'Excellent' sales for Morrisons

The company has been focusing on fresh food and promotional offers

Supermarket chain Morrisons has said it had an "excellent" Christmas, with like-for-like sales excluding fuel up 8.2% in the six weeks to 4 January.

The Bradford-based group said its results were helped by its focus on fresh food and promotional offers.

Last week, Tesco said its like-for-like Christmas sales rose 2.5%. Sainsbury's earlier reported a 4.5% rise.

Morrisons said it remained cautious on the outlook for consumer spending, with the market set to stay challenging.

We believe it will become harder for Morrisons to improve market share in a more competitive market Freddie George, Seymour Pierce

According to recent data from market researcher TNS Worldpanel, Morrisons reached its highest market share to date in the 12 weeks to 28 December of 11.9%.

"I am pleased with Morrisons excellent Christmas trading, having attracted 2.2 million extra customers with great fresh food and industry leading value," Morrisons chief executive Marc Bolland said in a trading update.

But the group's shares opened slightly lower despite the news.

"We believe it will become harder for Morrisons to improve market share in a more competitive market, which is likely to see greater discounting from Tesco trying to recapture market share," said Freddie George, a retail analyst at Seymour Pierce stockbrokers.

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RBS bail-out hits public finances

The government currently owns 70% of RBS

Britain's public finances took a big hit in December from the government's recapitalisation of Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS).

The public sector net cash requirement, which is the amount the government needed to borrow to fund its spending, hit £44.2bn, the highest on record.

Almost half of that came from bailing out RBS, with another £2bn spent on shoring up Bradford & Bingley.

Borrowing since April has been the highest since records began in 1946.

'Deteriorating'

The public finances are "pretty bad", but not unexpectedly so, according to Alan Clarke at BNP Paribas.

"They are deteriorating pretty much in line with what you would expect, given lower tax receipts and increased government spending," he said.

BBC economics editor Stephanie Flanders said the figures were a reminder of how quickly things can get ugly in the budget.

The figure of £44.2bn was £27.5bn above the level in December 2007.

She predicted that even though the tax-take should pick up a bit before April, it is still unlikely that the government will meet its forecast for net borrowing for the financial year.

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Global woes hit Dubai's fragile economy

By Malcolm Borthwick Editor, Middle East Business Report, BBC World, Dubai

Mr Vail spends time at the Creek rather than working

Pajani Vail came to Dubai a year ago to work in construction.

He is on a three year contract, but has not worked or been paid for four months.

Mr Vail spends most of his time at the Creek in the old town in Dubai, chatting to friends who are looking for jobs and watching the dhows and abras sail past.

"There are quite a few people like me," he says. "There are four or five people from my company looking for a job."

Waste of time

Mr Vail's employer is holding his passport and has told him to wait until work picks up again.

Developers have got serious cash flow problems Colin Foreman, Middle East Economic Digest

In the meantime he sleeps on the streets or in the back of trucks.

""One day I have food, one day I don't," he says. "I have to borrow money from friends."

Having left a steady job in India to come to Dubai, Mr Vail is struggling to support his wife and two children back in Chennai.

"What is the point in being here when I have no food, no money and no job?" he asks.

"This is a waste of time. If I go back to India at least I am at home with my family."

No reserves

There are about 1.5 million Indians in the United Arab Emirates.

Guest labourers often leave Dubai when work dries up

Many of them are blue collar labourers, living together in rooms with six to 10 fellow workers.

An increasing number are, like Pajani, victims of the credit crunch.

Unlike its neighbour Abu Dhabi, Dubai does not have vast oil and gas reserves to fall back on.

In many, ways Dubai is a victim of its own success.

It has embraced globalization and aggressively diversified its economy into non-oil sectors such as financial services, tourism and real estate.

The Emirate is home to some of the most ambitious building projects on the planet.

It is building the world's tallest tower and has just opened the world's biggest shopping mall.

Not to mention the vast offshore islands off the city's coastline.

Struggling developers

But now financial forces have turned, it is exposed.

The announcement by the property developer Nakheel last week that it is delaying construction of a tower that is set to soar more than a kilometer high, is a sign of the times.

The real estate market is beginning to unravel.

"Developers have got serious cash flow problems," says Colin Foreman from Middle East Economic Digest.

