International Business News

CNP Assurances announced Friday that the market decline of savings in Europe had continued to weigh on its sales in the first quarter and said the change of government in France maintained the uncertainty the life insurance industry.

The turnover of the insurer fell 12.9% during the first three months of the year, to 7.028 billion euros.

The action CNP Assurances signed Friday in early trading shrinkage greater than that of the sector to 9:50, the title lost 2.27% to 9.7330 euros, while the European index limited its losses to 1.35%.

"There is a wait due to the structure of taxation and savings in general," he said during a conference call the Director Financial Group, Antoine Lissowski. 

He explained that it was difficult to assess the impact that doubling the ceiling of the Livret planned by President-elect Francois Hollande on appetite of French for life insurance.

It is currently suffering from competition from banks, seeking to attract customers and their deposits with savings accounts attractive.

The persistence of low interest rates also makes traditional life insurance products unattractive in terms of yield.

Despite a set back, CNP Assurances has managed to generate a first quarter net profit up 1.8% to 275 million euros through improved financial markets. 

The group took advantage of the upturn to continue its program of disposals of risky assets, particularly in Italy and Spain.

"The improved market conditions in the first quarter allowed us to record an increase in our earnings while actively pursuing our strategy of selling risky assets," said the director gen ; eral, Gilles Benoist, in a statement.

Antoine Lissowski said his group no longer had to date of Greek sovereign debt and had reduced its exposure to equity markets.

The CFO did not want to comment on the planned replacement of Gilles Benoist.

NOC has postponed its annual meeting from 7 to 29 June, after the parliamentary elections. 

At that time a new boss of the Caisse des Depots (CDC), the majority shareholder of NOC, should have been appointed.

Director General of the CDC until early March, Augustin de Romanet applied for membership to the estate of Gilles Benoist as Director General of NPC.

Wall Street fell more than 1.2% Friday, accusing them of this fact its worst weekly performance since the beginning of the year, within the scope of the announcement of a number of new jobs for the month of April far below expectations.

The Dow Jones Industrial 30 yielded 1.27%, or 168.32 points to 13,038.27. The S & P-500, wider, lost 22.47 points, or 1.61%, to 1369.10. The Nasdaq Composite fell on its side of 67.96 points (-2.25%) to 2,956.34.

On the whole week, the Dow has sold 1.4%, the S & P 500 2.4% and Nasdaq 3.7%. The latter two had their worst week since November and December respectively.

Some 115,000 people were recruited in the nonagricultural sector last month, announced Friday the Labor Department, against 154,000 in March and 259,000 in February, two figures it is true revised ; s up (for a cumulative total of 53,000).

Economists anticipated 170,000 net new jobs for the month of April after the 120,000 originally announced for March.

The unemployment rate, calculated from a separate survey, returned to 8.1% of the workforce, against 8.2% in March and 8.3% in February, a level not seen since January 2009 when it was 7.8%. 

Despite this recent positive development, the market players have mostly retained the figure for job creation, which leads them to fear a slowdown in U.S. growth.

At its current level, it is already considered insufficient to significantly reduce unemployment.

The approach of elections in Greece and France and any uncertainties they may have a Europe which still has not put the debt crisis behind it also contributed to stopping the coast.

"Market participants liquidated their positions after the employment figures and should not change posture throughout the weekend," said Frank Lesh, an analyst at FuturePath Trading LLC. 

The energy values ​​were strongly accused the coup after the employment statistics, due to fears of a possible slowdown weigh on demand black.

Because of these fears, the price per barrel of U.S. light crude also fell 4%, from below $ 100 for the first time since February. The S & P compartment of the energy of Wall Street has sold 2.17%.

The action Exxon Mobil sold 1.26% to 84.57 dollars and Chevron that of 2.14% to 103.72 dollars, the two values ​​are among the largest declines in the Dow Jones .

The area composed of values ​​related to utilities, considered defensive in times of uncertainty, is the only one that ended in the green, with a gain of 0.16%.

The action Estee Lauder has lost 5.35% to 60.72 dollars after the U.S. cosmetics group announced earnings guidance deemed disappointing for the fourth quarter of fiscal year and expressed his concerns about the slowdown in China. 

The way LinkedIn has instead won 7.21% to 117.30 dollars after the professional social network has raised its annual results after better than expected first quarter, supported by strong growth in business services.

