Financial life in a big town

Qantas Airways planes returned to the skies Monday after an Australian court ruled on a bitter labor dispute that had prompted the world’s 10th-largest airline to ground its entire fleet.

A flight from Sydney to Jakarta, Indonesia, took off shortly after Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority gave the “Flying Kangaroo,” as the Australian flag carrier is known, the all-clear to resume flying.

Qantas said in a statement it still expected some delays as it worked to clear the backlog of customers affected by the nearly 48-hour grounding. The airline is adding extra flights and expects its schedule to return to normal within one or two days.

The grounding disrupted the travel plans of tens of thousands of people across the world, and Qantas passengers were gathering at airports in Australia, Los Angeles and elsewhere in the hopes of finally getting to their destinations.

The airline’s resumption of flights comes around 12 hours after an emergency ruling by an arbitration court ended weeks of strikes and canceled a staff lockout.

The court ruling was a major victory in the airline’s battle with unions representing pilots, aircraft mechanics, baggage handlers and caterers, whose rolling strikes have forced the cancellation of 600 flights in recent months, disrupted travel for 70,000 passengers and cost Qantas 70 million Australian dollars ($75 million).

But some aviation experts said the surprise grounding of all 108 planes on Saturday, at a cost of $20 million a day, has hurt the Australian flagship carrier’s reputation around the world. Moody’s Investors Service said it could downgrade the airline’s credit ratings as the weekend’s events could hurt bookings, profits and the value of the Qantas brand.

Still, the stock market welcomed the weekend developments as allowing the airline to focus on its long-term strategy. Qantas shares on Monday jumped 4.3 percent to AU$1.61 on the stock exchange in Sydney.

Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst in San Francisco, predicts the shutdown will do long-term damage to the Qantas name by hurting its reputation for reliability.

“A lot of travelers won’t take a chance and will book away to Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand and other airlines,” Harteveldt said. “Brand loyalty in the airline business is very low, and there is so much competition.”

Before the court ruling, Virgin Australia said it was scheduling extra flights and offering 20 percent fare discounts to help stranded Qantas passengers through Thursday.

If Qantas loses customers, that could also hurt partners in its alliance of global airlines, including American Airlines. A rival alliance that includes Air New Zealand and is led by United Continental Holdings Inc. could benefit, as could a third group of airlines that includes several major Asian carriers and is led by Delta Air Lines Inc. and Air France-KLM.

CEO Alan Joyce praised the court ruling, which prevents unions from taking any further strike action over their demands for pay hikes and job security clauses under news contracts being negotiated. The strikes have been blamed for a sharp decline in the airline’s future bookings.

“The important thing is that all industrial action is now over and we have certainty,” Joyce told reporters in Sydney.

“We will be returning to business as usual over the next 24 hours,” he said.

Other industry veterans said the lockout was a daring move that will pay off for Qantas, which wants to expand the low-cost, low-fare model that it uses at its Jetstar Airways subsidiary business cards design.

Jetstar has extensive routes to Southeast Asia and Japan, and lower costs than Qantas. But Qantas unions fear that expansion of low-cost airlines will result in Australian jobs being sent overseas. Joyce hopes to bend the unions closer to the company’s vision for growth by tapping into Asian markets.

“It was a very shrewd move by their CEO to force the issue and stop the potential deterioration of the brand,” said Mo Garfinkle, an airline consultant who has worked for Qantas rival Virgin Australia. “In the end, it will benefit Qantas financially.”

Garfinkle said the short duration of the fleet grounding will help Qantas get back up to full speed quickly, cutting its losses.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday described the grounding as “extreme,” while Transport Minister Tony Albanese has sharply criticized Joyce for giving the government only three hours notice of his plans.

The Australian government, angered by a lack of warning of the grounding, had called an emergency court hearing on Saturday night to end the work bans for the sake of the national economy.

The three judges heard more than 14 hours of testimony from the airline, the government and unions. Workers have held rolling strikes and refused overtime work for weeks out of worry that some of Qantas’ 32,500 jobs would be moved overseas in a restructuring plan.

