The European markets score!

News from Belgium:
The Bel 20 wins 0.4 per cent on 4,472.13 points! 13 shares go higher and only 6 shares go lower. The largest profit in terms of percentage is for Agfa-Gevaert.
The share has had it bad since the end of July, but now it seems to pick up again. Agfa-Gevaert increase 3 per cent up to 13.95 euro.

The oil prices:
The price for a barrel harsh Brent-oil falls for the third day and stands now on 76.11 dollar.

The euro:
A euro is now 1.4035 dollar worth.

The Banks:
The financials Dexia and Fortis make the figures Brussels really beautiful.
Dexia increase 1 per cent up to 23 euro and Fortis increase 0.4 per cent up to 22.60 euro.

Fortis has now also confessed that the Fortis-consortium has 86 percent of ABN AMRO in hands. The shareholders of the Dutch bank have massively discussed the take-over bid of the three banks. If everything goes well Fortis can pick up more than 13 billion euro at its own shareholders.
KBC, the third financial heavyweight in Brussels, note 0.2 per cent higher on 99.68 euro.
Bank Degroof have raised up their aim-rate from 70 to 76 euro.

The Aviation:
Alitalia has raised up 3 per cent, up to 0.84 euro.
The Italian airline company will resume adoption negotiations with air France-KLM, Lufthansa, TPG and three other parties.

And this are only some examples of all the things that happened last time on the European markets, and I think we can conclude that the EU is doing very well!

(all these figures could be changes when you will read this post, that how the rates go)

Source
(Jonas)

Turkey fears send oil to record high

The crude oil prices are peaking after concerns that Turkey may soon launch an invasion against northern Iraq in an attempt to hit Turkish militants it accuses of attacking Turkish targets.

Such an attack could destabilize the Kurdistan region, the only relatively peaceful area in Iraq.

Rapidly declining oil inventories in developed countries ahead of the northern hemisphere winter also helped push the price higher.

The previous record for a barrel oil was $83.90 and yesterday the price peaked to $84.05 a barrel. It closed at $83.71 a barrel, up 63 cents on the day.

Iraq pumped about 2.18m barrels a day of crude oil in September, up 190,000 b/d from August.

Turkey is a key route for a crude oil pipeline from the Caspian sea that is forecast to carry about 500,000 b/d of oil by the end of 2007.

The watchdog has asked the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) to boost its supplies to build up inventories. Crude oil and products inventories usually increase in the third quarter, ahead of the winter, but so far they have fallen by 360,000 barrels a day.

Source

(Tom Van thienen)

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For people who are not that technological-minded:

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The growth in the technological industry is going down.

The car industry in Belgium is at a loose end. Early this year there were some restructurings by VW Vorst. A cause of this, the technologic growth was only 1.9%. If there were no restructurings the growth would have been 7%. The numbers come from Agoria, this is the federation of the technological industry.

But it is not all negative. There are also some sectors who did grow. One of the biggest is the electro industry. It has a growth of 7.1%. The employment was the same, but the car industry had al loss of 7.5%. A cause of this, the technological industry lost 1.1%.

The shortage of personnel slows down the growth of the company’s. So when nothing changes, there will be no growth anymore.

Why did it stopped? According to Agoria, the reason is the low dollar price and the low expectations in the construction sector.
A solution would be: more investments, those would involve into more constructions.

My opinion about this:
Maybe the government in Belgium can make some special proposals towards the industry. They can lower the taxes, so the company’s won’t leave Belgium. Now all those company’s restart their production in the East. There is the cost for personnel lower.
Another solution would be more subsidies. With those subsidies, the company’s could invest in a better production.

Source

(Bram)

Aldi will be more expensive

Aldi has already raised their prices of almost half their products in Germany, and now they have pronounces that also in the Netherlands they will raise their prices.
The reasons are always the same: high energy prices and a raise of the prices from cereals, milk and oils. Because these raw materials are used in a lot of products, are there a lot of products which prices will increase.

Also Colruyt thinks that they won’t escape to a rise of the price level but they say that they
will hold to their generalship of lowest prices.

Some suppliers have to declaim there contracts, because of the amount of the price rise. Another problem is that the price of fungible goods will raise because their is more demand, par example rice and cereals.

Professor Gino Van Ossel thinks that Aldi makes a large price adjustment, because it has a lot of basic product in their assortment. He think’s that is the reason why the expensive raw materials have such an impact on the prices of Aldi.

But Van Ossel thinks that the price rise will have some delay, because of the concurrential situation in Belgium. Colruyt namely shows clearly their price advantage against other supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl. But he also knows that Belgium will also suffer of the high prices of raw materials: “it’s not allowed to sell with loss, the expensive raw materials are to important to be ignored” he says.

I think it’s normal that the supermarket will raise their prices because of the expensive raw materials. Professor Van Ossel explains it correct: you can’t sell with loss, so ypu have to raise your prices. The only thing we can do as customer is hoping that the price of raw materials will descend again, so the supermarkets can drop their prices.

Source: http://www.nieuwsblad.be/Article/Detail.aspx?ArticleID=A51IGL39

Your savings suddenly disappeared?!

There were 23 fraud cases in 2007!

