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Ben S. Bernanke achieved one of his primary goals as Federal Reserve chairman yesterday by setting a numeric goal for inflation, advancing his legacy of greater transparency at the world
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Stocks are opening mostly lower ahead of a statement from the Federal Reserve and a news conference by its chairman.
The Fed will offer details Wednesday about how long it plans to keep interest rates very low. It also will release an economic forecast. Later, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will take questions from reporters.
Traders continue to monitor negotiations between Greece and its private bondholders aimed at reducing the nation’s crushing debt load.
Apple Inc. is up 6.9 percent after reporting its best quarter ever.
The Dow Jones industrial average is down 49 points, or 0.4 percent, at 12,626 shortly after the start of trading. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index is down 4, or 0.3 percent, at 1,310. The Nasdaq is up 13, or 0.5 percent, at 2,799.
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In the trend-setting North American market, BlackBerry phones have gone from must-have messaging toys to outdated clunkers _all in the space of a few years. The new CEO of Research In Motion Ltd., the company behind the phones, says it can claw its way back to the top with new software, but analysts are deeply doubtful.
The two co-CEOs of the Canadian company resigned Sunday. The new CEO is Thorsten Heins, who was the company’s chief operating officer.
Even though the company is in deep trouble and has seen its stock price fall 89 percent from the all-time high it hit in 2008, Heins said Monday that his appointment means “no seismic change” for the company. He’s confident in the course laid out by his predecessors, which hinges on the software revamp.
The new software is called BlackBerry 10, and it’s due in new smartphones late this year. For BlackBerry fans, it should be a welcome upgrade. It’s based on QNX, an industrial-grade operating system that runs devices that need to be very reliable, like core Internet routers and anesthesia monitoring devices.
That means it’s a stable platform that can give BlackBerrys a new look and new capabilities. BlackBerry 10 will have a completely new user interface, built from the ground up for touchscreen input and “very fluid,” Heins said in an interview.
But it amounts to BlackBerry tossing out its own quirky, outdated software, first introduced in 1999, and adopting a slick, touch-oriented operating system, much like Android, Google Inc.’s popular smartphone software, and the software on the iPhone.
Heins said BlackBerry 10 is “extremely competitive” and insisted that RIM is “not in a catch-up race” with the makers other mobile operating systems. He emphasizes that BlackBerry 10 will offer “multitasking,” or the ability to run several applications at the same time. This is something Google Inc.’s Android software and the iPhone operating system offer in a limited fashion.
Phone software developers generally stay away from full multitasking because it can shorten battery life considerably. Improved multitasking was one of the hallmarks of Palm Inc.’s webOS when it launched in 2009, but that didn’t save it from obscurity.
One thing that could entice buyers: the new software will expand the choice of applications greatly, by running ones written for Android. There are hundreds of thousands of such apps, but it’s unclear how many of them will run on BlackBerry 10 without modification.
The PlayBook, RIM’s tablet computer, already runs an early version of BlackBerry 10. RIM had huge hopes for the device when it put it on sale in April, but quickly had to slash the price. In December, the tablets that originally cost $500 were selling for $200, below the cost of making them. RIM wrote off $485 million worth of inventory.
The PlayBook also illustrates the big challenge RIM is facing switching operating systems. It launched without an email program, apparently because it’s very difficult to get QNX to work with the RIM servers that shunt emails around.
Application developers will also have to relearn their tools to write programs for BlackBerry 10, which could prove a big hurdle.
“The platform risks suffering from the same chicken and egg problem as many others_ users won’t buy a device without any apps, and developers won’t develop for a platform without any users,” said Jan Dawson, an analyst with Ovum.
But the main problem analysts see with BlackBerry 10 is that the phones are set to come out so late. They were originally slated for early this year, but pushed to late this year. The company said that was because the right chips weren’t available. When they come out, it will be more than five years since Apple released the first iPhone and set a new standard for phone software.
And even if BlackBerry 10 makes the phones more competitive, that doesn’t mean it can reverse RIM’s fortunes. Analyst Tavis McCourt noted that the history of phone makers who fall on hard times and try to turn things around is not encouraging.
“In fact, it is hard to think of a single successful case in the smartphone era,” he wrote.
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Even as anxiety-ridden individuals play it safe in low-yielding bank accounts, professional investors are showing renewed confidence in the stock market.
Bullishness among institutional investors has reached its highest level since last summer, and their buying has been powering the stock market’s surprising early-year advance, according to a new analysis by TrimTabs Investment Research. The Dow Jones industrial average is up almost 4 percent in the first three weeks of January.
