Monday Business Edition

“The world has fundamentally changed,” said Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum which organises the annual meeting at the Alpine resort.

“One of the most important factors of the new reality is the shift of geopolitical and geoeconomic power from north to south, from west to east.

But analysts warn that after a year that saw the recall of millions of vehicles, a wave of lawsuits and record fines, the company is likely to soon surrender that lead as it battles to regain consumer trust overseas.

In 2008 Toyota ended General Motors’ 77-year reign as the world’s largest automaker but the road has been a bumpy one for the Japanese giant, facing the impact of the economic crisis, recalls and recently a strong yen.

In a speech marking the opening of a 150-day parliament session, Kan said his government was working towards drafting a basic proposal by the end of June on overhauling the nation’s tax and social security systems.

Kan faces what analysts say is a make or break battle over the issue, which has proved divisive with voters.

More than one fifth of the world’s undiscovered but technically recoverable reserves of hydrocarbons are located north of the Arctic Circle, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS).

The region accounts for about 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas, USGS data shows. About 84 percent of the resources occur offshore, trapped below the icy waters.

A revamped Federal Open Market Committee — the Fed’s interest rate setting panel — gather Tuesday and Wednesday, when members are expected to continue to unfurl a $600 billion stimulus designed to jolt the US economy out of its inertia.

Despite signs that the recovery is picking up, the Fed is expected to keep its foot on the accelerator, continuing emergency bonds purchases that prime the economy and keeping interest rates at ultra-low levels.

Rosneft gained its status as Russia’s largest oil firm by acquiring prize Yukos assets when the firm was broken up by the Russian state after the arrest of its chief executive and founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003.

As Rosneft feted taking a major step towards realising its dream of becoming a global oil giant, Khodorkovsky is languishing in prison and faces staying there until 2017 after receiving a new jail term less than a month ago.

For the past decade, the Pentagon has struggled to launch a new fleet of refueling aircraft to replace the old KC-135 workhorses that date back to the 1950s, but the effort has been marred by scandal and bitter feuds.

Two previous attempts to move ahead with a new tanker were canceled, first with Boeing and then with EADS and its US partner Northrop Grumman.

“I know we can out-compete any other nation on Earth,” Obama said in his weekly radio address.

“We just have to make sure we?re doing everything we can to unlock the productivity of American workers, unleash the ingenuity of American businesses, and harness the dynamism of America?s economy,” he added.

While more profitable than ever — with nearly $30 billion in revenue last year — Google is under pressure from new rivals such as Facebook and Twitter for the attention of Web surfers, advertising dollars and engineering talent.

In naming co-founder Larry Page, 37, to be chief executive, analysts said Google is seeking to return to its startup roots and ensure its place amid a constantly evolving Internet landscape.

Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said Friday that the government was preparing a plan designed “to increase the solvency and the credibility of the savings banks.”

The plan was being drawn up in conjunction with the Bank of Spain and the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks (CECA), said Rubalcaba, who is also interior minister.

Quarterly earnings season got under way this past week with most banks serving Wall Street and Main Street showing better health, but with legislation and a new financial reality weighing on a few.

“The banks are getting healthier but are having trouble increasing revenue,” said Gregori Volokhine, at Meeschaert Capital Markets, pointing to the end of some profitable business that sustained banks during the boom years.

“We are reflecting, throwing about ideas,” a European Union diplomatic source told AFP, adding that eurozone finance ministers could hold a telephone conference next week to take stock of work by experts ahead of a March EU summit deadline.

The examination goes far deeper than eventual enlargement of the 440-billion-euro European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF), part of a 750-billion-euro (trillion-dollar) safety net put together by the eurozone, the EU and the International Monetary Fund.

As private enterprise bubbles up in Cuba after decades of official disfavor, Cubans have a million questions about how far they can go under the economic reforms being pushed by President Raul Castro, the first such overhaul in 14 years.