In Brussels the accounts of about fifteen Belgians with an internet account at Argenta, Dexia and KBC were plundered this year by hackers of the Russian mafia. But the banks have already did something to stop this.

In the course of spring some customers have communicated that their bank account was dismantled. The hackers have provided their selves access to the internet account of the customers.

The central systems of the banks were not cracked. The hackers obtained therefore possibly to the data of the customers of their Personal Computer.

Judicial research must identify now the accused ones of this new fraud!

The Russian mafia has to the technique in house to commit hacking.

At the beginning of this year hundreds of customers of the Swedish bank Nordea were the victim of computer fraud. That happened thanks to e-mails. They have stolen more than € 870,000 of the personal bank accounts of that people.

But thank God the touched customers were already compensated by their banks.

What is mostly strange is that Belgium stands on the top concerning security for banking on the internet and it is in Belgium that this has happened.

After this case that three important Belgian banks have taken more security measures. They think it was because some people don’t have a Digipass!

But now is the question:
Is electronically paying really safe enough?
The answer is that it is safe but the number of operations where something went wrong, amounts to one on ten millions, that is not much, but I hope I will never be the victim of that type of fraud, because I also use the internet banking-service of the banks!

Source

New member states EU have a boosting economy.

The prosperity in the new member states of the EU raises a lot faster then in the "richer" western Europe. But between the "old" member statese are also high differences.

For example in Latvia increased the income by inhabitant with 85 per cent between 1995 and 2004. Estonia and Lithuania have almost the same effect.

In Belgium was the increase in the same period a lot less, "only" 20 per cent, and in Germany it was even less then 10 per cent.

Economists from 8 European countries lanalysed the exploits of the EU member states, and looked for declarations for the high differences. They determined that the new member states from central Europe had already an increase before they entered the EU. From the new member states have Malta and Cyprus the slowest increase.

In the older member states are there coutriens who have a boosting Economy like Great Brittain, Ireland, Sweden and Finland. The reason for the boosting economy is a lot of investments in the information technologie, which increased the ICT-capital.

Other countries like Spain and Greece hav a boosting econmy because there was an increase of the labourer market.

France and Germany have a rather less growing economy, because they have a reduced labour market.

I think that it's good that the new member states have a boosting economy, because al member states of the European Union will have an advantage of boosting European Economy.

Source: tijd.be

Insider dealing scandal threatens Airbus

There is a suspect that twenty-one senior executives from Airbus and two large corporate shareholders sold their shares with inside information.

The transactions were reported as “strange, massive and simultaneous”. The shares were sold last year just before the plane-maker announced a huge delay for the A380 and that are the super-jumbo’s.

A preliminary report has been forwarded to a judge by the French financial markets. That judge is investigating possible charges of “insider trading” against those who unloaded their shares.

The Largardère company and DaimlerChrysler each sold 7,5 percent. M. Lagardère is one of France's wealthiest men and a close friend of President Nicolas Sarkozy. DaimlerChrysler is one of the largest shareholders of Airbus.

The previous December the French government was tipped off about the problems.

A day after Airbus announced that their were technical problems with the A380, the share price fell 26,8 percent. There is a report that says that 1200 individuals could have inside knowledge of the problems at Airbus. And they dumped 10 million shares before the official announcement. The profit from this inside information is estimated at 90 million euro.

Everybody who is involved with the situation denied that they used illegal inside knowledge.

A video showing the takeoff and landing of this new master peice by Airbus. The largest airliner the world has ever seen. Source

Source

(Tom Van thienen)

2010 the start of more competition into Europe's rail networks

Finally the European lawmakers gave their blessings to reform the Europe rail networks. In 2010, the passengers will have more choice and the train societies will do their best to be on time. Because, when the trains aren’t on time, the rail networks have to pay the customers a compensation.

When a train has a delay of 60 minutes or more, the passengers receive 25% of their fare. When a train has a delay of 120 minutes or more, the passengers receive 50% of their fare. This sound good but you only receive the compensation when the rail network can be held responsible for the delay.

Starting from 2010, new competitors are welcome on the railroad market. This leads to a bigger choice for the passengers, but will the new competitors be able to guarantee the safety? Not every land of the EU is happy about this new law.
The meaning of al this, is to promote the railroad. So it become a more popular way of transport.
Conclusion, it is positive for the passengers that they have more choice. Maybe the price will decrease. But if they can’t guarantee the safety it isn’t positive.
Source

(Bram)

Hugh labour shortage in the ex-communist EU states!

The 10 ex-communist states of the European Union were hit by massive unemployment.

I’m talking about these eight ex-communist countries: the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia.

At the beginning of the year 2007 Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, and that brings us to al membership of 27 countries.

2 decades ago they shifted to a market economy, and there were a lot of people looking for jobs, but there were no jobs… and now they are extremely unemployed.
In the past 2 years, in some of that countries the rate of vacant jobs has more than doubled.

The domestic shortfall in skilled workers has been amplified due to the emigration to other EU member states (Britain and Ireland).

A few little solutions:

They must do something about the early retirement, their median retirement age is 57, eight years less than in Belgium.
There was also urged to increase the investment in education, and also in “in-service training” for workers, in order to help reduce the skill shortages which are needed the most!
They also must open their markets to foreign workers. They must find a balance between the labour market needs and the employing of migrant workers!

Source

(Jonas)