The recession kills

Workers are going through a rough emotional period. A recent American consultancy's survey has conveyed that, as a result of unsatisfying jobs and low expectations of moving up on the firm's ladder due to the economic crisis, the suicide rate has skyrocketed. Performance-hungry bosses lacking responsibility in the human managing field, leave many employees behind without any hope or motivation. Luckily, companies are starting to realize that good hierarchic relations are vitally important for the firm's long term succes.

Arno Coene

Eureopean banks are resistant to a new crisis.

A stress test for the banking sector CEBS, has been announced which would allow banks to survive, even when economic growth decreases or the unemployment rate leaps. This survival would be made possible by government injections although banks all together would still have a loss of 400 miljard euros. ECB-president, Jean-Claude Trichet, says the results are encouraging, however, critics think the tests are meaningless.

Vervondel Laurent, Group 8.
Source: http://www.fd.nl/artikel/13344999/europese-banken-kunnen-nieuwe-crisis

Desperate times ask for... desperate measures?

Société Generale announced Tuesday a drastic solution to deal with the enormous emergency state loans of 3.4bn euros all in once by raising a generous 4.8bn euros.
The bank plans to repay the French state loan with this grotesque effort while SocGen's dreaming of an expansion with the other 1.4bn euros by pursuing potential takeovers and thus staying ahead of the competition.
The existing shareholders would get priority to buy further two shares for each nine they own bearing in mind that the new stock price is rated at a disappointing 31% discount compared with the current value. The banks latest results showed an amazing loss of profits by 52% despite rumours of better performance.

Mattias Dierickx
source: BBC NEWS, De Standaard Online

crisis tax on banks

The reckless short-term profitdriven wild or even cowboy capitalism of the financial sector as it is now being called is, among other things, what caused this current recession, so why should your average tax payer suffer the costs?
That's what ABVV(socialist trade union) chairman Rudy De Leeuw is arguing for and it seems he isn't the only one who feels this way.
Deputy PM Laurette Onkelinx of the walloon socialist party agrees and already has some ideas how this would be enforced, one of which is stripping banks of some tax benefits. Although there is a general sense of punishing those who are to blame they have yet to reach a consensus on how this should be done and even who, after all not every bank needed government help to stay afloat.



Simon Ghiotto

Homeowners win right to sue over mortgages

In America, a lot of homeowners aren't able to pay back their mortgages. Although the housing market has been crashed, the prices of the houses are very high compared with 10 to 15 years ago. Many of the borrowers don't have to pay back a fixed amount to the bank, but the loan depends on the increase in the value of the house. More than 300 homeowners have been united and they now sue Barclays and Bank of Scotland for selling such risk-bearing mortgages.

Thomas De Coninck

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article6863171.ece

Google miscalculated in take-over YouTube

When Google took over YouTube in 2006, they paid 1 billion dollar too much, says Eric Smidt, Google’s CEO. Smidt estimated the value of YouTube by 600 million till 700 million dollar, but Google paid 1,65 billion dollar to beat their competitors, despite of the warning of some critics, who said YouTube wasn’t profitable enough. It’s twice painful because it happened just before the worldwide bank and financial crises. However, Google is a big company and in 2008 it had a turnover of circa 28,5 billion dollars, but 1 billion dollar is still a serious amount in this times.

Valentijn Deltour

Recovery for the Tourism Sector?

“The international tourism sector, that has got a heavy blow by the impact of the rapid deterioration of the World economy and the effects of the influenza outbreak this spring, will revive next year. Certain indications lead one to suspect that we could expect a recovery in 2010” reports Taleb rifai, UNWTO Secretary-General. There is still an uncertainty about the strength of the World-wide economical recovery, and the effects of the influenza on tourism are too difficult to estimate. In Rifai’s view, the current year will be concluded with an average decrease of 5%.

Nele Aelter