STOCKS NEWS EUROPE-SG sticks with bulk of euro break-up picks - Reuters UK
Societe Generale strategists are sticking with the bulk of 20 stocks picked a year ago and expected to outperform in the event of a euro break-up. Since then, the basket has outperformed the STOXX Europe 600 by 11 percent.
"Our selection was based on the stock's relative performance positively correlating to a widening sovereign spread, strong balance sheet, and emerging market exposure," Societe Generale Head of Equity Strategy Claudia Panseri writes in a note.
The stocks it still backs are Akzo Nobel, Sanofi, L'Oreal, Beiersdorf, Henkel, Adidas, BMW, Publicis, Unilever, Roche, Syngenta , SGS, Nestle, Teliasonera, Royal Dutch Shell, Reckitt Benckiser and Tesco.
"We expect further outperformance of our basket in the period to come. Since May 2011, we have not changed the components of the basket, however we would now suggest avoiding capital goods and tech, namely Volvo, SKF and Ericsson, as fears of a bumpy landing scenario in China are on the rise," she says.
Reuters Messaging: blaise.robinson.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net
Business breakfasts launched at Mimosa in Colchester - essexcountystandard.co.uk
Business breakfasts launched at Mimosa in Colchester
11:25am Tuesday 29th May 2012 in News
MONTHLY business breakfasts have been launched to increase links between Colchester companies.
Mimosa in Colchester Business Park was packed for the first Quality Square business breakfast, organised by Green Square communications and solicitors Fisher Jones & Greenwood.
Tony Fisher, senior partner at the solicitors, said the purpose was to improve the links in the business community and with institutions like Essex University.
He said: “We are hoping it will be the beginning of a constructive debate on the development of the town centre for the businesses who operate here and the people who visit.”
After enjoying a full English breakfasts guests will be treated to a talk.
The first was from Professor David Crawford, Essex University’s head of business partnerships.
He first gave an overview of the university’s three campuses and the research work carried out including robotics and the internet, and how the Knowledge Gateway is progressing.
Professor Crawford also talked about ways to ensure town centres stay prosperous.
He highlighted the success of Business Improvement Districts - where businesses agree to pay an annual rate which is pooled and spent on town centre projects - in other towns and cities across the country.
An attempt to set one up in Colchester, which would have seen £4 million invested over five years, was overwhelmingly rejected in November 2007.
* The next business breakfast is at Mimosa on Wednesday, June 27 from 7.30am to 9.30am.
Advance booking, costing £20, is essential on phepburn@qsfjg.co.uk
Give these overpaid CEOs asbos (that's Antisocial Business Orders) - The Guardian
Forget civil servants. Forget academic expertise. Forget irksome consultation and careful study of what happens in other countries. No, today's Downing Street wonk knows just how to sort out any problem of public policy: just add CEO.
I'm not referring solely to private-equity baron Adrian Beecroft and last week's publication of his 16 pages of under-researched chest-puffery on how employment regulation should be slashed (actually, let's be fair: take away the gubbins and it's only 13 pages of under-researched chest-puffery). That merely follows on from Mary Portas and her government-commissioned proposals on how to revivify Britain's high streets; and from Topshop boss Philip Green and his 2010 report for David Cameron on how to cut waste in Whitehall.
The old cliche that every journalist has a novel inside them must be updated; now, it appears, every Rich List boss yearns to produce a report on reducing contraflows on the M25.
Not all these ideas stink as bad as Beecroft's, but the notion that business people have some unique cache of wisdom off-limits to anyone else is swiftly dispelled by a glance at the Green report on making government more efficient. Since I can't better it, let me quote the conclusion of Peter Smith, former director of purchasing for the Department of Social Security: "There is not a single procurement idea here that I have not read about in a previous report; is not already being implemented; or has not been tried and failed."
Like many bad things in public policy, you can trace the roots of this to Gordon Brown and his trick of pulling in big-name business people to head mammoth policy reviews: BA's Rod Eddington to look at transport or NatWest's former head Derek Wanless to study health funding. It was typical Third Way gimmickry – but at least back then the bosses sat alongside civil servants and produced something substantial (and, with the Wanless review, something positive, too: a compelling case to spend more money on the NHS). The same cannot be said for those 13 pages of saloon-bar guff from Beecroft.
