Friday, October 23, 2009

“Sarkozy’s son wins board seat, affirms ambition - The Malaysian Insider” plus 4 more

“Sarkozy’s son wins board seat, affirms ambition - The Malaysian Insider” plus 4 more

Sarkozy’s son wins board seat, affirms ambition - The Malaysian Insider

Posted: 23 Oct 2009 06:30 AM PDT

NANTERRE, France, Oct 23 — The 23-year-old son of French President Nicolas Sarkozy today won a seat on a powerful business district board, staying on track for a high-flying political career despite renouncing a bigger post.

Jean Sarkozy had wanted to run the Epad agency, which manages the La Defense district on the western fringe of Paris, but this caused such a huge outcry that last night he went on television to say he was dropping the bid.

However, he maintained his candidacy for a place on EPAD's board, and today he was elected by his peers on a council of local representatives from the Hauts-de-Seine administrative district, where La Defense is located.

"It was trying, of course. It's always trying when you are at the centre of controversy. But that's life, it forges your character and your determination," Sarkozy told journalists after the vote in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

His bid to run Epad had dominated the public debate in France for two weeks, with critics arguing that an undergraduate law student was unqualified to take responsibility for a corporate hub that generates about 10 per cent of French GDP.

Nicolas Sarkozy was accused of abusing his power by making arrangements behind closed doors for his son to take over a strategic post that he himself once held on his way to conquering the French presidency.

The younger Sarkozy, who is blond and taller than his father but has similar self-assurance, said during his television appearance yesterday that he was dropping his candidacy because he wanted to remove any suspicion of nepotism.

Today, he gave a calm and confident performance during the tense debate that preceded the vote, ignoring heckling from left-wing opposition councillors and lacing his speech with carefully worded comments that hinted at a broader meaning.

"I will give up none of my ambitions for this business district," he said.

Jean Sarkozy entered politics last year when he was elected as an Hauts-de-Seine councillor in Neuilly, a rich suburb near La Defense where his father was mayor for 19 years and which remains a rock-solid power base for the president.

Opinion polls showed a majority of voters opposed the younger Sarkozy's bid to lead Epad. The plan went down badly among young people in a country with high youth unemployment and where many graduates struggle to find jobs.

Politicians from the ruling centre-right UMP party tried to justify Jean Sarkozy's ambitions by arguing that he was very talented and had won his legitimacy through the ballot box like any other councillor. — Reuters

Critics responded that getting elected in Neuilly was hardly a feat for someone with his surname and that catapulting Jean to the board of EPAD made a mockery of his father's claim to support meritocracy and a break with the elitism of the past.

A group of protesters made that point outside the Hauts-de-Seine council headquarters during the vote by dressing up in Ancien Regime costumes and holding banners that likened the president to a king and Jean Sarkozy to his Dauphin.

But the protesters were held at a distance of several hundred metres from the building by dozens of riot police who had cordoned off the entire area and imposed security checks worthy of a visiting head of state.

 



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Merck posts big profit jump, slight rise in sales - Trentonian

Posted: 22 Oct 2009 03:50 PM PDT

By LINDA A. JOHNSON
AP Business Writer

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Drugmaker Merck & Co. on Thursday posted a bigger profit in the third quarter due to slightly higher sales and a huge gain from selling a business.

The maker of cholesterol drugs, vaccines and asthma and allergy treatment Singulair said net income was $3.42 billion, more than triple the $1.09 billion it made a year earlier.

That's mostly due to Merck having to sell its half of the Merial animal health business so that regulators would approve its plan to buy New Jersey neighbor Schering-Plough Corp.

That sale brought in $2.8 billion, or $1.7 billion after taxes. Without it, profit would have been up roughly 58 percent from the 2008 third quarter.

Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck is about to leapfrog from No. 8 to No. 2 in the pharmaceutical industry with its pending $41.1 billion acquisition of Schering-Plough. That will put it right behind Pfizer Inc., which last week bought Wyeth for $68 billion.

