Story first appeared in the Wall Street Journal
Here's food for thought: Despite being fed a steady diet of conflicting news about the global economy, consumers around the world are still tucking into pricey steaks and juicy pork chops with gusto.
U.S. exports of beef and pork are on pace to set records this year, and domestic demand is rebounding with surprising strength, indicating that slower growth world-wide and high unemployment at home haven't choked off appetites for some everyday luxuries.
Those consumer cravings have helped keep livestock futures consistently high this year, even as other commodities' prices have swung wildly. They have also pushed up domestic retail prices for many beef and pork products in recent years. The average price for sliced bacon in September was $4.82 a pound, up 34% from two years earlier, while uncooked beef roasts cost $4.52 a pound, up 15% over the same period, according to government figures.
Live cattle prices are up 13% this year in Chicago futures trading, making cattle among the few widely traded commodities besides gold to be up by double digits. Lean hogs futures are up 9% this year. Both meat contracts also jumped in 2010, climbing 26% and 22%, respectively.
Among U.S. consumers, the appetite for nicer cuts seems particularly strong. In recent months, the difference has widened between prices for choice cuts of beef typically sold in restaurants and for less costly select beef, which usually is purchased in supermarkets, says Glynn Tonsor, an assistant professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University.
The booming prices are providing an added boost to pocketbooks in rural America, which has also been benefiting from higher crop prices and soaring land values. For livestock producers, the rally is also offsetting the cost of animal feed, given big spikes in corn and soybeans last year.
Longer term, some see more price pressures. A harsh drought in the southern plains has driven ranchers to send more cattle to slaughter, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. While that is adding to the supply of beef right now, it is likely to create a dearth of supply down the road. With fewer cows to bear calves, beef production is likely to be curtailed. And it takes some three years to raise cattle for slaughter, creating upward pressure on prices in the meantime.
With exports booming and prices climbing, U.S. pork production is forecast to rise 2% next year, according to the USDA.
At the moment, expensive meat isn't sending customers fleeing. The U.S. had shipped nearly 1.9 billion pounds of beef and veal abroad this year through August, almost as much as in all of 2009.
U.S. beef exports are on track to top the all-time high of 2.5 billion pounds set in 2003 by roughly 10%, according to the USDA.
Pork exports also are poised to top the 2008 record of 4.7 billion pounds. Through August, the U.S. had already sent more pork abroad, 3.3 billion pounds, than in 2007, and twice as much as in 2002.
The trade has gotten a significant boost from a cheaper dollar, which has made U.S. meat cheaper abroad, particularly among major customers in Asia, where faster-growing economies are making people wealthier and more inclined to add costly protein to their diets.
An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in South Korea, America's fourth-largest beef customer in 2010, is also driving U.S. beef purchases higher. Through August, South Korea had imported 277 million pounds of U.S. beef, a hair under its total for all of last year, according to USDA data.
Disease, however, can also curtail U.S. exports, which is what happened in 2004 after an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known as mad-cow disease. Exports plunged 82% from the 2003 record and have taken years to recover.
The Obama administration is lobbying Japan to ease restrictions it still has on U.S. beef due to the outbreak, and the chief agricultural negotiator for the U.S. trade representative was in China recently, pushing China to allow U.S. beef.
Americans are expected to consume less beef per capita this year than last, according to USDA figures. But Kansas State's Mr. Tonsor compiles an index of U.S. beef demand that weighs consumption and prices, and it has risen for five consecutive quarters on a year-over-year basis, through the third quarter. A similar pork index is up four quarters in a row, he says.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Small Business Waiting to Hire This Holiday Season
Stor first appeared in USA Today.
For small business owners, at this time of year thoughts usually turn to hiring. Whether it's part-time help or paying the regular workers overtime, it's a holiday tradition to put that "Help Wanted" sign in the window.
But this year, concerns about depressed consumer sentiment are translating into weak hiring trends.
To bring on workers, there has to be an expectation that business is going to be good. But companies are worried that customers are still holding onto their cash as consumer confidence remains low, says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an outplacement firm in Chicago.
Bottom line: Don't count on the little guy to hire a lot of seasonal help between now and the end of the 2011.
For starters, the consumer confidence index fell to 39.8 in October. This is down from the previous nine-month average of 59.6, and lower than the 49.9 reading during the same month last year. If consumers don't spend, Challenger expects retail employment will be lower than last year, when, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the three months ending December 2010, the net change in retail jobs was approximately 630,000. This was up from 495,000 for the same period in 2009, but off from 746,800 in 2006.
How important is small business to the indicators for holiday hiring? According to the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, small businesses employ half of U.S. workers. They also pay 43% of total U.S. private payroll, and have generated 65% of new jobs over the past 17 years. For holiday hiring to show a bump, small business must be a part of it.
CBIZ, a company in Roanoke, Va., that tracks hiring, found that in September, small business employment shrank by 0.81%. The CBIZ Small Business Employment Index, a barometer for hiring trends among companies with 300 or fewer employees, showed that for the third month in a row, hiring in the small business sector trended slightly downward.
According to the National Federation of Independent Business, small business optimism saw a modest gain of 0.8 points in September, ending a six-month decline. While that number is up from recent months, says Holly Wade, senior policy analyst at the NFIB, the figure was still outweighed by those expecting sales to decline.
Still, the good news is that 7% more small business owners say they are planning to hire rather than cut employees in the fourth quarter compared with the same time last year. "It might be better than last year, and even better than it was two years ago, but we are not seeing the dramatic jump that we were hoping for," says Wade. The last time this number was healthy was when it was 14% in 2007.
So, while the numbers are trending up, it's a slow climb. One reason, according to the 350,000-member NFIB, whose largest segments are in retail, construction and services: poor sales have been its members' number one problem the past three years. They are certainly not going to hire workers just for the holiday season if they don't see the sales coming in the front door. She points out that any increases in the cost of running a business — higher taxes, more regulation, or increases in fuel prices — will affect the ability of an owner to pay for an extra employee.
But there are some indications that Santa will win the stare down with the conservative consumer. Commerce department numbers released at the end of October showed spending in the third quarter was the highest it had been all year. It's been three long years of frugality for many shoppers, and, whether they need to replace a worn out appliance or just want to freshen their wardrobe, Noftsinger notes, "Americans like to spend money, and they have been waiting for an opportunity to do so."
For small business owners, at this time of year thoughts usually turn to hiring. Whether it's part-time help or paying the regular workers overtime, it's a holiday tradition to put that "Help Wanted" sign in the window.
But this year, concerns about depressed consumer sentiment are translating into weak hiring trends.
To bring on workers, there has to be an expectation that business is going to be good. But companies are worried that customers are still holding onto their cash as consumer confidence remains low, says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray and Christmas, an outplacement firm in Chicago.
Bottom line: Don't count on the little guy to hire a lot of seasonal help between now and the end of the 2011.
For starters, the consumer confidence index fell to 39.8 in October. This is down from the previous nine-month average of 59.6, and lower than the 49.9 reading during the same month last year. If consumers don't spend, Challenger expects retail employment will be lower than last year, when, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the three months ending December 2010, the net change in retail jobs was approximately 630,000. This was up from 495,000 for the same period in 2009, but off from 746,800 in 2006.
How important is small business to the indicators for holiday hiring? According to the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, small businesses employ half of U.S. workers. They also pay 43% of total U.S. private payroll, and have generated 65% of new jobs over the past 17 years. For holiday hiring to show a bump, small business must be a part of it.
CBIZ, a company in Roanoke, Va., that tracks hiring, found that in September, small business employment shrank by 0.81%. The CBIZ Small Business Employment Index, a barometer for hiring trends among companies with 300 or fewer employees, showed that for the third month in a row, hiring in the small business sector trended slightly downward.
According to the National Federation of Independent Business, small business optimism saw a modest gain of 0.8 points in September, ending a six-month decline. While that number is up from recent months, says Holly Wade, senior policy analyst at the NFIB, the figure was still outweighed by those expecting sales to decline.
Still, the good news is that 7% more small business owners say they are planning to hire rather than cut employees in the fourth quarter compared with the same time last year. "It might be better than last year, and even better than it was two years ago, but we are not seeing the dramatic jump that we were hoping for," says Wade. The last time this number was healthy was when it was 14% in 2007.