The unions wanted the court to temporarily suspend the employee lockout so that strike action could resume if negotiations in the labor dispute failed to progress. But the airline said the strikes had devastated the airline’s reputation for reliability and that the threat needed to be removed permanently before customers would return.

Tribunal President Geoffrey Giudice said the panel decided that a temporary suspension would still risk Qantas’ grounding its fleet in the future and would not protect the tourism and aviation industries from damage.

Qantas is the largest of Australia’s four national domestic airlines, and the grounding affected 108 planes in 22 countries.

About 70,000 passengers fly Qantas daily, and would-be fliers this weekend were stuck at home, hotels or airports, or even had to suddenly deplane when Qantas suspended operations. More than 60 flights were in the air at the time but continued to their destinations, and Qantas was paying for passengers to book other flights.

Qantas infuriated unions in August when it said it would improve its loss-making overseas business by creating an Asia-based airline with its own name and brand. The five-year restructure plan will cost 1,000 jobs.

The airline also said in August that it had more than doubled annual profit to AU$250 million but warned that the business environment was too challenging to forecast earnings for the current fiscal year.

Qantas is the 10th-largest airline in the world by passenger miles flown, according to the International Air Transport Association, an airline trade group.

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Associated Press writers David Koenig from Dallas, Texas, and Andrew Dalton from Los Angeles contributed to this report.

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Enterprise Holdings’ revenue rose to $14.1 billion for its 2011 fiscal year, a record for the privately-held company and a 12 percent increase from 2010.

Clayton-based Enterprise’s brands include Enterprise Rent-A-Car, National Car Rental and Alamo Rent a Car. Its fiscal 2010 revenue was $12.6 billion.

For its 2011 fiscal year that ended July 31, Enterprise grew its daily rental fleet by nearly 10 percent, to more than one million vehicles, the company said in a statement payday loans guaranteed no fax. The company had more than $2 billion in corporate travel revenues for fiscal 2011.

Enterprise, which is owned by the family of founder Jack Taylor, does not disclose profit figures.

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Forget style, quality and customer service. This holiday season, all that matters is price.

A week before Halloween and two full months before Christmas, stores are desperately trying to outdo each other in hopes of drawing in customers worn down by the economy.

Wal-Mart, the biggest store in the nation, joined the price wars Monday by announcing that it would give gift cards to shoppers if they buy something there and find it somewhere else cheaper.

Staples and Bed Bath & Beyond have already said they will match the lowest prices of Amazon.com and other big Internet retailers. Sears is going a step further, offering to beat a competitor’s best price by 10 percent.

“The days of marketing the stuff in your store because it was a hot brand are over,” says Dave Ratner, owner of Dave’s Soda & Pet City, a Massachusetts pet food and supplies chain.

For the holidays, Ratner plans to offer 20 percent off pet accessories if customers buy a bag of dog food. Customers, he says, just want a deal.

Almost four years after the onset of the Great Recession, they’ve learned to expect one too. In better times, retailers could afford to keep prices higher and use promises of higher quality and better service to lure people into stores.

Those days are over. In a recent poll of 1,000 shoppers by America’s Research Group, 78 percent said they were more driven by sales than they were a year ago. During the financial meltdown in 2008, that figure was only 68 percent.

Wal-Mart last year went back to its “everyday low prices” roots, a bedrock philosophy of founder Sam Walton, rather than slashing prices only on certain items to draw in customers. Now everyday low prices might not be low enough.

So it’s trying something it is calling the Christmas Price Guarantee. It works this way: If you buy something at Wal-Mart from Nov. 1 to Dec. 25 and find the identical product elsewhere for less, you get a gift card in the amount of the difference.

The deal excludes online prices and some categories of merchandise _ groceries, live plants, tobacco, prescription drugs and wireless devices that require a service agreement. But it is good even if weeks pass between your purchase and spotting the better deal. And it applies even to big items like TVs, for which prices can drop steeply as Christmas approaches.

Duncan MacNaughton, chief merchandising officer for Wal-Mart’s U.S. stores, told reporters Monday that he has noticed “much more promotional intensity and gimmicks” among competitors.

