Negative Blogs

Entertainment giant Walt Disney is to buy Marvel Entertainment in a shares and cash deal valued at $4bn (£2.5bn).

The deal means Disney will take over ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men.

Marvel shareholders will get $30 per share in cash plus 0.745 Disney shares for every Marvel share owned.

The boards of Disney and Marvel have both approved the deal, which now needs the backing of Marvel shareholders and competition authorities.

Last month, Walt Disney reported a fall in profits of more than a quarter as the downturn hit revenue at its film and theme park divisions.

Net profit between April and June came in at $954m (£579m), down 26% on the $1.28bn the entertainment giant made in the same period last year.

Revenues of $8.6bn were down 7% from the $9.2bn recorded a year before. Hard Money Association

Apple’s iPhone is set to make its debut in China by the end of this year after the US company reached agreement with China Unicom, the country’s second-largest mobile operator.

China Unicom on Friday said it would start selling the 3G iPhone in the fourth quarter after signing a non-exclusive three-year contract with Apple.

The company said it would not use Apple’s traditional revenue-sharing model and would instead pay the group on a wholesale basis.

China Unicom said it hoped the introduction of the iPhone would boost falling profitability.

The company said on Friday that first-half net profit fell 42.1 per cent to Rmb6.62bn ($969m) amid heated competition, while revenues dropped 4.3 per cent to Rmb74.51bn.

Chang Xiaobing, chairman and chief executive, said he expected iPhones to lure more high-end users who spend more on data services. National Hard Money Association

The Icelandic parliament has voted in favour of repaying more than $5bn (£3bn) to the governments of the UK and the Netherlands.

The so-called Icesave bill will reimburse funds paid by the governments to compensate those who lost money in the Icelandic online bank Icesave.

About 400,000 savers lost money when parent company Landsbanki collapsed last year.

The amendments will now have to be agreed by the UK and the Netherlands.

The deal was agreed in June, but was only passed after an amendment was added setting various limits to the payments. NHMA

Bankers, industrialists and London’s mayor have fiercely rejected Lord Turner’s argument that Britain’s “swollen” banking industry was destabilising the economy and needed to be cut down to size.

The backlash came a day after the chairman of the Financial Services Authority said the City watchdog should be “very, very wary of seeing the competitiveness of London as a major aim”.

He also floated the idea of higher capital reserve requirements and a global Tobin tax on financial transactions to choke off some of the banks’ “socially useless” activity.

Lord Turner’s critics said he had overstepped his remit as a regulator and risked damaging London’s standing as Europe’s leading financial centre.

Stuart Fraser, chairman of policy at the City of London Corporation, said Lord Turner was playing into the hands of rival financial capitals, such as Frankfurt or Paris. “Other centres would dearly love to have business from London. If we want to shoot ourselves in the foot, they would be delighted to take the business,” he said.

Boris Johnson, the London mayor, said anybody who did not believe the FSA’s responsibilities included protecting the international competitiveness of the City was “crackers”. National Hard Money Association Conference

The US economy shrank at an annual pace of 1% between April and June, unchanged from an initial estimate released last month, according to the latest data.

Analysts had been expecting a downward revision, with some forecasting a contraction of 1.5%.

The second quarter figures were a significant improvement on the 6.4% contraction between January and March.

US growth figures are revised frequently and the different estimates can vary significantly. Hard Money Association

The head of Britain’s top banking watchdog supports the idea of new global taxes on financial transactions, warning that a “swollen” financial sector paying excessive salaries has grown too big for society.

Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, says the debate on bankers’ bonuses has become a “populist diversion” and that more drastic measures may be needed to cut the financial sector down to size.

He also says the FSA should “be very, very wary of seeing the competitiveness of London as a major aim”, claiming the city’s financial sector has become a destabilizing factor in the British economy.

His comments, floated in an interview in Prospect magazine published on Thursday, may be read in other financial centers, including New York, as a sign that Britain is becoming increasingly skeptical about the perceived advantages of being a leading financial centre.

Lord Turner’s suggestion that a “Tobin tax” — named after the economist James Tobin — should be considered for financial transactions is also likely to reverberate around the world. The proposed tax, which has previously been championed by development economists and the French government as a means of funding the developing world, has been fiercely opposed by the finance industry.

