Tuesday, October 20, 2009

“Invesco 3Q Net Down 20% As Inflows Drop; Shares Rise - NASDAQ” plus 4 more

“Invesco 3Q Net Down 20% As Inflows Drop; Shares Rise - NASDAQ” plus 4 more

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Invesco 3Q Net Down 20% As Inflows Drop; Shares Rise - NASDAQ

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 06:19 AM PDT



DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Invesco Ltd.'s (IVZ) third-quarter profit fell 20% on declines in revenue and assets under management while inflows slowed from earlier this year amid a slump in cash to money-market funds.

Earnings were in line with expectations, though revenue was stronger than expected. Shares rose 3.8% premarket to $24. The stock was up 60% this year through Monday.

Money managers, who have been buffeted by the downturn, are now poised to benefit as markets revive. Amid uncertainty about who would benefit from Wall Street consolidation, Invesco on Monday agreed to buy Morgan Stanley's (MS) retail asset-management business, including the Van Kampen fund unit, for stock and cash valued at $1.5 billion.

Invesco's profit fell to $105.2 million, or 24 cents a share, from $131.8 million, or 33 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue decreased 15% to $705.8 million.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters most recently were looking for earnings of 24 cents on revenue of $687 million.

Operating margin rose to 29.9% from 25.1% despite the revenue drop.

Assets under management fell 1.8% from a year earlier to $416.9 million as of Sept. 30 but rose 7.3% during the quarter. There were $2.6 billion in long-term net inflows, down from $3 billion in the second quarter. Institutional money market outflows totaled $2.6 billion, up from $1.7 billion.

-By Mike Barris, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2330; mike.barris@dowjones.com; 

    (END) Dow Jones Newswires   10-20-090917ET   Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

Brewer: Business tax cuts likely postponed - YourWestValley.com

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 04:25 AM PDT

Arizona businesses might have to wait a bit longer than 2012 for the tax cuts that Gov. Jan Brewer promised, Brewer said Monday.

Brewer, speaking to members of the Tempe Chamber of Commerce, complained about the refusal of lawmakers to adopt her plan to ask voters for a temporary hike in the state sales tax to help balance the budget for this fiscal year and the next two.

"The will wasn't there to send it out to the people," she said. "So now I'm a year behind in our plan to get this all kind of squared away and get us onto the path of prosperity and kind of turn the engine around." She said that leaves the financial situation in limbo until the Legislature comes back with some acceptable alternative.

But Brewer noted later that her five-point plan for returning the state to prosperity, outlined in March, was built on the assumption of the temporary boost in revenues now. Then, in 2012, the state could actually reduce business taxes in an effort to jump-start the economy.

And the governor said she assumes that the delay in the first part of her plan means a commensurate delay in the last.

Brewer on Monday repeated some of the same themes from her March plan, notably her belief that the way to long-term state fiscal stability is encouraging more businesses to locate and expand here. And that, she said, is going to require revamping the state's tax structure.

Some of that Brewer said, relates to the corporate income tax, which is now just a hair less than 7 percent. But Brewer also said the state needs to look at its property tax system.

That has come under fire because companies not only pay proportionately more than homeowners but also they are taxed, annually, on the value of their equipment. That, in turn, makes the state less attractive to manufacturers.

"I was willing to do that," Brewer said, even to the point of enacting tax cuts now that would take effect in future years. But Brewer said she wasn't willing to pursue that course once her proposal to put the temporary sales tax hike on the ballot failed to get the necessary votes.

And she even was willing to sign legislation to permanently repeal the state property tax entirely.

"I couldn't see doing tax cuts," she said, saying that repeal amounted to "making things worse."

Brewer said she remains committed to pushing through those tax cuts — when the time is right.

"I think it's important that we reach out and we really work on our economy," she said. "And we can only do that by making things good for businesses to function here."

Brewer pointed to figures showing construction employment at about half of what it was at its peak.

"We need high-tech, high-paying jobs (and) industries in the state of Arizona," she said. "By reducing taxes, that's going to bring them here."

Brewer said, though, she is willing to listen to arguments that the state still can afford tax cuts in 2012.

"I'm willing to talk about those, depending upon how the economy starts to move, determining what it is we are going to do with the budget," she said.

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Major business events scheduled for Tuesday - WTOP

Posted: 19 Oct 2009 11:07 AM PDT

By The Associated Press

(AP) - Major business events and economic events scheduled for Tuesday:

WASHINGTON _ Commerce Department releases housing starts for September, 8:30 a.m.

WASHINGTON _ Labor Department releases the Producer Price Index for September, 8:30 a.m.

NEW YORK _ Bank of New York Mellon Corp. releases third-quarter financial results.

PEORIA, Ill. _ Caterpillar Inc. releases third-quarter financial results.

ATLANTA _ Coca-Cola Co. releases third-quarter financial results.

WILMINGTON, Del. _ DuPont releases third-quarter financial results.

NEW YORK _ Pfizer Inc. releases third-quarter financial results.

RESTON, Va. _ SLM Corp. releases third-quarter financial results.

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. _ Supervalu Inc. releases second-quarter financial results.

CHICAGO _ UAL Corp. releases third-quarter financial results.

HARTFORD, Conn. _ United Technologies Corp. releases third-quarter financial results.

MINNETONKA, Minn. _ UnitedHealth Group Inc. releases third-quarter financial results.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. _ Yahoo Inc. releases third-quarter financial results.

WASHINGTON _ Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers, speaks at the National Economists Club.

WASHINGTON _ Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan testifies before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on the housing market.

WASHINGTON _ House Financial Services Committee hearing on financial regulatory overhaul.

SANTA ANA, Calif._ Trial to begin for former Broadcom Corp. CFO William J. Ruehle, charged with conspiring to backdate employee stock options.

FRANKFURT _ Federal Statistical Office releases producer prices for September.

WASHINGTON _ Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and national security adviser James Jones speak at a conference on U.S.-Iraq business and investment.


(Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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Google Promotes Business Apps With Ad Blitz – Boasts 2 Million ... - ebrandz.com

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 04:18 AM PDT

Los Angeles -- Search engine titan Google Inc., normally famous for creating its global business empire using little or no any conventional marketing method to promote its wares, has nonetheless found that such an approach is effective for its enterprise products and, has launched its biggest ever international advertising campaign running across six countries using the tag-line "Gone Google" designed to win over users of Microsoft products.

Google said more than 2 million businesses now employ its online office software, and the Web search leader is going global with an advertising campaign to entice customers away from Microsoft Corp and IBM products.

The "Gone Google" campaign is targeted at IT and business executives who influence IT purchasing decisions, and is configured to sell them on the benefits of using products like Google Apps and the Search Appliance enterprise search device.

The campaign, which begins Monday, which is also being extended in the U.S., will involve billboards and signs in airports and train stations, as well as ads in major online and print publications in the U.K., France, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore, represents a rare penetration by Google into mass-market advertising and underscores increasing competition to provide businesses with email and other office software.

How one of Google's adverts could look in Liverpool Street station.

The campaign emphasizes mainly on Google Apps, the company's Web-based suite of collaboration and communication applications, whose "cloud" software-as-a-service (SaaS) architecture Google maintains is a superior alternative to managing on-premises software.

The campaign is being operated by Google Enterprise -- the division which support products for business use, Google applications such as Google Mail, Google Docs, Calendar, Google Maps and Google Earth as well as digital security services -- and marks a push by the online giant to take a share of Microsoft's office services market.

The campaign's tag-line "Gone Google" denotes to the 1.7m businesses that the company claims have already embraced its services.

"It is the first and very highly visible integrated ad campaign that we have launched," said Dave Armstrong, head of marketing for Google Enterprise for Europe, Middle East and Africa. "Gone Google is a concept that we are at a tipping point where you [businesses] need to move to a new model. Look at how Google has brought products to the enterprise market, we have done it differently than some of the other competitors."

The ads use straplines that is designed to convince readers of the superiority of Google's products, such as "Day 9: Email inbox is full. Grrr!!! Go Google?", and "Day 15: Attaching documents is so 1990s. Go Google?".

"The idea behind [Going Google] is that companies change to Google Apps and it is a real transformational change," said Tom Oliveri, Google's enterprise marketing director.

Nikesh Arora, Google's top sales executive, added, "We are also seeing lots of traction among small and medium-sized businesses, which continue to increase at a fast pace."

While Microsoft and International Business Machines Corp command the market for enterprise email, Google is attempting to convince businesses to switch to its so-called cloud-based services, in which software is accessed over the Internet and maintained at Google's data centers instead of on a company's computers.

Gartner analyst Tom Austin said most businesses will eventually switch to cloud-based email, but the process may take years. He noted IBM and Microsoft have introduced cloud products recently, and that Cisco Systems Inc appears to be preparing to offer its own cloud-based software.

On Thursday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told investors during the company's quarterly earnings conference call he intended to boost investments in new business initiatives.

The campaign consists of 21 different ads that will run over 28 days. The initial campaign included billboards in Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco. The new one will expand to Britain, France, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore, with ads showing up in high-traffic transit stations and in airports.

The UK campaign will run across media such as outdoor billboards, digital locations in train stations including Paddington and Liverpool Street, and print ads in titles such as the Economist and Daily Telegraph. An online campaign will run across websites including Silicon.com, FT.com and Times Online.

Armstrong said the campaign aimed to play on the "frustrations that users and IT teams face everyday".

A spokesman for Google UK said the company had never before run such a high profile campaign, just the odd small ad push in targeted trade magazine titles and websites.

Google's Apps business -- which the company has said is profitable and generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year -- is a tiny portion of Google's overall business, which yielded almost $22 billion revenue last year.

According to spokesman Andrew Kovacs, its Apps team has doubled over the past year to more than 1,000 employees.

Watch the video offering a preview of the ad campaign here.


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Rajaratnam's arrest can put Galleon Group out of business - Silicon India

Posted: 20 Oct 2009 05:44 AM PDT

New York: In the past, Billionaire Galleon Group Founder Raj Rajaratnam attracted some of Wall Street's savviest investors to his hedge funds. Now his arrest could change the fate of the company and spark fresh calls in Washington for tighter industry regulation.

Now investors who once counted themselves lucky for getting access to one of the industry's finest technology hedge funds, may be running for the exits, frightened by news that Rajaratnam was arrested and charged with running the biggest-ever insider trading scheme involving a hedge fund.

"This may shutter Galleon. But there is not yet enough information to determine that," said Ron Geffner, a Partner at law firm Sadis and Goldberg LLP, who works with hedge funds and their investors.

"I don't think any big investor would hang around and wait for the verdict when they see headlines in the newspaper every day," said one person who invests with hedge funds but asked not be named since he cannot discuss his investments publicly.

The headlines are bound to add fresh fuel to calls on Main Street and in corners of Congress to demand new laws for the $1.4 trillion business that has until now not had to report its performance numbers or other information the way mutual funds are required to. With investors still shellshocked from the Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford Ponzi schemes, hedge fund investors said that many are likely to want to get out as fast you can.

A number of pension funds and endowments put money with Rajaratnam, helping the 52-year old billionaire to build Galleon Group into one of the world's biggest hedge funds with $7 billion in assets at its peak last year. U.S. financial regulators said that the fund had $2.6 billion in assets as of March. The 52 year old investor was identified this year by Forbes as the 559th richest person in the world.

This case has brought the Indian School of Business (ISB) in spotlight once again for the wrong reason. Among those charged for Insider trading case, Anil Kumar, a Director at consulting firm McKinsey, is on the executive board of the ISB. Kumar, 51, a resident of Saratoga, California, is a friend of Rajaratnam and a direct or indirect investor in certain Galleon funds.

Previously, ISB had dealt a blow in January this year after its Dean Mendu Rammohan Rao resigned following widespread protests over his role as a board member of fraud-tainted Satyam Computer Services.

According to Bloomberg, prosecutors also arrested Rajiv Goel, who worked at Intel Capital as a Director in strategic investments and IBM Senior Vice President, Robert Moffat. The former officials at Bear Stearns asset management are Danielle Chiesi and Mark Kurland, who were affiliated with the firm's New Castle Partners, which managed about $1 billion. "Following the charge, Moffat has been placed on temporary leave of absence," said IBM.

"Greed, sometimes, is not good," said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. The case is the largest ever over hedge fund insider - trading. It's the first time wiretaps have been used to target insider trading, signaling the government will now use the same tools against Wall Street that it employs in organized crime and drug cases, he said. Bharara called the case 'unprecedented'.

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