A plea to shed
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WINNIPEG - One of Canada’s largest mutual fund companies says it will reduce the management fees charged on many of its products, starting in July. Investors Group, which is part of IGM Financial (TSX: IGM) and the Power group of companies, says the reductions will affect about two-thirds of its funds.
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One of the last vestiges of hope for Jamestown Mall has been its JCPenney outlet store.
While other retailers have deserted the mall in droves, the 124,000 square-foot anchor store’s presence – and success — has been something that the mall’s proponents have hung onto as proof of the area’s potential. (A Macy’s is also still open at the mall.)
In January of last year, J.C. Penney Co. announced it was exiting the outlet business. At the time, it sounded like a possible death knell for Jamestown Mall.
“For ten months we were in limbo,” said Steven Bingham, the outlet store’s manager.
But then SB Capital Group came to the rescue, buying most of those outlet stores in October and converting them to a new name: JC’s Five Star Outlet. Glen Gammons, who ran J.C. Penney’s outlet division for years, came on board to run the rebranded chain under the new owner.
In a recent phone interview, Gammons said the company’s plan for the Jamestown Mall store is the following: to keep it open. J.C. Penney still owns the building, he noted.
And what’s more, he said, the store is still profitable. In fact, its sales performance put it within the middle tier among the other 14 stores in the chain, he said.
Gammons thinks the mall could see better days down the road. The city needs to team up with a developer to bring in a retailer such as a Sam’s Club or Burlington Coat Factory to the site, he said.
“There’s potential for the mall to be revived,” he said. “I’m not naïve that there are challenges. … But it’s a good piece of real estate.”
In the meantime, the outlet store is in the midst of a 21-month transition to separate the systems and name between JCPenney and JC’s Five Star Outlet.
The slow changeover has led to some confusion. The sign outside the store still says “JCPenney outlet store.” So does the store’s glossy advertisements. The store no longer accepts JCPenney gift cards, but you can use that retailer’s credit card in the outlet.
While a lot of the systems behind the scenes are in flux, what hasn’t changed as much is what customers see on the sales floor. The store still gets about 20 to 25 percent of its merchandise from overstock and end-of-season inventory from J quick payday loan.C. Penney – the same level as before, Gammons said. But he said the chain is also expanding its other vendors to bring in different products into the store.
Not surprisingly, many customers haven’t realized the store has changed names. At the same, the store is also facing the opposite problem.
“A lot of our customers think we are closed,” Bingham said, referring to the previous publicity about J.C. Penney exiting its outlet stores.
So the store has seen a dip in traffic, he said. But it’s gradually building back up as word spreads that it’s still open.
Another thing the store has going for it is a loyal following. Some customers have been shopping at the outlet since it first opened in East Alton in 1980. It moved a couple times before ending up at Jamestown Mall in 1999.
“We are definitely a destination,” Bingham said. “We have some customers who are here everyday, scoping out the new merchandise.”
KELLWOOD
Kellwood Co.’s newly-minted chief executive didn’t get too settled in during her pit stop to the apparel company’s Town and Country headquarters. Jill Granoff popped into the local office earlier this week in between visits to the company’s New York and California offices.
A Connecticut resident, she will be working out of the company’s New York office.
It makes sense in some ways since New York is the center of the fashion world. But it also makes you wonder a bit about the future of the local headquarters where about 150 people work.
Her predecessor, Michael Kramer, once told me that he would keep the headquarters in this region as long as he was in charge. Then he took a job as chief operating officer for J.C. Penney.
However, Erin Haggerty, a company spokeswoman, noted in an email that the previous CEO before Kramer lived in New York.
“So it’s not uncommon for Kellwood to base its CEO there,” she wrote.
Still, I asked if there were any plans to move the company headquarters. Haggerty said there wasn’t — at least not “at this time.”
The crash of a new, Russian-made jetliner into a jagged, Indonesian volcano during a flight to impress potential buyers threw doubt on dozens of plane sales Thursday just as Moscow seeks a comeback in foreign markets. All 45 people aboard were feared dead.
Search and rescue teams trudged and climbed through the mist-shrouded, jungly terrain for nearly 20 hours to reach the site where the plane roared in at nearly 480 mph (800 kph) on Wednesday, blowing apart and raining debris down a nearly vertical slope.
When the weather clears, all recovered bodies will have to be hoisted by nets and ropes onto hovering choppers, said Gagah Prakoso, a spokesman for the national search and rescue agency.
“We’re still searching for survivors,” he said. “But it doesn’t look good.”
The Sukhoi Superjet-100 _ Russia’s first new model of passenger jet since the fall of the Soviet Union two decades ago _ was supposed to kick-start the nation’s efforts to modernize its fleet and resurrect its neglected aerospace industry.
