09/09 内需型企業、アジア最高益 - 資生堂・花王など 今期の収益下支え

 資生堂や花王など、国内消費関連企業のアジア(オセアニア含む)の地域別営業利益が2010年度に相次ぎ過去最高になりそうだ。アジアの高成長が続き、日用品や食品などの消費が拡大しているためだ。各社とも内需低迷で国内事業が苦戦。自動車や電機などの輸出産業に続き、内需型企業でもアジアが収益を下支えする構図が鮮明になる。




(地域別営業利益は総合面「きょうのことば」参照)


 国際通貨基金(IMF)の7月時点の見通しでは、10年のアジアの実質経済成長率は7.5%と、世界の4.6%を大きく上回る。11年は6.8%に減速するが高水準の成長が続く見通しだ。

 資生堂は今期のアジア・オセアニア地域の営業利益が2期ぶりに最高益を更新、グループ全体の3割超となりそう。今秋以降には低価格化粧品ブランドを投入して、需要開拓を進める。

 ユニ・チャームは国内では1%増益(本業ベース)にとどまるが、タイや中国で紙おむつなどを拡販。アジア地域では19%増益となる。

 赤字が続いていた企業も、知名度向上などで収益が改善し利益が最高となる。花王は今期、化粧品・家庭用品事業のアジア地域の営業損益が7期ぶりに黒字転換し、同事業として最高益になる見込み。インドネシアでは洗濯機が普及していない地域向けに手洗い用の洗剤を投入するなど、現地対応も進めている。

 アサヒビールも中国・青島ビールへの出資や豪飲料大手シュウェップス・オーストラリアの買収で、4億円程度の黒字に浮上する見込みだ。

 アジアでは経済成長に伴う賃金上昇で、消費者の購買力が高まっている。米人材コンサルティング会社のヒューイット・アソシエイツの調べでは、09年の賃金上昇率がインドやインドネシアは6%台、中国も4.5%の高水準だった。

 賃金上昇は人件費増にもつながるが、それを上回る売り上げの拡大が利益増に結びついている。10年もアジアや新興国の賃金は一段と伸びる見通し。生活必需品でも高付加価値品の需要が高まる余地が生まれている。

 国内主要企業420社の4社に1社は、10年3月期ですでにアジアが稼ぎ頭。ただ自動車や電機など輸出型が中心で、内需型企業では先行投資負担などを理由に稼ぎ頭となったところは少なかった。資生堂やユニ・チャームも、アジアが地域別利益額のトップではない。

 アジアの成長力は依然として高いが、米景気の悪化などリスク要因もある。海外の大手企業との競争も激化しており、一段の収益拡大には「日本企業の強みである品質やブランド力の向上が不可欠」(みずほ証券の佐藤和佳子シニアアナリスト)との見方もある。

source: nikkei

Soros to Donate $100 Million to Rights Group

By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: September 6, 2010

George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, plans to announce on Tuesday that he is giving $100 million to Human Rights Watch to expand the organization’s work globally.


Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The philanthropist George Soros said in an
interview that the gift to Human Rights Watch is the first in a series of large
gifts that he planned to make.

Pat Roque/Associated Press
Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, which monitors rights abuses.


It is the largest gift he has made, the largest gift by far that Human Rights Watch has ever received, and only the second gift of $100 million or more made by an individual this year, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. “We’re seeing noticeably fewer charitable gifts at the $100 million level from individuals reported than we did just a few years ago,” said Patrick Rooney, the center’s executive director. “Between 2006 and 2008, an average of about 13 gifts a year of that size by individuals was reported. In 2009, it dropped to six, and this year, we know of only one other.”

The largest known gift in 2010 was $200 million pledged by an anonymous Baylor University graduate, to be dispensed upon the donor’s death, for medical research at the university.

Uncertainty about the direction of the economy has made even the wealthiest individuals more cautious about making big philanthropic commitments, Mr. Rooney said.

Contrariness, however, is a hallmark of Mr. Soros, both as an investor and as a philanthropist. While others have held on to their money, he has made bigger gifts than ever. And he said in an interview that the gift to Human Rights Watch is the first of a series of large gifts that he plans to make.

“This is partly due to age,” said Mr. Soros, who celebrated his 80th birthday last month. “Originally I wanted to distribute all of the money during my lifetime, but I have abandoned that plan. My foundation should continue, but I still would like to do a lot of giving during my lifetime, and doing it this way, with such size, is a step in that direction.”

Last year, in the depths of the recession, Mr. Soros gave the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity that fights poverty in New York, a $50 million contribution that helped it raise significantly more than that amount. He also gave every family with children on welfare in New York State $200 to buy school supplies, a grant worth $35 million that enabled the state to gain access to some $175 million in federal money for which it would not otherwise have qualified.

So far this year, Mr. Soros has donated about $700 million to various causes, including the gift to Human Rights Watch. His hedge fund, Quantum Endowment, grew 29 percent in 2009, earning him $3.3 billion in fees and investment gains.

Human Rights Watch will use the gift to add about 120 staff members to its team of 300 around the world, expand translation of its reports and open new offices. The intent, said Kenneth Roth, the advocacy group’s executive director, is to increase its influence in emerging power centers. The group, which is based in New York, investigates and draws attention to human rights abuses around the world.

Mr. Roth said that South Africa had more sway in Zimbabwe than the United States and other Western powers. Similarly, India, China and Japan are more influential in Sri Lanka. “We need to try to generate pressure on those governments, those emerging powers, now, which means expanding our capacity to deploy our information,” Mr. Roth said.

