Word: quartered
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...total European workforce - may be a mere ripple compared with the tidal wave of layoffs around the world in the past year. But the proposed cuts - about a third of which would be in Belgium - follow the company's announcement of profits of $1.55 billion in the third quarter of last year. This has angered the Belgian unions, which are taking a stand against what they see as an affront to the country's beer-making tradition. "This is the ugly face of capitalism," says Roger Van Vlasselaer, who heads the Flemish Brabant section of the ABVV-FGTB, Belgium...
...America lost roughly $8 billion and $5 billion, respectively. The credit-card and mortgage businesses of JPMorgan Chase, which reported their earnings last week, were a disappointment. Wells Fargo posted a profit, but nonperforming loans and related charge-offs both jumped. Morgan Stanley turned a profit in the fourth quarter, but it was less than what analysts expected. Even earnings growth at Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs somewhat slowed. (See the best business deals...
Many had expected the earnings at financial firms to drop in the fourth quarter of 2009. A number of the biggest firms at the end of last year rushed to repay the tens of billions of dollars they had received under the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. Analysts said the rapid exit would be costly but would ultimately show that the banks had done a lot to repair their finances...
...even excluding the payments the banks made to the government, the fourth quarter was still a doozy. Sales at Citigroup, for instance, fell in three of its biggest units - investment banking, consumer banking and transaction processing - compared with the prior quarter. So while Citi's government-assistance repayment accounts for a big part of its losses, even without that, the bank still lost $1.4 billion in the last quarter of 2009. (See pictures of TIME's Wall Street covers...
...story is weak revenue," says analyst Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. "So the Street can shrug [because of TARP repayments], but it does not get better next quarter...