LyrArc Article Gist
Joe Kaeser is appointed new CEO of Siemens. The company's board ousted previous CEO Peter Loscher for poor performance. Siemens pursued fast growth in recent years and this led to missing profit margin goals and decline in share price. Mr. Kaeser, says Siemens tried to do too much too fast and will now "focus on projects, on execution, on quality and reliability."

LyrArc Article Gist
Facebook briefly reaches the $38 price of its IPO offering in July 2013.

LyrArc Article Gist
Shell reported a 60% drop in profit for the second quarter of 2013, after taking a $2 billion writedown on the value of its liquids rich shale assets. Excluding the charges, Shell's profit was $4.6 billion, declining 20% on the prior year quarter. Shell has the largest investments among oil companies in unconventional sources of oil and gas in the U.S. It is producing 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from unconventional sources, including 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from shale at end of 2012. Shell expects the exploration and production division for the Americas to remain at a loss during the second half of the year because of current oil and gas prices. Shell is now conducting a strategic review to sell around half of its main nine unconventional oil and gas assets in North America.

LyrArc Article Gist
Eisinger says the Federal Reserve's staff plays an important role in regulatory reform. He quotes Cornell law professor, Robert Hockett, who says the general counsels tend to become more conservative over time and inclined to support the status quo. This makes required regulatory changes such as increasing the capital reserves at banks and reducing leverage more difficult. Eisinger describes the position of the U.S. Federal Reserve's general counsel, Scott Alvarez, on disclosure of lending by the Fed during the banking crisis, and on capital reserves, which veered more to the position of the banks which preferred less information be released and capital reserves be left at the 5% level than the 6% proposed by the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Comments by Alvarez in nonpublic hearings to Congressional staff members on May 18, 2012, about the JP Morgan London Whale trading losses, according to Eisinger, shows lack of awareness of the overall implications of the breakdown in financial controls and supervision inside the bank....

LyrArc Article Gist
The Zillow index from Zillow Inc., the real estate web site, shows home values increasing by 5.8% in June 2013 over a year ago, and up 2.7% in the first six months of 2013. The Case-Shiller index shows home prices up 12.2% in May from one year ago. Economists say the Case-Shiller index overstates the price increases compares to the Zillow index because it includes foreclosed homes. During a period when foreclosures are slowing as in the past year, this tends to show a faster increase in prices in the Shiller index, with the reverse happening when foreclosures are high. This is because foreclosed homes sell at a large discount. The Zillow index excludes foreclosed homes removing this volatility in the index. Increase in mortgage rates by one percentage point, and future expectations of increases, are likely to keep price gains down in pricier markets of Boston, New York and San Francisco. Inventories are tight in some cities. Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego, Washington D.C. and Orlando, have less than 3 months supply, according to John Burns Real Estate Consulting. Phoenix, Seattle, Denver less than 2.5 months supply, according to a WSJ quarterly survey of 28 metro areas....

LyrArc Article Gist
Friedman describes the leaks on income and expenses by wives of Chinese government officials after the officials took on mistresses. This has provided an unusually detailed acccount of the corruption of government officials in China.