Indonesia, the fourth stop of a six-nation “Welcome Asia!” tour, was one of Sukhoi’s brightest hopes, accounting for a big chunk of the 170 orders taken globally so far.
Kartika Airlines, Sky Aviation and Queen Air _ among dozens of airlines to have popped up in the nation of 240 million to meet the growing demand for cheap air travel in the last decade _ together were aiming to buy 48.
“Our plan is to order 30 planes, gradually until 2014, to strengthen our fleet,” said Arifin Seman, one of the top executives at Kartika. “But we will wait for the result of the investigation before making any further decisions.”
Others, too, were being cautious.
“It’s too early to say,” said Krisman Tarigan, president director of Sky, which has placed orders for 12. “But we wouldn’t rule out cancellation … if it turned out the crash occurred because the plane was not airworthy.”
The ill-fated Superjet was carrying dozens of representatives from local airlines and journalists on what was supposed to be a quick, 50-minute demonstration flight Wednesday. Some excited passengers snapped pictures of themselves smiling and waving in front of the twin-engine jet before lifting off, then quickly posting them as profile pictures on Facebook and Twitter.
Just 21 minutes after takeoff from a Jakarta airfield, however, the Russian pilot and co-pilot asked for permission to drop from 10,000 feet to 6,000 feet (3,000 meters to 1,800 meters), said Daryatmo, chief of the national search and rescue agency free business cards.
They gave no explanation, disappearing from the radar immediately afterward.
It was not clear why the crew asked to shift course, especially since they were so close to the 7,000-foot (2,200-meter) volcano, or whether they got an OK, Daryatmo said.
Communication tapes will be reviewed as part of the investigation. It’s unlikely they will be released to the public any time soon.
The plane, with a relatively low price tag of around $35 million, seats from 70 to 98 people and has an operating range of around 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers).
It is seen as a potential challenger to similar-sized aircraft from Canada’s Bombardier Inc. and Brazil’s Embraer SA.
Future buyers will scrutinize the crash investigation for signs of flaws in the aircraft, said Tom Ballantyne, a Sydney-based aviation expert.
“If it’s a technical fault … then obviously that will be very serious for them,” he said. “But if it’s pilot error or the fault of air traffic control, it won’t be quite so bad because they’ll be able to say, ‘Well, it’s not the airplane.’”
The Superjet made its inaugural commercial flight in April last year.
Fitch Ratings agency said in a statement Thursday that it expects the crash to “negatively affect” Sukhoi orders for the short term.
“The accident represents a further setback to the ambitious Russian civilian aerospace industry,” it said, adding that the success of the Superjet “is especially important as it is the first of many new commercial aircraft to be launched.”
“Instead, it has suffered from a three-year development delay, poor initial market reception and minor operational difficulties” since its entry into commercial service, the agency said.
All but 10 of the 45 people on board the plane Wednesday were potential buyers and journalists, said Sunaryo from PT Trimarga Rekatama, the company that helped organize the event.
The others were Russians, all from Sukhoi companies, an American consultant with a local airline and a Frenchman with aircraft engine-maker Snecma.
On the road to this week’s launch of their new running apparel line, Michael Burnstein and Dave Spandorfer have learned a lot of valuable lessons, including this one: use a brand name that a) people can easily pronounce and b) doesn’t create confusion with a wildly popular British singer and songwriter.
Last year, they changed the name of their company from Edele — or “opportunity” in Amharic — to Janji — or “promise” in Malay.
“We’re pretty sold on Janji now,” said Spandorfer, smiling, as he met for coffee earlier this week. “Janji has a nice springy feel to it. And people remember it — unlike Edele, Adele, whatever you want to call it.”
They held a launch party for Janji this week at Big River Running in west St. Louis County. In the coming weeks and months, they will be hitting the road for Boston, Chicago, and Anchorage to attend similar events at stores that will soon begin carrying their products.
In total, about 70 specialty running stores have already placed orders for their shirts and running shorts — a number that at times astounds even them.
“They could easily wait and see how the launch goes and then decide to carry us,” Burnstein said. “These are small business owners and it’s a pretty big risk for them to take on a new product.”
The two first hatched the idea for the clothing line on a bus trip on the way to a track tournament in 2010. They were both then members of the Washington University cross country team. (Spandorfer graduated last year and Burnstein is just finals away from finishing his senior year.)
They knew that runners like to participate in races for just about every cause under the sun. So, they thought, why not imbue that same sense of social conscious into a clothing line?
For every pair of shorts ($38) or shirt ($30) a customer buys, the company donates $4 to a nonprofit organization. For example, some of the proceeds from the shirt modeled after the Haitian flag goes to Meds and Food for Kids, which works with undernourished children in Haiti. And a line of Kenyan-themed products helps fund KickStart, which sells subsidized water pumps to people in Kenya.
