Sara notes

RSS
Oct 26

Reuters in 2010 and a look ahead to 2011


By David A. Schlesinger Another year has sped by with more change and economic uncertainty throughout the global markets. From a journalist’s viewpoint, 2010 has been filled with some of the most dynamic and complex stories to cover — the euro zone debt crisis, the U.S. midterm elections, currency wars, heart-warming heroism such as the Chile miners rescue and heart-breaking tragedies like that of the Haiti earthquake. As a news organization during these turbulent times, Reuters has invested aggressively in transforming our news priorities and coverage tactics to ensure we are meeting the needs of the 21st century professional audience. Our aim is to best understand your workflow — what news you use, when you use it and how we can package and present our stories to best suit your needs. We have placed significant focus around the rapidly developing economies (RDEs) news coverage and the implications these markets have on your business. My senior editors and I held two invigorating RDE summits, one in China and one in Brazil, to hear from market specialists and our customers on how we can further improve our news coverage in these important markets. 2010 marked the launch of Reuters Insider, the innovative video platform delivering news, insight and commentary straight to Thomson Reuters desktops — recently hitting more than one million views. Now with Thomson Reuters Eikon, our customers have single sign-on access to Reuters Insider, making watching video news an integrated part of their daily workflow. If you haven’t done so already, I hope you’ll check it out. We have taken a leap into enterprise reporting, examining the issues, themes and undercurrents that are shaping markets, ranging from the potential perils of high-frequency trading to drone warfare.  I am thrilled that the team has already won its first investigative reporting award from Bartlett and Steele. Our core news file remains strong and I was also pleased when our IFR team won the FX Week Award for its exceptional coverage of the foreign exchange market through a year of turmoil. We have just hit our one-year anniversary since the acquisition of Breakingviews. Since day one of the combined commentary service, we have offered agenda-setting financial views around the world on the topics that are on the minds our customers. And we are putting more emphasis on the top stories. We have restructured our coverage to allow dedicated editing teams to look at the top stories across asset classes and package them in a way that provides our readers with better forethought and insight. The Reuters iPad app, launched in April, has been a huge success, drawing great reviews for its design and execution, and providing our audience with another way to spend time with our content and brand.  Furthermore we have redesigned the reuters.com web sites, providing exceptional enhancements to the user experience. As the media industry continues to face restructuring and reordering, Reuters is seeking to transform our position in the U.S. market to allow us to best support our customers. A team of reporters and editors will publish U.S. political and general news of national interest to complement our existing international coverage and allow us to offer a competitive and client-driven product to domestic media groups and those outside the U.S. as well. This offering will be supported by partnerships to offer more U.S. sports pictures and data. Behind the scenes, Reuters is working aggressively to implement new cutting-edge editing tools and technology to ensure our news gets to you faster and in the most readable format. I am truly excited about the position Reuters holds in the journalism market. We are poised to deliver the news our customer need in the manner in which they need in today’s changing media environment. I wish you all the best in the remainder of 2010 and as you kick off 2011.

