Here’s a look at some major retailers’ layaway programs:
Toys R Us
TransCanada Corp. is still likely to proceed with the Keystone XL pipeline project, despite the roadblock thrown up by the U.S., says analyst Steven Paget.
Paget, of FirstEnergy Capital in Calgary, said that re-routing the pipeline through Nebraska may drive up the $7 billion cost by $1 billion.
The U.S. has ordered a re-routing in order to avoid the sensitive Sandhills grasslands in Nebraska.
The delay will push any construction start past next year
Tropical Storm Sean continues to strengthen as it moves to the northeast toward Bermuda.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Thursday afternoon that Sean’s maximum sustained winds are 65 mph (100 kph). It is located about 285 miles (459 kilometers) west-southwest of Bermuda and is moving northeast at 13 mph (21 kph). The storm’s center should pass to the northwest of Bermuda on Friday morning.
A tropical storm warning is in effect for Bermuda, where storm conditions are expected to begin Thursday night online payday loan lenders. Sean is expected to produce 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) to 3 inches (8 centimeters) of rainfall there. Swells generated by Sean are affecting the southeastern U.S. coast and Bermuda, with life-threatening surf and rip currents.
The Atlantic hurricane season lasts from June to the end of November.
Italy’s benchmark 10-year borrowing rate has jumped above the 7 percent level widely considered unsustainable over the longer term, a day after Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi announced he would resign after Parliament passes new austerity measures.
The announcement failed to calm markets, with stocks and bonds sliding.
The 7 percent threshold is psychologically important for traders because Greece, Ireland and Portugal asked for bailouts when it became clear the rate wasn’t coming back down from that level.
Berlusconi agreed to leave office after a routine vote confirmed he’d lost his majority in Parliament. What comes next remains unclear.
Berlusconi wants new elections with his hand-picked successor as a candidate. Before that can happen, Italy’s president must decide an interim government and if it will be led by politicians or technocrats.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
ROME (AP) _ Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi confirmed he won’t run again for office and said Wednesday his hand-picked successor Angelino Alfano will be his party’s candidate when Italy holds new elections.
Italian borrowing costs jumped higher a day after Berlusconi promised to resign after Parliament passes new austerity and reform measures. While Berlusconi’s majority was hampered in pushing through reforms, the makeup of Italy’s next government remains a looming question.
Berlusconi said he would leave office after a routine vote in Parliament revealed he no longer had the majority he needs to push through policy. He said he would step aside once Parliament passes economic reforms demanded by the European Union to prevent Italy from being swept up further into Europe’s debt crisis.
No date has been set, but earlier indications suggested it would happen next week.
Despite the move, Italy’s financial markets deteriorated on Wednesday. The yield on Italy’s 10-year bonds jumped another 0.37 of a percentage point Tuesday to 6.95 percent. The main Milan stock index was trading 3.6 percent lower at 15,097. Shares in Berlusconi’s Mediaset empire were battered, trading down 9.8 percent at euro2.262.
Once Berlusconi resigns, President Giorgio Napolitano must begin consultations to form a new government _ possibly with the conservative leader from Berlusconi’s party, or if consensus can’t be reached, a technical government may be sought.
Berlusconi is pressing for new elections in early 2012.
“I won’t run, actually I feel liberated,” Berlusconi was quoted as telling the La Stampa daily. “It’s Alfano’s turn.”
Berlusconi tapped Alfano, his former justice minister, to head his People of Liberties Party a few months ago. At 41, Alfano represents a new generation of politicians after 17 years of Berlusconi leadership.
Mario Monti, a former EU competition commissioner who now heads Milan’s prestigious Bocconi University, has been widely tipped as a candidate to head a technical government.
Berlusconi conceded it was up to Napolitano to decide how to proceed once he steps down.
It’s not clear that Napolitano would want to subject Italy to elections any time soon given the need to calm markets. He may try to sound out politicians about the possibility of forming either a government of technocrats or a broad-based government that could hold a majority in parliament.
