An open letter, signed by 13 business leaders, is expected to question the benefits to business of the runway and to call for more exploration into possible alternatives, the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday.

Among the names listed were James Murdoch, head of News Corporation in Europe and Asia, and BSkyB chief Jeremy Darroch, the paper said.

“To say that all those from the business community support the third runway is wrong,” the letter is expected to say on Monday, according to the Daily Telegraph report.

The letter is expected to take issue with the notion that passengers changing planes at Heathrow boost the domestic economy.

The company leaders will call for more new high-speed rail links, and raise environmental and safety concerns, the paper said.

The Sunday Times had earlier reported that the 13 also included Justin King of J Sainsbury, Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse, Ian Cheshire of Kingfisher and Roy Gardner of Compass.

Kingfisher confirmed Cheshire was involved, but the others were unavailable for comment.

The paper cited Russell Chambers, an adviser at Credit Suisse, who it said was “instrumental informing the group.”

“It’s possible to be pro-transport, pro-aviation and yet at the same time, pro-responsible citizenship,” he told the paper.

A source familiar with Chambers’ thinking confirmed to Reuters that he has been very concerned about the third runway along with a number of other “high profile” executives.

Credit Suisse declined to comment.

Top executives lead Heathrow runway revolt

America has always been the dominant player in the oil/gas services field as it had led the way, back in the late 1800s, in oil and later gas exploration and exploitation. Oil services companies do everything that it takes to deliver the product to their clients, the major private and national oil companies. This includes everything from locating deposits, up to 10km under the ground, to drilling to them, to developing the wells and managing production, to transferring the product to refineries and storage facilities. As such, these companies employ an immense amount of technology and industry.

As oil/gas exploration moved to the far corners of the world, it made more sense to move at least some of the manufacturing closer to the international customers. However, the business units, engineering departments and quality personnel were almost all exclusively employed in America. This will be no more.

As with other formerly dominant industries, such as light manufacturing, IT, textiles, etc, a recession was used as the knife to finally do in the workers. IT is a prime example. While outsourcing was a force that was picking up steam throughout the 1990s, it was not until 2003, the year after the tech bubble bust of 2002 (and a short recession) that IT outsourcing finally took off. The companies involved, used the bust to lay off hundreds of thousands of tech workers around the US and Britain, sighting low profits or debt. The public as a whole accepted this, as part of the economic landscape and protest were few, especially with a prospect of the situation turning around. However, shortly after the turn around in the economy, it became very clear that there would be no turn around in the IT employment industry. Not only were companies outsourcing everything they could, under the cover of the recession, they had shipped in tens of thousands of work visaed workers who were paid on the cheap.

America’s last dominant industry starts to leave

* The stocks of companies that have found themselves on the wrong side of President Barack Obama’s proposed budget fell again, as biotechs dropped for the fourth straight session.

* The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI slid 299.64 points, or 4.24 percent, to end unofficially at 6,763.29. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index .SPX fell 34.27 points, or 4.66 percent, to finish unofficially at 700.82. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC lost 54.99 points, or 3.99 percent, to close unofficially at 1,322.85.

US STOCKS-AIG fallout pushes Dow under 7,000

To survive the current global economic crisis, Nissan Motor needed to shed some excess weight. About 8.5% of its entire work force, 20,000 jobs, will be cut worldwide after the automaker on Monday forecast a net loss of 265.0 billion yen ($2.9 billion) for the current fiscal year.

The bloodletting, which will trim Nissan Motor (nasdaq: NSANY – news – people )’s headcount to 215,000, from 235,000, will help the company reduce labor costs in high-cost countries by 20%, to 700 billion yen ($7.7 billion), from 875 billion yen ($9.6 billion), in fiscal 2009. Bonus payments to the board of directors will also be eliminated for the current year, fiscal 2008. Starting in March, salaries paid to board members and corporate officers will be reduced by 10%, until the situation clearly improves.

“The global auto industry is in turmoil, and Nissan is no exception,” Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn told a press conference in Tokyo. Nevertheless, Nissan has no plans to close any factories, he added.

Credited with turning around Nissan within a year when he first joined the company as chief operating officer in 1999, Ghosn is now facing another huge challenge. Nissan’s caution about recording a group net loss for 2008 would signal its first red ink in a decade under the stewardship of Ghosn.

The maker of GT-R sports car and March compact vehicles has already posted a loss of 83.2 billion yen ($810 million) for the October-December quarter, in contrast to the 132.2 billion yen ($1.3 billion) profit it made in the equivalent period the previous year. Net sales for the Oct.-Dec. period were also down, by 34.4%, to 1.8 trillion yen ($17.7 billion).