“There is bewilderment — a lot of people have the desire to act and not much knowledge of the new laws, because there were a lot of restrictions before,” said Lazaro Mendez, who has been in business for himself for 26 years.

A correction was widely expected on the DSE, which is up 400 percent since the start of 2007, but the speed at which it has happened and the sudden slide has alarmed experts and prompted investors to cry foul.

“Untimely policy measures and interventions by regulators are to blame for this crisis,” Salauddin Ahmed Khan, professor of finance at Dhaka University and former chief executive of the DSE, told AFP.

Shares in India, one of 2010’s hottest markets, have fallen to three-month lows due to expectations of interest rate rises, which will dampen economic growth currently running at 8.5-9.0 percent in Asia’s third-biggest economy.

Annual inflation zoomed in December to 8.43 percent, up by nearly a percentage point from the previous month, led by a spike in the cost of food, petrol prices and commodities.

Suu Kyi’s release in November following Myanmar’s first election in 20 years has reignited debate over the effectiveness of the punitive measures, enforced by the United States and the European Union in response to the junta’s human rights abuses.

“There’s a lot of internal debate going on among policymakers and a previously established and longstanding consensus is increasingly seeming brittle,” a Bangkok-based Western diplomat said.

As President Hu Jintao wound up a state visit to the United States, Chinese officials appeared to try to shift the focus away from US allegations of currency manipulation and instead stressed business promotion.

“Our two countries need to sit down and work it out so there won’t be such a huge trade deficit and trade surplus,” Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming told a business conference in Chicago.

The full board of Riversdale, coveted for its coal projects in Mozambique, recommended the bid saying it was unaware of any other offers in the works, even as an Indian consortium said it planned to decide on January 27 whether to bid.

Riversdale Managing Director Steve Mallyon said his company “had not had one call” from the consortium, called ICVL and made up of an Indian steel maker, iron ore miner and a utility, which may be interested in the coal for its own use.

The decision means that one-time Bear Stearns investors can move ahead with a proposed securities class-action fraud case, though the judge threw out two related lawsuits that had been rolled into the litigation. The investors accuse former Bear chiefs of painting a wildly misleading picture of the firm’s finances ahead of its March 2008 unraveling.

The written ruling was made public late on Friday.

The unemployment rate is finally edging lower and figures due on Friday are expected to show economic growth strengthened over the final three months of 2010. But the Fed may provide only a slightly more upbeat economic assessment at its next policy-setting meeting, which wraps up on Wednesday.

The central bank’s word choices are always parsed and scrutinized. This week’s statement will be particularly tricky because the Fed will need to acknowledge the improving economic data without sending a false signal that its $600 billion bond-buying program could end early.

This earnings season, if you’re good, you’re just OK. If you’re just OK, you’re bad. And if you’re bad, you’re quickly taken outside and put out of your misery. Only the truly great are lauded — and even then not very much.

In an environment like that, and with a heavily extended market, disappointments are taken hard. The S&P 500 just ended its first down week in eight with underwhelming results from the likes of Goldman Sachs (GS.N) and Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold (FCX.N) weighing on indexes.

The 38-year-old co-founder of the world’s No. 1 Internet search company will replace Eric Schmidt as chief executive officer in April, at a time when Google Inc is facing tough competition from Facebook and Twitter.

It seems straight out of a well-worn Silicon Valley script — but with which ending?

The recommendations, laid out by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a study reviewed by Reuters late on Friday, would drastically alter the landscape for broker-dealers who under current laws are only required to recommend products that are “suitable” to mom-and-pop investors.

It could also potentially mean changes for investment advisers if the SEC opts to replace their fiduciary standard with a new one, although the study says it would be “no less stringent” than what they face today.

With the U.S. unemployment rate stuck at a stubbornly high 9.4 percent, Obama said expanded trade was crucial to job creation.

“If we’re serious about fighting for American jobs and American businesses, one of the most important things we can do is open up more markets to American goods around the world,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Britain set up the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) last year to examine a possible shake-up of the sector following the crisis, which saw top banks such as Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds needing bailouts.