Posted 7 months ago

20 notes

Reuters, in, 2010, and, a, look, ahead, to, 2011,

Oct 18

EMERGING MARKETS-Chile’s peso declines as China weighs on copper


* Colombia peso, Brazilian real weaken against dollar* Mexico peso erases gains, weakens; Moody’s warns FranceBy Jeb Blount and Michael O’BoyleRIO DE JANEIRO/MEXICO CITY, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Chile’s peso weakened against the U.S. dollar, posting the largest intraday loss among the world’s major currencies, on slower than expected growth in China.China’s economy grew 9.1 percent in the third quarter compared to a year earlier, its slowest pace in more than two years and less than expected. China is Chile’s largest trading partner.The China growth result, along with declines in steel and power output and demand for oil and other commodities comes as the world’s second-largest national economy tries to control inflation by restricting credit.Copper, Chile’s main export, fell for a second day.”The peso’s declines day are a reaction to the news of China slowing,” said Juan Pablo Castro, chief Chilean economist with Spain’s Banco Santander in Santiago. “The peso is very sensitive to external factors like the cost of copper.”The Chilean peso weakened 1.27 percent to 510.80 to the U.S. dollar, the largest intraday decline among the 25 most-traded world currencies.Of the more than 150 currencies tracked by Thomson Reuters, only the thinly traded Sao Tome dobra , Guinea franc and Mauritanian ouguiya weakened more than the Chilean peso on Monday.Chile’s peso could weaken as much as 5.4 percent more to 540 if copper, a key component in electrical systems, falls below $3.00 a pound in New York, Castro said.Copper at $3.50 a pound could help the peso gain to 500 to the dollar said Castro, who’s bank expects the peso to finish the year at 510 and copper at $3.30Copper for Dec. 1 settlement , the most widely held copper future on the New York Mercantile Exchange, fell 2.1 percent to $3.31 a pound in New York. In London copper for three month delivery fell 2.5 percent to $7,309 a tonne.Colombia, another country that depends heavily on exports of commodities, also saw its currency weaken. Its peso dropped 0.53 percent to 1,897.60.Colombia is a major exporter of oil, coal and coffee. The index of the 19 most traded agricultural, energy and metals raw materials fell for a second day, shedding 0.77 percent to 312.11.Brazil’s real erased early losses. In a day of seesaw trading it was 0.50 percent firmer at 1.7595 after weakening as much as 0.98 percent earlier.Iron-ore fell 2.02 percent to $150.30, the lowest for the main steel ingredient in 11 months.China is also Brazil’s largest trading partner and Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee, sugar, beef and orange juice and the second largest exporter iron-ore and soybeans.Mexico’s peso was firmer in seesaw trading, up 0.19 percent at 13.4486 to the dollar after economic data from the U.S. showed that chain store sales increased for a second month. Earlier it weakened as much as 0.6 percent to 13.5369.Mexico gets about 80 percent of its export earnings from the United States. Mexico is a major oil producer and exporter with an important mining industry.The Mexican peso’s declines may have been bolstered by concern about a potential Greek sovereign debt default that threatens to saddle European banks with large losses, slashing lending and growth world-wide.France, which may see itself hit with a large bill to recapitalize money-losing banks if Greece defaults, saw its 10-year bond fall. The yield on that bond, a proxy for 10-year borrowing costs, rose to their highest levels since August.Moody’s Investors Service warned it may soon place France on a watch-list for a potential downgrade of its top-tier “AAA” credit rating.”The French banks are the big concern for the market, and I think the Moody’s news makes the market a bit nervous,” said Jorge Perez-Duarte, managing director of emerging markets at TD Securities in Toronto.

