“500 Jobs At Risk At Halifax Estate Agency - Ananova” plus 4 more |
- 500 Jobs At Risk At Halifax Estate Agency - Ananova
- Banking battlefield - NJBIZ
- Should You Lend Money to Family Members? - ElderLawAnswers.com
- Advancing Stock- MNDP - Transworld News
- When 2+2 Equals a Privacy Question - Star News Online
| 500 Jobs At Risk At Halifax Estate Agency - Ananova Posted: 17 Oct 2009 06:33 PM PDT Almost 500 jobs have been placed under threat after Lloyds Banking Group confirmed it is to sell its Halifax estate agency. The owner of the Your Move sales and lettings business has agreed a deal to take over the division. LSL Property Services is to buy the business from Lloyds for £1. The sale will result in the closure of 121 banking counters, and the transfer of 1,051 employees. Lloyds said the move would result in the loss of approximately 360 full-time roles, with a further 100 positions also "affected". David Nicholson, managing director of Halifax Community Bank said: "Halifax Estate Agency is a well established business and, following a strategic review, we believe that it is better able to grow outside the group with a strong existing player in the market such as LSL Property Services plc." LSL, which also owns the Reeds Rain and Intercounty brands, will have the UK's second largest estate agency network as a result of the deal. The Accord union said it would press the new owner not to make any compulsory redundancies at the group. Ged Nichols, Accord general secretary, said: "We will be having early meetings with LSL to discuss their plans for the business and employees' terms and conditions so that we can provide maximum support for Accord members who will be transferring to LSL's employment." The sale marks the first of the disposals expected from Lloyds as it looks to meet European competition requirements following the receipt of state aid. Lloyds received around £14.5bn from the Government in the wake of the financial crisis and its takeover of HBOS. Both Lloyds and fellow bail-out beneficiary Royal Bank of Scotland are under the scrutiny of competition commissioner Neelie Kroes, who has raised concerns they could be seen as distorting the market. Lloyds, which is 43% taxpayer-owned, is expected to reduce its high street presence to allay these fears. Last year Halifax closed 53 branches as a result of the housing market downturn and said it would concentrate on its core markets in the Midlands and the North.
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| Posted: 18 Oct 2009 06:15 AM PDT A series of takeovers gave two big banks an enhanced South Jersey presence. Now, Wells Fargo Bank NA-Wachovia and TD Bank NA appear to be getting ready to square off — and when the dust settles, the victor will be local businesses, according to some industry insiders. "Our top competitor by market share in southern New Jersey is TD Bank," Brenda Ross-Dulan, the new South Jersey regional president of Wachovia Bank, told NJBIZ at a recent meeting in her Trenton regional headquarters. Her institution is using the name "Wachovia, A Wells Fargo Company" until the two banks are fully integrated under the Wells Fargo name in 2011. "We're looking to expand the range of financial services and products offered to our customers," she said. TD Bank's reply: Bring it on. "We welcome the competition," said Michael Carbone, regional president for TD Bank's Metro Philadelphia area. "We'll keep executing our strategy. Competitors say they'll match our hours and other services, but they don't actually do it." TD Bank's $9.9 billion of deposits in the eight-county South Jersey region, from Ocean to Cape May, give it a 22 percent market share, the highest in the area as of June 30, 2009, the most recent data available from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Wells Fargo-Wachovia snared second place with $5.4 billion of assets, or a 11.9 percent market share, according to the FDIC. The faceoff has been in the works for some time, but picked up steam earlier this year, after Wells Fargo brought in Ross-Dulan from Los Angeles, where she also was a regional president. When TD Bank bought Cherry Hill-based Commerce Bank in March 2008, the Canadian-based institution already had a beachhead in New Jersey, but beefed up its South Jersey exposure by a considerable amount. Under the watch of Commerce founder Vernon Hill, the then-regional institution used a fast-food model of long hours and plenty of locations to build up a commanding share in the region. His efforts benefited businesses and individuals, even if they didn't bank at Commerce, one expert said. "The fact is that when a strong banking competitor comes along you either meet the challenge or fold," said Peter J. Ostrowski, a former analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston who is now a now a managing director at Ostrowski & Co. Inc., a Cranford-based bank consulting firm. "Commerce has been very influential in New Jersey," he said. "Even when a Commerce branch was rumored to be opening nearby, existing banks would take a second look at their operations as they compete for customers," which can benefit businesses and individuals. There's no doubt that TD's takeover made Commerce stronger, Ostrowski added. It appears the bank's innovative spark survived the departure of Hill, its founder and cheerleader who left in June 2007 after a federal investigation. For example, the financial institution scored top honors in the Mid-Atlantic region, which includes New Jersey, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2009 Retail Banking Satisfaction Study. Wells Fargo had no retail branches in New Jersey until it acquired Wachovia. In a conversation with NJBIZ, Ross-Dulan denied singling out TD Bank for particular attention. But during an early October meet-and-greet in the bank's Trenton office, she used language that was very similar to the style Commerce Bank used for years. For example, she referred to Wachovia branches as "stores," and noted that local branch hours are being extended until 5 p.m. on weekdays to make it easier for customers to come in for face-to-face transactions. This content has passed through fivefilters.org.