Business News & Financial News

In its hunt for tax evaders, the U.S. Department of Justice is now turning also to Israeli banks, with branches in Switzerland are suspected of helping U.S. citizens evade taxes in their country, we learn from sources close to the file.

The banks involved are Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi le-Israel BM and Mizrahi-Tefahot.

This extension of investigations to Israeli settlements mark an intensification of the fight against tax evasion, which opened in 2007 against UBS and Credit Suisse recently against continued.

However, Israel is a state close to the United States with whom he maintains close diplomatic and military support from more than $ 3.1 billion per year.

Aviram Cohen, spokesman for Bank Leumi in Tel Aviv, said Thursday that "the application related only to statistical data. It appears that these data will be used to an agreement between the Swiss and American. Obviously, the Bank Leumi Switzerland is cooperating fully with authorities in accordance with the law. "

According to the Swiss press, U.S. officials now have statistics of ten Swiss banks suspected of justice by helping their clients based in the United States to evade taxes.

The Deputy Minister of Justice James Cole sent a letter on August 31 asking for statistical information to Swiss banks in September and three Israelis.It gives them until Sept. 23 to provide details of their customers.

UBS has already passed under the yoke of American justice, having delivered nearly 4,500 American identities of customers in addition to the payment of $ 780 million to avoid a trial that had threatened its existence.

Michelin said Wednesday its objectives in 2011, the current uncertainties surrounding the economic time to have any impact on demand, said Michel Rollier, Managing Director of the tire manufacturer, the motor show in Frankfurt.

He also assured that the group's ability to pass through price increases and cost increases of raw materials, natural rubber head was intact.

Michel Rollier noted as such the increase of 4% to 6.5% in Canada on Tuesday announced the prices of passenger and light truck tires.

"Today, our sensors show that sales are conducted properly in accordance with our expectations, sales of winter tires are good," he said during a press lunch."We do not currently an indicator of deterioration."

"We know there are a number of macroeconomic threats, Greece first," he said. "In this case we know that it will be brutal but we will react very quickly."

Michelin intends to build on the experience gained during the 2009 crisis, including the use of a very regular control of the activity of all plants.

Michel Rollier confirmed the target of an increase around 8% of sales volume and operating income growth from one year to another.

The unemployment rate in France within the meaning of the International Labour Office (ILO) decreased slightly by 0.1 points in the second quarter to 9.1% on average in metropolitan (9.6% including the overseas departments -mer), according to data seasonally adjusted (SA) Interim released Thursday by INSEE.

The number of unemployed stood at 2.580 million in city, or 37,000 fewer than in the first quarter.

The unemployment rate in the first three months of the year have been confirmed at 9.2% of the workforce in metropolitan and 9.7% with Dom.

In one year, the unemployment rate in France fell by 0.2 points in the second quarter.

The unemployment rate for 15-24 year olds has fallen more sharply in the second quarter than the general population: 21.9% on the mainland, it folds down 0.9 points from January to March and a point in one year.

INSEE no longer publishes monthly unemployment rate since 2006, after a controversy over its methodology.

Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, continues to do so, however, and announced Wednesday a rate of 9.9% for France (Dom included) in July, a level below a tenth of a point the average for the euro area.

The President of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet reiterated over the weekend of the ECB's commitment to price stability, which it considers "essential" to promote growth.

These words, delivered Saturday at the annual meetings of Jackson Hole (Wyoming), have followed a remarkable response from the Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde, who has warned against the risk of the global economy plunging into recession and called for a rapid and coordinated political action, particularly through a recapitalization of banks.

"We believe that the very solid anchoring of inflation expectations is our one of our major assets," said Jean Claude Trichet, who did not mention in his address the crisis of sovereign debt in the euro zone or prospects for the policy of the ECB.

"This is something we consider absolutely essential to trust," he added, saying that confidence was useful in a difficult environment to help maintain growth.

The European Central Bank will adjust its monetary policy unconventional specific problems it faces, said the head of the institution in Frankfurt.

"The use of unconventional measures depends on the operation of the transmission of monetary policy and must be proportionate to the level of malfunction or interruption of money and capital markets or market segments," he said.

Jean-Claude Trichet echoed the comments of Christine Lagarde, that the upheavals of the political process in Europe increases the uncertainty.

"Paradoxically, we – as a group, as a whole – are not necessarily being in trouble because our fundamentals are very bad. Our fundamentals are very bad.The problem is that we have created difficulties in our governance, "he said.