“This gives customers peace of mind that we are an advocate for them,” he said.

Toys R Us’ big book of holiday offers will be packed this year with $8,000 of savings, compared with $5,600 last year, said Bob Friedland, a company spokesman. And it has added an incentive this year: If customers who sign up for its loyalty program spend $200 or more during the holiday season, they will get coupons on toys every month next year.

Retailers are responding to a customer base that is better informed, and more comfortable shopping online, than ever.

Jenna Wahl, a cardiac nurse from Bloomington, Ind., said she expects to spend about as much on holiday gifts this year as last _ roughly $500 _ but will try to get more for her money.

She’ll be asking stores to do more price-matching and plans to use her iPhone to check prices and download coupons.

“I will take things back in order to get the better deal,” she said.

Wal-Mart left online prices out of its Christmas offer, but other stores have decided they may not have that luxury. Staples, for example, is leaving it to the discretion of its store managers to decide whether to match online prices.

Sears’ offer of beating a competitor by 10 percent will not apply to retailers that only do business online, such as Amazon, but will apply to prices that its brick-and-mortar competitors offer on their websites.

The holiday price wars mark an acceleration of a trend that has already swept the retail industry. Lowe’s, the nation’s No. 2 home improvement store, said in August it was starting to focus on everyday low prices for items that customers can easily comparison-shop at rivals like Home Depot and Sears.

And J.C. Penney, the department store chain, said earlier this month that it plans to overhaul its pricing strategy starting in February. So far, it has kept the details a secret.

Wal-Mart stepped up its price matching in April by directing store employees to comb through competitors’ advertisements so price matches at the register would be easier. Wal-Mart’s price match has been around for several years, but it is using it more as a competitive weapon to compete with rivals. It’s launched ads playing up its price matching and has training sales associates to better police prices of local competitors. Customers will still have to ask for the price match.

“Customers have learned to wait on the next big deal because they know that if they wait long enough they can get a lower price than the everyday low price,” Bob Gfeller, Lowe’s executive vice president of merchandising, said to investors in August. “However, we must be vigilant to ensure that our customers perceive us to be priced competitively every day, even against online retailers and smaller category killers.”

Indeed, 64 percent of shoppers polled said that it would take discounts between 30 percent to 50 percent to get them to spend, up from 54 percent last year, according to a recent Citi Investment Research & Analysis survey of a little more than 1,000 customers. Customers looking for 60 percent off as a big motivator to spend increased to 10 percent from 8 percent last year, the survey showed.

Bill Martin, co-founder Shoppertrak, which monitors customer traffic at 25,000 stores nationwide, says retailers are seeing that customers appear in droves when they have big sales for holiday weekends like Black Friday, Memorial Day or Father’s Day. This creates peaks and valleys throughout the year, a trend that hasn’t abated since the recession began in late 2007.

“The reality is consumers are targeted. They’re well informed, and they’ve searched the Internet for price information,” said Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak, which expects foot traffic to drop 2.2 percent during the holiday season compared with a year ago.

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Folk music legend Pete Seeger and `60s folk singer Arlo Guthrie joined Occupy Wall Street demonstrators Friday in their campaign against corporate greed while residents near the protest park encampment pushed to regain some peace and quiet in their neighborhood.

Seeger joined in the Occupy Wall Street protest Friday night, replacing his banjo with two canes as he marched with throngs of people in New York City’s tony Upper West Side past banks and shiny department stores.

The 92-year-old Seeger, accompanied by musician-grandson Tao Rodriguez Seeger, composer David Amram, and bluesman Guy Davis, shouted out the verses of protest anthems as the crowd of about 1,000 people sang and chanted.

They marched peacefully over more than 30 blocks from Symphony Space, where the Seegers and other musicians performed, to Columbus Circle. Police watched from the sidelines.

Occupy Wall Street began a month ago in lower Manhattan among a few young people, and has grown to tens of thousands around the country and the world. A recent Associated Press-GfK poll says more than one-third of the country supports the Wall Street protesters, and even more _ 58 percent _ say they are furious about America’s politics.