In the media too, the voice of big business is loud and constant. No BBC discussion of globalisation is complete without advertising boss Martin Sorrell. Rare is the debate over the eurozone that does not feature Next's CEO Simon Wolfson. The logic of booking such people is never spelled out, but is nevertheless obvious: they have made a bit of money, therefore they must know all about economics. In the process, the subject is trivialised and the views of the powerful, on areas well outside their expertise, is given unnecessary amplification. Needless to say, the same courtesy is rarely extended to trade unionists or campaigners from NGOs.
And besides, why not extend the argument further? Jonny Logan was magnificent on Eurovision all those years ago with Hold Me Now, so why not invite him to front a documentary on Ireland's sovereign debt problems?
What's really odd here is that the representation of big business in the media and in public policy comes precisely as major chief executives are increasingly remote from the rest of us. Their pay packages are bigger than at any point in living memory, while many feel less obliged to pay taxes to the countries they deign to advise. Cameron's former efficiency tsar, Philip Green, is equally efficient in the organisation of his tax affairs: he legally avoids paying millions to Revenue and Customs by paying himself in the form of a dividend to a Channel Islands company owned by his wife, Tina, who in turn is legally resident in the tax haven of Monaco.
But for chutzpah, Sorrell goes one better. In September 2008, he wrote an op-ed for the FT about how his London staff suffered "ruinous housing costs, high crime levels and creaking public transport". Just a few months after issuing this plea for greater public spending, he moved his FTSE 100 firm to Dublin for tax purposes, even while keeping its offices in London. Oh, and as Ferdinand Mount points out in his book The New Few, in 2008 the WPP boss got 631 times the wage of his average employee. Yet somehow Sorrell's views on what should be done about taxes for the super-rich get far more airtime on Newsnight than, say, a tax-justice campaigner such as John Christensen.
In an ideal world, the media and government would simply give less prominence to big business. But that isn't going to happen any time soon. So meanwhile, the rest of us should at least get some say on which business people should not be allowed to pronounce on public policy. We could do it through a scheme called Antisocial Business Orders, or asbos, for short.
Executives of a company might earn an asbo if they are on excessive pay packages, or arrange their tax affairs so as to (let's be gentle here) inconvenience the Revenue. Or a boss might not give enough of his corporate budget to training staff, or investing in wider community projects. Chris Bones, a professor at Manchester Business School, suggests awarding asbos for climate-destructive corporate behaviour.
Unlike the other asbos, the ones for business wouldn't carry any punishment – a committee of judges would simply slap them on firms behaving perfectly legally, just very, very badly. And then, when the Today programme stuck on Sorrell for the umpteenth time, families across the land would know not to pay him any heed. After all, he earned his asbo a long time ago.
Student business is to help NEETs find work - Buckingham Today
A WILD card entry by a group of Brackey students saw them rise to the top during a dragons den style competition last month.
The Magdalen College School students thought their ambition of creating a recruitment business focused on young people was sunk when they did not get through the first round of the enterprise competition with other Northants Schools.
But with the latest OECD figures showing that more than a fifth of young people in the UK are out work, judges saw the value of the Recruit21 business plan and booked them a place at the finals held at the iCon Centre in Daventry on Thursday, May 3.
The competition was hosted by of the SWAN Rural Enterprise Centre and Northants Enterprise Ltd and dragons included Carol Morrin from logistics firm DHL, and Steph Smalls from credit card giant Barclaycard.
The group organised themselves as a normal business with; 17-year-old Duncan Balloch fulfilling the role of managing director, 17-year-olds Sam Naylor and Jack Brownrigg were responsible for business development, Will Armistead, 16, and Olly Paterson, 17, on finance, and Edd Russell, 17, was the sales and marketing director.
That approach gave them the edge during the final and judges thought their ability work as a team, with each able to answer questions on their own field expertise, provided for a slick presentation.
Mr Balloch said there had been a lot of interest in their proposals and are in talks with a firm willing to push the idea toward becoming a profit making business, which has the added benefit of helping the section of the labour force hit worst by the recession
He added: “It was incredible to win because we had put a lot of work in and to have that recognised was fantastic.”