"SLOWDOWN DOES NOT MEAN RECESSION"

Austria's Ewald Nowotny, a member of the Governing Council of the ECB and also present in Jackson Hole, said in turn that there was no reason to believe that inflation expectations had increased.

"What we see is that inflation expectations are stable," he told news agency Bloomberg.

"At the moment, when I look at oil prices and demand, I see no specific problem that could contribute to an increase in inflation expectations."

These comments suggest that the ECB has a mandate to keep inflation just below 2%, could keep its rates unchanged after two successive increases this year.

To the Governor of the Austrian National Bank, "the prospect of growth is intact" in the euro area and provide a solid foundation for next year.

"Even if there is a slowdown, it does not mean that there is recession," he said to Bloomberg, saying not to believe that the interbank lending market was moving towards paralysis, as in 2008 after Lehman Brothers.

"We should not overstate the situation (…) We are far from a situation like after Lehman.It's something to watch, but not an immediate challenge. "

Earlier this month, Ewald Nowotny was found that the surge in bank deposits with the European Central Bank was worrying, but warned that the economic situation in the euro area had not changed overnight.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange ended sharply lower Friday, with a decline of 2.51%, instead accusing a Japanese third session down due to renewed fears of a return to recession have pushed Wall Street and stock markets Europe the day before.

The Nikkei lost 224.52 points to 8,719.24 and the Topix, broader, sold 15.62 points (-2.04%) to 751.69.

Financial analysts believe it is unlikely for there to be a real rebound in shares before Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, is expressed on Friday at a conference in Wyoming.

"The measures to be taken by the Japanese government are limited and the current market weakness is mainly due to concerns about overseas markets," said Takahide Kiuchi, chief economist at Nomura Securities.

"Investors will mainly focus on whether the Fed will suggest that it could take further monetary easing."

The decline occurred on Friday in a trade volume rather low, below the average of the past week.

Car manufacturers, a strong presence in the United States, fell sharply due to concerns about the sharp slowdown in the activity of the world's largest economy, losing 1.39% Toyota, Honda and Nissan 3.34% 4.39% .

Bristol-Myers Squibb said Thursday sales exceeded expectations in the second quarter, but the tax increase left the benefit simply in line with forecasts.

The pharmaceutical group raised its profit forecast Thursday for all of 2011 and reaffirmed its forecast for 2013 suggests that the relatively stable for that exercise.

That year, his star anticoagulant, Plavix, will face for the first time in a year to U.S. generic competition.

In exchange, the action is gaining 2.3% to 29.28 dollars in a market up slightly.

Bristol-Myers reported a profit of $ 1.31 billion, or 52 cents per share in the second quarter, up from $ 1.27 billion, or 53 cents a year earlier.

Excluding special items, EPS amounted to 56 cents, one cent more than was expected on average by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I / B / E / S.

The effective tax rate of the U.S. group rose to 27% in the quarter, against 20.4% a year earlier.

Revenues increased 14% to 5.43 billion, while Wall Street was counting on 5.04 billion dollars.

The group was helped by the weak dollar, strong demand for products including Abilify and Plavix and the launch of its treatment of melanoma Yervoy that appears promising.

Sales of Plavix, marketed in partnership with the French Sanofi rose 15% to $ 1.87 billion. Sales are expected to fall sharply in May when the first generic will appear.

The major French banks, BNP Paribas, BPCE (People's Bank, Savings Bank), Credit Agricole and Societe Generale have passed the stress test bank, said Friday the Bank of France.

The central bank said in a statement that the four banks show a capital adequacy ratio "core tier one" aggregated from 7.5% to end 2012 in the worst economic scenario selected by the EBA (EBA) which stress tests conducted on 91 locations across Europe.

ABE required a minimum threshold of 5% at end 2012.

"Their level of capital is appropriate since in the end allow them to finance the economy even in the most degraded scenario," said Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France.

In detail, Societe Generale shows the lowest ratio of four French banks with 6.6%, while the Crédit Agricole group shows the highest ratio at 8.5%.

U.S. stocks ended down Tuesday for the third session in a row, after a day of ups and downs, investors remain worried about the situation in Europe.

The Dow Jones has given 0.47% or 58.88 points at 12,446.88 points, while the Standard & Poor's 500 gave up 0.44% or 5.85 points to 1313.64 points and the Nasdaq composite fell by 0.74% or 20.71 points to 2781.91 points.

The downgrade of Ireland by Moody's late in the session completed to convince investors to remain cautious.

Markets have a time pretended to be gaining ground after the minutes of the last monetary policy meeting of the Fed, some officials of the central bank has raised the possibility of new measures to support growth.

