LONDON: The single biggest risk to Britain's nascent economic recovery is continued eurozone weakness, the Bank of England's outgoing governor Mervyn King said in a television interview on Sunday. He called for a "credible medium term plan" to get the economy back on track and said automatic economic stabilizers should be allowed to work. He also predicted that North Sea oil output would recover in the next couple of years. King last week predicted that UK growth would be faster and inflation lower than expected three months earlier. ...
Published On: 2013-05-19

WASHINGTON: Near-term U.S. deficits under President Barack Obama's 2014 budget plan would be higher than those forecast by the Congressional Budget Office this week but $1.1 trillion lower than what it estimates over the coming decade, CBO said on Friday. After four straight years of $1-trillion plus deficits, the non-partisan CBO said that Obama's plan would lead to a $669 billion deficit for fiscal 2013 that ends September 30 and a $675 billion deficit for fiscal 2014 year. Combined, that is $142 billion higher than the CBO estimates for those years based on current tax and spending laws. ...
Published On: 2013-05-19

MUMBAI/BANGALORE: A breach of security at two payment card processing companies in India that led to heists at cash machines around the world has reopened questions on the risks of outsourcing sensitive financial services to the Asian nation. Global banks that ship work to be processed in India, either in-house or to big IT services vendors, were already under pressure to step up oversight of back-office functions after a series of scandals last year. Last week, U.S. prosecutors said a global criminal gang stole $45 million from two Middle Eastern banks by breaking into the two card process...
Published On: 2013-05-19

BEIJING: Sales of fast food giant KFC in China slumped an estimated 36 per cent last month, according to parent Yum! Brands, as consumers shunned chicken due to the H7N9 bird flu outbreak in humans. For Yum overall, which includes other restaurant chains such as Pizza Hut, Chinese same-store sales — a measure of turnover in established outlets — fell an estimated 29 per cent in April. An outbreak of H7N9 avian influenza, found in humans for the first time, has killed 33 people in China since the government began reporting figures in late March. Dell’s profit dives SAN FRAN...
Published On: 2013-05-18

BEIJING: China's housing inflation accelerated to its fastest pace in April in two years, driven by a jump in prices in Beijing and Shanghai, complicating the task of policymakers trying to cool the property sector while supporting economic expansion. Average new home prices rose 4.9 percent last month from a year ago, after a year-on-year increase of 3.6 percent in March, according to Reuters calculations from data released by the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS) on Saturday. The rise was the sharpest since April 2011. Rising home prices have reignited concerns about property inflation, ...
Published On: 2013-05-18

NEW YORK: Europe's top trade official for the first time late on Friday officially cited Chinese mobile telecommunications equipment makers Huawei and ZTE Corp for violating anti-dumping and anti-subsidy guidelines. European Union Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said he was prepared to launch a formal investigation into anti-competitive behavior by these Chinese companies in order to protect a "strategic" sector of Europe's economy. "Huawei and ZTE are dumping their products on the European market," De Gucht told Reuters in an exclusive interview before engaging with U....
Published On: 2013-05-18

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama on Friday trimmed his funding request for the war in Afghanistan and other overseas operations by 10 percent, reflecting his plans to wind down the U.S. presence in that country. The president asked for $79.4 billion to fund so-called overseas contingency operations in fiscal 2014, which begins October 1, down from his original $88.5 billion request, a White House aide said. Obama made the request in a letter to Congress. The U.S. chief executive has said he plans to draw down troops in Afghanistan after 2014 but has not specified by how much. "The pr...
Published On: 2013-05-18

LONDON: Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. will be called back to the British parliament to clarify how its activities in the UK justify its low corporate income tax bill, two lawmakers told Reuters. Amazon will follow search giant Google, which attended another grilling by parliament's Public Affairs Committee (PAC) over its tax affairs on Thursday. A Reuters report earlier this month raised questions over Google's earlier assertions that its UK-based staff don't sell to customers. Over the past six years, Amazon has paid around $9 million in income tax on over $23 billion of sales to Britis...
Published On: 2013-05-17

WASHINGTON: The percentage of global investment that goes to developing countries should triple in the next two decades as emerging economies catch up to richer nations and become more integrated into financial markets, the World Bank predicted in a report on Thursday. These nations and their comparatively younger and bigger populations are also set to become the largest sources of capital, with China and India turning into the world's two biggest investors by 2030, the global development lender said. The shifting landscape of saving and investment has profound implications for everything fr...
Published On: 2013-05-17

SINGAPORE: The dollar held firm near a 10-month high versus a basket of currencies on Friday after a regional Federal Reserve chief said the U.S. central bank may begin to taper its asset buying this summer, while Asian shares were mixed. European stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Friday. At 0604 GMT, futures for Euro STOXX 50, Germany's DAX and France's CAC were 0.1 to 0.4 percent lower. U.S. equities had sagged on Thursday after John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said the Fed could begin easing back on the monetary gas pedal this summer and ...
Published On: 2013-05-17