| Visa plans IPO aimed at raising over $18 bln
Visa Inc, the world's biggest electronic payment processing company, announced on Monday that it was planning an initial public offering (IPO) in the United States, saying it hoped to raise over 18 billion dollars. Visa, which processes payments for credit and debit cards, said it plans to offer just over 400,000 shares for public purchase. It expects its shares to be priced at between 37 and 42 dollars per share. The San Francisco-based company said in a statment that it plans to launch its IPO as soon as possible. Investors will be able to purchase shares in Visa from a pool of 447 million shares of Class A stock the company intends to sell. The company has hired a group of well-known investment banks to support its IPO, including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and HSBC Securities (USA) Inc.
Treasury’s five-year Rock loan
Some will see it as a taxpayer subsidy to a bank which got itself into a mess and was unable to raise money in a conventional way. However shareholders are likely to view it as a potentially crippling burden on the company which – if the Treasury wanted it back – could wipe out the value of Northern Rock's shares. Update 08:00 Northern Rock's shareholders have had a huge dose of bad news this morning. The company says that the preliminary bids for the business all value it at significantly less than the current market value. And the Treasury has said that neither bidders or the company should assume that the £24bn of loans made to it by the Bank of England will be kept in place after February. The Treasury has also warned that the support it has provided to the Rock represents state aid under EU rules and may therefore turn out to be illegal.
Labour still cares
The shared equity scheme presaged more than 18 months ago will finally be launched in July, but details are still under wraps. No prizes for haste there. It will be fascinating to see how Key responds. He has had the speech for more than four hours under Parliament's standing orders, so should be well prepared. .
Bush Expected to Call New Russian Leader
Vladimir Putin, left, and his hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev greet their supporters standing side-by-side at the stage during a concert to mark presidential election at the Moscow Red Square late Sunday, March 2, 2008. The sign in the background reads: "Russia, go forward!" Medvedev was headed for an easy victory in Sunday's presidential election, according to an exit poll and partial results. Putin congratulated his protege and said his win would guarantee the continuation of his policies. (AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Vladimir Rodionov, Presidential Press Service) (Vladimir Rodionov - AP) .
Historians Fear MLK’s Legacy Being Lost
Hillary Rodham Clinton came under fire when she was quoted as saying King's dream of racial equality was realized only when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. King has "slipped into the realm of symbol that people use and manipulate for their own purposes," McNair said. Harris-Lacewell said that is something people need to push back against. "It's not OK to slip into flat memory of who Dr. King was, it does no justice to us and makes him to easy to appropriate," she said. "Every time he gets appropriated, we have to come out and say that's not OK. We do have the ability to speak back." © 2008 Associated Press .
Consumer, ID Theft Safety Tips
Be very careful about to whom you give out personal identification information.
- Never provide any personal, bank account or credit card information.
- Keep items with personal information in a safe place.
- Destroy all automated teller machine and bank receipts.
- Minimize the number of credit cards and other items with personal information printed.
- Do not use obvious information when creating passwords or personal identification numbers.
- Give out your Social Security number only when necessary.
- Do not leave envelopes containing your checks in your home mailbox.
- Review a copy of your credit report at least once a year.
- To decrease the number of unsolicited credit card applications, call (888) 5OPT-OUT.
Reality lost on those who put faith in universal health care
It is no wonder that none of the candidates have sparked much interest this campaign cycle.Let's go back to basics. I did the numbers on my hospital test. I added in every cost including salaries, equipment, utilities, insurance, and then gave everyone a 100 percent profit margin. The cost of my test: well under $200.Prior to the test, I did not call the hospital and ask about the cost.Suppose that I did not have insurance and health care was sold in a free market. Here is what would have happened.I would have called the hospital. They would say the cost would be $900.I would call another. In a free market, some hospital is going to settle for only 300 percent profit and ask for $450. Sooner or later, I would find a hospital that would do the test for $150.Would I travel 200 miles for $700 in savings? Yes, I would.The people who demand "free" universal health care maintain that the medical industry is ripping us off.
Technology foe, pal to postal agencies
Marty Sellers used to need about a hundred postage stamps every three months. These days, he can stretch that supply to last a year.
Sellers, 40, now pays most bills online and receives financial statements electronically. The owner of Sellers Photo in Huntsville, Ala., he also has cut down on mailing clients CDs, transferring images over the Internet instead.
"Even things like a birthday card, I will just send a happy birthday e-mail," he said.
Because many people around the world are like Sellers, the U.S. Postal Service and its counterparts in other countries are tapping technology to cut costs and expand into electronic services -- including services designed to attract more "junk" mail.
In the United States, first-class mail volume has dropped 7 percent since 2001 -- an average of 1.3 billion fewer letters, postcards and bills each year.
JP Morgan's $1.3bn sub-prime hit
US bank JP Morgan Chase has said its earnings for the last three months of 2007 fell 34% as a result of its exposure to soured US mortgage loans. Net income was $2.97bn (1.5bn) in the quarter to the end of December, down from $4.53bn a year earlier. The bank said it had to cut the value of investments linked to the US mortgage market by $1.3bn. Other US and European banks, including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, have also had to cut the value of their holdings. Also on Wednesday, Wells Fargo said the home loans crisis had led to its first drop in quarterly profits since 2001. Wells Fargo, the biggest bank on North America's West Coast, reported a 38% decline in net income to $1.36bn for its last three months of 2007. However, the losses at JP Morgan and Wells Fargo were smaller than those of many of their peers.
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