MPs To Question Burberry Chiefs On Jobs Directors of Burberry, the luxury fashion group, are to be summoned before a parliamentary committee over plans to close a factory in Wales with the loss of 300 jobs....... Read Full Article Saturday Interview: Making It To The Major League Of Fantasy Sports Christopher J. Russo founded Fantasy Sports Ventures Inc., a leader in the fantasy sports field.... Read Full Article In Mexico, A Fugitive’s Arrest Captivates The Cameras Sandra Ávila Beltrán, accused of playing a key role in building a cocaine trafficking operation in Mexico, has captured her nation’s attention.... Read Full Article 2007: The World In Focus <a href="http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/europe/article1290799.ece">January 1</a> <b> </b>... Read Full Article World Briefing | Asia: China: Tourists Riot Over Shopping Trip Policemen armed with riot shields and batons were called in to subdue angry tourists from the mainland who clashed with tour guides in the tiny gambling enclave of Macao, the police said.... Read Full Article |
Thought NewsMicrosoft looks at Facebook over $47.5bn takeover$Microsoft is believed to have approached Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, over a possible acquisition of the social networking site. It is believed that Microsoft has sought to gauge Facebook’s level of interest about a potential bid after $47.5 billion ($£24.3 billion) takeover talks with Yahoo!, the online search engine, failed on Saturday. It is not thought that there are any active talks between Microsoft and Facebook.Read Full Article British Airways counts cost of T5 fiasco as passenger numbers fallThe chaotic opening of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 last month led to British Airways’ worst April since the start of the Iraq war. Yesterday the airline said that passenger numbers had fallen by 7.9 per cent, or 221,000 people, to 2.5 million after the problematic opening of the £4.3 billion terminal. The British flag carrier was forced to cancel more than 430 flights and lost about 20,000 pieces of luggage as it moved into its new home at T5. The negative publicity and cancelled flights are thought to have contributed substantially to the fall in passenger numbers during the month. This particularly affected BA’s UK and European operations, which were the first to move into T5. Short-haul passenger numbers fell 8.5 per cent last month and BA’s aircraft were operating at only 70 per cent of capacity. Worldwide, the carrier’s aircraft were 71.6 per cent full during the month, the lowest April load factor since the Iraq war began in March 2003. Load factors are seasonal and typically in April traffic rises before the summer. The decline in passenger numbers last month was worst in the economy cabins, with an8.8 per cent fall compared with last year. Premium passenger numbers rebounded by 3.4 per cent after a 5 per cent fall in the previous month. Of particular concern to BA will be the sudden drop in transatlantic travel, which is where the carrier makes the bulk of its money. Passenger numbers to and from the Americas fell 7.9 per cent and the load factor fell to 72.2 per cent, from 78.5 per cent in the same month last year. Nick van den Brul, aviation analyst for Exane BNP Paribas, said: “T5 has clearly been a big problem and it will have an impact on profits. April is usually a good month, when things start to pick up after the winter, but this has not happened.” Analysts are concerned that BA’s passenger numbers are falling just as costs rise and the economy slows. Oil prices have hit record levels and this has caused a number of airlines to go into bankruptcy. BA put up its fuel surcharge last week to cover these increased costs, but it risks losing passengers, particularly as the economies of Britain and the United States slow. Doug McVitie, managing director of Arran Aerospace, an aviation consult-ancy, said: “The combination of higher fares, higher costs and falling passenger numbers is very bad news and the more bad news there is, the more people will be put off the airline.” BA’s share price fell 9¾p to 239p yesterday and is trading at less than half the level of a year ago. The company said: “Market conditions are broadly unchanged with long-haul, nonpremium traffic showing significant weakness. In April some impact was felt, particularly on transfer traffic, from the move to T5 and the operational problems in the early part of the month.” Ryanair, the low-cost carrier, has also suffered from weaker demand as a result of tighter household budgets. Its traffic figures for April show that it is not increasing passenger numbers by enough to cope with the capacity it is adding. Passenger numbers rose by 15 per cent to 4.7 million, compared with the same month last year, but load factors dropped to 79 per cent from 83 per cent. Further indications of weakness in the airline sector is expected today when easyJet, another budget airline, reports its first-half figures. Analysts expect a loss of about £50 million compared with a £17 million loss in the same half last year.Read Full Article Warren Buffet takes