The announcement comes after workers at the Ellesmere Port plant, near Liverpool, overwhelmingly backed a job deal which turned the factory into a 24-hour-a-day operation, a key cost-cutting measure pursued by parent company GM Europe.

GM Europe lost $700 million in 2011 and has been struggling to turn around its Opel and Vauxhall brands. It had been feared the company would close the Ellesmere Port facility in favor of consolidating production elsewhere _ such as its headquarters in Ruesselsheim in Germany or Gliwice in Poland.

The announcement _ which comes with a 125 million pound (nearly $200 million) investment and 700 extra jobs _ is a break for leaders such as British Business Secretary Vince Cable, who fought hard to keep the British plant open credit score.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking from the northern city of Manchester, called the decision “a fantastic vote of confidence.”

“The U.K. government gave this its full backing. The unions supported the necessary changes. The workforce has responded magnificently. It is a British success story,” he said.

Cable, who at one point traveled to the U.S. to plead the plant’s case, told BBC television that no financial inducements were offered to GM to keep the U.K. facility open, saying the move underlined that the U.K. is “a good business environment for the motor industry.”

Production of the new car is due to begin in 2015, with at least 160,000 vehicles scheduled to be produced every year.

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Greece is headed for another general election next month after nine days of unsuccessful talks since the May 6 poll yielded a split vote with no one party able to govern on its own.

The next election could well become a referendum over Greece’s place in the euro _ which could mean the established Greek political parties that took a hammering in the first poll might do better. However, markets are still worried that Syriza, the radical left coalition that came a surprise second in the first election, may actually emerge as the biggest party in the next time round. Led by Alexis Tsipras, Syriza has steadfastly stood to its anti-austerity, anti-bailout position.

“The fear is that the anti-austerity vote will grow,” said Fawad Razaqzada, market strategist at GFT Markets. “The big issue is how this squares with the Greeks’ desire to keep the euro as their currency.”

Without agreeing to another round of austerity measures, it’s conceivable that Greece’s partners in the eurozone will withhold the next round of bailout cash that’s keeping it afloat. An exit from the euro could then become inevitable.

In Greece, that prospect has led to further outflows of Greek deposits, with some (EURO)800 million thought to have made their way out of Greek banks since the election. Those deposits may have found their way into safe-haven alternatives, such as German and British ten-year bonds, which have risen to record highs in the secondary markets. The dollar has also mustered a lot of support through its perceived-status as a safe haven asset, especially against the euro, which has sunk to near four-month lows of around $1.27.

Stocks, widely viewed as riskier assets, have taken a battering amid the political uncertainty in Greece, not least in Athens when the main market is trading at near 20-year lows.

“Equity markets remain under pressure as investors fret about the consequences of a Greek exit from monetary union,” said Neil MacKinnon, global macro strategist at VTB Capital. “The likelihood of this happening, in our view, is high but the crisis will not stop with a Greek exit.”

Elsewhere in Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 1 percent at 5,381 while Germany’s DAX fell the same rate to 6,338. The CAC-40 in France was 0.1 percent lower at 3,037.

The bonds of Spain and Italy were under pressure too as investors worried about contagion from the Greek crisis. If Greece leaves the euro, then a precedent would’ve been set that could be taken up by other countries burdened by high debt levels. The yield on Spain’s ten-year bond, a gauge of investor concerns, was up at 6.33 percent, while Italy’s rose to 5.85 percent. Though down on the levels they hit last November, the two rates are uncomfortably near the 7 percent level, widely-considered to be unsustainable in the long-run.

Wall Street was poised for a subdued opening, with both Dow futures and the S&P 500 futures down 0.1 percent.

Earlier, Asian benchmarks recorded sharp losses earlier in the day.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index dropped 1.1 percent to close at 8,801.17, its lowest close since Jan. 30, amid discouraging economic news. Core private-sector machinery orders fell 2.8 percent in March, the first drop in three months, Japan’s Cabinet Office said.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng plummeted 3.2 percent to 19,259.83 and South Korea’s Kospi fell 3.1 percent to 1,840.53.

