Finance articles and news

·Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao met with World Bank President Robert Zoellick in Beijing Tuesday.
·Wen said China will focus on expanding domestic demand to stimulate economic growth.
·Zoellick said the World Bank will continue to play a role in helping China overcome difficulties.

BEIJING, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said here Tuesday in response to the global financial crisis, China will focus on expanding domestic demand as an effective way to stimulate economic growth.

Wen made the remarks when meeting with President Robert Zoellick of the World Bank (WB). Wen briefed the WB President about China’s economic situation and its measures to address the global financial crisis.

Wen said China, with a 1.3-billion population, has yet to overcome the disparity between urban and rural areas, relatively low per capita incomes and a relatively large number of poverty-stricken people.

Wen said China’s move to expand domestic demand is aimed to gradually meet the people’s demands through economic growth, which will be achieved by stimulating the ultimate consumption market.

To meet this end, Wen said China will focus on improving incomes of rural residents and social security for low-income groups. He said China will strive to expand employment. It will also work on the development of such social causes as education, medical service and culture. Wen said China will advance development of infrastructure in rural areas, including drinking water, bio-gas, roads, electricity and telecommunications. He said China will continue to protect the environment, while working on the rehabilitation of earthquake-stricken areas and poverty elimination.

Zoellick said the current financial global crisis calls for closer cooperation among the international community. He said the World Bank will continue to play a role in helping China overcome difficulties in financing and employment.

Zoellick appreciated the Chinese government’s measures to expand domestic demand. He said sustaining its own economy will be China’s biggest contribution to maintaining financial stability and the economic growth of the world.

Zoellick also met with Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang Monday.

Li said during the meeting that the World Bank should play its due role as the world’s largest multilateral development financial institute to help developing countries to fend off external impacts and maintain financial stability and economic growth.

Li said China has been participating in international cooperation on addressing the financial crisis. He said China will continue to act in a responsible way by making its own contribution to maintaining the stability of global finance and economy.

Li said the fundamentals and long-term trend of China’s economic growth remained unchanged despite the many difficulties and grim challenges it faces.

Zoellick spoke highly about China’s performance in addressing the global financial crisis. He expressed the willingness to further expand cooperation between the World Bank and China.
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Permament link to this post: Chinese premier discusses financial crisis with World Bank president

BERLIN - GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel, under fire over her reaction to the financial crisis, called together business leaders, ministers and experts on Sunday to discuss ways of escaping the international recession.

‘No concrete measure was decided,’ Economy Minister Michael Glos said after the six-hour meeting finished.

The goal of the meeting had been to reflect on possible measures, he added, with the government aiming to decide on specific actions by the end of January.

Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck said everything would be done to avoid job losses.

The time had come for ‘us to take joint responsibility, as the government cannot handle the economic situation alone’, Ms Merkel told a press conference before the meeting.

Ms Merkel has made defending German jobs a top priority but increasing numbers have been lost in Europe’s biggest economy in recent weeks.

The criticism of the government has particularly hurt as Ms Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) prepare for a legislative election in 2009. The CDU is in a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD).

German economic experts and officials have said her 31 billion euro (40 billion dollar) economic stimulus is not enough.

Other European Union members have also pressured for Merkel to spend more.

Quoting government sources, the weekly Wirtschaftswoche reported the government is preparing a second 30-billion-euro economic plan that will include investment and fiscal incentives.

The package is not expected to be announced until the end of January, giving Merkel time to prepare an anti-crisis strategy within the government, the weekly said.

Ms Merkel is to meet state and local government leaders this week.

Der Spiegel magazine said in its latest edition that the government now expects the economy to shrink by two per cent in 2009. The official government forecast is for a fall of up to one per cent. — AFP
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The financial crisis means boom times for spooks-for-hire.

By Barney Gimbel, writer
Last Updated: December 8, 2008: 11:16 AM ET

NEW YORK (Fortune) — If James Bond’s “License to Kill” gets revoked, he’d have no problem finding work as a corporate spy. To the short list of sectors that stand to gain from the financial crisis, add corporate intelligence firms.

They are seeing a dramatic uptick in business from a surge of banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds that need to make sure those pesky multimillion-dollar investments they made when times were good will hold up.

Firms like Control Risks, a London-based risk consultancy staffed by ex-CIA agents, and its rival, New York-based Kroll say they have seen a 20% jump in new business over the past two months. Together the two firms control the majority of the market.

These spook outfits have long carved out a lucrative business investigating corporate fraud, performing due diligence, or simply ferreting out the things not on a balance sheet - be they a company’s shady associates in Brazil or corrupt investors in Texas.

But in the recent heady times, some fast-moving investment outlets cut corners.

Now they are hoping to save face - and money - before precarious deals fall apart altogether. “The tolerance for failure has diminished,” says Jim Brooks, who heads North American operations for Control Risks.

Already, spies-for-hire are finding a couple of embarrassing flubs.

Consider the more than $300 million that one international bank lent to a sketchy Russian magnate (we’d tell you who it was, but then we’d have to kill you). When he stopped paying his bills, the bank brought in Control Risks to find out where the money had gone. (They found the Russian could have funneled money out of the country through various, seemingly unrelated shell companies.)

Another big client, a Washington-based law firm, hired it to investigate a wealthy, if not highly leveraged, Bolivian who had been claiming poverty while secretly moving his assets to places like Poland, Switzerland and Sylvania.

Tactics range from mundane document searches to clandestine interviews with former employees, customers, or government officials. Much of the work is happening overseas, where public records don’t always exist.

For the Bond wannabes, the new business isn’t adding to the bottom line so much as replacing the business they lost when pre-deal due diligence went out the window. Still, they expect the boom times to continue.

“Companies are only beginning to deal with the situation,” says Bob Brenner, who heads Kroll’s business intelligence and investigations practice in the U.S.

It may not match the martini swilling and jet setting the real Bond gets to do, but it pays the bills, which in these times is exotic-sounding enough.
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