India
Mining company Anglo American has gained a controlling interest in diamond miner De Beers, paying $5.1 billion for the 40 percent of De Beers shares held by the Oppenheimer family.
The deal potentially raises Anglo American’s stake to 85 percent. The government of Botswana, however, has pre-emption rights to buy one-fourth of the Oppenheimer shares at the time the transaction closes, potentially increasing its stake to up to 25 percent.
“This has been a momentous and difficult decision as my family has been in the diamond industry for more than 100 years and part of De Beers for over 80 years,” said Nicky Oppenheimer, representing the Oppenheimer family interests which are held by CHL Group.
Anglo American shares were up 3.4 percent in midmorning trading in London.
With stock markets around the world taking a bath this year, your RRSP has probably shrunk dramatically. Thanks to some foresight by former prime minister Paul Martin and some rare cooperation by provincial premiers during the mid-1990s, you’ll at least have a solid Canada Pension Plan to fall back on.
The CPP was founded in 1966 as a way to give all working Canadians some financial security in retirement. Over the years, the plan’s obligations have grown, leading to worries over whether there will be enough in it to pay out as baby boomers retire.
In 1997, then finance minister Martin and provincial premiers did something about it, boosting premiums and allowing the excess to be invested in the stock market by the newly created CPP Investment Board. Last year, the CPP Fund managed by the CPP IB grew by 16 per cent to $153 billion. In the last six months, in contrast, the TSX S&P Composite Index has fallen almost 15 per cent. According to the Chief Actuary of Canada, that means there will be enough money in the fund to pay out CPP benefits for at least the next 75 years.
The cash in the fund comes from premiums deducted from your pay cheque, and income from investments made by the investment board.
Without that investment income, we’d all have to be digging a lot deeper to pay for our grandparents’ and parents’ pensions (the average retiree gets $512 a month from the CPP, but it can go as high as $960; Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplements, paid out of general government revenues, can add another $900). And that’s just what Martin was hoping to avoid when, as federal finance minister, he pushed for reforms to the Canada Pension Plan in 1997.
“We had a bit of a magic moment here,” he said of the reforms, which were implemented following a rare degree of cooperation between the provincial governments. “To be quite honest, the provinces rose to the occasion.”
“My generation was going to be getting a good pension plan, and it was going to be paid for by my children and their generation.”
That’s because until that time, the CPP was what’s known as “pay as you go,” meaning benefits for existing retirees were paid for almost exclusively out of the premiums being taken off the paycheques of active workers. (Any small excess in premiums was invested in low-return government bonds). With more pensioners being supported by fewer active workers, it was a formula for rapidly rising premiums, shrinking benefits and inter-generational resentment.
“Young people felt that there was no savings or pension plan that would be available to them,” said Martin. “There would have been a public outcry against a plan that was essentially a chimera. . . Public pressure would have forced radical change that wouldn’t necessarily have been good.”
What Martin proposed, and what eight out of 10 provinces accepted, was an increase in premiums to 9.9 per cent of a person’s income, and a small cut in benefits. The resulting excess in premiums was allowed to be invested in the stock market, with the goal of boosting the CPP’s money to the point where it didn’t need to rely as much on current premiums to pay out benefits Business Card Holders.
By and large, the strategy has worked, says professor James MacKinnon, head of the economics department at Queen’s University.
“What they did at that time greatly strengthened the CPP. . . The higher contribution rates and more market-oriented investments were a substantial move away from pay as you go,” said MacKinnon. “I don’t see any reason to use the world insolvency and the CPP in the same sentence.”
Having a 75-year investment horizon is a built-in advantage over other investors, says Don Raymond, the CPP IB’s chief investment strategist. For one thing, it allows them to ignore quarterly blips in a company’s performance, even though their long-term business is still solid.
“We tend to think in quarter centuries, not quarters,” said Raymond, a former investment strategist at Goldman Sachs.
The CPP IB has invested your money in everything from Canadian corporate titans like Royal Bank and international giants like Anheuser-Busch/InBev, all the way down to an airport in Auckland, New Zealand, and a holding company that owns hotels and casinos in Macau.
