Financial News

Wind Mobile will announce its handsets and rates Wednesday and if online speculation is anything to go by, consumers will be pleased, though perhaps not surprised.

The company has refused to comment on rumours and leaks on blogs and online forums – some supposedly posted by insiders, others leaked by disgruntled ex-employees. But top industry analysts, who did not want to be named, said some of the information looked "dead-on," while adding some aspects were likely to change.

According to a posting on Howardforums.com, a site for cellphone junkies, Wind seems to be coming in with an expansive low-rate plan, with unlimited calling between the company’s subscribers and 100 minutes for $15 – twice the minutes of Telus Corp.’s discount Koodoo brand and Rogers Wireless Inc.’s Fido, which have similar $15 plans.

The posting, which has almost 50,000 page views, also lists a $35-per-month plan with unlimited provincial calling (but only 50 outgoing texts) and a $45 monthly plan that includes unlimited national calling and texting.

In interviews, Anthony Lacavera, chairman of Wind Mobile parent Globalive, has stressed that cheap pricing is not his strategy. Rather, he says, his goal is to provide value for money, good customer service and clear billing.

"It’s right in line with what we’ve expected, what the market has expected," one analyst said.

"That’s why you’ve seen the stock get knocked from the big three (incumbents Rogers, Telus and Bell Canada)."

Websites have also described the company’s data packages, pointing to a $10 social BlackBerry package and an unlimited mobile data plan for $35.

One analyst said he doubted whether the data would be truly unlimited, adding that "tethering" – effectively using a BlackBerry’s Internet service as a modem for a laptop – is unlikely to be included, as was suggested.

"It’s very difficult to give people unlimited data because it’s just so expensive," the analyst said.

The upstart wireless carrier’s launch was delayed by a Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission ruling that said Globalive was a foreign company and ineligible to operate in Canada.

It received the green light from Industry Minister Tony Clement last Friday, after cabinet concluded that the CRTC had erred in its decision payday loan. Almost all of Globalive’s debt and 65 per cent of its equity is held by Egyptian telecom giant Orascom Telecom Holdings SAE, which has cellular services in Greece, Italy and Algeria.

The delay has been costly. After the CRTC ruling, many of Wind’s 800 or so employees sat idle, and were then sent out volunteering in the community.

And the company, which previously said it was ready to launch, is now grappling with the actual process, and the difficulties that come with erecting a complicated network.

However, it is doing so without the established resources of the giant incumbents, one analyst said.

It is also unclear if Wind will have the BlackBerry at launch, since it sucks up a lot of bandwidth on the network and may get wonky service – a disaster for a company such as Wind, which is launching with an emphasis on customer service.

Lacavera has told the Star that Wind was in discussions to begin carrying Apple Inc.’s iPhone, though analysts said not to expect it in the short term, as the company struggles with more practical tasks.

The new year will see other new entrants, as well, which will challenge Globalive for the roughly 30 per cent of Canadians who do not currently have a cellphone.

Public Mobile CEO Alek Krstajic told the Star earlier the company aims to be the cellular provider "of the working class," with lower rates and cheaper devices.

DAVE Wireless president Dave Dobbin has a target audience more similar to Globalive’s, and said in an interview on Monday his company won’t be the cheapest but will focus on value.

"What I can assure you is that Canadians will have greater choice," Dobbin said.

Wind will be selling phones out of 13 Blockbuster Video locations in Toronto and three in Calgary, the company’s first launch markets, as well as designated stores.

At the Liberty Village Blockbuster in Toronto, four cheery employees stood by a kiosk empty of phones.

"We’ve been waiting to tell people for months," said Chanel Manthorpe, 22. "We’re excited."

Source

Instant online cash advance with next-day cash direct deposit.

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.

Source

Kraft Foods Inc faces a tougher task winning over Cadbury Plc shareholders after disappointing results reinforced the view that it will formalize its existing offer for the British chocolatier next week rather than present a higher bid.