"Their revenue was coming from selling properties which hadn't been built yet and they were supplementing this with financing.

"Banks aren't interested in lending them money and nobody is interested in buying property, so their two avenues for finance have gone.

"At the same time they have got huge outgoings because they are building projects that they no longer have money to pay for."

Little statistics

It is easier for companies to lay off workers in Dubai than in the West because there are no unions.

Industry insiders have told the BBC that tens of thousands of workers in the construction and real estate market alone have lost their jobs over the last few months.

Some workers have just dumped their cars at the airport and fled the country, reportedly fearing for their jobs and nursing large debts.

But it is tricky to quantify the extent of the job losses here as there are few hard statistics.

Regional relocation

Some workers have moved to other countries in the region, such as Qatar, in order to find work.

Thanks to revenue generated by its vast gas reserves, Qatar's economy is booming.

It is expected to grow by 9% in 2009, which would make the Gulf state one of the fastest growing economies in the world this year.

The British project management company Mace is one of many companies in Dubai trying to relocate its employees within the region.

"The largest reaction or action has been making redundancies," says Ian Tarry, Mace's Middle East director.

"However we have managed to relocate people to other parts of the group. In some case this has involved salary reductions.

"So far Abu Dhabi has taken some of the slack and we have relocated other workers to Saudi Arabia."

Expats and tourists

The worry is that the slowdown in the construction and the real estate sector could seep into the wider economy.

Around four-fifths of Dubai's population are expats.

Fewer expats mean less demand for property.

The tourism market is also being hit. Western tourists are cutting back on spending, and occupancy rates at many of Dubai's luxury hotels are down.

The slump in the non-oil sector is part of the reason why the Egyptian investment bank EFG-Hermes says the United Arab Emirates' economy will shrink this year.

"There are two factors which have supported private consumption," according to Monica Malik, director of economic research at EFG-Hermes.

"The expats who have spent money setting up houses and buying products and secondly the tourists.

"These are both going to fall, and with greater uncertainty in the economy those who are remaining will be more careful with their spending. This shows that private consumption will fall."

Desirable slowdown

Many say a correction is long overdue, and also healthy.

Khalfan Saeed Al Kaabi runs a handful of construction related companies and is based in Abu Dhabi.

"This is normal," he says.

"We were not having enough time to plan and to design.

"Projects were being awarded and designs were done on site.

"It's good for the construction industry to reduce its speed from 200 miles an hour to 40 miles an hour, and let the momentum restart again on a different foundation."

Damaged credibility

Many companies around the world and countries in the region have bought into Dubai's success.

It is the financial, retail and tourism centre for the Gulf. B

ut what does the future hold?

"Looking at the long term, Dubai has built itself on the promise of tomorrow and people have been buying into the dream it will deliver," according to Mr Foreman.

"It now says it will not be able to deliver these dreams, so as an investor that credibility has gone.

"Dubai needs to do a lot of work to restore that credibility over the next two years."

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Fast bucks: how Porsche made billions

By Emily Hughes BBC Money Programme

Making and selling cars is just one part of Porsche's business

Porsche is world famous for its iconic sports cars.

But car manufacturing isn't the only thing the company is good at.

Last year it made six times as much on the stock market as it did making cars.

Industry insiders are only half joking when they call it a hedge fund with a carmaker attached.

Porsche says its stock market trades are only for one reason: to take it towards its long term goal, the takeover of car making giant, Volkswagen.

In October 2008, Porsche's takeover moves triggered an unprecedented stock market squeeze when it suddenly revealed it owned or had positions on more than 74% of Volkswagen shares.

The value of Volkswagen stock rocketed to more than 1,000 euros, briefly making it the most valuable company in the world.

Hedge funds, who had gambled that the value of Volkswagen shares would fall are said to have lost between 10bn and 40bn euros.

Porsche denies any wrongdoing and says that it made no profit from the squeeze, but some hedge funds are crying foul.

Now the German financial regulator, BaFin, is conducting an investigation into what it calls "suspected market abuse."

The back story

The stories of Porsche and Volkswagen have long been intertwined.

Wiedeking took the decisions, the risky decisions, to come up with new models Arndt Ellinghorst, head of European automotive research at Credit Suisse

Ferdinand Porsche designed the iconic Volkswagen Beetle in the 1930s, a car that became an emblem of Germany's economic success throughout the world.

