European Central Bank Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said Standard & Poor
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Some airline customers won’t see savings this weekend even though several federal taxes on tickets have expired.
US Airways and American Airlines raised fares to offset the tax savings.
That means instead of passing along the savings from expired taxes, the carriers are pocketing the money while customers pay the same amount as before.
But other airlines left their prices unchanged on Saturday. Consumers could save money by shopping around.
The expired taxes can total $25 or more on a typical $300 round-trip ticket. For a September trip between Dallas and San Francisco, the cheapest American flight on Travelocity.com was $24 higher than offerings from United, Continental, Delta and Virgin America, which did not raise fares.
The taxes expired after midnight Friday night when Congress failed to pass legislation to keep the Federal Aviation Administration running.
That gave airlines a choice: They could do nothing _ and pass the savings to customers _ or they could grab some of the money themselves.
“We adjusted prices so the bottom-line price of a ticket remains the same as it was before … expiration of federal excise taxes,” said American spokesman Tim Smith. US Airways spokesman John McDonald said much the same thing _ passengers will pay the same amount for a ticket as they did before the taxes expired.
Smith declined to say whether the increase would be rescinded if Congress revives the travel taxes.
Tom Parsons, who runs the Bestfares.com travel website, said consumers should get a break.
“Why would the airlines deserve it?” he said. “They already hit us with enough fees. Now they’re keeping the government fees too.”
The Transportation Department says it will lose $200 million a week. J.P. Morgan analyst Jamie Baker said airlines could take in an extra $25 million a day by raising fares during the tax holiday.
Parsons said competitive pressure eventually will force the airlines to match _ either they’ll all pass the tax savings on to passengers, or they’ll all raise fares and keep the money themselves.
Southwest Airlines and its AirTran subsidiary raised prices by $8 per round trip, said spokeswoman Marilee McInnis.
Southwest’s support could be crucial if the airlines decide to keep the tax money. Southwest carries more U.S. passengers than anyone, and it effectively sets rates on many routes. Southwest torpedoed attempts by other airlines to raise prices in the last two weeks. CEO Gary Kelly has publicly worried that airlines could frighten away passengers by raising prices too high.
That may be less of a fear this time, however, since consumers wouldn’t be shelling out more money for tickets _ they just wouldn’t get an unexpected discount, courtesy of Congress.
Several federal travel taxes expired when Congress adjourned for the weekend without passing FAA legislation. Lawmakers couldn’t break a stalemate over a Republican proposal to make it harder for airline and railroad workers to unionize.
Air traffic controllers stayed on the job, but thousands of other FAA employees were likely to be furloughed.
Airlines stopped collecting a 7.5 percent ticket tax, a separate excise tax of $3.70 per takeoff and landing, and other fees. Those add up to about $32 on a round-trip itinerary with base fare of $240 and one stop in each direction.
Other government fees for security and local airport projects are still being collected. They boost the final cost of that $240 base-fare ticket to $300.
Passengers who bought tickets before this weekend but travel during the FAA shutdown could be entitled to a refund of the taxes that they paid, said Treasury Department spokeswoman Sandra Salstrom. She said it’s unclear whether the government can keep taxes for travel at a time when it doesn’t have authority to collect the money.
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When the temperature went up close to record-breaking levels Thursday, production lines at Italpasta Ltd. in Brampton went down.
But plant manager Riccardo Bordignon wasn
LONDON—James Murdoch scaled the rungs of the global media empire that his father built. Now scandal taints the heir apparent, threatening to derail the expected succession and shaking the assumption that the Murdoch dynasty would preserve its tight grip over the multibillion-dollar business.
Founder Rupert Murdoch, 80, has long expressed a wish to hand his publicly traded News Corp. to his offspring, and he retains the voting power to make key decisions. But shareholders and board members are said to be troubled by revelations of wrongdoing on Murdoch’s watch, and feel the U.S.-based company needs fresh leadership.
Bloomberg News is reporting that two anonymous sources within News Corp. “have begun questioning the company’s response to the crisis and whether a leadership change is needed.”
Shares in News Corp. tumbled Monday to $14.98, down 13 per cent since July 4 — the day the Guardian newspaper reported that News of the World journalists had hacked into the voicemail belonging to murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
A pivotal moment for the Murdoch family comes Tuesday when the media mogul and his son testify before British lawmakers investigating the hacking and alleged police bribery at a now-shuttered tabloid, News of the World.
“The future is looking increasingly grey” for James Murdoch, said Ivor Gaber, professor of political journalism at City University London. “There are now investors, particularly in the United States, who are suggesting that the time has come to end the Murdochs’ dynastic hold on News Corp.”
Some analysts believe Murdoch is positioning 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth as a successor in the event that 38-year-old James, chief executive of his father’s European and Asian operations, is forced to step aside or faces arrest.
