Archive for the ‘EU’ Category
Microsoft has appealed against a 899m euros ($1.4bn; £680.9m) fine given for defying sanctions imposed on it for anti-competitive behaviour.
The penalty – the largest ever from the European Commission – came after it failed to comply with a 2004 ruling that it abused its market position.
The ruling said that Microsoft was guilty of not providing key code to rival software makers.
Microsoft said it was appealing to seek “clarity from the court”.
The Commission said that it was confident the fine was “legally sound”.
Freezing out rivals
The challenge has been lodged with the EU Court of First Instance.
When they handed down the punishment in February, EU regulators said Microsoft was the first to break an EU anti-trust ruling.
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DISPUTE TIMELINE
March 2004: EU fines Microsoft 497m euros and orders it to release key Windows code to rival software developers
September 2004: Microsoft tries to have the ruling temporarily suspended
April 2006: Microsoft appeals against the ruling in the European Court of First Instance
September 2007: Microsoft loses its appeal
February 2008: EU imposes 899m euros fine on Microsoft for defying sanctions
May 2008: Microsoft appeals the fine, “seeking clarity”
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The fines came on top of earlier fines of 280m euros imposed in July 2006, and of 497m euros in March 2004.
An investigation concluded in 2004 that Microsoft was guilty of freezing out rivals in products such as media players, while unfairly linking its Explorer internet browser to its Windows operating system at the expense of rival servers.
The European Court of First Instance upheld this ruling last year, which ordered Microsoft to pay 497m euros for abusing its dominant market position.
Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it would open up the technology of some of its leading software, including Windows, to make it easier to operate with rivals’ products.
- In: Around | bubble | EU | Globe | Housing | IMF | iPhone 2.0 Unlocked | London | Mumbai | New Delhi | Spread | U.S | united states | Woes
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Emma Linnane in her apartment in Dublin. Its value has declined by $100,000.
The collapse of the housing bubble in the United States is mutating into a global phenomenon, with real estate prices swooning from the Irish countryside and the Spanish coast to Baltic seaports and even parts of northern India.
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This synchronized global slowdown, which has become increasingly stark in recent months, is hobbling economic growth worldwide, affecting not just homes but jobs as well.
In Ireland, Spain, Britain and elsewhere, housing markets that soared over the last decade are falling back to earth. Property analysts predict that some countries, like this one, will face an even more wrenching adjustment than that of the United States, including the possibility that the downturn could become a wholesale collapse.
To some extent, the world’s problems are a result of American contagion. As home financing and credit tightens in response to the crisis that began in the subprime mortgage market, analysts worry that other countries could suffer the mortgage defaults and foreclosures that have afflicted California, Florida and other states.
Citing the reverberations of the American housing bust and credit squeeze, the International Monetary Fund last Wednesday cut its forecast for global economic growth this year and warned that the malaise could extend into 2009.
“The problems in the U.S. are being transmitted to Europe,” said Michael Ball, professor of urban and property economics at the University of Reading in Britain, who studies housing prices. “What’s happening now is an awful lot more grief than we expected.”
For countries like Ireland, where prices were even more inflated than in the United States, it has been a painful education, as homeowners learn the American vocabulary of misery.
“We know we’re already in negative equity,” said Emma Linnane, a 31-year-old university administrator.
She bought a cozy, one-bedroom apartment in the Dublin suburbs with her fiancé, Paul Colgan, in May 2006, at the peak of the market. They paid $575,000 — at least $100,000 more than it would fetch today. “I sometimes get shivers thinking about it,” Ms. Linnane said, “but I’ll let the reality hit me when I go to sell it.”
That reality is spreading. Once-sizzling housing markets in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states are cooling rapidly, as nervous Western Europeans stop buying investment properties in Warsaw, Tallinn, Estonia and other real estate Klondikes.
Further east, in India and southern China, prices are no longer surging. With stock markets down sharply after reaching heady levels, people do not have as much cash to buy property. Sales of apartments in Hong Kong, a normally hyperactive market, have slowed recently, with prices for mass-market flats starting to drop.
In New Delhi and other parts of northern India, prices have fallen 20 percent over the last year. Sanjay Dutt, an executive director in the Mumbai office of Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate firm, describes it as an erosion of confidence.
Much of the retrenchment seems to be following the basic law of gravity: what goes up must come down. With low interest rates helping to inflate housing bubbles in many countries, economists said the confluence of falling prices was predictable, if unsettling.
This is not the first housing downturn to cross borders, but its reverberations have been amplified by the integration of financial markets. When faulty American mortgages end up on the books of European banks, the problems of the United States aggravate the world’s problems.
Consider Britain, which had one of Europe’s most robust housing markets, with less of an oversupply than in Ireland or Spain. Then last summer came the subprime crisis across the Atlantic.