But the encampment at Zuccotti Park has become more than a tolerable nuisance, some neighborhood residents say. At a meeting Thursday, they complained of protesters urinating in the streets and beating drums in the middle of the night. Some called for the protesters to vacate the park.

The area’s community board voted unanimously for a resolution that recognized the protesters’ First Amendment rights while calling for a crackdown on noise and public urination and defecation.

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and state Sen. Daniel Squadron said in a statement that the resolution was “an attempt to establish a sensible framework that respects the protesters’ fundamental rights while addressing the very real quality of life concerns for residents and businesses around Zuccotti Park.”

Asked about Occupy Wall Street on WOR Radio on Friday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the protesters’ leaderless structure has made it difficult to negotiate with them.

Occupy Wall Street spokesman Han Shan, who has served as a liaison between protesters and local elected officials, agreed the protesters needed to be better neighbors. Shan, who attended the meeting, promised to limit the noise.

At Columbus Circle, Seeger and friends walked to the chant of “We are the 99 percent” and “We are unstoppable; another world is possible.” Seeger stopped to bang a metal statue of an elephant with his cane _ to cheers from the crowd.

At the center of the plaza, Seeger and Amram were joined by Guthrie in a round of “We Shall Overcome,” a protest anthem made popular by Seeger.

After more singing, Seeger asked for a mic check to tell the crowd: “The words are simple: I could be happy spending my days on the river that flows both way-ay-ays.”

During the march, the younger Seeger, in troubadour fashion like his grandfather, walked among the protesters playing songs. Amra took up a flute and others enlivened the night protest with the sounds of the accordion, banjos, and guitars.

At the front of the throng, marchers held American flags and a large blue flag that said: “Revolution Generation … Debt is Slavery.” Along the way, the crowd sang protest songs made popular or written by Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and others of the protest era.

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Associated Press writer Karen Matthews contributed to this report.

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Enormous oil wealth lies thousands of feet below Libya, but whether it will be claimed, and by whom, now that Moammar Gadhafi is gone is very much an open question.

Drilling and shipping equipment has been damaged in the Libyan civil war, land mines must be cleared around oil fields, and a legal framework for how oil money is collected and distributed must still be worked out.

Whatever government is formed could open vast regions of Libya for drilling at reasonable terms _ or it could demand that foreign oil companies pay exorbitant royalties or require them to build infrastructure in exchange for access to oil.

Libya sits on the biggest reserves of oil in Africa. Those resources could help Libya recover from Gadhafi’s decades-long corruption and the civil war. Or the oil could be kept out of reach by political chaos, crumbling infrastructure or violence.

“It’s extraordinary how the Gadhafi regime squandered so much oil wealth and left it a deprived country in terms of infrastructure,” says Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS CERA, an energy research firm, and author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil industry. “The country will need oil revenues to rebuild and recover.”

The oil industry had already begun to recover in recent months, especially in parts of the country where fighting had long since stopped. Libya is producing about a quarter of the 1.6 million barrels per day of oil it pumped out before the war.

Gadhafi’s death reduces the threat of further fighting in other parts of the country, especially the west and south, where the country’s most important oil fields are. In the best outcome, the national oil company and international companies will soon be able to return to those fields, repair equipment and get oil flowing again.

Analysts say it will take about a year for the country to return to full oil production, but many uncertainties remain.

The country has the potential to someday produce much more oil than it has in recent years, but the oil industry could languish if Libya’s dozens of tribes can’t form a representative government and the country falls into chaos.

The first and most important step is to establish security, experts say. International oil companies with a presence there won’t bring in engineers to assess damage to oil fields and pipelines until they are reasonably sure their workers will be safe.

Gadhafi loyalists are thought to have planted land mines around critical oil infrastructure. Thousands of shoulder-fired missile systems have disappeared from Libyan weapons depots and could be in the hands of Gadhafi loyalists or insurgents.

“If you want to cripple the state, you attack its biggest source of revenue,” says Helima Croft, an analyst for Barclays.

