ANALYSIS | BlackBerry brand bruised but not beaten

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota As Research In Motion restored its BlackBerry service Thursday after a four-day outage, analysts warned that the Waterloo, Ont.-based company's missteps are piling up and that unless it halts its decline soon, it will get left behind in the increasingly competitive wireless market.Even RIM's co-CEO Mike Lazaridis admitted the company had let its customers down and "did not deliver.""You expect better from us," he said in a video statement posted on...

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U.S. Funds Cut Loans to French Banks by 44%

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota October 14, 2011, 4:18 AM EDT By Radi Khasawneh Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The eight largest U.S. money-market funds reduced their lending to French banks by 44 percent last month as the European sovereign debt crisis worsened.Holdings in BNP Paribas SA, Societe Generale SA, Natixis SA and Credit Agricole SA dropped to $23.2 billion at the end of September from $41.5 billion the previous month, according to filings compiled by Bloomberg and published in today’s Bloomberg Risk newsletter. The biggest falls were for Natixis, at 74 percent, and Credit Agricole,...

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New Apple iPhone sees thousands line up pre-dawn

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota Thousands of people camped out at electronics stores Friday morning as the newest iPhone went on sale in Canada and a half-dozen other countries. Apple Stores and retailers Future Shop and Best Buy were opening two hours early across the country to kick off sales of the new model, the iPhone 4S.A dozen people were waiting at the Future Shop in St. John's when it opened its doors at 8 a.m. NT, said Shaun Eary, the store's manager of cellular products....

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Germany Backing Italy Seen as Key to Europe’s Bank Crisis

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota October 14, 2011, 5:32 PM EDT By Christine Harper, Aaron Kirchfeld and John Glover (Updates 20th paragraph to show European officials considering 50 percent writedown on Greek bonds. See {EXT4 } for more on the euro-area financial crisis.)Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Italian media reported last month that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had been caught on wiretaps making disparaging sexual comments about German Chancellor Angela Merkel.A diplomatic blunder at any time, the insults were especially inopportune when the question haunting investors these...

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$2 smartphone salvo in Samsung-Apple war

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota Sydney, Australia (CNN) – In the latest maneuver in the smartphone wars, Samsung is offering its latest Galaxy S II smartphone for a token $2 to the first 10 people in line each morning at a temporary store just steps away the Apple flagship store in Sydney.Normally priced at $850, the deep discount attracted some young buyers to camp out three or four nights to snatch the phone. "We calculated that the amount of money we are saving ... makes it equivalent to being paid $15 an hour just to loaf around for four days,” one person waiting for a phone...

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SAP Has Better-Than-Expected Quarterly Profit

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota October 14, 2011, 10:54 AM EDT By Cornelius Rahn (Updates with litigation-related provision in seventh paragraph.)Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- SAP AG, the largest maker of business-management software, reported third-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ estimates as new mobile and real-time analytics offerings boosted sales.Operating profit, based on non-international financial reporting standards, rose 23 percent to 1.13 billion euros ($1.57 billion) while sales on that basis gained 12 percent to 3.41 billion euros, the company said today. The average...

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Statoil Targets More North Sea Finds

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota October 14, 2011, 8:26 AM EDT By Marianne Stigset (Updates with replacement ratio in seventh paragraph.)Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Statoil ASA is targeting more prospects in the North Sea after the Aldous-Avaldsnes oil find revived interest in the area and strengthened the company’s goal of keeping output at current levels until 2020.“From an exploration perspective, 2011 has been a fantastic year,” Oeystein Michelsen, head of development and production in Norway, said yesterday on a platform at the North Sea Troll field. “Despite it being a mature area,...

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Playing Chicken To Cut The Deficit

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota Alex Wong/Getty Images U.S. Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) speaks as Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) listen during a hearing before the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee, also known as the supercommittee. If you've ever thought that most of politics is game-playing, you're right. Political scientists often use mathematical game theory to describe how Congress works. And when they look at the current battle over how to handle the deficit,...

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Are we heading into another recession?

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota London (CNN) – You know things are bad when an email like this lands in your inbox:Subject: is it time for a quick catch up?Before the world expires…The message takes on a new meaning when you realise it’s from the former head of one of the UK’s larger financial services companies.As the eurozone crisis rages seemingly without end and big banks are being bailed out again, many are bracing themselves for a return of the pronounced recession that characterized the end of the last decade.But is there evidence to support such a claim?Economists at Deutsche...

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A New Muesli Maker's Quest For The Cereal Aisle

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota Zack Seward for NPR Muesli Fusion for sale at the Rochester Public Market in Rochester, N.Y. Being a local brand has served owner Ian Szalinski well, but he has bigger plans for his cereal business. Small businesses are often called the backbone of the U.S. economy; they employ about half of the nation's private sector employees. But in many cases, small companies start out with a workforce of just one — like cereal entrepreneur Ian Szalinski in Rochester,...