It should be noted that such bullishness isn’t necessarily positive. Widespread optimism sometimes has foreshadowed a drop in share prices. If most investors are already in the market, the logic goes, then there are few new buyers left to come in and lift prices higher.
Still, the upbeat mood among institutional investors points up the vastly divergent opinions between Wall Street and Main Street.
Risk-averse retail investors have contributed only $3.3 billion into stock mutual funds so far this month, even though inflows are typically heavy in January guaranteed online personal loans. Individuals stuffed $932 billion into checking and savings accounts last year, dwarfing the $117 billion they put in stock and bond mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, according to TrimTabs.
“While retail investors continue to put most of their money under the mattress, institutions are more bullish now than at any time since the big sell-off in early August 2011,” said David Santschi, a TrimTabs executive vice president.
A variety of surveys and other sentiment indicators point to rising bullishness among professionals. A survey of hedge funds showed that 42 percent of managers are optimistic versus 30 percent who are bearish, the highest level of bullishness since July.
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Apple’s value on the stock market briefly rose to $400 billion on Thursday, a record high for what was already the world’s most valuable technology company.
The company’s market cap slipped below the $400 billion mark by midday as Apple’s (, Fortune 500) stock fell back from the all-time high of $431.37 it set earlier in the morning. Shares ended the day slightly down, leaving Apple with a $398 billion market value.
Still, that puts Apple in some pretty exclusive territory. Only Exxon Mobil (, Fortune 500) has a higher valuation, at about $420 billion. PetroChina () is Apple’s closest competitor, at $270 billion, and Microsoft (, Fortune 500) follows at $235 billion.
Apple’s market cap is higher than the gross domestic product of Greece, Austria, Argentina, or South Africa. (For more comparisons, check out this excellent blog: Things Apple is Worth More Than.)
Despite its size, Apple is still one of the fastest growing technology companies. The company will report its finances for the past quarter next week, and analysts expect Apple to announce that its sales grew by 45% compared to last year, according to a survey conducted by Thomson Reuters.
Apple’s financial empire
Unsurprisingly, Apple topped CNNMoney’s survey of technology analysts about the best tech company to invest in for the future. Choosing Apple for the prestigious spot as one of the Four Horsemen of Tech, respondents noted that Apple is a frontrunner in the smartphone revolution. Its iPad created a new category of mobile computing, and Apple has embraced cloud computing with its high-profile iCloud.
Apple’s growth is a stunning achievement for a 35-year old company that had a market cap of just $10 billion a decade ago.
The company’s turnaround began with the launch of the iPod, and growth really skyrocketed after the iPhone’s release in 2007. Apple is forecast to have sold a record 30 million iPhones last quarter, following the launch of the iPhone 4S in October.
Apple on Thursday announced three new initiatives to reinvent the textbook, including the ability to create and publish searchable, updatable and interactive e-textbooks for the iPad. The company also released a publishing tool for secondary school curriculums and instituted a $15 price cap for e-textbooks on the iBookstore.
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Standard & Poor’s said Friday that it has downgraded the credit ratings of nine euro area governments, including AAA-rated France and Austria.
S&P lowered its rating for Italy, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus by two notches. The move means Italian bonds are now rated BBB+, dangerously close to the junk bond level that could make it even harder for the government to raise money.
France and Austria both had their top-tier credit rating lowered by one notch to AA+, said S&P. But Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg all maintained their AAA ratings.
S&P cut the ratings of Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia by one notch.
It’s not clear how hard the downgrades will hit markets. Investors have been expecting S&P to act for weeks now — a fact that could blunt the impact. At the same time, downgrades could scare off investors in European debt and raise the cost of government borrowing.
S&P said the downgrades reflect a combination of economic and financial challenges, as well as "an open and prolonged dispute among European policymakers over the proper approach to address challenges."
Specifically, the agency pointed to weakening economies, tightening credit conditions across the eurozone, rising interest rates for a growing number of nations and the "deleveraging" of both governments and households.
"Today’s rating actions are primarily driven by our assessment that the policy initiatives that have been taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the eurozone," said S&P.
S&P warned that most eurozone governments are at risk of further downgrades given the risk of a "more adverse economic and financial environment."
The agency said a deeper-than-expected recession in the eurozone would put further stress on government finances. In addition, governments remain vulnerable to further turmoil in the bond market, which could drive up their borrowing costs.
Meanwhile, S&P said it welcomed recent moves by the European Central Bank to help prevent a credit crisis in the banking system.
On Friday, as the downgrade chatter circulated, stocks sold off. London’s FTSE 100 () and Germany’s DAX () were down about 1.5%, while the CAC40 () in Paris was off 1%.