"The Fed gave us a little pep, but the problems of Europe prevails at present", says Steven Roge, Roge & Co manager in Massachusetts.

On the Nasdaq, the technology has been particularly affected by the new home from Novellus Systems. The company, which manufactures equipment for the production of semiconductors, said he expected that orders continue to decline. Novellus fell 11.2% to $ 31.75.The semiconductor index dropped 2.9%.

Four months to the day after the accident at the nuclear plant, the lives of Japanese is upset. And not just in Fukushima. L'Expansion. Com is the point. Japan Earthquake, Natori City. Homes swept away by the tsunami. March 11, 2011. 23,000 dead or missing because of the earthquake

This is the painful record of the tsunami that struck Japan on March 11. In total 23,000 people are dead or missing after the magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami giant.

At least 150 billion euros of damage

In late June, the Japanese government amounted to almost 150 billion damage caused by the disaster, the equivalent of 3.5% of Japanese GDP, which would make it the costliest natural disaster in history.A total that does not include indirect economic consequences of the tsunami, such as electricity shortages and disruptions to business activity such as automobiles, or the fallout from the nuclear accident. Mid-March, the Bank of Japan injected 309 billion euros into the economy. To finance the reconstruction, the government has passed a supplementary budget of 51 billion euros that could still add 34 billion more.

20 mSv / h, the new standard allowed

Difficult to get an idea of ​​the level of radioactivity in Japan. Some large cities like Tokyo levels appear to fully comply with international standard (0.1 microsieverts per hour). But recently, the Japanese authorities decided to raise the threshold of 1 mSv / year to 20 mSv / year (standard usually allowed for nuclear workers).A decision deemed incomprehensible by public opinion, especially in Fukushima where children are likely more contamination. Recently one of the four measurements made in this city of nearly 300,000 inhabitants reported a rate of 46,540 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram, while the statutory maximum rate is 10,000 becquerels Japan. Result, the inhabitants of the city, aided by numerous community associations, are increasingly likely to ask to be evacuated, but authorities refuse to do so persistently. Saturday, high levels of cesium – more than six times the permitted levels of radioactivity – have been found in beef from the prefecture of Fukushima.

100,000 tons of contaminated water to the central Fukushima

TEPCO engineers, the operator of the plant, are still hard at work to regain control of the six reactors on the site.Almost 100 000 tons of contaminated water are indeed still trapped in buildings. To cool the reactors – until the cooling system announced for January 2012 – the Japanese are forced to pay 500 tonnes of water each day to prevent nuclear fuel to heat. Unfortunately, some of that water accumulates in plants, which could cause an overflow if the pumping system is not recovering the way very quickly. To believe the authorities, cleaning and decommissioning of the "take three, five, ten years or even decades to manage the accident," said this weekend the Prime Minister of Japan, Naoto Kan. Scary … Despite this the Japanese government reiterated on Monday that he was out of question to challenge the nuclear industry.

– 15% of electricity consumption in Tokyo

Since the accident, 35 of the 54 reactors installed in Japan have not been restarted. 19 are currently active, the others being stopped is a direct result of an earthquake, or for maintenance. The lack of electricity begins to be felt by residents worried about not being able to cope with very hot humid summer coming. Injunction on government, businesses and administrations of the Capital Region must reduce 15% electricity consumption from July 1 to avoid power cuts.

11 billion in losses for Tepco

The operator of the plant in late March issued a loss of nearly 11 billion euros in fiscal year 2010-2011, the heaviest ever experienced by a Japanese company outside the financial sector.Involved, the massive depreciation of assets and the cost of emergency operations resulting from the disaster. The group will also have to compensate 160,000 victims for a total of about 8.5 billion euros. To avoid bankruptcy in the Japanese utility, the government has provided a mechanism for public funding of compensation in case Tepco could cope, but the bill is stuck in parliament.

Airbus expects orders on Wednesday for its A380 superjumbo, which damaged the copy will fly Sunday at Paris Air Show, said Louis Welsh, CEO of EADS, on RTL.

"The A380 will fly today and we should now have additional controls," he said.

Hong Kong Airlines said June 14 that it planned to order at Le Bourget for several A380.

Louis Welsh was also estimated on RTL that orders for Airbus at Le Bourget should "significantly" exceed the number of devices reached 263 to date.

The Paris Air Show opened Monday and ends Sunday after three days open to the public.

"The Civil Aviation is well. The market is gone. (…) The crisis is over for the sector of civil aviation business.For helicopters, this is expected for the next semester, "said Louis Welsh.