Finance & Business World

Shoppers appear to have given the nation’s stores a needed last-minute sales surge.

Early readings from Toys R Us, Sears Holdings Corp. and several mall operators show packed stores on Christmas Eve following a busy week fueled by shoppers who delayed buying, waiting for bigger discounts that never came or slowed by last weekend’s big East Coast snowstorm.

Stores are counting on these stragglers in a season that so far appears slightly better than last year’s disaster. The jury is still out, because the week after Christmas accounts for about 15 percent of sales as gift card-toting shoppers return to malls.

"The procrastinators were really out in force," says David Bassuk, managing director in the retail practice of AlixPartners, a global business advisory firm.

"But I think retailers needed to be more aggressive to fight for those sales. A lot of people are still willing to hold out until after Christmas because the deals weren’t as good."

A Christmas Eve snowstorm in the nation’s heartland was slowing some shoppers after snarling roads in the mountain states a day earlier.

Wally Brewster, spokesman at General Growth Properties said merchants in his centers said they had made up for lost sales.

Still, he expects overall holiday sales will be only about even with a year ago payday loans with no faxing.

Caution remained. Karen MacDonald, spokesman for mall operator Taubman Centers Inc., noted that stores said many shoppers, remembering the 80 to 90 percent clearance sales they found last year, were asking whether the discounts were going to get any deeper.

And Rebecca Stenholm, a company spokesman for mall operator Macerich Co., reported that more people were using cash to pay for gift cards than a year ago, reflecting tight credit and a desire to pay down debt.

The full picture won’t be known until merchants report December sales Jan. 7. But most expect merchants’ fourth-quarter profits should be intact because they didn’t have to cut prices more than they’d planned as they were cushioned by lean inventories.

ShopperTrak is sticking to its prediction for a 1.6 percent gain, compared with a 5.9 percent drop a year ago.

The National Retail Federation expects that total retail sales will slip 1 percent, though some experts say that might be a bit too cautious.

A year ago, they fell 3.4 percent by the trade group’s calculations.

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Don’t close the coffin on Saab just yet.

Spyker, a Dutch maker of exotic cars, said Sunday that it had made a new offer to General Motors for the Swedish car brand.

GM announced on Friday that it would let the brand die after it had failed to reach a deal with potential buyers, including Spyker and Swedish carmaker Koenigsegg.

Early Sunday, Spyker Chief Executive Victor Muller said the company had submitted a proposal that addresses the issues that had hung up a deal.

"Despite our collective 11th-hour set-back, we are returning to the table with a renewed offer, that addresses every known issue brought to light during the initial negotiations and that has the full backing of the Saab management," Muller said in a statement.

"Our efforts are based on our passion for saving an iconic brand that we would be honored to shepherd, and the jobs and livelihoods of thousands of loyal Saab employees, suppliers and dealers around the world," he added.

Some 3,400 employees globally would be directly affected by Saab’s closure, according to GM spokesman Chris Pruess.

In a statement on Sunday, GM said it had "received inquires from several parties" following Friday’s announcement. The company added that it would "evaluate each inquiry."

Spyker’s offer is set to expire Monday at 5 p.m. ET.

Saab has never been a big-selling car brand, but the recent global recession and news of the brand’s possible demise have driven sales down to crisis levels. Saab’s U.S. sales have fallen by more than half so far this year.

Sweden’s other major automaker, Volvo, is currently owned by Ford (F, Fortune 500), which is in the process of selling it to the Chinese automaker Geely.

What went wrong

GM previously said that the potential deals with both Spyker and Koenigsegg fell through because of unspecified issues that arose during negotiations.

As of Friday, GM was still planning to sell some Saab 9-3 and 9-5 technologies to the Chinese automaker Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings Co. Ltd. That deal was announced last week.

GM has owned a major stake in the Swedish automaker since 1989 and took full ownership in 2000; Saab has been making cars since 1949. GM will now begin winding down Saab production, but warranties will continue to be honored, and spare parts will still be available, the company said.

In the past two decades, GM has made every effort to turn Saab into a profitable car brand, Smith said. But recent global economic problems were simply too much for the still-weak automaker to survive.

