An unprecedented outflow of New Zealand citizens last year for jobs and better pay in Australia is leaving the nation
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Ever since oil was discovered in the North Sea off the British coast in December 1969, the Scottish National Party claimed it for Scotland.
Now in power and closer than ever to a referendum on whether to break from the U.K. after more than 300 years, the SNP government in Edinburgh led by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is counting on tax revenue from the oil industry as a key pillar of the economy along with financial services.
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Nike Inc.’s fourth-quarter net profit rose 14 percent to beat expectations as the company’s sales improved around the globe.
The world’s largest athletic shoe company reported Monday that it earned $594 million, or $1.24 per share, for the quarter. That’s up from the $522 million, or $1.06 per share, it earned in the same quarter last year.
Nike’s total revenue rose 14 percent to $5.77 billion
The results handily beat the $1.16 per share on revenue of $5.53 that analysts polled by FactSet were anticipating. The news sent shares of the company, based in Beaverton, Ore., soaring in after-hours trading.
Nike had warned investors that higher costs would cut into its profit margins. The company, like many of its peers, is dealing with higher costs for materials, labor and freight.
The company was able to make up for the rising costs with higher sales volume. Revenue improved in every market except Japan during the quarter.
“We delivered exceptional results in extraordinary times,” Mark Parker, Nike’s CEO said.
For the full year, Nike earned $2.13 billion, or $4.39per share, compared with $1.9 billion, or $3.86 per share, for the prior year.
Shares of Nike jumped $3.15, nearly 4 percent, to $81.62 in after-hours trading.
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Israel’s vital tourism industry has been surprisingly resilient in the face of regional turmoil that has dried up visits to neighboring Arab countries, tourism officials say.
In contrast to Egypt and Jordan, the number of tourists visiting the Jewish state appears to be holding steady, according to tourism experts.
“Tour operator bookings indicate a good picture for 2011,” Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov told The Associated Press in an interview.
With its holy sites and Mediterranean beaches, Israel has long been a tourist magnet. Foreign tourists pumped some $4.4 billion into the Israeli economy last year, up from $3.3 billion the previous year, according to government figures.
After a record year with more than 3.4 million visitors in 2010, Israel was hoping to attract as many as 4 million this year. Ami Etgar, chief executive of the Israel Incoming Tour Operators Association, said the figures probably won’t be that high, but he expects them remain steady or fall slightly to no less than 3.2 million in 2011.
Egypt and Jordan are both reporting significant drops in tourism, attributed directly to the political unrest in the Arab world.
According to Israel’s Tourism Ministry, overall traffic to Israel was down 2 percent in February from a year earlier, to 218,000 tourist entries. But the number of travelers visiting Israel alone was up 10 percent. March figures are not in yet.
Misezhnikov noted that in recent weeks, Israel has experienced a deadly bombing in Jerusalem, rocket fire from the Gaza Strip and the killing of five West Bank settlers in their sleep.
“All these things create a mini-crisis. We hope this mini-crisis will pass cash advance no faxing.”
Ami Federmann, president of the Israel Hotel Association, said the Arab unrest “creates an atmosphere that isn’t good.” But overall, he added, “it’s not something substantial at this point.”
Tourism officials said it was too early to predict summer traffic. Misezhnikov said Israel expects to see 250,000 tourists in the Passover-Easter season this month, on par with last year.
Day trips to Israel from Egypt have been hardest hit. Last year, some 400,000 day trippers flew to Israel from the Sinai beach resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. This segment has suddenly dried up, because Sharm el-Sheikh hotels are mostly empty now, Misezhnikov said.
Their absence is offset somewhat by cruise ships making more frequent and longer stops off Israel’s coast instead of anchoring in Egypt, officials say.
Campaigns aimed at bringing in tourists from Ukraine and Russia, launched before the pro-democracy revolts began sweeping the Mideast three months ago, are also paying off, tourism officials say.
More than 1 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union live in Israel, and many have relatives or former neighbors there, making Israel an attractive vacation draw. Israel canceled visa requirements for both Ukrainians and Russians, and that, too, has been an impetus for them to visit, the officials say.
Israel is also looking to develop tourism markets in India, South Korea, Poland, China and Brazil, said Misezhnikov. His ministry hosted an international tourism conference in Jerusalem last week.
Group of 20 leaders may limit criticism of the Federal Reserve for flooding the world with money when they meet in China as Europe’s debt crisis and Japan’s disaster take precedence.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet will gather in Nanjing for a one-day seminar on the international monetary system tomorrow. China, Brazil and South Korea all previously slammed the Fed’s $600 billion program for driving down the dollar and fueling asset bubbles in emerging markets.
A 9.0-magnitude earthquake in Japan, armed NATO intervention in Libya, and the heightened prospect of a bailout of Portugal are among developments since Sarkozy proposed the meeting seven months ago. At the same time, the Fed plans to end its Treasury purchases in June and officials have signaled that additional quantitative easing is unlikely as the American economy is showing signs of strengthening.
