July 12 (Bloomberg) -- Wells Fargo & Co., the largest U.S. mortgage lender, said it will stop funding loans originated and sold by independent mortgage brokers after settling a federal fair-lending investigation.
After tomorrow, the company won’t accept new applications for loans originated by independent mortgage brokers in its wholesale channel, according to a statement today from the San Francisco-based firm. The lender said it will still process and close existing applications.
Wells Fargo agreed today to pay $125 million to settle U.S. claims that it discriminated against minority borrowers in making residential loans. The decision to exit wholesale was made by Wells Fargo “on its own volition,” the bank said in a statement about that accord.
The company made $7.4 billion of mortgages through brokers in the first quarter, the most of any lender and 21 percent of the industrywide total, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. The loans made up about 5 percent of the company’s total, according to the statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Dakin Campbell in San Francisco at dcampbell27@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net.
VoIP Innovations Wholesale DIDs’ Now Available on the IPsmarx Platform - YAHOO!
VoIP Innovations, North America’s Premier Wholesale VoIP carrier, announced its API integration with IPsmarx multi-tenant IP-PBX and calling card platform. VoIP Innovations provides the industry’s largest VoIP DID footprint. Their DIDs’ are used by the leading VoIP Service Providers and can be easily provisioned through the industry’s leading backoffice, Titanium III.
Pittsburgh, PA (PRWEB) July 12, 2012
VoIP Innovations, North America’s Premier Wholesale VoIP carrier, announced its API integration with IPsmarx multi-tenant IP-PBX and calling card platform. VoIP Innovations provides the industry’s largest VoIP DID footprint. Their DIDs’ are used by the leading VoIP Service Providers and can be easily provisioned through the industry’s leading backoffice, Titanium III.IPsmarx has integrated the Titanium III API into their platform. By doing this, IPsmarx customers can now easily provision VoIP Innovation DIDs, e911, CNAM directory and more. This functionality provides more automation in the IPsmarx platform and makes it very user friendly. With the rapid growth in VoIP services, a full turnkey solution from the best of breed providers has become more attractive. Rapid deployment and lower barriers to entry will provide a lucrative business opportunity to many that are looking to enter this field.
VoIP Innovations and IPsmarx, two of the leading providers in their respective fields, have been enabling providers for many years now. These providers include service offerings such as residential, business, calling card, PINless, Mobile VoIP, and international calling services. Both VoIP Innovations and IPsmarx plan on exhibiting at the ITEXPO show in Austin, TX in early October. VoIP Innovations will be launching its Titanium III API version 3.0 which will include some new features such as international DIDs’ and Email to Fax service.
IPsmarx Technology supports VoIP Service Providers in over 70 countries and has been providing feature rich VoIP solutions since 2001. Their Class 4 & 5 Softswitch Solutions, SIP Based Calling Card Platform and Multi-Tenant IP-PBX Platform with integrated billing have earned them worldwide acclaim. Systems from IPsmarx are modular, scalable and flexible. This gives clients the opportunity to customize solutions to their needs. IPsmarx helps service providers minimize the risks of entering a new market by providing you security, technical training, support and a reliable billing platform. To learn more about IPsmarx, visit them at http://www.IPsmarx.com
VoIP Innovations (http://www.voipinnovations.com) provides wholesale origination and termination services to over 1,000 carriers, resellers, service providers and ITSP's across the world. They specialize in providing the largest DID and termination VoIP footprints in North America. Their network includes over 500,000 DIDs in stock in over 8,500 rate centers in the US and Canada. Recently, VoIP Innovations expanded their footprint to include DIDs in over 60 countries and offer A-Z termination. VoIP Innovations is owned by ABG Capital which is based in Pittsburgh, PA. To learn more about VoIP Innovations, visit them at http://www.VoIPInnovations.com
Nick Medina
VoIP Innovations.com
877-478-6471
Email Information
US wholesale stockpiles grew in May but sales fell - YAHOO!
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. wholesale companies added modestly to their stockpiles in May. But sales at the wholesale level dropped by the largest amount in three years, a troubling sign for future growth.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that wholesale stockpiles rose 0.3 percent in May. That followed a 0.5 percent increase in April, which was revised lower from an initially reported 1.1 percent gain.