So, while the numbers are trending up, it's a slow climb. One reason, according to the 350,000-member NFIB, whose largest segments are in retail, construction and services: poor sales have been its members' number one problem the past three years. They are certainly not going to hire workers just for the holiday season if they don't see the sales coming in the front door. She points out that any increases in the cost of running a business — higher taxes, more regulation, or increases in fuel prices — will affect the ability of an owner to pay for an extra employee.
But there are some indications that Santa will win the stare down with the conservative consumer. Commerce department numbers released at the end of October showed spending in the third quarter was the highest it had been all year. It's been three long years of frugality for many shoppers, and, whether they need to replace a worn out appliance or just want to freshen their wardrobe, Noftsinger notes, "Americans like to spend money, and they have been waiting for an opportunity to do so."
Case Systems Solutions’ parent company, Case Systems, Announced the Purchase of The Assets of CIF Lab Casework Solutions, Inc. of Ontario, Canada
Midland, MI (November 7, 2011) – Case Systems Solutions L.L.C., a Michigan based dealership that delivers casework, countertop, millwork and total project management to the primary education (K-12), higher education, laboratory casework and healthcare market segments, has announced that CIF Lab Solutions LP has purchased the assets of CIF Lab Casework Solutions, Inc. and will maintain operations in Vaughan Ontario, Canada. The purchase is a joint venture between the ownership group of Northeast Interior Systems and Case Systems Inc.
CiF is a manufacturer of the highest quality wood casework for the university, college, research, government and healthcare casework for laboratory environments, as well as, the K-12 institutional market segment; in the United States and Canada.
“In our continued goal to supply our customers with a full range of quality products, we are enthusiastic about the addition of this solid product line.” said Brad Laackman, General Manager of Case Systems Solutions. “Our manufacturers include, Case Systems for plastic laminate products, BOSTONtec for adjustable table systems and overhead service distribution, along with other various suppliers that complement our core partners to meet our client’s expectations. These partners have been integral to our success.”
“Now, with the addition of CiF Lab Solutions, we have improved our portfolio with premium wood casework for our clients. Their products have the acceptance of the laboratory design community, including nationally recognized architectural firms and lab planners. They meet and exceed the design criteria of our clients at a competitive price point.”
Laackman went on to add, “By accessing Case Solutions’ success in sales, project management and installation services, along with Case System’s operational excellence in manufacturing, CiF will offer all of us something that the market is ready for; premium wood casework that is complete, on-time and at a competitive price.”
“We are excited to announce another “Best in Class” offering to our customers with the addition of CiF to our companies”, says Robert Bowden, Chairman of the Board for Case Systems. “For thirty-four years we have continued to build organizations focused on customer needs, excellence of product and flawless execution. We accomplished this by starting at the foundation, directly serving our customers through our expanding dealerships. To better serve our customers we added manufacturing companies including Case Systems Inc and BOSTONtec with our combined synergies and resources we were able to control our quality and service, develop innovative products, and in all ways enhance our customer’s experience.”
“The addition of CiF will allow us to further integrate and expand our offerings, as well as, deliver the confidence of financial stability, best in class quality products, on time and complete delivery, dependable service, product esthetics and innovation, which have always been the core of our companies. Bowden added. “We look forward with much excitement to the added opportunities and solutions that CiF will bring to our clients.”
For More Information
If interested in learning more about Case Solutions, Case Systems or CiF Lab Solutions, or the purchase, please contact Brad Laackman at 989.496.0824 or brad.laackman@cs2direct.com. In addition, you may visit our websites for further company details at www.casesystemssolutions.com, www.casesystems.com and www.cifsolutions.com.
About Case Systems Solutions
Case Systems Solutions started in 2010 as a direct contracting extension of Case Systems. Delivering a superior, long-term customer experience from custom design to installation of a full product line package. Using a high level of communication and professionalism, Case Systems Solutions is focused on delivering our products in a prompt, efficient fashion to meet your deadline. As part of Case Systems, we have the capabilities of combining steel workstations and casework to achieve superior product responses. In addition, all Case Systems Solutions products can be treated with our ÆGIS Microbe Shield® technology.
.
About Case Systems, Inc.
Case Systems is a leading designer and manufacturer of durable, versatile, laminate casework systems for the healthcare, education and laboratory markets. Case Systems purchased BOSTONtec, a former supplier, to produce high quality, steel furniture for industrial and technical environments. All Case Systems and BOSTONtec products are designed and fabricated in Midland, Michigan, and sold throughout North America.
CiF is a manufacturer of the highest quality wood casework for the university, college, research, government and healthcare casework for laboratory environments, as well as, the K-12 institutional market segment; in the United States and Canada.
“In our continued goal to supply our customers with a full range of quality products, we are enthusiastic about the addition of this solid product line.” said Brad Laackman, General Manager of Case Systems Solutions. “Our manufacturers include, Case Systems for plastic laminate products, BOSTONtec for adjustable table systems and overhead service distribution, along with other various suppliers that complement our core partners to meet our client’s expectations. These partners have been integral to our success.”
“Now, with the addition of CiF Lab Solutions, we have improved our portfolio with premium wood casework for our clients. Their products have the acceptance of the laboratory design community, including nationally recognized architectural firms and lab planners. They meet and exceed the design criteria of our clients at a competitive price point.”
Laackman went on to add, “By accessing Case Solutions’ success in sales, project management and installation services, along with Case System’s operational excellence in manufacturing, CiF will offer all of us something that the market is ready for; premium wood casework that is complete, on-time and at a competitive price.”
“We are excited to announce another “Best in Class” offering to our customers with the addition of CiF to our companies”, says Robert Bowden, Chairman of the Board for Case Systems. “For thirty-four years we have continued to build organizations focused on customer needs, excellence of product and flawless execution. We accomplished this by starting at the foundation, directly serving our customers through our expanding dealerships. To better serve our customers we added manufacturing companies including Case Systems Inc and BOSTONtec with our combined synergies and resources we were able to control our quality and service, develop innovative products, and in all ways enhance our customer’s experience.”
“The addition of CiF will allow us to further integrate and expand our offerings, as well as, deliver the confidence of financial stability, best in class quality products, on time and complete delivery, dependable service, product esthetics and innovation, which have always been the core of our companies. Bowden added. “We look forward with much excitement to the added opportunities and solutions that CiF will bring to our clients.”
For More Information
If interested in learning more about Case Solutions, Case Systems or CiF Lab Solutions, or the purchase, please contact Brad Laackman at 989.496.0824 or brad.laackman@cs2direct.com. In addition, you may visit our websites for further company details at www.casesystemssolutions.com, www.casesystems.com and www.cifsolutions.com.
About Case Systems Solutions
Case Systems Solutions started in 2010 as a direct contracting extension of Case Systems. Delivering a superior, long-term customer experience from custom design to installation of a full product line package. Using a high level of communication and professionalism, Case Systems Solutions is focused on delivering our products in a prompt, efficient fashion to meet your deadline. As part of Case Systems, we have the capabilities of combining steel workstations and casework to achieve superior product responses. In addition, all Case Systems Solutions products can be treated with our ÆGIS Microbe Shield® technology.
.
About Case Systems, Inc.
Case Systems is a leading designer and manufacturer of durable, versatile, laminate casework systems for the healthcare, education and laboratory markets. Case Systems purchased BOSTONtec, a former supplier, to produce high quality, steel furniture for industrial and technical environments. All Case Systems and BOSTONtec products are designed and fabricated in Midland, Michigan, and sold throughout North America.
What is Yahoo Doing!
Story first appeared in USA TODAY.
Even as Yahoo rolls out a fresh batch of social and mobile products and services, its strategic moves continue to baffle investors and analysts alike.
And at least one major shareholder isn't happy. Hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, in a letter to Yahoo's board on Friday, pushed for the ouster of director and company co-founder Jerry Yang. Loeb, who owns a 5.2% slice of Yahoo through a fund called Third Point, asserts that Yang has too many conflicts of interest.
Chief among them is Loeb's contention that Yang is in discussions with several buyout firms about joining forces to acquire a controlling stake in Yahoo. Loeb's letter names the Blackstone Group, KKR, Providence Equity Partners, Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group as firms talking to Yang, who co-founded Yahoo in 1995 with David Filo.
Yang had no comment.
The shareholder hullabaloo is just the latest distraction for the scuffling Internet pioneer. Though the online display ad market is growing in the U.S.— especially in the sale of targeted ads based on unique data — Yahoo badly lags behind Facebook and Google. At the same time, Yahoo made "no strides forward in the dominant technology trends — social, mobile and cloud. And, if anything, they've lost even more ground," says Jonathan Yarmis, an independent tech analyst.