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Defending Defense Contracts: Programs Turn To PR

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota Enlarge Ted Robbins/NPR In southern Arizona, troops take part in a large-scale search-and-rescue exercise called Operation Angel Thunder. Ted Robbins/NPR In southern Arizona, troops take part in a large-scale search-and-rescue exercise called Operation Angel Thunder.Five Air Force Pave Hawk helicopters are parked or landing in the high desert east of Tucson, Ariz. They are transporting victims of a mock earthquake as part of a training exercise called...

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CPP, Oxford team up on new Toronto bank tower

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota Two of Canada's largest pension plans are teaming up to build a new office tower in downtown Toronto that's slated to be the headquarters for Canada's largest bank.The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Oxford Properties, the real estate arm of OMERS will build RBC WaterPark Place, a 30-storey office tower on Queens Quay between Bay and York Streets in Toronto's financial district.An artist's rendering of what the building that will serve as Royal...

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Stocks, Commodities Rally, Treasuries Drop on G-20, Retail Data

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota October 14, 2011, 5:24 PM EDT By Michael P. Regan and Rita Nazareth Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Stocks gained, extending the biggest weekly rally since July 2009, as the Group of 20 began talks to tame Europe’s debt crisis and U.S. retail sales and Google Inc.’s results beat estimates. Commodities rose and the euro completed the largest weekly advance versus the dollar since March 2009.The MSCI All-Country World Index rose 1.4 percent, extending its weekly gain to 5.5 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index jumped 1.7 percent to 1,224.58, the highest...

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Walsh Carving Up Iberia to Boost BA: Union

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota October 14, 2011, 11:44 AM EDT By Steve Rothwell Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Willie Walsh, chief executive officer of the merged British Airways-Iberia, favors growth at the U.K. carrier and will carve up its partner to cut costs, the head of the Spanish unit’s pilot union said.Plans announced Oct. 6 to switch 13 planes from Iberia’s mainline operation to a low-cost unit by Dec. 31 are aimed at bypassing merger terms designed to guarantee the Spanish carrier’s status within International Consolidated Airlines Group SA, Sepla union official Justo Peral...

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A roadmap or dead end? Barroso to the rescue

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota London (CNN) – It's taken months, but Europe's leaders are starting to put pen to paper and be willing to spell out, in some detail, how to fix the eurozone - if it's fixable.I think it is fixable. It will include a massive restructuring of Greek debt, call it default or not.European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso - or what he should be called; the euro cheerleader - did not say as much in his speech to the European Parliament Wednesday.He did do, however, lay out in some detail five road marks on how to get out of the euro mess. I did have...

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Occupy protesters 'emboldened' by park cleanup delay

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota The decision to postpone a planned cleanup of a New York private park occupied by Wall Street protesters has "emboldened the movement," organizers said Friday.In an emailed statement, Brookfield Properties said Friday that it had deferred cleaning the park for a short period while it negotiates with protesters."At the request of a number of local political leaders, Brookfield Properties has deferred the cleaning of Zuccotti Park for a short period of...

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Gucci faces 'sweatshop' claims in China

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota Hong Kong (CNN) – Gucci stores in Shenzhen, China are facing allegations from former employees of operating as high-end “sweatshops,” according to reports earlier this week in China’s English-language newspapers, China Daily and Global Times.In late September, five former employees released online an open letter to senior executives of the Italian designer brand, including claims of a draconian list of employment regulations such as time limitations on bathroom use and unpaid overtime extending past midnight.A Gucci spokesperson told Chinese media,...

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G20 ministers face off over Europe debt crisis

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota Finance ministers and central bank governors from the world's 20 most advanced economies are gathering in Paris Friday to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with Europe's debt crisis.The stakes are high, with many participants and economists arguing that a failure to get this right could plunge the world back into recession.The discussions among the Group of 20 ministers, which continue Saturday, are expected to be frank, given market perceptions that European leaders have lagged in their efforts to agree on measures to prevent the problems of heavily...

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Study: Women ask for raises, but aren’t heard

AppId is over the quotaAppId is over the quota (CNN) – A new Catalyst study examining career advancement strategies has debunked the myth that women make less because they don’t ask—they do, they just aren’t being heard.According to the study, men who employ traditional career advancement strategies—such as making your willingness to put in time and effort known and accepting challenges—are more likely to be rewarded, in the form of promotions or pay raises, than men who don’t.However, women who adopted these strategies were not much more likely to advance than women who didn’t.“This study busts...

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