying in Washington. The two companies have spent millions on advertising, including radio and subway ads in the nation’s capital, and hired dozens of lobbyists.
Google has penalized Overstock.com, saying the online retailer violated policy designed to keep companies from artificially boosting their search rankings. Overstock said the penalty, which moved some of its search results from the first page of Google results to the fifth or sixth, resulted in large part from providing discounts in exchange for links on college websites to the company’s site. The practice was discontinued Feb. 10, Overstock said.Overstock’s pages had recently ranked near the top of results for dozens of common searches, including “vacuum cleaners” and “laptop computers.” But links to Overstock on Tuesday dropped to the fifth or sixth pages of Google results for many of those categories, greatly reducing the chances that a user would click on its links.
The incident, according to Overstock, stemmed in part from its practice of encouraging websites of colleges and universities to post links to Overstock pages so that students and faculty could receive discounts on the shopping site. Overstock said it discontinued the program on Feb. 10, before hearing from Google, but said some university webmasters have been slow to remove the links.
What’s particularly dastardly about Overstock’s strategy is that educational sites are valued higher by Google’s search algorithm because they rarely link to commercial sites. In other words, by placing Overstock links on college websites, the company effectively tricked Google into elevating its rank all the while poisoning the naive hearts and minds of America’s youth with seriously awesome deals on everything from book shelves to shower curtains.
”RBS Misses Analyst Estimates With 1.1 Billion-Pound Loss”
Britain’s state-rescued Royal Bank of Scotland said Thursday that net losses narrowed sharply last year to £1.125 billion (1.327 billion euros, $1.823 billion).
Two years on from the global financial crisis, RBS’s recovery is ahead of schedule,” Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hester said in the statement. “We have much work still to do and there are significant obstacles still to overcome.
The return to operating profit reflects both the internal rebuilding process at RBS and the external recovery in market and economic conditions,” said chairman Philip Hampton.
“We are still a good way from where we want to be in terms of our performance but 2010 represents another big stride towards that goal.
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”Texas Census Numbers Show Huge Hispanic Growth”
Hispanics account for two-thirds of Texas’ growth over the past decade and now make up 38 percent of the state’s total population, according to new local U.S. Census figures.
Non Hispanic whites dropped to 45.3 percent and blacks make up 11.5 percent of Texas’s population. The figures, which were obtained by The Associated Press, were given Thursday morning to state leaders and were set to be released publicly Thursday afternoon.
Texas’ growth over the past decade was driven by Hispanics who accounted for nearly two-thirds of the state’s nearly 4.2 million population increase.
Hispanics now comprise 38 percent of the state’s population. Non-Hispanic whites dropped to 45.3 percent and blacks comprised 11.5 percent, the data shows. ]]>
”Kraft says more price increases ahead”
Kraft Foods claims that the strength of brands such as Kenco, Philadelphia and Dairylea will help it pass on the price increases necessary to offset rising commodity costs.
Despite the Cadbury takeover helping to boost sales by 30%, Kraft’s net profit for the fourth quarter fell 24% to $540m (£335m) due to costs associated with integrating the UK business.
Kraft also warned that it would be increasing prices to offset rising commodity costs.
Operating income in the latest period was $1.24 billion, or 46 cents a share, Kraft also reported.
Net revenue rose 30% to $13.8 billion, mostly from Kraft’s acquisition of British chocolate company Cadbury. Combined organic net revenue rose 5.7% in the period.
Kraft was expected to make a profit of 47 cents a share on sales of $13.33 billion, according to the average estimate of analysts surveyed by FactSet Research.
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A JetBlue flight attendant got into an argument with a passenger on a jetliner arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday, cursed the passenger, grabbed a beer from the galley and then deployed an emergency exit slide and fled the plane, authorities said.
Flight attendant Steven Slater was arrested at his nearby home in the Belle Harbor section of Queens by Port Authority of New York And New Jersey police on charges of criminal mischief, reckless endangerment and trespassing.