In September, Yahoo booted Carol Bartz as CEO after she failed to reverse its flagging fortunes despite 2½ years on the job. Then the board hired investment bankers Goldman Sachs Group and Allen & Co. to help the company explore its strategic options. In recent months, Yahoo has padded its editorial ranks, stealing key execs from CBS Interactive. Last week, the company bought online ad network Interclick for $270 million and bolstered its mobile and social efforts.
The confluence of seemingly conflicting strategies has confounded followers of the Internet company, inspiring the latest parlor game in Silicon Valley: What, exactly, is Yahoo's end game?
Yahoo's answer is that the board is exploring a wide range of options. The company says they can assure all Yahoo shareholders that whatever the outcome of the strategic review process may be, it will serve the best interests of all the company's shareholders.
In a Sept. 23 memo to employees, Yang, Filo and Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said the search is on for a full-time CEO and that company advisers are fielding offers from potential business partners. USA TODAY obtained a copy of the memo.
In the weeks since Bartz was bounced, Yahoo has had a flurry of activity under interim CEO Tim Morse. Last month, it announced a content-sharing and distribution partnership with ABC News and rolled out more than a dozen original Web series featuring actors such as Morgan Spurlock and Judy Greer.
But the purchase of Interclick — which reaches more than 120 million unique users a month, according to market researcher ComScore — is a head-scratcher because Yahoo already owns ad network BlueLithium, which has not panned out, analysts say.
Yahoo executives are betting the addition of Interclick makes it a stronger company or a more attractive acquisition target, Lee reasons. However, he said, "it is odd Yahoo decided its best option was to buy rather than to build on top of what" it already has.
Potential bidders
Yet the saber rattling by private-equity firms and other buyout shops storming the gates of Yahoo is building pressure on management. The company needs to move fast to prove its relevance or be sold at a bargain-basement discount. The problem: Yahoo isn't growing like it used to. And its prospects in the face of competition aren't great, either. Still, it's profitable and boasts a massive audience of 700 million users worldwide.
Much of the problem is leadership. Yahoo still doesn't have a permanent CEO. And then-CEO Yang's resistance to Microsoft's offer to buy the company in 2008 for $47.5 billion — double its current market value — has landed him in the doghouse. Yahoo's board ultimately rejected the bid.
Should Yahoo opt to sell, a long list of prospective suitors possibly awaits. Even Google's name pops up, although Alibaba Group, a Chinese Internet company partially owned by Yahoo, is the only bidder that has publicly declared its interest in mounting a takeover attempt.
Google and Yahoo declined to comment.
Others reported to be mulling an offer include Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and buyout firms KKR, the Blackstone Group and Silver Lake Partners.
Microsoft has been reported to be weighing whether to help finance a Silver Lake bid.
It would be folly for Microsoft, sitting on a heap of cash (more than $40 billion) to make another go at Yahoo, cautions independent analyst Damon Vickers. "These are two companies slowly fading away," he says. "If they merge, it would be like two cinder blocks sinking in water."
Despite its well-documented problems — three CEOs in a few years, for starters — Yahoo's audience of some 700 million people worldwide and its stakes in prized assets such as Alibaba and Yahoo Japan make it an attractive takeover candidate, says David Hallerman, an analyst at eMarketer.
By acquiring Yahoo, Google or Microsoft could eliminate a competitor and pick up valuable pieces from Yahoo in the process, says Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond's School of Law. But Google and Microsoft face antitrust scrutiny if they pursue Yahoo, he adds.
The takeover talk has helped lift Yahoo's stock price by more than 30% since Bartz's departure. Yahoo's shares rose nearly 3%, to close at $15.69 Monday.
Still, it is unclear if Yahoo will put itself up for sale as it explores ways to appease shareholders. Many stockholders are frustrated with the company's declining revenue at a time when the overall Internet advertising market is growing.
Yahoo's profit and revenue slipped year-over-year during its third quarter. Profits were $293 million, or 23 cents a share, compared with $396 million, or 29 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue was $1.07 billion, vs. $1.12 billion a year ago, but in line with Wall Street expectations.
What the future holds
Yahoo's travails aren't likely to go away as it increasingly faces competitive pressure from Facebook and Google for users and advertisers.
Searches on Yahoo, for instance, were up only 1% in its third quarter, while search page views slumped 3%, the company said.
That, in no small part, has adversely affected Yahoo's online advertising business. While Yahoo's annual revenue from display ads is expected to improve 15% to $1.86 billion in the U.S. in 2012, Facebook's is expected to soar 45% to $2.9 billion and Google's 58% to $1.82 billion, according to eMarketer.
Yahoo said it has agreed to extend the revenue-per-search guarantee in its partnership with Microsoft through March 2013.
Earlier this year, however, Yahoo admitted the two-year deal was taking longer than anticipated to pay off because of technical imperfections in the search-advertising system.
Yahoo is being squeezed by Google's dominance in search and Facebook's in delivering targeted advertising to its 800 million members. With these two monster competitors offering scale, relevance and the power of the social graph — and with AOL's new Devil ad unit slowly gaining traction — the room for Yahoo to grow dramatically is narrowing.
In that Sept. 23 memo to employees, Yang, Filo and Bostock acknowledge Yahoo needs to "accelerate innovation, reignite inspiration, and give our users what they want now — great content that is engaging and easy to use on any device and provide an experience in which they can participate and contribute."
Such strategy dovetails with the advice of several industry observers, including Don Dodge, a former Microsoft executive who closely follows Yahoo.
He suggests that Yahoo hire a "product-driven CEO" who focuses on customers and eschews business deals; hold onto valuable equity holdings in Yahoo Japan and Baidu; and concentrate on Yahoo strongholds, such as Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance.
Even as Yahoo rolls out a fresh batch of social and mobile products and services, its strategic moves continue to baffle investors and analysts alike.
And at least one major shareholder isn't happy. Hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, in a letter to Yahoo's board on Friday, pushed for the ouster of director and company co-founder Jerry Yang. Loeb, who owns a 5.2% slice of Yahoo through a fund called Third Point, asserts that Yang has too many conflicts of interest.
Chief among them is Loeb's contention that Yang is in discussions with several buyout firms about joining forces to acquire a controlling stake in Yahoo. Loeb's letter names the Blackstone Group, KKR, Providence Equity Partners, Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group as firms talking to Yang, who co-founded Yahoo in 1995 with David Filo.
Yang had no comment.
The shareholder hullabaloo is just the latest distraction for the scuffling Internet pioneer. Though the online display ad market is growing in the U.S.— especially in the sale of targeted ads based on unique data — Yahoo badly lags behind Facebook and Google. At the same time, Yahoo made "no strides forward in the dominant technology trends — social, mobile and cloud. And, if anything, they've lost even more ground," says Jonathan Yarmis, an independent tech analyst.
In September, Yahoo booted Carol Bartz as CEO after she failed to reverse its flagging fortunes despite 2½ years on the job. Then the board hired investment bankers Goldman Sachs Group and Allen & Co. to help the company explore its strategic options. In recent months, Yahoo has padded its editorial ranks, stealing key execs from CBS Interactive. Last week, the company bought online ad network Interclick for $270 million and bolstered its mobile and social efforts.
The confluence of seemingly conflicting strategies has confounded followers of the Internet company, inspiring the latest parlor game in Silicon Valley: What, exactly, is Yahoo's end game?
Yahoo's answer is that the board is exploring a wide range of options. The company says they can assure all Yahoo shareholders that whatever the outcome of the strategic review process may be, it will serve the best interests of all the company's shareholders.
In a Sept. 23 memo to employees, Yang, Filo and Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said the search is on for a full-time CEO and that company advisers are fielding offers from potential business partners. USA TODAY obtained a copy of the memo.
In the weeks since Bartz was bounced, Yahoo has had a flurry of activity under interim CEO Tim Morse. Last month, it announced a content-sharing and distribution partnership with ABC News and rolled out more than a dozen original Web series featuring actors such as Morgan Spurlock and Judy Greer.
But the purchase of Interclick — which reaches more than 120 million unique users a month, according to market researcher ComScore — is a head-scratcher because Yahoo already owns ad network BlueLithium, which has not panned out, analysts say.
Yahoo executives are betting the addition of Interclick makes it a stronger company or a more attractive acquisition target, Lee reasons. However, he said, "it is odd Yahoo decided its best option was to buy rather than to build on top of what" it already has.