The action took Dole 7.69% to 9.39 dollars after the distributor of fruits and vegetables said he could split some divisions following a strategic review its activities.

Wall Street ended higher Friday, as a result of strong corporate earnings often, especially high tech values ​​such as Amazon. Com and Expedia began to counterbalance the economic indicators for the less mixed lately, like the GDP released Friday.

The Dow Jones gained 23.69 points (0.18%) to 13,228.31. The S & P 500 is 3.38 points (0.24%) to 1,403.36. The Nasdaq Composite gained 18.59 points (0.61%) to 3,069.20.

Over the whole week, the Dow shows a gain of 1.5%, the S & P 500 gained 1.8%, while the Nasdaq 2.3% advance.

The Dow and S & P and enroll their weekly gain the highest since mid-March. For the Nasdaq, is the more substantial gain since early February.

Of the 287 companies in the S & P 500 that have published their accounts, 73% of the students have exceeded the consensus, according to Thomson Reuters data.

The gains of the day, even though moderate minimal, yet allow Wall Street to make its best weekly performance since more than a month.

Growth of the U.S. economy slowed in the first quarter mainly because of declining business investment, although the strength of the automotive market has helped ease the movement.

Another statistic was published on Friday, held better than GDP. 

The U.S. consumer sentiment improved slightly in April to its highest level since February 2011, according to final data from the monthly survey Thomson Reuters -University of Michigan.

Values, Amazon.com and the online travel agency Expedia surged 15.75% respectively and 23.54%, the two companies that reported results Thursday at the higher consensus and having allowed the Nasdaq Composite to register a gain slightly higher than the Dow or S & P.

Procter & Gamble lowered its earnings forecast Friday yearly because of the fragility of developed markets, more aggressive pricing of its competitors on certain products and pressure on prices in Venezuela in particular.

The action yields 3.63%. 

Ford announced Friday a drop in quarterly profit, a result of his difficulties outside of the U.S. market, but the results exceeded the expectations of investors.

The action coward 2.27%.

Chevron released Friday net profit up 4% in the first quarter, boosted by higher oil prices and improved margins in its refining background of declining its oil and gas.

The action ended unchanged.

Merck published Friday quarterly earnings slightly above expectations, boosted by tighter control of costs, but revenue has however disappointed expectations facing generic competition.

The action eventually stationary.

The consortium led by Russia's Gazprom to develop the giant Shtokman gas field in the Arctic in June will announce an overhaul of this project, which accuses several years of delay, have we learned from several sources within the consortium, industry and Russian authorities.

Gazprom and its allies in this project, which include the French Total and Norway's Statoil, plan to give up on the Shtokman gas transit to Europe through pipelines in favor of production liquefied natural gas (LNG), the sources explained.

They stated that no decision on this point had been adopted so far, but several sources have said that the consortium had canceled all tenders already started to build. 

A redesign of the project could result in a delay in the production field, currently scheduled for 2016.

"For now, the technical configuration of the project not suitable for any of the shareholders, so they are not willing to take a final investment decision," said a source in the consortium.

Signing a new agreement could intervene at a meeting of investors in St. Petersburg in June, she added.

"After that one year might be necessary before a final investment decision. They need time to launch new tenders and find new suppliers. "

Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena suffered a net loss of 4.69 billion euros last year and said Thursday it would pay no dividend for fiscal 2011, which is tumbling the stock exchange.

The market was expecting a loss twice as heavy, according to Thomson Reuters consensus I / B / E / S was -2.13 billion.

The third Italian bank, which is restructuring and has also undertaken to reduce the size of its balance sheet, recorded in its accounts for 4.51 billion euros of writedowns in total.

The capital ratio "hard" was 8.5% at end-2011 excluding 1.9 billion euros of bonds guaranteed by the state written in 2009 to strengthen its capital.

At 10:45 GMT, the share was down 8.2% to 0.3314 Euro, by far the worst performance of the European banking sector index (-1.37%). 

The competitors UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo also recorded huge writedowns on their fiscal 2011.

But analysts say Montepaschi particularly vulnerable because it has to find 3.3 billion euros of capital by June to comply with new European regulatory requirements.

The German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has admitted for the first time Monday that the initiative to introduce a tax on financial transactions in the euro area was bound to e failure.

"We simply can not do it, even in the euro area alone," said Schaeuble in Berlin, referring to the Franco-German initiative to bail out of public finances with by the financial crisis. "We will therefore try something else."

