Business and Finance news

South Africa's central bank will probably raise the benchmark interest rate today after inflation accelerated to the fastest pace in five years and bank officials said it will remain above target until 2010.
Policy makers may raise the repurchase rate by 1 percentage point to 12.5 percent, the biggest move since September 2002, according […]

A shareholders' group that owns 6 percent of the stock of Danka Business Systems PLC is speaking out against some of the terms of the planned sale of Danka's operations to Konica Minolta.
DCML LLC, a group based in New York, said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that while […]

New Zealand construction work contracted in the first quarter, adding to signs economic growth stalled as record-high interest rates slowed domestic demand.
Construction excluding inflation fell 6.3 percent from the fourth quarter, Statistics New Zealand said in a report released in Wellington today. Residential building declined 6.6 percent and commercial construction dropped 5.9 percent. […]

Rim Semiconductor Co., which is developing technology for high-speed data transmission, said Wednesday it has received a $1 million order.
However, in the "forward-looking statements" section of its press release, Rim, a publicly traded company based in Southeast Portland, said it doesn't have the resources to fill the order.
"Rim Semi is currently […]

Swiss inflation accelerated more than economists forecast to the fastest pace in almost 15 years in May, led by rising energy costs.
Swiss consumer prices rose 2.9 percent from a year earlier after increasing 2.3 percent in April, the Federal Statistics Office in Neuchatel said today. That's the highest rate since October 1993. Economists […]