Well, it is not as if I relish rubbing salt into old wounds, but this quote from the a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8bb0da5a-c7dc-11de-8ba8-00144feab49a.html"latest piece by Ben Hall in Paris and Ralph Atkins in today's Financial Times/a is just too good to resist.br /br /blockquoteFrench manufacturing output rose at its fastest rate for nine years, according to a survey on Monday, confirming that France has become the economic powerhouse of continental Europe. Purchasing managers’ indices for manufacturing showed France performing significantly better than the continent’s other main economies – thanks to robust domestic demand./blockquotebr /br /a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SvASaIFOk2I/AAAAAAAAPjI/Xa0wjOVFc3A/s1600-h/france+manufacturing.png"img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 213px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5399836193272533858" border="0" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SvASaIFOk2I/AAAAAAAAPjI/Xa0wjOVFc3A/s400/france+manufacturing.png" //abr /br /Plenty of food for thought in this paragraph it seems to me. As a href="http://spaineconomy.blogspot.com/2009/10/french-rebound-continues-in-october.html"foreshadowed in this earlier post/a, it is the French economy - and not the German one - which is rebounding sharply, and this ...

Chicago Bridge & Iron Company NV (CBI) reported net income of $40.8 million, or 42 cents per diluted share, for the third quarter of 2009, compared with $8.6 million, or 9 cents per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2008. This was higher than Zacks Consensus Estimate of 38 cents per share. Revenue for the quarter was $1.0 billion compared with third quarter 2008 revenue of $1.6 billion.  New awards for the reported quarter totaled $1.6 billion, including CB&I’s $550 million Gorgon LNG contract in Australia and the $530 million GASCO award in Abu Dhabi. With less work, the company cut sales-related costs 39%, although overhead shrank by a more modest 12%.  Earlier, the company had announced that it has agreed to buy hydrogen-management technology from H2Gen Innovations Inc. in order to get hold of the Mars modularized Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) technology. H2Gen's PSA technology ...

Dr Stock Pick HOT News & Alerts!

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Wednesday October 28, 2009

DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

AQNM, CX, PSFT, AXP, PWRM, NDAQ, CSRH, VZ, CVAT, GE

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AXP, American Express Company

AXP, a payments and travel company, provides charge and credit payment card products, and travel-related services worldwide.

AXP’s division American Express Business Travel announced today the findings of two surveys which offered separate yet similar predictions on the health and future of business travel heading into 2010. The company surveyed its Global Business Partnership (GBP) clients, its largest global clients, as well as 180 client organizations based across Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou in China through its annual China Business Travel Survey (The

...

This analysis is from John Derrick, U.S. Global Investors Director of Research. The market has rallied dramatically since the March 9 low, with the biggest beneficiary of this rally being low-quality companies. This intuitively makes sense, given that companies with the most troubled outlooks are the ones most likely to have a strong recovery when the dire outcomes predicted at the bottom of the crisis failed to transpire. Quality may have different meanings to different investors, but in a recent research piece, Citigroup ranked performance based on multiple definitions of quality. Samp;P earnings quality ranking, debt-to-capitalization ratio and return on equity were used as proxies for quality. The research universe was the small-cap Russell 2000 Index, but I believe broader market conclusions can be drawn as well. Based on Samp;P earnings quality rankings, companies with C or D (the two lowest categories) ratings returned about 55 percent over the past six months, while the ...

This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Gerard Lyons (Times Online): Discovering if we learnt the lessons of Black Monday, October 19, 2009. Today (Monday) is the twenty-second anniversary of Black Monday. On this day in 1987 stock markets around the world crashed. The Dow Jones fell 22.6 per cent in one day, London shed one fifth of its value over two days. The newspapers and television were full of pictures of traders in panic. Sound familiar? Reflecting on 1987 is interesting in its own right and has lessons for today.