Britain and other European countries do not support this tax, commonly known as "Robin Hood Tax," he said Schäuble, adding that the establishment of such a tax n ' was conceivable that across the EU.

A working paper of the European Commission is the basis for thinking of this tax, which could raise up to 57 billion euros, mainly from London, the leading financial center of the EU.

France must introduce in the coming months its own tax, similar to stamp duty imposed on the London stock exchange transactions.

According to Airbus, the final WTO report confirms massive subsidies granted to Boeing. The U.S., by contrast, talk about a great victory for the American aircraft manufacturer in this case. Airbus delivered 534 aircraft in 2011, a record.

The European aircraft manufacturer Airbus said Monday that the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO) confirmed and extended the same sentence on subsidies granted to U.S. rival Boeing. "The report of the Appellate Body confirms and expands the scope of the conviction by the WTO on massive subsidies granted to Boeing illegal," he said in a statement Airbus (EADS), which still considers its commercial harm to $ 45 billion.

Airbus issued this statement even before the official announcement of the decision of the Appellate Body of the WTO. In this case, the judges of the WTO had estimated March 31, 2011 at trial that some of these U.S. aid constituted subsidies inconsistent with global trade rules. The judges then had amounted to "at least $ 5.3 billion" for the period 1989-2006.

"This report confirms the existence of illegal subsidies paid by the U.S. to Boeing," said the manufacturer according to which grants "a few billion dollars resulting from today's decision" is in addition to " at least $ 5.3 billion "subsidy initially estimated. Airbus estimates that the Appellate Body rejected "almost 90% points of the appeal filed by the U.S. against the earlier findings of the WTO and validates all of the call of the European Union ".

The U.S. response was not long in coming. According to a statement the U.S., the WTO ruled that the aircraft manufacturer Boeing had received four to six times less public subsidy than its European rival Airbus. The U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk exterior even boasts a "great victory" in the WTO, stating that "comparable figures", the Geneva organization had identified only "three to four billion dollars" of illegal subsidies of American States United, against $ 18 billion in illegal subsidies from the European Union.

According to the U.S., EU subsidies have cost the equivalent of 342 aircraft orders to Boeing, while conversely the U.S. subsidies have lost the equivalent than "a little over 100 "aircraft orders to Airbus.

"The view of the United States has prevailed," welcomed Mr. Kirk. "It is now clear that European subsidies to Airbus are much more important – and it amounts in multiples – and caused much distortion that may have done everything the United States for Boeing," has he added. "This decision is a victory for the great industrial and American workers," said Mr. Kirk.

However, Washington has also, communicated before the WTO itself does not make public its judgment on appeal. This is expected later Monday.

The country has avoided bankruptcy thanks to an agreement signed Friday with the creditors.

Greece has avoided bankruptcy by obtaining an agreement Friday to its private creditors to participate in the biggest operation of debt reduction in history and a green light from its partners in the euro area to help pay her 130 billion euros.

This announcement sparked a wave of enthusiastic reactions within the euro area, stuck for over two years in the debt crisis.

Its new president, recently renewed, Herman Van Rompuy, said that "turning the crisis is reached." "We are heading for calmer seas," he said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has held that "the page of the financial crisis is beginning to turn" while German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has wanted more cautious. "We are not out of the woods, but we made a big important step," he told reporters.

Direct consequence: the International Monetary Fund announced it will participate in the new financing plan promised to Greece. After consulting the Member States of its board Friday, IMF Executive Director, Christine Lagarde, said the proposed amount was 28 billion euros to be paid over four years, more than 23 billion envisaged up 'here.

After nine months of tough negotiations, Athens Friday finally got the guarantee to erase at least 100 billion euros of debt to private.

The operation – the largest of its kind ever made – should help significantly reduce the national debt which is sinking into a deep recession, GDP fell by 7.5% yoy in the fourth quarter , according to official figures released Friday also.

In 2020, according to official projections, the Greek sovereign debt should represent more than 120.5% of GDP against over 160% today, a rate considered tolerable by the creditors, although it remains very high. 

Finally, Greece has secured the participation of creditors representing 95.7% of debt held by the private sector, which amounts to 206 billion euros of a total of over 350 billion.

To achieve such a result, the government had to resort to trigger clauses requiring recalcitrant creditors to go along with the offer.