As part of its government-sponsored bankruptcy restructuring, GM planned to sell of or wind down four of the eight brands it recently operated.

Pontiac is being wound down; a deal to sell the Saturn brand to Penske Automotive fell through in September; and a deal to sell the Hummer SUV brand to Chinese heavy equipment maker Sichuan Tengzhong is awaiting government approvals.

GM’s remaining brands are Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac. 

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Bakers Footwear Group Inc., a St. Louis-based women’s footwear retailer, announced Friday that it no longer meets the minimum stockholders’ equity requirement needed to remain listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market.

For the quarter ended Oct. 31, Bakers reported a shareholders’ deficit of $3.5 million. The retailer said it intends to submit to Nasdaq by Dec. 29 a plan explaining how it will turn the deficit into equity and reach the minimum requirement of $2 poor credit personal loans.5 million this quarter. If the plan isn’t accepted by Nasdaq or if the plan fails, the company faces delisting from the stock exchange.

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Senate Democrats are preparing to drop a compromise health-care plan that would allow 55- to 64-year-olds to buy into Medicare because of opposition from Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, two senior Democratic sources said Monday.

"It’s what the White House wants, and there aren’t many other options that allow us to finish by Christmas," said one source.

Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, has emerged as the majority party’s main obstacle to its efforts to get a health care bill through the Senate before Christmas. He ratcheted up his public opposition to the bill Sunday by threatening to join a Republican filibuster if the legislation contains either a government-run public health insurance option or a proposed alternative that would expand Medicare to people as young as 55.

"I think the danger always is you try to add too much onto a bill," he told reporters Monday evening. He said he supports the "core" of the bill, including tighter regulations on private insurers — but he wants Democrats to "take off some of this stuff that runs the risk of creating federal debt, and moves toward a government takeover of insurance, which I think would be bad."

Unanimous Republican opposition so far means Senate Democrats need all 60 votes in their caucus to close debate on the sweeping health care bill. Final passage of the bill would then require only a simple majority of 51.

Lieberman supported letting older workers buy into Medicare in 2000, when he was the Democratic vice presidential candidate, and as recently as September in comments to a Connecticut newspaper.

But he said Monday that the idea was "no longer necessary," since the Senate bill includes subsidies to help people over 55 and older buy insurance coverage before they become eligible for Medicare.

"I was suggesting various ideas for health care reform that did not involve the public option, and that was the focus at that time," he said. "But the important thing is I’m for health care reform, and if we get together, we’re going to deliver a health care reform bill that will provide the ability to get health insurance to 30 million people that don’t have it now."

And Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittmann said that now, "We have a huge national deficit and a program that analysts indicate is in dire fiscal straits in 2009."

Emergency meeting Senate Democrats held an emergency meeting Monday night to discuss the issue, which threatens to derail the Obama administration’s push for a sweeping reform of U.S. health insurance. Although a final decision was not made at Monday night’s meeting, a second Democratic source said a final decision could be made at a White House meeting Tuesday between the Senate’s Democratic majority and President Barack Obama.

"I think there is a fundamental understanding of the direction we’re going in," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts. Before the meeting, liberal Democrats Tom Harkin of Iowa and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia indicated that the Medicare buy-in would likely be dropped.

While they didn’t like the idea, they suggested they would support a health care bill anyway payday loan lenders. Democrats "may have to do what Mr. Lieberman wants," Harkin told CNN. The Medicare expansion was part of a package of provisions announced by Reid last week as an alternative to a government-run public health insurance program, which lacked enough support among Democrats to break a filibuster.

Negotiated by a team of 10 Democratic senators — five liberal and five moderate — the compromise package was hailed by Reid, Obama and others as an important step forward in the health care debate. The package also would allow private insurers to offer non-profit health coverage overseen by the government.

Many senators have reserved judgment on the compromise proposal until the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provides its analysis of how much it costs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would discuss no specifics of a bill after Monday night’s caucus, telling reporters he would wait until the CBO finished its estimate of a revised bill’s price tag.

