Thursday, September 12, 2013

Friday September 13 Housing and Economic stories


American Homes 4 Rent Said to Fire Employees After Loss - (www.bloomberg.com) American Homes 4 Rent yesterday fired a group of workers, with a focus on acquisition and construction staff, after the housing landlord reported a fiscal second-quarter loss, according to a person with knowledge of the terminations. The company, owner of almost 20,000 single-family homes, has cut about 15 percent of its workforce this year, including an earlier round of terminations before its initial public offering last month, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The Malibu, California-based company, which raised $705.9 million in the IPO, had a net loss of $14 million, or 15 cents a share, on revenue of $18.1 million in the quarter ended June 30, according to a statement this week. Single-family landlords have struggled to turn a profit while acquiring homes faster than they can fill them with tenants. Hedge funds, private-equity firms and real estate investment trusts have raised more than $18 billion to purchase more than 100,000 rental houses in the past two years. American Homes 4 Rent, founded by B. Wayne Hughes, is the largest single-family landlord after Blackstone Group LP’s Invitation Homes, which has spent more than $5 billion on 32,000 homes. American Homes 4 Rent executives Peter Nelson, Jack Corrigan, Sara Vogt-Lowell and Janice Stack didn’t respond to e-mails and telephone messages seeking comment on the firings.

Japan's debt-funding costs to hit $257 billion next year: document - (www.reuters.com)  Japan expects to spend a record $257 billion to service its debt during the next fiscal year, a document obtained by Reuters showed, underscoring the huge burden created by the government's borrowings. The amount to be allocated for debt-servicing for the year that will begin on April 1 is nearly as large as the gross domestic product of Singapore, which the World Bank put at $275 billion at the end of 2012. Japan's Ministry of Finance (MOF), charged with drafting the state budget and issuing government bonds, will request 25.3 trillion yen ($257 billion) in debt-servicing costs under the budget, the document showed on Tuesday. That will be up 13.7 percent from the amount set aside for the current fiscal year, reflecting the ministry's plan to guard against any future rise in long-term interest rates.

Thai Stocks Slump 21% From High in Longest Decline Since 1998 - (www.bloomberg.com) Thai stocks retreated for a ninth day, sending the benchmark index down more than 20 percent from this year’s high, amid concern foreign outflows will accelerate as the economy weakens. The baht and government bonds dropped. The benchmark SET Index lost 2.7 percent to close at 1,293.97 in Bangkok, its longest losing streak since 1998. Siam Cement Pcl (SCC) and Total Access Communication Pcl (DTAC)dropped more than 3.6 percent and were among the biggest drags on the index. The baht weakened 0.8 percent to 32.18 per dollar, while the yield on 10-year government debt rose 14 basis points to 4.29 percent, the highest level since December 2009. Thailand entered a recession in the second quarter, according to figures released this month, while data yesterday showed exports unexpectedly fell last month. Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy will probably post a current-account deficit of $550 million in July, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists.

Exclusive: Nasdaq, NYSE at odds on outage cause as SEC seeks facts - (www.reuters.com) U.S. regulators have asked Nasdaq OMX Group and NYSE Euronext to come up with a timeline of Thursday's three-hour trading disruption, but the rival exchange operators have been unable to agree on the details, according to several sources familiar with the situation. Nearly a week after a glitch paralyzed Nasdaq-listed stocks for three hours on all U.S. markets, Nasdaq and NYSE have a different understanding of what happened in the period preceding and during the blackout, with each side blaming the other for the outage, according to the sources. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday called a meeting for September 12 to address the glitch. SEC Chair Mary-Jo White and the heads of the exchanges will discuss the trading interruption, the Nasdaq-run system involved in the halt, as well as other market systems and infrastructure issues, the regulator said.

Five Years After TARP, Misgivings on Bonuses - (www.finance.yahoo.com)  “There was such a total lack of awareness from the firms that paid big bonuses during this extraordinary time.” That is what Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury secretary, said last week. We were discussing the 2008 financial crisis in light of the approaching five-year anniversary of those white-knuckled days, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the government stepped in to bail out the American International Group and then the banking system. Mr. Paulson’s comments about the outsize bank bonuses paid after the bailouts might sound de rigueur given all the frustration that has already been expressed by others. But Mr. Paulson had never been so emphatic about the bonuses in public. Five years on, Mr. Paulson, assessing the success of a bailout program that clearly helped stabilize the economy, said that the bonuses that the banks paid after the bailouts — a record $140 billion in 2009 — were a primary reason for the public outrage over the program he worked so hard to persuade Congress to pass and the country to support. “To say I was disappointed is an understatement,” he said. “My view has nothing to do with legality and everything to do with what was right, and everything to do with just a colossal lack of self-awareness as to how they were viewed by the American public.”





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