"We have made significant progress in our planning the past three months" for the merger, Chief Executive Richard Clark told analysts during a conference call. "We will be ready to hit the ground running on our first day of business as the new Merck."

For the third quarter, Merck posted a 2 percent increase in revenue, to $6.05 billion.

It had earnings per share of $1.61, or 90 cents excluding the big gain from Merial. That beat analysts' conservative expectations for earnings per share of 82 cents without items and revenue of $6 billion.

Its diabetes drugs, Januvia and Janumet, saw big jumps, bringing in a combined $664 million, and Januvia was recently approved in China. Sales of Merck's top drug, Singulair, increased 5 percent to $1.1 billion. HIV drug Isentress was up 84 percent to $197 million, but sales of osteoporosis blockbuster Fosamax, which now has generic competition, fell 22 percent to $276 million.

Gardasil, a vaccine against a virus that causes cervical cancer and genital warts, had a 22 percent drop in sales to $311 million. Gardasil got off to a strong start when it was launched three years ago, but has seen sales slump this year and took two potential blows to sales in the last week.

Last Friday, GlaxoSmithKline PLC's rival HPV vaccine, Cervarix, got approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Then on Wednesday, the influential U.S. Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decided not to recommend routine vaccination of boys to prevent them from getting genital warts or infecting girls with HPV. That's despite the FDA approving Gardasil for boys a week ago.

Meanwhile, concerns about the swine flu epidemic have boosted sales of another Merck vaccine, Pneumovax, which protects against 23 strains of pneumococcal disease that can cause pneumonia. Sales are up about 80 percent from a year ago, to $130 million, as government agencies have been buying the vaccine and health officials push steps to prevent pneumonia, a common flu complication that can be deadly.

Merck and Schering-Plough have been partners for several years on the cholesterol drugs Vytorin and Zetia, but their once-surging sales have been declining steadily since January 2008. That's when reports began surfacing that question whether they work any better than a much-cheaper generic cholesterol pill. In the third quarter, their combined sales fell nearly 7 percent, to $1.03 billion.

That partnership made their combination a natural. In addition, Merck really needed Schering-Plough's much stronger stable of experimental drugs in development.

And as Pfizer has just done, Merck is looking to diversify beyond its strength in vaccines and traditional pills. Buying Schering-Plough gives it a strong biotech operation, more veterinary medicines and a host of well-known consumer health products such as the Coppertone sun care and Dr. Scholl's foot care lines.

Clark said the combined company will be focused on health care reform, "anticipating customer needs" and growth areas including emerging markets, biotech drugs and vaccines.

Merck has suffered some setbacks with experimental drugs, including a September announcement it will stop developing a potential treatment for acute migraines, MK-3207, because of potential liver problems.

But late in September, Merck entered an exclusive deal with Australian flu vaccine maker CSL Biotherapies to distribute its Afluria seasonal flu shot in the U.S. starting next fall. The deal pays Merck based on how many Afluria doses it distributes and runs through the 2015-16 flu season.

In morning trading, Merck shares fell 38 cents to $32.30.

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(AMM) Reliance walks away from business and returns to profitability - Metalbulletin

Posted: 22 Oct 2009 07:46 PM PDT

Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co., the country's largest service center chain as measured by 2008 sales, walked away from some business in the third quarter and returned to profitability, posting net income of nearly $41.8 million in contrast to a $5.8-million net loss in the second quarter but still down 72.6 percent from earnings of $152.5 million in the same period last year.

"We are in a better environment now than 90 days ago," chairman and chief executive officer David H. Hannah said during a conference call Thursday. "We are back to making money after a small blip in the second quarter, and we look forward to making money next year."

Reliance gave up some volume in order to retain profits during the quarter, the company said in reporting net sales of...