But sales at the wholesale level fell 0.8 percent in May, the biggest decline since March 2009.
Greater restocking means companies ordered more goods, which increases factory production. But the broader economic benefits from faster restocking were likely offset by the decline in sales, which could prompt wholesalers to restock more slowly in the coming months.
Stockpiles at the wholesale level stood at $484.1 billion in May. That is 25.8 percent above the post-recession low of $384.9 billion in September 2009.
The May increase reflected gains in stockpiles of autos, computer equipment, drug products and clothing.
It would take about five weeks to exhaust stockpiles at the May sales pace. That's considered a healthy timeframe.
Steven Wood, chief economist at Insight Economics, said stockpiles remain lean and should add modestly to growth in the April-June quarter.
The economy grew at a tepid 1.9 percent annual pace in the January-March quarter, down from 3 percent annual growth at the end of last year. A key reason for the winter slowdown was that companies restocked more slowly. Nearly two-thirds of the economic growth at the end of last year came from a surge in restocking.
Most economists don't expect much pickup in growth in the April-June quarter, while some predict growth slowed.
High unemployment and meager pay raises have made consumers more cautious about spending. Consumer spending, which drives roughly 70 percent of economic activity, was flat in May.
Wholesale stockpiles account for about 27 percent of total business inventories. Stockpiles held by retailers make up about one-third of the total and manufacturing inventories represent about 40 percent.
Berlin plan to move Old Masters angers art historians - The Guardian
It is one of the stormiest art world rows of recent times, pitching Rembrandt and Botticelli against Rothko and Beuys and angering art historians around the globe.
Plans to empty the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin of its Old Masters and fill it instead with 20th-century art have left cultural chiefs facing accusations of irresponsible neglect of what one critic described as the nation's family silver.
As part of a longstanding plan to re-establish Berlin as one of the world's most respected cultural centres, the Gemäldegalerie's estimated 3,000 works spanning five centuries are to be relocated to a much smaller, temporary space on Berlin's Museum Island complex to make way for a billionaire industrialist's private collection of surrealist and expressionist art, which he has donated to the nation on condition that it is put on display in its entirety.
Critics fear that the Gemäldegalerie's treasures are playing second fiddle to the 20th-century collection and will be put in storage indefinitely to be shown only in piecemeal fashion for the foreseeable future until they have their own dedicated space, which could take years.
A new building for the Old Masters' collection, which includes works by Brueghel, Vermeer, Dürer, Raphael and Caravaggio, has yet to be proposed, let alone financed and built.
Opponents accuse cultural chiefs of bowing to pressure from Heiner Pietzsch and his wife, Ulla, whose collection, valued at €150m (£120m) is described as an outstanding selection of classic modernism. It includes paintings by Mark Rothko, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Jackson Pollock, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. The Pietzsches say they simply want to ensure their paintings do not end up in storage.
In an open letter to Germany's culture minister, Bernd Neumann, the Association of Art Historians argued that the plans would leave the public and academics "indefinitely deprived" of some of the world's greatest artworks.
"These plans … rob one of the world's finest and, despite its wartime losses, most comprehensive collections of Old Master paintings of its unique capacity … to present more than 500 years of European painting history in encyclopaedic scope in works of the very highest quality," the letter says.
In a separate petition signed by more than 7,400 figures from the art world, Jeffrey Hamburger, professor of German art and culture at Harvard University, said the move was a tragedy that came "at the expense of one of the world's premier collections of Old Master paintings", which he said had become pawns in a chess game.
Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, accused critics of failing to appreciate the huge task of reorganising Berlin's museums after decades of war and division, which led to a large part of Berlin's art collections being broken up and dispersed.
"Historically speaking, the Gemäldegalerie works belong on Museum Island, which with its collection from antiquity to the 19th century, has the potential to rival the Louvre, and until they're back there this vision is incomplete," he told the Guardian. "But it's a process which needs to happen step by step."
He said part of the process involved creating a dedicated space for 20th-century art in the building currently now housing the Gemäldegalerie, which is conveniently located next to the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin's leading space dedicated to modern art.
Parzinger said: "Twentieth-century art currently has no proper space in Berlin and it's long overdue that we have something to rival Paris' Centre Pompidou, London's Tate Modern, or New York's Moma.
