Worldcrunch
MADRID – Anyone who has ever been to Madrid knows the Plaza de España. But today, you might not recognize it. The whole area, formerly prosperous and energetic, is a window on the crisis raging throughout Spain. Along the sides of the Plaza and in the side streets, there are entire rows of closed storefronts, […]
BEIJING – Investing in North Korea is becoming a hot topic among Chinese businessmen. Over the last few weeks, a series of business events and investment conferences about North Korea have been held. Chen Jiangfeng, a real-estate developer from Beijing was one of the 150 plus entrepreneurs who attended the investment projects fair held at […]
THE AUSTRALIAN, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia), LES ECHOS (France), WALL STREET JOURNAL (USA) Worldcrunch SYDNEY – In a major blow to the ratings industry, the Federal Court of Australia ruled on Monday that Standard & Poor’s had misled investors by giving its most trusted rating to instruments that S&P knew to be faulty, the Australian […]
CHINA TIMES (Taiwan), STOCK MARKET TREND WEEKLY (China), CNBC (USA) Worldcrunch BEIJING – The ranking of the world’s richest man has stayed relatively stable. There have been only three individuals who made it there in the past ten years – Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and the Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim. Over the same period […]
CAIRO – The economic stagnation of the past year and a half has taken a toll on many businesses, but a fleet of Islamic investment banks in Egypt sees opportunity in the emerging new order. Ridge Islamic Capital, one such investment bank, has found a niche in the finance sector and made plans to capitalize […]
BEIJING – While many other luxury brands are facing a sharp decline in their sales in China, the American brand Coach is busy writing a different story. As a relatively more accessible luxury brand, its prices have always been 50-75% lower than the top luxury brands. Now for the first half of this year, it […]
PARIS – In the United States, “China bashing” is in full swing. Denigrating China has been a mainstay of the American presidential campaign, in a time of economic one-upmanship between Washington and Beijing. During the final televised debate, devoted to foreign policy, Republican candidate Mitt Romney once again accused Beijing of manipulating its currency and […]
MUNICH – According to exclusive information obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German, French, Italian, Spanish and Moroccan governments are pushing forward their green power “Desertec” project. Electricity produced by a solar thermal plant in Morocco, which would cost 600 million euros to build, would supply Europe with renewable energy. The planned power plant site is […]
The future of Bhutan“s agriculture industry will be organic. The country, which mainly grows oranges, apples, rice and potatoes, had decided to become 100% organic in the next 10 years. Situated in the craggy foothills of the Himalayas, only 3% of the kingdom’s territory is actually farmland. However, 80% of the population of Bhutan, a […]
LE TEMPS (Switzerland), THE FINANCIAL TIMES (UK) Worldcrunch ZURICH – Swiss bank UBS officially announced Tuesday it is cutting 10,000 jobs worldwide after losing $42 billion during the financial crisis. The Zurich based bank, which currently employs 64,500 people, is aiming to reduce its workforce by 2015, Swiss daily Le Temps reports. The bulk of […]
MOSCOW – “At the time of transition, there were hopes that Russia would transform itself into a high-skilled, high-income economy with strong social protection programs inherited from the Soviet Union era…” So starts the Credit Suisse report on Russia as part of its 2012 Global Wealth Report. According to the bank’s experts, since 2000 the […]
The German publishing giant has completed a mega merger of its Random House publisher with Penguin books. And it isn’t done yet.
EL OBSERVADOR (Uruguay) CLARIN (Argentina)

 Worldcrunch MONTEVIDEO – As the Southern Hemisphere’s summer vacation season approaches, the tourism industry in Uruguay is already sweating Argentina’s new restrictions on changing money to dollars and using it for travel abroad. The Association of Hotels and Restaurants of Uruguay has taken extra steps to attract Argentines, including publishing […]
ONS, BBC NEWS (UK) Worldcrunch LONDON – Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported Thursday that the UK economy has emerged from recession, helped by the Olympic Games. In the three months from July to September, the country’s economy returned to growth at its fastest pace in five years, with its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) […]
CAIRO – As Egypt struggles to emerge from a period of deep financial uncertainty; government officials are looking towards the country’s vital shipping artery — the Suez Canal — as a major source of revenue and jobs. Officials from several government ministries have announced massive public-private partnerships aimed at developing the region. The hope, they […]
LISBON – Manuela, an animal rights activist, is standing outside the entrance to the Entrecampos train station in Lisbon, calling out to the occasional passersby, who pretend they don’t see her. The majority of the shops in the station’s arcade are empty, and even though the building is new, there is a feeling of neglect. […]
LES ECHOS (France) Worldcrunch A study published this week by two economists for the German Bertelsmann Foundation says that if Greece defaults on its debts and leaves the euro zone, it would cost the world’s major economies 17.8 trillion euros by 2020, and cause a severe worldwide depression, reports French business newspaper Les Echos. Greece’s […]
PANAMA CITY – Panama’s fiscal incentives are luring more and more people to its shores: multinationals, retirees in search of sun and investors seeking new opportunities. Real estate prices are ballooning into a mini Manhattan-on-the-Pacific. The latest notable arrival is PKB Privatbank, the first private Swiss bank to open a “banking center” in Panama City. […]
CHINA TIMES (Taiwan), APPLE DAILY (Hong Kong), DAILY MAIL (UK) Worldcrunch BEIJING – One week after the end of the Golden Week holiday, when more and more of upwardly mobile China travels abroad, the bills are rolling in. And once again, Chinese purchasing power is stunning the world. During the nine-day-long holiday, which this year […]
MILAN – Amazon was born in a car: Jeff Bezos wrote the first draft of his business plan for the company on a long drive between New York and Seattle. It was symbolic for the company, which arrived on the scene in 1995, selling books over the Internet. Today, Amazon is the biggest store in […]