Posted 7 months ago

79 notes

EMERGING, MARKETSChiles, peso, declines, as, China, weighs, on, copper,

Oct 17

NEWSMAKER-UPDATE 1-Rich Kinder: Big deals, major philanthropist


* Big donor to education, children (Adds links to Breakingviews columns, Insider program)By Anna DriverHOUSTON, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Judging by Wall Street’s warm embrace of Richard Kinder’s $21 billion deal to buy El Paso Corp, he is still — to borrow the phrase once used to describe his former Enron colleagues — the smartest guy in the room.With the deal, the Texas billionaire who started his business in 1997 by buying pipeline assets from Enron for $40 million, will create the largest oil and gas transportation company in North America with 80,000 miles of pipeline.Analysts applauded the deal, which used Kinder Morgan’s relatively high stock valuation and relatively low cost of capital to pick up the nation’s largest natural gas network.”He’s still perceived to be the smart guy out of the old Enron organization,” said Duane Grubert, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial Group. “The respect for his creative dealmaking continues to be really high.”If Kinder, CEO and chairman of Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc (KMI.N), manages to sell off El Paso’s (EP.N) exploration and production assets around the same time the deal closes, he could almost immediately pay back most of the money his company is borrowing for the $11.5 billion cash portion of the deal.Kinder Morgan’s shares rose as much as 10 percent on Monday, the day after the deal was announced. [ID:nN1E79F06X]>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^For Breakingviews columns on the deal, please click on[ID:nN1E79G0GN] [ID:nN1E79F0BG]For a Reuters Insider program click on:link.reuters.com/xed54s^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>Kinder Morgan was put together through a string of deals, including some with marquee private equity names including Carlyle Group [CYL.UL], Goldman Sachs Inc’s (GS.N) buyout arm Highstar Capital and Riverstone Holdings.”This is not the first rodeo we’ve done,” Kinder reminded analysts on a conference call with investors on Monday.HEIR APPARENTKinder, a Missouri native, joined Florida Gas in the early 1980s and was reunited with University of Missouri friend Kenneth Lay when Lay’s Houston Natural Gas acquired the Florida company.In 1985, Houston Natural Gas merged with Nebraska’s InterNorth to form Enron Corp, with Lay as CEO.As Enron’s president and chief operating officer, Kinder was known as the guy who made the trains run on time and kept spending in check.Unlike Lay, whose extravagant lifestyle included a liking for Gulfstream jets with catered lunches, Kinder was satisfied with a cheaper Cessna for quick business trips.Until the mid-1990s, Kinder, now 66, had been considered Lay’s heir apparent as CEO. But Jeffrey Skilling, whom Enron had poached from consultancy McKinsey & Co years earlier, caught Lay’s attention by engineering Enron’s transformation from a pipeline company into a trading giant and became the CEO-in-waiting.Kinder left Enron in December 1996, and in February 1997 he founded Kinder Morgan with longtime friend Bill Morgan, the pair having spent about $40 million to acquire some Enron pipeline and associated assets that the energy giant no longer considered core to its ambitious operations.Enron collapsed in 2001, its demise chronicled in a best-selling book “The Smartest Guys in the Room,” by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind.In December 2006 Kinder, then-retired Morgan and other members of the board, including Houston financier Fayez Sarofim, acquired Kinder Morgan for $15 billion and took it private.STRAIGHT SHOOTERKinder, who ranks 46th on Forbes’ list of richest Americans, has an estimated worth of $6.4 billion, according to the magazine.Still, the affable and plain-spoken executive parks in the same garage as his employees and is often spotted in his office building lobby sporting short-sleeved shirts, not the dark suit normally expected of an oil industry billionaire.Kinder, who served as a captain in the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and wife Nancy are generous donors to a number of philanthropies benefiting education and children.They are a fixture on Houston’s social circuit, often appearing in photos in magazines and websites that chronicle the city’s glitterati.”Both of them are some of the most highly philanthropic people in this city,” said Shelby Hodge, editor-at-large for Houston’s dominant social and entertainment website, culturemap.com. “They are straight shooters and very careful stewards of that money.”Kinder’s mother was a schoolteacher and in her memory, the couple has lavished on millions on the cause of furthering education, Hodge said.Through a foundation, the Kinders have already given millions to fund an urban research institute at Rice University in Houston, a program to award teachers, and a research effort to screen middle-school students with difficult-to-detect heart abnormalities.Kinder and his wife have also joined the Giving Pledge movement, launched by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, by committing to give the majority of their wealth to charity.Kinder Morgan shares closed 4.8 percent higher at $28.19 on a day that the S&P 500 index fell 2 percent.

