Southeastern Brazil’s Minas Gerais state governor Antonio Anastasia will request at least 1.5bn reais (US$814mn) in funding from the federal government on Tuesday (Jan 10) to support flood prevention, reconstruction and sanitation work.
The state aims to rebuild areas that were damaged by recent heavy rain and flooding. Work will include bridge construction, slope contention, drainage works and urban infrastructure improvements, federal news service Agкncia Brasil reported.
The state’s priority is to repair damaged roads and fully restore water supply and electrical power services, Anastasia said, adding that disaster prevention projects will be carried out during a second phase.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce released its quarterly Small Business Outlook Survey on Monday with some pretty grim results. The survey of more than 1,400 small-business owners revealed that an overwhelming 84 percent believed the U.S. economy is on the wrong track.
Nearly 50 percent of the small-business owners cited economic uncertainty as their greatest challenge, while the U.S. Full Article…
NEW YORK Morgan Stanley will cut about 1,600 jobs across all levels of company, becoming the latest bank to slash payrolls against a backdrop of extreme volatility in financial markets.
The cuts, which amount to 2.6 percent of the banks workforce, will be made in the first three months of 2012, a spokesman for the New York investment bank said Thursday. The bank had more than 62,000 employees as of the end of September.
Spokesman Mark Lake said that the cuts will occur globally and will include analyst, associate, vice president, executive director and managing director levels.
Citigroup also said last week it will eliminate 4,500 jobs, or about 1.5 percent of its global workforce of 267,000, over the next few quarters.
Fast Company:
Offering beer as a token of holiday goodwill can be tricky. Its gauche to put a six-pack under the tree, and nothing says I forgot like a brown bag with a ribbon around its neck. The solution: the Rare Beer Club. Each month, members are mailed two, four, or six 750-milliliter bottles of domestic and international rarities.
Oil prices inched lower toward $102 a barrel Wednesday in Asia as investors eyed signs of an improving U.S. economy.
Benchmark crude for February delivery fell 40 cents to $102.56 a barrel at late afternoon Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract jumped $4.13 to settle at $102.96 in New York on Tuesday.
In London, Brent crude was down 32 cents at $111.81 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
Crude has jumped from $75 in October amid evidence the U.S. economy is slowly growing and may avoid recession this year.
AN international trade body has called on the Welsh Government to take a more aggressive approach to attracting foreign investment into Wales.
The Wales International Business Council (WIBC) said that Wales needed to up its game securing more foreign direct investment (FDI) projects, although it had become a far more competitive global marketplace
Following the decision to scrap the International Business Wales inward investment brand, inward investment personnel although a number opted for redundancy are now supporting the sector specific teams, which include ICT and advanced manufacturing, in the Welsh Government.
However, it is understood that the Welsh Government will make an announcement next month which could see a centralised team being reintroduced.
BDO South Africa, a regional association of accounting firms says that the cost of an extra public holiday, as declared by the presidency on Wednesday, would result in an estimated R7-billion loss in turnover.
Acting president Kgalema Motlanthe declared December 27 a public holiday throughout the Republic, the presidency said on Wednesday.
The declaration was made in terms of Section 2A of the Public Holidays Act, 1994 (Act No.36 of 1994).
Olivier Barbeau, chief operating officer at BDO South Africa, said: “South Africans typically enjoy 13 paid public holidays a year. This, on the face of it, is comparable to other countries like the US, France and Singapore. Full Article…