Japan’s TDK gets lifeline from China’s rising smartphone stars

Japan’s TDK gets lifeline from China’s rising smartphone stars

10:58am EDT

By Reiji Murai and Sophie Knight

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s TDK Corp, an electronics parts maker that has struggled to make a profit while several of its peers grew rich in the smartphone boom, has found help rebuilding its fortunes with the rise of China’s smartphone makers. Once a leading brand in cassette tapes that later prospered in magnetic heads for hard disk drives until the PC business headed south, TDK fell behind rivals such as Murata Manufacturing Ltd in making tiny, high-spec parts for mobile gadgets like Apple Inc’s iPhones and iPads. Read more of this post

Wal-Mart Takes a Pause in China; Retailer Plans to Close About 25 Underperforming Stores

Wal-Mart Takes a Pause in China

Retailer Plans to Close About 25 Underperforming Stores

LAURIE BURKITT and SHELLY BANJO

Updated Oct. 16, 2013 11:28 a.m. ET

BEIJING—After years of furiously opening stores in China, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.WMT +1.65% has concluded that a couple dozen of them just aren’t working. As a result, the retailer on Tuesday told investors it will be closing about 25 stores in China, even as it continues to open others. Based on its current expansion plans, China would still add more stores than it subtracts. Wal-Mart is set to open about 30 stores this year as part of a three-year, 100-outlet expansion effort, which will continue to 2015. Currently, Wal-Mart has 398 China-based stores. Read more of this post

Yellow Tail Maker Plans $100 Wine, Spritzers in Profit Hunt

Yellow Tail Maker Plans $100 Wine, Spritzers in Profit Hunt

Casella Wines Pty., the maker of Yellow Tail wine, is developing a label costing $100 a bottle as well as packaged spritzers as it seeks new markets amid narrowing industry profit margins. The winemaker, whose signature product sells for about $7.50 a bottle in U.S. stores and inspired the growth of low-priced, easy-drinking Australian “critter labels,” will charge about 13 times as much for the Casella 1919 brand when it’s released later this year, Managing Director John Casella said in an interview in Sydney yesterday. Read more of this post

Fed Weighs Surcharge on Banks’ Physical Commodity Businesses

Fed Weighs Surcharge on Banks’ Physical Commodity Businesses

Fee Could Spur Firms to Pare Involvement in the Sector

MICHAEL R. CRITTENDEN and JUSTIN BAER

Updated Oct. 16, 2013 6:10 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—Federal Reserve officials are considering imposing a new capital surcharge on Wall Street banks that own oil pipelines, metals warehouses and other lucrative physical-commodities assets, according to people familiar with the matter. Such an approach could encourage banks to pare back their involvement in physical commodities, which has increasingly raised concerns among regulators and lawmakers. Read more of this post

Fiscal Uncertainty Chips Away at U.S. Prestige; Dysfunction Is Limiting U.S. Position Abroad, Observers Say; ‘Sadness From Our Trading Partners’

Fiscal Uncertainty Chips Away at U.S. Prestige

Dysfunction Is Limiting U.S. Position Abroad, Observers Say; ‘Sadness From Our Trading Partners’

THOMAS CATAN

Oct. 15, 2013 7:10 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—As the world’s pre-eminent economic power, the U.S. has been the cornerstone of the global financial system since World War II. Now, observers say that prestige may have been badly dented by Washington’s latest display of fiscal dysfunction, limiting the U.S.’s ability to get things done abroad. Laurence Fink, chief executive of the world’s largest asset manager, New York-basedBlackRock Inc., BLK +2.91% said Friday that he detected “a pronounced sadness from our trading partners and our friends” as he tried to explain the fiscal impasse during his recent travels abroad. Read more of this post

Warren Buffett: Debt limit is a ‘political weapon of mass destruction’

Warren Buffett: Debt limit is a ‘political weapon of mass destruction’

By Jim Puzzanghera

October 16, 2013, 6:13 a.m.

WASHINGTON — Billionaire investor Warren Buffett on Wednesday called the U.S. debt limit a “political weapon of mass destruction” and said both political parties should pledge never to use it as leverage because of the financial damage it can cause. As lawmakers and the White House scrambled to raise the $16.7-trillion debt limit before a Thursday deadline, Buffett said it would be “asinine” for the U.S. to risk its hard-won reputation for paying its bills on time. Read more of this post

Real-Time Economic Data Could Be a Game Changer; Startup Uses Phone Photos to Track Grocery Inflation

Real-Time Economic Data Could Be a Game Changer

Startup Uses Phone Photos to Track Grocery Inflation

SUDEEP REDDY

Oct. 15, 2013 12:32 a.m. ET

The world of economic data may be headed for a substantial revision. Private companies are deploying new technology to overhaul a half-century-old approach to tracking changes in the global economy, promising constantly- updated gauges to guide major corporations, hedge funds and governments. The latest entrant, Premise Data Corp., is the first to create real-time inflation data using hundreds of people snapping photos of store shelves and produce carts around the world daily to track price changes. Read more of this post