In the United States, stocks also fell, with the Dow industrials (), S&P 500 () and Nasdaq Composite () posting modest declines.
Standard & Poor’s set the rumor mill in motion last month, when it put 15 members of the eurozone on review for a downgrade, including top-rated Germany and France.
The agency said at the time that it would conclude its review shortly after the latest summit of European Union leaders, which took place on Dec. 9.
European leaders have been banking on the new fiscal compact, announced at the December summit, to resolve the long running sovereign debt crisis.
But S&P said the plan does not go far enough.
"In our opinion, the political agreement does not supply sufficient additional resources or operational flexibility to bolster European rescue operations, or extend enough support for those eurozone sovereigns subjected to heightened market pressures," the agency said.
In response, Olli Rehn, vice president of the European Commission, defended European policymakers. He made a subtle dig, referencing an alert S&P accidentally sent to investors last year regarding France’s credit rating.
"After verifying that … this time is not accidental, I regret the inconsistent decision earlier today by Standard & Poor’s concerning the rating of several euro area member states, at a time when the euro area is taken decisive action in all fronts of its crisis response," Rehn said in a statement.
The plan includes €200 billion of loans to the International Monetary Fund to boost its contingency fund, possible sanctions if member states exceed a 3% deficit ceiling, and accelerated the creation of a permanent bailout fund that will run alongside the current European Financial Stability Facility for about a year.
Leaders from Germany, Italy and France have been sounding upbeat about the proposed solution. Earlier this week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the pact could be signed by Jan. 30, the date of the first EU summit of 2012.
Two days later, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti met with Merkel and sounded equally positive, saying Europe "doesn’t have to fear any more that Italy is a possible source of contagion."
Europe groped throughout much of last year for a way out of its debt crisis. The hardest-hit countries have implemented tough austerity measures, but eurozone countries are now also facing weak economic growth and possibly even recession.
Downgrades could make it harder for governments to raise money by selling bonds to investors in the private sector.
World’s largest economies
And that could add to fears of one or more defaults in the eurozone, which has hung over financial markets for months. In addition, many analysts say the loss of AAA status would likely result in a downgrade of the eurozone bailout fund.
The bailout fund is financed by loan guarantees from the 17 euro area nations, with Germany and France as its largest backers.
The fund also raises money by selling bonds. It is set to offer up to €1.5 billion of 6-month bills on Tuesday.
Last August, the United States had its AAA rating cut one notch amid a political impasse over the nation’s debt ceiling.
The U.S. downgrade initially sparked a sell off in the stock market. But the reaction in the bond market was muted, with yields on U.S. government bonds holding steady at low levels.
That may not be the case in the eurozone bond market.
While yields on Italian and Spanish bills and notes have eased in recent days, investors remain wary of bonds issued by governments struggling with weak economic growth and heavy debt loads.
The real test of market sentiment could come next week. On Monday France wants to sell €8.7 billion of debt. Spain and Germany are also planning on selling debt next week.
– CNN’s Jim Bitterman contributed to this report.
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A helicopter on Sunday airlifted a third survivor from the capsized hulk of a luxury cruise ship 36 hours after it ran aground off the Italian coast, as prosecutors said they were investigating the captain for manslaughter charges and accused him of abandoning his ship.
Authorities reduced to 17 from 40 the number of people still unaccounted for, with an Italian who worked in cabin service pulled from the wreckage of the Costa Concordia off the tiny Tuscan island of Grigio. A South Korean couple on their honeymoon were rescued late Saturday in the unsubmerged part of the liner when firefighters heard their screams.
Three people are confirmed dead after the huge cruise ship carrying more than 4,200 people ran aground on Friday night, forcing a chaotic and frightening evacuation. There are now six crew members and 11 passengers who haven’t been located, Tuscany’s regional president Enrico Rossi said.
Authorities were holding the captain, Francesco Schettino, for suspected manslaughter among other possible charges and a prosecutor on Sunday confirmed allegations that the captain abandoned the stricken liner before all the passengers had escaped.
Asked Sunday by Sky TG24 about the accusations, Grosseto prosecutor Francesco Verusio replied, “unfortunately, I must confirm that circumstance.”
A French couple who boarded the Concordia in Marseille, Ophelie Gondelle and David Du Pays of Marseille, told The Associated Press they saw the captain in a lifeboat, covered by a blanket, well before all the passengers were off the ship. They insisted on telling a reporter what they saw, so incensed that _ according to them _ the captain had abandoned the ship before everyone had been evacuated.
“The commander left before and was on the dock before everyone was off,” said Gondelle, 28, a French military officer.
“Normally the commander should leave at the end,” said Du Pays, a police officer who said he helped an injured passenger to a rescue boat. “I did what I could.”
According to the Italian navigation code, a captain who abandons a ship in danger can face up to 12 years in prison.
Schettino has said the ship hit rocks that weren’t marked on his nautical charts, and that he did all that he could to save lives.
“We were navigating approximately 300 meters (yards) from the rocks,” he told Mediaset television. “There shouldn’t have been such a rock.”
He insisted he didn’t leave the liner before all passengers were off, saying “we were the last ones to leave the ship.”
But that wasn’t the case. In addition to the three people recovered from on board by rescue crews Saturday night and Sunday, police divers and rescue crews on Sunday circled the wreckage searching for more of the 17 missing.
Crews in dinghies touched the hull with their hands, near the site of the 160-foot-long (50-meter-long) gash where water flooded in and caused the ship to fall on its side.
Coast guard officials have said divers would enter the belly of the ship in case anyone is still inside.
Coast guard spokesman Capt. Filippo Marini told Sky Italia TV that Coast Guard divers have recovered the so-called “black box” with the recording of the navigational details from a compartment now under water.
A Dutch firm has been called in to help extract the fuel from the Concordia’s tanks before any leaks into the area’s pristine waters, Rossi, the regional president, said. No leaks have so far been reported.
While ship owner Costa has insisted it was following the same route it takes every week between the Italian ports of Civitavecchia and Savona, residents on the island of Giglio said they had never seen the Costa come so close to the “Le Scole” reefs and rocks that jut out off Giglio’s eastern side.
“This was too close, too close,” said Italo Arienti, a 54-year-old sailor who has worked on the Maregigilo ferry service that runs between the island and the mainland for more than a decade. A now-retired Costa commander used to occasionally do “fly-bys” on the route, nearing a bit and sounding the siren in a special salute for his hometown, he said.
Such a fly-by was staged last August, but there was no incident, he said.
He said the cruise ship always stayed more than five to six nautical miles offshore, well beyond the reach of the “Le Scole” reefs, which are popular with scuba divers.
The terrifying escape from the luxury liner was straight out of a scene from “Titanic.” Many passengers complained the crew didn’t give them good directions on how to evacuate and once the emergency became clear, delayed lowering the lifeboats until the ship was listing too heavily for many to be released.
Several other passengers said crew members told passengers for 45 minutes that there was a simple “technical problem” that had caused the lights to go off.
Passengers said they had never participated in an evacuation drill, although one had been scheduled for Saturday. The cruise began on Jan. 7.
Costa Crociera SpA, which is owned by the U.S.-based cruise giant Carnival Corp., defended the actions of its crew and said it was cooperating with the investigation. Carnival Corp. issued a statement expressing sympathy that didn’t address the allegations of delayed evacuation.
France said two of the confirmed victims were Frenchmen; a Peruvian diplomat identified the third victim as Tomas Alberto Costilla Mendoza, 49, a crewman from Peru. Some 30 people were injured, at least two seriously.
Some 300 of the crew members were Filipinos and that three of them were injured, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said.
The captain has insisted that the reef was not marked, but locals said that the stretch of sea is not difficult to maneuver. Anello Fiorentino, captain of a ferry that runs between Giglio and the mainland, said he makes the crossing every day without encountering problems.
“Yes, if you get near the coast there are reefs, but this is a stretch of sea where all the ships can safely pass,” he said.
Islanders on Giglio opened up their homes and businesses to accommodate the sudden rush of survivors. Rossana Bafigi, who runs a newsstand, said she was really moved by the reaction of the passengers.
She showed a note left by one Italian family that said, “We want to repay you for the disturbance. Please call us, we took milk and biscuits for the children. Claudia.”
At Mass on Sunday morning in Giglio’s main church, which opened its doors to the evacuees Friday night, altar boys and girls brought up to the altar a life vest, a rope, a rescue helmet, a plastic tarp and some bread.
Don Lorenzo, the parish priest, told the faithful that he wanted to make this admittedly “different” offering to God as a memory of what had transpired.
He said each one carried powerful symbolic meaning for what happened on Friday night: the bread that multiplied to feed the survivors, the rope that pulled people to safety, the life vest and helmet that protected them, and the plastic tarp that kept cold bodies warm. “Our community, our island will never be the same,” he told the few dozen islanders gathered for Mass.
