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Business News - Am770chqr.com
IFF Reports Improving Business Trends - FLEXNEWS
UPDATE 2-Sinopec sees profitable refining business in ... - Reuters UK
Fox Valley TV stations fight for business as they weather changing ... - Post-Crescent

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 12:54 AM PDT

29.03.2010

Royal, TD raise mortgage rates in sign era of historically low rates ending

TORONTO - Two of Canada's biggest banks are increasing some of their residential mortgage rates effective Tuesday in the latest sign that the era of historically low rates could soon come to an end.

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IFF Reports Improving Business Trends - FLEXNEWS

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 04:43 AM PDT

New York, Mar. 29 - International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., a leading global creator of flavors and fragrances for consumer products, today announced that improving business trends are driving better than anticipated financial results for the first quarter of 2010.

Local currency sales is trending to low double-digit growth, as all categories, including Fine Fragrance, are showing significant improvements versus the year-ago period. Trends in the emerging markets continue to be strong, particularly Greater Asia, where every category is experiencing double-digit growth. The effects on margin have been positive and as a result, adjusted quarterly EPS is expected to be near record levels.

"IFF continues to execute a successful strategy that enables us to generate strong financial results," said Doug Tough, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "We are seeing a significant improvement in our business segments, including double-digit growth in the Fine Fragrance category. While we continue to see strong commercial performance relative to new customer business, a portion of this improvement can be attributed to favorable comparisons versus the year ago period as well as some elements of customer restocking."

Mr. Tough added, "As we have realized some benefit of customer restocking, we continue to be mindful that this may well be an isolated event, as economic conditions remain fluid. As a result, we plan to monitor our performance as we look to make targeted investments to strengthen our marketplace position throughout the balance of the year."

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

UPDATE 2-Sinopec sees profitable refining business in ... - Reuters UK

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 03:31 AM PDT

* Q1 refining margins slightly lower than $4/barrel

* Confident about prospects for refining business

* Not ruling out buying Addax from parent (Adds background, quotes)

By Sui-Lee Wee and Alison Lui

HONG KONG, March 29 (Reuters) - Sinopec Corp (0386.HK), Asia's top oil refiner, said its refining business will be profitable in the first quarter even as higher oil prices have squeezed profit margins in the previous quarter.

Crude oil rose nearly 30 percent in the 2009 fourth quarter from a year earlier. While that boosted profit at Sinopec's (600028.SS) (SNP.N) exploration unit, China's second-largest, it squeezed refining margins as Sinopec buys more than 70 percent of its crude on the world market.

Sinopec's refining margins in the 2010 first quarter could fall to slightly below $4 a barrel from around $4 a barrel in the fourth quarter, Chief Financial Officer Wang Xinhua told reporters on the sidelines of a briefing in Hong Kong on Monday.

He did not explain how Sinopec's refining business would be profitable in this first quarter.

Analysts say China's top refiner may continue to struggle in the 2010 first half as Beijing holds back from raising state-set fuel prices for fear of stoking inflation. Continued...

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Fox Valley TV stations fight for business as they weather changing ... - Post-Crescent

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 04:07 AM PDT

The outlook for broadcast television is uncertain.

Not only are the Green Bay-area stations competing among themselves for the news audience, they compete with many new players — including those on cable and the Internet — for viewers' attention and time.

Can it survive?

"In the short run, yes. In the long run, probably not," Barry Orton, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of telecommunications. "The audience is fragmented into many little pieces instead of a few big pieces."

The continued recession also is taking its toll on the employment ranks of the Green Bay area's four television stations. They're all doing more with less.

In 2008, Journal Broadcast Group, owner of WGBA Channel 26, drastically cut news staff and locally produced newscasts.

Also that year, WBAY Channel 2, eliminated at least four positions. WFRV Channel 5, eliminated at least four that year. WLUK Channel 11 also reduced its staff two years ago but didn't say by how many positions.

Things are difficult for local broadcast television stations, but people still watch those stations to get information about area news.

"If we were living back in the last century and I saw myself as a broadcaster and that's all I did, then, yes, it's gotten tougher," said Perry Kidder, general manager at Channel 5.

"But the reality is, that was last century, this is this century. I don't call myself a broadcaster anymore. What we are is local content creators, and we happen to be video based."

Channels 2, 5 and 11 employ news staffs ranging from 22 to 31, though position designations vary. Channel 26 includes eight Green Bay-based staff members who appear on air.

By comparison, The Post-Crescent and the Green Bay Press-Gazette employ about 50 people in each of their newsrooms. The Oshkosh Northwestern employs 20 full-time newsroom staffers.

As with media outlets across the country, Green Bay television stations are jumping a series of high hurdles, particularly as the economy sputters along.

"It seems likely that having 2, 5, 11 and 26 all running competing newscasts and making money on them won't hold up for very long," said UW-Green Bay communications professor Timothy Meyer, who studies the media.

Who is watching?

Television in Green Bay started March 17, 1953, with Channel 2. For many years, the market included three stations — 2, 5 and 11. Public TV WPNE, Channel 38, arrived in 1972.

Today, the market has eight commercial broadcast channels and three public TV channels.

Cable, satellite and AT&T add scores more channels from national outlets.

"The television stations used to get the biggest pieces of the pie, as did newspapers — and what I say goes for newspapers as well," Orton said.

"And with all these competitors and with all people who are going to new media and different media, the pieces get smaller and smaller.

"Unless the broadcast stations find a new source of revenue, they no longer are going to be in the position of being dominant, mainstream media."

Viewers are pulled in many directions, and signs are it isn't toward local news.

But local television executives say their industry continues to evolve.

"The so-called experts have predicted the demise of local television for many years, but my experience is that it remains a very good business and will continue to be into the future," said Don Carmichael, general manager at Channel 2.

The Pew Research Center for the People & Press recently conducted a study examining local news on a national level.

It found that 64 percent of the public said they regularly watched local television news in 1998. In 2008, the figure fell to 52 percent.

Four times a year — February, May, July and November — TV viewing for all stations is measured in a process called sweeps. For 2008, the Pew study found local news ratings were down for every sweeps period but May and shares were down in every period. Ratings were down as much as 11 percent.

Jay Zollar, general manager at Channel 11, provided updated figures for the Green Bay market, comparing collective household ratings for all of the news stations from the November 2008 sweeps to the November 2009 sweeps.

Viewing in the Green Bay area is measured four times a year by the A.C. Nielsen Co. using estimates from viewers who keep track of what they watch in a hand-written diary.

"From 6 to 9 a.m., the collective news viewing was up 4 percent year to year," Zollar said. "At 5 p.m., the collective news ratings were down 5 percent, while the collective late news ratings were up 3 percent.

"It would seem that, although ratings were down from several years ago, when there was not as much competition for viewers, it appears that the erosion has stabilized."

Comparing collective ratings over a longer period — Oct. 29 to Nov. 25, 1999, and Oct. 29 to Nov. 25, 2009 — local news numbers were up a bit at 5 p.m. and off dramatically for the collective late news.

During the two sweeps, the stations collectively had fewer overall viewers in 2009, though Channel 26 and Channel 11 showed some gains in some time periods over 1998.

New technologies

Media outlets are now connecting with the public beyond the traditional ways, and the Internet has become an important part of their presence.

Getting people information on their cell phones is in its infancy and more technologies are emerging.

Channel 5's Kidder said, "If you take our news ratings, you now add in the number of page views we get in, say, a month, we've got more eyeballs today than we've ever had. Then throw mobile on top of that, and that adds even more eyeballs."

Channel 2 "must continue to improve its product, facility and technology, focusing on local news delivery by every means available and do it better than anyone else in the market," Carmichael said.

Keeping viewers will depend on "the uniqueness of the content or the superior packaging or delivery of that content," Meyer said.

"The challenge becomes: how can the station 'do more with less,' keeping up with its revenues while doing it with fewer employees — either total number or cutting the more highly paid employees and replacing them with lower-salaried employees in the positions?"

Orton, the UW-Madison professor, is skeptical.

"Only if people cared much about news," he said. "But, as you know being in the news business, they don't really. They care who won 'American Idol,' they care who fell out of whose dress and they probably care about who won the big game or who's going to drop out of a race because he has he fathered a child out of wedlock or something."

Channel 11's Zollar said, "In the digital multiplatform world we now live in, it is simply a fact that employees are expected to acquire and perform multifunctions.

"They need to think of delivering relevant content whenever it happens by way of television, the Internet or mobile. New skills are simply a way of life in this ever-changing digital world."

Warren Gerds writes for the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

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Monday, March 29, 2010