The struggling US investment bank, Lehman Bros has brought forward its third quarter financial statement by a week, and has promised also to detail new capital initiatives after its shares sank 45% on Wall Street overnight.
Markets thought the world was saved; judging by the size of the rebounds in the past day after the saving of America's imploding mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
New market research by industry analyst, Redshift Research, on behalf of Oxygen8 Communications, has found that major UK brands are still failing to monetise their digital media strategies, and campaigns are often in direct competition with traditional print or TV advertising campaigns.
There have been 29 IPOs during the first eight months of 2008, with only a single IPO between April and July. But in August, four companies went public, a level of activity we have not seen in quite a while.
NYSE Euronext reported transaction volumes for its global cash equities and derivatives exchanges for August 2008. Despite a decline in year-over-year volume from August 2007, which was the most active August in NYSE Euronext history due to extraordinary market conditions, year-to-date volumes in 2008 remained strong with double-digit growth across all of NYSE Euronext’s products and exchanges.
US stocks finished down for the week, but with a small bounce late Friday which some commentators claimed to be related to reports that troubled investment bank, Lehman Brothers will raise capital and a claim by big noting US investor, Barton Biggs that the market is near a bottom.
The downturn in commodities since the middle of July has been pretty vicious and this week it seemed to be made more tense by the way the market fell across the board as Hurricane Gustav squibbed it and didn't prove to be the major destroying storm that many had feared.
China, being the largest consumer and major producer of aluminium, remains the growth engine for global aluminium industry. China’s aluminium demand outstripped the domestic supply in the last few years.
Preliminary figures show that Australian gold production fell 7% to a 19 year low in the year to June. Figures from consultants, Surbiton Associates also showed output fell 13% in the June quarter. Final official figures from Abare (the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics) will be out next week in the latest round up on mineral commodity production and exports.