Amanda Morrall details key news overnight in 90 seconds at 9 am including a strong finish for equities markets; a potential drop in Australia's OCR tomorrow ; more U.S. labour stats; unemployment data for NZ; Goldman Sachs Jim O'Neill as next BOE governor?
A subdued start to the week this morning with some markets in Asia closed for holidays. That follows a strong end to the week with markets on both sides of the Atlantic moving up.
For the first time all month, the S&P 500 broke through the 1,400 mark, considered an important psychological hurdle. However the index is still down 0.4 percent for the month, even after gaining 1.8 percent for the week. See Yahoo Finance for more here.
Analysts will be watching for some key events and data out this week including a decision by the Reserve Bank of Australia on the Official Cash Rate there, currently set at 4.25%. Economists are predicting the bank will lower the benchmark rate by up to 50 basis points tomorrow afternoon, bowing to a contraction in retail spending and other economic pressures. According to this report carried by the Sydney Morning Herald U.S. corporate executives are becoming increasingly nervous about the outlook for Australia.
Meanwhile, more corporate earnings reports due out this week could further buoy last weeks' rally in the U.S. markets.
As of the close of Friday, 57 percent of the S&P 500 companies had reported first-quarter results. Of those 287 in the S&P 500 that had reported earnings, 72.8 percent posted results that topped analysts' expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data.(See Reuters story here for details).
Analysts will also be watching for a number of key labour reports due out this week starting with the ADP Employment Report on Wednesday, followed by the U.S. weekly jobless claims data on Thursday and then the government's jobs report for April (non-farm payrolls) on Friday.
Closer to home, the official unemployment rate is due out on Thursday along with the Labour Cost Index and Quarterly Employment Survey tomorrow. (See Radio New Zealand story here for analysis).
Unemployment in the final three months of last year fell 0.2% to 6.3%.
And finally, you just knew Goldman Sachs couldn't stay out of the news for longer than a week.
The investment bank is making headlines again, this time after a report from the Sunday Times suggesting that Jim O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, has been approached by Britain's finance ministry as a potential candidate for the job of Governor of the Bank of England. The incumbent, Mervyn King, is due to retire in June 2013. (Yahoo finance has the full story).
O'Neill, who now famously coined the term 'BRIC' in 2001 to describe how the economic clout of Brazil, Russia, India and China would challenge the West's economic dominance, would not comment on the story.
Whoever gets the job as the next BOE governor will be tasked with helping to steer the U.K. out of its second recession since the global financial crisis.
No chart with that title exists.
9 Comments
Bienvenue Bernard, assurez-vous que le bonheur qui vous suit tout récemment, est irradié lors de la rentrée à l'Etoile de la Mort.......... nous avons essayé de jouer bien, mais tu sais bien hein, heureux d'avoir vous sauvegardez mon ami.
Shuold your French be a little rusty , I sure Amanda will oblige....
Happiness.
Unfortunately Amanda, I will be doing a little flying over the next few days, if I can just get the kinks out of the Batsuit . ....be sure to give him my regards..!
P.S. I'll pop a little pic of my Batsuit on the profile page.......Steven was kind enough to pop it on while I debugged it for flight.
Sod it ...I'll email it...the user apps are a bit on the archaic side on the profile page.
Well if your batsuit is anything like this guy wears
Try and avoid ending up with this result
After watching No.1 link, I can bring myself to watch the second. Crazeee town.
This incarnation of Batman seems a bit saner.
Cardinal O'Brien does not get it
"Scotland's most senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has accused the prime minister of acting immorally by favouring the rich ahead of ordinary citizens affected by the recession. The cardinal also denounced David Cameron's opposition to a "Robin Hood tax" on financial institutions. And he urged Mr Cameron not just to help "your very rich colleagues."
The cardinal clearly doen't get it. The current government is on a mission to build a "big society": bunch of volunteers providing key services and food banks instead of benefits and services guaranteed by the state, i.e. taxpayers, ourselves.
We are all in it together and ultimately we will all be equal: broke. Our, the taxpayers, main role has changed in the last 3 years from paying for services provided to us by the state to subsidising the financial services industry. If we take away the issue of super-rich who are getting richeras the super-rich have always been and always will be, this is the largest equalisation project in history: taking the middle classes to the cleaners. Even Karl Marx and his followers had not dreamt of such radical and progressive system: big society all in it together. http://gregpytel.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/cardinal-obrien-does-not-get-it…
BNZ's parent NAB has just announced the result of the strategic review of its troubled British operations:
Here are NAB's Key points
• The decisions coming out of the UK strategic review are to:
o Simplify the business model to focus on retail operations and SME business lending
in Scotland and Northern England;
o Improve the UK Banking balance sheet structure by transferring the vast majority of
its commercial real estate (CRE) assets to NAB in the first half of the 2013 financial
year; and
o Place the transferred portfolio into run-off, to be managed separately.
• The restructure reduces risk appetite and improves the return and cost profile of the
ongoing UK Banking business;
• Restructuring costs of £195 million will be incurred in non-cash earnings for
redundancy, software impairment, lease break fees and other costs (£36 million in the
March 2012 half year and an estimated £139 million in the September 2012 half). The
restructure is expected to deliver annual cost savings of approximately £74 million by
2015;
• Provisioning against the UK CRE portfolio has been increased to reflect the recent
deterioration experienced in that asset class as a result of weaker economic and
operating conditions. The Group has transferred to UK Banking £150m ($230m) of the
$300m collective provision economic overlay that was expensed in 2008 and 2009;
• Goodwill associated with Clydesdale Bank of £141 million will be written off as at 31
March 2012 through non-cash earnings;
• UK Banking cash earnings for the March 2012 half year were a loss of £25 million;
• An additional provision of £120 million has been expensed in the March 2012 half year
as non-cash earnings due to an increase in the rate of payment protection insurance
(PPI) claims.
Implementation of the proposed restructure remains subject to final prudential regulatory
approval from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the UK Financial Services
Aussie new home sales at lowest level since 1994 - http://www.smh.com.au/business/home-sales-sink-to-lowest-since-1994-201…
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