NOBELPRIZE.ORG (Sweden) Worldcrunch STOCKHOLM – The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2012 was awarded on Monday to Alvin Roth of Harvard University and Lloyd Shapely of UCLA “for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.” The work concerns a central economic problem, explained the […]
BERLIN – This truck has been shipped from China, where it was bought from the country’s biggest truck maker, CIMC. It looks just like the kind of truck a child would draw: bright red, very long, very high, with massive wheels. Everything about it is just a tad too big for German roads. The truck […]
SANTIAGO – It’s July of 1990, and the two Germany’s have just united, marking the end of the Cold War, and capped with West Germany’s soccer World Cup victory over Argentina. As the images of the defeated players travelled the world (who can forget Diego Maradona’s tears?), in New York, a Latin American company was […]
-Opinion- A few weeks ago, the world’s biggest coffee chain, Starbucks, opened a new shop in the commercial district near Lingyin Temple. This temple, whose name means the Temple of the Soul’s Retreat, is in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Founded in the 4th century, it houses one of China’s most famous monasteries for Chan Buddhism (known […]
THE WORLD BANK, REUTERS Worldcrunch SINGAPORE – The World Bank cut its 2012 growth forecast for East Asia and the Pacific region on Monday, with China’s GDP growth outlook down from 9.3% in 2011 to 7.7% this year. Markets reacted quickly to the news: Oil and gold prices push sharply lower as World Bank cuts […]
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, WASHINGTON POST, CNN, SALON (USA) Worldcrunch The U.S. unemployment rate fell below 8% for the first time in nearly four years, according to the September jobs report released on Friday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate decreased to 7.8% in September, while total non-farm employment rose by […]
SÃO PAULO – Brazil is the most expensive developing nation for doing business and has costs similar to developed countries, according to a study by consulting firm KPMG. “Competitive Alternatives” is a regular KPMG report that compares the structure of costs for companies in different countries and localities, taking into account taxes, labor, rent, cost […]
-Analysis- PARIS – A specter is looming over France. That specter is called Qatar. Qatar’s announcement that it would invest 50 million euros in the impoverished suburbs outside Paris, an investment that will be matched by a fund partly financed by the French government and partly by the private sector, has sparked growing controversy. Some […]
KOMMERSANT (Russia), FACEBOOK, TWITTER Worldcrunch MOSCOW – Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg met with Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev to discuss the possibility that the social network’s presence in Russia expand from the virtual to physical world. The two talked business development at the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a Silicon-Valleyesque tech center near the city of Samara, […]
THE INDEPENDENT, FINANCIAL TIMES (UK) Worldcrunch LONDON – Martin Wheatley, the newly appointed chief financial policeman to the UK vowed on Monday that there will be no stone unturned in bringing corrupt bankers to justice in the City- London’s financial hub. Bad bankers warned: repent or go to jail ind.pn/QEdKg3 — The Independent (@Independent) October […]
PARIS – The price of luxury products is skyrocketing. The quasi-hypnotic appeal of some brands and the increasing number of extremely wealthy clients throughout the world is enabling luxury brands to hike prices to stratospheric levels year after year. A pair of John Lobb shoes, a Kelly Hermès bag, a kilo of Petrossian Sevruga caviar, […]
ALMATY – The sharp rise in tensions between the European Commission and Russian oil giant Gazprom is worrying the central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, which are highly dependent on their gas and oil exports to the EU. “The relationship between Europe and Russia, in regards to energy, is similar to that of […]
MOSCOW – The Russian government has made quite clear its desire to protect the national light manufacturing and textile industry. A thick packet of documents from the Ministry of Economic Development (MED) lays out how the government intends to change the law regarding procurement of materials for federal agencies, including the military. MED essentially wants […]
PARIS – For months, consumption has been stagnating, and purchasing power is not improving. Will the French, like the Spanish, start buying their yogurts one by one instead of in packs as a way to face the global financial crisis? Remarks by Jan Zijderveld, head of European operations for the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Unilever, on the […]
XINHUA (China), UNITED DAILY, CHINA TIMES (Taiwan) Worldcrunch TAIPEI – The Taiwanese are famous for being hard-working and creative when it comes to business. And thus the ongoing dispute between China and Japan has turned into an opportunity for the busy brains of Taiwan businessmen. While the boycott of Japanese goods is growing, an emphasis […]
CLARIN (Argentina) Worldcrunch BUENOS AIRES – Olives and its oil have been one of Argentina’s boom industries in recent years, but farmers are now begging the government for help to stay afloat, Clarin reports. The olives produced in Argentina are mostly exported, and currency fluctuations have made the price paid for the olives abroad shrink […]
BRUSSELS – Greece needs at least two more years and an additional 30 billion euros in order to be able to meet the targets set for it by the euro zone countries, European sources tell Süddeutsche Zeitung. When – and indeed if – the country gets money from the second bailout package is unclear. In […]
NEW DELHI – It was a long, hard summer in New Delhi — and it was made worse by the nice weather. In a country subject to monsoons (rainy season from June to Sept.), it’s when it doesn’t rain in July and August that the weather is considered bad. From this point of view, summer […]
KOMMERSANT (Russia) BBC Worldcrunch MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin is back in the middle of the oil business. Putin met this week with the head of Rosneft, a partially state-owned oil company, as well as the president of BP and a representative from the British multinational’s board of directors to see if a partnership […]
REUTERS, AFP, DIE WELT (Germany) Worldcrunch SINGAPORE — Held back by the financial crisis in Europe, world trade will grow by a meager 2.5 percent this year, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said on Friday. Reuters reports the WTO cut the 2012 estimate (originally set at 3.7 percent growth in April). “I see the risk […]