The impact of the strong yen and a sharp falloff in consumer spending and availability of financing in all major markets contributed to the loss, Nissan said.

“In every planning scenario we built, our worst assumptions on the state of the global economy have been met or exceeded, with the continuing grip on credit and declining consumer confidence being the most damaging factors,” Ghosn explained.

Nissan To Ax 20,000 After Loss Warning

Blaming world-market conditions, Toyota said Friday it expects to lose 450 billion yen or $5 billion in the current fiscal year — ending in March.

Revenue for the third quarter declined slightly more than 28 percent. The company saw the most decline in vehicle sales in North America and Europe.

Toyota’s North American sales declined by 235,000 vehicles, and it saw 73,000 fewer vehicle sales in Europe.

Toyota has been cutting production and revising its sales figures downward during the past several months, as the recession and credit crunch drove customers away.

Last month, the company said it will scale back automobile production at seven of its U.S. plants in an attempt to cut its inventory by nearly half. It is also halting production for 11 days in February and March at its 12 Japanese plants.

Toyota’s U.S. sales, distribution and marketing unit is based in Torrance.
Better news this week from Hyundai, Kia

The news comes as Kia Motor America Inc. of Irvine and Fountain Valley-based Hyundai Motor America Inc. they saw their auto sales grow in January.

Hyundai said this week it saw a 14 percent increase in auto sales from the year-earlier period. Kia Motor America said it sold 22,096 vehicles in January.

Hyundai served as the presenting sponsor of NBC’s Super Bowl Pregame show on Sunday while the big-three auotmakers, General Motors Corp., Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. sat out of the advertising pool. The big three are taking high-dollar government bailouts, and many speculators say the automakers would have drawn criticism if spending millions on ads to air during the Super Bowl.

Toyota expects $5 billion loss

About 3.6 million jobs have disappeared since the recession began in December 2007 – half of those in the past three months, according to BLS.

“It’s also important to keep in mind that the job market is local – the most recent unemployment rates coming out of major metropolitan areas like Milwaukee, Baltimore, Boston and D.C., for example, reflect much brighter employment pictures than other regions of the country,” said Tig Gilliam, CEO of Adecco Group North America, in a statement. “Even more critical than where you live or what you do, educational accomplishments have the greatest impact on an individual’s ability to find a job.”

Manufacturing shed 207,000 jobs in January, the largest one-month decline since October 1982. Construction lost 111,000 jobs. About 1 million construction jobs have been eliminated in the past two years.

Overall, 11.6 million Americans were unemployed in January.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said the new jobless numbers demonstrate the need to pass the economic stimulus bill quickly.

“Today’s job numbers confirm that the economy remains in free-fall, with disastrous consequences for America’s workers,” Kennedy said in a statement issued by his office. “We need strong measures to put people back to work and support for those who can’t find a job.”

U.S. lost 598,000 jobs in January – Los Angeles Business from bizjournals:

Mr. Erdogan apparently became incensed after he was prevented by the moderator from responding to remarks by Mr. Peres on the recent Israeli attack. The panel was running late and Mr. Peres was to have had the last word, participants said.

Panel discussions at Davos are strictly restricted to one hour, but Mr. Erdogan insisted on responding to Mr. Peres. Red faced, and with one hand grasping the arm of the moderator, David Ignatius of the Washington Post, Mr. Erdogan turned to the Israeli president.

“Mr. Peres, you are older than me,” he said. “Your voice comes out in a very high tone. And the high tone of your voice has to do with a guilty conscience. My voice, however, will not come out in the same tone.”

Resisting efforts by Mr. Ignatius to end the session, Mr. Erdogan continued, saying to Mr. Peres, “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill.”

Eventually, the prime minister gathered up his papers and departed from the stage, saying, “And so Davos is over for me from now on.”

Mr. Peres pointed a finger at the departing Mr. Erdogan and told him that Turkey would have reacted the same way had rockets been falling on Istanbul, participants said. But the Israeli president called Mr. Erdogan five minutes later to apologize for any misunderstanding, saying that his words had not been directed at the prime minister personally, the semi-official Anatolian Agency reported.

In a news conference immediately following the panel discussion, Mr. Erdogan said that he was particularly upset with Mr. Ignatius, who he said had failed to direct a balanced and impartial panel.

By all accounts, the discussion of the Gaza incursion was a lively one, with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, joining Mr. Peres and Mr. Erdogan. For the most part, participants said, Mr. Peres was alone in defending the Israeli role in Gaza, which is why he was given the final 25 minutes to speak. Earlier, Mr. Erdogan had spoken for 12 minutes about the sufferings of the Palestinians.

