Oman oil’s official price on the Dubai Mercantile Exchange Ltd. rose for the first time since July after OPEC’s compliance with output cuts limited supplies from the Middle East for Asian refiners.
Oman crude oil for March loading was set at $44.34 a barrel, up 8.7 percent from February’s $40.79 a barrel, based on a Bloomberg [...]
Geopolitical risk in the Middle East deters investors and is a concern for the oil industry, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said in a Bloomberg Television interview.
Risks “certainly hamper investment into the region,” Tanaka said today at the World Economic Forum in Davos. He named Turkey a “very strategic transit country [...]
Qatar may buy stakes in three “blue-chip” companies and increase existing holdings, the Gulf state’s prime minister said.
“We cannot build all our reserves on one kind of investment, so we have to spread it,” Hamad bin Jasim said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We are talking [...]
Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) — Caterpillar Inc. said it will fire 2,110 factory workers at three Illinois factories as the global recession saps sales at world’s largest maker of bulldozers and excavators.
The cuts increase the 20,000 job losses Caterpillar outlined on Jan. 26, when it posted fourth-quarter profit that fell by almost a third. The latest [...]
Stocks sputtered as the market digested a dire reading on fourth-quarter gross domestic product that punctuated a week of grim economic reports.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 91 points to 8057 in recent trade after data showed that GDP contracted at a 3.8% annual rate at the end of last year, which was somewhat better [...]
U.S. business activity shrank in January for the fourth consecutive month, a sign the downturn in manufacturing may worsen this year.
The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago said today its business barometer decreased to 33.3, the lowest reading since March 1982, from 35.1 the prior month. Readings below 50 signal a contraction.
Companies may keep curtailing investment and [...]
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — Toshiba Corp., Japan’s largest chipmaker, forecast a record annual loss as the deepening global recession worsens the glut in the industry and drives down prices of semiconductors that store data in consumer electronics.
The net loss will probably reach 280 billion yen ($3.1 billion) in the year to March 31, compared with [...]
WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – The number of Americans claiming jobless benefits hit a record high in mid-January, while orders for long-lasting factory goods fell for a fifth month in December, according to data on Thursday that showed the economy in steep decline.
Piling on the gloom for an economy mired in recession for more than [...]
DETROIT — The Ford Motor Company, the only Detroit automaker not being propped up by billions of dollars in government loans, said on Thursday that it lost $14.6 billion last year as sales slumped the most in decades, making 2008 its worst year in history.
Still, the company said it had “sufficient liquidity to fund its [...]
Polaris predicts 1st-quarter, full-year earnings below Wall Street estimates
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Polaris Industries Inc. on Thursday projected first-quarter and full-year earnings below Wall Street expectations, as the leisure vehicle maker navigates a tough retail environment.
Polaris said it expects 2009 earnings between $2.50 and $3 per share. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect a profit of [...]