Within two months, mortgage approvals dropped 31 percent, compared with the previous year. And by March, average housing prices had fallen 2.5 percent, the largest monthly decline since 1992.
“The boom in house prices was actually much bigger here than in the U.S.,” said Kelvin Davidson, an economist at Capital Economics in London. “If anything, people should be more worried than in the U.S.”
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- In: Beijing | boycott | china | EU | Geneva | Nicolas Sarkozy | Olympics | opening | Tibet
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Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, has led a chorus of European criticism over China’s actions in Tibet, refusing to rule out a boycott of the Olympic Games opening ceremony.
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Tibet groups abroad say a protester was shot dead when police responded by ‘firing indiscriminately’
“I don’t close the door to any option. I want dialogue to begin and I will graduate my response according to the response given by Chinese authorities,” Mr Sarkozy said.
Until yesterday, Western governments had been measured in their response to two weeks of unrest in Tibet, mostly rejecting any possibility of an Olympics boycott.
But days of strident attacks on the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, by Beijing; an uncompromising security response inside Tibet, and the publicity gained by anti-China protesters abroad have generated a fiercer response.
Britain also criticised Beijing, with an annual report by the Foreign Office highlighting Beijing’s “violation” of human rights in Tibet. David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said worldwide concern about the situation in Tibet was “justified and proper”.
“There needs to be mutual respect between all communities and sustained dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Chinese authorities,” he said.
In its first collective statement, the European Union demanded that China stop using force against peaceful protesters, while also calling on demonstrators to “desist from violence”.
“The EU stresses the importance it attaches to the right of freedom of expression and peaceful protest,” it said at the United Nations in Geneva.
Germany also urged dialogue between China and the Dalai Lama. A spokesman said Chancellor Angela Merkel was prepared “at any time” to repeat her meeting last year with the Dalai Lama, which plunged relations between Beijing and Berlin into an unexpected freeze.
At the weekend, the Chinese government accused the Dalai Lama of being behind rioting in Lhasa, which left 19 dead, and of conspiring with Muslim terrorists to sabotage the Olympic Games.
A government spokesman said a protest by free speech campaigners at the lighting of the Olympic torch in Greece was “shameful and unpopular”.
The spokesman added: “We also believe that competent authorities in countries through which the torch relay will pass have the obligation to ensure a smooth relay.”
This suggests that China expects host countries, including Britain, to react vigorously to prevent protests.
Today, in a public relations fightback, Beijing will take a small, carefully selected group of foreign journalists to Lhasa to present its side of the story.
The government confirmed that a policeman was killed by rioters in a Tibetan area of Sichuan province on Monday.
Tibet groups abroad say a protester was shot dead when police responded by “firing indiscriminately”.
- In: banks | Credit Suisse. | EU | European banks | Federal Reserve | inflation | leaders | losses | reveal | UBS
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EU leaders urged international banks to help calm markets by revealing recent losses, wrapping up two days of talks that come to a close Friday with a report showing inflation in the euro area hit a new high.
art.euro.strength.gi.jpg
The srength of the euro is a topic of increasing concern to EU leaders and was a “serious issue” at the summit.
Yearly inflation in the 15 nations that share the euro hit a revised 3.3 percent last month, the EU statistical agency said Friday — setting a new record as prices for oil and food surged.
The dollar’s extended slump was central to the discussions.
Just as Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa called the euro’s strength a a “serious issue,” the euro hit a new high against the U.S. dollar, peaking at $1.5652.
A more expensive euro makes German cars and French wines tougher to sell to the EU’s biggest trade partner, the U.S. A strong euro, however, could ease inflation by cutting the import bill for dollar-priced oil.
The dollar has declined on pessimism about the U.S. economy, which has fed expectations that the Federal Reserve will continue to lower interest rates to jump-start the economy.
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EU leaders insisted in a draft declaration that the fundamentals of the economy remain strong. But the main lever to curb soaring inflation and runaway exchange rates — interest rates — lies outside their hands, and in the control of the fiercely independent central banks.
EU leaders urged member nations to hold off measures such as fuel taxes that would take more money out of shoppers’ pockets as they shell out more for basics.
The leaders plan to issue a statement expressing concern about “fragile” financial markets with credit tight and banks reluctant to disclose losses from complex investments in U.S. mortgage-backed securities. Those securities began to unravel rapidly last summer.
Banks worldwide have written off more than $150 billion in the past half-year, including large fourth-quarter write-offs by major European banks like UBS and Credit Suisse.
Yet Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said Thursday it estimates writedowns of subprime asset-backed securities could reach $285 billion globally, up from its previous projection of $265 billion.
The statement from the EU will urge banks to provide “prompt and full disclosure of exposures to distressed assets.”
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