An announcement formalizing Kraft’s current offer is expected on Monday, under a deadline set by the UK Takeover Panel, one source familiar with the situation told Reuters. The source could not be identified by name because he was not authorized to speak with the media.

Kraft is unlikely to raise its offer or change the cash-and-stock mix of the bid at this time because it faces no rival suitors for Cadbury, said the source familiar with the situation, who cautioned that plans could still be altered, before or after Monday.

“Formalizing the bid is just a starting point,” said the source. “Anything could change after that.”

If Kraft failed to formalize its bid by 1700 GMT on Monday November 9, it would have to walk away from Cadbury for six months under UK takeover rules.

Kraft made a cash-and-shares offer in early September that was rejected by Cadbury. Formalizing the offer without a recommendation from Cadbury would turn the bid hostile.

The initial approach was priced at 745p a Cadbury share, or 10.2 billion pounds ($16.8 billion), but the fall in Kraft shares makes it presently worth around 733p, against a current Cadbury share price of around 767p.

Kraft released its quarterly results after the U.S. market close on Tuesday, reporting revenue that fell short of Wall Street expectations and cutting its sales forecast.

The world’s No. 2 foodmaker has insisted it would not overpay for Cadbury. But it has also secured a $9 billion bridge loan and could use it to sweeten the cash element of its offer at a later date.

Kraft shares were down nearly 3 percent on Wednesday afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange, while Cadbury closed down 1.4 percent in London.

HOW MUCH SWEETER?

Pablo Zuanic at broker JPMorgan said Kraft’s results were likely to cap any eventual improvement in its offer.

“Re: the Kraft bid, we now assume a lower price on lack of competing bids, lower synergy assumptions and our growing belief Kraft could walk away … We doubt Kraft will go over 780 pence,” he added.

Investec Securities, meanwhile, said it expects Kraft would not be willing to pay more than 800 pence a share for Cadbury.

“We now think Kraft will be willing to pay only 800p, and the probability of a successful bid falls accordingly,” said analyst Martin Deboo at Investec Securities, one of the few big brokers not involved in advising or financing in the bid battle. 

Read more

Loblaw Cos. Ltd. is taking direct aim at Wal-Mart’s price claims in the Ontario market, saying the food prices in its Real Canadian Superstores are now on par with the world’s biggest discounter.

To drive home the point with consumers, starting Friday, the flyers for the Ontario Superstores will be advertising new prices on some 2,000 items, roughly 10 per cent of the food in Superstores.

The program, called "rounding down," takes those prices down to the nearest dollar, or in some cases down several dollars, Loblaw’s chief operating officer Dalton Philips said in an interview yesterday.

"It’s a very aggressive price campaign," Philips said.

"We’re going head-to-head with Wal-Mart."

Wal-Mart countered later in the day, saying it stands by its commitment to provide "unbeatable prices" on a basket of goods.

"Anybody can at any given point in time lower the price on a specific product, but our commitment is unbeatable prices on a whole basket," Wal-Mart spokesperson Andrew Pelletier explained.

Wal-Mart Canada has been running its own price promotion campaign since early September, Pelletier noted, discounting both food and general merchandise items across the store to celebrate its 15th anniversary.

The move comes as glum economic news has more consumers shopping around for bargains, trading down to cheaper products and checking flyers for the best deals.

"The consumer has become very promiscuous," Philips said, referring to the lack of customer loyalty to a particular store or brand.

The question is whether its Real Canadian Superstores in Ontario have been reaping any of those benefits.

Built to compete with Wal-Mart as the global giant entered Canada’s supermarket business three years ago, Loblaw’s Superstores contain food and general merchandise.

The Ontario stores are modelled on a format that had been highly successful for the company in western Canada for more than 25 years online payday loans.

But the concept hasn’t translated well. Indeed, one of Galen Weston’s first decisions after taking the helm at Loblaw in September 2006 was to stop building more Superstores in Ontario until the company got the format right.

(It has since opened one in Milton and one in Peterborough, but they were both already in the pipeline.)

