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U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said it would be
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ConocoPhillips said Wednesday that it and China National Offshore Oil Corp. reached a $160 million agreement to settle compensation claims from oil spills off northeastern China.
The Houston-based company said in a statement that the two had reached an agreement with China’s Ministry of Agriculture over the oil spills last June in the Bohai Sea.
The spills were considered small, especially compared with the Gulf of Mexico spills in 2010, but Conoco, the operator of the Bohai field, still came under intense media criticism in China.
Conoco said the money, 1 billion yuan, would be used “to settle public and private claims of potentially affected fishermen in relevant Bohai Bay communities.”
It said 10 percent of the money would go to the company’s previously announced fund to improve fishery resources.
The agreement will likely stop a lawsuit that a group of more than 100 Chinese fishermen filed last year seeking compensation from ConocoPhillips China for damage to their sea cucumber catches.
In September, ConocoPhillips announced plans to set up two funds to pay compensation and address environmental problems resulting from the spills.
The government has already ordered the company to stop all production pending a full cleanup and a review to ensure no more oil seeps into the sea.
The oil spill covered about 2,500 square miles (6,200 sq. kilometers) of water surface. It drew attention to pollution in the Bohai region due to industrialization, oil drilling and fast population growth that has decimated sea food and fish stocks and caused frequent red tides.
Sea cucumbers, one of many types of sea product harvested in the Bohai, are sausage-shaped, often spiky marine animals that are viewed as a delicacy by many in Asia.
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Home sales ended a difficult year on a high note, resulting in a gain in full-year sales volume.
The National Association of Realtors reported that the annual sales pace in December reached 4.6 million homes, up 5% from November’s pace and 3.6% from a year ago.
It was the third straight month of improvement in the pace of sales. The fourth-quarter sales volume lifted full-year sales to 4.26 million homes, up 1.7% from 2010 levels.
"The pattern of home sales in recent months demonstrates a market in recovery," said Lawrence Yun, the group’s chief economist. "Record low mortgage interest rates, job growth and bargain home prices are giving more consumers the confidence they need to enter the market."
Home prices, however, remained depressed, largely because distressed sales continue to make up a significant part of the market.
The median price was $164,500 in December, down 2.5% from a year ago. For the full year, the median price of $166,100 was off 3.9% from 2010 levels.
Realtors said foreclosed homes sold for an average discount of 22% below market value in December, compared to a 20% discount a year ago. Meanwhile, short sales, which are homes sold for less than the amount owed on a mortgage, sold for a 13% discount, compared to a 16% discount in December 2010.
Foreclosures made up 21% of all sales, while short sales were 12% need a personal loan with bad credit. Both figures were comparable to 2010.
But even with the distressed properties on the market, the inventory of homes for sale has gotten tight.
Realtors calculate that at the current sales pace, there is only a 6.2 month supply of homes available for sale, the smallest since March 2005, before the housing bubble burst.
That was down from a 7.2-month supply in November and more than an 8-month supply a year ago, which is a "a notable decline," according to Troy Davig, an economist with Barclays Capital.
"The housing market appears to be making progress in terms of working through its excess inventory," said Davig in a note Friday.
Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist for Deutsche Bank, said the current conditions should lead to improved prices and sales in the near term.
Other encouraging signs include a survey of home builders that showed the most bullish view of current sales conditions and customer traffic in nearly five years. The government’s report on home building is also showing improvement.
"Coming on the back of a dramatic improvement in homebuilders’ sentiment, the latest existing-home sales report corroborates our thesis that a housing recovery has finally begun," LaVorgna wrote in a note.
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Egypt’s election commission and political groups say final results from the country’s first elections since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak show Islamist parties winning nearly three-quarters of the seats in parliament.
An alliance led by the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood won 47 percent of the spots in the 498-seat parliament, while the ultraconservative Al-Nour Party clinched 25 percent.
The two parties are not likely to join forces because of ideological differences.
The liberal Egyptian Bloc, led by a party founded by Christian telecom tycoon Naguib Sawiris, said Saturday it secured 9 percent of the seats in parliament. Another liberal party, the Wafd, also won 9 percent.
The new parliament is set to convene for the first time Monday.
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Last summer, Marie Davis was living in an 800-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment and not liking it. A single woman of 27, she wanted bigger and better.
“I thought, I’m handing money away in rent, and I’ll never see a return on it,” she said.
One day, Davis was passing by a new subdivision, Greystone Estates, in Shiloh. “I saw the price range on the sign, and that caught my attention,” she said. So she stopped in.
The staff at Fulford Homes, which builds in the subdivision, realized something about Marie Davis: She is a rare find for builders. She has a good, steady job, and wasn’t not trapped in a home she can’t sell. People like Davis are today’s prime customers, and there aren’t enough of them.
