| Stocks edge up after housing data Posted:  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged higher and the S&P 500 turned positive on Thursday after data showed contracts to buy previously owned homes increased solidly to a near two-year high in March. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 44.84 points, or 0.34 percent, to 13,135.56. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 1.44 points, or 0.10 percent, to 1,392.13. The Nasdaq Composite Index added 7.86 points, or 0.26 percent, to 3,037.49. (Reporting By Chuck Mikolajczak; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)
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| Jobless claims suggest stumbling labor recovery Posted:  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans lining up for new jobless benefits fell only slightly last week, the latest sign of a weaker pace of healing in the still-struggling labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 388,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. "This was a disappointing number and offers more evidence that the labor market continues to lose traction," said Joe Manimbo, an analyst at Western Union Business Solutions in Washington. ...
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| Pending homes sales near two-year high in March Posted:  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Contracts to purchase previously owned homes increased solidly to a near two-year high in March, suggesting the spring selling season got off to a firmer start and offering hopes of a pickup in housing. The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in March, jumped 4.1 percent to 101.4, the highest level since April 2010. Economists polled by Reuters had expected signed contracts, which lead existing home sales by a month or two, to rise 1.0 percent after a previously reported 0.5 percent fall. ...
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| Production growth lifts Shell; Exxon falls short Posted:  (Reuters) - Quarterly earnings from the top two publicly traded oil companies on Thursday showed clearly both the challenge and potential gains of growing output, with Exxon Mobil Corp falling short and Royal Dutch Shell Plc easily beating estimates. Exxon's oil and natural gas production slumped 5 percent in the first quarter, leading to a lower net profit and pushing its shares down 1.7 percent -- an especially big move for a $400 billion company that just increased its dividend the previous day by a better-than-expected 21 percent. ...
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| SEC starts probe of Chesapeake CEO's well stakes Posted:  NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an informal inquiry into Chesapeake Energy Corp's controversial program that granted Chief Executive Aubrey McClendon a share in each of the natural gas producer's wells, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. That investigation, being led by the SEC's office in Fort Worth, Texas, comes after Reuters reported about loans McClendon had obtained on those wells that raised concerns about a potential conflict of interest by the company's CEO. ...
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| PepsiCo, Coke Enterprises beat Wall Street views Posted:  (Reuters) - PepsiCo Inc and Coca-Cola Enterprises reported higher-than-expected quarterly profits, helped by price increases on sodas, and stood by their full-year forecasts. For PepsiCo, 2012 is a transition year as it ramps up marketing, cuts thousands of jobs and streamlines its portfolio to improve its performance, especially in its North American drink business. "As the year progresses, quarter by quarter, you'll start seeing the business strengthen," PepsiCo Chief Executive Indra Nooyi said on a conference call on Thursday. ...
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| Trimble Navigation to buy Google's SketchUp Posted:  (Reuters) - Trimble Navigation Ltd has agreed to buy SketchUp 3D modeling platform from Google Inc for an undisclosed price, the companies said. As part of the SketchUp platform, Trimble will partner Google in developing SketchUp's 3D Warehouse — an online repository where users can find, share, store and collaborate on 3D models, the companies said in a joint statement. Trimble, which makes surveying, mapping, and marine navigation equipment, said SketchUp will enhance the integration of its field presence with the wider enterprise. ...
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| Shell CFO: Wet gas switch will drop 2012 US production Posted:  NEW YORK (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell Plc Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry said on Thursday that in the U.S., the company would be switching the bulk of its drilling program toward the production of "wet" natural gas and away from "dry" natural gas. As a result of this shift in focus in its U.S. natural gas business, Shell's natural gas production is expected to be lower year-on-year in 2012, but will be higher in 2013, he said during the company's first-quarter 2012 earnings call with analysts. ...
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| Dow Chemical profit beats Street, but sales miss Posted:  (Reuters) - Solid sales of herbicides and other agricultural products helped Dow Chemical Co's first-quarter profit beat Wall Street's expectations, but lower-than-expected revenue pushed shares down more than 3 percent in premarket trading. Dow's chemicals and other products are used to make plastics, computers, clothing and many other consumer goods. The company's results are often seen as a key barometer of global economic health. The largest U.S. chemical maker by sales said the U.S. ...
