Peter Jefferson is a full-time researcher for www.businessdistrict.com, a task he took on in 2011 when the site was launched. He brings to the position a wealth of practical experience in the field of fiscal policy, having consulted with various government bodies on revenue collection, expenditure and economic growth. Contact Peter at peter[at]businessdistrict.com
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Facebook’s mobile photo service, Instagram will be expanding is new advertising business to countries outside the United States.
The plan is to first show ads to users in Australia, Britain and Canada later this year by working with just a small number of advertisers in each of those countries.
Facebook has already begun placing ads in Instagram inside the US, beginning last November with brands like Levi’s and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Instagram announced that the ads within the US have, in some cases yielded results “well above the ad industry’s average for performance.”
Instagram has over 200 million users, and is therefore expected to be an excellent source of advertising revenue for Facebook, which purchased the mobile photo service in 2012 for $1 billion. Seeking to calm investor expectations of a quick revenue uptick, Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg said that the company was going to roll out their ad program on Instagram at a moderate pace.
“We don’t see the need or the urge to ramp this as quickly as we possibly can,” Sandberg said.
As the economy struggled in its continuing bid at recovery, Toys “R” Us took a lot of the brunt as sales plummeted in 2013. The giant toy store chain reported a net loss of $210 million during the fourth quarter of 2013 and a total loss of $1 billion for the year. The losses were blamed on fierce competition from on-line sellers such as Amazon, and discount department stores like Wal-Mart.
Earnings for 2012 totaled $239 million, accentuating the challenges of last year’s marketplace.
The private held retailer posted a decrease in same-store sales of 4.1 percent in the US and 2.2 percent internationally during the fourth quarter of 2013. Those figures are an important indicator of a retailer’s overall health, and they included the crucial holiday season.
“It was a challenging year, with declines in both our domestic and international segments,” CEO Antonio Urcelay said in a statement to investors.
“The U.S. business experienced the more significant downturn, primarily due to a decrease in net sales, margin pressure and one-time items, including the write-down of excess and obsolete inventory as we take the necessary and prudent steps to improve the business.”
Toys “R” Us did have a good year in China, however. As the Chinese economy continues to expand and more people are climbing the affluence ladder, there is more disposable income available to spend on children’s playthings.
So far this year things are looking up a bit for Toys “R” Us here at home. So far there has been a 3.5 percent increase in same-store sales in the US due to an increase in entertainment related toys connected to beloved movie franchises. Net sales for all of 2013 totaled $12.5 billion. That is $1 billion less, or 7.4 percent, from 2012.
In what is at least the third recall of generic Lipitor in the past two years, The Federal Food and Drug Administration announced a Class II recall of the Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd product.
Over 64,000 bottles of the medication that lowers cholesterol levels were recalled in the United States as a reaction to the discovery by a pharmacist of a 20-milligram tablet in a sealed bottle which was marked as containing just 10-milligram tablets.
A Class II recall means that there is only a slight chance that severe bad consequences or death will ensue due to the problem. Ranbaxy, located in India, did not comment on the recall announcement.
Ranbaxy is India’s largest drug manufacturer by revenue. In November 2012 the company recalled 480,000 bottles of atorvastatin calcium, the generic name for Lipitor’s active ingredient, due to the discovery of tiny particles of glass by the company.
Speeding violations major source of revenue for Hampton, Florida
The tiny town of Hampton, population 477, is well-known in north Florida despite its small size. Sitting along route 301 between Gainesville, where the University of Florida has a campus, and other much larger communities, Hampton is known as a speed-trap, a place where driving too fast frequently gained the transgressor a speeding ticket . It turns out that the 17 policemen on the force of Hampton gave out tickets to the tune of $200,000 over the years, but did not keep track of where the money finally ended up.
This turns out to be only a small sample of the mismanagement at best, and pervasive corruption at worst, that plagued the town for many years. Hampton just went through a devastating audit pointing to gross wrongdoing by city officials. As a result of the audit the entire staff of the town resigned, and the Florida legislature plans on filing legislation to abolish the town this coming spring.
In wake of the fact that the town’s staff has resigned en masse, passage of a bill to disband the town may be purely symbolic, as the town, for all intents and purposes, already does not exist as a political entity.
“The whole town’s resigned now,” said the chairman of the Legislature’s joint auditing committee Lake Ray, R-Jacksonville. “Apparently, the operator of the water plant had resigned but agreed to come back and work for a little while.”
Hampton is about 130 miles north of Orlando. The audit, overseen by the Florida Joint Legislative Auditing Committee, showed that the town kept horrible records of expenses, could not account for 46 percent of its water, entered into contracts without keeping records, and in one case at least, lost public records “in a swamp.” Not to mention the 17 policeman who generated $200,000 in revenue through the handing out of speeding tickets, with no record of where those funds went to.
“You can’t make this stuff up in a book,” Bradford County Sheriff Gordon Smith told the panel last week.
“We do have the information that says there’s a lot of unusual activities,” Ray said. “So therefore we believe there may be some problems, so we’re sending it to the State Attorney’s office. Our understanding is they’re aware of it and they will be taking action.”
The committee is planning on sending a letter to the State Attorney to ask for an investigation into the issue of whether criminal wrongdoing took place in the running of Hampton.
Moving in a distinctly reverse direction to the innovation companies like Google and Zappos have embraced, where employees are given freedom in areas like creativity, time-off and more; a Japanese company has created a tool that will track just about every movement and interaction an employee has in the office or workplace.
The device, which is worn as a badge or ID card, holds chips and sensors which record a variety of behaviors, including how often a worker goes to the lavatory; to whom an employee speaks during the day, how often, where and with how much enthusiasm, and just about every move a worker is capable of making.
Hitachi, the developer of the device, calls it the “Business Microscope.” It is a good name since it will certainly make employees feel like they are being scrutinized as if they were bugs on a slide under the eye of their supervisor.
The gadget can tell how often a worker gets up out of his chair, how far he walks and where he went. It can also tell how often he speaks at meetings, reporting on how much and what he contributes to groups.
“Business Microscope uses sensor technology to measure and analyze inner company communication and activities. Multiple-sensor devices are placed inside a nameplate-type sensor that is attached to employees,” Hitachi said on its website.
“When the name tag sensors come within a specified distance of each other, they recognize each other and record the face time, body and behavior rhythm data to a server,” Hitachi added.
Hitachi said their goal for developing the badge is to make workers more efficient while also helping supervisors and bosses to organize the workspace to make it more worker-friendly, enhancing cooperation between workers.
