Business Shark

Leading Blog of Business News

INTERNATIONAL. The spot market price of buying gold climbed to US$1,728 an ounce Monday morning London time – a slight drop from last week’s close – while stock markets, commodities and the Euro all fell and government bond prices rose as European leaders met for their latest summit in Brussels.

The cost of buying silver fell to US$33.08 at one point – a 2.6% drop from where it ended last week.

Gold fell as low as US$1,718 per ounce Monday morning, dropping steadily during Asian trading, though this represented a loss of only 1% on Friday’s closing price, before turning higher in New York morning trading to reach US$1,730 by 13:58 EDT.

“Everybody seemed to be expecting profit taking out of Shanghai after the two Chinese bourses came back online,” said one Hong Kong dealer.

“As far as we can see, there wasn’t much of that.”

During last week’s Lunar New Year holiday, China saw a “gold rush”, with consumers spending more on buying gold than during the 2011 festival, according to a China Daily report.

“People seem crazy about gold, snatching it up more like a cheap cabbage than such a precious metal,” it quotes Beijing resident Miao Miao.

The value of sales at two of Beijing’s top gold retailers, Caibai and Guohua, reportedly hit 600 million Yuan (US$95.28 million) – a 49.7% rise on last year’s sales. The gol

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The primary goal for most companies and brands was to increase fans/likes (44 percent), the survey found, followed by increasing loyalty (30 percent) and collecting data (19 percent).

“We ran into a problem, if you want to call it that,” said Lucas Hanyok, a Web developer with the Cyphers Agency in Baltimore. “We didn’t realize the response we would get. We quickly jumped from 1,000 fans to 53,000 fans in just a few days. We only had 5,000 of the product samples to give away.”

Overall, running contests boosted fan count by an average of 28.7 percent, the survey found.

Sweepstakes received the greatest number of entries, followed by photo contests, essay contests and video contests.  The incentive that proved to be the most effective was offering big-ticket grand prizes, such as iPads, plasma TVs or cruises.  

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A PROPERTY trust run by Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (Swip) has passed the 1 billion milestone for purchases since it was launched in 2009.

Recent acquisitions by the Swip Property Trust include a £76 million retail site close to Oxford Street in London where Boots is the largest tenant. Around 80 per cent of the properties bought by the trust over the past year were in London and the south-east of England.

Fund manager Gerry Ferguson said income would continue to be the main driver of property returns in 2012 with central London forecast to provide strongest growth.

News of the milestone came as Lucy O’Carroll joined Swip as its chief economist in Edinburgh. She was previously senior economist at Lloyds Banking Group working under Patrick Foley.

VERNON, CA, January 24, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ — Van’s Natural Foods, the market leader in delicious, better-for-you frozen foods, announces three new healthy choices: Power Grains Protein Waffles, 8 Whole Grains English Muffins and 8 Whole Grains Pancakes.

Van’s Power Grains Protein Waffles are the first nationally available high-protein frozen waffles and offer 10 grams of protein per 180-calorie serving. As recent studies by leading obesity research journals have found, a breakfast rich in protein may help promote weight loss over time.

We are dedicated to providing delicious, all-natural breakfast options for those who want to lead healthier lives, said Sarah Meis, Van’s Director of Marketing. Our Power Grains and 8 Whole Grains lines fit into busy lifestyles. Read Full Article…

The day after Business Secretary Vince Cable announced extra legislation to control fat cat pay and bonuses, a major, FTSE 100 blue-chip company, Cairn Energy, bowed to shareholder pressure over a massive, one-off pay-out for its chairman.

Sir Bill Gammell had been due to receive a 2.5 million share bonus, with another 1 million being donated to charity as a result of the successful, 3.5 billion sale of the group’s Indian business to Vedanta last year.

But today Cairn bowed to investor pressure and said it had withdrawn Gammell’s share bonanza and the charity donation from the agenda of its shareholder meeting next week. Read Full Article…

Some well-known San Antonio companies failed to claim their .xxx domains and at least two local businesses have moved to protect their brands from possibly being associated with smutty online content.

The .xxx designations went live late last year as a way to distinguish adult-entertainment sites. Many companies not part of the adult-entertainment industry moved quickly to block domains affiliated with their brands.

Valero Energy Corp. earlier this month took steps to secure the domain name Valero.xxx after it was acquired by a Netherlands man on Dec. 6 — the first day domain names went on sale to the public.

J Leegsma, who is listed as the site’s registrant, said Monday that he planned to turn over the rights to the site to Valero after it filed an action with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). I

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