Mainland Chinese shares also lost ground, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index falling 1.2 percent to 2,346.19. The Shenzhen Composite Index dropped 1.4 percent to 942.04.

Oil prices tracked equities lower amid the economic uncertainty _ the main New York rate was down $1.54 at $92.50 a barrel.

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This will be possible because of the “Jumpstart Our Business Startups”(JOBS) Act that became law last month.

The act will allow smart small businesses, along with pie-in-the-sky dreamers and flim-flammers, to sell stock in their ventures to ma-and-pa investors across the country through the Internet. That’s called crowdfunding.

Entrepreneurs can raise small fortunes without the normal audits and disclosures designed to protect investors in initial public offerings today.

I’ll call my company Gimme Inc. I’m not sure what business I’ll be in, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll have a spiffy business plan that envisions fantastic profits! I won’t mention that I’m lazy as a hound dog.

Then I’ll put my stock offer on the Internet and wait for the rubes to pay up. I have an entire nation to go sucker-hunting in, thanks to the JOBS Act.

When the money rolls in, I’ll pay myself a very nice salary, and I’ll rent an office from my brother-in-law, at a sweet profit for him. I’ll hire my worthless relatives. I’ll make a stab at actually running a business, just in case the feds come poking around, but mainly I’ll skin the gullible.

When the money finally runs out, I’ll be richer and my investors will be shirtless.

I’ll do it all under the muzzled noses of state and federal securities watchdogs newly chained by the JOBS Act.

Of course, I’m just an amateur miscreant. So let’s hear from a more celebrated crook: Sam Antar, former chief financial officer of the Crazy Eddie chain, who plead guilty to a multi-million dollar fraud.

“The JOBS Act for criminals is crime made easy. It makes me want to end my retirement from crime and be going back to fleecing investors,” he told Reuters. “Any time you peel a way a layer of compliance, a layer of controls, it makes crime easier.”

He’s not the only one complaining. The chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the AARP, the Consumer Federation of America and other do-gooder groups lined up against the law.

The JOBS act is billed as a way to make it easier for entrepreneurs to raise capital. It does that by weakening those pesky requirements that assure investors that a business is viable, or actually exists.

It lessens requirements for audited financial statements and certified financial controls for companies going public with revenue under $1 billion. That includes most companies going public. It lessens conflict-of-interest rules on securities analysts who report on such companies.

Some of those rules were put in place after the corporate scandals of a decade ago, in which big companies lied about their condition, analysts lied to investors and investors got skinned. Remember Enron? Congress forgot.

For mom and pop investors, the biggest peril lies in the crowdfunding provision.

“Most of those who invest through crowd-funding sites are likely to lose some or all of their money. At worst, crowd-funding web sites could become the new turbo-charged pump-and-dump boiler room operations of the internet age,” said the AARP in a letter to Congress.

Companies hoping to crowdfund investments must make their offers through a securities broker or a new crowdfunding “portal.” The portals must do a cursory regulatory background check on the company’s owners. But the portals can’t advise investors on whether a deal is worthwhile.

Companies raising less than $100,000 from investors would have to produce only an income tax return and financial statements certified by their CEO. That’s a welcome mat for fraud. For offerings up to $500,000, financial statements must be reviewed by an accountant. Only bigger deals require an audit.

Thankfully, the law limits the little guy’s investments. People with net worth or earning up to $100,000 can invest only $2,000 or 5 percent of their income. Richer folks can invest up to $10,000 or 10 percent of their annual income.

In Missouri, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan says she favors crowdfunding in theory, but she is unhappy that the law prevents her securities regulators from screening small companies offering stock in the state.

“Instead of weeding out the bad actors on the front end, we’ll have to help investors who’ve been scammed on the back end,” she said.