Next, the country must set up a system for oil companies to negotiate contracts for finding, retrieving and selling oil. At least in the interim, it appears that a government oil minister will set policy, such as how much oil companies must pay to extract Libyan oil, and the head of the national oil company will oversee operations.

But the details will probably remain in flux until an interim government can be established. Until then, oil companies can’t be sure that their existing contracts in Libya will remain in effect, although the head of the national oil company has said contracts will be honored at least for a while. It would be up to an elected government to determine whether the contracts would be revised.

What’s most important, analysts say, is that oil companies feel assured that whatever terms are set will not change in the future. Otherwise, they will never agree to spend tens of billions of dollars to repair fields and infrastructure and restore production. Some of the nation’s oil fields, pipelines, refineries and shipping terminals are in relatively good repair, but others are badly damaged.

In general, though, analysts say infrastructure in Libya is in better shape than once feared.

“What we haven’t seen is oil fields blazing,” says Jon Marks, an Africa and Middle East expert with London-based consulting firm Cross-border Information.

Major international oil companies that operated in the country before the civil war, such as Italy’s Eni and Spain’s Repsol, are beginning to assess the situation and restore production in the oil fields offshore and in Libya’s east, long held by anti-Gadhafi forces.

But international oil companies have yet to assess oil fields in the south and west, which produce most of the nation’s oil. U.S. companies that were active in Libya before the war, including Hess Corp. and Marathon Oil Corp. have not returned workers to the country.

Nuri Berruien, the head of the national oil company, told The Associated Press earlier this month that most of the damage appears to be from corrosion. Some older oil fields, such as those of the Sirte basin, require water or natural gas injection to maintain pressure in the reservoir, and that has not been done for more than six months.

Two important oil terminals, which are needed to export oil, are said to be severely damaged, but another is said to have suffered little damage. Also, looters have made off with essential oil field equipment such as power generators, pumps and trucks.

And there are other issues. Many of the country’s most experienced and senior oil engineers are seen by workers as Gadhafi loyalists. At one field, workers are refusing to work until these top engineers are removed.

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AP Business Writers Tarek El-Tablawy in Kabul, Afghanistan, Alan Clendenning in Madrid, and Adam Schreck in Dubai contributed to this story.

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Small Business Administration guaranteed loans hit a record $210.9 million for the eastern district of Missouri in the past year.

That’s a 51 percent increase from a year ago and a record level of SBA lending, according to SBA St. Louis District Director Dennis Melton.

In the eastern Missouri SBA’s 2011 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, there were 533 loans to small businesses and start-up companies, totaling $210.9 million. For the 2010 fiscal year, there were $139.2 loans to 566 borrowers.

The previous record was in fiscal 2007 when the SBA’s eastern district reached $178.4 million in loans for 1,173 borrowers.

The SBA said fee waivers on certain kinds of loans

Stocks got a boost Thursday after the release of surprisingly strong U.S. economic data and the overwhelming approval by Germany’s parliament of a bill to strengthen a bailout fund intended to help European countries mired in debt crises.

News that the U.S. economy grew by more than previously thought in the second quarter of the year and a surprisingly large drop in weekly jobless claims drove stocks.

The Commerce Department said the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 1.3 percent in the April-June quarter, up from an estimate of 1 percent made a month ago. The improvement reflected more consumer spending and a bigger boost from trade.

“The quality of the improvement far outweighs the scale of improvement with the U.S. consumer key to future growth,” said Michael Woolfolk, an analyst at The Bank of New York Mellon. “The risk for the third quarter is to the upside, with the outside possibility that it could well come in at the upper end of the 2.0-3.0 percent range.”

Further good news emerged from the Labor Department, which found that jobless claims last week dropped 37,000 to a seasonally adjusted 391,000, the lowest level since April 2. It’s the first time applications have fallen below 400,000 since Aug. 6.

The mood in stock markets had already been largely positive after a clear victory for Chancellor Angela Merkel in a vote on beefing up Europe’s bailout fund. More encouraging for the markets, perhaps, was the fact that Merkel did not have to rely on support from opposition parties.