Just over half of the money controlled by the CPP IB is in equities (both public and private), while almost a third is in fixed income (including some government bonds it has owned since the 1997 reforms). The remainder is in a mix of real estate and infrastructure holdings.
And it would be logistically next to impossible, never mind politically suicidal, for any federal government to get its hands on money in the fund in the event of debt woes like those in Greece. For any government to try and get at the money, the Pension Benefits Standards Act would need to be changed, something that requires the approval of at least two thirds of the provinces and territories, representing two thirds of the Canadian population.
While some critics at the time suggested it was reckless to have a national pension plan subject to the vagaries of the stock market, Martin still insists that the decision was the right one.
“Look at the alternatives. The status quo had brought the CPP almost to its knees. The second alternative was to individually invest in pension plans, and that would be even more vulnerable to the market,” Martin said.
Besides, says the former prime minister, the proof is in the pudding. The pudding, in this case, being a report from the Chief Actuary of Canada projecting that the CPP Fund will have enough money to pay out pensions until at least 2086.
“It’s actuarially sound for the next 75 years, which is as far out as they go,” said Martin.
Still, warns MacKinnon, there are no guarantees.
“They don’t know what their rate of return (is that) they’re going to get on their investments, and they don’t know for sure what they’re going to have to pay out . . . You can never say with 100 per cent certainty that any pension plan is fully funded.”
Also read: Why $1M in an RRSP isn’t a pension
Regulators on Friday closed two banks in Georgia and one each in Florida and Colorado, raising to 84 the number of U.S. banks that have failed this year.
The number of closures has fallen sharply this year as banks have worked their way through the bad debt accumulated in the recession. By this time last year, regulators had shuttered 139 banks.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized the four banks. The largest by far was Community Banks of Colorado, based in Greenwood, Colo., with $1.38 billion in assets and $1.33 billion in deposits. Also shuttered were Community Capital Bank, Jonesboro, Ga., with $181.2 million in assets and $166.2 million in deposits; Decatur First Bank, Decatur, Ga., with $191.5 million in assets and $179.2 million in deposits; and Old Harbor Bank, Clearwater, Fla., with $215.9 million in assets and $217.8 million in deposits.
Community Banks of Colorado was a state-chartered institution and under the supervision of the Federal Reserve. The Fed appointed the FDIC receiver of the bank after determining that it had been “critically undercapitalized” since July 29.
The Fed said in a statement that it also consulted with Colorado’s banking commissioner.
Bank Midwest, based in Kansas City, Mo., agreed to assume the assets and deposits of Community Banks of Colorado. In addition, the FDIC and Bank Midwest agreed to share losses on $714.2 of Community Banks of Colorado’s loans and other assets.
The bank’s failure is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $224.9 million.
State Bank and Trust Co., based in Macon, Ga., agreed to assume the assets and deposits of Community Capital Bank. Atlanta-based Fidelity Bank agreed to acquire the assets and deposits of Decatur First Bank, while 1st United Bank, based in Boca Raton, Fla., is assuming the assets and deposits of Old Harbor Bank.
In addition, the FDIC and State Bank and Trust agreed to share losses on $141 short term personal loan.3 million of Community Capital Bank’s assets. The agency and Fidelity Bank are sharing losses on $111.5 million of Decatur First Bank’s assets. The FDIC and 1st United Bank are sharing losses on $155.6 million of Old Harbor Bank’s assets.
The failure of Community Capital Bank is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $62 million. The failure of Decatur First Bank is expected to cost $32.6 million; that of Old Harbor Bank, $39.3 million.
Georgia and Florida have been among the hardest-hit states for bank failures. Regulators closed 16 banks in Georgia and 29 in Florida last year. The failures of Community Capital Bank and Decatur First Bank brought to 22 the number of Georgia lenders shut down this year. Old Harbor Bank was the 12th bank shuttered in Florida.
California and Illinois also have seen large numbers of bank failures.