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Ralcorp Holdings and Post Holdings, the branded cereal business that’s being spun off as a separate company, announced the lineup of each company’s board of directors.
The board appointments are effective when the spin-off of Post is finalized, which is expected to occur at the end of this month.
The new configuration of St. Louis-based Ralcorp’s board includes: J. Patrick Mulcahy, Benjamin Ola. Akande, Bill Armstrong, Jonathan Baum, Barry Beracha, Kevin Hunt, David Kemper, Patrick Moore and David Wenzel.
Joe Micheletto, vice chairman of Ralcorp’s board of directors, is ending a 46-year career with Ralcorp and its predecessor, Ralston Purina Co. His retirement from the board is effective Jan. 20.
At Post Holdings, the board lineup includes Bill Stiritz, David Banks, Terence Block, Jay Brown, Edwin Callison, Gregory Curl, Dr. William H. Danforth, Robert Grote and David Skarie. In recent SEC filings, Post listed an office building in Brentwood as its base of operations no teletrack payday loans.
Stiritz, who will also serve as CEO at Post, has been chairman of the board at Ralcorp since 1994. With the spin-off, Ralcorp is focusing on its private label, or store-brand, pastas, cereals, and frozen bakery foods.
Post is the third-largest seller of ready-to-eat cereals in the U.S. Its brands include Honey Bunches of Oats, Raisin Bran and Great Grains.
“As Ralcorp and Post move forward with the separation, the composition of these boards represents a significant milestone in becoming independent companies,” said Mulcahy, Ralcorp’s vice chairman, said in a statement. Once the separation of the companies is completed, Mulcahy will serve as chairman of the board at Ralcorp.
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After more than six months on the auction block, Florida-based Raymond James Financial emerged as the winning bidder to acquire Morgan Keegan & Co., a Memphis-based brokerage that’s a powerhouse in municipal bond underwriting.
Raymond James was competing with St. Louis-based Stifel Financial in the final days leading up to Wednesday’s sale announcement, but Stifel’s bid ultimately fell short.
Raymond James is paying $930 million to buy Morgan Keegan. The deal includes a $250 million dividend from Morgan Keegan to its parent company, Birmingham, Ala.-based Regions Financial, prior to the sale, resulting in proceeds totaling $1.18 billion for Regions.
The sale is expected to close within the first quarter, subject to regulatory approval, Regions said.
“We know them well and firmly believe they will be an outstanding long-term partner,” Regions’ president and CEO Grayson Hall said of Raymond James in an investor conference call late Wednesday afternoon. Raymond James’ fixed income and public finance businesses will be based in Memphis, where Morgan Keegan currently is headquartered.
At one time, Stifel was in exclusive negotiations with Regions Financial, which put Morgan Keegan’s brokerage and investment banking operations up for sale last June, according to Bloomberg News.
Regions, which bought Morgan Keegan in 2001 for $789 million, owes the U.S. Treasury $3.5 billion from participating in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, in 2008. Regions is seeking to use the proceeds from selling Morgan Keegan to pay a portion of the TARP money it owes.
Once the exclusivity period ended with Stifel, talks between Regions and Raymond James began to intensify nearl the end of the year, Bloomberg reported.
Stifel executives have declined to comment on the firm’s bid for Morgan Keegan, but Bloomberg News reported Wednesday that Stifel’s most recent bid, made on Jan no fax payday loan. 8, was $875 million in cash and stock.
Several private equity firms that also expressed interest in buying Morgan Keegan also dropped out last fall after financial conditions worsened in the wake of the European debt crisis and the collapse of the derivatives broker MF Global.
Stifel has made several sizable acquisitions in recent years to grow its geographic footprint and its adviser ranks to more than 2,000 in 318 offices, including its $300 million acquisition of Thomas Weisel Partners Group of San Francisco in 2010. Adding Morgan Keegan would have been the largest acquisition in Stifel’s 122-year history.
Stifel recently acquired its headquarters building downtown St. Louis and company executives are in growth mode. In an interview in December, Ron Kruszewski, Stifel’s co-chairman, chief executive and president, said Stifel remains poised for growth opportunities.
For Raymond James, which has 5,400 financial advisers located in offices around the country, the acquisition of Morgan Keegan will add 1,200 financial advisers. It also will bolster Raymond James’ municipal bonds underwriting operations. This week, Thomson Reuters reported Morgan Keegan ranked ninth in the nation as leading underwriter for municipal bonds in 2011 after serving as book running manager on 488 issues with par amounts totaling $9.2 billion.
In the St. Louis area, Morgan Keegan has about 50 employees in offices located in Town and Country, East Alton and Swansea.