centre stage at the Berkshire Hathaway AGMWarren Buffett gave an hilarious performance at his annual shareholders’ meeting this weekend, musing that envy was the most useless of the seven deadly sins because it hurts you, rather than its subject, who may even feel better as a result. Gluttony, on the other hand, had an upside, Mr Buffett told an audience of 31,000 as he munched chocolates and guzzled cola throughout a five-hour question-and-answer session in his home town of Omaha, Nebraska, on Saturday. His take on the Christian vices was classic Buffett, combining a strict moral code with his desire to enjoy the pleasures of life and wrapping a serious message in a joke. With an estimated $62 billion ($£31.4 billion) fortune, Mr Buffett, 77, recently supplanted Bill Gates, a member of his Berkshire Hathaway board who attended the meeting, as the world’s richest man. The annual weekend of events has come to be known as the Woodstock of capitalism and is thought to be the largest financial gathering in the world, with hotel rooms booked years in advance. Mr Buffett’s annual shareholder meeting is without parallel. It attracts a range of people from successful hedge fund managers to small children, from Britain, Australia and India, to hear his opinions on derivatives and currency fluctuations. The combination of age, wealth and success has left Mr Buffett comfortable in his skin and with little to prove. How many heads of huge corporations would recommend shareholders to sell their stock in his company, as he seemed to do at the weekend? “If you have a small amount of money, for many there might be something better to do than buy Berkshire Hathaway. If you have plenty of time, there are more attractive things to buy in smaller investments - it is not feasible for us to do it now like we did in the past,” Mr Buffett said. Over the past 40 years Mr Buffett has turned a failing textiles company into a $200 billion conglomerate stretching from insurance to sweets, prompting a more than 7,000-fold rise in its share price. The sheer size of Berkshire Hathaway means that he has to make huge investments if they are to have any impact on his fund$’s bottom line. Mr Buffett bemoaned that it is much harder to make a good return on multibillion-dollar investments because there are fewer of them and the companies involved are much better known. Berkshire Hathaway owns or has stakes in about 80 companies, including Coca-Cola, See’s Candy, Tesco, Johnson & Johnson and the Washington Post. He is set to add a 19 per cent stake in Wrigley’s after agreeing to help Mars to finance a takeover of the chewing gum maker last week. “There is no question that returns for Berkshire will be lower than in the past. We operate in a universe of stocks of companies worth at least $10 billion and more often $50 billion,$” Mr Buffett said. “You can take Warren’s promise [on Berkshire’s returns] to the bank,” quipped Charlie Munger, the group’s 84-year-old vice-chairman and less famous half of the corporate world’s greatest comedy duo. Although he has not been involved in the day-to-day running of Berkshire Hathaway for years, Mr Munger has played a considerable part in the group’s success, providing an invaluable sounding board for Mr Buffett over the past 30 years. In a relationship honed over decades, Mr Buffett played his usual role of the sociable wife to Mr Munger’s grumpy, acerbic husband, jockeying him along and smoothing his bluntness for the guests. After giving an investor from New Jersey a lengthy response to a question about the futurepossible direction of the stock markets, Mr Buffett, oozing folksy Mid-Western charm, gave the floor to his po-faced, dead-pan deputy. “I have nothing to add,” Mr Munger said. “He’s been practising for weeks,” Mr Buffett joked. A little later, after his answer about future energy sources, Mr Munger concluded that “most people don’t think like that, but I do”. “Charlie does not find comfort in numbers,” Mr Buffett explained, to the same gales of laughter than greeted many of their exchanges. There is an obvious chemistry between the two. At one point, Mr Buffett mused: “Charlie and I don’t even need to talk to each other. We think in the same way and have the same spheres of knowledge.” As if to underline the point, a shareholder from Mexico City asked Mr Buffett where he stood on religion. “I am an agnostic,” Mr Warren said. “I simply don’t know,” Mr Munger added, with precision timing. On the surface there is something surreal about 31,000 people flying across the world to see these elderly men talking about finance. But, more than anybody else, they represent a human face of business that people can relate and aspire to. Their investment philosophy sounds so simple - invest in solid, market-leading brands that people will always want and don’t get involved in things you don’t understand, such as derivatives. They are very funny and they have remained ordinary. Mr Buffett has lived in the same house, valued at about £350,000, since 1958 and has pledged to give away 85 per cent of his wealth over time, most of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates charitable foundation, the rest going to four family charities. He and Mr Munger take annual salaries of only $100,000 $– although their holdings make them billionaires. On the subject of pay, Mr Munger said on Saturday: “The leaders of great enterprises have a moral duty not to take the compensation they do. I don’t know how they can do it.” And Berkshire Hathaway is a company of its word, Mr Buffett said. Once it has agreed to finance a deal, it will do so “even if [Federal Reserve chairman] Ben Bernanke runs off to South America with Paris Hilton”. Towards the end of the meeting, a 12-year-old girl asked him why, when his hero was Benjamin Graham, the investment guru who taught him at Columbia, he insisted on not paying a dividend. “You were influenced by your hero in so many ways, so why not in this?” she asked.“I had to do something my way,” said Mr Buffett, who has not paid a dividend since the 1960s, preferring to reinvest all profits in his company. Ins and outs of life at Berkshire — Berkshire Hathaway’s Class A shares trade at just under $135,000 each, making them the most expensive in the world $ $— The group introduced Class B shares, with fewer voting rights, in 1996, valued at 1/30th of the Class A, to make it more affordable to invest — Mr Buffett has about 32 per cent of Berkshire’s voting power, while Charlie Munger, the vice-chairman, has 1.4 per cent — Berkshire’s investments include stakes in Tesco, American Express, Procter & Gamble, Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson — In April, Warren Buffett overtook Bill Gates to become the world’s richest man, with an estimated $62billion fortune, according to Forbes magazine$Read Full Article Some Diabetics Don?t Have What They Thought They HadResearch is changing doctors? understanding of diabetes.Read Full Article Music Review: Dolly Parton’s Unconventional WisdomHer show at Radio City Music Hall on Wednesday was a seminar on the power of independent thought.Read Full Article External News for: thoughtNCAA tournament blogging – Morgan-W.Va. final thoughts - Baltimore Sun (blog)Globe and MailNCAA tournament blogging – Morgan-W.Va. final thoughtsBaltimore Sun (blog)The kids he grew up playing against in his neighborhood thought Morgan State was a joke. There was almost more pride in not playing at all instead of ...Avoiding The BugBlueGoldNews.com (subscription)West Virginia uses memory of last year to ignite surge vs. Morgan StateUSA TodayHuggins Says "I Told You So" About Frank MartinKansas City StarYahoo! Sportsall 593 news articles »NCAA tournament blogging – Morgan-W.Va. final thoughts - Baltimore Sun (blog)Globe and MailNCAA tournament blogging – Morgan-W.Va. final thoughtsBaltimore Sun (blog)The kids he grew up playing against in his neighborhood thought Morgan State was a joke. There was almost more pride in not playing at all instead of ...Avoiding The BugBlueGoldNews.com (subscription)West Virginia uses memory of last year to ignite surge vs. Morgan StateUSA TodayHuggins Says "I Told You So" About Frank MartinKansas City StarYahoo! Sportsall 593 news articles »Tourney Thoughts: It'll be hard to top Day 1 for excitement, drama - SI.comBoston GlobeTourney Thoughts: It'll be hard to top Day 1 for excitement, dramaSI.comI've thought for quite that Villanova was a little suspect, and most people, myself included, did not think they deserved a No. 2 seed. ...Lemme tell you, there's a new level of self-loathing you reach when you stand ...Topeka Capital Journal (blog)Patrick Kinahan: BYU Blog From Oklahoma CityKJZZCould BYU's Fredette be next March darling?Houston ChronicleSI.comall 576 news articles »NCAA tournament blogging – Morgan-W.Va. final thoughts - Baltimore Sun (blog)Globe and MailNCAA tournament blogging – Morgan-W.Va. final thoughtsBaltimore Sun (blog)The kids he grew up playing against in his neighborhood thought Morgan State was a joke. There was almost more pride in not playing at all instead of ...Avoiding The BugBlueGoldNews.com (subscription)West Virginia uses memory of last year to ignite surge vs. Morgan StateUSA TodayHuggins Says "I Told You So" About Frank MartinKansas City StarYahoo! Sportsall 593 news articles »Tourney Thoughts: It'll be hard to top Day 1 for excitement, drama - SI.comBoston GlobeTourney Thoughts: It'll be hard to top Day 1 for excitement, dramaSI.comI've thought for quite that Villanova was a little suspect, and most people, myself included, did not think they deserved a No. 2 seed. ...Lemme tell you, there's a new level of self-loathing you reach when you stand ...Topeka Capital Journal (blog)Patrick Kinahan: BYU Blog From Oklahoma CityKJZZCould BYU's Fredette be next March darling?Houston ChronicleSI.comall 576 news articles »Tebow debuts new throwing motion - Minneapolis Star TribuneMassLive.com (blog)Tebow debuts new throwing motionMinneapolis Star TribuneI definitely saw some adjustment and I thought he executed very well." About 3000 fans showed up despite cool temperatures and light rain. ...Henne on Tebow: On second thought ...Newsday (subscription)all 53 news articles » |
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