Word: firms
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...water," says Véronique Riches-Flores, chief European economist at French bank Société Générale. Business leaders ranging from Sir Stuart Rose at British retailer Marks & Spencer to Renault's CEO Carlos Ghosn are sounding the alarm. At Burberry, the luxury-goods firm, CEO Angela Ahrendts frets about a combination of rising costs, falling demand and a strong euro that cuts into competitiveness. "There's a perfect storm out there," she says. Many investors would agree: this year, stocks across Europe are down 20% or more, the standard measure of a bear market...
Consumers: The Party's Over Oxford Street, London's busiest retail area, is still teeming with shoppers hunting for end-of-season sales bargains, but the store owners are anything but happy. Marks & Spencer's stock dropped 25% in a day on July 2 after the firm issued a profit warning. At privately owned rival John Lewis, sales in the summer-clearance week at the end of June fell more than 8% compared with the same week in 2007. Patrick Lewis, who heads the company's retail operations, said the market "has certainly got an edge tougher...
...jobs in tourism, hospitality and health care, according to the online recruiter Monster, which compiles the survey. Still, fueled by negative headlines, fears abound about harder times ahead: in the U.K. consumer sentiment has sunk to its lowest level since 1990, according to a poll by market research firm GfK NOP; back then the country was heading into a deep recession. Riches-Flores of Société Générale reckons Europe may already be in the midst of a consumer spending recession...
...faint of heart. But think back, if you will, some five years to a time when the industry was nothing like it is today. In mid-2003, when a barrel of oil fetched about $30, BP made what was then the largest ever foreign investment in a Russian firm. The British company paid more than $6 billion for a 50% stake in TNK-BP, an oil outfit it set up with a consortium of four Russian billionaires. Vladimir Putin, Russia's President at the time, joined Tony Blair, then Britain's Prime Minister, in cheering the joint venture...
This deal, which created Russia's third-largest oil firm, still has the leaders of both countries talking. But their tone has changed. When current U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown brought up TNK-BP with Dmitri Medvedev, Putin's successor, on the sidelines of the G-8 summit on July 7, the uneasy discussion was of a breakdown in relations between the British and Russian partners. Meanwhile, Dudley, the company's BP-appointed boss, is battling to keep his job. In Moscow that same day, AAR, the Russian consortium that controls 50% of TNK-BP, called for his dismissal, claiming...