Business and Finance news

Profits are down at Hillenbrand, America’s largest maker of caskets. Admittedly, this fact sounds like the setup for a punch line, but the cause of the shortage in stiffs contains lessons for politicians and business leaders alike.
Hillenbrand’s CEO, Kenneth Camp, explained his company’s main problem this way in a recent conference call with […]

Norges Bank raised its key interest rate a quarter point from a record low and signaled steeper increases than it previously forecast over the next three years as inflation accelerates and unemployment remains low.
The Oslo-based bank raised the overnight deposit rate to 1.5 percent, becoming the first European central bank to reverse its […]

Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, said investors are wrong to bet that China will restrain its unprecedented stimulus after the economy accelerated in the third quarter.
“The Chinese really are fixated on one thing and one thing alone which is social stability — they don’t want to take a risk of another […]

American Express Co. posted stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings Thursday as the credit card company trimmed costs, a decline in consumer spending stabilized and bad loans eased.
Net income fell 21% to $640 million, or 53 cents per share, from $815 million, or 70 cents per share, a year earlier, the largest U.S. credit card company by […]

China’s government should keep fiscal stimulus spending intact for another year to allow for a “full recovery in 2011,” central bank adviser Fan Gang said.
Investment in China’s real estate sector is starting to resume and some industries are beginning to utilize previously idled capacity, Fan said. The government’s stimulus is needed to keep […]

Mortgage applications in the U.S. dropped for a second consecutive week as borrowing costs climbed, a sign the recovery in home sales may cool.
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s index of applications to purchase a home or refinance a loan declined 14 percent to 641 in the week ended Oct. 16 from 742.9 a week […]

Asia needs to reassess its strategy for future growth and reduce its over-reliance on exports, said Malaysia’s central bank governor, Zeti Akhtar Aziz.
Global economic conditions will remain volatile for a while, she said in a speech in Kuala Lumpur today.
Source

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats offered more tax cuts in talks with their prospective coalition partner as they bid to break a deadlock that’s holding up the formation of Germany’s next government.
The Christian Democratic Union raised the amount it’s prepared to spend in tax cuts to 20 billion euros ($30 billion) from an […]

U.S. foreclosure filings climbed to a record in the third quarter as lenders seized more properties from delinquent borrowers, according to RealtyTrac Inc.
A total of 937,840 homes received a default or auction notice or were repossessed by banks, a 23 percent increase from a year earlier, the Irvine, California-based seller of default data […]

U.S. bank regulators, saying losses on souring commercial real-estate loans pose the biggest risk to lenders, will issue guidelines to help the institutions modify the agreements.
Reduced demand for space has led to falling rental rates, adding to losses on the loans, leaders of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of […]