• Allan Dodds Frank (The Daily Beast): Hedge fund dominoes, October 18, 2009. Friday’s insider-trading charges against the founder of Galleon could be the tip of the iceberg. Other hedge funds and the McKinsey consulting

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Today, Beacon Enterprise Solutions Group, Inc., an emerging global leader of high performance Information Transport Systems (“ITS”) infrastructure solutions, announced that it has expanded its relationship with an existing Fortune 100 pharmaceutical client to provide ITS infrastructure documentation, design, installation and ongoing management services. Valued at approximately $27 million, the engagement will initially focus on Switzerland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Later it will expand to include 31 additional European, Middle Eastern, and African nations. The engagement follows other pre-existing projects that Beacon currently manages for this client.

Beacon will conduct ITS infrastructure assessments and prepare complete documentation of all of the pharmaceutical company’s foreign facilities, encompassing more than 450 buildings. Additionally, the company will provide ongoing managed ITS infrastructure services using Beacon’s I(3)MAC infrastructure management platform.

The company has commenced the initial phase of the engagement. It involves site visits, assessments and documentation of each of

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – October 13, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Royal Philips Electronics (PHG), Sony Corporation (SNE), General Electric Company (GE), Panasonic Corporation (PC) and Nucor Corporation (NUE).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Monday’s Analyst Blog:

Philips Misses Zacks Consensus

Royal Philips Electronics (PHG) reported earnings of 27 cents per share for the third quarter of 2009, below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 38 cents.

Sales amounted to $8.04 billion, a decline of 11% on both nominal and comparable bases.

Healthcare

...

Royal Philips Electronics (PHG) reported earnings of 27 cents per share for the third quarter of 2009, below the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 38 cents. Sales amounted to $8.04 billion, a decline of 11% on both nominal and comparable bases. Healthcare sales declined by 4% on a comparable basis due to declines at Clinical Care Systems, Imaging Systems and Healthcare Informatics. Consumer Lifestyle sales fell by 15% on a comparable basis, due to declines in all businesses except Health & Wellness. Lighting sales declined by 13% on a comparable basis, led by double-digit declines at Professional Luminaires, Lighting Electronics and Automotive Lighting. In mature markets, double-digit declines at Lighting and Consumer Lifestyle were offset by a mid-single digit decline at Healthcare. Sales in emerging markets showed sequential improvement although it remained 11% below the level achieved in the corresponding prior-year quarter....

Johnson Controls (JCI) has won a record-breaking $87 million project at Princess Noura bin Abdulraham University, the world's biggest women-only university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Under the contract, Al Salem Johnson Controls, the company's joint venture in Saudi Arabia, will supply 26 York brand chillers to Princess Noura University.  The Wisconsin-based supplier of automotive interiors, batteries and other control equipment will supply chillers that use HFC-134A refrigerant, which does not contribute to ozone depletion. They are manufactured in San Antonio, Texas.  The York brand is a proven market leader in energy efficiency. Al Salem Johnson Controls will also supply radiators for the chillers, making this one of the company's largest single orders in its history. The company achieved the first and largest-ever chiller order in the world for the Pearl Qatar project. It has also succeeded in winning the Bahrain Bay project.  Johnson Controls ...

It seems that the swine flu pandemic has attracted many large pharmaceutical players towards the vaccine business, the latest being Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). Yesterday, J&J acquired an 18% stake in a Netherlands-based biotech company, Crucell NV, for $440 million. The deal will primarily focus on developing a universal vaccine for influenza treatment using Crucell's genetically engineered antibody technology. Additionally, vaccines for other diseases will be developed in due course. Following the deal, J&J’s per-share earnings will be reduced by 2 cents to 4 cents in 2009. Per the deal, Crucell will retain the European marketing right for the vaccine which will be jointly produced by the companies, while Johnson & Johnson will market the vaccine in the rest of the world. Accordingly, Crucell is eligible to receive royalties on global sales. Although the vaccine influenza vaccine is still in an early stage of development, ...