Mr. Soros put it differently. “I’m afraid the United States has lost the moral high ground under the Bush administration, but the principles that Human Rights Watch promotes have not lost their universal applicability,” he said. “So to be more effective, I think the organization has to be seen as more international, less an American organization.”

He said the gift to the organization was “also from my heart,” an acknowledgment of the training in human rights issues and philanthropy that he received from the group when he was just starting to emerge as a major donor.

“Every Wednesday morning at 8 o’clock, a group at Human Rights Watch got together and discussed issues with the managers,” Mr. Soros recalled. “I was an active participant in that group, and human rights remains an important element of my foundation’s current activities.”

Mr. Roth said few people then knew who Mr. Soros was. “We were just trying to figure out what we were going to do that week and so on, and he was just a guy at the meeting,” he said.
The grant is structured as a challenge that asks the group to raise $10 million from new, primarily international sources, each year for the next decade, but Human Right Watch will receive the Soros grant regardless. Roughly 30 percent of its revenue comes from countries other than the United States, but less than 1 percent is from non-Western countries, where much of the organization’s work is focused.

Mr. Soros wants to see the organization raise more money in places like Brazil, Mexico, India and China, which will be challenging, Mr. Roth said. “This is a transformative grant in more than one way for sure,” he said.

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08/09 'Many failures' caused BP spill

8 September 2010 Last updated at 13:22 GMT

Eleven people were killed and 17 people were injured in the explosion

A "sequence of failures involving a number of different parties" was to blame for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP says.

An investigation carried out by BP said it was responsible in part for the disaster, but it also blamed other companies working on the well.

BP faces billions of dollars-worth of legal claims for compensation over the spill, the worst in recent US history.


US Oil SpillWho's to blame?
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An estimated 4.9m barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf after the blast.

The well was capped on 15 July, and an operation to permanently seal it is due to take place in the next few weeks.

In the 193-page internal report released on its website, BP said that decisions made by "multiple companies and work teams" contributed to the accident, which it said arose from "a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgements, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces".

BP was leasing the Deepwater Horizon rig from Transocean, and its cement contractor was Halliburton.

'Bad cement'

The report, conducted by BP's head of safety, Mark Bly, highlighted eight key failures that, in combination, led to the explosion.

BP said that both BP and Transocean staff incorrectly interpreted a safety test which should have flagged up risks of a blowout.


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"Over a 40-minute period, the Transocean rig crew failed to recognise and act on the influx of hydrocarbons into the well" which eventually caused the explosion.

BP criticised the cementing of the well - carried out by Halliburton - and repeated previous criticism of the blowout preventer.

"To put it simply, there was a bad cement job and a failure of the shoe track barrier at the bottom of the well, which let hydrocarbons from the reservoir into the production casing," said outgoing chief executive Tony Hayward.

"The negative pressure test was accepted when it should not have been, there were failures in well control procedures and in the blowout preventer; and the rig's fire and gas system did not prevent ignition," he said.

The blowout preventer that failed was recovered from the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday and transported to a Nasa facility near New Orleans where it will be placed in the custody of the US Justice Department and examined.

Transocean and Halliburton have not yet commented on the report.

'Lessons for future'

BP's incoming chief executive Bob Dudley said the report proved that the explosion was "a shared responsibility among many entities".

The company said it had accepted all the recommendations in the report, and would implement them worldwide.

"We are determined to learn the lessons for the future and we will be undertaking a broad-scale review to further improve the safety of our operations... to ensure that a tragedy like this can never happen again," Mr Dudley said in a statement.

BP's shares rose after the report was published at 1100 GMT (1200 BST).

BP says dealing with the aftermath of the spill has cost $8bn (£5.2bn), and it has already paid out about $399m in claims to people affected by the spill.

The leak caused widespread disruption to jobs in the fishing and tourism industries along the US Gulf Coast.

A national commission is expected to submit a report to President Barack Obama by mid-January next year. A Congressional joint investigation will submit a report later than month.

The US Justice Department is also investigating the disaster, but its investigations will only conclude when lawyers and investigators have found evidence, or not, of criminal wrongdoing.


./.

07/09 Suicides cost Japan economy $32bn

The government in Japan says suicides and depression cost its economy almost 2.7tn yen ($32bn; £21bn) last year.

The figures refer to lost incomes and the cost of treatment. It is the first time Japan has released such figures.

Japan has one of the world's highest suicide rates, with more than 32,000 people killing themselves last year. PM Naoto Kan sees it as proof of an economic and emotional downturn.

The government is setting up a task force to try to reduce the rate.

From Friday, it will run a video clip of a footballer from the J-league on its website, urging people to be more aware of the problem.

Lost income
Continue reading the main story

Start Quote
Decreasing suicides would be one way to build a society with a minimum level of unhappiness”
End Quote
Naoto Kan

Prime Minister of Japan
"Given that the number of suicides in Japan has been over 30,000 for 12 straight years, this is a problem that needs to be addressed by the entire nation," a health, labour and welfare ministry official said.

"We hope this study triggers stronger prevention measures."

The study showed that those who took their lives last year - 26,500 people in 2009 - when they were aged 15 to 69 would have earned 1.9tn yen had they worked until retirement.

Mr Kan has pointed to the suicide numbers as proof of what he believes is wrong with the country, with too many people suffering economically and emotionally.

"There are many causes of suicides. Decreasing them would be one way to build a society with a minimum level of unhappiness," he said.

But attitudes to depression in Japan arguably demand equally urgent scrutiny, correspondents say.

In a country in which stoicism and consensus are highly valued, many older people in particular view mental illness as a stigma that can be overcome simply by trying harder, they say.

The use of psychotherapy to treat depression has lagged behind North America and Europe, with Japanese doctors often viewing medication as the sole answer, they add.