But he said the measure "saves lives, saves money, and saves Medicare." "I am confident that by next week we’ll be on our way to forward this bill to the president," he said.

Backing public option Most Democrats support the public option as a non-profit competitor to private insurers that would expand coverage and bring down prices. Republicans and some moderate Democrats, along with the health insurance industry — one of the major employers in Lieberman’s home state — oppose a public option, calling it a first step toward a government takeover of the U.S. health care system.

Lieberman first expressed possible opposition to the health care bill in late October, saying he would join a GOP filibuster if the measure contained the public option. Asked about Lieberman’s position then, Reid said: "Joe Lieberman is the least of Harry Reid’s problems."

Another potential obstacle for Reid is moderate Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who said Sunday said he cannot support the Senate bill without tighter restrictions on federal funding for abortion. The Senate last week defeated an amendment proposed by Nelson and two other senators that would adopt tougher language on abortion funding contained in the House health care bill.

A compromise on the abortion language is possible, said Nelson, one of 10 Senate Democrats who negotiated in private last week on the public option compromise.

If the Senate eventually passes a health care bill, its version will have to be merged with the version the House of Representatives passed in November, which includes a public health insurance plan.

The final bill would then need approval from both chambers before going to Obama to be signed into law. Obama and Democratic leaders have said they want the bill completed this year. The Senate would need to finish its work this week to leave a realistic chance of meeting that schedule.

–CNN’s Dana Bash, Ted Barrett and Tom Cohen contributed to this report.  

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San Francisco brokerage Charles Schwab said Monday that fourth-quarter earnings will come in lower than the third quarter.

The firm said earnings per share will be 2 cents to 4 cents lower than the prior quarter due to lower interest rates and slower trading in recent weeks.

Schwab (NASDAQ: SCHW) also said Monday that it plans to waive $108 million in fees on its money market funds, an 8 percent increase from the firm’s earlier forecast.

The earnings warning indicates Schwab expects to earn 13 cents to 15 cents per share in the current quarter, down from 17 cents in the third quarter and 27 cents per share in last year’s fourth quarter Payday advance.

November’s daily average trading — a key performance measure at Schwab — was down 11 percent from October and down 27 percent from November 2008, when financial markets were in a tailspin.

“Continued declines in the rate environment have led to heightened revenue pressures … and client trading volumes have slowed in recent weeks,” said Joe Martinetto, Schwab’s chief financial officer.

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The Translational Genomics Research Institute and Scottsdale Healthcare are testing an Italian pharmaceutical firm’s new drug for thymic cancer.

Scottsdale Healthcare is the world’s first site for the Phase I trial of a new oral drug, being called NMS-1286937. The hospital had conducted a Phase II trial for another of the Italian company’s drugs, called PHA-848125ac for advanced thymic cancer. This new research is based on the earlier promising results of PHA.

The thymus is a small organ near the lungs and heart that is a key part to the body’s immune system during fetal and childhood development.

The Italian company, called Nerviano Medical Sciences, is working in conjunction with TGen and SHC on both the thymic cancer drugs. The goal is to quickly turn these discoveries into targeted therapies at SHC’s Virginia G paydayloans. Piper Cancer Center in Scottsdale.

Mark Slater, senior vice president of research at Scottsdale Healthcare, said while SHC is the only U.S. site for the study, France and Italy also are conducting studies.

“Our partnership with TGen has allowed us to bring in novel therapies, really cutting-edge treatments that have addressed new mechanisms for rare cancers and cancers that have not responded well to standard therapy,” Slater said. “Our approach is to target our therapies using advanced molecular diagnostics.”

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Sales tax revenue continues to fall in Dallas and other cities across North Texas.

Dallas' sales tax revenue fell 5.3 percent for November, compared to collections for the same period in 2008. Still, it's better than the Texas average, which dropped 14.4 percent, according to state Comptroller Susan Combs.

Dallas' net payment was $14.5 million, compared to $15.4 million for the same period last year. So far this year, payments are down 9.2 percent, dropping to $205.4 million from $227 million in 2008.