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Should You Lend Money to Family Members? - ElderLawAnswers.com Posted: 18 Oct 2009 06:43 AM PDT Lending money to family often is not a good idea, say many financial experts, but with interest rates at some of their lowest levels in years, families may find it difficult to resist. Family loans also can be a way to pass on part of the family estate. So if you decide to lend money to a family member, proceed with caution, say certified financial planning professionals. Even with the potential advantages to your child or other relative and yourself, you should treat intra-family loans very carefully. Loans gone sour can create much bad blood in families and could end up in the courts. Before you hand over the check, ask a couple of questions. First, is the family member receiving the loan a good credit risk, or does he or she have a history of not fulfilling promises? Lending money for a mortgage might earn you better money than a Treasury security, but the loan isn't guaranteed. Second, is the purpose of a loan a sound one? Lending money for a mortgage or perhaps college might be a good idea, while lending money to bail a person out of debt or to start a business is probably riskier. In the case of a business, for example, have the relative seek other sources of lending such as a bank or a venture capital firm. If institutions are unwilling to lend or invest, perhaps there's a sound business reason they won't. If they are willing to lend the money, often it's best to let them. Let'¢s say you lend money to your son to buy a home or start a business. The IRS may require you to charge a minimal interest rate, known as the applicable federal rate (AFR), for the loan. If you charge below the rate, or make an interest-free loan, the IRS may impute the difference as interest earned and consider it taxable income. In some cases, the IRS could characterize the entire loan as a gift, subject to gift tax. The imputed interest rules don't apply under certain circumstances: for loans of less than $10,000 as long as the loan is not used to buy income-producing assets, and for loans up to $100,000 as long as the borrower's net investment income doesn't exceed $1,000 for the year. In loans where the imputed interest rules apply, interest rates are set monthly by the IRS and depend on the length of the loan. For example, if you lend money to your son with the plan that he will repay the loan within three years, the minimum annual interest rate you would have to charge according to the April 2007 rates is 4.90 percent. For loan periods of three to nine years, the annual interest rate is 4.61 percent, and for nine years or longer, the rate is 4.81 percent. For the current AFRs, click on www.pmstax.com/afr/index.shtml Such low-interest loans can be a good deal for the family member. A 4.81 percent annual rate on a loan for a child buying a home would certainly be better than the rate offered by commercial lenders. And the rate could benefit you as well when compared to other investment options. Which AFR to use, or whether a de minimis exception may apply, depends on the specifics of the loan's terms, the borrower's net investment income, how the loaned funds will be used, etc. This is set out in Internal Revenue Code section 7872. You should talk to an attorney or certified public accountant (CPA) about which AFR(s) should be used. Treasury regulations may also be applicable. You may choose to forgive some of the interest payments should you not need the cash or your child or relative is facing a tough financial situation. You probably won't be liable for any gift tax if you can use the $12,000 annual gift-tax exemption. The catch is to be sure that you don't agree in advance to forgive the loan or end up forgiving all of the interest payments. Otherwise, the IRS will likely treat the entire loan as a gift subject to gift tax. Draw up formal documents, preferably, with the help of an attorney. Put in writing the terms, interest rate, payment schedule and so on, and keep track of all payments. This not only helps all parties treat it as a real loan, it can prove invaluable should the IRS question the loan. Say your child fails to repay you. You may be able to convince the IRS that this is truly a bad loan for which you can claim a bad-debt loss -- versus a slick way to transfer some of your estate to your child free of tax -- if you can show past payments, efforts to collect, sale of collateral or, heaven forbid, lawsuits filed for payment. Formal documents can help the borrower as well. A promissory note secured by a mortgage, for example, would allow the borrower to deduct the interest payments (though this may involve additional legal and tax issues and additional expenses such as title insurance). Be sure to consult your tax advisor. And don't just assume that if they don't pay it back, you'll simply chalk it off and consider it a gift or an advance against their inheritance. There can be tax consequences and other heirs may resent the loan forgiveness. [Editor's note: There is help for private lenders. CircleLending provides a full range of services for managing financial transactions between private parties. It handles every aspect of the lending process, from structuring the loan repayment schedule to drawing up formal promissory notes to collecting payments each month. For more on CircleLending, click here.] This article was written by the Financial Planning Association (FPA), the membership organization for the financial planning community, and is provided by Maureen McFarland, CFP, Med, of The Financial Team, Inc., a fee-based financial planning firm in Carlsbad, California, and a local member in good standing of the FPA. Ms. McFarland is an Investment Advisor Representative of QA3 Financial LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor, and a Registered Principal of, and securities offered through, QA3 Financial Corp. member NASD/SIPC This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Advancing Stock- MNDP - Transworld News Posted: 18 Oct 2009 06:43 AM PDT The Mundus Group Inc. maximizes commercial potential. Los Angeles 10/18/2009 01:45 PM GMT (TransWorldNews)