Potential bidders
Yet the saber rattling by private-equity firms and other buyout shops storming the gates of Yahoo is building pressure on management. The company needs to move fast to prove its relevance or be sold at a bargain-basement discount. The problem: Yahoo isn't growing like it used to. And its prospects in the face of competition aren't great, either. Still, it's profitable and boasts a massive audience of 700 million users worldwide.
Much of the problem is leadership. Yahoo still doesn't have a permanent CEO. And then-CEO Yang's resistance to Microsoft's offer to buy the company in 2008 for $47.5 billion — double its current market value — has landed him in the doghouse. Yahoo's board ultimately rejected the bid.
Should Yahoo opt to sell, a long list of prospective suitors possibly awaits. Even Google's name pops up, although Alibaba Group, a Chinese Internet company partially owned by Yahoo, is the only bidder that has publicly declared its interest in mounting a takeover attempt.
Google and Yahoo declined to comment.
Others reported to be mulling an offer include Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and buyout firms KKR, the Blackstone Group and Silver Lake Partners.
Microsoft has been reported to be weighing whether to help finance a Silver Lake bid.
It would be folly for Microsoft, sitting on a heap of cash (more than $40 billion) to make another go at Yahoo, cautions independent analyst Damon Vickers. "These are two companies slowly fading away," he says. "If they merge, it would be like two cinder blocks sinking in water."
Despite its well-documented problems — three CEOs in a few years, for starters — Yahoo's audience of some 700 million people worldwide and its stakes in prized assets such as Alibaba and Yahoo Japan make it an attractive takeover candidate, says David Hallerman, an analyst at eMarketer.
By acquiring Yahoo, Google or Microsoft could eliminate a competitor and pick up valuable pieces from Yahoo in the process, says Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond's School of Law. But Google and Microsoft face antitrust scrutiny if they pursue Yahoo, he adds.
The takeover talk has helped lift Yahoo's stock price by more than 30% since Bartz's departure. Yahoo's shares rose nearly 3%, to close at $15.69 Monday.
Still, it is unclear if Yahoo will put itself up for sale as it explores ways to appease shareholders. Many stockholders are frustrated with the company's declining revenue at a time when the overall Internet advertising market is growing.
Yahoo's profit and revenue slipped year-over-year during its third quarter. Profits were $293 million, or 23 cents a share, compared with $396 million, or 29 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue was $1.07 billion, vs. $1.12 billion a year ago, but in line with Wall Street expectations.
What the future holds
Yahoo's travails aren't likely to go away as it increasingly faces competitive pressure from Facebook and Google for users and advertisers.
Searches on Yahoo, for instance, were up only 1% in its third quarter, while search page views slumped 3%, the company said.
That, in no small part, has adversely affected Yahoo's online advertising business. While Yahoo's annual revenue from display ads is expected to improve 15% to $1.86 billion in the U.S. in 2012, Facebook's is expected to soar 45% to $2.9 billion and Google's 58% to $1.82 billion, according to eMarketer.
Yahoo said it has agreed to extend the revenue-per-search guarantee in its partnership with Microsoft through March 2013.
Earlier this year, however, Yahoo admitted the two-year deal was taking longer than anticipated to pay off because of technical imperfections in the search-advertising system.
Yahoo is being squeezed by Google's dominance in search and Facebook's in delivering targeted advertising to its 800 million members. With these two monster competitors offering scale, relevance and the power of the social graph — and with AOL's new Devil ad unit slowly gaining traction — the room for Yahoo to grow dramatically is narrowing.
In that Sept. 23 memo to employees, Yang, Filo and Bostock acknowledge Yahoo needs to "accelerate innovation, reignite inspiration, and give our users what they want now — great content that is engaging and easy to use on any device and provide an experience in which they can participate and contribute."
Such strategy dovetails with the advice of several industry observers, including Don Dodge, a former Microsoft executive who closely follows Yahoo.
He suggests that Yahoo hire a "product-driven CEO" who focuses on customers and eschews business deals; hold onto valuable equity holdings in Yahoo Japan and Baidu; and concentrate on Yahoo strongholds, such as Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance.
Web Suffixe Debate
Story first appeared in Bloomberg News.
A program to let companies acquire their own Web suffixes is failing to win over U.S. brand owners such as Procter & Gamble Co. and Hewlett- Packard Co. that don’t see a need to expand beyond .com.
P&G, the world’s largest consumer products company with more than 50 brands including Tide detergent, Pampers diapers and Crest toothpaste, won’t apply for new suffixes, said Paul Fox, a spokesman. HP, the biggest computer maker, considers the program costly and has no plans to take part, said Gary Elliott, vice president of global marketing.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit group managing the Web’s global address system under a U.S. Commerce Department contract, is preparing to consider almost any word in any language as a Web suffix, including company and brand names or terms such as .shopping or .nyc. The group will accept applications from Jan. 12 through April 12, 2012, for as many as 1,000 new suffixes a year. The application fee is $185,000 for each domain name.
Not one of 21 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 that Bloomberg informally surveyed in the past month said they plan to apply. Other responses ranged from still researching options to not commenting.
Six-Year Deliberation
Rod Beckstrom, the group’s chief executive officer, said the program isn’t for all companies when he told a meeting of the organization on Oct. 24 that “anyone who might be interested needs to do their own homework, develop a solid understanding of the program and then determine” whether a new name is worthwhile. “The clock is ticking,” he said.
The naming group, overseer of the Internet’s address system since 1998, currently manages 22 so-called generic top-level domains, including the commonly used .com, .org and .net. After six years of deliberation, the Marina del Ray, California-based group’s board voted June 20 to expand the number of those domains as a way to spur online innovation.
The expansion may foster competition in the domain sector, support new business models online and provide consumers with new ways to find products, according to an analysis prepared for the oversight group in June 2010.
The Commerce Department should delay the domain-name expansion to give businesses more time to assess the program, including brand and legal issues, the National Retail Federation wrote in an Oct. 21 letter to the agency.
‘Uncertainty Reigns’
Mallory Duncan, general counsel of the Washington-based retailers group, said in an interview that with the application date just months away, there’s not time to think all this through.
The Commerce Department is reviewing the letter and plans to respond in a timely manner, Moira Vahey, a spokeswoman for the agency’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said in an e-mail.
The Association of National Advertisers, a Washington-based organization where HP’s Elliott serves as chairman, criticized the domain-name expansion as increasing costs for businesses and sowing confusion among consumers.
The association represents more than 400 companies including Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.
Canon Inc. and Hitachi Ltd. are among the few large companies that have expressed public interest in the new domains.
Watching Competitors
General Motors Co., the largest U.S. automaker, has “thoroughly evaluated” the domain-name program and is weighing its options, Tom Henderson, a spokesman, said in an e-mail. Wal- Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer, is assessing the program, Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman, said in an interview.
Adobe Systems Inc., the largest maker of graphic-design software, is opposed to the “unnecessary, wholesale expansion of generic top-level domains and is very concerned it will cause confusion for consumers and increase the potential for online and consumer fraud,” John Travis, the company’s vice president of brand marketing, said in an e- mail. Even so, Travis said the company is still evaluating whether to apply for domains.
Companies may ultimately apply for domain names because they don’t know what their competitors are doing and the next application round hasn’t been announced, said Josh Bourne, managing partner at FairWinds Partners LLC, a domain-name consulting firm in Washington.
Competitive Risk
Brands are looking at the risk of being left behind. If all of your competitors are using their .brand or .keyword in marketing campaigns and you don’t have one, it may make you look out of touch, out of date.
Bourne is president of the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, a nonprofit group that has criticized the structure of the expansion, including the lack of a timeline for a second application round. The group’s members include Eli Lilly & Co., Morgan Stanley and Nike Inc.
Hewlett-Packard will use its HP.com website rather than “fracture our dollars” on new domains, Elliott said. He estimated the cost of operating a Web suffix may eventually reach $1.5 million, including legal and consulting fees, Web development and other costs for the Palo Alto, California-based company.
Procter & Gamble, based in Cincinnati, will “focus on our existing .com sites and other ways to connect with consumers,” Tonia Elrod, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
The program requires resources that they would prefer to focus on building relationships with customers. P&G already operates a range of .com brand sites, including Gillette.com for razors and Charmin.com for toilet paper.
Contract Scrutinized
The U.S. companies join corporations in Europe such as Porsche AG, Vodafone Group Plc and Puma SE that have said they aren’t attracted to new suffixes.
