WASHINGTON -- The star of the most recent Mitt Romney campaign ad criticizing President Barack Obama for arguing that government can play a constructive role in helping business has major business dealings with government entities.
Dennis Sollmann, the owner of Sollmann Electric Company, appears in a Romney web ad released Monday morning that plays off the president's now infamous "you didn't build that" line.
“I mean, I’m thinking, 'You’ve got to be kidding me,'" Sollmann says in the ad. "He was trying to say: ‘Hey, you didn’t build that business on your own. The government helped you build it.’ And that’s what ticked me off more than anything. Mr. President, unfortunately you have no idea how we here in Midwestern Ohio have to try to run a small business from daylight till night."
An electric construction company in Sidney, Ohio, Sollmann Electric has done work on commercial, residential and industrial properties. It has also serviced "hospitals, government and educational" facilities -- many of which rely on taxpayer funding. Neither Sollmann nor his company returned a request for comment as to how much money in government contracts they have earned. But a quick Google search turned up several instances in which the company either sought out or worked directly with government entities.
According to notes from a Jan. 26, 2006 meeting of the Ohio School Facilities Commission, Sollmann Electrical Company was rewarded a $915,117 contract for work in the Trotwood-Madison City school district.
Notes from a May 31, 2007 meeting of the same body show that Sollmann Electrical Company placed a $1,080,700 bid to do work in the Dayton County School District. This was the lowest bid offered and the commission recommended that it be finalized.
According to notes from a May 25, 2010 meeting of the School Facilities Commission, meanwhile, Sollmann Electrical Company was awarded a $1,689,829 contract for work in the Miami East school district.
Sollmann was also a contractor for work on the Horace Mann School in Dayton, Ohio, according to an Ohio School Facilities Commission form filled out in April 2008. Horace Mann is a public school, an official there said.
In November of 2011, Sollmann made a $274,792 bid with the Ohio Department of Administrative Services to do work on a building expansion at Rhodes State College, another public school.
The first project listed on Sollmann's own website is the work it did building Memorial Middle and High School in St. Marys, Ohio. An official at the school confirmed that it is a public school that was recently completely rebuilt.
The Obama campaign has argued that Romney's attacks over the "you didn't build that" line are woefully unfair, distorting the actual meaning of the president's words.
“The latest ad out of the Romney campaign once again blatantly takes the President's words out of context, showing their campaign will do and say anything,” Jessica Kershaw, press secretary of Obama For America - Ohio, told the Dayton Daily News.
The Obama campaign may take comfort in knowing that, through these web ads, the Romney campaign is seemingly making its point for them. This is not the first time that a businessman tapped by the Romney campaign to whack the president for acknowledging the government's role in a company's economic success has, himself, relied on the government to help with his business. It was reported last week that Jack Gilchrist, the owner of Gilchrist Metal Fabricating in Hudson, N.H. who starred in another Romney ad, had received $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds from the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority in 1999, as well as sub-contracts from the U.S. Navy in 2008.
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Business booming for HSBC as they rake in £44m per DAY in profit - Daily Mirror
HSBC has made more than £500 every SECOND this year... despite being hit by three scandals.
Britain’s biggest bank announced profits jumped 11% to £8.1billion between January and June.
The bank has set aside more than £1.2billion to cover looming compensation for mis-selling payment protection insurance and investments and a hefty fine for allowing money laundering.
HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver said: “It is right that we be held accountable for past shortcomings. We are profoundly sorry for our mistakes, and are committed to putting them right.”
The recent money laundering controversy in which drug cartels and potential terrorists banked with HSBC is expected to cost the bank £445million or more.
Bosses warned the final punishment by US authorities could be “significantly higher” than that after a scathing report found it shifted £4.5billion in suspicious funds from Mexico, and billions more from countries such as Iran, Syria and Russia.
Tory Lord Green has been caught up in the scandal as he was HSBC group executive chairman at the time – before he was made Trade Minister by PM David Cameron.
HSBC also increased the expected cost of settling claims by customers mis-sold PPI by another £340million in the second quarter, taking the total for the first half of 2012 to £637million.
The scandal could cost HSBC more than £1billion in total.
The bank announced today it also expects to pay around £150million in compensation for mis-selling complicated investment products to small and medium-sized businesses.
HSBC is making savage cuts to save money including axing about 28,000 staff worldwide. It also closed 27 UK bank branches this year.
Owen Tudor, of the Robin Hood Tax campaign, said: “Coughing up compensation for the latest scandal is a sticking plaster – banks continue to profiteer at the public’s expense.
Despite the recession, business is booming for banks so it is clear they can afford to pay more for the damage they have caused our economy and society.”