In addition to changing the brand name, another challenge along the way has been finding a factory to make the clothes. They initially worked with a factory in Vietnam, but were not satisfied by the samples they received back.
Even though it delayed their launch, they decided to find a different factory. After receiving some 400 samples, they settled on a factory in China that they found through a sourcing agent in St payday loans. Louis.
“One of our biggest concerns is having ethical labor standards,” Spandorfer said. “We know if we don’t do that right, no matter how great our mission is, it won’t matter.”
So they had a third party agent check out the factory. Then more recently, one of their team members flew out there to oversee production and to check out the working conditions firsthand.
They’ve received a lot of help along the way, too. They won $15,000 through Washington University’s Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. And they raked in another $20,000 from a contest through the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. On top of that, their families and friends have chipped in some start-up funds.
They eventually have plans to expand the product line and to partner with more nonprofits.
But for the time being, they are focused on the initial launch. And for Burnstein, he’s got finals, track tournaments and graduation to juggle, too.
CITY FOR CHEAPSKATES
At first blush, it may not seem like an honor to be called the best city for cheapskates.
But upon further reflection, St. Louis’ clinching of the top spot in Kiplinger.com’s list of top 10 cities for cheapskates may just be something to brag about.
St. Louisans earn roughly the same income as other Americans, our cost of living is 9 percent below the norm).
It listed free — or nearly free — stuff to do as judged by number of libraries and museums in region (St. Louis Zoo, Science Center, Citygarden, etc.), and the number of Dollar General stores in the region (59 in a 30-mile radius for the Lou!).
“St. Louis isn’t a huge city, but if we’re counting per capita, it boasts more museums and libraries than any city on our list (and it beats New York and Washington, D.C., by a factor of 25),” the website writes.
That’s definitely nothing to be ashamed about.
So the next time your mother (or friend or whoever) asks you why you live in the one of the “most dangerous” cities in the U.S. — one of the city’s other rankings over the years — just tell them it’s because you’re a cheapskate.
European finance ministers are unlikely to reach an agreement Wednesday over how the region’s banks should shore up their defenses against future financial shocks, Germany’s finance chief said.
The European Union is in the process to writing an international agreement on capital buffers for banks into European law. This would determine the level of risk Europe’s banks can take and what regulators can do to ensure that financial crises like the one that brought down U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 do not happen again.
The so-called Basel III deal would force banks gradually to increase their highest-quality capital _ such as equity and reserves _ from 2 percent to 7 percent of risky assets they hold by 2019. An additional 2.5 percent would have to be built up during good times.
Basel III was agreed by the world’s leading economies after the 2008 financial crisis demonstrated that many banks did not have enough of a capital cushion to absorb sudden losses on loans and other risky activities. Once agreed, the new rules would apply to more than 8,300 banks in Europe, forcing them to build up billions in extra capital by selling shares or assets or reining in bonuses and dividends.
The 2008 financial panic brought on by the Lehmans collapse hit Europe hard. Between 2008 and 2010, governments across the 27-country-bloc spent (EURO)4.6 trillion ($6.1 trillion) propping up struggling banks.
What complicated efforts even more was that the open borders in the EU allow banks to operate freely across the bloc, but when lenders ran into trouble it was national governments _ and taxpayers _ who had to foot the bill. While the EU is now striving for a single set of banking rules, there is no pan-European bank resolution fund that could relieve national governments.
The U.K., which had to save three major banks, has seen its debt load almost double since 2007, while much smaller Ireland had to seek an international bailout to help stem the losses of its domestic lenders. And many economists fear that the economic recession in Spain may soon reveal massive bank losses there guaranteed payday loans.
Now, the U.K. is leading a group of countries that want to be able to force their own banks to have bigger cushions than the ones prescribed by the pan-European rules without first getting approval from the European Commission in Brussels.
“We should make it clear that the crisis did not originate exclusively from weak fiscal policy. It originated also from insufficiently strong banks,” said Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski. “So therefore a group of countries including Poland, the Czech Republic, Sweden and the United Kingdom are very determined to see that banking systems in the future should be as healthy as we expect the fiscal side, the budgetary side, to be kept.”
That demand is opposed by France and the Commission, which fear that jacking up capital requirements in one country could force banks based there to cut down lending by their foreign subsidiaries. That, they argue, could hurt small states that don’t have a big domestic banking system.
To bridge the divide between the two camps, Denmark, which currently holds the EU presidency, has proposed a compromise that would allow national regulators to require an extra capital buffer of 3 percent. Anything beyond that would have to be approved by the Commission in Brussels, which would examine not only the level of risk in the home state but also the potential impact in neighboring countries.