The name oversight group is operating under a Commerce Department contract that expires in March. The agency is reviewing public comments on whether the terms should be amended and plans to open the contract for bidding this year.
The Commerce Department should include ethics and conflict- of- interest rules in a future contract to manage the domain-name system, Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, wrote in a September letter to the agency.
Two Washington-based government watchdogs, the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Citizen, have raised concerns about the departure of the naming group’s former chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush.
Dengate Thrush left the organization four days after the vote on domain-name expansion and within a month joined a London company called Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd., which intends to acquire Web suffixes created by the new plan and offer Internet registry services.
A program to let companies acquire their own Web suffixes is failing to win over U.S. brand owners such as Procter & Gamble Co. and Hewlett- Packard Co. that don’t see a need to expand beyond .com.
P&G, the world’s largest consumer products company with more than 50 brands including Tide detergent, Pampers diapers and Crest toothpaste, won’t apply for new suffixes, said Paul Fox, a spokesman. HP, the biggest computer maker, considers the program costly and has no plans to take part, said Gary Elliott, vice president of global marketing.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit group managing the Web’s global address system under a U.S. Commerce Department contract, is preparing to consider almost any word in any language as a Web suffix, including company and brand names or terms such as .shopping or .nyc. The group will accept applications from Jan. 12 through April 12, 2012, for as many as 1,000 new suffixes a year. The application fee is $185,000 for each domain name.
Not one of 21 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 that Bloomberg informally surveyed in the past month said they plan to apply. Other responses ranged from still researching options to not commenting.
Six-Year Deliberation
Rod Beckstrom, the group’s chief executive officer, said the program isn’t for all companies when he told a meeting of the organization on Oct. 24 that “anyone who might be interested needs to do their own homework, develop a solid understanding of the program and then determine” whether a new name is worthwhile. “The clock is ticking,” he said.
The naming group, overseer of the Internet’s address system since 1998, currently manages 22 so-called generic top-level domains, including the commonly used .com, .org and .net. After six years of deliberation, the Marina del Ray, California-based group’s board voted June 20 to expand the number of those domains as a way to spur online innovation.
The expansion may foster competition in the domain sector, support new business models online and provide consumers with new ways to find products, according to an analysis prepared for the oversight group in June 2010.
The Commerce Department should delay the domain-name expansion to give businesses more time to assess the program, including brand and legal issues, the National Retail Federation wrote in an Oct. 21 letter to the agency.
‘Uncertainty Reigns’
Mallory Duncan, general counsel of the Washington-based retailers group, said in an interview that with the application date just months away, there’s not time to think all this through.
The Commerce Department is reviewing the letter and plans to respond in a timely manner, Moira Vahey, a spokeswoman for the agency’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, said in an e-mail.
The Association of National Advertisers, a Washington-based organization where HP’s Elliott serves as chairman, criticized the domain-name expansion as increasing costs for businesses and sowing confusion among consumers.
The association represents more than 400 companies including Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.
Canon Inc. and Hitachi Ltd. are among the few large companies that have expressed public interest in the new domains.
Watching Competitors
General Motors Co., the largest U.S. automaker, has “thoroughly evaluated” the domain-name program and is weighing its options, Tom Henderson, a spokesman, said in an e-mail. Wal- Mart Stores Inc., the world’s biggest retailer, is assessing the program, Ravi Jariwala, a spokesman, said in an interview.
Adobe Systems Inc., the largest maker of graphic-design software, is opposed to the “unnecessary, wholesale expansion of generic top-level domains and is very concerned it will cause confusion for consumers and increase the potential for online and consumer fraud,” John Travis, the company’s vice president of brand marketing, said in an e- mail. Even so, Travis said the company is still evaluating whether to apply for domains.
Companies may ultimately apply for domain names because they don’t know what their competitors are doing and the next application round hasn’t been announced, said Josh Bourne, managing partner at FairWinds Partners LLC, a domain-name consulting firm in Washington.
Competitive Risk
Brands are looking at the risk of being left behind. If all of your competitors are using their .brand or .keyword in marketing campaigns and you don’t have one, it may make you look out of touch, out of date.
Bourne is president of the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse, a nonprofit group that has criticized the structure of the expansion, including the lack of a timeline for a second application round. The group’s members include Eli Lilly & Co., Morgan Stanley and Nike Inc.
Hewlett-Packard will use its HP.com website rather than “fracture our dollars” on new domains, Elliott said. He estimated the cost of operating a Web suffix may eventually reach $1.5 million, including legal and consulting fees, Web development and other costs for the Palo Alto, California-based company.
Procter & Gamble, based in Cincinnati, will “focus on our existing .com sites and other ways to connect with consumers,” Tonia Elrod, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
The program requires resources that they would prefer to focus on building relationships with customers. P&G already operates a range of .com brand sites, including Gillette.com for razors and Charmin.com for toilet paper.
Contract Scrutinized
The U.S. companies join corporations in Europe such as Porsche AG, Vodafone Group Plc and Puma SE that have said they aren’t attracted to new suffixes.
The name oversight group is operating under a Commerce Department contract that expires in March. The agency is reviewing public comments on whether the terms should be amended and plans to open the contract for bidding this year.
The Commerce Department should include ethics and conflict- of- interest rules in a future contract to manage the domain-name system, Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, wrote in a September letter to the agency.
Two Washington-based government watchdogs, the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Citizen, have raised concerns about the departure of the naming group’s former chairman, Peter Dengate Thrush.
Dengate Thrush left the organization four days after the vote on domain-name expansion and within a month joined a London company called Top Level Domain Holdings Ltd., which intends to acquire Web suffixes created by the new plan and offer Internet registry services.
Fast Retailing Co Looking to Purchase Rival
Story first appeared in Bloomberg New.
Fast Retailing Co., Asia’s largest clothing chain, may buy a bigger rival in the U.S. or Europe after the yen’s advance to a postwar high against the dollar boosted the Japanese company’s purchasing power.
The yen strength and anemic stock markets make this a very good opportunity for M&A, Chief Executive Officer Tadashi Yanai, 62, said . He added that it won’t be something small, but a company of equal size or bigger.”
The billionaire aims to take advantage of the yen’s climb to expand outside Japan, where an unexpectedly long summer damped demand for fall and winter clothing, contributing to a 12 percent decline in profit in the year through August. Fast Retailing opened two New York stores last month and aims to be the world’s top clothing retailer, targeting a sixfold jump in sales from last year to 5 trillion yen
($64 billion) by 2020.
If there is a chance to do M&A in the future, they are thinking of doing it. Yanai, who turned his father’s tailoring business into a company with a market value of 1.4 trillion yen, making him Japan’s second-richest person.
Fast Retailing, the second-biggest gainer on the Nikkei 225 Stock Average in the past five years, “does not need any brands” and isn’t considering companies such as Esprit Holdings Ltd., Yanai said.
Polo Ralph Lauren Corp. probably won’t agree to an acquisition, according to Yanai.
Overseas Sales
Fast Retailing has said it intends to boost overseas sales to be greater than domestic revenue by 2015 as it expands in China, Southeast Asia and the U.S., competing with Inditex SA’s Zara, Hennes & Mauritz AB, and Gap Inc. Sales at Uniqlo stores in Japan that have been open more than a year dropped for a third straight month in October.
Making purchases was one of the ways the company was “investing for the future,” Yanai said in September. He remains Fast Retailing’s biggest shareholder with a 22 percent stake, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Fast Retailing has gained about 26 percent in the past five years. In dollar terms, its market value has soared 90 percent. The stock fell
0.2 percent to 13,390 yen as of the 3 p.m. close of trading in Tokyo, paring its advance this year to 2.8 percent, compared with a 14 percent drop for the Nikkei 225 and a 17 percent slide for the broader Topix index.
May List Overseas
Yanai said the company may also list overseas since the Japanese equity market lacks growth. He didn’t give a timeframe for any share sales.
The yen on Oct. 31 hit a post-World War II high of 75.35 against the dollar before the government intervened in the currency markets. The Japanese currency traded at 78.24 to the dollar on Nov. 4.
Fast Retailing had 202 billion yen in cash and short- term investments in August, the highest level since at least 2002, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The company bought out apparel maker Link Theory in two transactions in 2009 for $371 million after purchasing a minority stake in 2004, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s Fast Retailing’s biggest acquisition to date, the data show.
Profit Outlook
Sales will probably jump 18 percent to 965 billion yen in the fiscal year ending Aug. 31, the clothing retailer said Oct. 12 in a statement. Profit is likely to rise 31 percent to 71 billion yen in the fiscal year.
Fast Retailing’s overseas sales comprised 18 percent of last year’s 820 billion yen total, compared with a share of about 16 percent in the previous year, according to its annual reports.
Fast Retailing has spent more than $875 million on 22 deals since 2003, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It acquired a stake in Nelson Finance, owner of the French brand Comptoir des Cotonniers, in 2005, according to its 2010 annual report. Fast Retailing bought a further 64 percent in the company for $192.5 million in 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Princesse tam.tam
The clothing retailer also took control of French fashion brand Princesse tam.tam by buying 95 percent of Petit Vehicule for $83 million in 2005, the data show.
The company paid a median of 20.6 times earnings before interest and taxes on seven of its deals, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
That compares with a median of 11.6 times EBIT for 78 transactions in the clothing retail sector in the same period, the data show.
Fast Retailing in August 2007 dropped out of the bidding for New York luxury chain Barneys as Dubai’s Istithmar PJSC offered $942 million, raising its offer twice to counter the Japanese retailer.
Yanai at the time said Fast Retailing would spend as much as 400 billion yen, or about $3.5 billion, on acquisitions to double annual sales to 1 trillion yen by 2010. The company announced deals worth more than $400 million in the period from August 2007 through the end of 2010 and reported sales of 815 trillion yen in its 2010 fiscal year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Focusing on Uniqlo
“We no longer think there is a reason to buy Barneys,” Yanai said.
“Currently, we are mainly driving our Uniqlo business, so in that sense, there is no meaning to buy Barneys.”
Fast Retailing aims to build a global production system capable of manufacturing 5 billion articles of clothes yearly by 2020, it said in September.
Yanai, with an estimated wealth of $7.6 billion according to Forbes, quit his job selling kitchen items and men’s clothing at a Jusco supermarket in Japan to join his father’s tailoring business, Ogori Shoji, in 1972. He became president in 1984, when he opened the first Uniqlo store, known at the time as Unique Clothing Warehouse.
Fifth Avenue Store
In Japan, Yanai is second in wealth only to Softbank Corp. Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son, according to Forbes.
Fast Retailing aims to make 1 trillion yen of pretax profit, excluding ordinary items by 2020, more than 10 times this fiscal year’s. It plans to open as many as 300 stores annually within a year or two, Yanai said last month.
Yanai opened two of Uniqlo’s biggest stores to date in New York last month, with one on Fifth Avenue and another on 34th street. The Fifth Avenue store has a floor space of 89,000 square feet. The company plans to open stores in Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco in the next three years, he said.
Birmingham Hurt by Bankruptcy
Story first appeared in the Bloomberg News
Birmingham, Alabama, the most prominent industrial center in the Southeast before the civil- rights era, has been on a long losing streak that just got longer.
In 1997, Daimler AG opened a Mercedes-Benz factory in Vance, one county west of the state’s biggest city. Honda Motor Co. put a plant to the east, Toyota Motor Corp. to the north and Hyundai Motor Co. to the south. Birmingham lost its minor-league baseball team to a suburb in 1987, and the Iron Bowl football game in 2000. Plans for an entertainment district foundered. The city’s population plummeted almost 13 percent since 2000, even as the state grew.
Birmingham is also the seat of Jefferson County, which filed the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history under the burden of more than $3 billion of sewer-system debt. The so- called Magic City may need a big trick to persuade residents and businesses that its days of losing are over.
Birmingham was once a manufacturing center whose steel furnaces lit the night sky. A 56-foot statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of the forge, looks down on the city from a 124-foot pedestal that rises from Red Mountain, where he holds aloft the tip of a newly hammered spear.
Dynamite Hill
In 1960s, the city became infamous when violence against civil-rights demonstrators made it synonymous with brutal racism. One neighborhood suffered so many attacks with explosives it was called Dynamite Hill, and the city earned the epithet “Bombingham.”
Over the ensuing years, its steel-making industry withered and its housing and infrastructure decayed. In 2010, the city had a population of 212,237, down 12.8 percent since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Jefferson County, which encompasses 33 municipalities, had 658,460 people.
The slide to bankruptcy began in 1996, when the county was forced to rebuild its sewer system after pollution was found spewing into rivers. Risky derivative financing for the project backfired beginning in early 2008, leading the county to become one of the biggest casualties of Wall Street’s credit crisis.
Birmingham’s mayor said he knows he must pull his city out of Jefferson County’s shadow.
That’s Not Us
Mayor William Bell, a former county commissioner who took office in January 2010, told reporters that they are a separate entity. He added that Birmingham’s financial status is very sound, and they have more than enough money to carry out our day-to- day operations.
Birmingham, with 4,160 employees and a $371 million general-fund budget for 2011, carries Moody’s Investors Service’s third-highest bond rating at Aa2.
Jefferson County’s bonds are rated 14 levels lower: Caa1, below investment grade.
The county’s revenue in the fiscal year that ended in September totaled $152.5 million, down from $207.2 million the previous year.
The county has cut about 450 positions since June to bring the workforce to 2,687 employees. More cuts are coming next month, Commission President David Carrington has said.
Mayor Bell said he’ll meet with heads of businesses beginning next week to clarify the city’s financial standing and to distance it from the bankrupt county.
Soldiering On
Birmingham’s companies have struggled along with the region. City- based firms compose almost 90 percent of the Bloomberg Economic Evaluation of States’ Alabama stock index based on market capitalization. So far this year, the index has fallen about 24 percent, compared with about 1 percent for the Standard & Poor’s 500.
Brian Hilson, president and chief executive officer of the Birmingham Business Alliance, which serves a seven-county area, said he’s concerned that employers may be deterred from moving to or expanding in the city.
The mayor isn’t giving up. While there is talk among city leaders that sewer-rate increases might drive business away, Bell said a company he couldn’t name promised 250 jobs by year’s end.
Higher Borrowing
Any higher borrowing costs resulting from the county’s fiscal crisis won’t deter plans for revenue-generating projects such as a new hotel, Bell said. The city is spending almost $60 million to build a stadium and create other enticements to lure back the minor-league team, the Birmingham Barons.
Residents are torn as to what bankruptcy will mean.
Scott Pierce, who came to Birmingham more than 20 years ago to attend college and never left, runs a website called WhyBHM.com where he posts testimonials of residents explaining why they’ve moved here.
Pierce doesn’t anticipate a shortage of stories.
Hilson of the Business Alliance said the city, which has weathered so much, will outlast this storm.
Tire Mess Seen From Space
Story first appeared in the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
The sprawling pile of hundreds of thousands of tires including tractor tires isn't easy to spot from the ground, sitting in a rural South Carolina clearing accessible by only a circuitous dirt path that winds through thick patches of trees. No one knows how all those tire got there, or when.
But, Calhoun County council Chairman David Summers said of these giant rubber menace, that you can see it from space.
Authorities have charged one person in connection with the mess of roughly 250,000 tires, which covers more than 50 acres on statelite images. Now a Florida company is helping haul it all away.
Litter control officer Boyce Till said he contacted the local sheriff and state health department, which in investigating who had been dumping the tires that are said to include ag tires. But the worst possible penalty that could be imposed locally? A single $475 ticket for littering.
The sprawling pile of hundreds of thousands of tires including tractor tires isn't easy to spot from the ground, sitting in a rural South Carolina clearing accessible by only a circuitous dirt path that winds through thick patches of trees. No one knows how all those tire got there, or when.
But, Calhoun County council Chairman David Summers said of these giant rubber menace, that you can see it from space.
Authorities have charged one person in connection with the mess of roughly 250,000 tires, which covers more than 50 acres on statelite images. Now a Florida company is helping haul it all away.
Litter control officer Boyce Till said he contacted the local sheriff and state health department, which in investigating who had been dumping the tires that are said to include ag tires. But the worst possible penalty that could be imposed locally? A single $475 ticket for littering.
LG Said to Plan to Debut Google TV at Trade Show in January
Story first appeared in the Bloomberg News.
Google Inc. and LG Electronics Inc. may unveil a television using the search giant’s software at the January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, according to two people with knowledge of the project.
The product would be LG’s first model with Google TV, said the people, who declined to be identified because the discussions aren’t public.
Support from the world’s second-largest TV manufacturer may boost Google’s attempt to bring its dominance in Internet search to living rooms with the Google TV software. Last month, the Mountain View, California-based company introduced a redesigned television service after sales of its initial version didn’t meet some expectations.
