Jonathan Bowes started his career in banking. After a few years, he took courses in business and finance and worked his way up the corporate ladder. Today, while writing part-time for Business District, Bowes assists talented people to find jobs in the field of economics. Contact Bowes at Jonathon[at]businessdistrict.com
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After five years of successful leadership as CEO of US sales for Hyundai Motor Company, John Krafcik is leaving his position to be replaced by David Zuchowski.
Mr. Krafcik, who is 52 years-old, has been working under a contract due to expire at the end of 2013, is the most successful leader of Hyundai to date. It is not yet known if Mr. Krafcik is leaving voluntarily or was asked to leave, but under his dynamic and skillful leadership Hyundai’s market share doubled.
“On behalf of Hyundai Motor Co., we sincerely thank John for his visionary leadership and relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction, which has driven Hyundai’s record growth over the past five years,” said Im Tak Uk, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Hyundai.
Mr. Krafcik joined Hyundai in 2008 from Ford Motor Company. He will be replaced by David Zuchowski, 55, joined Hyundai in early 2007 as vice president of sales. Before coming to Hyundai Zuchowski was vice president of sales and field operations for Mazda Motor Corporation.
No longer necessary to visit Atlantic City. Just turn on your computer and gamble!
As of midnight on November 26 New Jersey gamblers will be able to bet the farm by logging onto their choice of 13 internet gaming websites run by six of Atlantic City’s casinos.
Gamblers can thank state regulators who gave the go ahead on the websites in the wake of a 5-day testing period in which they found “no significant, widespread regulatory problems or technical barriers for going live.” That assessment was according to David Rebuck, director of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement.
New Jersey will become the country’s third state to make online gambling legal, but it is by far the most populated with 9 million residents. During the 5-day test phase the total number of players entering the websites reached 10,000 during the initial three days of 24-hour testing.
Casinos had to limit the number of players to only 500 at any one time on each website during the testing time, and they were also limited in how much they could advertise the sites. Tonight, when the sites go live, these restrictions will be lifted for the sites that have been approved. Officials are optimistic that the new online gambling venue will help give the state’s casinos an economic boost that they sorely need.
“You have to be gradual. You have to be cautious. You have to be measured,” Rebuck said.
He added that casinos wanted to be sure the sites were capable of handling the traffic before they invited large numbers of players.
“You’re going to see accelerating efforts by them to be much more aggressive” about marketing, he said.
Increased revenue from taxes and reduced spending from budget cuts combined to give America’s lowest budget deficit figures since 2008, according to Treasury Department data published on Wednesday.
During the last month of the fiscal year, which goes from October to September, the government brought in $75.1 billion more than what it spent. This leaves the year’s deficit at $680 billion, down from $1.09 trillion in 2012.
For every dollar that the government spent last year it collected 80 cents. The downturn for the government was caused by the 2007-2009 economic crises, which lowered government revenues substantially while increasing spending due to large unemployment benefit payouts.
About 80 percent of the deficit’s reduction came from higher taxes collected, the Treasury said in a statement. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said that the budget gap fell at its quickest pace since WW II during the past four years.
“Congress must build on this progress by crafting a pro-jobs and pro-growth budget agreement that strengthens the economy while maintaining fiscal discipline,” Lew said in the statement.
Stocks went south yesterday as investors’ anxiety over the possible shutdown of the government grew. The deadline to approve a budget is this Monday night, September 30, at midnight. As bad as not passing a budget would be, a far worse scenario is what is really worrying people; the possibility that the stalled Congress will not pass a bill to raise the nation’s ceiling on borrowing.
If the budget does not pass, forcing the government into a partial shutdown for the first time in 17 years, the prospect of government default on its loans will become a real possibility, sending fear into the hearts of investors.
The tension caused by the fight over the budget and the debt ceiling is easy to understand: US credit is the basic foundation that all other investment stands upon, mainly because there is an assumption that the country will always pay its debts.
“The concern is government has become so polarized that if it cannot pass (a budget), there’s a greater chance that the debt ceiling battle will go to the brink or possibly lead to a default,” said Alec Young, global equity strategist with S&P Capital IQ.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 15,129.67, down 129 points, or 0.8 percent. The S&P 500 dropped 10 points, to 1,681.55, a loss of 0.6 percent. The Nasdaq fell 10 points also, a difference of 0.3 percent, to 3,771.48.
Frozen Yogurt in Cairo Could Not Withstand the Heat of Conflict
In early 2011 four young partners opened Egypt’s first frozen yogurt store. Prospects then were good, as long as the country could maintain some level of stability.
Unfortunately, two weeks after opening in the swank Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek, the mass demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak broke out, hitting the economy, including the new yogurt shop, hard. But things calmed down a bit, and by the fall of 2011 Bloomberg Business Week featured a story about “MaybeTwo,” the yogurt store that seemed to bounce back from the turmoil of the beginning of the year.
Not only did they survive, but they were thriving. In the fall of 2011 the partners were ready to open two more branches of their shop in Cairo.
“In five years’ time we want to be an international franchise,” one of the four partners, Mohamed Ashour, then 28, said at the time. “A lot of young people want to start businesses, especially after the revolution.”
Their dream, however, was not to be. After resisting corruption to such an extent that the chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cairo, Hisham Fahmy, described the foursome as “heroes,” and the drying up of credit because of the instability, the friends could not withstand the pressure.
“The guy who used to come to take $5 from me before was now coming to get $500,” one partner explained. “Corruption was skyrocketing.”
“We were undergoing terrible pressure,” a second partner, el-Sherif said. “Suppliers who used to give us 90 days’ grace period wanted payment after two days.”
In April the distraught investors closed one store, but tried to find financing for the other two, hoping that the political and economic scene in Egypt were get under control.
On June 1st they had no choice but to close down their other two yogurt shops. Now Cairo’s once flourishing Maybe Two stores are just a memory. Three of the four friends and partners have left the country. The partner still in Egypt heads a real estate operation. Another went to Kuwait and opened a fast-food outlet. The last two, a married couple, took their three year-old son to London. They are looking for regular jobs while they decide what their next investment should be.
“Egypt is not in a shape for us to raise a child there,” the partner in London explained on Sept 5, the day assailants bombed the motorcade of the Egyptian Interior Minister in downtown Cairo, nearly killing him. “We need somewhere where our child can play and not to be in this aggressive atmosphere,” el-Sherif said.