While Mr. Erdogan has strongly criticized the Israeli military action in Gaza, his country and Israel have long enjoyed close diplomatic relations. With its strong relations with the militant group Hamas, which seized control of Gaza in 2007, Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party has played an increasingly important role mediating among Israel, Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians.

Leaders of Turkey and Israel Clash at Davos Panel

The move, which would be likely to provoke a backlash from the American public, would help stave off projected losses in 2009 of more than $6bn, said John E. Potter, the postmaster-general, in testimony to Congress.

It followed a reduction in mail volume last year of 9bn pieces – a 4.5 per cent fall – and a further decline of almost twice that expected in 2009.

“The strain on our operations becomes more apparent every day,” said Mr Potter.

“We have stretched the limits of our system as they have never been stretched before.

“Without help I do not believe we can long serve the people of America with the level of service they expect.”

Mr Potter said that the postal service, which with a workforce of 652,000 is America’s second largest direct employer after Wal-Mart, had already taken drastic cost-cutting steps over the past few years in the face of growing competition from e-mail and private sector courier services.

“No one knows at what point mail volume will bottom out,” he said.

The service had cut 120,000 jobs since 2002, halted the construction of new postal facilities, frozen the salaries of officers and executives and drastically cut travel budgets by switching to web and video conferencing technology.

However, the moves were insufficient to stave off a further sharp drop in revenue following losses last year of almost $3bn. Mr Potter said the growing revenue shortfall was threatening its ability to provide a universal service to the public.

“It is clear that the problems we are facing are intensifying,” he said.

“We are doing everything within our power to reduce costs . . . we know this may not be sufficient to close the widening gulf between revenues and costs.”

Mr Potter did not estimate how much the abandoning of the six-day delivery week, which has been mandated by law since 1982, would save in revenues.

However, he said that the move, when combined with an additional request for a waiver on a requirement to pre-pay future employee healthcare costs, would help to keep the postal service above water in the next year.

The postal service has not received an operational subsidy since 1982.

The postal service said it did not know whether Congress would approve the request.

FT.com / UK – Postal Service seeks to stop Saturday mail to stave off $6bn loss

Prime Minister Geir Haarde resigned and disbanded the government he’s led since 2006. Haarde was unwilling to meet the demands of his coalition partner, the Social Democratic Alliance Party, which insisted on choosing a new prime minister in exchange for keeping the coalition intact.

“I really regret that we could not continue with this coalition, I believe that that would have been the best result,” Haarde told reporters.

Iceland has been mired in crisis since October, when the country’s banks collapsed under the weight of debts amassed during years of rapid expansion.

Thousands of angry citizens have joined noisy protests against the government’s handling of the economy, clattering pots and kitchen utensils in what some commentators called the “Saucepan Revolution.”

The value of the country’s krona currency has plummeted, hitting many Icelanders who took out special loans denoted in foreign currencies for new homes and cars during the boom years. In addition, Iceland must repay billions of dollars to Europeans who held accounts with subsidiaries of collapsed Icelandic banks.

Haarde’s government has nationalized banks and negotiated about $10 billion in bailout loans from the International Monetary Fund and individual countries.

Haarde — a fiscal conservative with degrees from the University of Minnesota, Brandeis and Johns Hopkins — is suffering from cancer and has announced he would not seek another term. He called early elections last week, following the mass protests by Icelanders upset at soaring unemployment and rising prices.

Though largely peaceful, the protests have seen Reykjavik’s tiny parliament building doused in paint and eggs hurled at Haarde’s limousine. Last Thursday, police used tear gas to quell a protest for the first time since 1949.

Haarde said last week that he wouldn’t lead his Independence Party into the new elections because he plans to seek treatment in the Netherlands for his cancer.

Following discussions with Haarde, Iceland’s figurehead President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson said he would hold talks with Iceland’s four other main political parties late Monday before asking one of the organizations to form an interim government.

On Tuesday, he’s likely to ask Foreign Minister Ingibjorg Gisladottir, head of the Social Democratic Alliance, to govern with smaller opposition parties until new elections are held. Gisladottir said she wouldn’t agree to take part in a national government composed of all five major political parties.

“We should have a result no later than tomorrow (Tuesday) morning,” Steingrimur Sigfusson, chairman of the opposition Left-Green movement told RUV television. “The only real possibility is a minority government.”

Gisladottir said Monday she won’t seek to personally replace Haarde as Iceland’s leader. She instead proposed her party’s popular Social Affairs Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir.

