Hot finance topics

Japan’s unemployment rate held steady while payrolls rose in January, adding to signs the nation’s recovery is gaining pace after a temporary slowdown.
The jobless rate remained unchanged from the previous month at 4.9 percent, the statistics bureau said today in Tokyo. That figure matched the median estimate of 29 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. […]

The addition of 7,600 jobs in January notwithstanding, the Missouri unemployment rate remained at 9.6 percent in the first month of the year.
Displaced workers who have stopped applying for benefits, and therefore do not show up in the employment data base, account for a jobless rate that was unchanged from December.
Still, the numbers are generally […]

Less than two years after getting a U.S. government bailout, General Motors is handing out bonuses that, in some cases, could exceed 50% of workers’ salaries.
"To give GM’s 26,000 salaried employees a stake in the overall performance of the company, their compensation is based in part on the performance of the company and on […]

Turkey’s inflation rate fell to the lowest in four decades in January, supporting the central bank’s “unique” policy mix of interest rate cuts and lending curbs.
Inflation slowed to 4.9 percent from 6.4 percent the month before, the state statistics agency in Ankara said today on its website. That was the lowest rate since […]

Drugstore operator and pharmacy benefits manager CVS Caremark Corp. said Monday that Larry Merlo will succeed Thomas Ryan as CEO on March 1, about two months earlier than expected.
CVS Caremark said Merlo has been working with Ryan for months and is ready to be the company’s CEO. Merlo was president of CVS’s pharmacy operations for […]

WASHINGTON

For those using data from ADP Employer Services to formulate a U.S. payroll forecast, beware of December, said economists like JPMorgan’s Michael Feroli and Barclays Capital’s Michael Gapen.
“I don’t think ADP has been particularly useful in forecasting” the government’s employment figures, Feroli said in a telephone interview from his New York office. “ADP has […]

Torstar Corp. says it has completed the first stage of the sale of its 20-per-cent stake in CTVglobemedia Inc.
Torstar said Tuesday it has received $40 million in proceeds in connection with the acquisition by The Woodbridge Co. Ltd. of a direct interest in the Globe and Mail newspaper, which was completed on Dec. 21.
The move […]

The number of homeowners who owe more than their houses are worth fell for the third straight quarter this summer.
About 10.8 million households, or 22.5 percent of all mortgaged homes, were underwater in the July-September quarter, housing data firm CoreLogic said Monday. That’s down from 23 percent, or 11 million households, in the second quarter.
The […]

Police with riot shields and batons pushed angry student protesters away from London’s Parliament Square on Thursday as lawmakers debated a controversial plan to triple university tuition fees in England.
Thousands of students held demonstrations and sit-ins throughout the country, heaping pressure on the government to reverse course.
Small groups of protesters threw flares, billiard balls and […]