Today in Globe Business
NEW YORK - The numbers are a bit breathtaking: In a little more than four months, the Dow Jones industrial average has leapt more than 2,500 points - nearly 39 percent - to close above 9,000 for the first time since January.
Behind that meteoric rise, capped by 188-point gain yesterday, is a growing belief that profits at many blue-chip corporations are starting to bounce back, despite the tough economy.
In the past week alone, more than 100 major corporations, from the 3M Co. to Intel Corp., reported quarterly earnings that surpassed Wall Street’s predictions. Even one of the troubled Detroit automakers - the Ford Motor Co. - managed to beat expectations yesterday.
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Google Books causes concern among librarians, authors
Dan Clancy makes librarians nervous.
When the Google Books engineering director participated in a panel discussion at the Boston Public Library this week, his opening remarks focused on the search engine’s efforts to enable access for “every kid in Arkansas’’ to Harvard-size digital libraries. But soon afterward, he was hearing from librarians on the panel that they felt “queasy’’ about Google Books.
“I appreciate the trepidation, because this project is very big, and very complex,’’ he said afterward. “It is also part of a very large cultural and societal shift.’’
Google’s growing digital book project is making some in the publishing world nervous - a fact the search giant is trying to change. Google Books, which includes the largest team of engineers working out of Google’s Cambridge office, has been a force ever since it started an aggressive book scanning project with some of the world’s largest libraries in 2004. But now that Google has become a publishing powerhouse - with more than 10 million books scanned so far, of which 1.5 million are currently available online free of charge - it has made some librarians and authors uneasy.
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Times Co. expects sale of Sox stake
The New York Times Co. said yesterday it expects by January to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox and New England Sports Network. But the company’s executives declined to address the possible sale of The Boston Globe.
In a conference call to report second-quarter earnings, Times Co. chief executive Janet Robinson said the Globe is on “stronger financial footing’’ after the last of its unions this week approved a package of pay and benefit concessions that, combined, will yield $20 million in savings.
Robinson, however, would not comment on what she termed “speculation’’ that the Times Co. is trying to sell the Globe.
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Auto dealers hoping for rush of bargain hunters
Massachusetts auto dealers hope crowds of bargain hunters will rush to fill showrooms next week as buyers look to beat an Aug. 1 increase in the state sales tax and take advantage of the new federal “cash for clunkers’’ program.
The 25 percent sales tax increase - to 6.25 percent - coupled with today’s release of the federal credit program’s final rules could provide a much needed boost for the sinking industry, some auto officials say. According to the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association, there are 441 dealerships in the state, about 20 percent fewer than in 2007.
“When the government puts up billions of dollars to help stimulate the car industry, people are going to want to buy,’’ said Raymond Ciccolo, an official with the Massachusetts dealers group and the National Automobile Dealers Association.
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BOSTON CAPITAL: Pay debate, part II
No one will look back on America’s financial meltdown and wonder why the executives of so many big companies took such foolish risks with the businesses they ran.
We all know the simple answer is money. Executive pay schemes encouraging top managers to bet the farm weren’t the exclusive cause of our problems, but they played a huge part. A more complicated question: What should government do about it?
One response will be a full display in Congress next week, when the House Financial Services Committee takes up executive compensation legislation pushed by its chairman, Barney Frank. Call it: Say-on-pay, the sequel.
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