He then founded his own company, which became famous for making superfast sports cars.

The Porsche family still owns the company their grandfather founded and now wants to own Volkswagen itself, a company 14 times the size of Porsche.

Volkswagen owns some of the biggest names in European motoring; Seat, Audi, Lamborghini, Bugatti and Bentley.

The personalities

The recession of the early 1990s hit Porsche hard and some questioned if the company would survive.

Then, in 1993, Wendelin Wiedeking was appointed chief executive.

Together with chief financial officer Holger Haerter they are credited with turning the company around.

"Wiedeking took the decisions, the risky decisions, to come up with new models," says Arndt Ellinghorst, head of European automotive research at Credit Suisse.

They also slashed production costs, but most importantly, Mr Haerter used Porsche's cash to enter the financial markets.

He had little experience of car making, but he did bring expertise in investment management.

Through currency hedging he developed a mastery of the markets that he eventually turned towards Porsche's end goal; the take over of Volkswagen.

"Porsche does not have the research and development budget to come up with really the key innovations of the industry," says Mr Ellinghorst.

A takeover of Volkswagen would mean access to its huge production facilities, its technology and,most importantly, its cash.

VW Law

In 2005, Porsche quietly started to increase its stake in Volkswagen.

Porsche has been accused of speculating in Volkswagen shares

By September 2008 it had acquired 35.14% of Volkswagen shares.

Whilst Porsche stated publicly its long term goal was a takeover, insiders knew this goal was stymied by a peculiar anomaly: the VW Law.

The VW Law essentially protects Volkswagen from hostile take over.

It means that an 80% majority is needed to make "significant decisions" at annual meetings.

This gives the local state government of Lower Saxony, owning 20.1% of the shares, a blocking majority.

Porsche needs to overturn this law before it can reach its ambitious goal.

It is applying the pressure on both the EU and the German government to do this.

While the VW Law is still in place there is consensus among market insiders that there is little point in Porsche increasing its stake in Volkswagen, but sometimes things are not quite what they seem.

Short selling

By July 2008 the credit crunch was hitting the car industry hard and car company share values were plummeting around the world.

But Volkswagen's were remaining stubbornly high.

Porsche would gain from Volkswagen's expertise and finances

Hedge fund managers calculated that Volkswagen shares could not remain so high indefinitely and believed there was an opportunity to make some cash by short selling the shares - borrowing Volkswagen shares off a third party in the expectation that the price would fall so they would be able to buy them back cheaper, later and pocketing the difference.

Volkswagen shares became some of the most "shorted" stocks in Europe.

But despite the downturn, by the end of the summer it was clear there was something peculiar about Volkswagen shares.

The price was not dropping and the reason was about to be revealed.

The bombshell

On Sunday 26 October 2008, Porsche dropped a bombshell.

It announced it had increased its stake in Volkswagen to 42.6% and held cash settled options on a further 31.5% - meaning it had positions on up to 74.1% of all Volkswagen shares.

It seemed it had effectively cornered the market and short sellers who needed to buy back shares to close their positions were forced to fight over the remaining available stock.

How did it happen?

Porsche was able to build its secret holding by using financial instruments called cash settled call options.

Call options essentially give the buyer the option to buy shares at a competitive price at a future fixed date.

A cash settled call option enables the buyer to either take delivery of the share, or the difference between the strike price agreed when the option was bought and the market price when deal is settled.

The buyer can then use this money to purchase the share on the open market.

Porsche proved to be masters at this type of transaction, which, as long as it got the bets right and Volkswagen prices continued to rise, let it buy Volkswagen shares at favourable prices.

In the UK, any increase in share holdings to more than a 30% stake in a company has to be disclosed, whether you do it through cash settled call options or not.

This is not the case in Germany and this enabled Porsche to build up its position in secret.

Winners and Losers

Investors who were caught short have questioned Porsche's behaviour and the timing of its announcement of its secret positions in Volkswagen shares.

This is now being investigated by the German regulator, BaFin.

Porsche deny all wrongdoing and says its strategy was driven by its goal of taking over Volkswagen, not the wish to make profits from financial speculation.

It says it has invested the profits it made from the squeeze into purchasing more Volkswagen shares outright.

Fast Bucks: How Porsche made Billions, 19.30 Thursday 22 January 2009.

