Amazon.com went public 15 years ago but it has long been famous for its secretiveness. So when UK parliamentarians got enraged on Nov. 12 by the evasive answers they got from Andrew Cecil, Amazon’s director of public policy, they were merely joining the ranks of a generation of frustrated journalists and analysts.
Greece narrowly staved off yet another economic crisis this week by raising enough money in a Treasury bill auction to avoid default on payment due Friday. It’s a small hurdle in a long and ugly race.
UK regulators are investigating claims that energy companies in Britain have rigged wholesale gas prices similar to the way banks manipulated the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR) to their own advantage.
Chris Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, has called for a “structural overhaul” at the BBC following two high-profile scandals. The first involved claims of sexual abuse of minors by a BBC presenter (the deceased Jimmy Savile). The second scandal hit last week following the airing of current affairs program Newsnight, which wrongly implicated a former senior political official in a sexual abuse scandal involving a minor.
Today a British parliamentary committee mercilessly grilled executives of Amazon, Google, and Starbucks on how they manage to sell billions of pounds worth of books, online ads, and lattes, while paying relatively little, if anything, in UK tax.
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and his coalition government managed to pass a 2013 budget through parliament early this morning, only to face the prospect this week of defaulting on a €5 billion ($6.4 billion) debt repayment. The Greek government has announced plans to cover the gap by selling more debt on Tuesday, but the Financial Times reports that the treasury bill auction is likely only to raise €3.5 billion, leaving a shortfall of €1.5 billion (paywall).
If you think it’s hard to get your four-year-old into school in New York or New Delhi, try London.
A new documentary shows one of Europe’s most powerful industrialists and EADS chairman, Arnaud Lagardère, under the thumb of a familiar tyrant: his future mother-in-law.
France’s third biggest bank, Crédit Agricole, posted a much larger-than-expected third quarter loss, largely reflecting the price of selling off an unprofitable and costly Greek bank.
UBS is in the spotlight today in the latest “banks behaving badly” story. Its German subsidiary is being investigated on suspicion of illicitly transferring client funds to Switzerland, and circumventing tax authorities. Today is just the latest chapter in an ongoing saga. In September, the company’s Paris headquarters, as well as offices in Strasbourg, Bordeaux, and Lyon, were raided as part of a tax evasion probe. Earlier this week, a former UBS employee, Christos Bagios, pleaded guilty in a US court to charges that he helped Americans hide up to $500 million while at the bank. In 2009, the bank paid $780 million in fines to settle similar charges with the US government.
European aerospace giant, and Airbus parent company, EADS today reported mixed third quarter results. Profits slipped 1% to €309 million ($395.7 million) from €312 million a year ago in September, while sales picked up, as did underlying profits. Here’s a quick snapshot:
Pearson’s leadership has long denied any intention to sell the Financial Times (FT). But last night’s fervent and somewhat tetchy response to a Bloomberg story, saying talks were imminent, makes you wonder if there isn’t something more to the rumor this time.
As Europe’s unemployment rate tops 10% with more than 25 million people out of work, and nearly 23% (pdf) of them are under 25, some creative solutions to joblessness are springing up.
EU regulators might soon accept an offer by Apple and four major book publishers over an anti-trust investigation, according to Reuters. Apple, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan—as well as Penguin, which is not one of the firms making the offer—are being investigated for conspiring to fix e-book prices at artificially high levels. At issue are two main things: the “agency model” under which publishers, not retailers, set e-book prices (thus allowing them to maintain a minimum price) and “most-favored nation” clauses that prevent publishers from offering their books at a cheaper price to retailers other than Apple (thus preventing Amazon from undercutting Apple).
BMW beat expectations with third-quarter net profits rising by 16% to €1.29 billion euros ($1.63 billion), despite a tough climate. Revenue surged 14% to €18.82 billion, fueled by sales in China and a 9% rise in the number of vehicles sold.
The crackdown was codenamed: Operation Inertia.
Just as everyone was cheering the UK’s emergence from a double-dip recession, here’s more grim UK purchasing manager’s index (PMI) data. In October, the service sector grew at its slowest rate since December 2010. New business growth also slowed during the month, while staff were cut for a second month running.
Greece is in the spotlight this week as its government struggles to gain parliamentary approval for a €13.5 billion ($17.3 billion) austerity package. The mixture of severe budget cuts and structural reforms is required for international lenders to hand over a €31.5 billion round of bailout aid. Without this aid the country could be broke by mid-month, possibly leading to a euro zone exit.
The now notorious Lagarde List of alleged Greek tax cheats has inspired a rise of copycat lists—perhaps authentic, perhaps not. Like the original Lagarde List, which went suspiciously missing for two years before reemerging last month, the new versions also contain names of everyone from public figures to ordinary Greek citizens who stashed cash overseas, allegedly to avoid taxes.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) joined Barclays and Lloyds this week in reporting third-quarter losses, partly tied to provisions made to repay customers sold unnecessary loan insurance. RBS’s third-quarter net losses were £1.4 billion (£2.2 billion) on revenue of £4.9 billion. A year ago, the company made a net profit of £1.2 billion. (See full results here).
Kostas Vaxevanis, the Greek journalist who published a list of alleged tax dodgers, stands trial in Athens on Thursday. It’s pretty swift justice for the messenger, considering the real culprit is the Greek establishment that failed to investigate the roughly 2,000 people allegedly hiding substantial holdings in Switzerland.
Just a week ago, Britain was celebrating an end to its double-dip recession with GDP growth of 1% for the latest quarter. Today’s poor manufacturing data from the latest purchasing managers’ survey (PMI), however, suggests the positive sentiment may be short-lived.
Lloyds posted third-quarter losses today after taking a massive £1 billion hit to cover costs related to selling clients insurance they didn’t need. The net loss of £361 million ($468 million) is a better result, however, than the £501 million loss from the same period a year ago, though disappointed analysts. (Full earnings statement in this pdf here).
At long last, the revised 2013 Greek budget is in (see Greek version here.) This is the budget that the nation’s international lenders must approve to determine whether to give Greece another €31.5 billion ($40.7 billion) in aid this month before the country goes broke. The budget (still to be approved by parliament) holds some alarming revisions from earlier drafts.