There’s a total of 37 now in Ontario.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart has opened 42 combined food and general merchandise "supercentres" in Ontario and has plans to open or expand another 25 to 30 existing stores across the country this year.

Weston also acknowledged one of the company’s problems was that consumers perceived its stores to be more expensive than rivals, whether it was a Loblaw store competing with Sobeys, or a No Frills up against Food Basics.

The company has since invested millions in lowering prices, first in discount stores and then in its conventional stores.

Now, it’s tackling the Superstores in Ontario.

The big behemoths present a particularly difficult challenge in this market, analysts said. Unlike western Canada, where Loblaw didn’t operate any No Frills stores until recently, the Real Canadian Superstores were already the price leaders long before Wal-Mart entered the food business.

But in Ontario, the perception is No Frills is the price leader in food while Wal-Mart is ahead of the pack in general merchandise, leaving the Superstores without a strong image.

Pricing is just one of the areas Loblaw is addressing in the Superstores, Philips said.

The company is also adding more ethnic food and club packs to those stores in a bid to appeal to a wider customer base and help families shop on a budget, he said.

It’s also launching bulk bins, where customers can scoop up basic ingredients cheaply, as more consumers resort to cooking from scratch to cut costs, Philips explained.

Source

The International Monetary Fund will raise its 2010 growth forecast for the world economy to 3.1 percent from 2.5 percent to reflect improving economic conditions, a newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Citing unidentified sources at the IMF and the German government, German business daily Handelsblatt said the IMF had revised its global forecast for this year to a 1.1 percent contraction from a negative 1.4 percent before.

“The data is pointing upwards on a weekly basis,” it quoted one of the sources as saying. The IMF is due to update its forecasts in its World Economic Outlook to be released in Istanbul on Thursday.

The Handelsblatt also said the IMF had raised its forecasts for Germany’s gross domestic product to grow by 0.3 percent next year after previously predicting a 0.6 percent contraction.

Output in Europe’s biggest economy would shrink by 5.3 percent this year, less severely than the IMF’s previous forecast of a 6.2 percent decline, the newspaper said.

(Reporting by Jan Dahinten; Editing by Kim Coghill)

Read more

A tepid economic recovery and doubts about the Federal Reserve’s ability to smoothly withdraw aid from financial markets are reasons to favor more defensive stocks, according to Matthew Berler, a portfolio manager at Osterweis Capital Management.

Many investors have bought into cyclical areas of the market such as materials and industrials, putting stocks in those sectors among the leaders of a near 60 percent rally in U.S. equities.

Berler’s bottom up stock picking technique, where he focuses on the fundamentals of individual companies, is leading him to areas like healthcare and utilities.

The San Francisco-based Berler, a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, says the $699.4 million Osterweis Fund OSTFX.O currently has an above average cash position with 70 percent in equities compared to what would normally be 80 to 85 percent.

Below is a question and answer session with Matthew Berler.

Q. What do you think the economic recovery in the United States will look like?

A. Tighter credit together with what we expect will be stubbornly higher unemployment levels, along with a greater propensity to save on the part of the consumer probably means that we are going to see a sub par economic recovery.

What we’ve done is create a portfolio that should perform even if the economy doesn’t pick up significantly.

With the massive stimulus that has come from Washington into financial markets and into the real economy the risk is that if they do start to remove that liquidity from the system that could effectively take the punch bowl away from the stock market.

Q. Given those conditions what are some of the stocks you like?

A. Unilver NV is one of our largest holdings at this point in time, it’s a relatively new position we picked up in Q1 when a new CEO was brought in with a clear mandate to turnaround what had been a chronically underperforming global consumer product company.

We picked up Bayer AG. That is another great example of a company that’s trading at the same very depressed valuation as the U.S. pharmaceutical companies.

Q. Health care should fit that defensive profile but there are added risks from pending regulation connected to President Barack Obama’s reforms plans. What is your view of that sector?