The restoration of trust in the government is critical, said Iceland’s Environment Minister Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir, an alliance member.

“What is needed straight away is to try to restore trust between the political establishment and the general public,” Sveinbjarnardottir told The Associated Press. “What we need is for the general public to believe that the politicians are working in their interests.”

Both the demonstrators and the alliance seek the ouster of Central Bank Gov. David Oddsson, who has served for 13 years.

Sveinbjarnardottir said Oddsson’s ouster should be accompanied by the tightening of regulations in the country’s financial industry. “We need a certain amount of cleansing to be the first steps,” she said.

At a rally Monday outside Parliament, protester Svginn Rumar Hauksson said demonstrations won’t end yet.

“The protests will continue until it becomes clear that things are really changing,” he said.

The Associated Press: Iceland’s government topples amid financial mess

The Government of Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister, resigned en masse after days of mounting anger over the country’s financial meltdown.

The protests, which began peacefully after the nationalisation and overnight bankruptcy of Iceland’s three main banks, turned violent last week with the nation experiencing its worst riots in 60 years.

At their height 32,000 people — more than 10 per cent of Iceland’s population — took to the streets of Reykjavik banging pots and pans in what came to be known as the “Household Revolution”.

The final collapse of the Government came after talks between the two coalition partners failed over who would lead a new administration. Mr Haarde, the leader of the Independence Party, said that he planned to seek a government of national unity with all parties in parliament to lead the country into fresh elections.

“I really regret that we could not continue with this coalition,” he said. “I believe that that would have been the best result.” Icelanders did not agree. The Government’s approval rates — 72 per cent a year ago — stood at 20 per cent last week.

Jubilant protesters celebrated outside the Althing, Iceland’s parliament, yesterday after news of the Government’s fall. The country’s future looks far from secure, though, whoever is next to lead it.

The new Government faces a daunting task, including the repayment of a $10 billion (£7.2 billion) bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund and foreign governments, and a bill running into billions of dollars to repay former savers with collapsed Icelandic banks — among them thousands of Britons who took advantage of sky-high savings rates.

It was such financial adventurism that led to Iceland’s extraordinary decade-long boom — followed by its spectacular collapse. High-risk investing overseas by the so-called “Vikings”, a hard core of aggressively minded businessmen, multiplied Iceland’s GDP by ten in less than ten years. Its investments in Britain alone, including the buying up of swaths of the high street from Debenhams to Karen Millen, outdid its GDP twice over. At the same time, Reykjavik’s popularity grew as a high-end, boutique destination for European tourists.

When the Landsbanski, Glitnir and Kaupthing banks collapsed in October thousands of ordinary Icelanders who had put their money in banking stocks found their savings wiped out. The Icelandic currency, the krona, lost a quarter of its value before it was removed from trading, and interest rates soared to nearly 20 per cent. With inflation rising, Icelanders are finding it harder to afford even the basics, never mind repay their mortgages.

It was unclear yesterday who might emerge as the new leader. Mr Haarde had previously said that he would not seek re-election, owing to a cancer diagnosis. He hoped, though, to lead the country until a fresh election in May.

Ingibjorg Gisladóttir, the leader of the junior coalition partner the Social Democrats, had been regarded as his most likely successor. She too has taken herself out of the running after a brain tumour was diagnosed. She was in Sweden last week undergoing treatment, part of a two-month absence from work.

The Government’s implosion became irreversible late last week when Ms Gisladóttir called for Mr Haarde’s immediate replacement by a member of her party. Amid street protests, the Commerce Minister resigned his post on Sunday, calling for other heads to roll.

The last did yesterday, when Mr Haarde resigned on all their behalfs.

The Constitution says that it is now the job of the President to find a new government with sufficient backing in parliament. One of the key beneficiaries may be the Green Party, whose popularity has more than doubled as Icelanders turn their back on the failed capitalist system. Latest polls have seen the Greens well ahead of both coalition parties.

First name terms

Geir Haarde is among the few Icelanders whose last name is a surname rather than a patronymic.

In accordance with Norse tradition, an Icelander´s first name is usually followed by the father´s name and the suffix — son or dóttir — depending on the person’s gender, eg, Bjørn Bjørnson (Bjørn , son of Bjørn). Icelanders can also elect to be named after their mother. Use of the patronymic system is required by law, except for roughly 10 per cent of the population (including Haarde) whose family name predates 1913. The patronymic is largely redundant in Icelandic social life — the phone directory lists people by their first name first, patronymic second

Credit crunch claims Iceland government after ‘Household Revolution’ – Times Online