"The wonderful Pietzsch collection fits perfectly into this concept and will help reinstate Berlin as a superior art capital as it was before 1933 and the rise of the Nazis – who labelled much of its art degenerate – when it was itself a role model for museums like Moma.
"In short, we're rectifying the wrongs of history and re-establishing our cultural landscape, which is our calling card to the world."
Parzinger said nothing would be removed from the current gallery until he had reassurances from the government that a new museum was going ahead, adding that, even then, he would not be "locking the Old Masters in the cellar". They would be temporarily on display alongside the sculptures of the Bode Museum, "albeit more snugly displayed on the walls than we'd like under normal circumstances, but there's no need for panic – no one will come to Berlin looking for their favourite Cranach or Caravaggio and not be able to find it."
Heiner Pietzsch, who made his fortune in wholesale synthetics, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung this week that he felt betrayed by critics and art historians, who had once eulogised the quality of his collection but were now accusing him of trying to put his works on a pedestal above the Old Masters. "For the first time I'm learning that giving doesn't necessarily bring you joy," he said.
In what was interpreted as an indirect threat to withdraw his donation, the 82-year-old said: "If the whole thing collapses, my heirs at least will be happy. They'll make a lot of money from my paintings."
Jubilee baking boost for Associated British Foods - Daily Telegraph
Quarterly sales at AB Foods’ grocery division, which also owns Twinings, Ovaltine and Ryvita, were flat as UK households continue to trim their weekly shopping bills. AB Foods last week expanded its larder with the £34m acquisition of Elephant Atta, the ethnic foods division of its debt-laden rival Premier Foods.
The group’s sugar production business was the star performer during the quarter, with revenue climbing 54pc during the 16 weeks to June 23. Sugar prices have soared as a result of European Union caps on domestic production. Developing countries that supply the EU have been unable to keep up with demand or have found it more profitable to export elsewhere.
The shortage in Europe has also coincided with a spike in world sugar prices as the middle classes in emerging economies consume more processed food, often rich in sweeteners.
“Compared to a couple of years ago, when you were looking at a world sugar price of 12 to 14 cents a pound, you’re now looking at 20,” said Mr Bason.
The success of AB Foods’ sugar division came despite problems in Mali, where it was hoping to start production through its Illovo subsidiary. The group has been forced to scrap the £15m project, which was beset by problems after the Malian government was overturned in a military coup in March.
GST on carbon tax is inefficient: Hockey - Sydney Morning Herald
Putting the GST on a carbon tax is inefficient and revisits the old era of hidden wholesale sales taxes, shadow treasurer Joe Hockey says.
News Ltd reported on Thursday that energy companies, waste disposal firms and appliance repairers are among businesses charging consumers GST based on carbon tax costs.
Mr Hockey said the "taxes on taxes" scenario revisited the pre-GST era of hidden wholesale sales taxes and would make the economy inefficient.
"The only area where you still have taxes on taxes is insurance which is the most hideous area of tax," Mr Hockey told the Seven Network on Friday.
"The best way to get efficiency in the economy is to have only one tax on a product, not an embedded tax and then another tax on top of it which is what's happening with the carbon tax."
But cabinet minister Tony Burke said GST charges have been levied in the same way since it was introduced in 2000.
"The mechanics of how the GST works across the entire economy have been set down for more than a decade now," Mr Burke told the Seven Network.
News Ltd reports that NSW electricity companies have confirmed the 10 per cent GST would be applied to power bills, after the carbon tax had been added to the bill.
© 2012
AAP
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Shanghai Shopping (2) - People's Daily Online
Besides the famous "Four Streets and Four Cities", some other streets and roads are worthy of a visit.
If you just intend to buy small articles and inexpensive clothes, Hong Kong Famous Shops Street and Dimei Shopping Center beneath People's Square and Xiangyang Road will whet your appetite. In Dimei Shopping Center, clothes are competitively priced and fashionable, but you will seldom find the top brands here. With the alternation of four seasons the small shops here, sell clothes in vogue which cater for the needs of young people. You can bargain at ease.
The distinguishing feature in North Shaanxi Road is its shoes. Not only abundant varieties and original styles, the prices are reasonable and moderate. If you admire Chinese-style clothes, some shops selling them are on Maoming Road, Changle Road will meet your requirements. Generally clothes will be tailored to ensure a good fit.