This decision led Fitch to lower the rating of Greece and to place the country in "partial default" after the announcement of the results of the debt swap. Note the country should be raised once the deal is completed.

It also prompted the ISDA, the professional organization of insurance against credit risk (CDS, credit default swaps), to determine unanimously that it was a "credit event "and that investors could be repaid insured.

These assurances can be triggered when a borrower terminates the contract which governs the loan. ISDA has estimated that the use of "collective action clauses" designed to force the recalcitrant creditors, was that debt restructuring was not "voluntary".

Specifically, the exchange of securities to be held Monday for the obligations under Greek law. Security holders are not subject to Greek law have more time, until March 23, 0800 GMT, to make over 7 billion in bonds that are still missing the call.

List of stocks covered Wednesday at the Paris Bourse, where the CAC 40 index was up 1.01% to 3,409.69 points at 24:08, notably supported by the comments of the governor of China's central bank promised Europe to support the crisis.

* Values ​​European BANK (2.46%) signed the largest increase in the sector in Europe for about the governor of the PBOC as investors also hope qu'Antonis Samaras, the leader of the Greek conservative party New Democracy, submit his written support for new austerity measures adopted in the country.

BNP PARIBAS (6.22%), which is expected this year to stabilize the crisis in the euro zone but does not anticipate a recession in Europe is ahead of increases in the CAC 40 and SBF 120 index. 

SOCIETE GENERALE advance of 4.11% and Crédit Agricole.

* The CYCLIC are well oriented. The French economy has withstood the fourth quarter with a growth surprise of 0.2%, thanks to foreign trade and investment, while activity ; contracted in Germany and Italy.

RENAULT wins 3.65%, 3.16% and STMICROELECTRONICS LAFARGE 2.2%. The pan-European Stoxx index of auto sector advance of 1.47% and 1.22% of the construction.

* In contrast, PSA was down 1.72%, largest drop in the CAC 40. The group announced new savings and a comprehensive plan for asset sales in order to redress the financial situation of the group after a year marked by a relapse in 2011 net profit.

Moody's placed the ratings under review with the manufacturer as possible downgrade.

* PAGESJAUNES fell 12%, largest drop in the SBF 120 volumes representing already seven times their daily volume the past three months. The group announced that its board would propose as an exceptional pass the dividend for 2011, after registering a decline in its revenues and profit margins last year.

* BIC (4.2%) released 2011 results sharply higher through its consumer business (stationery, lighters and razors) and said target operating margin for 2012 Standardized e "near the record level reached in 2011."

* DANONE (1.59%) stated address with confidence after 2012 achieved its growth targets for 2011 thanks to its good performance in emerging markets where the group re alise today more than half of its sales. 

* Haulotte Group (10.23%) leads to increases in the CAC Mid & Small, supported by the announcement of a 23% growth in turnover in 2011 of the truck manufacturer é ; lévateurs.

* Abandons EUROPACORP 2.55%, the producer and distributor of films that have shown a fall of 58.2% of its turnover in respect of its fiscal third quarter.

Manitou in the first half is expected to reach its growth target of 15% of sales through an order book expanded, says CEO of the group specializes in forklift elements observers, although it remains cautious about the second half.

The group, which designs equipment for the industries of construction, agriculture and industry, had said in October that it expected growth in sales between 10% and 15% of the whole year.

"For the first half, I think 15% is almost acquired since, again, it is largely conditioned by the order book we have today in the hands," said Jean- Christophe Giroux, in an interview with Reuters. 

"The real question is what will happen in the second half and if the activity will slow or not by then," he added. "We can say that it will or may slow down if for example there was a real credit crunch."

Jean-Christophe Giroux has also confirmed its target of achieving a double digit operating margin in 2014-2015, a period when the turnover is expected to reach one billion from 1.6 to 1.7 euros, against 1.1 billion last year.

Manitou, which is to rival the French and American Haulotte Caterpillar, said in January this year wish to review in depth the organization to improve operational flexibility.

"We feel that we simply are not effective or efficient in our own industrial or operational management," commented Jean-Christophe Giroux. 

According Manitou, farming should improve and could become the fastest growing market this year, generating 45% of turnover, while the construction is affected by the uncertain economic environment in Europe.

"The construction remains depressed in many countries, there is almost no activity in Spain or Portugal, or even in Italy," said Group CEO.

The title Manitou increased 50% since the beginning of the year, bringing its market capitalization to around 700 million euros.