Business news with words decline+recession+shares. 7 news.

CONSUMER confidence is falling, the odds of a recession have risen, analysts predict the worst holiday shopping since 2002 - and retail-industry executives are buying their companies' shares like never before. Limited Brands Inc Chief Executive Officer Leslie Wexner and eight other executives bought a record amount of stock last month after prices fell to a four-year low. Dillard's Inc director Warren Stephens made the biggest insider purchase ever as shares of the Arkansas-based department store chain headed for the steepest decline since at least 1980. Cambiar Investors LLC, Royce & Associates LLC and Becker Capital Management Inc say insider buying foreshadows a rebound. The last four times executives added to their holdings, the Standard & Poor's Supercomposite Retailing Index rose an average 9.9 percent in the next three months, topping a 6.2-percent average rise in the S&P 500 Index. Retail company officials increased their investments by US$346.4 million since the start

UNITED States stocks have had the biggest weekly decline in a month after a Federal Reserve interest-rate cut and the biggest coordinated effort since 2001 to provide banks with cash failed to assuage concern that the economy will contract. Washington Mutual Inc led banks, brokerages and other financial firms to the steepest decline among 10 industries in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index. Circuit City Stores Inc, Sears Holdings Corp and Amazon.com Inc retreated on speculation that holiday sales at retailers will fall short of estimates, Bloomberg News said. Shares declined even after central bankers in North America joined those in Europe to inject money into the financial system and alleviate gridlock in credit markets. Reports that showed accelerating inflation caused concern that the Fed will be unable to cut interest rates more to prop up growth. "A recession is in the works," Andy Engel, who helps run the US$1.81 billion Leuthold Core Investment Fund that has

Anthony Bolton, the veteran fund manager at Fidelity International, is calling the bottom for property stocks and considering buying battered-down shares in housebuilders and retail companies. Speaking to investors yesterday at the annual meeting of his £400 million Fidelity Special Values fund, Mr Bolton said that he had bought into a number of well-known UK property stocks in recent weeks. News of Mr Bolton’s strategy came as a report revealed that prices of commercial property buildings had suffered a record one-month fall in November, twice as steep as the worst monthly price declines felt in 1990, at the depth of the last commercial property recession. Values of commercial buildings fell 4 per cent in November, bringing the three-month decline to 7.25 per cent, according to the Investment Property Databank (IPD). If price falls continue at the same rate then the value of offices, shops and warehouses could be 29 per cent down in mid2008 from their peak last summer. The share prices of Britain’s six largest quoted property groups - British Land, Land Securities, Hammerson, Liberty International, Segro and Brixton – have fallen on average by 45 per cent since January. Mr Bolton steps down from running both the Special Values Fund and Fidelity’s flagship £3.2 billion Special Situations Fund at the end of the month. He has run Special Situations since 1979, producing annualised returns of 20 per cent a year. Mr Bolton held a large weighting in property until earlier this year. British Land and Land Securities have been favoured investments. “Now with share prices falling, I’ve started to add back into this area,” Mr Bolton told investors yesterday. The sharp decline in quoted property stocks reflects fears that companies’ underlying building assets were overvalued. This summer’s credit crunch prompted the sudden withdrawal of the large numbers of leveraged buyers who had been propping up the investor market for the past two years. Their sudden absence caused investor demand to slump and capital values to fall, even though the rental market across offices, retail and industrial has held up. But price falls of individual assets, even after the release of yesterday’s IPD figures, are still far shallower than the declines marked down on property stocks, many of which have halved this year. This discrepancy has presented a

A full-blown dollar collapse would be disastrous. Thankfully, it need not happen THE weather may be cold and wet, but in the rich world's financial markets it is beginning to feel like August all over again. Credit spreads have widened and shares are pitching from gloom to elation as investors look to the Federal Reserve for solace. The anxiety is unmistakable. But this time the scare is about more than bad mortgage loans and their baleful effect on the credit markets. America may be falling into recession. And a new fear now stalks the markets: that the dollar's slide could spin out of control (see article). A full-blown dollar crisis on top of a credit crunch and a weakening economy would be frightening. It would send financial markets reeling and tie the hands of the Fed, perhaps forcing it to raise interest rates even as recession looms. The sky-high euro would soar further, choking off Europe's growth. Political tensions would also rise. Already Airbus has called the dollar's decline "life-threatening" and France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has given warning of "economic war". ...

ASIAN stocks rose, reversing earlier declines, on speculation minutes from a Federal Reserve meeting will show the United States economy, the region's biggest overseas market, can weather a slump in values of homes and subprime mortgages. Some shares also climbed on expectations declines this month didn't reflect regional companies' earnings prospects. Mitsui & Co, which lost a fifth of its value in November, advanced. CNOOC Ltd led gains among energy stocks as oil prices rose. "Is subprime going to drag the US economy into recession? I don't think so," said Mona Chung, who helps manage US$2.5 billion at Daiwa Asset Management Ltd in Hong Kong. "Some shares have already dropped to very attractive levels." The Morgan Stanley Capital International Asia Pacific Index added 0.3 percent to 158.05 at 6:47pm in Tokyo, rallying from an earlier decline of as much as 2.6 percent. The index is still down 7.8 percent this month. Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average

EUROPEAN stocks slumped to their lowest in almost two months last week, paced by commodity producers as metal and oil prices fell. Boliden AB, Europe's third-biggest copper refiner, and Anglo American Plc, the world's second-largest miner, led commodity stocks lower. Porsche AG dropped as the weak US dollar hurt the value of US sales translated into euros. "The picture is dimming for commodity stocks," said Herbert Perus, who helps oversee the equivalent of US$57 billion as head of global equities at Raiffeisen Capital Management in Vienna. "The word recession is heard more and more often from the US. It's a very sentiment-driven market with a lot of scared investors." The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index declined 1.3 percent last week. The benchmark has fallen nine percent since reaching a 6 1/2-year high on June 1 because of concern defaults among US mortgage borrowers with the poorest credit profiles will hurt the rest of the economy. "It's reasonable to

US energy and computer companies rallied, carrying the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to its third advance on Friday, after a better-than-expected jobs report outweighed concern banks face mounting credit losses. Schlumberger Ltd and Halliburton Co, the biggest oilfield services companies, gained as oil rose to a record US$95.93 a barrel. Apple Inc, Google Inc and Intel Corp climbed on prospects employment growth will increase consumer spending, helping the US economy avoid a recession. Merrill Lynch & Co led financial shares to their steepest two-day loss since 2002 as the market completed its second weekly decline in two months. The S&P 500 rose 1.21, or 0.1 percent, to 1,509.65 on Friday, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased 27.23, or 0.2 percent, to 13,595.1 and the Nasdaq Composite Index added 15.55, or 0.6 percent, to 2,810.38. About 18 stocks gained for every 17 that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. "Energy, technology - they have ties back to strong