Any time a single company is responsible for nearly 10% of a country’s GDP, it’s a problem. Thanks to a lack of competition, Pemex, the Mexican oil company responsible for producing all of the country’s oil, has seen production fall steadily over the past decade.
Since Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro took office last month, the country’s already decimated economy has not only floundered but also continued its neglect in providing people with the most basic goods: Milk, butter, coffee, cornmeal and even toothpaste have all been in short supply. And now toilet paper is the latest staple to become scarce.
Normally a nation as economically challenged as Argentina would find its consumers keeping their wallets closed. But instead, rampant inflation is leaving people with no choice but to buy brand new cars.
Argentina’s courts, in a welcome moment of sanity, have overruled attempts (link in Spanish) by Argentina’s government to prevent anyone who isn’t the government from publishing a figure for inflation that isn’t what the government says it is.
Starbucks has been working tirelessly to expand its business in China with its promise to open 1,000 stores by the end of this year.
While hustlers in Buenos Aires secretly buy dollars on the street, the Argentine government is openly begging for greenbacks.
Mexico’s auto production has taken a big leap since NAFTA. The country now accounts for roughly 20% of North American light vehicle production(pdf), according to a report this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, compared with a 6% share in 1990.
A couple of weeks ago, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt suggested on Twitter that everyone will be on the internet by 2020.
Mexico appears to be erupting over president Enrique Peña Nieto’s sweeping education reforms.
The numbers: Impressive. The British energy powerhouse rode last month’s sale of Russian oil company TNK BP to $16.86 billion in profit in its second quarter, nearly tripling from the same period a year ago. Revenue jumped 16% from last year to $107.21 billion. Gas production fell year-on-year, however, due in part to BP’s asset sell-off.
It’s not just the euro crisis ailing Banco Santander.The numbers out of Brazil have been a eyesore, too. Here’s a snapshot:
This story has been corrected.
The former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is still causing a stir from the grave. The UK government released figures today on the cost of Thatcher’s funeral, which was held on April 17. The Prime Minister’s family reportedly only paid for the flowers and the undertaker’s bill but the £3.6 million spent was less than expected. Here are seven other numbers from the Iron Lady’s funeral:
Starbucks wants you to buy its coffee … and pastries, smoothies, sandwiches, desserts, among lots of other confections.
Mexican retail is reeling.
Patrick Kane was nine months old when he lost part of his left arm and right leg to meningitis. Now 16, he’s the first person in the UK to wear the world’s most advanced bionic hand.
A little over a week ago, Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin brushed aside rumors that the country was going to abandon its massive space base in Kazakhstan.
The numbers: The world’s second largest oil field services firm reported a net loss of $18 million (pdf) on the heels of $637 million in litigation charges from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. But discounting money set aside for the oil spill and losses incurred from closed operations, Halliburton’s quarterly profit ballooned to $0.67 per share, significantly higher than analyst expectations of $0.57 per share. Strong sales, which climbed 1.5% from last quarter to $6.97 billion, coupled with successful cost-cutting helped the company’s operating profit margin reach 16%.
Chaos has befallen Boston. The past 18 hours alone: an MIT police officer dead, a bloody shootout that killed one of the two suspects in the marathon bombings; a city lockdown; and an all-out manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the second suspect still at large. (Here’s everything we know about him.)
The suspects in the Boston Marathon explosions are two brothers of Chechen descent who have lived in the US for much of the last decade, attending schools in Massachusetts. Any motivation for the act remains unclear at the moment, amid varying accounts of the intensity of their political and religious engagement. The older brother, an amateur boxer who hoped to join the US Olympic team at one point, was killed in a gunfight with law enforcement early this morning. His young brother was apprehended alive after being surrounded in a boat in backyard in Watertown, Mass. Here are some of the key details:
There goes the last of former Barclays CEO Bob Diamond’s close-knit crew of senior executives: Rich Ricci just announced this morning that he’ll be stepping down as the bank’s head of corporate and investment banking.
Would it surprise you to hear that every dean of Harvard Business School, Wharton Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, and University of Chicago Booth School of Business has been male?
The numbers: US energy giant Kinder Morgan (KMI), which specializes in pipelines and energy storage, posted quarterly profit of $292 million, or $0.28 per share, slightly missing analyst expectations of $0.31 per share. Revenue leaped 65% from a year earlier, well above the expected 57.2%. KMI’s quarter rode strong numbers from its Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP affiliates, for which profit nearly quadrupled, and El Paso Pipeline Partners LP, which reported a profit of $174 million.
The numbers: Mammoth toymaker Mattel posted an impressive quarterly profit of $38.5 million, or $0.11 per share, easily eclipsing analyst expectations of $0.08 per share. Revenue jumped 7% from a year earlier, beating expectations as well; Mattel’s quarter benefitted from soaring sales of its American Girl dolls, which rose a whopping 32%.
