Business news for Thu, 29 Nov 2007 & with word late. 16 news.

FOREIGN developers and corporations will start to pay a land-use tax from next year in Shanghai, according to a notice issued by the city government. The land-use tax will range between 1.50 yuan and 30 yuan (US$4.06) per square meter per year depending on the size and location of the property, the notice said late on Wednesday. Foreign companies are exempted from the tax before the notice takes effect but they still need to pay certain fees for land use. Domestic companies have been paying the tax since 1988. Individuals are exempt from the tax on their residences. The new policy means that developers have to pay tax for the land approved by authorities for construction of property projects. The move is widely expected to add costs to developers which are hoarding land in order to fetch higher selling prices in the future. "The tax won't affect the city's housing prices since it has been imposed for many years," said Xue Jianxiong, head of research at Shanghai

The US economy grew more quickly than previously thought between July and September, figures show.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The dollar was higher against the euro Thursday, in what analysts said was a largely technical trading move rather than a reflection of fundamental conditions. "As was the case yesterday, the moves reflect a chase for stops rather than a shift in fundamentals and should be viewed as a euro buying opportunity," wrote analaysts at Brown Brothers Harriman. Currency markets had a muted reaction to an upward revision to third-quarter gross domestic product. But a spike in crude-oil prices and a rise in weekly jobless claims to near two-year highs weighed on Wall Street, raising risk aversion and lifting the yen. The dollar was buying 109.82 yen, down from 110.17 yen in late U.S. trading Wednesday. The euro was at $1.4745, down from $1.4832 late Wednesday. The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was at 75.615, up from 75.185 late Wednesday.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Natural gas stocks and oil stocks rose in early action Thursday as traders mulled the impact of a pipeline explosion at an Enbridge Inc. facility in the Midwest and oil prices jumped. Crude prices rose $1.56 to $92.18, easing from earlier highs of $95.17 on the Nymex. Enbridge Inc. fell 2.8% to $36.76. Enbridge Energy Partners fell 3.6% to $51.55. The company confirmed the death of two employees in the pipeline blast late Wednesday at its Clearbook terminal in Minnesota. The company re-opened two lines out of four after a fire was extinguished. The company noted that at least one or two lines will be shut down until the damage can be inspected. Meanwhile, the EIA natural gas storage data is scheduled to be released at 10:30am E.T. The Amex Oil Index rose 0.5% to $7.28. The Amex Natural Gas Index rose 0.7% to 1,416. Exxon Mobil advanced 1% to $88.82.

On the 19th day of the strike that has sent a chill down a darkened Broadway, the League of American Theatres and Producers and the Local One stagehands' union announced a tentative settlement late Wednesday night in their labor dispute.

Forty years of decline, but from such a lofty height MICHAEL BILLINGTON, the Guardian newspaper's chief theatre critic, says he has spent more than 8,000 nights at the theatre. This exhausting qualification enables him to take a long view of British theatre since 1945, and, on the whole, he gives it an excellent review. He recalls most vividly a memorable golden age in the late 1960s when he argues that the scope of British writing for the theatre was unequalled since that of William Shakespeare and his colleagues in the first Elizabethan age. This is not absurd. The list was extraordinary: Harold Pinter, John Osborne, Peter Nichols, Sir Tom Stoppard and Sir Alan Ayckbourn. With Alan Bennett, Caryl Churchill, Mike Leigh and Sir David Hare waiting in the wings, and Samuel Beckett sending an occasional contribution over from Paris. Moreover, Mr Billington declares that the British theatre had acquired a decisive new role--"a more or less permanent opposition to whichever party was in power". Since he is an admirer of the state-of-the-nation play, he approves of this development, and his principal criticism of the post-war era is that the theatre has sometimes failed in its duty to define exactly what is rotten in the state of Britain. ...

Is the subprime mortgage crisis infecting America's credit-card market? WHEN there is blood in the water, it is only natural that dorsal fins swirl around excitedly. Now that America's housing market is ailing, predators have their sights on the country's credit-card market. Analysts at Goldman Sachs reckon that credit-card losses could reach $99 billion if contagion spreads from subprime mortgages to other forms of consumer credit. Signs of strain are clearly visible. There are rises in both the charge-off and delinquency rates, which measure the share of balances that are uncollectable or more than 30 days late respectively. HSBC announced last month that it had taken a $1.4 billion charge in its American consumer-finance business, partly because of weakness among card borrowers. It is too early to panic, though. Charge-offs and delinquencies are still low. According to Moody's, a rating agency, the third-quarter delinquency rate of 3.89% was almost a full percentage point below the historical average. The deterioration in rates can be partly explained by technical factors. A change in America's personal-bankruptcy laws in 2005 led to an abrupt fall in bankruptcy filings, which in turn account for a big chunk of credit-card losses; the number of filings (and thus charge-off rates) would be rising again, whether or not overall conditions for borrowers were getting worse. ...

