The Star Online: Business
The Star Online: Business |
- Bursa queries Adventa on price surge
- Egypt's Mursi to meet IMF aide on $4.8b loan request
- Obama says U.S. can't afford more showdowns over debt, deficits
| Bursa queries Adventa on price surge Posted: 05 Jan 2013 03:40 AM PST PETALING JAYA: Bursa Malaysia has issued an unusual market activity query to medical products and devices manufacturer and distributor Adventa Bhd, on the sharp rise in price and volume of the company's shares on Friday. Adventa went up 19.5 sen or 84.78% to close at 42 sen on volume of 52.69 million shares. On Dec 31, Adventa had told Bursa that it planned to acquire investment holding company PTM Progress Trading & Marketing Sdn Bhd for RM7.5mil. Adventa said the acquisition was expected to be completed in two months, and would enable its subsidiaries to utilise PTM's property as warehouses for the group's distribution and dialysis business. PTM is the beneficial owner of an industrial land in Subang. For the fourth quarter to Oct 31, 2012, the company was back in the black with a net profit of RM11.5mil from a previous loss of RM8.4mil. Revenue increased 62.7% to RM5.24mil. The better sales were due to higher shipments of nitrile examination gloves while the lower latex prices enable latex products to regain some of the lost margins from high material costs earlier in the year. The company said that cost-savings exercises taken had improved operating efficiencies. For the full year, net profit jumped some five-fold to RM25.25mil from RM4.19mil previously. Revenue increased 16.34% to RM14.63mil. |
| Egypt's Mursi to meet IMF aide on $4.8b loan request Posted: 05 Jan 2013 03:31 AM PST CAIRO: A senior official in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will meet Egyptian President and other top officials on Monday to discuss Cairo's request for a $4.8 billion loan, a major state-run Egyptian newspaper reported on Saturday. The IMF loan is seen as crucial to easing Egypt's budget deficit and an economic slump caused by the turmoil that followed the popular uprising that ousted autocratic president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. "Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi will receive on the day after tomorrow Masood Ahmed, the IMF director for the Middle East and Central Asia... and it is expected that the meeting will include talks about the IMF's loan to Egypt," the Akhbar Al-Youm daily reported. It said Masood would also meet Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, some ministers and the central bank governor. Officials from the cabinet, presidency and IMF were not immediately available to comment on the report. Egypt's currency has lost about 10 percent against the dollar since the start of 2011. But about a third of that plunge has come in the last week alone, since the central bank began auctioning $75 million a day out of its reserves on December 30. The pound slid further on Thursday at the central bank's fourth auction of foreign currency, with $74.9 million sold to banks at a cut-off price of 6.386 pounds, weaker than Wednesday's 6.351 to the dollar. The cabinet spokesman said on Thursday that an IMF mission would visit in January to discuss the loan deal, which was postponed last month at Cairo's behest because of violent anti-Mursi protests raging at the time. The IMF said last week that it welcomed steps Egypt had taken to stop a drain on its international reserves, which had driven the Egyptian pound down to record lows. Egypt's budget deficit in the year to end-June 2013 could widen by 50 percent from the original forecast made in July, according to a figure released by the planning minister last Monday. |
| Obama says U.S. can't afford more showdowns over debt, deficits Posted: 05 Jan 2013 03:26 AM PST HONOLULU: Fresh from the long legislative fight to prevent a "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts, President Barack Obama warned on Saturday that the United States could not afford further budget showdowns this year or in the future. Obama, who returned to Hawaii for a family vacation shortly after the House of Representatives passed a compromise bill on Tuesday, said in his weekly radio and Internet address that the new law was just one step toward fixing the country's fiscal and economic problems. "We still need to do more to put Americans back to work while also putting this country on a path to pay down its debt, and our economy can't afford more protracted showdowns or manufactured crises along the way," he said in the address, broadcast on Saturday. "Because even as our businesses created 2 million new jobs last year - including 168,000 new jobs last month - the messy brinkmanship in Congress made business owners more uncertain and consumers less confident." Government data released on Friday showed the U.S. unemployment rate remained at 7.8 percent in December. Lawmakers in the Senate and the House passed legislation this week that raised tax rates for the wealthiest Americans while making Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class permanent. It was a victory for Obama, who campaigned for re-election largely on a promise to achieve that goal. Republicans have indicated that they are ready for another fight over the U.S. debt ceiling. Representative Dave Camp, delivering his party's weekly address, warned, at least indirectly, that they would expect spending cuts in return for raising the ceiling again. "Many of our Democrat colleagues just don't seem to get it. Throughout the fiscal cliff discussions, the president and the Democrats who control Washington repeatedly refused to take any meaningful steps to make Washington live within its means," Camp said. "As we turn our attention toward future discussions on the debt limit and the budget, we must identify responsible ways to tackle Washington's wasteful spending." Obama repeated that he would not negotiate on the debt ceiling, hoping to avoid the 2011 conflict that led to a credit rating downgrade and pushed the country close to default. "If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic," he said. "Our families and our businesses cannot afford that dangerous game again." Obama said he was willing to do more on deficit reduction and suggested that the hike in tax rates for wealthy Americans was not the last tax change he expected to make. "Spending cuts must be balanced with more reforms to our tax code," he said. "The wealthiest individuals and the biggest corporations shouldn't be able to take advantage of loopholes and deductions that aren't available to most Americans." |
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