Word: boom
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...huge consumer of iron ore, and mining companies fear that the investment in Rio Tinto could give China more influence over the price of iron in global commodities markets. Every year, steel and aluminum producers worldwide dicker with the big raw-material producers over new contracts. During the boom years, when Chinese companies' appetite for virtually every metal was voracious, they got stuck with stiff price increases. But the deal could give Chinalco, which already owns 9.3% of Rio, additional stakes in the mining company's choicest deposits of copper, iron ore and bauxite. The secretary general of China...
...sure, the boom - years of 5% growth and soaring exports - is over. Industrial production has plunged. Even Embraer, the aircraft maker whose jets sell to scores of airlines, and which has become a symbol of Brazil's newfound confidence, recently announced plans to lay off 4,000 employees, almost one-fifth of its workforce. Commodity exports - soybeans, steel - are weak. The main stock market is down 25% since September. But Lula, a former shoe-shine boy who heads the leftist Workers Party (PT), has so far kept the good times from becoming a hellish bust. In Brazil, that's nothing...
...Anglo Irish has been the bank of choice of the wealthy builders and developers who reaped the rewards of Ireland's colossal property boom during the "Celtic Tiger" era of the 1990s. They also tend to support Fianna Fail, the party at the head of Ireland's coalition governments for the past 12 years. Following the FitzPatrick loan scandal, it emerged that 10 Anglo Irish customers, since dubbed the "golden circle" by the Irish media, were lent more than $560 million to buy shares in the bank - a deal that may have broken laws on market abuse. To date, only...
...Ireland's downturn has also laid bare some ugly home truths - scandals indicative of a boom-years culture of nepotism and scant regulation that some say is as much to blame for the nation's economic malaise as the global downturn. In December, it emerged that Sean FitzPatrick, the then chairman of Anglo Irish Bank, Ireland's third largest bank, had concealed from shareholders more than $100 million in personal loans by transferring them temporarily to a building society. After FitzPatrick quit, the Irish government stepped in to nationalize Anglo Irish, but the damage to public confidence had already been...
...buildings. Now it has 48, with dozens more under construction. Right now the Cartagena landscape is still shaped by local stores and galleries, Colombian cooking, and the open, curious hospitality of people who haven't yet dealt with pushy hordes of foreign tourists. But they're yearning for the boom that is about to come. At Café del Mar - the Cartagena branch of the famed Ibiza beach bar - a bartender quizzed me one night on how I would describe his city to the people back home. "Tell them," he begged, "tell them it's not like Afghanistan here...