The vehicle was recovered in the parking lot of another hotel on Monday afternoon, WWBT reported on its website, citing sources. It put the value of the equipment at about $200,000.The Defense Information Systems Agency, which provides communications support for the president and other officials, said a government vehicle had been stolen and recovered.”No classified or sensitive information was in the vehicle,” it said in an e-mailed statement.”We take incidents such as this very seriously, and a formal investigation is continuing in coordination with relevant law enforcement agencies.”A DISA spokeswoman declined to give more details. A spokesman for the Henrico County police was not available to comment.Obama is on a bus tour of North Carolina and Virginia in an effort to get his jobs plan through Congress. He is scheduled to speak in North Chesterfield, Virginia on Wednesday.
ALGIERS Oct 18 (Reuters) - Algeria is sticking to its plan
to nationalise Orascom Telecom’s local mobile phone
unit, the finance minister said on Tuesday, after he met
executives from would-be buyer Vimpelcom .”I met a visiting Vimpelcom delegation. I cannot give you
details about what we discussed,” the minister, Karim Djoudi,
told reporters.Asked about the plan to nationalise the Djezzy unit, he
said: “The state has expressed its position and is still
sticking to that position.”Vimpelcom this year acquired Wind Telecom, Orascom Telecom’s
parent company, in a $6 billion cash-and-shares deal. But it is
not clear if the transaction gave the new owners control of
Djezzy, Orascom Telecom’s most lucrative unit.Before the Vimpelcom deal, Orascom Telecom was forced to
agree to talks on Djezzy’s nationalisation after it was hit with
millions of dollars in back-tax demands from Algeria and
prevented from moving its cash abroad.Talks about the nationalisation are stalled because of a
dispute between the Algerian government and Djezzy’s owners
about how the unit is to be valued.
The Competition Commission began studying the merger in June and is expected to inform the firms of its preliminary findings later this week, said three sources with knowledge of the matter.The preliminary findings will give the merger partners a crucial signal of which way the commission will go when it announces its final decision, expected in early December.The sources said it was unclear which way the commission might lean, with one source saying it is “too close to call” at this stage.Bats Global Markets wants to buy Chi-X Europe for an estimated $300 million and merge the most successful new European trading venue with its own Bats Europe to create a viable alternative trading venue in the region.Chi-X Europe, which like Bats is owned by its main clients, is the largest European trading venue with a market share of 19.2 percent, while Bats Europe has 4.8 percent, Thomson Reuters data shows.Chi-X and Bats have challenged Europe’s main stock exchange groups, such as the London Stock Exchange (LSE.L), NYSE Euronext (NYX.N) and Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE), in the past three years with faster and cheaper trading systems.
* Food safety a hot issue in China* Other foreign firms have come under state media scrutinyBy Melanie LeeSHANGHAI, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Wal-Mart’s latest
troubles in China involving mislabeling of its pork products
reflect the retail giant’s struggles in a complex market where
rapid expansion and a cumbersome takeover has marred profit and
growth.After entering China in 1996, its expansion gathered steam
in 2007 when the world’s largest retailer bought a 35 percent
stake in Taiwanese hypermarket chain Trust-Mart. It had 346
stores in the mainland as of end-August.As a result Wal-Mart’s market share in the hypermarket space
jumped to 11.2 percent in 2010, from 4.8 percent in 2005, but
spending involved in the expansion has been weighing on its
profitability.The company acknowledges that.”Wal-Mart China made its maiden profit in 2008. Since then,
we have made steady progress every year despite the aggressive
store roll out program. As you know, new stores take time before
they can generate substantial profits,” a Wal-Mart spokesman
said in emailed comments to Reuters.Wal-Mart competes with French hypermarket chain Carrefour
, Britain’s Tesco , Germany’s Metro AG
, China’s Sun Art and China Resources
Enterprise in a hypermarket sector that is forecast to
grow at a compounded annual rate of 10.1 percent between 2010
and 2015, according to Euromonitor.In 2010, Sun Art was the number one player in China with 12
percent of the market, followed by Wal-Mart, China Resources and
Carrefour. Carrefour’s market share has remained flat over the
past three years at around 8 percent.Struggles and difficulties in integrating its Trust-Mart
operation were reasons behind the departure of Wal-Mart’s top
two China executives earlier this year, local media has
reported.”Carrefour and Tesco have a long track record of being
successful outside their home market whereas Wal-Mart has not,”
said Paul French, chief China analyst at retail consultancy
Access Asia.Some other American retailers have faltered too. Best Buy
, the world’s largest consumer electronics chain, closed
all of its namesake stores in China earlier this year to cut
costs, although it said last month that it is mulling a return.”In general, European and Asian (retail) companies are much
better operating outside their home territories than American
companies,” French said.While Wal-Mart’s retail expansion may have mixed success,
analysts see its e-commerce strategy as promising. Earlier this
year, Wal-Mart opened an e-commerce headquarters in Shanghai and
bought a minority stake in Chinese e-commerce firm Yihaodian.