Posted 7 months ago

18 notes

NEWSMAKERUPDATE, 1Rich, Kinder, Big, deals, major, philanthropist,

Oct 14

EURO GOVT-Bunds fall on debt plan optimism, but hurdles seen


* German Bund futures poised for third straight week of lossesBy Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Ana Nicolaci da CostaLONDON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - German Bunds dropped on Friday as riskier assets rallied on perceptions European officials would take aggressive steps to tackle the debt crisis, but moves by credit ratings agencies underscored the hurdles still facing the region.Spanish government bond yields rose to a three-week high even as the European Central Bank bought its debt and that of Italy, and were expected to remain under pressure next week after Standard & Poor’s cut Spain’s credit rating.Italian bond yields came off intra-day peaks near 6 percent after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi won a confidence vote in parliament, but remained at levels seen before the ECB started buying the country’s bonds in August.Triple-A-rated debt was also on the ropes, with the French 10-year bond yield premium over German benchmarks and Dutch counterparts hitting euro lifetime highs a day after Fitch put a series of European banks under review, including BNP Paribas and Societe Generale .The red flags raised by the credit rating agencies underscored the challenges still facing the euro zone as finance ministers and central bank heads of the Group of 20 nations met in Paris to discuss the regional debt crisis.Bund futures lost almost a full percentage point to settle at 133.40 , falling for a third straight week as equities rallied on expectations the meeting would detail a comprehensive solution to tackle the region’s crisis.”After (French President Nicholas) Sarkozy and (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel’s promise, if they do come up with a plan that seems to be credible then we’ll see risk assets rally further,” said Evolution Securities analyst Elisabeth Afseth.”I remain sceptical whether they will be able to agree to anything that would be sufficient … to take the risk out of Italian debt because that’s the largest European sovereign debt issuer. When it comes to contagion then Italy is way bigger than Spain. That’s the key to the whole problem.”Italian bonds recouped some ground against Spanish bonds after S&P cut Spain’s long-term sovereign rating to AA- from AA, citing high unemployment, tightening credit and high private-sector debt.Ten-year Spanish yields rose 8.1 basis points on the day to 5.30 percent before easing back to settle 4 bps up at 5.25 percent, with their yield spread over Italian BTPs 6 bps tighter at 55 bps. The BTP yield ended the session 2 bps lower at 5.80 percent, off the day’s high of 5.96 percent with traders citing ECB intervention.”They have been asking for Italy and Spain all across the curve, from two-year to 10-year,” one trader said.Another trader and strategists said there was more scope for Spanish bonds to underperform as they were relatively expensive, with concession-building into its debt prices seen building up before 4 billion euro debt auction next week.For euro zone debt supply outlook seeCiti strategists said the risk/reward of keeping long positions in Spanish bonds was deteriorating, adding their recent outperformance versus Italian BTPS may by challenged by post-election fiscal slippage and banking sector woes.”Moreover, we fear that expectations of a bold and comprehensive ‘grand plan’ for the euro area will be disappointed in the next few weeks,” they said in a note.Ten-year French government bond yields jumped 12.6 basis points to 3.10 percent, taking their gap over German 10-year yields to a euro-era high of 94 basis points.French yields hit their highest levels since August at 3.12 percent, after Fitch Ratings said it was reviewing ratings for banks including BNP Paribas and SocGen.”Obviously the banks are an absolutely critical part of French funding… at what point when they’ve downgraded more of the banks do we get to a situation where the sovereign entity gets downgraded? That’s the fear in the market,” Monument Securities analyst Marc Ostwald said.THREE-WEEK SLIDEHopes for an eventual recapitalisation of European banks and leveraging of the euro zone rescue fund have fuelled a sell-off in safe-haven German bonds in recent weeks but analysts say the market could turn at any point given the lack of action or solid detail.Although market watchers do not expect much that is concrete from the G20 meeting, they hope it will give an opportunity for French and German officials to flesh out the bones of a crisis resolution plan in time for a European Union summit on Oct. 23.”It’s still very fragile. It can go wrong on (any) of these different pillars and the risk that (for) one of these pillars, there is not a clear decision, means that the whole thing can still unravel again,” said Elwin de Groot, senior market economist at Rabobank.A second trader shared that view, arguing that recent losses have been based on a “hope that wasn’t really based on anything too substantial”.”I think we see 1.70 before we see 2.70 yields” on 10-year German bonds, the trader said. Ten-year German government bond yields were up 8 bps at 2.19 percent.