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| When 2+2 Equals a Privacy Question - Star News Online Posted: 18 Oct 2009 06:57 AM PDT How about a potentially false sense of control over who can see your user history? While Netflix and some health care concerns say they have been able to offer study data to researchers stripped of specific personal details like your name, phone number and e-mail address, in some cases researchers may be able to re-identify you by correlating anonymous information with the digital trail that you've left on blogs, chat rooms and Twitter. Of course, you may be fine with that. On the other hand, you may not want complete strangers rummaging around in your history of movie selections or medical needs. For example, contestants in Netflix's competition to improve its recommendation software received a training data set containing the movie preferences of more than 480,000 customers who had, as they say in the trade, been "de-identified." But as part of a privacy experiment, a pair of computer scientists at the University of Texas at Austin decided to see if it was possible to re-identify those unnamed movie fans. By comparing the film preferences of some anonymous Netflix customers with personal profiles on imdb.com, the Internet movie database, the researchers said they easily re-identified some people because they had posted their e-mail addresses or other distinguishing information online. Vitaly Shmatikov, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin and a co-author of the "de-anonymization" study, says the researchers were able to analyze users' public postings and connect that to their Netflix preferences — including how a person may have rated films with controversial themes. Those are choices a person may or may not want to make public, Mr. Shmatikov said. Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman, disputed the study's conclusions, saying the customers were not re-identifiable because Netflix had altered the data set before sending it to contestants. "There is no way with certainty that anyone could link a Netflix member with the data Netflix has disclosed by linking it with any publicly available data," he said. "The anonymity of the information is comparable to the strictest federal standards for anonymizing personal health information." Nevertheless, the Texas researchers say they were indeed able to positively identify Netflix customers, and some privacy advocates say their study raises questions about whether newly strengthened laws governing the security of electronic health records — which contain information on diagnoses and treatments entered by health care providers — may offer incomplete privacy protection. Leaked movie preferences might embarrass or stereotype you, they said. But information extracted from medical records and then linked back to you, they said, has the potential to cause social, professional and financial harm. "Movie records can be sensitive in some cases; it could be embarrassing for someone to find out I like romantic comedies," Mr. Shmatikov, the computer scientist, said in a recent phone interview. "But definitely for health records, this is a huge issue." And you don't need records containing a person's name and address to figure out to whom the records belong, he said, "As our research shows, pretty much any information that distinguishes one person from another can be used to re-identify records." The idea of an entirely paperless medical system holds the promise of more efficient and cost-effective care. And, with the incentive of stimulus package money, many companies are rushing to sell clinical information systems to streamline services like patient scheduling, sample tracking, and billing at hospitals and clinics. In some cases, the same companies that sell data management systems to hospitals and physicians also store that information and then repackage it to make money on other services. The clinical information systems market in the United States has sales of $8 billion to $10 billion annually, and about 5 percent of that comes from data and analysis, according to estimates by George Hill, an analyst at Leerink Swann, a health care investment bank. But by 2020, when a vast majority of American health providers are expected to have electronic health systems, the data mining component alone could generate sales of up to $5 billion, Mr. Hill said. Demand for the data is likely to be robust. Policy makers and hospitals will want to dig into it to analyze physician practices and glean information about patient health trends. Big players like the Cerner Corporation, which maintains electronic health systems for 8,000 clients, including large hospitals and retail clinics, and smaller players like Practice Fusion, which offers its Web-based health record systems free to health care providers, say they make use of patient data collected from their clients. A spokeswoman for Cerner, whose Web site promotes its "data mining of our vast warehouse of electronic health records," said the company shares de-identified patient data with researchers or drug companies looking for patients to participate in clinical trials. The patient records are "double scrubbed," she said, explaining that the company removes personal data like names and addresses before it runs a search using a numbered code for each patient. Other sensitive information, like mental health records, might be removed before the patient data is sent out, she said. The Web site of Practice Fusion, meanwhile, quotes Ryan Howard, the chief executive, as saying that the company subsidizes its free record-keeping systems by selling de-identified data to insurance groups, clinical researchers and pharmaceutical companies. In an interview, however, Mr. Howard said Practice Fusion had not yet started selling patient information but that it intended to do so. NEW regulations require notifying patients if their personally identifiable medical information gets loose, and they prohibit selling protected health records. But privacy advocates said electronic health records remain vulnerable because no federal law now forbids the sale of de-identified health care data. In 1997, for example, a researcher identified the medical records of William Weld, then the governor of Massachusetts, by correlating birthdays, ZIP codes and gender in voter registration rolls and information published by the state's government insurance commission. There are no current federal laws against re-identification, said Dr. Deborah Peel, a psychiatrist who is a director of Patient Privacy Rights, a nonprofit watchdog group in Austin, Tex. "Once personal health data gets out there, it's like the Paris Hilton sex tape," Dr. Peel said. "It is going to be out there forever." This content has passed through fivefilters.org.  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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