Lord Turner appears worried about a return to “business as usual” in the banking sector, suggesting that new taxes may be necessary to curb excessive profits and pay in the financial sector.

“If you want to stop excessive pay in a swollen financial sector you have to reduce the size of that sector or apply special taxes to its pre-remuneration profit,” he says.

Lord Turner says higher capital requirements will be the FSA’s main tool to eliminate excessive activity and profit, but that a tax on transactions on a global level may be an additional option.

Aides to Alistair Darling, chancellor, said no such taxes were under consideration. Mr Darling insists that the banking industry in London should continue to play a leading role in global finance.

Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, also defended the financial industry’s role in the economy saying the sector was a main provider of jobs and tax revenues and could be undermined by the wrong kind of taxes or regulation. National Hard Money Association

Toyota is poised to slash production by as much as 580,000 vehicles — or almost 6 percent of global capacity — in an effort to stem losses amid the sharp downturn in car sales.

Japan’s largest carmaker, which is forecasting its second consecutive net loss this year, said it would shut a production line in western Japan from next spring through to the second half of 2011, reducing output by 220,000 vehicles.

Toyota is also looking to pull out of Nummi, its manufacturing joint venture with General Motors, in California, the company said.

“While nothing has been decided, we are in discussions [with GM's administrator] with a view to pulling out of Nummi,” said Toyota.

Japanese media have been reporting that the carmaker is also looking at cutting production in the UK, where it makes the Auris, along with other lines in Japan. If this proves to be the case, Toyota will bring its total of production cuts to almost 1m vehicles, or 10 percent of its global production capacity.

It is the first time Toyota has planned to cut production on such a large scale and comes as the group’s global sales have been battered by the recession. NHMA

Japanese exports slid in July at a faster annual rate than June, raising fears the effects of global stimulus measures are starting to decline.

Exports from the world’s largest exporter were down 36.5% last month compared with July 2008.

Slower car sales to the US, Middle East and Russia were blamed for the decline, which followed June’s 35.7% fall.

Figures released last week showed that Japan’s economy grew between April and June, ending its year-long recession.

But economists said these latest export figures indicated that reports of a global recovery could have been premature.

“Falls in exports have been moderating in recent months on companies’ restocking efforts and government stimulus worldwide, but the July data indicate that the recovery momentum is losing steam,” said Seiji Shiraishi, chief economist at HSBC Securities.

“It is questionable whether exports will continue to recover once the stimulus effect runs out.” National Hard Money Association Conference

The UK’s net contribution to the European Union will rise by almost 60% next year, the Treasury has said.

The cost of membership will rise to £6.4bn - equivalent to about £260 per UK household - from £4.1bn in 2009/10.

The Treasury said it was right for the UK “to share the burden of membership with new accession countries”.

But the Tories say the rising bill is evidence of “Labour’s incompetence” in the midst of a recession. In 2004, the figure was £53 per household.

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The BBC’s Chris Mason said ministers knew the bill was coming, but perhaps had not anticipated just how severe the economic downturn would be when it arrived.

A spokesman for the Treasury said the increase had been fully and openly discussed in Parliament.

“The prime minister has made clear our belief is that it is right for us to share the burden of membership of the European Union with the new accession countries so that every part of the European Union can look forward to prosperity in the future,” he added. Hard Money Association

President Obama announced Tuesday that he plans to nominate Ben Bernanke to a second term as head of the Federal Reserve.

“Ben Bernanke, has led the Fed through the one of the worst financial crises that this nation and this world have ever faced,” Obama said from Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., as Bernanke stood by his side. “As an expert on the causes of the Great Depression, I’m sure Ben never imagined that he would be part of a team responsible for preventing another.”

Obama said that Bernanke’s “background, temperament, his courage, and his creativity” helped him to prevent another Great Depression.

Bernanke, a Republican, has played a central role in the government’s extraordinary response to the recession and 2008 banking panic.

Bernanke will have to be confirmed by the Senate. His term ends on Jan. 31. Fed chairmen serve four-year terms.

The question of Bernanke’s reappointment had been the focus of much speculation. Recently many economists and insiders had said they believed that he would more than likely keep his job.

The Fed has drawn criticism for not taking a stronger hand earlier in the crisis and for their part in inflating the housing bubble by keeping interest rates low for so long. National Hard Money Association