Posted 7 months ago

8 notes

EURO, GOVTBunds, fall, on, debt, plan, optimism, but, hurdles, seen,

Oct 12

UPDATE 1-PepsiCo third-quarter profit rises


* Affirms 2011 EPS growth targetOct 12 (Reuters) - PepsiCo Inc reported slightly better-than-expected quarterly earnings on Wednesday and affirmed its full-year target, helped by international growth and the acquisition of a Russian beverage company.The maker of Pepsi-Cola, Lays potato chips and Quaker oatmeal said net income was $2.0 billion, or $1.25 per share in the third quarter, up from $1.92 billion, or $1.19 per share, a year earlier.Excluding items, earnings were $1.31 per share, topping analysts’ average estimate by a penny, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Revenue climbed to $17.58 billion from $15.51 billion a year ago. Analysts on average were expecting $17.18 billion.The company affirmed its 2011 target, calling for high single-digit earnings-per-share growth.

Posted 7 months ago

2 notes

UPDATE, 1PepsiCo, thirdquarter, profit, rises,

Oct 12

BlackBerry problems hit four continents


Extensive delays hit Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India on Monday and the problems spread to Brazil, Chile and Argentina on Tuesday in the latest headache for the Canadian smartphone maker.The disruption piles pressures on RIM, which is fending off investor calls for a management shake-up and possible sale or split of the company as it shifts its phone lineup to new software first used in the widely panned PlayBook tablet.”The messaging and browsing delays being experienced … were caused by a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,” the company said in an emailed update late on Tuesday afternoon in Toronto.RIM’s BlackBerry service has long been prized by executives and politicians who rely on its security and reliability to deliver email and other messaging to mobile workers.But problems with the service may hasten corporate moves to allow rivals such as Apple Inc’s iPhone and iPad and devices running Google Inc’s Android software to access data kept behind company firewalls, one analyst said.”The current situation with the BlackBerry outages couldn’t come at a worse time for RIM, following some harsh criticism in recent months,” Informa Telecoms & Media analyst Malik Saadi said in a statement.”Some businesses may see this as a good reason to reevaluatetheir reliance on centralized servers and instead look to investing in more corporately controlled servers.”Not only would this enable IT departments to minimize the risk of unforeseen collapses, but it could also give employees more flexibility to use their own devices,” he said.The Canadian company manages its BlackBerry service via servers parked within enterprises and hooked up to a proprietary network carried by wireless operators.”Although the system is designed to failover to a back-up switch, the failover did not function as previously tested,” RIM said. Failover refers to the automatic switching of service to a standby server in the case of a failure of a main system.”As a result, a large backlog of data was generated and we are now working to clear that backlog and restore normal service as quickly as possible,” RIM noted.RIM hosts a number of network operating centers, including one at its headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, and another in southern England, which manage the massive amounts of data that flow through its system.RIM has suffered outages before. Its BlackBerry Messenger service went offline in Canada and Latin America last month and a massive disruption hit North American customers in April 2007, but the disruptions are usually contained within one continent or region.RIM has more than 70 million subscribers worldwide, with much growth in recent years coming from emerging markets.At 10:25 p.m. Monday Eastern Time, RIM said it had resolved problems disrupting its services in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). This was some 20 hours after users in EMEA and India first reported problems with email and BlackBerry Messenger.In its latest update, RIM did not say when it expected the outage to be fully resolved or how many customers had been affected.The outages are just another headache for RIM, which has less margin for error as rivals encroach on the corporate email market it once took for granted. Employees increasingly push to use their personal devices, typically iPhones and iPads and to a lesser extent Android devices, in the workplace.It is also facing growing calls from investors for a break-up, sale or change of management following recent dismal results, slipping market share for its phones and a lacklustre reception for its PlayBook tablet, designed to challenge Apple’s iPad.Network operators and users in EMEA tweeted that email and BlackBerry Messenger services were not working from Monday morning in London. Network operator T-Mobile said on its website that the problems were due to a European-wide outage on the BlackBerry network.It said: “RIM has apologized for the interruption to services and said it’s working to restore normal operations.”Vodafone sent a message to its British BlackBerry customers on Tuesday evening that noted “you may still be experiencing issues with BlackBerry services” and saying RIM was working to resolve this urgently.

Posted 7 months ago

49 notes

BlackBerry, problems, hit, four, continents,