Financial News

Lithuania won’t adhere to a “painful” euro adoption schedule that would quell demand and hurt the economy, Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said.

The former Soviet state will probably fail to comply with the European Union’s excessive deficit procedure, which calls on the government to bring the gap within 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2011, Finance Minister Ingrida Simonyte said in an interview yesterday. Euro adoption is unlikely before 2013, she said.

“Those are very ambitious measures, very painful measures, and of course there are some limits to what you can implement,” Kubilius said in an interview in London yesterday. The goal is “not killing the whole economy and the stability in your society when you are cutting expenditures, wages and pensions.”

The economy of the Baltic state, which abandoned communism in 1991, contracted 14.3 percent last quarter as the government pushed through budget cuts equivalent to 8 percent of gross domestic product this year. Even after the austerity measures, Lithuania will post a deficit of 9.7 percent in 2011, compared with 9.8 percent this year, the European Commission estimates.

Lithuania, which pegs the litas to the euro, needs the euro “as soon as possible, but possibilities have very practical limits and practical measures that should be implemented,” Kubilius said.

More Cuts

The government has proposed budget cuts for 2010 worth 5 percent of GDP that target social benefits, such as maternity and jobless pay and pensions.

Credit-default swap spreads on five-year Lithuanian debt jumped 19.08 basis points, to 343.01 basis points yesterday, the highest since Sept. 10, according to CMA DataVision prices. A wider spread reflects investor perceptions of higher risk.

Lithuania is lagging behind neighboring Estonia, which is set to join the single currency bloc in January 2011 after its government used years of budget surpluses to build up reserves, leaving public finances intact even after the credit crisis engulfed its economy easy payday loans. Latvia has said its economic collapse will prevent it from joining the euro region before 2014.

All three countries enjoyed a property and income boom after joining the EU in 2004. The credit crisis laid to waste the debt-fueled surge in wealth that followed EU accession and the three states are now mired in the bloc’s deepest recessions.

Debt Sales

“We would be very happy if our neighbors, Estonia, are able to have the euro much earlier,” Kubilius said. “It will show us very clearly what different policies Estonia and Lithuania were implementing during the last four, five years. Estonia had very strict fiscal control and surpluses in their budget, and we had deficits. Now, during the recession and financial crisis, that makes quite a big difference. Estonia is fighting to keep the deficit below 3 percent and we are fighting to keep it below 9 percent.”

Lithuania will probably return to international markets to sell bonds by next spring and again in the second half of the year, Simonyte said yesterday. She declined to specify the size or currency of any potential debt sale.

Unlike neighboring Latvia, Lithuania won’t go to the International Monetary Fund for financial assistance as it’s able to fund itself through capital markets, Kubilius said.

“The policies required by the IMF or the EU we can implement ourselves, therefore we have possibilities to borrow in international markets,” Kubilius said. “Those possibilities are becoming better and better as the price for borrowing is decreasing. We hope that during next year the price will go down even more.”

Lithuania raised $1.5 billion on Oct. 7 in its biggest-ever debt sale with the notes priced to yield 462.5 basis more than U.S. Treasuries.

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Rogers Communications Inc. says it's laying off about 900 employees across Canada, mostly in executive and management positions, in an effort to streamline operations as it grapples with intensifying competition.

A spokeswoman for the telecommunications and media giant didn't give a precise figure for the number of people affected but said the layoffs represent three per cent of the company's total workforce of 30,000 across the country.

"The goal was to streamline the organization, remove the number of layers and enable quick and faster decision making," said Rogers spokeswoman Terrie Tweddle in an interview Thursday.

Areas of the company affected by the cuts include marketing and communications, human resources, and technology support operations.

Tweddle added that the cuts have a minimal effect on "frontline" operations, such as call centres and customer services.

"We actually continue to hire and invest in resources, particularly in customer-facing areas, while we're going through the reorganization," she said.

The job cuts come as Rogers, which owns Canada's largest wireless phone service, faces heated competition from established rivals Bell and Telus and new entrants who plan to offer cheaper wireless airtime packages.

