Busted…
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The fun is over for a group of foreign exchange traders who brazenly dubbed themselves “The Cartel” and went about manipulating the price euros and dollars to score some extra cash. Now, because of them, five major banks have to shell out over $5 billion in settlement fees. Citicorp, J.P. Morgan Chase, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland all admitted their fiscal misdeeds that began in December of 2007. UBS pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and has to pay over half a billion dollars in fines. But the Swiss bank dodged some other penalties and gained conditional immunity for being the first to report on the criminal activities taking place. These forex traders would share confidential information about their clients’ orders and then plan out trades that would conveniently boost their own profits. Entrance into the group was by invitation only and one participant said at one point, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” Charming, huh? The resourceful plan proved quite profitable until January 2013 when investigators finally honed in on what was going on. Even though no criminal charges were brought, as per the settlement agreement, investigations into other foreign exchange issues are not going away any time soon. And of course, plenty of traders were given their walking papers. As for the movie rights…well, I suppose you can expect to see this play out in theaters within a few years. No sense in Hollywood not profiting off this, right?
Hit it…
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Seems like only yesterday when Target was rocked by a data breach that cost the retailer tens of million of dollars. Then there was the fiasco, also known as “Target’s Canadian Expansion,” that saw the retailer pulling the plug on the 133 stores located there. But those not so minor hiccups seem to be water on the fiscal bridge as Target released its latest earnings that hit their mark and saw its third straight quarter of sales growth, especially in home goods and apparel. So how good were these earnings? How does a a 52% increase in profits sound? That’s right, Target scored $635 million in net income, up from $418 million just one year ago, gaining $1.10 per share. Analysts were only predicting $1.02 per share. Clearly, those analysts were not amongst the many consumers lined up at five in the morning hoping to score some limited edition Lilly Pulitzer merchandise. Revenue was also up 2.8% which had everybody on Wall Street marveling at the fact that Target’s great earnings put Wal-Mart’s not great earnings to shame. Especially because sales at Target were up 38%, which is about double what Wal-Mart pulled in.
Talking turkey…
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Hormel, the original Spam maker, long before it was known for crowding our inboxes, just released its earnings and there’s good news. And bad news. The good news is that profit for the company increased 29% to $180.2 million with sales of $2.3 billion. The company pulled in 67 cents per share while analysts expected 62 cents per share. You may not be eating Spam, but somebody out there is. Besides, Hormel, being the largest meat processor in the United States, makes tons of other products including Roast Beef Hash and, I kid you not, Wholly Guacamole. In case you didn’t realize, Hormel’s got big business going in the refrigerated foods industry. The company also has a Jennie-O turkey store business, which brings us to the bad news: bird flu. There is a new bird-flu outbreak and if you want to sound sophisticated you can refer to it as avian influenza. Not only is this expected to take a big bite out of Hormel’s numbers, but it is also predicted that this outbreak is going to wreak havoc on the rest of the turkey industry as well. Forgive me if I just put an extremely early damper on your Thanksgiving.
Pujonomics. 