Putting profits above all else can be very, very costly - business editor Graham Hiscott's analysis
NOT long ago, HSBC was deemed one of the better banks.
It hadn’t needed a taxpayer bailout, it was defying the economic gloom and its reputation was intact.
The first two of those are still true, but the last has taken a serious knock. It took a £1.27billion hit for scandals in the first half of the year, and the figure could soar with a punishing money laundering penalty expected and a possible rate rigging fine.
The fact that amid all this it still made £8billion is, quite simply, staggering.
HSBC’s Asian arm is storming and today’s results will do nothing to dampen speculation that it will move its HQ that way, too.
We need HSBC to do well, it’s a London-based success with more than 200,000 shareholders.
But we also need it to remember its roots, to remember individual customers even though it’s a banking Goliath, and remember that slack rules and an obsession about profits above all else can prove very, very costly.
Stocks to watch at noon on Tuesday - News.com.au
STOCKS to watch on the Australian stock exchange at noon on Tuesday:
AQA - AQUILA RESOURCES LTD - up 20 cents, or 9.90 per cent, at $2.22
The environmental authority supports Aquila Resources' proposed port for its $6 billion iron ore project in Western Australia's Pilbara region.
BRG - BREVILLE GROUP LTD - up six cents, or 1.28 per cent, at $4.76
Shares in kitchen appliance maker Breville Group are higher after it said it expects full year earnings to grow by up to 40 per cent.
CTX - CALTEX AUSTRALIA LTD - up nine cents, or 0.64 per cent, at $14.21
Caltex Australia says it is confident of getting investor support for its $300 million capital raising despite a ratings agency casting doubt on its balance sheet last week.
HDF - HASTINGS DIVERSIFIED UTILITIES FUND - down one cent, or 0.39 per cent, at $2.54
The Takeovers Panel has rejected a request to look into aspects of one of the two takeover bids for energy infrastructure investor Hastings Diversified Utilities Fund (HDF).
MAQ - MACQUARIE TELECOM GROUP LTD - up 60 cents, or 7.32 per cent, at $8.80
Business-only telecommunications provider Macquarie Telecom has upgraded its earning guidance for the 2012 financial year by about 10 per cent.
MTS - METCASH LTD - up three cents, or 0.89 per cent, at $3.38
Grocery wholesaler Metcash has paid $46.5 million to take complete ownership of hardware chain Mitre 10.
ORG - ORIGIN ENERGY LTD - up 38 cents, or 3.28 per cent, at $11.95
Higher commodity prices have driven a three per cent rise in Origin Energy's full year revenue, despite lower production of gas.
World stocks rise on continued hopes of ECB action - The Guardian
BANGKOK (AP) — World stock markets rose again Monday as expectations remained high for strong European Central Bank action to stem the continent's chronic debt crisis.
Sentiment was also helped by U.S. second quarter growth not slowing as much as feared. The world's No. 1 economy grew just 1.5 percent in the April-June quarter after 2 percent growth the previous quarter but some analysts had predicted a bigger slowdown.
Markets are pregnant with speculation that the ECB will resume buying government bonds to lower the borrowing costs of struggling countries such as Spain and take other major steps to support the region's economy.
Investors hope such moves would prevent Spain from being forced to seek a bailout that would be much more expensive than earlier rescues of Portugal, Greece and Ireland. A major Spanish crisis could imperil the euro currency union and in turn tip the world economy into recession.
Global markets were roiled early last week as Spain's borrowing costs soared but rallied after ECB chief Mario Draghi on Thursday vowed that the central bank was ready to do what it takes to keep intact the euro currency shared by 17 European nations. A day later, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande said they too would safeguard the euro. The ECB's next scheduled meeting is Thursday.
Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will meet Monday with Draghi and Germany's finance minister to discuss the challenges facing Europe and the global economy.
"There is high expectation that the European Central Bank may reactivate its bond purchase program again to prevent Spain from evolving into a full-blown crisis," analysts at Singapore's DBS Bank said in a report.
In morning European trade, Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.4 percent at 5,649.78 and France's CAC 40 added 0.7 percent to 3,303.34. Germany's DAX rose 0.7 percent to 6,733.01. Wall Street was poised to lose ground with Dow futures off 0.3 percent and broader S&P 500 futures down 0.4 percent.
Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average closed up 0.8 percent at 8,635.44 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng jumped 1.6 percent to 19,585.40. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.9 percent to 4,245.70 and South Korea's Kospi rose 0.8 percent to 1,843.79. China's Shanghai Composite fell 0.9 percent to 2,109.91.
In energy trading, benchmark crude for September delivery was up 23 cents at $90.35 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract added 74 cents on Friday to finish at $90.13 per barrel in New York.