This holiday season is considered crucial for Rogers because it's the first time the company hasn't held the exclusive rights to the popular iPhone in Canada. Both Telus and Bell now offer the device, which was previously only available through Rogers Wireless and its Fido brand.

Both BCE Inc.'s Bell and Telus hope that holding the iPhone will help them lure away some of Rogers' customer base before new competitors enter the market next year.

Wireless profits are a crucial piece of Rogers' overall operations, and in the third quarter represented more than 70 per cent of the company's overall operating profit of $1.15 billion.

Industry analyst Carmi Levy of AR Communications Inc. said that while Rogers is facing pressure from its competitors, it's also having to respond to subscribers who demand lower-priced wireless packages.

"The industry is facing a bit of a double-edged sword. Consumers are demanding more service for less money," Levy said.

"As a result, service providers need to raise the level of their game by delivering richer, more complete services while at the same time holding the line on costs."

Rogers also owns numerous publications, broadcast outlets, specialty cable networks, the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team and Rogers Cable, which dominates Ontario's largest urban areas.

Rogers announced separately on Thursday that it has increased its stake in Canada's fourth-largest cable company, Cogeco Cable Inc. and its parent Cogeco Inc.

Rogers says it spent a total of $163 million cash, plus commissions, to increase its minority stakes in the two Montreal-based companies, which are controlled by the founding Audet family through their ownership of multiple-vote shares.

The Cogeco cable systems serve communities in an area that stretches from the tip of southwestern Ontario to the Gaspe region in eastern Quebec.

As a result, Cogeco is Ontario's second-largest cable provider after Rogers and Quebec's second-largest cable company after Quebecor's Videotron.

In September, the Rogers announced plans to further integrate its cable and wireless businesses to better respond to its customers.

"Our industry is in transition with products and networks converging, product cycles maturing and customer expectations increasing. To remain the industry leader, we need to work and operate differently," Rogers president and CEO Nadir Mohamed said at the time.

Even before that, Rogers had laid off an unspecified number of employees in its media division last December. Some external estimates suggested that about 100 jobs were affected, including staff at the Blue Jays baseball team operations and Citytv stations, though the company refused to confirm the amount.

"Rogers is, in effect, testing the waters," Levy said of the recent layoffs.

"They're slicing off relatively thin amounts of their infrastructure to see what works in today's business environment. After this 900 employee layoff they'll likely take some time to measure the impact on their ability to deliver services and see if subsequent cuts are needed."

Bell and Telus could mirror the Rogers cuts within their own operations before new wireless entrants Public Mobile and DAVE wireless debut next year, Levy suggested.

"I'd suspect they're all looking at their employee levels," he said.

"They need to clean up their house before the neighbourhood changes."

On Tuesday, a judge in B.C. decided that Rogers cannot continue to claim it has "Canada's Most Reliable" wireless network without qualification. The decision followed a request by competitor Telus Corp. to prevent Rogers from making the statement in its advertisements. Rogers says it plans to appeal.

Shares of the company fell 54 cents to $32.21 on the Toronto Stock Exchange in the afternoon.

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A higher sticker price and fewer guaranteed deliveries may be the only way to rescue Europe’s new military transport plane after years of costly delays.

The Airbus A400M is being prepared for a December maiden flight in southern Spain even as its fate depends on the outcome of talks to save the 20-billion-euro project from collapse.

The planemaking subsidiary of aerospace group EADS is pressing for concessions in Europe’s biggest ever defense contract, saying it faces unaffordable losses in delivering the 180 troop and equipment carriers to seven European NATO nations.

Germany leads pressure for Airbus to stick to its terms.

Thousands of jobs are at stake and observers say the outcome could affect the industrial shape of Europe as well as the region’s stammering progress toward a common defense identity.

Investors in EADS and suppliers are bracing for billions of euros in charges and penalties if the rescue bid fails and Boeing and Lockheed Martin are ready to fill the gap with increased sales of their own troop and cargo carriers.