LG a Tokyo-based company, and Google, a US based company, both declined to comment on the discussions between the two companies.
Google, pushing into areas that boost competition with rivals Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., unveiled the TV service last year with partners Sony Corp., Logitech International SA and Dish Network Corp.
Google said last month the partners would receive the updated software.
YouTube, Android
LG and bigger rival Samsung Electronics Co. are embracing the Internet and 3-D images to revive TV demand amid a plunge in set prices. Sony, maker of the Bravia models, has forecast an eighth straight year of losses at its TV business.
The revamped version of the TV service Google unveiled last month has a simpler interface. The upgrade was designed to show the YouTube video-sharing service better and opens up the platform for Android developers to build applications for TV. Android is Google’s software platform for mobile devices.
After the debut of the TV service, Google failed to secure programming from the four major U.S. broadcast networks, led by CBS Corp. and News Corp.’s Fox. Logitech, based in Romanel-sur- Morges, Switzerland, cut the price of its Revue set-top box for Google TV in April, citing “a slow start.”
The Electronics Times, a South Korean newspaper, reported this month that LG was in discussions with Google to use the TV service. The report didn’t give a timeframe for the product’s unveiling.
Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, also was in discussions with Google to develop a Google TV product, Yoon Boo Keun, head of Samsung’s TV business, said in February.
Google Reaches for the Stars
Story first appeared in the New York Times.
This story first appeared in the New York Times.
In a top-secret lab in an undisclosed Bay Area location where robots run free, the future is being imagined.
It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. Your robot could go to the office while you stay home in your pajamas. And you could, perhaps, take an elevator to outer space.
These are just a few of the dreams being chased at Google X, the clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas. In interviews, a dozen people discussed the list; some work at the lab or elsewhere at Google, and some have been briefed on the project. But none would speak for attribution because Google is so secretive about the effort that many employees do not even know the lab exists.
Although most of the ideas on the list are in the conceptual stage, nowhere near reality, two people briefed on the project said one product would be released by the end of the year, although they would not say what it was.
At most Silicon Valley companies, innovation means developing online apps or ads, but Google sees itself as different. Even as Google has grown into a major corporation and tech start-ups are biting at its heels, the lab reflects its ambition to be a place where ground-breaking research and development are happening, in the tradition of Xerox PARC, which developed the modern personal computer in the 1970s.
A Google spokeswoman said that investing in speculative projects was an important part of Google’s DNA. While the possibilities are incredibly exciting, please do keep in mind that the sums involved are very small by comparison to the investments we make in our core businesses.
At Google, which uses artificial intelligence techniques and machine learning in its search algorithm, some of the outlandish projects may not be as much of a stretch as they first appear, even though they defy the bounds of the company’s main Web search business.
For example, space elevators, a longtime fantasy of Google’s founders and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, could collect information or haul things into space. (In theory, they involve rocketless space travel along a cable anchored to Earth.) Google is collecting the world’s data, so now it could be collecting the solar system’s data.
Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, is deeply involved in the lab, said several people with knowledge of it, and came up with the list of ideas along with Larry Page, Google’s other founder, who worked on Google X before becoming chief executive in April; Eric E. Schmidt, its chairman; and other top executives.
Google may turn one of the ideas — the driverless cars that it unleashed on California’s roads last year — into a new business. Unimpressed by the innovative spirit of Detroit automakers, Google now is considering manufacturing them in the United States, said a person briefed on the effort.
Google could sell navigation or information technology for the cars, and theoretically could show location-based ads to passengers as they zoom by local businesses while playing Angry Birds in the driver’s seat.
Robots figure prominently in many of the ideas. They have long captured the imagination of Google engineers, including Mr. Brin, who has already attended a conference through robot instead of in the flesh.
Fleets of robots could assist Google with collecting information, replacing the humans that photograph streets for Google Maps, say people with knowledge of Google X. Robots born in the lab could be destined for homes and offices, where they could assist with mundane tasks or allow people to work remotely, they say.
Other ideas involve what Google referred to as the “Web of things” at its software developers conference in May — a way of connecting objects to the Internet. Every time anyone uses the Web, it benefits Google, the company argued, so it could be good for Google if home accessories and wearable objects, not just computers, were connected.
Among the items that could be connected: a garden planter (so it could be watered from afar); a coffee pot (so it could be set to brew remotely); or a light bulb (so it could be turned off remotely). Google said in May that by the end of this year another team planned to introduce a Web-connected light bulb that could communicate wirelessly with Android devices.
One Google engineer familiar with Google X said it was run as mysteriously as the C.I.A. — with two offices, a nondescript one for logistics, on the company’s Mountain View campus, and one for robots, in a secret location.
While software engineers toil away elsewhere at Google, the lab is filled with roboticists and electrical engineers. They have been hired from Microsoft, Nokia Labs, Stanford, M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon and New York University.
A leader at Google X is Sebastian Thrun, one of the world’s top robotics and artificial intelligence experts, who teaches computer science at Stanford and has developed a driverless car. Also at the lab is Andrew Ng, another Stanford professor, who specializes in applying neuroscience to artificial intelligence to teach robots and machines to operate like people.
Johnny Chung Lee, a specialist in human-computer interaction, came to Google X from Microsoft this year after helping develop Microsoft’s Kinect, the video game player that responds to human movement and voice. At Google X, where he is working on the Web of things, according to people familiar with his role, he has the mysterious title of rapid evaluator.
Because Google X is a breeding ground for big bets that could turn into colossal failures or Google’s next big business — and it could take years to figure out which — just the idea of these experiments terrifies some shareholders and analysts.
Mr. Page has tried to appease analysts by saying that crazy projects are a tiny proportion of Google’s work.
This story first appeared in the New York Times.
In a top-secret lab in an undisclosed Bay Area location where robots run free, the future is being imagined.
It’s a place where your refrigerator could be connected to the Internet, so it could order groceries when they ran low. Your dinner plate could post to a social network what you’re eating. Your robot could go to the office while you stay home in your pajamas. And you could, perhaps, take an elevator to outer space.
These are just a few of the dreams being chased at Google X, the clandestine lab where Google is tackling a list of 100 shoot-for-the-stars ideas. In interviews, a dozen people discussed the list; some work at the lab or elsewhere at Google, and some have been briefed on the project. But none would speak for attribution because Google is so secretive about the effort that many employees do not even know the lab exists.
Although most of the ideas on the list are in the conceptual stage, nowhere near reality, two people briefed on the project said one product would be released by the end of the year, although they would not say what it was.
At most Silicon Valley companies, innovation means developing online apps or ads, but Google sees itself as different. Even as Google has grown into a major corporation and tech start-ups are biting at its heels, the lab reflects its ambition to be a place where ground-breaking research and development are happening, in the tradition of Xerox PARC, which developed the modern personal computer in the 1970s.
A Google spokeswoman said that investing in speculative projects was an important part of Google’s DNA. While the possibilities are incredibly exciting, please do keep in mind that the sums involved are very small by comparison to the investments we make in our core businesses.
At Google, which uses artificial intelligence techniques and machine learning in its search algorithm, some of the outlandish projects may not be as much of a stretch as they first appear, even though they defy the bounds of the company’s main Web search business.
For example, space elevators, a longtime fantasy of Google’s founders and other Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, could collect information or haul things into space. (In theory, they involve rocketless space travel along a cable anchored to Earth.) Google is collecting the world’s data, so now it could be collecting the solar system’s data.
Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, is deeply involved in the lab, said several people with knowledge of it, and came up with the list of ideas along with Larry Page, Google’s other founder, who worked on Google X before becoming chief executive in April; Eric E. Schmidt, its chairman; and other top executives.
Google may turn one of the ideas — the driverless cars that it unleashed on California’s roads last year — into a new business. Unimpressed by the innovative spirit of Detroit automakers, Google now is considering manufacturing them in the United States, said a person briefed on the effort.
Google could sell navigation or information technology for the cars, and theoretically could show location-based ads to passengers as they zoom by local businesses while playing Angry Birds in the driver’s seat.
Robots figure prominently in many of the ideas. They have long captured the imagination of Google engineers, including Mr. Brin, who has already attended a conference through robot instead of in the flesh.
Fleets of robots could assist Google with collecting information, replacing the humans that photograph streets for Google Maps, say people with knowledge of Google X. Robots born in the lab could be destined for homes and offices, where they could assist with mundane tasks or allow people to work remotely, they say.