A. Broadly speaking we have a big overweight in health care.

Our sense is that whatever comes out of Washington probably ends up stimulating demand more than what health care in general loses in terms of pricing. 

Read more

From David Nicklaus’ Mound City Money blog. STLtoday.com/moundcitymoney

Unanimity is rare in surveys of businesspeople, but the St. Louis Fed found it among area car dealers. The Fed’s latest Burgundy Book survey says all the dealers it talked to expect lower sales this year. Other retailers aren’t quite as pessimistic, but half expect sales to fall and only one-third expect sales to rise.

If Kansas City’s leaders want to learn about the economics of a 1,000-room convention hotel, they could drive 250 miles east and talk to the folks who recently foreclosed on the Renaissance Hotel in downtown St. Louis. Instead, they’re spending $500,000 for a feasibility study. According to the Kansas City Star’s Kevin Collison, our neighbors to the west are also establishing a 20-member steering committee to think about the idea.

We St. Louisans could save them plenty of time and money. Here are three pieces of free feasibility advice:
— It won’t work without a huge public subsidy.

— It won’t magically generate more convention business

— Even with a huge subsidy, it might not succeed.

The ESOP Association estimates that 10 million U.S. workers, about 10 percent of the private-sector work force, participate in employee stock ownership plans at 11,500 companies. Many people would look at those numbers and see upbeat, motivated employees, their incentives fully aligned with the employers’ goals compare car insurance prices.

Sean Anderson, a visiting law professor at the University of Illinois, looks at ESOPs and sees a disaster waiting to happen. In an upcoming article, he says Congress should ban employer stock from all company-sponsored retirement plans. Here’s an Anderson quote, from a U of I News Bureau summary of the article that will appear in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal. :

"ESOPs have a lot of intuitive appeal — the idea of having workers own a piece of the company they’re working for. But they’re Enron on steroids. At the end of the day, they put workers at terrible risk and more often than not work as a tool that benefits the company, not employees."

ESOPs prevent workers from diversifying their retirement savings, and workers don’t even control the price at which they invest.

My guess is that any proposal to abolish ESOPs would run into a firestorm of criticism from many of those 10 million employee-owners. I’ve talked with people who get a special sense of pride from working at an employee-owned company such as Graybar Electric or McBride & Son Homes. Any reformer would also have to contend with the ghost of Louis O. Kelso, the Cold-War-era thinker who conceived of ESOPs as a way to keep workers engaged with capitalism and opposed to communism.

Source

<credit-solo/>Guarantee Electrical

Source

MONTREAL – Air Canada's (TSX: AC.B) shares got a lift Tuesday after the financially strapped airline reached tentative deals providing a 21-month moratorium on pension contributions with three unions.

The Montreal-based airline's shares gained nearly 13.5 per cent in trading, gaining 19 cents to $1.60 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Investors were responding to an overnight announcement that deals had been reached with three of Air Canada's five unions, moves that will save the airline millions of dollars in costs as it tries to deal with a cash crunch during the current recession.

Talks are continuing with unions representing pilots and flight attendants.

The agreement achieved with machinists, service agents, dispatchers and retirees provides the airline with labour peace and would save it millions of dollars in annual pension contributions for past service.

In exchange, workers will obtain an unknown equity stake in the airline to mitigate the risk of them agreeing to defer pension contributions individual health insurance plans.

Air Canada parent company ACE Aviation Holdings (TSX: ACE.B) would also become involved in financing the airline.

Leslie Dias, local president of the Canadian Auto Workers' Union which represents 4,500 service agents, said the tentative contract agreement will provide security for members while helping the airline to avoid another court filing for bankruptcy protection.

Ratification votes are expected next week. The union's first attempt to ratify a tentative contract agreement failed earlier this year.

Airline analyst Jacques Kavafian of Research Capital Corp. said labour agreements with all employees, while positive, would be only one part of the effort needed to ensure Air Canada's survival.

He said the airline must still raise financing and reduce its operating costs.

Source