Sir John Vickers, who heads up the ICB, said that while the ICB was still examining ways to separate the different activities of the country’s top banks, it was unlikely to support “narrow” bank models over diversified, bigger groups.

Raising debt at different rates would mean the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) would not have to lift the agreed headline sum, a step that has come up against ardent opposition from euro zone member states, especially Germany.

“One could for instance work with different interest rates within the EFSF,” Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle was quoted as saying in an interview with Die Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

The pace of bank failures is expected to decrease in 2011 as the economy recovers and the impact of the 2007-2009 financial crisis fades. In 2010, 157 banks failed, following 140 failures in 2009.

FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair has said the agency expects the number of failures to drop in 2011.

Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch businesses — including retail brokerage and investment banking — were profitable but did not make enough money to overcome the bank’s massive losses from mortgages.

As the financial crisis was ramping up, then Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis bought Countrywide Financial Inc for $4.2 billion. Current CEO Brian Moynihan is still coping with the aftermath.

Warner Music has hired Goldman Sachs as an adviser to explore a sale, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. [ID:nN20176555] On Friday, Warner Music shares rose $1.29, or 27.3 percent, to close at $6.01 on the New York Stock Exchange.

But analysts and music executives told Reuters any serious buyers would wait to see what happens to beleaguered EMI — owned by private equity firm Terra Firma and facing a debt deadline with Citigroup — before considering Warner Music assets.

Pandit pledged in 2009 to receive an annual salary of $1 until the struggling Citigroup returned to sustained profitability.

On Friday afternoon, three days after the bank reported its first full year-profit since 2007, the board raised his salary to an annual base of $1.75 million.

U.S. President Barack Obama tapped GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt on Friday to head a new economic advisory panel in a strong sign of how investor and public opinion has changed about a company that became one of the dogs of Wall Street during the recession.

Shares of the world’s largest maker of jet engines and electric turbines rose 7 percent on Friday, hitting their highest level since the thick of the financial crisis in November 2008, and making GE the biggest lift to the blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average.

Stocks traded in narrow ranges ahead of another batch of earnings, mainly out of the U.S., and amid expectations that China will soon be tightening monetary policy to put a lid on rising inflationary pressures.

The most noteworthy market developments, though, centered on the euro currency, which earlier spiked to $1.3646, its highest level since Nov. 22. That proved to be a cue for investors to book some recent gains – just two weeks ago the euro was trading at a four month low of $1.2875.

GM also released a new tally Monday for its global 2010 sales, at 8.39 million vehicles, slightly fewer than Toyota’s number, but a dramatic 12 percent rebound from 7.48 million vehicles the year before.

The race between the two giants appears to be getting close, with the chance the tables could be turned, seeing GM once again rising to the top.

Forced to eat more meals at home when money was tight, people learned new habits. Some discovered they enjoy cooking and dining in. As the economy improves and families have more spending money, they’re still saving restaurants for special occasions.

Restaurants traditionally have led other types of businesses out of a recession. This time, they’re at least a year and a half behind retailers. Sales of clothing grew 5 percent last year and autos rose 11 percent, as Americans started feeling better about their finances. At casual sit-down restaurants like Outback Steakhouse, the increase was just 1 percent. Some analysts say that could be the new norm.

The statement from Alassane Ouattara’s camp comes at the height of the cocoa export season, though it is unclear whether the ban will be heeded by cocoa growers. Despite Ouattara’s global support, it is also uncertain how much authority he wields over the industry amid a power struggle with his rival.

“The government informs all the economic operators of the immediate halt to all coffee and cocoa exports,” the statement said late Sunday, adding that anyone who didn’t follow the order would be “subject to national and international sanctions.”

Ho transferred most of his nearly 32 percent stake in the parent company, which owns just over half of the Macau casino operator, also known as SJM, according to a filing Monday to the Hong Kong stock exchange. He is now left with only 100 shares.

