Financial life in a big town

Deutsche Telekom AG’s major shareholder, the German state, is pressing it to make large acquisitions in the hope of raising its sagging share price, a source familiar with the government’s thinking said.

“Berlin is very clearly on an expansion course and is putting pressure on Deutsche Telekom,” the source told Reuters on Monday, as speculation swirled the German company could bid for U.S. wireless phone company Sprint Nextel (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

A source close to the company said Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) had been looking at Sprint Nextel since the U.S. company announced a huge goodwill writeoff in February. The person said no decision had been taken on whether to bid.

The Berlin government still owns around a third of the former state-owned company, has a representative on its supervisory board and has a major say in company decisions.

Asked about Telekom being interested in Sprint Nextel, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told reporters in Berlin he considered it to be “a rumor, like so much else”.

Deutsche Telekom’s chief executive, Rene Obermann, has said he wants to grow the group’s mobile phone business through acquisitions to compensate for a dwindling fixed-line business and has linked his performance to boosting the share price.

Telekom shares lost 1.5 percent to close at 11.61 euros, the second-biggest decliner among German blue-chips .GDAXI faxless online payday advances. Sprint shares were up 4.3 percent at $8.23 by 1751 GMT.

Such a deal would vault Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA unit past AT&T (T.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Verizon Wireless (VZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research) (VOD.L: Quote, Profile, Research) to the number one spot among U.S. mobile phone service providers, but industry experts were skeptical Telekom would pull it off. 

Read more

MONTREAL – Forestry firm Tembec Inc. reported today a second-quarter loss of $59 million, deepened from a year-earlier loss of $45 million.

The company (TSX: TMB), which underwent a major financial recapitalization in February, broke out its results into two separate blocks to account for the transformation of its books.

Tembec's loss for January and February was $42 million or 49 cents per share and in March, following the recapitalization, was $17 million or 17 cents per share. It's per share loss for the full prior-year came in at 54 cents per share.

The quarter included the two components due to the requirements of "fresh start" accounting as of Feb. 29.

"The March quarterly operating results were an improvement over the previous quarter, but remained well below acceptable levels," Tembec said.

"The extremely low US-dollar lumber selling prices experienced over the last several months offset most of the gains in pulp. As well, higher prices for fossil fuel are increasing the cost of transportation, chemicals as well as direct energy purchases."

Quarterly sales fell to $593 million from $714 million.

Forest products sales were relatively unchanged, with seasonally higher by-product sales offsetting lower prices and volumes for lumber and engineered wood.

The pulp segment had sales of $369 million for the quarter, on higher volumes and selling prices for all grades of pulp bad credit payday loans. The paper segment posted sales of $98 million.

Tembec has been idling some of its mills and laying off workers because of a lack of wood supply in the northwestern Quebec region. Along with other forestry companies, it's also being impacted by slowing demand due to a slump in the housing market.

The newly recapitalized company employs about 8,000 people at its operations located primarily in North America and France.

Under the recapitalization plan, Tembec converted US$1.2 billion of debt into equity. The deal is expected to cut Tembec's annual debt payments by nearly two thirds, from $100 million to between $30 million and $35 million.

On the TSX today, Tembec shares rose seven cents or 1.7 per cent to trade at $4.16.

Source

The first step to creating an effective wellness program is to develop a formal change management strategy that includes:

•Sponsorship by leadership

•Involvement of employees

•Targeted communication
•Education/tools to support learning

•Measures to assess progress

•Linkage to broader culture of health philosophies.

As part of the strategy, implementing incentives for wellness will create behavior change.

Incentives generally are used in three areas with varying levels of effectiveness: Annual Health Risk Assessment (HRA), participation in programs such as weight management and achievement of long-term goals (cholesterol levels, body mass index, or BMI).

Rewards generally are designed around three common approaches:

•Cash awards ranging from $35 to $500 per activity

•Reduced medical rates ranging from $5 to $10 per month

•Mandatory requirement to complete a health-related activity in order to be eligible for a certain medical plan.

Towers Perrin informally gathered information on the incentive programs of nearly 30 clients and found that the most prevalent goal of incentives is to encourage employees to complete an HRA no teletrak payday loans. Many employers also are now requiring that, where indicated, employees participate in an additional health-related activity based on the results of the HRA. It is important that the employer define the level of participation needed to earn the incentives.

Examples of health-related activities include biometric screening, wellness programs and disease management programs.

Once implemented, incentives are difficult to remove without employee backlash, so developing incentives that link to the broader change management strategy is critical.

Source