Wal-Mart was also part of a consortium that invested in Chinese
online electronic retailer 360buy.”Recent players like Yihaodian and (other) B2C retailers,
their memberships are growing very fast…It’s a good model for
certain segment so Wal-Mart is moving fast by doing investments
now,” said Adam Xu, a Shanghai-based consultant with Booz & Co.STATE MEDIA INCREASES SCRUTINYAuthorities in Chongqing in southwestern China have detained
37 Wal-Mart employees, arresting two, over accusations that
Wal-Mart mislabeled ordinary pork as organic over the past two
years.The company said on Monday it had temporarily closed 13
stores in Chongqing to “complete comprehensive actions to
upgrade the standards” of the stores.The issue of food safety has been a hot one in China, with
reports of watermelons exploding after being injected with
growth hormones, to poisonous milk and infant formula scandals.Earlier in the year, China’s Premier Wen Jiabao called on
Chinese businessmen to “thicken their moral blood” and not just
focus on profits.”In China you see big (food safety) problems. I think the
problem is widespread, foreign and local retailers all face this
problem,” Xu said.Other major Western firms have recently come under
increasing scrutiny from China’s state media, facing exposes and
fiery criticism over hot issues like food safety, and garment
quality.All retailers in China are vulnerable to food safety issues
as gaps in the supply chain could lead to exploitation by errant
employees, analysts say.In February, China fined Carrefour and Wal-Mart a combined
9.5 million yuan ($1.5 million) for manipulating product prices
in some of their stores.Wal-Mart was also fined in March for selling duck meat past
its expiry date in Chongqing.The problem of price manipulation and mislabeling at
Wal-Mart could be the result of a breakdown in its system due to
the lack of training, consultancy Access Asia’s French said.”Obviously you cannot change the sell-by date on something
and you can’t claim that something is organic when it’s not. But
do these guys (low level employees) think it’s really that big a
deal?,” French said, adding that poor monitoring and training
could be the cause of the problem.Despite the scandals, some consumers remain committed to
Wal-Mart.”There are many problems in the distribution chain and so
even the supermarkets themselves can’t guarantee their food
quality,” a female office worker in her twenties who would only
give her surname as Dong, said outside a Wal-Mart store in
Shanghai.”The scandal won’t affect my choice of Wal-Mart,” Dong said.
The bank confirmed to Reuters that it’s rolling out a new insurance plan next year that will give employees accounts to help cover medical expenses. They can either put their own pretax dollars in the accounts, or pay higher insurance premiums and have the company fund the account.If employees opt to put their own money into the accounts, they are on the hook for more of their medical expenses if they get sick. If they stay healthy, they benefit from lower premiums.Across the United States, companies are pressing their staff to open these types of accounts because they force consumers to think more about how they are spending healthcare dollars.But for most employers, these accounts are one option among many for health insurance, said Alexander Domaszewicz, a principal with human resources consulting firm Mercer.Only a handful of other companies, including General Electric Co and JPMorgan Chase & Co, are going the same route as Wells Fargo and offering only account-based healthcare plans.”It still isn’t common for very large firms,” Domaszewicz said.But other companies may follow suit because account-based health plans can cut employees’ and companies’ premium costs by 15 percent.Other employers often follow big companies like Wells Fargo when it comes to benefits, Domaszewicz said.In materials sent to employees, Wells said it was making the change “because rising health care costs and the impact of federal health care reform require us to take a new approach to managing costs together.”Studies are mixed over whether the new U.S. healthcare law will drive up employers’ healthcare costs, but overall U.S. health insurance premiums have surged over the last decade.A study last month by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the average annual premium for family coverage through an employer increased 9 percent to $15,073 in 2011 from the year before. Since 2000, premiums have risen 134 percent.Employers pay nearly three-quarters of that premium, a rate that has held fairly steady for the last 10 years, according to the foundation’s data.”This is one of the fastest-growing expenses employers have,” said Randall Abbott, a senior consultant at healthcare consulting firm Towers Watson.Cost-cutting is particularly crucial in the financial sector, where the mortgage crisis, low long-term interest rates, and weak loan demand are depressing revenue. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo is looking to shave $1.5 billion from its quarterly operating expenses by the end of 2012 under a program known as “Project Compass.”A Mercer survey found that health benefits costs on average will rise 5.4 percent in 2012, the smallest increase since 1997, because employers have been so aggressive about cutting these expenses.LESS BARGAINING POWERU.S. employers began widely offering healthcare coverage after World War Two to get around government salary controls. With unemployment now at 9.1 percent, however, companies don’t need to work as hard to keep workers happy.With 275,000 full- and part-time employees, Wells Fargo is the 12th-largest employer among public companies, according to Fortune Magazine.About one-third of the bank’s employees already use some sort of account-based plan. Wells will still offer traditional plans in California and other states where switching would force too many employees to change their doctors.Under the bank’s program, employees can have a “health reimbursement account,” which Wells funds, or a “health savings account,” which workers fill with their own pretax dollars.Both accounts will help cover out-of-pocket expenses until a deductible is met. After that, Wells will first share medical costs with the employee and later assume all of them after they reach a certain point.Eligible preventive care, such as routine checkups, annual screenings and immunizations, is covered 100 percent. Employees can earn money to put into their accounts through participating in health and wellness programs.A Wells employee in North Carolina covered on an individual basis would pay about $23 per two-week pay period for the health savings account option, compared with $48 for the health reimbursement account plan.An employee in an individual plan can put up to $3,100 into a health savings account under IRS rules next year. The deductible in that plan is $3,000.In the health reimbursement option, the company can put between $200 and $1,000 in an employee’s account. The deductible is $2,000 for individual coverage. Employees must pay $25 for a primary office visit, which is less than the full cost. There are also co-pays for generic prescription drugs.