Two and a half years after the official end of the Great Recession, the home building industry is still stuck deep in its own depression.
Not only are builders selling fewer homes, but the homes they sell are smaller and lower priced. McMansions are becoming passe. A new frugality is at work, driven largely by today’s buyers.
People like Davis benefit from that.
“I realized that what I was paying in rent is pretty close to what I’d be paying in a mortgage,” said Davis, who works in contracting at Scott Air Force Base. She figured she’d be getting a lot more for the money - a three-bedroom, two-bath ranch spanning 1,660 square feet with a two-car garage. The price was $179,000.
She moved in last October, and her monthly mortgage payment is about $100 more than her rent.
Last year was awful for builders in St. Louis.
Single family home construction was down 21 percent from 2010 on the Missouri side of the metro area, measured by permits issued, according to the Home Builders Association of St. Louis.
Preliminary numbers, which doesn’t include the town of DeSoto, show 2,273 home building permits issued last year, less than half the 5,894 built in the top of the boom in 2006.
In the Metro East counties of St. Clair, Madison and Monroe, 796 homes were built through November 2011. That’s down 27 percent from the comparable period in 2010, and 67 percent below the 2006 boom year, according to figures from the Home Builders Association of Greater Southwest Illinois.
The housing depression harrowed the building business. Taylor-Morley Homes went out of business. Whittaker Homes went through bankruptcy. T.R. Hughes sold off or allowed banks to repossess hundreds of lots.
“The common theme is that they went long on land at the peak of the market,” said builder Ken Stricker of Consort Homes in Chesterfield. They borrowed to buy big tracts, and were stuck with it when buyers disappeared.
But Consort and others kept building through the downturn, though at a vastly reduced rate. They are leaner firms today living on narrowed profit margins.
LOOKING FOR BUYERS
Back in the good old days, around about 2006, Gene Stumpf would build 25 to 30 homes a year. They were four and five bedroom mansions, covering up to 4,000 square feet and selling for $500,000 or so.
That market has virtually disappeared, unfortunately, says Stumpf, who founded Stumpf Homes in 1985.
Unemployment is part of the reason, but that’s less of an issue for affluent people who buy big houses.
The real problem is the sick market for existing homes: people who might want a bigger house can’t sell the one they now own for an acceptable price.
So, builders find themselves building more for people who don’t have homes to sell.
“The market that did best for us is the first-time home buyer,” said Mark Fulford, of Fulford homes in O’Fallon, Ill.
The best sellers are ranch houses, with three bedrooms covering about 1,700 square feet and selling in the $180,000 to $190,000 range, he said.
In some ways, it’s a throwback to the modest developments that sprang up locally in the 1960s and 1970s. But the newer models have extras - double vanities in the bathroom, walk-in closets, and full basements.
Those amenities, plus the newness, is the edge that lures buyers away from existing homes.
SMALL IS BETTER
Changes in taste, in family size and personal finance are also driving the trend toward smaller homes. Americans no longer see a house as an investment, so there’s less incentive to buy big.
More customers are older couples. “They don’t need 3,400 square feet. Their kids have moved on,” says Stricker.
Kim Hibbs is a custom home builder. His customers are affluent people who want a home designed for them.
Even Hibbs’ buyers are thinking smaller. There’s less call for large family rooms and formal dining rooms, with customers asking for more open floor plans.
They make up for the smaller size with upgrades, creating “jewel box” homes with heated floors in bathrooms, granite in bedrooms.
In the boom times, developers would start a subdivision, build some model houses and wait for the orders to role in.
“Often, somebody would come in over the weekend and I’d have a contract on my desk Monday morning,” said Stumpf.
Usually, builders wouldn’t start construction until an order was in hand. Buyers would wait to sell their existing homes until the hammers were banging, confident of a rapid sale.
That’s changed. These days, move-up buyers don’t sign deals until they have a contract for the old one in hand, and they can’t wait for construction.
So, builders are putting up more “spec” houses - houses built on speculation that a buyer will show up.
“Those are the ones that sell,” says Stumpf.
A spec home strategy requires a friendly bank, and builders say their bankers are getting a bit friendlier.
The custom business has another problem: appraisals. Appraisers drew criticism for overestimating values during the housing boom, and they’ve become conservative in response.
They sometimes have trouble putting a value on a unique custom house, says Hibbs.
Without a high enough appraisal, borrowers can’t get loans, and builders lose the work.
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Shares of Carnival plummeted in U.S. trading Tuesday after the cruise line operator said it may suffer a more than $100 million hit to its profit from the grounding of the Costa Concordia.
The accident on Friday has left at least 11 people dead after five more bodies were found Tuesday. More than 20 people are still missing as the ship lists on its side near the island of Giglio off the coast of Italy.