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China's economic growth slows

By Michael Bristow BBC News, Beijing

The global economic downturn is hitting China's growth

China's economic growth slowed to 9% last year, its lowest rate of growth for seven years.

The world's third-largest economy was hit hard by the global financial crisis that led to a fall in orders for Chinese exports.

But the official who announced the figures said the economy had still done relatively well in trying times.

There has also been gloomy news from South Korea, where the economy shrank by 3.4% in the last quarter of 2008.

Meanwhile, Japan reported that its exports plummeted 35% last month - the sharpest fall on record.

'Eventful year'

At first glance, China's figures appear to show that its economy is still doing very well. Overall growth of 9% for the year would leave most governments ecstatic.

But China recorded 13% growth in 2007, and figures announced on Thursday show economic growth slowed rapidly towards the end of 2008.

Growth in the first quarter of last year was 10.6%, but that had slowed to just 6.8% in the last three months - after the financial crisis had struck.

Global appetite for China's exports is drying up

At a press conference to announce last year's figures, Ma Jiantang, head of the national bureau of statistics, said: "In 2008, we saw an eventful and extraordinary year."

He said China's economy had been affected by a series of natural disasters, such as the earthquake in May, and by the financial crisis.

It is this last event that has hit the Chinese economy hardest - leading to less demand for Chinese products across the world -and the crisis is getting worse, said Mr Ma.

He revealed that millions of migrant workers - villagers who travel to cities to work in factories - had already lost their jobs.

He did not give an absolute figure for the number of migrants who are now jobless, but he said a survey showed about 5% had lost work.

China's Academy of Social Sciences recently said that there were about 200 million migrant workers - meaning about 10 million migrants are now unemployed.

Independent Chinese economist Andy Xie said the number of migrant workers without jobs could rise to more than 20 million.

"A lot of factories are not going to reopen after the Chinese New Year. The workers will be told not to come back," he said.

China worries that these unemployed people will cause an increase in social unrest if they are unable to find new jobs.

Mr Ma acknowledged that this was a problem. "[We] take this issue of migrant workers very seriously," he said.

To reinforce the point, he reminded those listening that China's communist leaders were improving ordinary people's living standards.

"Despite all economic difficulties, the incomes of both urban and rural households continue to climb," he said.

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Sony sees first loss in 14 years

Demand for Sony products is being hit by the downturn

Electronics giant Sony has said it is going make its first annual loss in 14 years as the global economic slowdown hits demand for its products.

For the financial year ending in March, Sony said it expected to make a net loss of 150bn yen ($1.7bn, £1.2bn).

The company also blamed a strong yen for making its exports more expensive.

Sony had forecast as recently as October that it would make a profit this year. The expected loss was much bigger than analysts had anticipated.

Last year, Sony made a profit of 369.4bn yen, but its fortunes have changed as the global downturn has hit home.

In October, it cut its profit forecast in half and shortly after announced it would lay off 8,000 employees and shut some manufacturing plants.

Sony is particularly sensitive to currency fluctuations since about 80% of its sales come from overseas.

The yen is at a 13-and-a-half-year high against the dollar, which has eroded Sony's foreign earnings.

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Intel shedding up to 6,000 jobs

Intel has been hit by the global fall in computer spending

Chipmaker Intel is closing five plants in the US and Asia, with the loss of between 5,000 and 6,000 jobs, as it responds to falling computer sales.

The facilities to close are its factory in Santa Monica, California - its last in Silicon Valley - and sister sites in Oregon, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Intel said the two US factories were based on older microchip technology.

The announcement comes a week after Intel reported a 90% fall in profits for the last three months of 2008.

Intel's profit for the quarter totalled $234m (£160m), down from $2.3bn a year earlier.

In addition to falling computer sales, the firm said it was being affected by the growth in popularity of super-small laptops, known as "netbooks", as they use lower profit margin smaller and slower chips.

'Good step'

Intel said the decision to close the five plants - including two sites in Malaysia - would not affect continuing investment in its more modern manufacturing facilities.

"The market will welcome these actions - this is absolutely a good step," said Doug Freedman, a computer analyst with Broadpoint Amtech.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, one of Intel's smaller rivals, also announced on Thursday that it was being hit by the global fall in demand for computer products.

It reported a 64% fall in quarterly profits.

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