Mr Russell said: “It took a few days to sink in, to have two massive companies say they were interested in what we were doing was huge.”
The idea of marketing a recruitment agency toward young people and businesses wanting to hirer them had already attracted good feedback from the local area after pitching the idea to members of Brackley Means Business.
BMB chairman Jan Dean said: “It’s good that young people born and breed in Brackley are coming up with winning ideas.”
European Stocks Are Little Changed; Banks Drop, Rio Rises - Bloomberg
European stocks were little changed, following last week’s rally for the region’s equity benchmark, as a selloff in banks offset Greek opinion polls that eased concern the country will leave the euro.
Bankia SA (BKIA) sank 13 percent after the lender said it will seek 19 billion euros ($24 billion) of state funds and Spanish borrowing costs surged. Mining companies limited losses, led by Rio Tinto Group and Antofagasta Plc, as copper climbed amid dwindling stockpiles in China.
The Stoxx Europe 600 Index (SXXP) slipped less than 0.1 percent to 242.47 at the close in London. Markets in Denmark, Iceland, Luxembourg, Austria, Norway and Switzerland were closed for a public holiday today, while U.S. exchanges were shut for Memorial Day.
“Investor sentiment is very cautious and there is likely to be a lot of volatility with the Greek elections looming over the market,” said Keith Bowman, an equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Plc in London. “A lot of people are sitting on the sidelines where they can and are waiting for a bit more certainty.”
European stocks posted their first weekly gain of the month last week as China pledged to bolster growth and a three-week selloff left the Stoxx 600 at its cheapest valuation since January. The gauge has still slumped 11 percent from this year’s high on March 16 amid concern Greece will fail to implement the measures required to stay in the euro.
Greek Opinion Polls
Greece’s New Democracy, which supports the spending cuts and tax increases imposed by the European Union, came first in all six opinion polls published on May 26 as campaigning continued for the general election on June 17.
Party leader Antonis Samaras said Greece’s departure from the euro would cause incomes, bank deposits and property values to lose at least half their value within days, while food prices would rise by a quarter.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde upbraided Greek taxpayers and Juergen Fitschen, the incoming co-chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank AG, referred to the country as a “failed state.”
In Ireland, supporters of the EU’s fiscal pact maintained their lead before the 31 May referendum. Four polls over the weekend gave the yes campaign an average lead of 17.5 percentage points, when undecideds are excluded.
National benchmark indexes declined in 7 of the 12 western- European markets that opened today. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 gained 0.1 percent, Germany’s DAX dropped 0.3 percent and France’s CAC 40 decreased 0.2 percent.
Spain’s IBEX 35 Index sank 2.2 percent as bonds retreated, pushing 10-year yields to their highest relative to benchmark German bunds since the euro was created.
Bankia Shares Plunge
Bankia, the lender that Spain nationalized this month, tumbled 13 percent to 1.36 euros after the group said it will seek state funds as it set aside provisions for residential mortgages and lending to companies.
The group took provisions of 5.5 billion euros for non-real estate lending after stress-testing the loans, Director General Jose Sevilla told reporters in Madrid on May 26. It also reclassified 300 million euros of lending, that it had booked as loans to small- and medium-sized companies, as lending to property developers, Chairman Jose Ignacio Goirigolzarri said.
Standard & Poor’s cut the credit ratings of Bankia, Banco Popular Espanol SA (POP) and Bankinter SA (BKT) to junk on May 25, citing Spain’s weakening economy. The rating company downgraded 11 Spanish banks on April 30.
Banco Popular, Bankinter
Banco Popular retreated 7.5 percent to 1.71 euros and Bankinter dropped 4.3 percent to 2.81 euros. A gauge of bank shares lost 1 percent, led by Spanish and Italian lenders.
International Consolidated Airlines Group SA (IAG) dropped 2.7 percent to 137.1 pence amid concern that Bankia, its largest shareholder, may sell a stake in the company. Bankia’s Goirigolzarri said on May 26 that the bank will give details on any share sales when it presents its strategic plan in June.
Rio Tinto, the world’s third-biggest mining company, gained 2.2 percent to 2,857.5 pence, Antofagasta Plc (ANTO) increased 2.1 percent to 1,038 pence and BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), the largest mining company, rose 0.8 percent to 1,716.5 pence.
