Business Blog

18 April 2013 Last updated at 12:53 ET

Morgan Stanley has reported a first quarter profit of $958m (£627m), compared with a $119m loss last year.

But investors appeared to be unimpressed, sending shares down 4.33% in afternoon trading.

Revenue from its wealth management group offset a decline in its fixed income and commodities trading unit.

The US bank has been focusing on wealth management as a stable source of growth.

"Morgan Stanley demonstrated solid momentum across the firm this quarter," said chief executive James Gorman in a statement.

Excluding a one-off charge related to changes in the value of the bank's debt, it recorded a profit of $1.2bn for the quarter, down from $1.4bn last year.

Excluding these charges, total revenue fell 4.8% to $8.5bn, although still above analysts' expectations of $8.35bn.

Revenue from its wealth management business, which provides financial advice for high net-worth clients, made up 41% of the bank's total revenue, growing 5.4% to $3.47bn.

Operating pre-tax profit in the wealth management business was the highest in the bank's history, said Mr Gorman.

However, revenue from the bank's fixed income and commodities trading unit fell to $1.5bn from $2.6bn a year earlier, reflecting falls in commodities and rates.

"Morgan Stanley has seen a huge shift to global wealth management, which should pay off," said Bernie Williams, a vice president at USAA Investments.

"I'm attracted to that business because it has fewer regulatory obstacles than trading and it provides more stable earnings," he added.

Morgan Stanley is scheduled to purchase in June Citigroup's remaining stake in their joint venture, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, the retail brokerage.

18 April 2013 Last updated at 08:11 ET

Shares of Nokia have fallen 13% after higher sales of its Lumia smartphones failed to offset a decline in its mobile phone unit in the first quarter.

In its earnings report, the Finnish firm said sales of Lumia handsets rose 27% in the first quarter of 2013, but that total sales of mobile phones fell 30% to 1.59bn euros.

Revenue fell 20% to 5.85bn euros, down from 7.35bn euros a year earlier.

Nokia is trying to catch up with rival smartphone makers Apple and Samsung.

The company reported a 339m-euro (£290m) loss in the January-March period, down from a loss of 1.57bn euros last year.

In the first quarter of this year, Nokia shipped 55.8 million handsets. It sold a total of 11.1 million smartphones including 5.6 million Lumia phones, 500,000 Symbian units and five million units of its entry-level Asha phones, which fell 46%.

"The shortfall is in the cheaper mobile phone side, where both volumes and average selling prices came lower than expected. That is of course a bit worrying, since that has been their bread and butter business in the Devices and Services unit," said Hakan Wranne, analyst at Swedbank.

"I think we will see the market's profit estimates for 2014 come down," he added.

The only bright spot in the report was Nokia's Lumia smartphone range, for which the company expects to see more demand in coming quarters.

The Lumia uses Microsoft Windows software, after Nokia abandoned its own operating system two years ago.

"Six million Lumias is quite promising," said Francisco Jeronimo, research manager at IDC, a tech research firm.

"They are on a right track and we can see a much better year for Nokia smartphones. They are far from volumes of Samsung and Apple, but that is not where Nokia is trying to compete now. Nokia is trying to go for the mass market.

"They are trying to compete on the segment where consumers are moving from feature phones to smartphones, but they want cheap smartphones."

In other areas of the company, its telecoms equipment venture, Nokia Siemens Networks, reported a fall in sales.

"We have areas where we are making progress and areas where we are further increasing the focus," said Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop, who was hired in 2010 to revive the company.

"For example, people are responding positively to the Lumia portfolio and our volumes are increasing quarter over quarter.

"On the other hand, our mobile phones business faces a difficult competitive environment, and we are taking tactical actions and bringing new innovation to market to address our challenges," he added.

19 April 2013 Last updated at 07:31 ET

Norwegian energy giant Statoil has said it has found "significant" new oil resources in the North Sea.

The company estimates the discovery could yield between 40 and 150 million barrels of oil.

The find is in the Gullfaks oil field, which has been in production since the 1980s.

Norway has been looking for more oil deposits in the North Sea and has stepped up exploration in the Arctic.

Oeystein Michelsen, executive vice president for Statoil's development and production in Norway, called the discovery "a result of Statoil's strategy for revitalisation of the Norwegian continental shelf.''

Norway is the largest oil producer in Western Europe, pumping about three million barrels of oil a day, according to the country's Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.