In the short-term, the markets’ hope is that the vote in favor of an expanded rescue fund _ with 523 lawmakers in favor, 85 against and 3 abstentions _ indicates Germany is fully behind efforts to shore up Europe’s defenses against a crisis that has already seen three countries bailed out and stoked talk that Greece will default.

Germany is the biggest economy among the 17-countries that use the euro currency and has to contribute more than others to boosting the firepower of the bailout fund, the so-called European Financial Stability Facility, or EFSF. If passed, Germany will be guaranteeing loans in the future for up to euro211 billion ($288 billion), rather than euro123 billion so far.

“The overwhelming majority in the Bundestag is a good sign and will hopefully mark a step change in German commitment to bringing the spiraling crisis under control,” said Sony Kapoor, managing director of Re-Define, an economic think-tank.

In Europe, Germany’s DAX was up 1.4 percent at 5,657 while France’s CAC-40 rose 1.5 percent to 3,041. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was underperforming, trading up 0.3 percent to 5,234.

Wall Street was poised for big gains at the open _ Dow futures were up 1.3 percent at 11,115 while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 futures rose by the same rate to 1,163.

The improved appetite for risk on Thursday also helped the euro brush off another survey showing that Europe’s economy was grinding to a halt. When risk appetite is high, the euro usually garners support against the dollar. Following the German vote, it was trading 0.8 percent higher at $1.3646.

In its monthly survey of economic conditions around the 17 countries that use the euro, the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission said confidence fell further in September following the previous month’s precipitous collapse. Its economic sentiment indicator stands at 95, against August’s 98.4, and is below the long-run average. The last time it was lower was in December 2009.

The further decline in confidence is likely to pile the pressure on the European Central Bank to reverse recent course and start cutting interest rates again, if not in October, then in November when Italy’s Mario Draghi will have replaced the current head Jean-Claude Trichet.

Earlier in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index swung between gains and losses before finishing up 1 percent to 8,701.23. South Korea’s Kospi index shot up 2.7 percent to 1,769.29. China’s Shanghai Composite Index dropped 1.1 percent to 2,365.34. Markets in Hong Kong were closed due to severe weather.

Oil prices tracked equities higher too _ benchmark crude for November delivery rose 23 cents to $81.44 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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Sony Corp.’s movie studio has started a spat with theater owners, telling them in a recent letter that it will stop paying for disposable 3-D glasses in U.S. theaters next May. The decision could save it millions of dollars per movie, but consumers might have to pick up the tab.

Sony Pictures said in its letter that theaters could adopt a “guest ownership model” prevalent in Europe and Australia that charges patrons separately for the glasses, which they can re-use on future visits.

RealD Inc., one of the main suppliers of glasses, said a pair in Europe sells for about one euro, or around $1.36 at today’s exchange rate. Most patrons spend more than $3 on popcorn and sodas each, according to major theater chain Regal Entertainment Group, and the average 3-D movie already costs a few dollars more per ticket.

Some designer 3-D glasses cost more than $100 a pair.

The change would come ahead of the release of a couple of Sony’s own 3-D blockbusters next summer, “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “Men in Black III,” although some of Sony’s 3-D movies, including “Arthur Christmas,” come out before then.

Sony Pictures spokesman Steve Elzer said in a statement, “there are constructive ways to deal with the cost of 3-D glasses that will not adversely impact consumers, and can also help the environment.” He called on theater owners to come to the table to work out the issue.

Usually, such negotiations happen behind closed doors. In this case, Sony going public with its new policy didn’t sit well with theater owners. The nation’s largest cinema trade group, the National Association of Theatre Owners, said the unilateral policy change was “insensitive” to consumers in a weak economy.

Regal Entertainment Group on Wednesday threatened to cut the number of screens showing 3-D films if the move means it or its patrons will have to pay more.

“To the extent that Sony seeks to change the current model in a manner that shifts costs to exhibitors, we would be forced to evaluate this new economic model and program our screens accordingly,” said Regal CEO Amy Miles in a statement.

