The US economy encouragingly created more jobs for the past two years and now is set for a slowdown, as economists predict. The prevailing credit conditions the US market indicate tightening of economy. The US private sector added 205,000 jobs in January as against 267,000 in December.
Industry
South32 Reduces Asset’s Book Value Of $1.7B, Cuts South African Manganese Production And Jobs
South32 is to reduce asset's book value of $1.7 billion, decrease expenses and trim production. The plan will include the cut of around 620 jobs and the reducing of Manganese production in South Africa.
Equipped With Daihatsu, Toyota President Eyes To Compete With Suzuki In The Indian Car Market
Toyota and Daihatsu have reached an agreement which is believed to be executed by August 2016. Under the agreement, Daihatsu will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota by way of share exchange. Through the Toyota shared key technologies, Daihatsu will produce price efficient mini cars for itself and Toyota. Toyota President is believed to look for opportunity to dominate Indian car market snatching from Suzuki.
UK house prices up 1.7% on lower interest rates
The UK house prices rose for the consecutive second month in January 2016. The UK property market demand is growing in the wake of lower interest rates and encouraging job growth rate. The average cost of a house in the UK was up 1.7 percent in January.
Wall Street monitors USD, while oil price drops
Investors are concerned as the US stock index futures turned weaker. The marginal recovery in oil price amid drop in the US dollar puts the Wall Street on cautious note. On the other hand, Asian and European stocks were trading marginally higher on oil price recovery and drop in US dollar.
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GoPro has represented fourth quarter financials on Wednesday. It has counted a loss of 8 cents per share in Q4 and yearly earning per share has been reduced to 76 cents a share. The yearly earning has been reduced by 42% from 99 cents per share, a year ago. Poor sales during the Q4 have been held responsible for the week financial figures. But the company itself has widened the loss margin through repurchasing own stocks. Not only that, it has allocated $264.4 million funds for further share repurchasing in 2016.
The rise of oil prices had brought positive growth to most of the Asian markets, except for Japan. On the other hand, European market had seen a drop. The oil prices increased overnight due to speculations that U.S Federal Reserve would possibly decide not to increase interest rates throughout 2016.
VirnetX has been in the limelight for its achievement in realizing $223 million from Microsoft in out of court settlements. Now the patent litigation company has won a court verdict that instructs Apple to pay $625.6 million for patent infringement issues. VirnetX has claimed for $532 million initially, but Apple’s deliberate infringement over the patented products has reportedly increased the amount.
Royal Dutch Shell said that its profit for the fourth quarter dropped 44% as the price of the crude oil tumble. The UK-based oil firm also confirmed that it is trimming 10,000 jobs, a move to reduce its costs.
The deal was a huge move forward for both Veolia and Kurion. Veoila is determined to expand its business to nuclear waste management and believes that Kurion is the perfect partner to achieve that goal. Kurion itself is a successful startup focusing in nuclear waste involved in the Fukushima nuclear incident clean-up in 2011.
Cisco announced its intention to purchase Jasper Technologies, a provider of cloud service for internet-powered devices, for $1.4 billion. The merger will enable Cisco to provide a full IoT solution which is inter-operable through devices and coordinates with application developers and IoT service providers.
Google, for the first time, has disclosed financials on earnings, expenditure, asset value and future business planning. From the financials, analysts have found lot of scopes for Google and its parent company, Alphabet to expand. Google’s ad earnings have been witnessed to rise significantly during the year 2015. Meanwhile, it has spent only $3.6 billion in its ambitious technology projects during the same period. The net earning of Alphabet has been reached to $4.9 billion. Adding this earning to the net asset value, Alphabet has been recognized as the worlds most worthy enterprise.
Takata Corp, a manufacturer of airbags used in vehicles for consumer safety, will announce its restructuring plan to automakers in May. The restructuring plan is expected to include the sharing of recall costs. The defective airbags are forcing automobile majors to recall millions of cars.
According to PwC and NVCA report, Charlottesville has been the fastest growing startup since 2010. Between 2010-2015, venture-backed startups increased 55% annually in the place where Thomas Jefferson's house is located.