Fort Worth saw its monthly payment drop a whopping 17.3 percent, to $7 million from $8.5 million a year ago. For the year, payments in Fort Worth are down 7.9 percent, to $97.8 million from $106 no fax payday loan.2 million.

Frisco saw its November collections drop 11.6 percent, Plano saw a drop of 19.1 percent, Grapevine tax revenue for the month was down 8.3 percent and Irving showed a decrease of 18 percent. Lewisville fared better than most North Texas cities, with November 2009 collections dipping less than 1 percent when compared with November 2008.

Texas collected $1.7 billion in sales taxes last month, making November the ninth consecutive month of a year-over-year decline.Combs says collections are down in all categories, including retailing, oil and gas production and construction.

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Options traders are growing less bullish on the yen after efforts by Japanese officials to boost the world’s second-biggest economy and a U.S. jobs report led to the currency’s biggest weekly decline in a decade.

Japan’s currency plunged 2.5 percent against the dollar and 1.3 percent versus the euro on Dec. 4 after the U.S. Labor Department said employers cut the fewest jobs since the recession began. The yen sank 4.5 percent versus the greenback for the week, the most since February 1999 and retreating from a 14-year high. Traders sold yen and bought dollars on speculation interest rates in the U.S. will increase before June.

“The improving U.S. jobs market suggests the Federal Reserve won’t stand pat on interest rates longer than the Bank of Japan,” said Kazutoshi Yasuda, general manager of the markets department in Tokyo at FX Prime Corp., a unit of Itochu Corp. Increased U.S. borrowing costs would lead traders to favor using yen to finance higher-yielding investments, leading to more losses for the Japanese currency, he said.

Options showed declining bets the yen will rise. The odds for a gain to 84.5 yen per dollar by the end of March from 90.56 last week fell to 38 percent from 80 percent on Nov. 30, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Chances of a decline to 92 versus the dollar by Dec. 31 reached 63 percent. Options grant buyers the right to purchase or sell an asset at a predetermined price.

Weekly Tumble

The yen tumbled 3.6 percent versus the euro last week, the sharpest slide since the five days to April 3. The yen also fell 4.5 percent against the dollar, the most since the week ended Feb. 19, 1999, when it slumped 5.9 percent. The yen’s biggest drop during the week came after the U.S. Labor Department said payrolls dropped by 11,000 last month, the smallest decrease since the recession began.

The yen traded at 89.90 per dollar as of 11:53 a.m. in Tokyo from 90.56 last week, and was at 133.87 versus the euro from 134.54.

“What the job numbers do is firm up expectations that the Fed interest-rate hike is coming,” said Camilla Sutton, a strategist in Toronto at Bank of Nova Scotia, the nation’s third-largest lender. “That should be a strong-dollar story.”

Federal-funds futures contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade show a 43.3 percent probability the U.S. central bank will raise its target rate for overnight bank borrowing to 0.5 percent by June from the current range of zero to 0.25 percent, up from 12.6 percent odds a month ago.

‘Finally Turning’

UBS AG expects the Fed to set its key rate at the top end of its 0.25 percent range in April and follow with a quarter- point increase in June. The jobs report and last week’s gains “suggest the greenback is finally turning,” Mansoor Mohi-uddin, the Zurich-based bank’s global head of currency strategy, wrote in a note to clients.

The yen was the best performer against the dollar among the 16 most-traded currencies the past four years, Bloomberg data show. It surged to 84.83 on Nov. 27, the strongest since July 1995, from 124.13 in June 2007. The yen tends to advance amid financial turmoil because Japan’s trade surplus reduces reliance on foreign capital.

Record low U.S. interest rates have kept the dollar under pressure at the expense of the yen, making the greenback the favorite for so-called carry trades, where investors raise funds in countries with low borrowing costs and use the proceeds to invest in countries with higher returns.

Benchmark rates of as low as zero in the U.S. and 0.1 percent in Japan compare with 3.75 in Australia and 2.5 percent in New Zealand.

Libor

The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, for three- month loans in the U.S. currency has been below the equivalent yen rate since Aug. 24. In the decade before then, the dollar rate averaged 2.94 percentage points more than the yen rate.