18 April 2013 Last updated at 05:44 ET

Doubts have been cast on research that has been crucial in supporting governments' austerity programmes.

Two Harvard economists found in 2010 that a country's output falls substantially as soon as its total public debt passes 90% of its annual output or gross domestic product (GDP).

But two other economists say they have found errors in the work which means the relationship "evaporates entirely".

The original researchers admitted mistakes but say their message stands.

Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, the economists behind the original research, said in a statement: "It is sobering that such an error slipped into one of our papers despite our best efforts to be consistently careful," but they added that the "central message" of their research was still valid.

The new study by Robert Polin, Michael Ash and Thomas Herndon from University of Massachusetts, which was made public this week, found coding errors in spreadsheets used in the 2010 study, which they said meant that growth did not fall as fast as was claimed when debt passed 90% of a country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Robert Polin told the BBC that between 2000 and 2010, the average rate of growth in countries with debt above 90% of GDP had actually been higher than it had been in countries with lower debt to GDP ratios.

"So their relationship, which they're saying is so fundamental for understanding policy - the relationship evaporates entirely," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Policy influence

Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff's paper Growth in a time of debt looked at 20 advanced economies since 1945 and found that GDP growth had been between 3% and 4% when debt had been below 90% of GDP, but that the average had collapsed to -0.1% when debt had risen above 90%.

The new research says that growth only falls to an average of 2.2% when debt passes 90%.

The result is important because governments were encouraged by the original paper to take drastic steps. such as severe austerity measures, to avoid borrowing any more money once their borrowing reached 90% of annual output.

The authors of the new research argue that governments might have been better off borrowing more money to spend on trying to encourage economic growth and reduce the severity of the recessions their countries were facing.

18 April 2013 Last updated at 01:56 ET

Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has reported a record trade deficit for the year to 31 March.

The deficit hit 8.17tn yen ($83.4bn; £54.5bn) as a slump in global demand hurt exports, while greater domestic consumption of fuel boosted imports.

A weak yen, which has dipped nearly 20% against the US dollar since November, also boosted the value of the imports.

Analysts said the deficit was likely to shrink in the coming months as the weaker yen will help Japan's exports.

The yen has dipped after policymakers introduced aggressive measures aimed at spurring a fresh wave of economic growth and stoking domestic demand.

Trade shift

Japan, which has traditionally been known for its exports, has seen a shift in its trade pattern in recent times.

It has seen its imports rise, driven mainly by an increased demand for fuel.

This was after most of its nuclear reactors were shut after the earthquake and tsunami in 2011 which damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and resulted in radiation leaks.

As a result, utility providers have had to turn to traditional thermal power stations to generate electricity.

These power plants need natural gas and coal to operate, resulting in a surge in imports of these commodities.

Meanwhile, its exports have been hurt by a slump in demand from key markets such as the US and Europe, while a territorial dispute has hurt sales to China.

That has seen it report a deficit for nine straight months.

Delayed impact

Policymakers have been hoping that their recent measures, which have weakened the currency, will help the country's exporters.

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A weak currency makes Japanese exports more affordable to foreign buyers and also boosts profits of exporters.

However, analysts said that while a weakening currency has an immediate impact on the value of imports, it takes longer for it to help exports.

At the same time, exports are also influenced by global demand, which analysts said had remained subdued.

"The broad picture remains intact as the weaker yen is having more of an impact on boosting imports than exports, while the recovery in the world economy, particularly China, is tepid," said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute in Tokyo.

"We'll need to wait at least until around summer before the weaker yen enhances price competitiveness of Japanese products abroad to boost exports."

There were some signs of recovery in the data for March, which showed a 1.1% increase in exports during the month, from a year earlier.

That was better than the 0.4% gain that many analysts had forecast.

17 April 2013 Last updated at 15:48 ET

The US central bank has slightly upgraded its view of the US economy, saying it expanded at a "moderate pace" in recent months.

The view comes in the Federal Reserve's latest Beige Book report, which covers the period from late February to early April.

The Fed highlighted growth in the manufacturing and construction sectors.

In its previous beige book report in January, the Fed said growth was only "modest to moderate".

In its latest report, the Fed also said that carmakers were performing strongly.

Yet it cautioned that consumer spending was only increasing at a "modest" pace.

The most recent official figures showed that the US economy grew at an annualised rate of 0.4% in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Meanwhile, official data from the Commerce Department showed that retail sales fell in March, down 0.4% from February.