Half of the stake was transferred to a company owned by Ho’s third wife and the rest was transferred to another company owned by Ho’s five children from his second wife, according to a statement from the public relations company representing the two holding companies. The stake is worth about 13.4 billion Hong Kong dollars ($1.7 billion), based on SJM’s closing share price Monday.

Li-Ning is among the first Chinese consumer product brands trying to build a following in the U.S., seeking to grab a slice of its saturated but highly coveted market. As China’s economic might increases – it last year overtook Japan as the second-biggest economy after the U.S. – its companies are increasingly confident about expansion overseas. But corporate China has yet to produce a brand with the global name recognition of the likes of Apple, Sony or Google.

“It’s a process of finding out – while staying true to our heritage, our brand – what side of our DNA is going to resonate with the American consumer,” said Jay Li, general manager for Li-Ning International. “We’re still searching, to be perfectly honest with you. And we’re not in a hurry.”

That demand is creating hard choices for the newest members of Congress, especially Republicans who owe their elections and solid House majority to the influential grass-roots movement. Cutting defense and canceling weapons could mean deep spending reductions and high marks from tea partiers as the nation wrestles with a $1.3 trillion deficit. Yet it also could jeopardize thousands of jobs when unemployment is running high.

Proponents of the cuts could face criticism that they’re trying to weaken national security in a post-Sept. 11 world.

The dispute involves whether a Walmart should be built near the Civil War site, and the case pits preservationists and some residents of a rural northern Virginia town against the world’s largest retailer and local officials who approved the Walmart Supercenter.

Both sides are scheduled to make arguments before a judge Tuesday.

It was time not just to stabilize the shaken economy, he declared, but to reach for lasting prosperity.

His goals were expansive: overhauling health care, cutting the deficit, improving schools, finding a way out of Iraq and a way ahead in Afghanistan. Most of all, creating jobs. Jobs by the millions.

Beginning Jan. 1, the state began phasing out certain energy-sucking bulbs, federal standards the rest of the country will enact next year.

Manufacturers will no longer make the traditional 100-watt bulb and stores will eventually sell out of current supplies. Consumers will have to choose from more efficient bulbs that use no more than 72 watts, including halogen incandescents, compact fluorescents and light-emitting diode, or LED, bulbs.

Anibal Cavaco Silva, who is supported by the main opposition Social Democratic Party, collected 53 percent of the vote compared with 20 percent for second-placed Socialist Party candidate Manuel Alegre, official figures showed with 98 percent of districts returning. Four other candidates picked up the remaining votes.

The government has enacted deeply unpopular austerity measures amid fears that the financial crisis spells economic disaster for Portugal.

Even as it struggles to contain damage caused by WikiLeaks’ release of classified internal documents, the department is reaching out across the Internet. It’s bypassing traditional news outlets to connect directly and in real time with overseas audiences in the throes of unrest and upheaval.

American diplomacy isn’t a newcomer to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr or Twitter, but it has stepped up online efforts as those networks play a growing role in events around the world.

Brian Cowen is widely blamed for Ireland’s stunning slide to the brink of bankruptcy. His Fianna Fail party, which has won the most seats in parliament in every election since 1932, is expected this time to suffer a crushing defeat.

The Greens hold just six seats, but losing them cost the ruling coalition its parliamentary majority. Their withdrawal means Cowen will be forced to dissolve parliament and call an election within days, nullifying the March 11 election date Cowen had announced last week. Analysts said a new election date, most likely in the second half of February, would be pinpointed this week.

Here’s a look at what the consequences of the cables’ release has been so far, and what the future could hold for WikiLeaks.

Olbermann’s announcement at the end of Friday’s “Countdown” that it would be his last show quiets, at least for the moment, the most dominant liberal voice in a cable-television world where opinionated talk has been the most bankable trend over the past several years.

As Olbermann read from a James Thurber short story during a three-minute exit statement Friday night, MSNBC simultaneously e-mailed a statement to reporters that the network and host “have ended their contract.” Neither indicated a reason nor addressed whether Olbermann quit or was fired.