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| Lockheed names new CEO; profit beats Wall Street view Posted:  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top U.S. weapons maker Lockheed Martin Corp posted a higher-than-expected first-quarter net profit and announced a succession plan that will bring in President Chris Kubasik as chief executive officer in January. Lockheed, which builds F-35, F-22 and F-16 fighter jets, Aegis missiles and new coastal warships, affirmed its forecast of $45 billion to $46 billion in revenue for the full year and said operating profit should reach $3.9 billion to $4 billion, or $7.70 to $7.90 per share. ...
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| HSBC to cut over 2,200 UK jobs, targets managers Posted:  LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC is cutting more than 2,200 jobs in Britain, targeting senior and middle management roles as part of its drive to slash costs and boost profitability in the face of a changing banking landscape. In total, 3,167 jobs will be affected, but almost 1,000 of those employees will be redeployed to other jobs. The net job loss will be 2,217, HSBC said. The redundancies will mainly affect HSBC's retail bank, plus head office functions and some other areas, Reuters reported on Wednesday. ...
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| Fiat Q1 net profit beats forecast but Europe weak Posted:  MILAN (Reuters) - Italian car maker Fiat , which holds a majority stake in Chrysler, said revenue from mass market car sales in Europe fell 13.1 percent in the first quarter, a shortfall which was more than compensated by booming car sales in the United States. Its group trading profit including Chrysler was 866 million euros, better than the 845 million euros expected in an analyst consensus compiled by Fiat. ...
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| AstraZeneca CEO quits as drug sales tumble Posted:  LONDON (Reuters) - AstraZeneca's chief executive David Brennan is to step down on June 1 in an abrupt exit after six years in the top job, following rising investor discontent at the company's performance. Britain's second-biggest drugmaker has suffered repeated drug development setbacks, stoking fears about its long-term prospects given a complete reliance on prescription medicines at a time when rivals have diversified. ...
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| Chrysler, Hyundai, VW pull into auto sales fast lane Posted:  LONDON (Reuters) - Automakers Volkswagen , Chrysler and Hyundai pulled away from rivals on Thursday, unveiling strong sales and profits driven by growth in the Americas and Asia. Carmakers that rely heavily on European sales, by contrast, are struggling with cut-throat price competition in a dwindling market as government budget cuts, weak wages growth and rising unemployment depress consumers' spending power. Robust sales in North America helped U.S. maker Chrysler Group LLC, managed by majority owner Fiat Spa , to post its best quarterly profit since its 2009 bankruptcy. ...
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| Ford to close Australian plants for a week due to supplier woes Posted:  CANBERRA (Reuters) - The Australian arm of Ford Motor said it will close its operations for almost one week, after a parts supplier was put into administration over rent dispute. About 1,800 workers would be stood down at two plants in the state of Victoria, and production would cease at the close of business on Thursday and would not resume until next Wednesday, a Ford spokeswoman said. "We won't be producing cars on Friday, Monday or Tuesday," she said. "Obviously the whole process needs a bit of time to happen before we can start our production line again. ...
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| Chrysler, Hyundai, VW pull into auto sales fast lane Posted: LONDON (Reuters) - Automakers Volkswagen , Chrysler and Hyundai pulled away from rivals on Thursday, unveiling strong sales and profits driven by growth in the Americas and Asia. Carmakers that rely heavily on European sales, by contrast, are struggling with cut-throat price competition in a dwindling market as government budget cuts, weak wages growth and rising unemployment depress consumers' spending power. Robust sales in North America helped U.S. maker Chrysler Group LLC, managed by majority owner Fiat Spa , to post its best quarterly profit since its 2009 bankruptcy. ... |
| Insight: Collusion probe latest Mexico woe for Telefonica Posted:  MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - When Telefonica arrived in Mexico about a decade ago, the Spanish phone company framed the expansion as a social crusade as much as a business: It would bring wireless service to the country's poor while taking on Carlos Slim, the tycoon who has dominated Mexico's telephone industry for a generation. Telefonica says it has achieved part of its goal. Cellphone use has quadrupled since the company arrived, it says, and it has helped put handsets into the hands of rural peasants and street vendors while shrinking the cost of service. ...