Shares of Carnival (), the Miami-based parent company of Costa Cruises, which owns the ship, were down 14.2% in morning trading Tuesday, the first U.S. trading day since the Friday night accident.
Carnival released details of the financial costs in a statement Monday, adding that it is "deeply saddened by this tragic event."
The company said it has insurance policies for both damage to the vessel and personal injury liability for third parties. But there is a $30 million deductible on the damage policy and $10 million deductible on the personal injury policy.
In addition, the loss of use of the ship will likely cost the company between $85 million and $95 million during its current fiscal year, which ends Nov. 30.
"The vessel is expected to be out of service for the remainder of our current fiscal year, if not longer," said the company. "In addition, the company anticipates other costs to the business that are not possible to determine at this time."
Shares of Carnival rival Royal Caribbean Cruises () were down 3.7% in morning trading on investor fears that the accident could hurt demand for all cruises.
Analysts from Susquehanna Financial downgraded both cruise operators on Tuesday, while JPMorgan downgraded only Carnival.
JPMorgan analyst Kevin Milota wrote that this accident comes at a particularly bad time for the cruise industry, since the peak sales period runs from January through March.
"While an event like this is extremely rare in the cruise industry, we do think this will have an impact on bookings in the immediate term, in particular for the cruises that have yet to be booked," Milota wrote.
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The Swiss drugmaker Novartis is cutting nearly 2,000 jobs in the United States, anticipating the impending loss of patent protection on its blockbuster drug Diovan.
Novartis () said it is reducing its "field force" by 1,630 positions, primarily sales reps, and cutting an additional 330 jobs at its headquarters. Though the company did not specify where exactly these job cuts would take place, its U.S. headquarters is in East Hanover, N.J., and it also has facilities in Massachusetts and California.
Altogether, Novartis employs about 121,000 workers worldwide, including 30,000 in the United States.
Diovan, a blood pressure medication, is the company’s top products, bringing in more than $6 billion in revenue in 2010, the most recent year for sales data.
But Diovan will lose its patent protection in September 2012. When that happens, it will open the market for generic production by competing drugmakers such as Teva Pharmaceutics () in Israel and Barr Pharmaceuticals in New Jersey, which will cause the price of the drug to plummet.
That’s great news for patients with cardiovascular problems, but bad news for Novartis. The company has an ample supply of billion-dollar blockbusters, but none of them come close to Diovan.
OxyContin: Purdue’s painful medicine
After Diovan, the Basel-based drugmaker’s top-selling medications are the cancer drugs Gleevec and Glivec, with nearly $4.3 billion in 2010 sales. Novartis has three other billion-dollar blockbusters, including Lucentis, a treatment for vision loss, at $1.5 billion in 2010, as well as the cancer drugs Zometa, also at $1.5 billion, and Femara, at nearly $1.4 billion.
Novartis is reacting to a failed study, announced in December, involving the drugs Rasilez and Tekturna for diabetics. The failure of the late-stage "altitude" study dried up another potential sources of sales for Novartis.
The job cuts will take place in the second quarter, the company said.
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An Iranian pro-reform newspaper says the country’s OPEC governor has warned the country’s Arab neighbors that Tehran will view any increase in crude production to counterbalance a potential embargo on Iranian oil as an unfriendly act.
A Sunday report by Shargh daily quotes Mohammad Ali Khatibi as saying that Arab nations will be an “accomplice in the consequences,” if they raise output to offset any potential loss of Iranian crude exports due to an embargo payday loan lenders.
New U.S. sanctions against Iran approved last month target the country’s central bank and, by extension, its ability to sell petroleum abroad. The U.S. has delayed implementing the sanctions for at least six months. The EU is also contemplating an embargo.
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President Barack Obama will ask Congress today to give him power to reorganize the federal government, a White House official said.
The president is to speak today at the White House at 11:20 a.m. Washington time on steps to make the U.S. government leaner, smarter and more consumer-friendly, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in advance of the remarks. Obama is seeking the authority to merge federal agencies and then force Congress to hold an up-or-down vote on the proposed merger, the official said.
The proposal comes nearly a year after Obama raised the idea in his last State of the Union Address, saying:
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Regions Financial Corp. says it has agreed to sell Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc. to Raymond James Financial Inc. for $930 million.
Morgan Keegan, one of the nation’s leading underwriters of municipal bonds, will pay Regions a dividend of $250 million before closing, resulting in total proceeds to Regions of $1.18 billion.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter.
Raymond James’ Fixed Income and Public Finance businesses will be based in Memphis, Tenn easy payday loans., where Morgan Keegan is currently headquartered. Raymond James will continue to operate a regional support center in Memphis as well.
Regions expects to record an impairment charge of between $575 million to $745 million for the fourth quarter of 2011.