Finland's UPM/Botnia plant, which is an ongoing motive of dispute with Argentina is planning a second pulp mill but to the east of Uruguay, announced Vice-president Danilo Astori, confirming a previous statement from the First Lady and Senator Lucia Topolansky.
US bank JP Morgan has agreed to a record 13 billion dollars settlement with US regulators for misleading investors during the housing crisis. It is the largest settlement ever between the US government and a corporation. The bank acknowledged it made serious misrepresentations to the public, but said it did not violate US laws.
United States sided with Spain's Repsol position in the dispute over the seizure of a majority stake in YPF by the administration of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez last year, a dispute which remains unresolved over compensation for the assets.
A United States appeals court on Monday declined to reconsider an order requiring Argentina to pay 1.33 billion dollars, ruling in favor of bondholders who refused to participate in two debt restructurings spinning out of the country's 2002 default.
Sunday 1st December 2013 marks the introduction of the new National Minimum Wage legislation for the Falkland Islands. From this date, employers are required by law to pay their workers aged 18 years and over a minimum of £5.05 per hour, equivalent to approximately 8.13 dollars (or £3.10 per hour for workers aged 16 or 17 years).
Argentina's economic activity grew 4.7% in September compared with the same month last year, according to the government's much questioned stats office, INDEC. Market expectations were in the range of 3.9%.
Vice-president Danilo Astori confirmed that Uruguay will continue with its current flexible foreign exchange policy, because this has helped us reduce volatilities, but also admitted concern about inflation, the third highest in South America and fourth in Latin-American and the Caribbean.
Long gone are the days of easy money, so it seems. Junior energy companies are finding today’s capital to be more expensive and harder to access. In the current market, juniors are fighting an ongoing battle just to balance sustainable growth, manage debt, and to compete with peers for dollars that just aren’t there. When assessing a junior, one must look at how they put their budgets together and maintain them if they’re to survive out there in the wild.
The European Union has clinched a deal on a sharply trimmed 2014 budget after a marathon 16-hour session ending a long dispute over how best to spend taxpayers' money. After decades of growth, next year's EU budget is set to be around 7% lower than this year's at 135.5 billion Euros in contributions by member states.
Japan unveiled a new wind farm off the coast of Fukushima last week. Only thirteen miles offshore from the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power station, the same nuclear station that notoriously attracted the world's attention during the 2011 Japanese tsunami, the new wind farm is expected to produce upwards of one gigawatt from 143 wind turbines. For comparison, the now-inoperable Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant could provide 4.4 gigawatts.