More and more people realize the joy of having clothes tailor-made. To find the fabric, there is fabric market and tailor shops recommended here. Nan Wai Tan (South Bund) Fabric Market in Lujiabang Road is perhaps the largest fabric market you can find in Shanghai. Take subway to Nanpu Bridge Station and walk along Lujiabang Road for a short while, you can see the market. To have anything tailor-made, get to the shop nearly one month in advance. Several fittings will undergo for it may not fit you very well at the first time. Nearby the fabric market, there are many tailor shops in Duojia Road. You can find various fabric materials to make curtains in the market as well. Maoming Road and Changle Road also have some feature tailor shops. For example, KATANO in Maoming Road is an 82-esr-old tailor shop of a Japanese owner. You can have your suit, shirt, office-look clothes made here. Psyche .Q in Xiangdai Plaza (Huaihai Middle Road, north of Xintiandi) has more fashion customers. Yang Yang is a tailor shop good at making Chinese traditional clothes. Go and explore more by yourself!
Fuzhou Road earned its fame as "Culture Street" a century ago. The outlets here deal mainly in manner of cultural items, ranging from books, music and art... It is now the fashion for local people to wander along Fuzhou Road after work to browse through all sorts of books and magazines in the stores along the road.
Shanghai Music Bookstore: No. 365, Middle Tibet Road Tel: 63223213
Shanghai Ancient Books Store: No. 424, Fuzhou Road Tel: 63223453
Shanghai Foreign Languages Bookstore: No. 390, Fuzhou Road Tel: 63223200
Shanghai Books City: No. 401, Fuzhou Road Tel: 63200651
Shanghai Fine Arts Articles Shop: No. 402, Fuzhou Road Tel: 63528706
Dongtai Road Antique Market is a market mainly dealing with the porcelains, jade wares, bronze wares, wooden wares, calligraphy and paintings and embroidery utensils. Lots of tourists from home and aboard come to this famous market.
Getting there: Public Bus No. 17, 18, 23, 864
Of course local food specialties should be taken into account. Houyin Fish (Noodle Fish), origin in Qingpu and Chongming counties, the Houyin Fish is scrumptious and delicious. Canned Anchovy, one of the specialties of Shanghai, is fried and exported overseas and is highly praised. Other local specialties like Pudong Chicken, Shanghai Juicy Peach, and Juicy Pear and so on will make your mouth water.
Local products like, Gu Embroidery , also called Luxiang Yuan Embroidery, from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), is now used in producing clothes, ornaments and bedding. Tapestry is divided into two types, for appreciation and daily use. It is popular among visitors because of various colors, vivid figures and visual design. A scroll of tapestry depicting the Great Wall of China is exhibited in the United Nations building. Jade sculpture, wood sculpture, and stone sculpture feature Shanghai's tourism industry with its exquisite and delicate carvings. The city was one of the original producers and exporters of Chinese silk and silk produced here remains unique owing to its age old traditions as well as new means of production and design.
Tourist Souvenirs Shopping Building: No. 558, East Nanjing Road
As for the purchase of household appliances, big home appliance markets, like Gome, Guotong and Quyang Home Appliance City are highly recommended. Household appliances here have low prices and good quality.
Gome in Changning Shopping Center: No. 986, Changning Road
For everyday requirements, supermarkets offer a wide range of goods. You will find Carrefour, Metro, RT Mart, Hypermarkets & Shopping malls, Lotus and Hualian, etc. Most of them are located near to the transportation hubs and residential areas. Furthermore, up to 100 supermarket chains and 24-hour-open Lawson Convenience Store are established for your convenience.
A Google Marketplace? New Google Shopping Is One Indicator - Searchengineland.com
Imagine if Mall of America had unlimited space and let all merchants setup shop for free.
Now imagine if Mall of America abruptly changed their business model and told each merchant they would have to pay rent based on how much foot traffic each of their stores get.
This is a reality online merchants face after Google Shopping, the largest comparison shopping site online, announced it would be transferring to a pay-to-play product comparison site.
Many merchants are leaving the marketing channel completely. Most will stay and pick up the increased demand caused by the vacuum of smaller merchants out of the program.
