From Staff Reports By most standards, 3.9% GNP growth is pretty good. But not for Turkey, where the second quarter figure is down from 6.9% in the previous quarter, marking its slowest growth since Q1 2002. Turkey’s economy has enjoyed five-straight years of growth. In 2005, Turkey’s economy grew at a 7.4% clip. In 2006, […]
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Global Markets
S&P Rates "Most Vulnerable" Nations
From Staff Reports Latvia, Iceland, Bulgaria and Turkey could be among the nations hurt the most if the global credit crunch continues to escalate, said a new Standard & Poor's Inc. ranking of 15 countries from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. S&P's so-called "Liquidity Vulnerability Index" tries to measure the sovereign vulnerability of […]
China Communication Construction Taunts Barred U.S. Investors With 136% First-Half Profits, 130% YTD Stock Gains
By Mike Caggeso Staff Writer China Communication Construction Co. released striking first-half numbers that parallel the country's massive trade explosion. Profits rose 136%, revenue rose 24% and earnings per share leaped 90% during the first half, CCCC reported in its first half-year earnings statement since its December 2006 IPO in Hong Kong. Infrastructure construction, which […]
Central Banks Engaged in a Constant Battle with Liquidity
From Staff Reports While central banks in the United States and Europe did their best to infuse their respective economies with liquidity, central banks in China and Japan were doing just the opposite. The People's bank of China last week sold $20 billion worth of three year treasury bills hoping to siphon off excess funds […]
Hold your noses and profit
By Martin HutchinsonDirector of Global Investing Research Emerging-markets investing can be a strange business. Most of the time, the process is fairly simple, and profitable. All one must do is to: Identify the two or three best prospective countries. Examine the economic and political prospects of each one (as well as the prospects of the […]
Chinese Banks Go Public to Satisfy Bull Market Demand
By Jason Simpkins Staff Writer China Construction Bank Corp. is gearing up for what is likely to be the world's second biggest public stock offering this year. The amount the bank expects to raise was not disclosed in the preliminary prospectus released Tuesday. But based on current share prices it's estimated that the stock offering […]
Sony Financial Holdings Shaping to be Japan's Biggest IPO of the Year
By Mike Caggeso Staff writer Most of us know Sony Corp. (SNE) as Japan's electronics and videogame juggernaut. But its upcoming IPO will add another public dimension — insurance and financial services juggernaut. Yesterday (Tuesday), the Tokyo Stock Exchange approved the application for the listing of the common shares of Sony Financial Holdings. Sony Corp. […]
Slovakia economy grows 9.4%
From Staff Reports Higher wages and growing exports powered the Slovakia economy to a second-quarter growth rate of 9.4%, the government’s statistical office reported. Among the key factors: Industrial production rose 15.9%. Wages rose 6.7%. The number of unemployed workers fell 18.5%. Bloomberg News reports that newly built plants by automakers PSA Peugeot Citroen and […]
Beijing's Finance Minister Resigns
From Staff Reports China's finance minister resigned Thursday, the day after President Hu Jintao criticized finance officials over a lack of integrity, the Reuters news agency reported last week. The precise motivation for Jin's replacement remains unknown, but several Chinese sources have suggested that a sex scandal was his undoing. According to published reports, the […]
Germany Shows Slight Improvement in Unemployment
From Staff Reports Germany’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate held steady at 9%, according to The Associated Press. The total number of unemployed individuals was 3.705 million in August, fewer than July’s 3.715 million, but more than the 3.687 million unemployed in the month of June. Adjusted for seasonal changes the number of people out of […]