A possible saving grace lies with the SEC, which must devise detailed rules for the program. Lets hope those rules are tough as nails. The SEC has until January to decide.

I suspect that most investors won’t lose their money to crooks. Instead, they’ll lose it on honest entrepreneurs with bad ideas.

Angel investors and venture capital managers are very smart people who fund very young companies. They know how to pick them. Still, they lose money on half the companies in which they invest.

If the smart money has that much trouble picking winners, how do you think ma and pa will do?

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The Informal Anarchist Federation’s Olga unit said it would continue to carry out other “actions” in the claim sent to leading daily Corriere della Sera, which posted it on its website.

Roberto Adinolfi was shot in the leg Monday near his Genoa home by an unknown masked gunman, who fled as a passenger on a motor scooter. Adinolfi, who was released from the hospital on Friday, is the CEO of Ansaldo Nuclear, a division of the state-controlled Finmeccanica company.

In the claim, the anarchist group, known as the FAI, listed Adinolfi’s role in promoting nuclear energy as the reason for targeting him and said that it would continue its campaign against Finmeccanica, a defense and aeronautics company.

The FAI has previously claimed responsibility for letter bombs sent to Italy’s Equitalia tax collection agency, including one that wounded the organization’s director last December.

A letter containing small amounts of explosive powder was received Thursday at the main office of Equitalia in Rome, the news agency ANSA reported. No one was reported harmed.

Equitalia has come under more mainstream pressure in recent weeks amid media reports of a rash of suicides and other public acts of desperation among businessmen in financial difficulty.

The desperate acts have brought to the fore the issue of slow payments from the state to private businesses, and the inability, to date, of businessmen to count the balance owed them from the state against their tax bill.

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Enbridge is holding its annual general meeting here and anger over its proposed Northern Gateway pipeline threatened to get loud.

With drums pounding, protesters chanted

The gauge dropped to minus 19 from minus 11 in March, which was the highest since June 2010, according to a report today by London-based RICS, which conducts a monthly poll of property surveyors nationwide. A reading below zero means more surveyors saw price drops than gains last month. An index of sales fell below zero for the first time since September.

The property market is struggling to recover as Britain suffers its first double-dip recession since 1975. Bank of England policy makers will probably halt their bond-purchase program at 325 billion pounds ($526 billion) at a meeting this week, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

]]> http://fundsreporter.com/uk-rics-house-price-gauge-drops-to-six-month-low-bloomberg/feed/ http://fundsreporter.com/blasts-fire-at-thai-petrochemical-plant-kill-12/ http://fundsreporter.com/blasts-fire-at-thai-petrochemical-plant-kill-12/#comments Sun, 06 May 2012 18:36:25 +0000 Wolf http://fundsreporter.com/blasts-fire-at-thai-petrochemical-plant-kill-12/ Officials say explosions and a fire at one of the world’s largest petrochemical industrial estates have killed 12 people and injured more than 100 others in eastern Thailand.

The blasts Saturday forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 people living near Map Ta Phut industrial estate, Thailand’s largest industrial park. The park is in Rayong province, 180 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of Bangkok.

Rayong Gov. Seni Jittakasem says authorities are investigating the cause of the explosions, which occurred when workers were cleaning a chemical tank at a Bangkok Synthetics plant, a synthetic rubber manufacturer guaranteed high risk personal loans.

He said Sunday all evacuees had returned home. Most of the dead were workers at the plant.

The fire sent thick chemical smoke over a wide area. It was put under control after four hours.

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The company’s first-quarter net income was only a third of last year’s, when results were boosted by the sale of GM’s stake in a parts company.

GM earned 60 cents per share compared with $1.77 a year earlier. Revenue rose 4 percent to $37.8 billion.

GM lost $256 million pretax in Europe, where it also took a $590 million charge related to pension costs payday loan no faxing. North America led gains with a $1.7 billion pretax profit. GM made $529 million in Asia and $83 million in South America.

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