A gauge of mining shares increased 1.5 percent for the biggest advance of the 19 industry groups in the Stoxx 600 as copper climbed for a third day in London.
Inventories of the metal monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange slumped for a seventh week, the longest losing streak in a year, data from the bourse showed.
Aveva, Technicolor Climb
Aveva Group Plc (AVV) led technology companies higher, surging 11 percent to 1,638 pence. The maker of engineering software products reported full-year revenue of 195.9 million pounds ($307 million), topping the average analyst estimate of 192.2 million pounds. Chief Executive Officer Richard Longdon said, “We are confident about the prospects for 2012-13.”
Technicolor SA (TCH) surged 8.9 percent to 1.52 euros in Paris after investor Vector Capital Corp. offered to back a 186 million-euro capital increase and increase its holding in the producer of film-making technology to almost 30 percent.
The volume of shares changing hands on the Stoxx 600 was 44 percent lower than the average of the past 30 days, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Jones in London at sjones35@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Rummer at arummer@bloomberg.net
What you should know about college financial aid - Marketwatch
By Mara Grbenick
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch)—President Barack Obama opposes a push by Congress to double the 3.4% interest rate on federal Stafford student loans, but Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Fastweb.com and Finaid.org, has a different message: Let the rate expire in July as currently mandated and increase funding for Pell Grants, which help make college attainable for the neediest students in America.
The U.S. is in a brains race, Kantrowitz says, and, to stay competitive, should devote substantially more resources to smart people who can’t afford college.
In a recent conversation, Kantrowitz offered his take on federal education loan policy and his best advice for students and parents.
Question: What frustrates you most about how the college-aid process works?
Answer: “The financial-aid system, which includes the financial-aid application, the methods for evaluating financial need and the types of aid available, is too complicated. Neither the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) nor the College Board’s CSS/Financial Aid Profile form take into consideration consumer debt held by the student or parents. Student-loan debt is also not treated as offsetting to assets or income and consequently the need analysis overstates ability to pay.
“There are three college-savings plans: 529 college savings plans, prepaid tuition plans and Coverdell education savings accounts. There are three education tax benefits: Hope Scholarship tax credit (also known as the American Opportunity tax credit), lifetime learning tax credit and tuition and fees deduction. There are also too many student-aid programs: For example, there are five different federal loan programs — Perkins, subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford, Parent Plus loans, consolidation loans — and they all have different interest rates. It’s too much choice for most people and makes the true cost of college hard to know.”
Q: What should students look for in their college-aid award letters?
A: “In financial-aid award letters, colleges often describe loans as reducing college costs, which is, of course, misleading, because loans do just the opposite—they increase your costs. Also, there’s an important distinction between the net cost, the term used in award letters, and the true cost of college. The net cost of college is the total cost of attendance minus the financial-aid package, which may include a variety of student loans.
“I routinely hear from students who believe they are getting a free ride because the net cost is zero. The net cost is usually the same or similar to the expected family contribution, which may be zero for low-income students. When I look at their financial-aid award letters I see thousands of dollars of student loans and tens of thousands of dollars of Parent Plus loans. That isn’t a free ride.”
Q: What should the goals be, on a national level, to improve financial-aid policy?
A: “In the United States, we are not adequately investing in our greatest resource—students. Public policy can be based on a variety of goals, such as increasing the number of college-capable low-income students who can enroll in and graduate from college, or keeping the U.S. strong in fields that are going to be strategically important (e.g., science, technology, engineering and math) by rewarding academic merit in those fields. Finally, encouraging college graduates to become teachers in those areas will help educate the next generation so public-service loan forgiveness should be a part of the policy.
“More money for loans means less money for grants. Cutting direct investment in education will ultimately hurt us as a nation. The benefits of this investment are not private. Not only do college graduates earn incomes that are 70% to 80% higher than high-school graduates, but bachelor’s degree recipients also pay more than double the federal income tax.”
Q: Why have the interest rates on some federal student loans remained high even though interest rates for other things like cars are quite low? The Direct Plus loan for parents is 7.9% plus a 4% origination fee. The government makes money on it.
