Esprit to staunch losses as early as next year: paper

Troubled fashion retailer Esprit Holdings hopes to put an end to its losses as soon as next year, Chief Executive Jose Manuel Martinez told a German Sunday newspaper. "I expect that we will soon - maybe even next year - no longer be loss making," he said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. For the current 2013/14 fiscal year, Esprit has forecast a further decline in turnover, partly due to store closures, but expects cost cuts will help reduce its operating expenses-to-sales ratio below 50 percent from just over 65 percent in the previous year.

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Latest Obamacare Folly: The 80% Standard

In the private sector, serving the "majority" of your customers is never enough.

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Nobel Prize economist warns of U.S. stock market bubble

An American who won this year's Nobel Prize for economics believes sharp rises in equity and property prices could lead to a dangerous financial bubble and may end badly, he told a German magazine. Robert Shiller, who won the esteemed award with two other Americans for research into market prices and asset bubbles, pinpointed the U.S. stock market and Brazilian property market as areas of concern. But in many countries stock exchanges are at a high level and prices have risen sharply in some property markets," Shiller told Sunday's Der Spiegel magazine. "I am most worried about the boom in the U.S. stock market.

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ArcelorMittal says U.S. buy won't impact $15 billion debt target

ArcelorMittal's (MT.AS) acquisition of a U.S. plant jointly with Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp will not affect the world No. 1 steelmaker's debt targets, ArcelorMittal's chief executive said on Sunday. ArcelorMittal unveiled the $1.55 billion takeover of ThyssenKrupp's (TKA.DE) U.S. steel finishing plant in Calvert, Alabama, on Friday, saying it would finance the deal via equity and debt at the joint venture level. ArcelorMittal Chief Executive Lakshmi Mittal told reporters on a conference call the deal would have a minimal impact on this year's debt and no effect on its medium term debt target. Chief Financial Officer Aditya Mittal said ArcelorMittal and Nippon would split the equity cost of the deal.

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Freeport says worker dead at Indonesian copper mine

TIMIKA/JAKARTA (Reuters) - A worker was killed after an incident in an underground section of Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc's (FCX) giant Grasberg copper mine in Indonesia, the company said. "The Freeport Indonesia command center received a report of an incident in the West 1E loading area in the DOZ underground mine," Freeport Indonesia corporate communications officer Karel Luntungan told Reuters via text message on Sunday.



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Price growth and jobless fall eases pressure on ECB to act

A pick-up in inflation this month eases pressure on the European Central Bank to act next week, and the first fall in unemployment in almost three years shows a tentative euro zone recovery is gaining traction. The double dose of data lent credence to the ECB view that the 17-country bloc is undergoing a gradual economic recovery more than five years after a financial crisis erupted, forcing five countries to seek emergency aid from their neighbors. Consumer price inflation - the rate of increases in the cost of shopping and paying household bills - rose in the euro zone by 0.9 percent in November, slightly more than economists had predicted. That put the annual inflation rate, measured on a basket of goods including cigarettes, beer and gas bills, on an upward path after an unexpected slip in October.

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Israel's El Al airlines CEO Shkedy to step down

The chief executive officer of El Al Israel Airlines (ELAL.TA), Elyezer Shkedy, tendered his resignation on Sunday and will step down after his successor is in place, the company said in a statement. El Al quoted Shkedy as saying he felt "pride and tremendous satisfaction" about his role at the airline, but regretted failing to put together a new collective labor agreement for staff. "El Al must reduce spending for the sake of a better future for its personnel and passengers, if it wishes to continue to grow and compete in the field of aviation, which is variable and challenging," Shkedy said in the statement. The FIMI fund, Israel's largest private investment fund, had agreed in April to inject up to $75 million in El Al but the deal was contingent on El Al reaching a new collective labor agreement aimed at allowing the carrier to deal with an increasingly competitive environment.



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