In currencies, the euro was down 0.3 percent at $1.227. The dollar fell 0.3 percent to 78.26 yen.
STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-Sakari Resources up after Q2 result - Reuters UK
Shares of Sakari Resources Ltd rose to the highest in nearly two weeks after the coal producer posted a 66 percent increase in its second-quarter net profit from the previous three months on the back of lower costs and higher output.
Sakari shares gained as much as 4.7 percent to S$1.33, the strongest level since July 19. Sakari stock has fallen 28 percent so far this year.
Nearly 28 million Sakari shares changed hands, 1.2 times the average full-day volume over the past 30 days. Sakari was among the top traded stocks by both value and volume in the Singapore market.
The company turned in net profit of $23.9 million for the quarter ended June, up from $14.5 million in the preceding three months. But net profit fell 39 percent from a year earlier.
"Year-on-year, coal prices had fallen quite a lot and we had expected the weaker performance. But the quarter-on-quarter improvement was actually a lot stronger than what we expected," said Carey Wong, an analyst at OCBC Investment Research.
"The key reasons for the improvement in margins is that they managed to sustain the average selling prices, and they have also managed to reduce cash costs slightly faster than what we expected."
1135 (0335 GMT) (Reporting by Eveline Danubrata in Singapore; eveline.danubrata@thomsonreuters.com)
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11:18 STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-Deutsche cuts COSCO, Yangzijiang target prices
Deutsche Bank cut its target prices for COSCO Corp Singapore Ltd and Yangzijiang, citing poor outlook for the Chinese shipbuilding sector.
Shares of Yangzijiang were 0.5 percent lower at S$1.005 by 0305 GMT. They have risen 10.4 percent so far this year. COSCO was down 0.5 percent at S$0.955. It has gained 9 percent this year, compared with the FT ST Industrial Index's 13.7 percent rise.
"Operating conditions and outlook in the Chinese shipbuilding sector remain challenging," due to declining new orders, falling ship prices, weak vessel financing and intensifying competition amongst Chinese yards, said Deutsche Bank in a report.
The brokerage cut its target price for Yangzijiang to S$1.10 from S$1.20, kept its 'hold' rating, and lowered its new order assumptions in 2012-2014 by 13-33 percent.
It also lowered COSCO's target price to S$1.00 from S$1.10, maintained its 'hold' rating and cut its new order assumptions for 2012-2013 by 11-17 percent. As a result, it trimmed its net income estimates for the shipbuilder by 9.1-9.4 percent over the same period.
1111 (0311 GMT)
(Reporting by Charmian Kok in Singapore; charmian.kok@thomsonreuters.com)
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09:56 STOCKS NEWS SINGAPORE-OCBC raises target on Tiger Airways
OCBC Investment Research raised its target price on Tiger Airways Holdings Ltd to S$0.83 from S$0.76 and maintained its buy rating, citing the Singapore budget carrier's improved operations.
Tiger shares were up 0.7 percent at S$0.695 and have risen around 9 percent so far this year versus the 15 percent gain in the FT ST Small Cap Index.
Tiger's passenger yields in its fiscal first quarter rose 9 percent from a year earlier, while the fall in average jet fuel prices provided some cost relief, OCBC noted.
OCBC said the first-quarter operating profit posted by Tiger's Singapore operations bodes well for the rest of the 2013 fiscal year as it is no longer burdened with excess aircraft, allowing it to moderate its capacity expansion in 2013.
Tiger's Australian unit is primed for recovery with the ramping up of its operations to 60 sectors a day, after being hit by flying restrictions, and the expected peak travel season later in the year, OCBC said.
For a related story, click
0946 (0146 GMT)
(Reporting by Eveline Danubrata in Singapore; eveline.danubrata@thomsonreuters.com)
Asian stocks push higher as ECB hopes build - The Guardian
KELVIN CHAN
AP Business Writer= Hong Kong (AP) — Asian stocks pushed higher on Monday as expectations continued to build that European policymakers will unleash powerful measures to battle the continent's debt crisis.
Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average rose 0.6 percent to 8,691.60 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.8 percent to 19,748.73. South Korea's Kospi rose 1.4 percent to 1,868.92 while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.8 percent to 4,280.00. Benchmarks in Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and New Zealand also rose.
Investors are pinning their hopes on a European Central Bank meeting later this week where many expect ECB President Mario Draghi to announce big plans to support the euro, following his comments last week that the bank is "ready to do what it takes" to save the beleaguered currency. Spain's borrowing costs have surged, raising the risk that one of Europe's biggest economies will need a potentially unaffordable bailout that would strain the euro currency union.