One suitor has been chosen, but others are forcing their way into the church AT FIRST it proceeded at a glacial pace, but the sale of Northern Rock has now picked up unseemly haste. On November 25th Richard Branson's Virgin Group was chosen as preferred bidder for the stricken bank, which is kept alive only by public money. The Sunday decision caught many by surprise, not least rival bidders who were either due to present their bids to the bank and the government in coming days, or had done so that weekend and had no inkling that things would move so fast. Such haste at this late stage is unlikely to serve the interest of taxpayers, who have lent over GBP20 billion ($41 billion) to the mortgage lender since it came cap in hand to the Bank of England in September. That was the time for urgent action, and Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, could have moved far faster to sort out the mess. ...

Such a lot of data, so little information IMAGINE you are an advertiser, you want to place your banners on the most popular website, and you want to know how much to pay. Globally, the leading site is Google, which has the most "page views". Or is it Microsoft, whose various sites have, in the jargon, the most "time spent"? Or should you go by unique users, duration, hits, click-through, impressions, queries, sessions, streams, or engagement? Whether or not there is truth in advertising, there is certainly none for online advertisers, at least none that is immediately obvious and simple. Bob Ivins, who is in charge of all non-American business for comScore, a big web-measurement firm, says that the web produces data as "a fire-hose shoots water", and that working out what those data mean is rather like "putting a straw into the fire hose to take a sip". Get the angle even slightly wrong, and you are blown away. Take, for instance, the case of page views, the most widely used measure for much of the past decade. It is the number of times web surfers call up web pages on a given site. Page views became popular in the late 1990s, because they were far superior to the existing measure of "hits", also known as "file requests". Hits are confusing because every graphic on a page, as well as the page itself, counts as a hit. If a site owner puts more graphics on his pages, he gets more hits, even if visitors, clicks and everything else stay the same. "We produced hits numbers because we could, not because it was useful," says one old-timer in the industry. ...

As defaults soar, America seeks to modify mortgages en masse THE statistics are chilling. As many as 2m adjustable-rate subprime mortgages, worth $350 billion, are due to reset to higher interest rates in America over the next 18 months. Resets on Alt-A (or near-prime) loans will continue to climb until late 2010. House prices are tumbling (see article). What can be done to avoid a bloodbath of defaults? Enter the Gubernator. Galvanised by the fact that a quarter of all resets will come in his state, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's governor, has struck an innovative deal with four big loan servicers. This will see the companies extend by several years the period for which thousands of borrowers can stay at the initial "teaser" rate. Crucially, the four have agreed to "fast-track" their procedures to make it easier to include whole swathes of struggling but not hopeless borrowers. ...

[Food] The company will leverage the success it has enjoyed since employing the late Robert Goulet to act out of character in an amusing campaign that brought Emerald brand recognition and sales success. The new effort will continue the focus on nuts as a healthy way to boost energy in the afternoon workplace.

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- Adobe Systems Inc. and Yahoo Inc are partnering to run ads on Adobe's PDF documents developed from its prominent Acrobat software, the companies said late on Wednesday.

The central bank is still hopeful the country will avoid a recession despite signs of stress. The economy grew at a slower pace in the late fall as shoppers watched their pennies heading into the busy holiday season.

Though skies were dark and dreary Wednesday as light showers and sprinkles developed late in the day, it was mild as high temperatures surged to their warmest levels in more than a week. The city's official 48 (degrees) high at O'Hare was the mildest here in more than a week since it reached a balmy 55 (degrees) on Nov. 20. Some areas were even warmer with a 50 (degrees) high in the Loop at Northerly Island and a 54 (degrees) maximum at Kankakee.

It was the post-millennial version of a chicken in every pot: Every American who wanted one should, and probably could, buy a house.

Warner Music Group Corp. and the family of Frank Sinatra have formed a joint venture to manage global licensing of music, film and merchandise involving the late entertainer's work, name and likeness, the company said Wednesday.