A: “The rates are overall a pretty good deal. When you buy a car, the loan is secured with the car. When you buy a house, the mortgage is secured by the home. If you default on a federal student loan, the government cannot repossess your education. Federal student loans are also higher risk, since they are not credit underwritten. Federal student loans have fixed rates, while most other forms of consumer debt have variable rates, rates that have nowhere to go but up. This is why, if you fail to pay your student loans, your wages or even Social Security checks could be garnished up to 15%.
“The interest rate doesn’t matter while you’re in school. It only affects the cost of college after you graduate. Remember that interest rates are unusually low right now because the Federal Reserve is suppressing increases in interest rates through 2014. If interest rates follow past patterns, they will eventually begin to rise by about the same amount they dropped at the start of the credit crisis. Federal student loans have fixed rates, which over time will cost less.”
Financial crisis: UK can't afford its shopping addiction anymore - Daily Telegraph
It did at one point cross my mind, clutching my three-for-two Christmas ribbon and Per Una underwear on my way to the wine section, that even with 20 per cent off the price of things, that still left 80 per cent to pay.
No matter; I stayed and queued and saved the grand total of £12.50.
When was it that shopping did become a leisure activity, taking over from family, sport, religion, dogs and loafing around with a book as the way people spend their time? More to the point, why did it?
The author Neil Borman, whose book Bonfire of the Brands documented his flight from brand addiction, has released a spoof film about indiscriminate shopping, The Good Consumer.
The voiceover at the start of it declares: "The good consumer is always buying new products. When he is not buying, he is earning money so that he can fund his consumption, or looking for purchases that he can make in future."
Yes, it's heavy handed. But it doesn't feel like a spoof so much as a sober account of the condition of England, recession or not.
A few weeks ago, the retail sector raised a couple of fingers to the credit crunch with the opening of the Westfield shopping centre: two miles worth of expensive shops in a part of London previously known for its proximity to Wormwood Scrubs prison.
The opening was a riot. Another two multi-billion-pound shopping projects kicked off this year – at Liverpool One and Bristol's Cabot Circus – on top of 10 rather smaller shopping-centre openings elsewhere.
And the retail spread is not stopping any time soon; the Westfield developers will be opening another shopping centre on the same scale in Stratford, East London, in 2012.
The recession has clipped our wings, but we're still buying things – although more and more of it is from Primark and Aldi.
Where does it come from, this almost hormonal drive to go shopping, to buy and own more things? Why do we do it?
Men hate it. Children hate it. The shoppers you see in department stores don't give any discernible sign that they're enjoying themselves – bookshops apart. There's something dead around the eyes.
But families will still take themselves off to Bluewater to spend their day of rest – theirs, if not the assistants'.
And if wandering from WH Smith to Scribblers to Boots to Debenham's makes them look like zombies, a working definition of hell would be the shopping centre Christmas sales.
Women queue up at five in the morning to save 50 quid at the Brent Cross Next sales. Why?
The social psychiatrist Oliver James, in his book, Affluenza, squarely attributed much of the high rates of mental illness in Britain and the US to consumerism.
"The Affluenza virus," he says, "is a set of values which increase our vulnerability to psychological distress: placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions... My explanation... is that the virus promotes Having over Being and the confusion (through advertising) of wants with needs."
It wasn't always thus, you know; shopping isn't part of the human condition.
The other week, I was in Walsingham in Norfolk, famous for its shrine to the Virgin Mary. We pottered around the shops after church and before the pub opened – but, this being Sunday, most shops were shut.
And as we browsed the teddy hospital for reclaimed bears and the children's charity shop and the little retail section at the entrance to the priory – three packs of Christmas cards for a pound! – it dawned on me what was missing.
There weren't any chain stores; all the shops appeared to be independent or at least without identical branches in London, Glasgow and Manchester.
The retail equivalent of the M&S discount day will be tomorrow when the Catholic church holds its Christmas (sorry, Advent) Bazaar and the going price for most things will be around two quid.
But then in Walsingham, there is a life that doesn't revolve around shopping: you've got religion, riding, pubs to go to, walks to go on, Women's Institute meetings to attend. Lots of places were once like that.