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| Euro zone woes keep banks wary after Q1 bounce Posted:  LONDON/MADRID (Reuters) - Earnings from some of Europe's top banks showed the scars of the euro zone crisis on Thursday, with big losses on Spanish property and fragile economic recovery likely to dampen an early investment banking rebound. Spanish bank Santander said first quarter net profit dropped 24 percent after it took a 3.1 billion euro ($4.1 billion) provision to cover rising loan defaults, as the effects of Spain's property market crash were compounded by recession and widespread joblessness affecting nearly one in four workers. ...
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| Lufthansa to cut 3,000 admin jobs: report Posted: FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Lufthansa AG said it was still evaluating how many jobs it would cut in a cost-reduction program after a newspaper reported Germany's biggest airline planned to slash about 3,000 administrative staff. German mass-circulation paper Bild earlier reported that Lufthansa planned to cut half of a total of 6,000 administrative jobs around the world, with 1,500 jobs to go in Frankfurt. The remaining administrative jobs are to be moved to a new business unit, with longer working hours and less pay, the paper said, citing an internal document. ... |
| Bank of China profit disappoints, signals rough quarter for peers Posted:  (Reuters) - Bank of China , the country's No.3 lender by market value, posted on Thursday a near 10 percent rise in first-quarter net profit but the figure fell below expectations as flat net interest margins offset a rise in fee income. Bank of China is the first of China's four largest banks to report earnings for the quarter which still showed the effects of Beijing's earlier policy-tightening moves to engineer a soft-landing for the economy. China's annual rate of GDP growth slowed to 8.1 percent in the first three months of 2012, down from Q4 2011's 8.9 percent. ...
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| Lockheed eyes growth amid "increasing headwinds" Posted: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lockheed Chief Executive Bob Stevens and his successor, Chris Kubasik, who will move into the CEO job in January, told a news conference: - that the company is focused on growth despite "increasing headwinds" in the defense sector - that Lockheed has begun making contingency plans in case U.S. ... |
| Unilever Q1 sales lifted by price hikes, emerging markets Posted: LONDON (Reuters) - Consumer goods giant Unilever beat forecasts with an 8.4 percent rise in first-quarter sales on Thursday, helped by price hikes and emerging market growth. The Anglo-Dutch maker of brands like Dove and Knorr is battling high input costs from rising commodity prices such as crude and vegetable oils, and slow growth in developed nations. It also cautioned that emerging market growth has started to slow especially in eastern Europe and Russia. ... |
| ECB urges euro zone to share bank rescue costs Posted:  FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank called on authorities to set up a body to manage bank rescues in the euro zone, marking the central bank's strongest intervention yet in the debate on whether the costs of bailing out troubled banks should be shared. Having been firmly rebuffed by key euro zone members so far during the debt crisis, the idea of a rescue fund that would cover all banks in the currency bloc is now gaining traction as policymakers begin to suspect it may be the only way of snuffing out investors' fears about the bloc's fragile banks. ...
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| Fed stands pat but says will act if needed Posted:  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Wednesday said U.S. monetary policy was "more or less in the right place" even though the central bank would not hesitate to launch another round of bond purchases if the economy were to weaken. In a statement after a two-day meeting, the Fed's policy-setting panel reiterated its expectation that interest rates would not rise until late 2014 at the earliest, and it took no action on monetary policy. ...
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| Shell Q1 tops forecast on higher prices Posted:  LONDON (Reuters) - Royal Dutch Shell beat forecasts with an 11 percent rise in quarterly profit, as higher oil prices and a ramp-up of new projects outweighed the impact of lower U.S. gas prices. Europe's largest oil company by market capitalization said its current cost of supply (CCS) net income - an industry measure of profit - rose 11 percent to $7.66 billion. Shell's London-listed A shares were up 2.9 percent at 0746 GMT on Thursday, against a 1.6 percent rise in a European oil and gas sector index . ...
