ADM follows Cargill in cutting jobs, costsArcher Daniels Midland Co., the world's largest grain processor, plans to cut about 1,000 positions, or 3 percent of its workforce, to reduce costs. The company will offer voluntary retirement incentives and severance to achieve a significant portion of the job cuts, ADM said. The cuts and other measures will trim annual pretax expenses by more than $100 million, ADM said. ADM is among agricultural companies, including Cargill Inc., trimming costs and cutting jobs amid higher and more volatile grain prices.
Home insurers raising rates after disastersAllstate Corp., Travelers Cos. and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. are among insurers raising homeowners' rates after damage from natural disasters defied industry projections. Allstate, the No. 2 U.S. home insurer, boosted prices for its namesake brand of home policies by 5.6 percent in the nine months through Sept. 30 and has said more increases are coming. Travelers is raising rates after re-evaluating U.S. storm risk. State Farm, the largest U.S. home insurer, has charged homeowners more nationwide for three straight years.
Germany could be tipping into a recessionGermany may be on the brink of recession after the sovereign debt crisis caused the economy to contract in the final quarter of 2011. Europe's largest economy shrank "roughly" 0.25 percent in the fourth quarter from the third, the Federal Statistics Office said. Economists expect gross domestic product to contract again in the current quarter. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP.
Coors Light breaks Budweiser's hold on No. 2After years of gaining ground, the Silver Bullet has finally caught the King. Coors Light outsold Budweiser last year to become the nation's second most popular brew after Bud Light, according to estimates by an industry trade publication. Beer Marketer's Insights reported this week that Anheuser-Busch InBev sold 17.7 million barrels of its flagship lager in the U.S., less than the 18.2 million barrels that beer drinkers bought of Coors Light. It marks the first time in nearly two decades that A-B hasn't claimed the two top spots on sales charts.
First decline since 2001 for U.S. PC shipmentsThe U.S. personal-computer market declined for the first time in a decade last year, hurt by sluggish consumer spending, supply shortages, and the popularity of smartphones and tablets. Shipments slipped 4.9 percent to 71.3 million in 2011, the worst performance since 2001, research firm IDC said. The U.S. market fell 6.7 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with a 0.2 percent drop worldwide. A separate report from Gartner pegged the fourth-quarter U.S. decline at 5.9 percent.
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