Republican state legislators and governors are working on how to deliver coverage to more than 30 million people now uninsured, as the law calls for, even as GOP attorneys general lead the legal battle to overturn the law’s mandate that most Americans have health insurance.

The result? Perhaps the first practical opportunity for the two political parties to work together on an issue that divide them in Washington.

These assembly-for-export plants that crank out everything from brake pads to plasma TVs for U.S. companies are opening new facilities, expanding existing ones and hiring more employees. Some firms looking for lower costs have even begun shifting production from China back to Juarez.

The recovery of the about 350 maquiladoras is the single bright spot in a city where drug violence has killed 7,000 people in three years. The maquiladoras may also be a sign that the economy in the region is finally turning the corner, after gross domestic product for Mexico shrank by almost 7 percent in 2009, the worst contraction in decades.

The U.S. Agency for International Development made the change despite criticism over how it has managed billions of dollars spent on reconstruction contracts.

In January 2010, the agency said companies would compete for the project, which was awarded to Black & Veatch Corp. of Overland Park, Kan. USAID had chastised the company for cost overruns and busted deadlines on a diesel-fueled power plant in Kabul.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over the banks, the largest by far being United Western Bank, based in Denver, with $2.05 billion in assets.

First-Citizens Bank & Trust Co., based in Raleigh, N.C., agreed to acquire the assets and deposits of United Western Bank. In addition, the FDIC and First-Citizens Bank & Trust agreed to share losses on $1.1 billion of United Western Bank’s loans and other assets.

Facebook boasts 500 million members who share 30 billion links, notes and photos each month – data that Google’s search engine can’t completely index. It’s so influential that 26-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg was just named Time’s person of the year, and a movie about the company’s early days is a contender for best picture at the Oscars.

Twitter, Groupon and Foursquare, all hard-charging and potentially game-changing services, are additional thorns in Google’s side, raising worries that the online search leader may be losing the competitive edge that turned it into the Internet’s most powerful company.

Marking the halfway point in his four-year term, the president used a visit to Schenectady, birthplace of the General Electric Co., to declare that his job is “putting our economy into overdrive” and to announce a restructured presidential advisory board stressing increased employment and greater business opportunities abroad.

“America’s home to inventors and dreamers and builders and creators,” Obama told workers at G.E.’s 23-acre turbine and generator plant. “You guys are a model of what’s possible.”

More than 50 fishing and seafood organizations from 24 states have signed on to the National Seafood Marketing Coalition, a group that’s working on a national plan to better market American seafood and is hoping for help from the federal government. Organizers say promotion, new product development, education and other marketing means will strengthen the U.S. seafood economy and generate jobs.

“Our experience is that a little bit of marketing goes a long way,” said Dane Somers, executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council who has been active with the national group. “Since nobody’s doing much, when you do a little bit it’s noticeable.”

Northeast Utilities’ proposed purchase of Nstar would give the company 3.5 million electric and gas customers in three states. The Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities is permitting more than a dozen power companies and consumer, labor and environmental groups to intervene in the review.

Northeast Utilities plans to buy Nstar in an all-stock deal for $4.36 billion based on the most recent price of NSTAR shares.

Investors announced Friday they have filed resolutions with nine oil and gas companies that use hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to extract gas from shale formations thousands of feet underground. Critics contend that fracking has the potential to pollute groundwater. The industry says it is safe.

The proposals ask drillers to explain how they plan to manage the potential environmental consequences of fracking, and to go “above and beyond” existing regulatory standards. The resolutions also demand a reduction in the volume and toxicity of chemicals used in fracking; improvements in well construction; and increased recycling of toxic wastewater.

Mohamed Ghannouchi said in an interview on Tunisian television Friday he will leave power after a transition phase leading to legislative and presidential elections “in the shortest possible timeframe.”

Protesters have been demanding for days the departure of all remnants of the old guard under ousted President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Ghannouchi was an ally of Ben Ali and has been struggling to restore calm under a new multiparty government.