“At the end of the day, that’s what made it a success. It’s ‘Brand Murdoch,’” said Richard Hillgrove, a London-based public relations consultant and former commentator for Murdoch-owned newspapers in New Zealand. “He’s going to do anything in his power to make sure it stays that way.”
Hillgrove described Elisabeth Murdoch, who is expected to join the board of News Corp. in October, as the “likely contender” for leadership of the company and noted that she appears “untainted and pretty clean” in comparison to the pressure bearing down on her brother, James.
There have been unconfirmed reports in the British media of family tension and dissatisfaction on the part of Elisabeth with how the company has been run; some observers speculate people close to the family have leaked information to elevate her stature.
However, a suit in the United States has questioned News Corp.’s move in February to buy Shine Group., the television production company founded in Britain by Elisabeth, in a $670 million deal viewed by some shareholders as overpriced and fueled by nepotism. And while the company is successful, Elisabeth lacks experience at the highest levels of international management.
Another Murdoch son, 39-year-old Lachlan, is on the board of News Corp., but he quit a high-level position in the company in 2005 and does not have a management role. He is saddled in part by the legacy of a failed investment in an Australian telecoms company a decade ago.
Chase Carey, the American deputy chairman and president of News Corp., could step in to head the group as an option from outside the family. He previously worked with Fox television, a company holding.
Murdoch crafted a behemoth over the decades, acquiring newspaper, television, publishing and entertainment interests in Asia, Europe, the United States and Latin America. New York-based News Corp., which employs more than 50,000 people, said it had total assets as of March of $60 billion, and total annual revenues of $33 billion, though the scandal has pushed down share prices.
In 2001, a former wife of Rupert Murdoch predicted that there would be heartache among her children — James, Lachlan and Elisabeth — when the time came to choose his successor. At the time, Anna Murdoch Mann told the Australian Women’s Weekly magazine that she would prefer that none of her children took the reins.
“I think they’re all so good that they could do whatever they wanted, really,” she said. “But I think there’s going to be a lot of heartbreak and hardship with this. There’s been such a lot of pressure that they needn’t have had at their age.”
The accusations of phone hacking and police bribery by journalists at the News of the World reached into the elder Murdoch’s inner circle with the arrest Sunday of Rebekah Brooks, former head of his British newspaper unit.
James Murdoch did not directly oversee News of the World, where the phone hacking of celebrities and others allegedly occurred, but he approved payments to some of the paper’s most prominent hacking victims, including 700,000 pounds ($1.1 million) to Professional Footballers’ Association chief Gordon Taylor.
He said he “did not have a complete picture” when he approved the payouts. Still, commentators view his position as fragile because of questions about whether the criminal investigation will go higher up the chain of command at News Corp. Additionally, the company could be liable under the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars American companies from bribing foreign officials for business.
Journalists at the News of the World hacked the voice mail of mobile telephones in an attempt to get information for stories that would help sell newspapers, and allegedly paid police for information that could also be used in the production of news reports.
Louise Cooper, an analyst in the London office of the brokerage BGC Partners, described years of speculation about who would take control after Rupert Murdoch as a perpetual process of “one’s up, another one’s down” that focuses on the tycoon’s children. In the end, she said, it is the patriarch’s decision.
“He still has absolute control over that company,” Cooper said. She said that barring further revelations about the involvement of James Murdoch in the scandal, “it’s difficult to write him off completely.”
Rupert Murdoch controls News Corp. through a family trust that holds 40 per cent of the company’s Class B voting shares. The succession question has centred on James, Elisabeth and Lachlan, children by Murdoch’s second marriage to Anna Torv, later Anna Murdoch Mann after she remarried.
Elisabeth is married to prominent British public relations executive Matthew Freud. She resigned as managing director of British Sky Broadcasting, a lucrative satellite broadcaster in which News Corp. is the biggest shareholder, in 2000 to go her own way. This month, Murdoch dropped a bid to take full control of BSkyB in response to the uproar over phone hacking.
Lachlan Murdoch, once seen as the heir apparent, had been elevated to deputy chief operating officer of News Corp. by the time he quit in 2005 to go back to Australia.
That left James as the expected heir. He has been chairman and CEO of the company’s European and Asian operations since 2007, and later became deputy chief operating officer of News Corp.
Rupert Murdoch has another daughter, Prudence, from his first marriage to Patricia Booker; she is married to Alasdair MacLeod, who stepped down last year after 20 years as a News Corp. executive, most recently as managing director of the Australian newspapers.
Murdoch also has two daughters, 9-year-old Grace and 7-year-old Chloe, with his third wife, Wendi Deng. She was a junior News Corp. executive in Hong Kong before marrying Murdoch in 1999 at the age of 32. Her name has occasionally cropped up in succession speculation in the past.