Getting full approval for that compromise, however, may not be possible on Wednesday, officials said, partly because France is unlikely to budge from its position ahead of the second round of presidential elections this Sunday.
But German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said that he expects an agreement before the end of June.
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Don Melvin contributed to this story.
I have planned my daughters’ weddings for them. As the father of the bride, I claim that prerogative. I get stuck with the bill.
Here’s how we’ll do it, girls. We’ll drop the bride and groom by the church for a quick “I do.” No flowers, crooners or organist. Just get hitched and get out.
The reception will be in our back yard. You’ll recognize the daughter who’s not getting married. She’ll be grilling the hot dogs. My wife will be the DJ (I hope they like the Beatles). I’ll tend bar.
There will be an open bar at my daughters’ weddings – I’m no cheapskate! – all the Pabst you can drink until the mini-keg runs dry.
When the crowd drifts away, I’ll sit down and, with a tear in my eye, write the happy couple a check for $25,000. I’ll be getting off cheap.
The average cost of a wedding today is actually $27,800, according to a survey by the wedding website Theknot.com.
Think of that. $27,800 is the down payment on a nice house. It’s a fancy new car. It’s a year at Mizzou for a grand kid.
Are we going to blow that on a one-day shindig, shiny rocks on a ring and a dress the bride will wear once? Daughter dear, wouldn’t you rather have cash than a bash?
That will be my pitch, anyway. I suspect I’ll get some push back. Girls start dreaming of their weddings when still in middle school, and they keep dreaming until the big day. If my daughters push hard enough, we’ll go to plan B: a nice wedding on a sane budget.
Since I know diddly about this, I asked help from a wedding planner, Ellen Gutierrez, and a very thrifty person, Barbara Ann Hughes.
Hughes is the queen of used. She teaches a course at St. Louis Community College titled “You can’t have enough stuff; the art of going to garage sales, estate sales and flea markets.” She furnished her whole house in Town and Country second hand.
Her advice to parents; Give the young lovers a set amount for the wedding and say, “Anything you don’t spend you can keep.” That encourages thrift.
That gets us to cheap dresses. Back in 1975, my wife bought her wedding dress used, then sold it for a profit. These days, eBay lists used wedding dresses as cheap as $49. What could possibly go wrong?
If you want to actually try on the dress before you buy it, go to the Scholar Shops in Clayton and Webster Groves. Profits go to loans to needy college students. Goodwill thrift stores, another good charity, often have used wedding dresses in stock.
Scholar Shop sells used wedding dresses for $75 to $250, says Kim Abel, director of the Scholarship Foundation, which runs the shops. Some donated dresses still have tags on them; evidence that love can go awry.
Think barter. Abel knows a parent in video production who bartered with a friend in the travel business. One couple got a free wedding video, and the other a cut-rate honeymoon.
Think do-it-yourself. When Hughes was married, she did all the decorating. She put two fish bowls stuffed with silk flowers on the altar. “The pastor said, ‘Those look really pretty. Can we leave them up for tomorrow’s service.’ I said sure,” said Hughes.
Wedding planner Gutierrez, of Brides Vision in Kirkwood, disagrees with the DIY solution.
“I try to keep my brides and moms as calm as possible,” she says. Running around with flowers in fishbowls doesn’t create serenity. “I try to allow them to be a guest at their own wedding,” she says.
Gutierrez’ top recommendation for saving money: Limit the crowd you wine and dine. “Ask yourself, ‘Does this person have meaning in your life in the long run?’”
Consider a lunch instead of a dinner, she says. It’s cheaper.
If you’re planning to celebrate somewhere other than your back yard, prepare to pay through the wazoo. But there are tactics for keeping the cost down.
Consider odd locations. At the St. Louis Zoo, for instance, one couple is planning a wedding witnessed by hippopotami in front of the hippo enclosure. “They love hippos,” says Kathy Lunders, director of group sales, who also planned dizzy weddings on the zoo merry-go-round. (Disclosure: My wife works at the zoo.)
“You can get married at the Four Seasons or at the VFW hall and every place in between,” says Gutierrez. Wedding in the off-season, say January instead of June, might save you a little on a hall rental but not much, she says.
You can cheap out by using a fake wedding cake rented from a bakery, Hughes says. Only the top tier is real, so the bride and groom can cut it. Then it’s wheeled back into the kitchen. The guests eat sheet cake.
Nancy Slade, editor of St. Louis Bride magazine, says brides should set their top priorities up front. “For one bride it may be the photography. She wants pictures she can remember for the rest of her life. For another, it may be the flowers,” Slade says.
Spend your money where it will have the most meaning, she says.
WASHINGTON
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak