Engineering Services company LogiCamms Limited announced to ASX that it is no longer anticipating growth in the second half of the 2011 financial year and is now expecting a Net Profit After Tax result for FY11 of $4.2 million, implying a break even result for the second half of FY11.
The company said the revision to the estimated financial performance for the second half of FY11 was driven by lower work volumes at the company’s Northern operation and recognition of additional project costs and unexpected revenue delays on two fixed price contracts.
“The break-even NPAT expected for the second half of FY11 is the product of a small number of discrete, but material issues including factors outside our control,” Managing director Adam Keats said. Get full info…
19 Apr
Posted by: Max Wiedermann in: Business Tips
Coming soon to McDonald’s: frozen strawberry lemonade, a new smoothie and higher prices.
In reporting that its first-quarter profit rose 11 percent, the Oak Brook-based hamburger chain revealed it expects to further raise prices this year, on top of a 1 percent March increase, the first such boost since late 2009.
Although the timing and amount of the increases were not specified, McDonald’s Corp. Chief Financial Officer Pete Bensen said the chain will make a conscious effort to lag competitors’ price increases and with an eye on price hikes at the grocery store.
19 Apr
Posted by: Amy Fantin in: Business Casual
Britain’s banks continue to rely on the taxpayer for £512bn of support, according to the public accounts committee as it calls for the industry’s reliance on the state to end.
Margaret Hodge, MP, chairman of the public accounts committee, said: “Contracts entered into when state support was put in place have allowed some of these gains to be used to pay bonuses to certain bank staff and dividends to shareholders, rather than enhancing the financial sustainability of the sector, and this causes us and the wider public much concern.
“This committee feels that it is inappropriate for banks dependent on taxpayer support to be generating excessive incomes, unnecessary bonuses or dividends at the expense of exiting public support.”
The committee’s report said: “The Treasury must explore all avenues to ensure that the remuneration packages for the part-nationalised banks provide value for money for the taxpayer, and properly reflect the burden on the taxpayer for continuing support.”
However, the committee also believes the government should take account of the £5bn of interest it pays on the £124bn of debt it incurred as a result of bailing out the banks when assessing the return to the taxpayer.
It also notes that the sell-off of the stakes will require “extraordinarily careful handling”.
“When developing its strategy for the sale, the Treasury will need to balance the legitimate desire to maximise proceeds against its other objectives of preserving financial stability and enhancing competition,” it said.
Noting the importance of the independent commission on banking, chaired by Sir John Vickers, the committee suggests the government produces options for the shape of the banking sector and quantifies the value it places on its objectives.
“Considerable regulatory and political uncertainty over the government’s intentions of the banking sector will remain until the government has responded to the recommendations from the independent commission of banking, expected to report in September 2011,” the committee said.
Taxpayer support had fallen from £1 trillion to £512bn by December 2010. The
Shannon Bailey and her son Grady, 15, from Birmingham, Ala., pick out clothes at Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Ala.
AP Photos In this March 17 photo, multiple Ipods left behind on flights are available for purchase at Unclaimed Baggage in Scottsboro, Ala. Along a country road next to a muffler shop and a cemetery is a 40,000-square-foot store filled with all the items that never made it home from vacation. Shoes, samurai swords, iPods, even lingerie, all available for 20 to 80 percent off.
AP Airlines Writer
SCOTTSBORO, Ala.
16 Apr
Posted by: Amy Fantin in: Business Casual
A congressional panel blamed lax lenders who are too cosy with regulators, credit rating agencies and devious behaviour by investment banks in a report on the causes of the financial crisis released on Wednesday.
The 635-page bipartisan report from the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations made the following 19 recommendations to avoid a repeat of the events that dragged the economy into recession from 2007 to 2008.
• Ensure “qualified mortgages” are low risk. Federal regulators should use their authority to ensure all mortgages deemed to be qualified residential mortgages have a low risk of delinquency or default.
• Require meaningful risk retention.
16 Apr
Posted by: Claudia Anthony in: Business Online
The Millisor + Nobil law firm in Cleveland is independent no more.
Fisher & Phillips LLP, a national labor and employment law firm out of Atlanta, has absorbed Millisor + Nobil. Nineteen attorneys from Millisor + Nobil, which also specializes in labor law, joined Fisher & Phillips effective April 16. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Steven Nobil, managing partner of Millisor + Nobil’s Cleveland office, said his firm has discussed transactions like this with most of the national labor and employment boutiques, but have always chosen to remain independent. In Fisher & Phillips, however, we found a firm much like ourselves with the additional benefit of a national scope.Mr.
Cautious optimism was the theme among job seekers at a Davie job fair on Thursday, a day before an announcement that Florida’s unemployment rate had dropped from 11.5 percent to 11.1 percent, the lowest rate since November 2009.
Many have spent months to years looking for a job in a market where the unemployed greatly outnumber job opportunities. Here are a few of their stories.
John Sims, 52, Cooper City: “You have to take what’s available and make the best of it,” said Sims, a job seeker who also happens to be a city commissioner in Cooper City.
To most small-business owners, the terms video clip and impact are more likely to suggest the latest Jackass-style stunt immortalized on YouTube than something important to their bottom lines. But a few new online services are trying to get companies to embrace video in ways that could have a big payoff for very little effort.
One company that’s been experimenting with one of the services is ClassOne Equipment, which sells refurbished ultrahigh-tech semiconductor manufacturing equipment. With smartphone sales going great guns even through the recession, large pockets of the semiconductor industry have been booming, helping ClassOne double its revenue last year. O