Finance Blog number 1

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin has renounced his U.S. citizenship, a move expected to save him hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes stemming from the company’s impending initial public offering.

The Brazil-born 30-year-old became a U.S. citizen in 1998 but has lived in Singapore since 2009. Giving up his citizenship will allow him to avoid paying taxes on billions of dollars of capital gains when Facebook launches its IPO Friday. Singapore does not have a capital gains tax.

Saverin gave up his citizenship in the first quarter of this year, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service said.

“Eduardo recently found it to be more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” Saverin’s New York-based spokesman Tom Goodman said Tuesday in a statement.

Goodman said that because Saverin plans to invest in Brazilian and global companies that have strong interests in entering Asian markets, “it made the most sense for him to use Singapore as a home base absolutely free credit score.”

Saverin has a 4 percent stake in Facebook, which has headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Analysts say the company could be worth $100 billion.

Saverin, who moved to the U.S. from Brazil in 1992, founded Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 while the two were students at Harvard University. Saverin gained additional fame when his conflict with Zuckerberg and departure from the company was depicted in the 2010 movie “The Social Network.”

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Voters in Greece and France challenged austerity as Europe

U.K. services, manufacturing and construction probably waned this month as Bank of England policy makers prepare to discuss whether they need to extend stimulus after the economy slipped back into recession.

A gauge of factory activity based on a survey of purchasing managers will fall to 51.5 from 52.1 in March, according to the median estimate of 27 forecasts in a Bloomberg News poll. A reading above 50 indicates expansion. An index of services, the largest part of the economy, will decline to 54.1 from 55.3, while a construction measure will also fall, separate surveys of economists show.

U.K. gross domestic product fell in the first quarter, pushing the economy into its first double-dip recession since the 1970s. While Bank of England officials have said that may hurt confidence, they must balance that risk with the threat from faster-than-targeted inflation at their May 9-10 meeting.

Hungary

Japan and Canada agreed Sunday to formally start talks aimed at forging a free trade agreement between the two countries.

If established, the pact would be Japan’s first with a country from the Group of Eight major economies.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and his Canadian counterpart, Stephen Harper, said they would also seek to boost economic, energy and security relations between the two countries.

“This is a truly historic step that will help create jobs and growth in both countries,” Harper told a joint news conference. “The negotiations we are announcing today complement Canada’s ambitious trade agenda.”

Japan is Canada’s fourth-largest export market, and a free trade deal could potentially increase that “by as much as two-thirds,” Harper said.

Japan’s main exports to Canada are cars, machinery and other industrial products. Its chief imports from Canada are natural resources and agricultural products including soybeans and pork. Both countries are seeking to join the U.S.-led trans-Pacific multilateral trade pact known as TPP. Japan’s highly protected farm sector is seen as a main obstacle.

Noda stressed the importance of accelerating private-sector cooperation on the trade of natural gas and other energy resources.

Japan is struggling to secure a stable supply of energy resources due to concerns about a serious power crunch stemming from the nuclear crisis set off by last year’s massive earthquake and tsunami paydayloans.

The March 11, 2011, disasters destroyed power and cooling functions at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, sending three reactors into meltdown and forcing 100,000 people to relocate.

The crisis also raised public concerns and opposition to restart reactors idled for regular safety checks. Only two of Japan’s 54 reactors are currently running, with all of them expected to go offline by the end of April if none are resumed by then.

During the talks Sunday, Japan and Canada also agreed to strengthen cooperation in defense and security in the Asia-Pacific region, Noda said. The two leaders are heading to Seoul to attend this week’s Nuclear Security Summit.

“We reaffirmed the importance to tackle outstanding global issues, particularly the issues surrounding North Korea and others in the Asia-Pacific region, as we cooperate as partners,” Noda said.

North Korea says it will launch an observation satellite on a long-range rocket next month. Japan shares fear by the U.S. and South Korea that Pyongyang wants to test long-range missiles that could eventually deliver nuclear warheads.

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Days after the Conservative government introduced its copyright reform bill in June 2010, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore spoke out in support of the legislative package by notoriously labeling critics as

President Barack Obama, offering an election-year prescription to spur the economy, said the wealthiest Americans should pay more taxes in the name of fairness, to bring down the deficit and ensure those trying to make ends meet don

The U.S. bond market is neutralizing budget deficits as an election-year campaign weapon.