Kevin Garland still remembers the pessimistic prediction of a well-wisher when she took over as executive director of the National Ballet of Canada a decade ago.
Turning up the pressure, Canada Post announces it is moving to three times a week delivery in most cities because rotating strikes have slashed mail volumes in half.
As Canada Post made its announcement curbing service, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers announced rotating strikes across Canada in small communities beginning at 11:30 pm EDT.
The walkouts will affect four locations in Ontario: Thunder Bay, Hearst, Brantford and St. Thomas. As well, workers are off the job in Labrador City, Labrador; Acadie-Bathurst, New Brunswick; Summerside, P.E.I.; Ste.Therese, Quebec; Ste Jerome, Quebec; Flin Flon, Manitoba; Yellowknife, Northwest Territories; Whitehorse, Yukon; and Vernon, B.C.
Canada Post said home delivery will continue on Thursday, but starting next week, most people who are served by mail carriers will only get delivery of letters, ad mail and small parcels on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Large parcels and priority mail will continue to be delivered on a five-day a week basis.
“Our volumes have dropped off the cliff,” said Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton, saying the company must contain costs as revenues are falling. “The union’s rotating strikes are having a profound impact.”
Canada Post estimates that instead of delivering its usual 40 million items a day, it’s only about 20 million.
“We need to maintain and create good jobs, not cut back on jobs in our communities,” said Denis Lemelin, CUPW National President and chief negotiator, said in a news release high quality business cards. “Smaller communities also benefit from having access to increased services at their post offices. We are asking Canada Post to address these demands.”
Employees will only be paid for the hours they work. Staffing at mail processing plants will also be adjusted to deal with falling volumes.
Post office operating hours and access to post office boxes will be unchanged. Pickups from street letter boxes on major streets will continue as usual.
Canadians who live in rural Canada will continue with daily service because their carriers are covered by a separate contract.
The strike by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers began Friday, with 24- to 48-hour shutdowns across the country. The rotating strikes began in Calgary and Edmonton overnight, after walkouts in Winnipeg, Hamilton, Montreal, Victoria and Moncton.
The union has not hit the Toronto area yet, which includes two of the country’s busiest processing plants, the mail sorting facility on Eastern Ave. and the parcel sorting facility in Mississauga.
It has not ruled out a full nationwide strike at some point, but with rotating strikes, most employees have been able to draw a paycheque. The company’s latest move means their wages will shrink.
Talks are continuing at an Ottawa hotel, but Canada Post said little progress was being made.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers was not immediately available for a response.
Apparently people don’t like paying $5 to withdraw their own money from an ATM.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) said Monday it has finished testing $4 and $5 ATM fees for non-customers in two states, and it is now going back to the $3 fees it previously charged.
Earlier this year,the bank had been testing a $5 ATM fee in Illinois and a $4 ATM fee in Texas — both for non-customers who use its ATMs — to see if they brought in enough revenue to introduce nationwide, according to a spokesman for the company.
Out of the bank’s network of 16,000 ATMs, more than 20% — or about 3,600 — are located in these two states.
Chase spent an estimated $400 million to build the entire network and pays $200 million a year to run it. So the bank wanted non-customers to pay a little extra for the convenience of using its large network.
But the $5 fee meant that a $20 withdrawal would cost you a 25% premium for that convenience. And that doesn’t even include what your own bank charges you for going out of network — typically around $3.
But it looks like that $5 threshold inconvenienced enough customers, and convinced them to trek an extra few blocks to their own banks.
So Chase threw in the towel, and the $3 ATM fees you’re used to paying are back — for now.
Sony executives have bowed in apology for a security breach in the PlayStation Network that caused the loss of personal data of some 77 million accounts on the online service.
Three executives, including Kazuo Hirai, the chief of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation video game unit, bowed for several seconds at Tokyo headquarters Sunday in the traditional style of a Japanese apology. It was their first public appearance since the worldwide problems surfaced in April payday loans with no fax.
Sony said account information, including names, birthdates, email addresses and log-in information, was compromised for players using its PlayStation Network. Hirai asked that all users change their passwords.
Asian currencies gained, led by Singapore’s dollar and Malaysia’s ringgit, on speculation the Group of Seven nations’ efforts to curb the yen’s rally will stabilize markets and boost demand for emerging-market assets.
The yen weakened for a second day after the G-7 issued a joint statement on March 18 saying it would join Japan in concerted intervention in foreign-exchange markets. The currency reached a postwar high of 76.25 on March 17 on speculation Japanese companies and investors were repatriating funds after the country’s biggest earthquake on record. India, China, South Korea, Thailand and Indonesia have all boosted interest rates this year to combat rising prices.
“The G-7 action is giving a positive signal to the market and tempers the risk of an economic slowdown,” said Nik M. Khairul, a treasury dealer at Asian Finance Bank Bhd. in Kuala Lumpur. “The focus is back on efforts to tackle inflation in the region” which could benefit currencies, he said.