Funny; it crossed my mind then that the super-luxe section of shops in Westfield is called The Village. Except that village is a parody of the real one.
Tamasin Doe, the former fashion director of Instyle magazine, pinpoints the start of shopaholicism around 25 years ago, during the Eighties, when shopping malls, which had already been around for a decade, began to spread and become a place for the young to hang out. The malls stimulated the collective shopping gland.
"You began," she said, "to be defined by how you shop, and everything else was depleted by it. Everything was defined by acquisition. Shopping became a way to recreate yourself."
The fashion cycle shortened; built-in redundancy became the essence of it, at least for women. The rise of low-cost production in China meant it became cheaper to buy new manufactured goods than to have the old ones repaired.
In fact, for some durables, such as computers, it wasn't actually possible to fix old models; they had to be replaced.
Politics came into it too, notably the 1994 Sunday Shopping Act, which lifted the curbs on Sabbath trading.
It had conscience clauses to prevent people being forced to work on the day of rest, but if you want to hear a not very nice laugh, ask your department-store manicurist or perfume saleswoman whether she can turn down work on Sunday.
At the same time, we got the cult of celebrity. Obviously, there have been pin-ups for the masses – society beauties and cult actors – for well over a century.
But Hello!-style celebdom, being famous for nothing at all, is a comparatively recent phenomenon.
And what celebrities do is shop and be seen to shop and give their endorsement to products that the rest of us can shop for. It's hard to think of images of Wayne Rooney's wife, Colleen, without armfuls of carrier bags.
The symbol and apex of the trend were the It Bags – big, phenomenally ugly handbags that cost from about £300 to £1,500 and had a life cycle of about six months.
Once Britain took to consumerism, it went all the way. Over the past 20 years, the retail sector absorbed 88 million square feet of new space – the equivalent, for those who think in terms of football pitches, of 1,200 of them.
Obviously, you can't have a shopping habit without paying for it – eventually. Because of the liberalisation of credit over the past couple of decades, personal indebtedness is higher in Britain than anywhere in Europe: consumer debt totals £1.5 trillion.
There was a time when, if you wanted to buy something, you had to save up for it. Ten years ago that was seen as almost risibly quaint. Now it looks like rather a sensible thing to do. The demutualisation of the building societies added to the problem.
Don't think I'm being snooty about all this. I was right in there and the upshot in my case is that I have, oh, six credit cards, which cost more to maintain than the baby.
Plainly, the recession has changed things. But only up to a point. One retail analyst, Verdict, estimates that retail-sector growth will fall to 2.4 per cent in 2008 – but that's after 10 years during which average annual growth was about four per cent.
Of the £228 billion we're likely to spend in the shops this year, an estimated £128 million is classed as non-essential, indulgence spending. Even if there's a fall in spending, it's from a very, very high base.
What's the solution? Well, how about going with the grain of the recession, of making do and mending? How about not shopping on Sundays?
Keeping perfectly good clothes even when the fashion roundabout has moved on? Spending time with the family at home? Saving up to buy things?
At the end of all this, we may come to remember that we're more than the sum of our possessions. And that would be a good thing.
Is it time to start your own business? - Daily Telegraph
If you use your car for business, invite clients into your home, offer advice or are the main breadwinner for your family, then you need the appropriate cover. Home-based firms are vulnerable to business disruption, legal claims and damage to property just like site-based ones.
But the message is clear. If you can start a lean business, attract clients and cover yourself against the worst-case scenario, now could be the best time yet to take the plunge into self-employment, regardless of the choppy waters.
What AXA can do for you
AXA’s new website for businesses — axainsurance.com/business — allows start-ups to assess their insurance needs and buy cover in a clear and simple way.
Business owners who want to keep an eye on what they spend can strip out the add-ons and be safe in the knowledge that they have the basics sorted, while others can select add-ons appropriate to their structure and the service they provide — all at the click of a mouse.
Customers decide their own premium and can see at a glance how much various elements of cover cost. This modular approach, written in plain English, is a quick and pain-free way to protect your business, giving you more time to concentrate on your big idea. And for customers who want the comfort of knowing they have all the bases covered at the right level, AXA’s helpline operators are on hand to give you the best advice around the clock.
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