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| China's Wen says sees risks to global economic recovery Posted:  WARSAW (Reuters) - The global economic situation has been getting better so far this year, but the recovery is still fragile, China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said in Warsaw on Thursday. Wen, on his first visit to Poland in more than two decades, also said China was ready to reduce trade imbalances with eastern and southern European countries and would set up a dedicated fund as well as a credit line to achieve that. (Reporting by Maciej Onoszko and Kevin Yao, writing by Gabriela Baczynska)
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| No respite seen for euro zone periphery woes: poll Posted: LONDON (Reuters) - Deeper recessions, spiralling unemployment and a failure to meet budget deficit targets will afflict the euro zone's most vulnerable economies floundering under austerity, a Reuters poll suggested on Thursday. The survey of more than 40 economists, taken over the last week, showed Portugal, Spain and Greece will stay stuck in a much deeper economic mire than they predicted in January. ... |
| Spain, Brazil weigh on Santander results Posted:  MADRID (Reuters) - Santander , the euro zone's largest bank, said on Thursday it still had 1 billion euros in property-related losses to come after first quarter profit was hit by rising loan provisions in recessionary Spain and overheated Brazil. Spain has instructed its banks to set aside capital to cover a funding gap of tens of billions of euros stemming from a decade of unsustainable lending to property developers during a real estate boom that went abruptly into reverse in 2008. Santander said it would take the rest of the provisions throughout 2012. ...
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| Chrysler reports best quarter since Fiat alliance Posted:  DETROIT (Reuters) - Automaker Chrysler Group LLC showed its best quarterly profit since its 2009 bankruptcy on strong sales in North America, and confirmed guidance that it will show a profit of about $1.5 billion in 2012. Chrysler, managed by its majority owner Fiat SpA , showed first quarter net income of $473 million, up from $116 million a year ago. Chrysler's auto sales increased 33 percent to 523,000 vehicles in the quarter, led by its home U.S. market where it gained market share on a first-quarter sales jump of 36 percent versus as the industry-wide showed a gain of 13 percent. ...
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| Japan's crude imports from Iran drop as sanctions bite Posted:  TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's customs-cleared crude imports from Iran fell 6.3 percent in March from a year ago, ahead of a sharp drop expected in April and May due to difficulty in doing business with the Islamic Republic amid tighter Western sanctions. The drop last month comes even after the United States exempted Japan and 10 EU nations from financial sanctions as they had significantly cut purchases of Iranian oil. Soon after receiving the exemption, Finance Minister Jun Azumi said Japan would continue to cut imports of Iranian oil. ...
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| UPS 1Q profit up, but international business slows Posted:  UPS said Thursday that its first-quarter profit rose 6 percent, but the result came in below Wall Street's expectations as Asian exports and other international shipments slowed.
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| Kellogg 1Q profit drops 2 percent as costs rise Posted:  Food maker Kellogg Co. said Thursday that first-quarter net income fell 2 percent, hurt by declining demand in Europe and higher raw material costs.
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| Upturn in homes sales sends stocks slightly higher Posted:  U.S. stocks are edging up. On a day of mixed news about the economy, investors are choosing to focus on the positive.
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| Turkey starts oil, gas search in north Cyprus Posted:  Turkey began exploratory drilling for oil and gas Thursday in the breakaway Turkish north of ethnically divided Cyprus, heightening a dispute over who is entitled to the Mediterranean island's potential fuel riches.
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| Political battle over student loans heating up Posted:  The House Democratic leader accused Republicans Thursday of raiding women's programs to pay for a bill keeping student loan interest rates low in an election-year battle over college aid.
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| Summary Box: Chrysler earnings best in 13 years Posted: THE RESULTS: Chrysler posted its highest quarterly profit in 13 years on Thursday at $473 million. Revenue was up 25 percent to $16.4 billion. |
| Quick response averts market scare in mad cow case Posted:  The announcement that mad cow disease was found in a California cow drew a rapid response this week from the beleaguered American beef industry, which has been enduring one crisis after another for more than a year.
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| Summary Box: UPS profit up, international slows Posted: HELLO, WORLD: UPS said Thursday that its first-quarter profit rose 6 percent, but the results came in below Wall Street's expectations as Asian exports and other overseas shipments slowed. |
| Natural gas prices rise, oil steady at $104 Posted: Natural gas futures continued their rise off 10-year lows Thursday on hopes that demand is picking up and plans by drillers to cut production in response to low prices. |
| Virgin Atlantic upgrades its business class seats Posted:  Virgin Atlantic has rolled out a new business class seat that the airline says turns into the longest bed in its class.
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