In all of 2010, regulators seized 157 banks, the most in any year since the savings and loan crisis two decades ago. Those failures cost around $23 billion. The FDIC has said 2010 likely was the high-water mark for bank failures from the Great Recession.
In 2009, there were 140 bank failures that cost the insurance fund about $36 billion, a higher price tag than in 2010 because the banks involved were bigger on average. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008, the year the financial crisis struck with force; only three were closed in 2007.
From 2008 through 2010, bank failures cost the fund $76.8 billion. The FDIC expects failures from 2011 through 2015 to cost $19 billion.
The deposit insurance fund fell into the red in 2009. With failures slowing, the FDIC’s fund balance turned positive in the second quarter of this year; it stood at $3.9 billion as of June 30.
Scratch the Timbits the next time you order that double-double. How about a nice slab of lasagna instead?
Tim Hortons announced Monday it
The football season just started, but Doritos is already thinking about the Super Bowl.
The snack chip brand is going to have its sixth annual “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, which allows viewers to submit their own Doritos commercials and fans to vote on their favorites to appear during the big game.
If the ads score well on the USA Today Ad Meter, which measures the popularity of Super Bowl commercials, contestants win cash prizes of up to $1 million.
This year, Doritos has added a twist: It has enlisted Andy Samberg, a comedian on the popular “Saturday Night Live” program, and The Lonely Island, a creative team that consists of Samberg and two childhood friends, to create an ad to compete in the contest.
If their ad wins, they’ll donate the prize money to charity. If they don’t, they’ll work with the winners on a future yet-to-be-determined Doritos project.
“I see this year as really us raising the stakes a little bit,” said Tony Matta, vice president of marketing. Instead of just cash and recognition, he says winners will get “a career-changing opportunity.”
The Super Bowl is advertising’s largest showcase; the football championship garnered a record 111 million viewers when it aired on Fox in February, according to Nielsen.
In order to get more bang for their buck _ a Super Bowl ad costs about $3 million per 30 seconds _ marketers are increasingly seeking ways to promote their advertising online and get publicity before and after the big game.
“The challenge for marketers today is to really engage consumers using both traditional and new forms of media,” said Tim Calkins, Clinical Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
“Crash the Super Bowl” has been Doritos’ way to create buzz. The brand, which is made by PepsiCo Inc.’s Frito-Lay division, saw video submissions for the contest increase 38 percent to 5,600 for the most recent game played earlier this year. The contest finalists’ videos were viewed 22 million times. Doritos also saw a 30 percent increase in Twitter activity and a 25 percent increase in Facebook activity during the contest high quality business cards.
This year, they’re amping it up by teaming with the partnership The Lonely Island. The team, which also includes Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone, wrote, directed and appeared in a series of popular digital shorts for “Saturday Night Live” with Justin Timberlake. The team also wrote and shot a music video for a song called “I’m on a Boat,” which was nominated for a Grammy.
Samberg said The Lonely Island agreed to work on the campaign in part because the Super Bowl is “such a large stage,” and he added “we just thought it was cool that young filmmakers get an opportunity to get that break.”
So far, winners of the contest have garnered some commercial work but there has been no breakout success story yet. The winners from the telecast earlier this year, Tess Ortbals and J.R. Burningham, started their own company, Mythmakers Entertainment, to pursue commercial work after creating an ad that took the stop spot on the Ad Meter.
That ad, “Pug Attack” shows a man mocking a dog with a bag of Doritos through a glass door. The pug then knocks down the door and eats the chips.
The first $1 million winners, Joe and Dave Herbert, brothers who won the contest in 2009, have gone on to direct several beverage spots and have shot several Web commercials. They’re also developing a feature film.
Matta said the goal is to one day launch a winner who can capitalize on the break and become a big-name director. “I would love in two or three years from now for the winner of this year’s program be directing or producing major motion picture film, that is true success,” he said.
Participants can enter the contest this year by submitting a 30-second Doritos ad at http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com between Oct. 3 and Nov. 21. Five finalists will be announced in January 2012, ahead of NBC’s Feb. 5, 2012 Super Bowl XLVI broadcast.
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