The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index climbed for a third day, up 0.1 percent to 116.45 as of 10:39 a.m. in Hong Kong. The Singapore dollar gained 0.5 percent to S$1.2690 against the greenback, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The ringgit strengthened 0.4 percent to 3.0395 and the Philippine peso advanced 0.3 percent to 43.57.
China’s yuan reached a two-week high after policy makers raised banks’ reserve requirements for the third time this year on March 18. Consumer prices climbed 4.9 percent in February and January from a year earlier, according to official data. Prices are likely to increase at a rate of less than 4 percent in 2011, the official Xinhua news agency reported over the weekend, citing former central bank adviser Fan Gang.
Ringgit Rises
The yuan strengthened 0.06 percent to 6.5650 per dollar after reaching 6.5640 earlier, the strongest since March 7.
“The reserve-rate increase eases suspicion that China may use the Japan earthquake as an excuse not to allow faster appreciation,” said Sean Callow, a senior currency strategist at Westpac Banking Corp. in Sydney. “The move also shows Chinese authorities remain confident about its growth prospects and concerned with its inflation level.”
The ringgit rose for a fourth day, poised for its longest winning streak in a month, on speculation the central bank will allow more gains or raise interest rates to stem rising prices.
Inflation in Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy accelerated 2.6 percent in February from a year earlier, compared with 2.4 percent in January, according to the median estimate of economists in a Bloomberg News survey. The statistics department will report the data on March 25.
Indonesian Growth Forecast
Indonesia’s rupiah advanced to its strongest level in almost a week after the central bank said economic growth in the first quarter may beat its forecast. The rupiah strengthened 0.2 percent to 8,753 per dollar.
Gross domestic product may increase 6.6 percent in the three months through March, compared with an earlier estimate of 6.4 percent, Deputy Governor Hartadi Sarwono said last week. The currency rose for a second day after U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the Obama administration believes the worst of Japan’s nuclear crisis is over.
“Recent comments by Indonesian officials that gross domestic product may beat the initial forecast has set a positive backdrop for the rupiah,” said Joanna Tan, an economist at Forecast Singapore Pte. “There’s also positive developments in Japan.”
Elsewhere, the Thai baht strengthened 0.1 percent to 30.28 per dollar, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. South Korea’s won rose 0.2 percent to 1,124.70 and Taiwan’s dollar added 0.1 percent to NT$29.566.
South Korea’s unemployment rate rose to a one-year high in February as jobs in farms, hotels, restaurants, and the retail and wholesale sectors declined.
The jobless rate rose to 4.0 percent from 3.6 percent in January, Statistics Korea said in Gwacheon today, citing seasonally adjusted figures. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of eight economists was for a rate of 3.6 percent.
A further climb may ease pressure on the central bank to extend interest-rate increases if it helps tame the fastest inflation in more than two years by curbing demand. Officials are also weighing the impact of the earthquake in Japan, saying they will help exporters if trade flows are disrupted.
“The jobless rate probably rose last month due to the impact of foot-mouth-disease and the Lunar New Year holidays,” Park Sang Hyun, chief economist at HI Investment & Securities Co. in Seoul, said before the release. “The rise will be temporary as the economy is still on a recovery track, but the outlook is uncertain due to higher oil prices and Japan’s earthquake.”
The won yesterday fell to its weakest level this year and government bonds rose on concern about radiation leaking from nuclear reactors in Japan following the magnitude-9 temblor and ensuing tsunami on March 11.
Market Declines
The won slid 0.5 percent to 1,134.80 per dollar at the 3 p.m. close in Seoul after reaching 1,137.95, its weakest level in 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The benchmark Kospi stock index dropped 2.4 percent.
South Korea’s exports and factory output will probably be hurt if the earthquake disrupts supplies from Japan for an extended period, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said this week.
The Bank of Korea on March 10 raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point for the second time this year, to 3 percent. Inflation has breached the bank’s 4 percent ceiling for two straight months and climbed to 4.5 percent in February from a year earlier.
The central bank forecasts economic growth of 4.5 percent in 2011, slowing from a 6.1 percent pace in 2010, and predicts inflation will accelerate to 3.5 percent from 2.9 percent.
The seasonally unadjusted jobless rate was 4.5 percent in February, compared with 3.8 percent in January, today’s report showed. The number of employed people increased 469,000 to 23.34 million last month from a year earlier.
Employment in manufacturing rose 6.7 percent from a year earlier and jobs in the agricultural, fishery and forestry industries declined 4.2 percent, today’s report showed. Jobs in restaurants, hotels and the retail and wholesale sectors dropped 1.4 percent while construction jobs advanced 1.7 percent and the number of people employed in the private and public service sectors gained 3.3 percent.
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