| Starbucks to close some stores, stop selling breakfast sandwiches
Starbucks will say goodbye to its breakfast sandwiches, close about 100 underperforming U.S. locations and slow down the number of domestic openings as the once-go-go coffee company retools itself amid a slowing economy. The changes, announced Wednesday along with modest first-quarter earnings, also include putting more emphasis on overseas expansion. Few stores will be closed in the Pacific Northwest, and employees at the shuttered stores will be transferred to other sites, said Chairman Howard Schultz, who took over as chief executive Jan. 7. "It's important to understand a new day is here," Schultz said in an interview with the Seattle P-I after the earnings release. "We want to put the customer at the forefront of every decision we make, and we want to exceed their expectations at what we are doing." Schultz, who replaced fired CEO Jim Donald, said a five-point plan on a "catalyst for change" would be revealed at the company's annual meeting March 19.
Financial Blogs Bear Witness to Misery
While most U.S. investors enjoyed a day off for Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 21, financial bloggers watched the markets tank in Asia and Europe, and braced for big damage when the U.S. stock market reopened for business the next day. Bespoke Investment Group's Think B.I.G. listed the drops in each of the 30 Dow stocks in pre-market trading on Jan. 22—and it wasn't pretty. To illustrate how bad it is for traders, Trader Mike posted a video of a young distraught fellow losing gobs of money. (Warning: The video contains abundant profanity.) Long or Short Capital's tips for "how to end it" might cheer him up—or maybe not. Over at 24/7 Wall St., Jon Ogg asserted that the Federal Reserve is "far behind the curve," and asked if the Fed would attempt to limit the damage by cutting rates before its scheduled meeting on Jan.
Key dates in the auto industry in 2007
Sept. 4: Toyota Motor Corp. beats out Ford in August sales, bringing it closer to overtaking Ford as the No. 2 automaker in U.S. sales for 2007. Sept. 6: Chrysler names Jim Press, the former head of Toyotas North American operations, its vice chairman and president in charge of sales and marketing. Sept. 13: The UAW names GM the lead company in its 2007 contract negotiations. Ford and Chrysler extend their contracts indefinitely. Sept. 14: Midnight deadline for UAW and GM to reach a new contract passes without an agreement, but bargaining continues. Sept. 24: More than 74,000 GM workers strike the automaker after the UAW and GM fail to reach a contract agreement. Sept. 26: The UAW and GM reach a historic tentative contract agreement, ending a two-day strike.
Ahead of the Curve
On Wall Street, vultures don't go after dead things. They go after things that are alive and very cheap. And right now, they're going after troubled financial stocks in a big way, which means it's time to move in. I was way too early when I said in this column on Oct. 26 that it was time for bottom-fishing in the financial sector. Those stocks are off about 6% since I said that. But now it's time. The vultures have arrived. Investing billions of dollars, they're taking large equity stakes in companies whose capital structures have been wrecked by losses in subprime-mortgage securities. They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't believe two things. First, that there are no further shoes to drop the losses already announced pretty fully take account of the risks.
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