Contracts betting the yen would climb against the dollar rose to 51,710 on Nov. 27, the most since May 2008, according to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission in Washington based on contracts at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. As recently as June, there more contracts betting on a decline than a gain.

Such “extreme” positioning may suggest that the decline in the yen represents traders unwinding “long” positions rather than an outright bet on the currency’s depreciation, Marc Chandler, the global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York, said in a note to clients on Dec. 4.

The median estimate of more than 30 strategists surveyed by Bloomberg is for the yen to end March at 92 to the dollar and 136 to the euro.

‘Urgent Steps’

Fujio Mitarai, head of Japan’s largest business lobby, called on the government to take “urgent steps” on Nov. 27 to curb gains in the yen, which make Japanese exports less competitive and threaten corporate profits. The same day, Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said in Tokyo the nation will “do what is necessary” and he may contact U.S. and European officials to act.

Exports make up about 12 percent of Japan’s economy, compared with 6 percent in the U.S. The nation’s gross domestic product is forecast to shrink 5.7 percent this year, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. That compares with a contraction of 2.4 percent in the U.S.

The Bank of Japan announced an emergency 10 trillion yen ($113 billion) credit program on Dec. 1 to combat falling prices and the stronger yen. The spread between dollar- and yen-based Libor narrowed to 2.72 basis points on Dec. 4 from as much as 7.25 basis points on Sept. 8.

Stimulus Plan

“The BOJ’s action worked,” said Masato Mori, senior manager of the business and marketing department at NTT SmartTrade Inc. a unit of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. “Stopping the yen’s advance will require additional spending from the government.”

A stimulus plan worth as much as 4 trillion yen may be agreed upon today, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said last week. The government planned to announce the measures on Dec. 4 before disagreements between Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s ruling Democratic Party of Japan and coalition partners, who want a larger package, caused a delay.

Bonds to be issued in the fiscal year starting April 1 may reach 146.2 trillion yen compared with a revised 132.3 trillion yen this year, according to Citigroup Global Markets Japan Inc.

“There is probably enough in the policy action in Japan by the government and the BOJ to argue for further upside on cross- yen currencies near term,” said Greg Gibbs, a foreign-exchange strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in Sydney.

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The Canadian Auto Workers says it will reaffiliate with the Ontario Federation of Labour after an absence of more than a decade.

CAW president Ken Lewenza said Friday that the union is currently talking to OFL leaders about conditions for a return that will likely come in the first quarter of next year.

"We’re not reaffiliating just to reaffiliate," Lewenza told more than 800 delegates at a CAW council meeting earlier. "We’re affiliating because we believe the labour movement needs us and we need the labour movement."

Union delegates had passed a resolution at a council meeting earlier this year to start a "constructive and respectful" dialogue that could lead to possible reaffiliation.

The CAW, one of the province’s biggest private sector unions, left the federation in 1997 after it could not get assurances of representation among the OFL’s top four officers payday loan online.

It has about 225,000 workers across the country including a majority in Ontario.

Lewenza said the labour movement in the province needs a united front in the growing attack on workers by corporations and governments.

The umbrella federation represents about 700,000 workers in scores of unions.

The split between the federation and the CAW has weakened the labour movement during the last decade as the groups pursued different strategies and agendas with less collective power, according to some labour analysts.

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The Toronto stock market fell sharply Thursday in a broad-based decline despite solid earnings reports from two of the big Canadian banks as investors opted for caution ahead of Friday's U.S. non-farm jobless report.

The S&P/TSX composite index declined 143.18 points to 11,636.55 with a report showing a surprising contraction of the U.S. service industry during November also limiting advances.

The Institute for Supply Management's non-manufacturing index fell to 48.7 from 50.6 in October. Economists had expected the index to rise to 51.5, which would show continued expansion.

Market sentiment Friday will likely be determined by the U.S. jobless report. Economists expect that employers cut 130,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate remained flat at 10.2 per cent.

"It's understandable that the market would tread water at this point,"" said Tim Knepp, chief investment officer of Genworth Financial Asset Management.