Interest payments will cost the government 3.1 percent of gross domestic product this year, according to Office of Management and Budget and International Monetary Fund data compiled by Bloomberg. That

U.S. stock futures are falling Thursday as the European debt crisis again becomes the key driver of market sentiment.

Stock markets in London, Germany and France have all declined. The euro has dropped to a 15-month low against the dollar.

The concern in the markets has centered on the state of Europe’s banks following UniCredit’s announcement Wednesday that it was selling new shares at a large 69 percent discount to Tuesday’s closing price.

Banks are an integral part of the debt crisis because they hold government bonds. A default or steep fall in the value of government bonds could inflict heavy losses on banks and choke off credit to the European economy. That’s why regulatory authorities want Europe’s banks to raise their buffers by euro115 billion (149 billion) over the next few months. The worry in the markets is that banks will have to offer sharp discounts to raise the funds.

U.S. economic reports have the potential to shift sentiment. Key releases later Thursday include the Institute for Supply Management’s monthly survey of the services sector as well as indicators on the pace of hiring in the private sector.

The latter may affect market expectations for Friday’s closely-watched nonfarm payrolls data for December. The figures often set the market’s tone for a week or two after their release. The expectation is that the U No teletrak payday loan.S. economy generated around 150,000 jobs during December.

Positive economic news propelled U.S. stocks to a big rally on Tuesday. Those gains held Wednesday as automakers reported strong sales in December.

Less than two hours before trading opens in New York, futures on the Dow Jones industrial average are down 55 points to 12,301. Futures for the broader S&P 500 index have fallen 7 points to 1,266.

European stocks fell, though most indexes remained higher for the year so far. Germany’s DAX was down 0.7 percent at 6,066 while the CAC-40 fell 1 percent to 3,163. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was 0.7 percent lower at 5,629.

Earlier in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.8 percent to close at 8,488.71. South Korea’s Kospi index lost 0.1 percent at 1,863.74, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index rose 0.5 percent to 18,813.41. Benchmarks in Singapore and Taiwan were also higher.

Mainland China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index lost 1 percent to 2,148.45, its lowest level in almost three years. The Shenzhen Composite Index lost 3.5 percent to 813.99. More than 100 companies plunged to the daily limit of 10 percent.

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Labor unions on Wednesday ramped up the pressure on Republican lawmakers to approve a Senate plan that would extend jobless benefits for millions of unemployed Americans.

Congress is deadlocked over how to provide the relief after Republicans in the House of Representatives on Tuesday scuttled a short-term measure that had been approved in the Senate with overwhelming Republican and Democratic support.

Most House Republicans voted against the Senate bill, which would extend by two months long-term jobless benefits and a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans.

“We’ll be hitting them in the media in their home districts,” said labor union umbrella group AFL-CIO spokeswoman Amaya Tune. “We’ll continue to look at what ways we can shame Republicans for this horrible vote,” she said.

Republicans refused to approve the Senate bill, saying they wanted to work on a full-year extension — a plan Democrats support but have failed to broker because the sides disagree on how to cover the costs.

If Congress fails to extend jobless benefits, nearly 700,000 people would lose them by the second week of January and nearly 2.2 million would be cut off by mid-February, according to the Labor Department. Some 13 million Americans are unemployed, of whom nearly 6 million have been without a job for more than a year cash advance loans.

The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor group, and other advocacy groups such as Working America, the Philadelphia Unemployment Project and the National Employment Law Project are gearing up to push Republicans to vote on the two-month deal.

“We are going to challenge those representatives to get back to work and put these fixes in,” said Mark MacKenzie, president of the AFL-CIO’s New Hampshire office.

The National Employment Law Project is mobilizing thousands of its constituents from unemployed Americans to community advocates to call Republican lawmakers.

“This is pressure on leadership first and foremost but really it is on everybody. Get back here and pass the bill,” said Judy Conti, the federal advocacy coordinator for the project.

Other labor organizers are planning a protest outside Republican House Speaker John Boehner’s office in Ohio later this week.

It was unclear how lawmakers would resolve their differences before the December 31 deadline. Democrats have refused to start negotiating a full-year extension until Republicans pass the Senate’s short-term measure. Republicans have proposed cutting long term benefits from 99 weeks to 59.

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