| Universal Corporation Announces First Quarter Results
RICHMOND, Va., Aug. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Allen B. King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Universal Corporation (Nachrichten), announced that income from continuing operations for the first quarter of fiscal year 2008, which ended on June 30, 2007, was $18.2 million, or $0.52 per diluted share. That performance represented a significant improvement over last year's results, which reflected a loss of $13.7 million, or $0.67 per diluted share, from continuing operations. First quarter earnings in fiscal year 2008 included about $3.3 million in restructuring costs ($0.08 per diluted share) related to the cost of reducing staff in the Company's Canadian operations and in its flue-cured growing projects in Africa. Last year's first quarter included impairment charges of $12.3 million ($0.48 per diluted share) on long-lived assets used in tobacco growing projects in Zambia.
Banking on Bulgaria's Gypsy businesses
Shortly before leaving on a trip to Eastern Europe, my husband and I did something that would baffle any traveler who's been approached at a train station in Rome or Paris by women in flowing skirts, cradling babies in their arms and begging for coins. We loaned money to Gypsies. Meet our new business partners, Diana Beleva, 26, a traveling sock saleswoman; and her brother Todor Belev and his wife, Silvia, who make a living selling firewood in the Balkan mountain town of Sliven. In their T-shirts and ball caps, they look no different from most Bulgarians. But they are Roma, an Eastern European ethnic minority more commonly known as Gypsies. First migrating from India to Turkey around the 11th century and later into Eastern Europe to find work, the Roma still live on the fringes of society, often in separate neighborhoods called mahalas or in hillside camps.
Fed Leaves Key Interest Rate Unchanged
The Federal Reserve left a key interest rate unchanged on Tuesday as worries about inflation trumped concerns about turbulent financial markets. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues voted unanimously to keep their target for the federal funds rate _ the interest that banks charge each other _ at 5.25 percent, where it has been for more than a year. The Fed decision came after a volatile couple of weeks on Wall Street as investors have been beset by troubles in global credit markets stemming from a sharp rise in defaults on subprime mortgages. In a brief statement, the Fed acknowledged the turbulence and said the downside risks to the economy had "increased somewhat." But the Fed continued to state that the predominant risk remained that inflation "will fail to moderate as expected." Many analysts believe the Fed will remain on hold through the rest of this year, preferring to watch and make sure that inflation moderates back to an acceptable level.
Business Highlights
Wall Street gave up a moderate gain in late trading and closed marginally lower Monday after the Federal Reserve and other central banks added more cash to their banking systems, helping investors set aside some concerns about credit tightness. .
Keep politicians away from the production line
WHILE most commentators have welcomed the Reserve Bank's inflation-dampening interest rate rise, interest payments are part of the direct expenses of doing business. Hence the latest move will bring additional costs of debt servicing for industry. In addition, higher interest rates will probably further strengthen the Australian dollar. Increased debt servicing costs and a stronger dollar put particular pressure on the trade-exposed activities involved in export markets and in competing with imports. Trade-exposed industries now have to find cost savings to retain their competitiveness. Victorian companies and jobs are more vulnerable to general cost increases than those in other states, because of the state's prominent manufacturing base and its strengths in exporting educational services.
Interest rate rise No.2 tipped
THE prospect of interest rates jumping to 6.75 per cent in early 2008 increased significantly yesterday following the release of the Reserve Bank of Australia's statement on monetary policy. Even after factoring in last week's interest rate rise, the bank said inflationary pressures in the economy were at the top of its target band. The RBA yesterday lifted its core inflation forecast for December and throughout 2008 from 2.5 per cent to 3 per cent growth -- signalling another rate rise was on the agenda. Economists said it was a clear statement from RBA governor Glenn Stevens that rates may rise but was unlikely this year because of the looming federal election. The RBA statement said: "With the economy growing at a higher-than-average pace, capacity pressures are likely to persist in the near term".
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