"Job creation is going to be the key to sustaining any kind of rally."

The Canadian dollar moved down 0.41 of a cent to 94.81 cents US.

The TSX financial sector stepped 1.3 back per cent amid reports from three major banks Thursday.

"They're bumping into resistance right now, particularly TD and CIBC are kind of at the high end of their trading ranges," said Colin Cieszynski, market analyst at CMC Markets Canada.

"We had the prices run up on anticipation of a recovery in bank earnings, and so now we're getting the recovery in bank earnings but the market had already anticipated that to a certain extent, which is why we're getting this consolidation (over the last three months)."

CIBC shares were ahead $1.52 to C$70 on the TSX after the bank reported fourth-quarter net income of $644 million or $1.56 per share, up from year-ago profit of $436 million or $1.06 per share. Revenues totalled $2.9 billion for the quarter, compared to $2.2 billion last year.

CIBC's provision for loan losses surged 91 per cent from a year ago to $424 million due to higher losses in its credit cards, unsecured personal lending and corporate lending portfolios. But provision for credit losses was down $123 million from the prior quarter, primarily due to lower losses in these same portfolios.

TD Bank Financial Group (TSX: TD) reported net income for the fourth quarter was essentially flat compared with the same period last year at just over $1 billion. TD's provision for credit losses nearly doubled to $521 million but was down from the prior quarter. Its shares fell $1.71 to $66.08 as U.S. personal and commercial banking profits tumbled 51 per cent to $122 million. And continued weakness in the U.S. real estate market brought net impaired loans higher to $879 million, a rise of 163 per cent over the same time last year payday loan.

National Bank Financial Group (TSX: NA) missed expectations reported net income of $241 million or $1.39 per share for the fourth quarter, up from year-ago profit of $70 million or 37 cents per share. Revenues came in at $1.1 billion, rising 43 per cent from $765 million last year and its shares dropped $3.78 to $60.84.

In other earnings news, shares in Bombardier Inc. (TSX: BBD.B) fell 13 cents to $4.56 after the airplane and train manufacturer said its profits fell 26 per cent to $168 million in its summer quarter amid harsh economic conditions that triggered recent layoffs. But the company said it managed to keep revenues at year-ago levels of $4.6 billion and a contract worth US$779 million with AMR Eagle Holding Corp, the parent company of American Eagle Airlines for 22 CRJ700 regional jets.

The energy sector was down 1.17 per cent as the January crude contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange slipped 14 cents to US$76.46 a barrel.

EnCana Corp. (TSX: ECA) shares were down $27.62 to $28.81 after the energy company completed its split into two companies on Monday. EnCana becomes a pure play natural gas company while Cenovus Energy Ltd. is an integrated oil company. Cenovus shares started regular trading Thursday on the TSX and were off five cents to $26.25.

The gold sector was down just over two per cent as the February bullion contract on the Nymex gained $5.30 to a record US$1,218.30 an ounce.

The base metals sector declined 1.5 per cent as March copper was down 1.35 cents at US$3.24 a pound. Sherritt International (TSX: S) lost 14 cents to C$6.48.

Market heavyweight Research In Motion Ltd. (TSX: RIM) also pressured the TSX, moving down $1.35 to $61.53.

The TSX Venture Exchange edged 0.18 of a point lower 1,461.61.

Losses also picked up in New York late in the session as the Dow Jones industrial average fell 86.53 points to 10,366.15.

The Nasdaq composite index dropped 11.89 points to 2,173.14 while the S&P 500 index ticked 9.32 points lower to 1,099.92.

In other corporate news, WestJet Airlines Ltd. (TSX: WJA) stock slipped 29 cents to $11.65 after the carrier said it expects the ongoing transition to a new reservation system will have a negative impact on its fourth-quarter passenger revenue. The Calgary-based airline said revenue is expected to be at least 11 per cent below last year.

Shares in uranium giant Cameco Corp. (TSX: CCO) gained 26 cents to $32.93 after the company approved a 17 per cent increase in the annual cash dividend to 28 cents a share from 24 cents, beginning in 2010.

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