Theater association president John Fithian said Sony’s decision upends a six-year old practice of splitting the costs of the rollout of digital 3-D screens across the country high risk personal loans.

While movie studios have paid for 3-D glasses and the cost of digital projectors and equipment _ expecting to save on film printing costs in the future _ theaters have paid for 3-D add-on technology and labor costs.

The squabble comes amid changes in the movie business that have hurt studios’ profits. People are buying fewer DVDs and aren’t paying enough for Blu-ray discs, on-demand movie downloads, or online subscriptions to make up for the loss. Studios are trying to cut costs through layoffs and even smaller movie budgets.

Fithian said the belt-tightening shouldn’t result in passing the buck to theater owners or moviegoers. “It is nonsensical to say theater owners and our patrons should be paying for their mistakes in the home market,” he said.

It remains to be seen if other studios will follow Sony’s lead and stop paying for the glasses. Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros. said it was sticking with its arrangements with theaters for now.

“We are evaluating the situation,” said Chris Aronson, senior vice president of domestic distribution for News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox.

Representatives from Viacom Inc.’s Paramount, Comcast Corp.’s Universal and The Walt Disney Co. did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

One immediate result of the announced change was that RealD shares plunged $1.80, or 14.7 percent, to close at $10.42 in trading Wednesday. RealD supplies technology for about 90 percent of the 3-D screens in the U.S. and is a major supplier of the glasses, which made up about 40 percent of its revenue in the most recent quarter.

RealD spokesman Rick Heineman said the company is fine with any new model, including one in which consumers pay. He compared that system to buying headphones on an airplane. The core profit of the company comes through licensing its technology, he said.

Sony shares rose 12 cents to close at $19.34.

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Asian stocks faced sharp losses early Friday following a precipitous session of trading of Wall Street sparked by fears that a global recession may already be under way.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 2.3 percent to 17,493.07, a day after tumbling nearly 5 percent. South Korea’s Kospi plunged 4.8 percent at 1,713.56.

Australia’s S&P ASX 200 fell 1.4 percent to 3,909.5. Markets in Japan were closed for a public holiday.

Investors headed for the exits Thursday as they gave in to fears that a global recession was already under way. Selling started in Asia, picked up speed in Europe and sent Wall Street near its worst finish of the year.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 3.5 percent to close at 10,733.83. It was the second consecutive rout in the stock market since Wednesday afternoon, when the Federal Reserve announced a change in strategy for fighting the economic slowdown _ a bid to lower long-term interest rates and get people and companies to spend more money.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index, a broader measure of the stock market, and the Nasdaq composite, which is more heavily weighted with technology stocks, both fell more than 3 percent for the day.

Economic news was bad around the world. A closely watched survey in Europe indicated a recession could be on the way there, and a manufacturing survey suggested a slowdown in China, which has been one of the hottest economies.

Volatility has been exacerbated by investors who find themselves outside their “comfort zones,” according to Sean Darby, equity strategist at Jeffries Hong Kong Ltd.

“The low incidence of sovereign defaults and banking crises until 2008 created a false sense of security amongst investors that this was the ‘norm’. In reality, the global economy tends to experience long periods where countries are in default,” Darby wrote in a report.

The Fed announced Wednesday that it would shuffle $400 billion of its own holdings in hopes of reducing interest rates on long-term loans, a plan known as Operation Twist. The central bank hopes that if people and businesses are able to borrow money more cheaply, they will spend throughout the economy and give it a lift.

Still, the Fed announcement troubled investors because it came with a bleak assessment of the future. The Fed said it sees “significant downside risks to the economic outlook,” including volatility in overseas markets.

Asian stocks were hammered to start the world’s trading. The Nikkei index in Japan fell 2.1 percent. The main stock averages fell 2.8 percent in China, 2.9 percent in South Korea, 2.6 percent in Australia and almost 5 percent in Hong Kong.

Europe fared even worse. The stock market fell 5.3 percent in France, 5 percent in Germany and 4.7 percent in Britain.

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