Other ideas involve what Google referred to as the “Web of things” at its software developers conference in May — a way of connecting objects to the Internet. Every time anyone uses the Web, it benefits Google, the company argued, so it could be good for Google if home accessories and wearable objects, not just computers, were connected.
Among the items that could be connected: a garden planter (so it could be watered from afar); a coffee pot (so it could be set to brew remotely); or a light bulb (so it could be turned off remotely). Google said in May that by the end of this year another team planned to introduce a Web-connected light bulb that could communicate wirelessly with Android devices.
One Google engineer familiar with Google X said it was run as mysteriously as the C.I.A. — with two offices, a nondescript one for logistics, on the company’s Mountain View campus, and one for robots, in a secret location.
While software engineers toil away elsewhere at Google, the lab is filled with roboticists and electrical engineers. They have been hired from Microsoft, Nokia Labs, Stanford, M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon and New York University.
A leader at Google X is Sebastian Thrun, one of the world’s top robotics and artificial intelligence experts, who teaches computer science at Stanford and has developed a driverless car. Also at the lab is Andrew Ng, another Stanford professor, who specializes in applying neuroscience to artificial intelligence to teach robots and machines to operate like people.
Johnny Chung Lee, a specialist in human-computer interaction, came to Google X from Microsoft this year after helping develop Microsoft’s Kinect, the video game player that responds to human movement and voice. At Google X, where he is working on the Web of things, according to people familiar with his role, he has the mysterious title of rapid evaluator.
Because Google X is a breeding ground for big bets that could turn into colossal failures or Google’s next big business — and it could take years to figure out which — just the idea of these experiments terrifies some shareholders and analysts.
Mr. Page has tried to appease analysts by saying that crazy projects are a tiny proportion of Google’s work.
New Leader in the Personal Computer Market
Story first appeared in the Sacrament Business Journal.
Apple Inc.'s share of the personal computer market is at its highest in 15 years and is likely to pass Hewlett-Packard Co. as No. 1 in the world in 2012, according to an analyst report, the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal reports.
The Palo Alto firm of Canalys said that, counting iPads into the mix, Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) share of the market has grown to 15 percent from 9 percent in the past four quarters.
“HP and Apple will fight for top position in Q4, but Apple may have to wait for the release of iPad 3 before it passes HP,” said Canalys analyst Tim Coulling. The report didn't give a specific projected market share for HP (Nasdaq: HPQ).
Both Apple and HP have employees in the Sacramento region.
Apple Inc.'s share of the personal computer market is at its highest in 15 years and is likely to pass Hewlett-Packard Co. as No. 1 in the world in 2012, according to an analyst report, the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal reports.
The Palo Alto firm of Canalys said that, counting iPads into the mix, Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) share of the market has grown to 15 percent from 9 percent in the past four quarters.
“HP and Apple will fight for top position in Q4, but Apple may have to wait for the release of iPad 3 before it passes HP,” said Canalys analyst Tim Coulling. The report didn't give a specific projected market share for HP (Nasdaq: HPQ).
Both Apple and HP have employees in the Sacramento region.
Friday, November 18, 2011
LESS RETIREES ARE MOVING OUT OF STATE
Story first appeared in USA TODAY.
Aging Baby Boomers who dreamed of retiring in the sun near Florida beaches or Arizona deserts have hit a speed bump: the bad economy.
One woman stayed within Jacksonville, Fla., when she moved into Sweetwater, an active-adult community. Moving is at a historic low due to the recession and faltering housing market, demographers say.
The number of Americans ages 55 to 64 who moved to Sun Belt states since the economy began to tank has declined dramatically, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Census data released Tuesday.
The slowdown is part of a continued drop in the mobility of all Americans. Only 11.6% — 35 million — changed residence from 2010 to 2011, the lowest rate since the Census Bureau began collecting the statistics in 1948. In the mid-1980s, more than 20% were moving each year.
Two primary reasons for historic lows in all types of moves — within the same county, to other counties and other states.
The oldest of 77 million Boomers who had fueled a rush to "active adult" communities throughout the Sun Belt are staying put because they can't sell their homes or can't afford to retire.
The dismal job market also has kept young people, typically the most mobile of all age groups, in place.
The Census data also show:
•Colorado stands alone among Western states in continuing to attract retirees and young professionals. Largely because of relatively low unemployment rates, the Denver metro area ranked first in net migration of young adults from 2008 to 2010, up from No. 12 in the mid-2000s, says Cindy DeGroen of the state's demography office.
•Most people move for housing reasons rather than family or jobs. For the first time, the Census has identified those related to foreclosures or evictions: 1.2% in 2011.
•For the first time since the turn of the last century, more than half of California residents are natives. Of the non-natives, more are born abroad than in other states.
•Despite the displacement of thousands of residents after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana continues to be the state with the highest percentage of people born there — 79% in 2010.
States that are attracting fewer out-of-staters are seeing their native population creep up since 2000. Native-born Arizonans increased 3 percentage points to 38% of the population.
Nationally, the percentage of people living in the state of their birth dropped from 60% in 2000 to 58.8% in 2010.
•Net migration to a group of counties across the country that are primarily retirement magnets fell 70% last year.
In response to the slowdown of Boomers moving, one company has designed an online calculator that allows prospective buyers to tally real estate taxes, monthly payments, utilities and other costs for each of the company's developments.
It is also expanding development outside the Sun Belt, recognizing that some retirees don't want to move far from children, grandchildren and friends.
The Carolinas have emerged as the preferred retirement destination, according to Del Webb's most recent Baby Boomer survey, a finding backed by Census data. North Carolina continues to gain a net of about 9,000 retirement-age residents every year from other states; South Carolina, about 6,000.
At the peak of the good times, Nevada was gaining more than 4,000 people ages 55-64 every year. Since the housing market collapsed, it has been gaining about a fifth as many.
Aging Baby Boomers who dreamed of retiring in the sun near Florida beaches or Arizona deserts have hit a speed bump: the bad economy.
One woman stayed within Jacksonville, Fla., when she moved into Sweetwater, an active-adult community. Moving is at a historic low due to the recession and faltering housing market, demographers say.
The number of Americans ages 55 to 64 who moved to Sun Belt states since the economy began to tank has declined dramatically, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Census data released Tuesday.
The slowdown is part of a continued drop in the mobility of all Americans. Only 11.6% — 35 million — changed residence from 2010 to 2011, the lowest rate since the Census Bureau began collecting the statistics in 1948. In the mid-1980s, more than 20% were moving each year.
Two primary reasons for historic lows in all types of moves — within the same county, to other counties and other states.
The oldest of 77 million Boomers who had fueled a rush to "active adult" communities throughout the Sun Belt are staying put because they can't sell their homes or can't afford to retire.
The dismal job market also has kept young people, typically the most mobile of all age groups, in place.
The Census data also show:
•Colorado stands alone among Western states in continuing to attract retirees and young professionals. Largely because of relatively low unemployment rates, the Denver metro area ranked first in net migration of young adults from 2008 to 2010, up from No. 12 in the mid-2000s, says Cindy DeGroen of the state's demography office.
•Most people move for housing reasons rather than family or jobs. For the first time, the Census has identified those related to foreclosures or evictions: 1.2% in 2011.
•For the first time since the turn of the last century, more than half of California residents are natives. Of the non-natives, more are born abroad than in other states.
•Despite the displacement of thousands of residents after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana continues to be the state with the highest percentage of people born there — 79% in 2010.
States that are attracting fewer out-of-staters are seeing their native population creep up since 2000. Native-born Arizonans increased 3 percentage points to 38% of the population.
Nationally, the percentage of people living in the state of their birth dropped from 60% in 2000 to 58.8% in 2010.
•Net migration to a group of counties across the country that are primarily retirement magnets fell 70% last year.
In response to the slowdown of Boomers moving, one company has designed an online calculator that allows prospective buyers to tally real estate taxes, monthly payments, utilities and other costs for each of the company's developments.
It is also expanding development outside the Sun Belt, recognizing that some retirees don't want to move far from children, grandchildren and friends.
The Carolinas have emerged as the preferred retirement destination, according to Del Webb's most recent Baby Boomer survey, a finding backed by Census data. North Carolina continues to gain a net of about 9,000 retirement-age residents every year from other states; South Carolina, about 6,000.
At the peak of the good times, Nevada was gaining more than 4,000 people ages 55-64 every year. Since the housing market collapsed, it has been gaining about a fifth as many.
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