"It's all about the ECB at the moment," strategist Stan Shamu of IG Markets in Melbourne, said in a commentary. "Mr Draghi has made people believe we will see a strong policy response to the rise in peripheral European bond yields," Shamu said. He cautioned that the chances of investors being disappointed following Thursday's meeting are very high.
China's Shanghai Composite edged 0.1 percent lower to 2,107.25 as investors appeared unimpressed by a government announcement the day before that it will launch projects to attract private investments in energy, health and other industry sectors in an attempt to reverse an economic slump.
U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers are also meeting this week, adding to hopes of more monetary stimulus for the world's biggest economy.
On Wall Street on Monday, U.S. stocks fell as investors took a more wary approach, waiting for action from Europe's leaders to follow their talk. The Dow Jones industrial average fell less than 0.1 percent to close at 13,073.01. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 also edged down less than 0.1 percent to 1,385.30, while the Nasdaq dropped 0.4 percent to 2,945.84.
In currencies, the euro rose to $1.2289 from $1.2261 in late trading Monday. The dollar weakened to 78.19 Japanese yen from 78.21 yen.
Oil prices rose. Benchmark crude for September delivery was up 21 cents to 89.99 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 35 cents to $89.78 on Monday. In London, Brent crude was up 10 cents at $106.30 on the ICE Futures exchange.
Four Flintshire council staff suspended in financial probe - BBC News
Four council staff have been suspended over alleged operational and financial irregularities, it has emerged.
The staff are employed by Flintshire's Streetscene section which looks after refuse collection, street cleaning and grass cutting.
North Wales Police said they had been informed.
Council chief executive Colin Everett said interim arrangements had been made to ensure "continuity of service until the investigation is complete".
Mr Everett added no further information could be provided to avoid "risks of identifying the individuals involved or prejudicing the investigation".
Morning business round-up: HSBC sets aside $2bn - BBC News
What made the business news in Asia and Europe this morning? Here's our daily business round-up:
Continue reading the main storyHSBC has put aside $2bn (£1.3bn) to cover potential mis-selling claims and money-laundering fines as it announces a sharp rise in first-half profits.
The bank is setting aside $1.3bn to cover UK mis-selling compensation and $700m for any US fines following the money laundering accusations.
Chief executive Stuart Gulliver described the bank's failure of anti-money laundering controls as "shameful" and "embarrassing".
Pre-tax profit for the first six months of 2012 was $12.7bn, up 11% on the $11.5bn the bank made a year ago. But that figure was boosted by $4.3bn of asset sales in the US.
Investors concerns about Italy and Spain seem to have eased, as comments from European leaders suggest authorities are preparing measures to help the debt-laden countries.
Business headlines
Yields on Spain's 10-year bonds, which indicate its cost of borrowing, dropped to 6.5% in open market trading from last week's record high of 7.5%. A higher interest rate, or yield, indicates greater investor nervousness.
Italy meanwhile sold 5.48bn euros (£4.2bn) at a lower interest rate than in June. Five-year bonds were sold with an interest rate of 5.29%, compared with 5.84% in June, and 10-year bonds at 5.96%, significantly below June's 6.19%.
There were results from two of Europe's biggest airlines, Air France-KLM and Ryanair.
Losses widened at Air France-KLM to 895m euros ($1.1bn, £700m) in the three months to June, against a 197m euro loss a year earlier.
It took a one-off charge of 368m euros to cover redundancy payments as part of plans to cut 10% of its workforce.
Revenues rose 4.5% in the quarter to 6.5bn euros, with the number of passengers up by 2.4%.
However, the carrier saw a drop in its freight business due to the weak economic backdrop in Europe.
Fuel costs hit Ryanair's profits, knocking 29% off net profit for the three months to the end of June.
Ne profit was 99m euros ($122m; £77m), down from the 139m euros the company made a year earlier.
The Irish airline said traffic growth and an increase in average air fares helped to increase revenue by 11% to 1.28bn euros.
In Asia, Japanese output fell for the third straight month, prompting renewed fears the economy is losing steam.
Factory output dipped 0.1% in June, compared to the previous month. It follows a 3.4% decline in May.
The fall was mainly due to lower output in the machinery, iron and steel sectors, data showed.
Looking ahead, two of the world's biggest technology firms , Samsung and Apple, will face each other in court in California later in one of the biggest trials of its kind.
The tech firms have accused each other of intellectual property infringement.
Billions of dollars of payments could be triggered from one business to the other and sales bans imposed if the jury finds one or both parties guilty.
Submitted documents and testimony are also likely to throw fresh light on decision making processes and deals made by the two tech firms with others.
Today's Business Daily programme from the BBC World Service looks at the climate change policies of America's biggest oil company, Exxon Mobil.
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