Criticism of U.S. monetary policy is “so yesterday,” said Chris Rupkey, chief financial economist at Bank of Tokyo- Mitsubishi UFJ in New York. “World leaders and monetary officials have a lot more important things on their plate.”
Officials including French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde will discuss topics including “shortcomings in the international monetary system” and dealing with volatile capital flows, according to the schedule for the conference in Nanjing, a city on the Yangtze River about 170 miles (270 kilometers) from Shanghai.
Currency Intervention
The meeting comes after Portugal’s 10-year bond yield advanced to a euro-era record, unrest in the Middle East and North Africa pushed crude oil over $100 a barrel, and the Group of Seven nations this month triggered the biggest fall in Japan’s yen in more than two years. A weaker currency may help Japanese exporters to weather a disaster spanning nuclear leaks and the annihilation of northeastern towns.
Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management International, said it will be “fascinating” to see how a Chinese delegation including central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan reacts to any discussion of the G-7 move.
China itself intervenes to limit gains by the yuan, drawing criticism from trading partners including the U.S. The currency traded at 6.5610 per dollar yesterday after touching a 17-year high of 6.5552 on March 22.
The host nation has been one of the biggest critics of U.S. monetary policy, blaming it for driving up commodity prices and stoking inflation, which reached a 28-month high of 5.1 percent in China in November.
Fed’s Easing
The Fed, which sets monetary policy independent of Geithner’s Treasury Department, has initiated two rounds of quantitative easing to support growth after the financial crisis.
“Some countries have further eased their monetary policies in order to spur economic recovery and that has caused rising global commodity prices,” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told chief executives gathered on March 21 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
In an interview this week, Goldman’s O’Neill asked whether the Fed’s critics would rather see a permanently damaged American economy or a U.S. recovery where “one of the consequences might be higher commodity prices.”
O’Neill, who will speak in Nanjing in a panel on liquidity management moderated by U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, said he expects possible changes to the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights to be discussed. In 2009, Zhou suggested in a policy paper that SDRs may be the basis for a new global currency.
Sarkozy’s Agenda
While French officials said there will be no group statements or decisions, Sarkozy’s own agenda in China includes pushing industrial projects such as Areva SA (CEI) nuclear-power plants, Airbus SAS planes and Alstom SA (ALO) high-speed trains.
Tomorrow’s event also reflects the French leader’s desire to organize a new “Bretton Woods” during his presidency of the G-20 to address what he has called imbalances in the global monetary system. He first raised the possibility of such a meeting in August and pressed the Chinese to act as hosts.
Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, was the site of a 1944 meeting which led to the establishment of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
“I think in some sense maybe the axis of discussion for this G-20 is going to be helping the Chinese assume a bit more prominence at the global table,” said Cliff Tan, head of emerging-markets research at Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong.
–Michael Forsythe. With assistance from Rebecca Christine in Washington and James Hertling in Beijing. Editors: Paul Panckhurst, James Hertling.
Singapore’s inflation held above 4.5 percent for a third month as the cost of transportation, food and housing climbed, sustaining pressure on the central bank to join regional policy makers in damping inflation.
The consumer price index increased 5 percent last month from a year earlier, a Department of Statistics statement showed today. That compares with an inflation rate of 5.5 percent in January. The median estimate of 18 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 5.4 percent gain. Prices fell 0.1 percent from January, without adjusting for seasonal factors.
Asian central banks from India to South Korea and Thailand have tightened monetary policy this month as rising oil and commodity prices threaten to fuel inflation. Singapore last month raised its inflation forecast for 2011, and economists from Standard Chartered Plc to Citigroup Inc. predict the central bank will revalue the currency or let it appreciate faster at the policy review in April.
“Inflationary risks are certainly rising,” Irvin Seah, an economist at DBS Group Holdings Ltd. in Singapore, said before the report. “Food and fuel prices will surely become more prominent factors in the inflation equation going forward. And that should prompt further monetary action from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.”
The central bank, which uses the exchange rate as its main tool to manage inflation, revalued the currency in April 2010 and said in October it would steepen and widen the currency’s trading band while continuing to seek a “modest and gradual appreciation.”
Currency Climbs
Consumer prices will probably rise 4 percent this year, according to the median estimate in a survey of 20 economists by the central bank released this month. Consumer prices may climb 3 percent to 4 percent this year, up from a previous forecast of 2 percent to 3 percent, the government said Feb. 17.
The Singapore dollar has gained more than 10 percent against the U.S. currency in the past year to be the best performing currency in Asia excluding Japan.
The Singapore dollar may strengthen to S$1.23 versus the U.S. currency by the end of 2011, economists surveyed by the central bank predicted. It traded at S$1.2644 a dollar at 12:20 p.m. local time.
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