So far bids are ranging around 40 – 50 cents. So you can imagine if a small business was getting 500 clicks per month from Google Shopping, and now they bid around 40 cents per clicks, that’s an added expense of $2400 per year to, in an industry where margins have been decreasing for years now.
Many retailers will have to start writing bigger checks, paying more than $100,000 / year to Google while some like Amazon, eBay and Walmart will face a difficult decision - either cut Google a 7 figure check each year or “give away” the market share that was previously free.
Google Tip-Toeing Into Ecommerce
The new Google Shopping and Google’s release of Google Trusted Stores may seem like small moves to the average eye but ecommerce experts see a major shift on the horizon: Google competing directly with Amazon.
Amazon, the online retail giant that accounts for more than 1/3 of all purchases online, now owes Google a pretty penny in margins for thousands of sales per year generated by Amazon products in Google’s Shopping program.
The next move we think Google will make is a more secure full-service online store experience for consumers. But probably not a Google Marketplace as some suspect (even though the new Google Shopping gives sellers the option to pay only for sales, not clicks).
Another indicator is Google’s new Trusted Stores program that gives Google direct access to merchant order and cancellation information, as well as direct access to online retail customer support teams and the merchant’s customers themselves.
The retailers that participate in this program, all who are required to sustain specific customer service standards and capture more than 1,000 transactions per month (at the disgust of quality smaller merchants) will surely see some form of benefits in search engine rankings, if not directly then through the addition of future Google Trusted Stores rich snippet markup in SERPs.
So what is Google’s ace in the whole?
Google may be actively pursuing local-availability product fulfillment, a space where Google local search has an edge on Amazon. Being able to fulfill product orders to your doorstep on the same day would be a huge move by Google and threaten Amazon’s 2 day Amazon Prime shipping program and could make Google a fulfillment powerhouse, charging merchants for direct local delivery access and online access through search to consumers.
I can picture it now: fleets of robotic controlled Google cars delivering products across the globe. A little farfetched? Maybe. Maybe not.
The Google Marketplace: Why Not?
The argument against Google creating its own marketplace rests on the assumption that Google does not want to damage its main source of revenue – ads. Moving into a marketplace model would lock sellers in at a set CPA, potentially giving up placement in SERPs that were once held by ads.
CPC ad programs have traditionally been more profitable for the owners of those programs. Nextag, a long-held opponent to Google’s increasing aggression towards content-aggregation sites, attempted a marketplace model on Nextag not too long ago with benefits to the merchants who used the program, but at a loss in ad revenue to Nextag.
This is one of the major reasons why we think Google will stay the course with its ad-based programs but offer a level of fulfillment unheard of in today’s ecommerce world.
The Small Business Online Retailer: Forever Forgotten?
Small businesses who relied on Google Shopping as a major source of free traffic and sales are hardest hit by the new Google Shopping.
Some major questions they are asking include:
- Can I manage this program in house? Do I have the technical and time resources available to update ad_groups and CPC bids multiple times a week?
- Do I have the technical expertise to tease out top performing products and brands through Google Analytics to optimize my campaigns?
- Will the money I lose on margins for each sale make this shopping channel worth my time?
- What traffic source will help mitigate for this loss?
- Does the Google Trusted Stores 1,000 order / month minimum to qualify for being considered for the program further hurt my ability to rank for product searches in Google?
Definitely some hard questions to answer but one thing is for certain, retailers who rely on Google as a major lifeline to their online store are now looking for other cost effective ways to get traffic to their businesses. And this creates a lot of potential opportunities for existing & new Internet entities.
SEOs: Forever Alone?
It’s been a tough few weeks for some SEOs who are still grappling with the fact that very few organic results will be above the fold for transactional search queries.
For most SEOs I talk to, even before the Google Shopping switch, a majority of their work was not with ecommerce clients in the first place, but this is another strain on businesses built around optimizing the placement of organic listings which have been decreasing in visibility consistently over time.
Search Engine Marketing: A Shift
A couple of weeks ago on #ppcchat we were lucky enough to join the conversation about Google Shopping. One thing that was clear was that most paid search marketers didn’t know much about data feeds or data feed manipulation.
We predict that to soon change. For marketers dealing with ecommerce clients understanding how a data feed works and being an expert at how to manipulate and maintain it will be just as important as optimizing Product Listing Ad bids.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
Related Topics: Search & Retail
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