Now, with an end-2009 deadline weeks away, a formula for hiking prices without any immediate burden on taxpayers appears the most widely acceptable answer to a year-long deadlock.

If adopted, such a deal could stretch the targeted total of 180 aircraft over a longer period, but result in fewer planes being handed over during the previously agreed delivery period.

It is a device negotiators typically use to engineer a unit price increase when new cash is unavailable, according to current and former arms procurement officials, and many see it as the only pragmatic starting point during the economic crisis no checking account payday advance.

One scenario, which implies an approximately 25 percent unit price increase, would call for about 40 planes being pushed back into budget limbo pending a recovery.

New cash to build them would not be needed until the decade after next, well beyond the day-to-day political horizon.

“Presentation is a problem but the hard facts are that the only way to save the A400M program is through a price increase per plane,” said Teal Group aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia.

For investors, such a deal could lift the threat of severe penalties that EADS would otherwise face for the 3-4 year delay.

However it may also leave EADS dependent on exports to erase previous losses, and the manufacturer suffered a setback when South Africa, one of only two overseas buyers so far, canceled.

And it leaves little room for maneuver if there are further cost overruns, since they have to be amortized over a decreasing number of planes — a phenomenon nicknamed the ‘death spiral,’ which Aboulafia says can chip defense projects down to the bone. 

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Cheryl Gray knew she had a problem on her hands when cleaning staff in one of the buildings she was responsible for started showing up to work with masks.

It was the summer of 2003 and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, had hit Canada’s largest city. By the end of the outbreak there were 443 probable cases, with 44 deaths. Tenants in her Toronto buildings were clamouring for information. Was it even safe to touch the elevator buttons?

Gray, a senior vice-president at Canadian property manager and developer Bentall Capital, knew she had to be prepared if there was a next time. "There was a lot of angst amongst tenants and we really didn’t have a clear game plan on what to do," Gray said.

What Gray did was create what some describe as the gold standard of pandemic planning for commercial buildings in North America.

Gray’s obscure manual is getting more attention today after long lines for H1N1 flu vaccination shots in Ontario created a heightened sense of urgency for Canadian businesses. About 2.5 million people have been vaccinated in three weeks, with 198 deaths across the country.

Apart from the health implications, the virus can have severe consequences on the economy if commercial and retail operations close.

Written in the wake of the SARS epidemic, the manual is considered the go-to document in pandemic preparedness, written on the front lines by property managers like Gray who were at the epicentre of the SARS outbreak.

"We were caught by surprise with SARS, and Cheryl took the initiative to reach out to the industry so we could collectively come up with a game plan," said Diana Osler-Zortea, president of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada, which represents commercial real estate landlords.

"We really needed to figure out how you continue to service everyone when all your workers are sick. How would your business continue in the event of an emergency?"

At the time, Gray was responsible for managing 20 million square feet of properties in eastern Canada, mostly in Toronto. After the SARS outbreak, she got in touch with other members of BOMA, a group whose members include major landlords such as Redcliffe Realty, Brookfield Properties and Oxford Properties, and formed a group that met monthly for 18 months to prepare the 95-page document now used by building managers worldwide.

The committee used input from not just real estate experts, but legal, insurance and medical experts as well. Toronto microbiologist Dr. Donald Low is also a consultant.

Ralph Dunham, managing director of risk consultancy Marsh Canada Ltd., said he uses the guide as a good starting point for clients.

"Not only is it a gold standard in the North American real estate industry, but it is valuable to other non-real estate organizations," he said.

"Each company is different, but the principles of preparedness are the same."

The guide looks at basic issues such as how to maintain contact with tenants and employees, preparing for the possibility of closure, travel policies, education and even rent defaults by tenants in the wake of a pandemic.

It discusses whether there is even a legal obligation for owners and building managers to have a pandemic plan. It argues employers have a duty to do this because legislation requires that they maintain a safe workplace.

"We tried to look at everything that could happen," said Gray. "If the cleaning company has a 40 per cent absenteeism rate, how are you going to cope with cleaning the premises effectively? Another example might be that some people may not want to take public transit during an outbreak, so they drive in. How do you respond to the need for extra parking spaces?"

Over the past year the guide has been fine-tuned with more input from stakeholders. Gray says it is necessarily a work in progress as building managers learn from the real world.

"When I finished working on the first manual, I was hoping it would have some value one day. I just didn’t think it would be this soon," said Gray.

"People thought, well, that’s interesting, but I guess it didn’t have the kind of relevance and immediacy it has now."

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Swiss food giant Nestle may consider a bid for Britain’s Cadbury to challenge a hostile 9.9 billion pound ($16.3 dollars) bid by Kraft Foods Inc and a potential move by Hershey, Bloomberg reported on Sunday.

Nestle is still weighing its options and may decide against a bid, Bloomberg said, citing two unnamed people with knowledge of the matter.

Nestle declined to comment.

Italian chocolate maker Ferrero and U instant payday loan.S.-based Hershey have teamed up and said on Wednesday they were reviewing a possible offer for Cadbury.

Analysts view Nestle as a potential suitor for Cadbury.

(Writing by Lisa Jucca; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)

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Growing up in an Air Force family, Maggie Campbell moved all over the world. After earning her undergraduate degree, Campbell got a job with the Main Street revitalization program in Taylor, Texas.

Subsequent Main Street jobs in Oklahoma and Mississippi led to downtown development jobs in Pasadena, Calif., Dallas and Fort Worth. Before beginning work in St. Louis on Nov. 2, Campbell spent three years as president of the Arlington (Texas) Downtown Management Corp. In St. Louis, she succeeded Jim Cloar, who retired.

Campbell’s first visit to St. Louis was last year when she attended a meeting of the International Downtown Association.

What was your first impression of downtown St. Louis?

I loved the old buildings. There’s a very rich architectural history here. I had the impression a lot had been accomplished but that there was a lot left to be done. There were more gaps in the teeth than what I expected to find.

Why do few national retailers have stores downtown?

Maybe downtown isn’t ready for them. But if you create attractions and add jobs and residents, the retailing will follow. For retailers, it’s all about numbers. What I found in Pasadena is perhaps closest to what I’m seeing in St. Louis. I’m feeling a very similar kind of promise of activity from people who have a stake in downtown. Old Pasadena is very urban, very cool. Thousands of people are on the sidewalks at night. We’ve got to sustain this coolness factor.

Which of your previous jobs prepared you most for your new position?

It’s been a cumulative process. To go to Arlington was quite a contrast from Pasadena but it was a tremendous opportunity to learn economic development, the piece I was missing in my career. Until then, I didn’t have the responsibility for making deals happen.

Arlington was a small town between Dallas and Fort Worth, but in the 1950s it had this tremendous suburban growth. My work in Pasadena was all about managing success because it was such a proven district.

It’s a combination of those most recent jobs that prepared me best for this new position.

What are you learning so far?

The No. 1 concern I hear from people when they talk about downtown St. Louis is the empty, dilapidated buildings. They want them returned to active use. I’ve not heard from a single resident who wants to tear down historic buildings.

I’d love to have more Class A buildings downtown and getting more corporate citizens to realize that downtown is important. But we already have a lot of underused buildings. In this current economic climate and without some very creative financing, we’re not going to get new construction right away.

What’s your main job goal here?

My job is to connect the vision for downtown with developers and investors. A lot of thoughtful listening goes a long way.

We still need to attract more residents. That will happen. We need to fill in the gaps and connect the dots. If you see vacant buildings, the impression is that nobody cares. But not every delay or setback indicates the absence of progress. A degree of dissatisfaction drives the desire to show that downtown can be better.

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Indonesia shouldn’t be looking at increasing government spending, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said a day after Morgan Stanley urged a boost in outlays to bolster growth.

“Given that the recovery appears to have begun in earnest, additional fiscal easing would not be advisable,” the Paris- based OECD said in a report yesterday. “Growth picked up significantly in the second and third quarters.”

The OECD’s call for fiscal restraint contrasts with the views of Morgan Stanley economist Deyi Tan, who said on Nov. 18 that Indonesia’s government “has room” to raise spending by about 3 percent of gross domestic product. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, re-elected in July to a second five-year term, expects the budget deficit to narrow to 1.6 percent of GDP in 2010 from around 2.5 percent this year.

Both the OECD and Morgan Stanley acknowledge that some of the pro-growth policies adopted by Yudhoyono’s government are being hampered by infrastructure constraints.

“Implementation bottlenecks continue to delay execution of investment projects,” the OECD said. “The 2009 budget deficit target of 2.5 percent of GDP may therefore be undershot.”

Yudhoyono’s efforts to jump-start development spending during his first term were impeded by a number of “structural impediments,” according to Morgan Stanley.

Tan said none of the 91 projects worth $22.5 billion which Yudhoyono put out to tender at Indonesia’s 2005 Infrastructure Summit have materialized.

‘Lack of Consistency’

“Land acquisition issues, the lack of consistency in regulation at the central and regional government levels, the lack of separation in functions such as policy making, regulating, contracting and operating” are some of the impediments, she said cash advance today.

Yudhoyono told a business summit in Singapore last week that the government will streamline investment procedures, aiming to boost annual economic growth to between 6.3 percent and 6.8 percent over the next five years.

Indonesia’s central bank may start raising interest rates in the first six months of next year as inflation accelerates, the OECD said.

Bank Indonesia maintained its key rate at 6.5 percent for the third consecutive month on Nov. 4, after cutting the measure nine times from December 2008 to August this year to boost economic growth.

“Monetary policy may need to begin to be tightened in the first half of 2010 to ensure attainment of the end-year inflation target,” yesterday’s report said.

Faster Inflation

Inflation may accelerate to between 4 percent and 6 percent next year compared with an estimate of 3.5 percent to 5.5 percent in 2009, central bank Senior Deputy Governor Darmin Nasution said on Oct. 14.

Indonesia’s economy, Southeast Asia’s largest, is forecast by the OECD to expand 5.3 percent next year from an estimated 4.5 percent in 2009.

The $514 billion economy grew 4.2 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier after gaining 4 percent in the previous three months. Indonesia has fared better than its Asian neighbors during the worst global recession since the 1930s as it relies less on exports.

“Activity is picking up in earnest,” the OECD said. Economic growth “is projected to gather some further impetus, buoyed by rising investment and easing credit conditions.”

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Low U.S. interest rates and the weak dollar are drawing more hot money into grain markets despite the weight of mammoth crops, setting up a potential repeat of last year’s boom and bust in that market.

As index funds and other big investors pour cash into futures at the Chicago Board of Trade, U.S. grain prices have been soaring even as farmers harvest the largest soybean crop ever and the second-biggest corn crop.

Prices for corn, soybean and wheat futures on the CBOT, the world’s largest grain exchange, are viewed as the global benchmark, affecting prices from Europe to Asia to Africa.

The markets have also been frothy because CBOT rules allow investors much more leverage to use borrowed money than the U.S. stock market, which has much stricter margin rules.

Futures prices still have a long way to go before they approach the highs hit last year, which triggered worries of food shortages before the financial crisis decimated markets. But market watchers remain concerned the latest rally is not justified by fundamentals.

“Corn and bean fundamentals get more bearish every day but the market direction depends on what the funds want to do,” said Paul Haugens, vice-president for Newedge USA LLC.

A wave of fund buying through the first half of 2008 drove wheat prices to a record high $13.34-1/2 per bushel, about 135 percent higher than the current level.

CBOT corn last year hit a record $7.65, up about 90 percent above the current price loans until payday. Soybeans rose to a record high $16.63, about 66 percent more than the present level.

CBOT wheat prices on Wednesday were trading at five-month highs, soybeans at a 2-1/2 month high and corn was at its highest level in nearly a month.

REPEAT PERFORMANCE?

While some fear prices will tumble like they did after last year’s rally, when grains markets ran up with crude oil, whose price peaked above $147 a barrel. But other analysts said this rally in grains could extend into next year.

“We can’t have a big break in the market because everyone is expecting more fund buying at the beginning of the year,” said Joe Bedore, CBOT floor manager for trade house FC Stone.

“We have different fundamentals than we had in the spring and summer of 2008 so I think that will keep prices in check to a certain point. But the investment community did see grains as an asset class then and they still do,” said Jerry Gidel, analyst for North America Risk Management Inc.

He said investors, buoyed by low interest rates, will bet on commodities and other asset classes.

“There is a lot of money looking for a home and it’s too risky for them to put it all in the stock market, mortgages or some kind of leases like railroad cars for example,” he said. 

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It was always clear what Anheuser-Busch meant to St. Louis. Good jobs. Prosperity. A company this city could count on.

But last November, things became murky. Uncertainty surrounded A-B’s takeover. And a year’s time has left many ways to look at how the company has changed and what that change means to St. Louis.

One thing to look at is the numbers. They’ve been well-documented.

Like the 1,000 people who were laid off right before Christmas. And the $20,000 that wasn’t given to Gussie Busch’s old American Legion Post.

Another is the psychological cost — for Anheuser-Busch wasn’t your average St. Louis company.

Other global brands, such as McDonnell Douglas and TWA, have called this city home.

But the bond with A-B ran deeper, all the way back to the city’s German heritage. Budweiser was a name known around the world, and it brought St. Louis along for the ride, always ending its ubiquitous advertisements with the name of its hometown. The company spread donations all over town and took legendary care of its employees. The Busch family was like royalty.

And St. Louisans were loyal. They drank A-B products with pride. They took visiting relatives to tour the great brick brewery. And they stood in the eighth inning of every Cardinals game, clapping along to "Here Comes the King," a salute to the company that was a lot like their city — independent, prosperous and proud.

A year ago, that bond loosened. The connection between the city and the company shifted forever. The independent, prosperous Anheuser-Busch was gobbled up by a faceless Belgian-Brazilian behemoth: InBev. What kind of name is that?

And that provides a third, perhaps more important, way to look at the merger: what it says about St. Louis’ place in the global economy.

We’ve seen foreign interests acquire other local firms. But it never seemed such a big deal. And we’ve seen other iconic companies get bought — like McDonnell and TWA — but those were by other big American names.

No, the hostile takeover of a great local institution has given St. Louis a front-row seat on the nature of the new world economy, in all its uncertainty and all its potential. And St. Louis hasn’t always liked what it sees.

First came the takeover, which both the Busch family and Congress were helpless to stop. Then the new regime settled in, announced its layoffs and razed the executive suite where Busches used to rule. Costs were cut. Contracts changed. Many of the old ways of doing business were thrown out the window.

These were the opening gambits of "a hypercompetitive company" striving to become more so, said Jim Fisher, a marketing professor at St. Louis University, of remolding Anheuser-Busch to better compete on the world stage.

"What we’ve seen here up close is kind of a metaphor for globalism," he said. "It just sounds like a completely different world there now."

And that’s been a disturbing thing for the place that so relied on old, solid Anheuser-Busch.

In economic terms, the merger’s impact on St. Louis has been far less than that of auto plant closings or McDonnell’s shrinkage in the ’90s. Compared with the broader recession, InBev’s cuts have been a drop in the bucket, about 2 percent of the 47,000 jobs the region has lost in the last year.

But these were good jobs, at the world headquarters of a respected company. And their loss adds to that nagging fear that the global economy is leaving St. Louis behind low cost payday loans.

"The big stuff is moving to bigger cities," said Bob Lewis, president of local economic consulting firm Development Strategies. "You feel a little like we’re losing ground, or we’re becoming more of a second-tier city than we like to believe we are."

That’s a hard thing to quantify, but it can have very real economic consequences, especially when it comes to building a strong work force. A lot of talented people moved to St. Louis to work at A-B, or for the law firms and ad agencies it kept busy all over the city. Will they come to a branch office town? Will there be jobs for them?

We don’t know yet, Fisher said. But the answers will say a lot about what happens next for St. Louis’ economy.

"The key dimension here is human capital. It’s talent," he said. "The question is how well will St. Louis stand up as companies look for the best and the brightest?"

And that poses a fourth way of looking at what the purchase of Anheuser-Busch has meant for St. Louis: that, maybe, it’s not such a bad thing.

InBev bought A-B, after all, because it wanted Budweiser.

It wanted the Clydesdales and the beechwood aging process and that red-and-white label touting the King of Beers. "America in a bottle," InBev CEO Carlos Brito called the beer, and he pledged to use his company’s global reach to sell it in markets Anheuser-Busch had struggled to tap. If he succeeds, that will mean jobs for people who make and sell Budweiser and other A-B products, and some of those jobs will likely be here. Benefits will accrue to the birthplace of Bud.

And InBev anointed St. Louis as its headquarters for North America, the place where it now sells one-third of its beer. While it has beefed up operations in New York, it has also moved high-level executives here. It is placing a big bet on this continent, and the base of operations for that is Pestalozzi Street.

That gives some comfort to U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. She was among those in Congress who rattled sabers against the deal last summer but now says it has mostly been "a success for St. Louis."

"They have made a very good effort," she said.

Indeed, St. Louis could do worse than to be the North American headquarters of a huge global company, notes Lewis. If St. Louis remains a key point on the company’s map, that helps plug the city back in to the very same fast-moving global economy that gobbled up A-B.

"That’s powerful. North America’s a big place," he said. "To the degree we can push that sort of thing, it says we’re part of the world."

Still there’s no denying that the solidity Anheuser-Busch represented in this town is gone.

Office buildings that used to hum with A-B staffers in Sunset Hills now sit empty. Suppliers and ad agencies have seen their revenue squeezed. Good jobs — the kind you build a career on — have disappeared.

And for those who lost them, it has been hard to find new ones, said Blair Forlaw, who runs a work force development program that has helped dozens of laid-off Anheuser IT workers. Most have landed just temporary contract work — another sign of this new global economy and the uncertainty that goes with it.

Jeremiah McWilliams of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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The euro zone economy jumped out of recession in the third quarter, data showed on Friday, but with slightly less spring than expected after growth in the area’s top three economies fell short of market forecasts.

Gross domestic product in the 16 countries using the euro rose 0.4 percent quarter-on-quarter after five consecutive quarters of shrinking output, but was 4.1 percent lower year-on-year, the European Union’s statistics office said.

Economists polled by Reuters had on average forecast quarterly growth of 0.5 percent and a 3.9 percent annual decline.

“The euro zone exited recession at a trot rather than a canter in the third quarter,” said Howard Archer, economist at IHS Global Insight.

For graphics on growth see:

here

Germany, France and Italy all reported a third-quarter increase in economic output, but the German 0.7 percent quarterly growth was below expectations of 0.8 percent, the French 0.3 percent increase only half of what was expected and the Italian 0.6 percent fell short of the 0.7 percent consensus.

Italy and the Netherlands returned to growth, but Spain continued to contract albeit at a significantly reduced pace.

A more detailed breakdown of the data will only be available on December 3 but economists said net exports and inventory build-up added to growth, while household consumption was weak and investment remained in recession payday loan companies.

“In other words, domestic demand remains the big weak spot,” said Aurelio Maccario, economist at UniCredit Group.

END OF EUROZONE RECESSION

The growth ends the deepest economic downturn in Europe since World War Two, brought on by a global financial crisis, but economists say recovery is likely to remain fragile.

The European Commission expects that fourth-quarter growth would slow to 0.2 percent quarter-on-quarter and then to 0.1 percent in the first two quarters of 2010.

“This loss of momentum is expected to be the consequence of the withdrawal of some stimulus measures, including car scrappage schemes and employment support measures,” said Archer.

Economists said restocking at companies, which could be helping growth now, would also be less of a factor toward the middle of 2010. A strong euro, rising unemployment and still tight credit conditions will also dampen growth prospects. 

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