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MORE FROM THE BUSINESS JOURNAL - Central Penn Business Journal

Posted: 23 Oct 2009 07:27 AM PDT

Pennsylvania is leading a five-state coalition in trying to secure $300 million in stimulus funds to upgrade railroad tracks that could speed commerce while removing excess truck traffic from highways.

Most of the upgrades would be to Norfolk Southern Corp.'s tracks, tunnels, bridges and rail yards between New Jersey and Louisiana as part of a $2 billion upgrade to the so-called Crescent Corridor.

Norfolk Southern also is spending about $27 million to replace tracks between Harrisburg and the Maryland state line as part of its corridor improvements, said railroad spokesman Rudy Husband. The upgrades and additional engineering will increase train speeds by 5 to 10 mph, he said.

"These upgrades will improve transit times to move goods north and south along the East Coast," he said.

That should help businesses save time and money in shipping and receiving goods, he said.

The railroad's lines in the Crescent Corridor closely parallel the Interstate 81 corridor, which runs through Cumberland and Dauphin counties. Local governments have seen an increase in truck traffic and warehouses close to residential areas.

If the states receive the competitive U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) grant, about $61 million would go to Pennsylvania for the Harrisburg and Greencastle rail yards, projected to cost a total of $147 million, according to PennDOT. Virginia-based railroad Norfolk Southern would pitch in $46 million for the two projects and PennDOT would contribute $40 million for a new rail yard in Franklin County.

The Harrisburg rail yard stretches across the eastern side of the city and into Susquehanna Township. Norfolk Southern will add track for loading and unloading trains, as well as parking spaces for trucks being loaded or unloaded, Husband said.

Corridor-wide upgrades are expected to generate a broader impact, according to Norfolk Southern. Those benefits include:

  • 47,000 permanent jobs with the railroad, warehousing, logistics and light industry;
  • $326 million in state and local taxes;
  • 1.3 million long-haul trucks diverted from interstates;
  • $146 million in accident-avoidance savings;
  • 1.9 million-ton reduction in CO2 pollution;
  • $575 million in congestion savings;
  • $92 million savings on highway maintenance;
  • 169 million gallons in fuel savings.

It's unlikely increased rail use for long-haul freight will hurt trucking companies, said Jim Runk, president and chief executive officer of the Camp Hill-based Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association. Some firms could put their loads on the train anyway because of the driver shortage for long-haul trucking, he said. The issue is whether the consumer can wait additional time to receive products, the distance involved and the cost, he said.

It's not set in stone that rail improvements will reduce truck traffic by the millions, Runk said.

"It remains to be seen," he said. "It might take some long-haul off the road, but it's not automatic that this is going to occur."

Short-haul trucking firms shouldn't be affected because they're taking freight off rails to deliver to stores and other customers anyway, he said. Other firms are getting business that never needs to go on rails, Runk said.

Although trucking and railroads companies compete about 40 percent of the time for business, they often work in conjunction as part of a larger freight system, he said.

"One of the greater values is that over time tremendous amounts of through-freight can be diverted from the highway and onto rail," said Rick Rovegno, a Cumberland County commissioner and member of the Interstate 81 Corridor Coalition. The group of state and local officials, transportation experts and businesses organized two years ago to help guide transportation initiatives and development around I-81.

With many warehouses, trucking firms and highways, Cumberland County is a focal point of transportation improvements. Business leaders, local officials and residents have been pushing for improvements that could reduce truck traffic without locking out trucking or warehousing companies, a staple in the county's economy.

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Business Life - Philippine Star Online

Posted: 23 Oct 2009 08:32 AM PDT

Just a few weeks before the devastating onslaughts of typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng, was a luncheon I can't forget hosted by Cebu Pacific Air boss Lance Y. Gokongwei for World Wildlife Fund Philippines officials, led by CEO Jose Ma. Lorenzo "Lorie" Tan at the Crowne Plaza Hotel's Xintiandi Chinese restaurant.

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