My finance view

European confidence in the economic outlook unexpectedly worsened in February after the euro region’s recovery almost stalled in the fourth quarter.

An index of executive and consumer sentiment in the 16 nations using the euro slipped to 95.9 from a revised 96 in January, the European Commission in Brussels said today. The economic recovery may fail to gather strength for most of 2010, the commission said in a separate report.

European domestic demand remains weak and it’s not yet clear to what extent the euro region will benefit from a global recovery, the commission said. As governments seek to bolster the recovery, they also are trying to stem investor concern about widening budget deficits in Greece and other nations, which is pushing up bond yields.

“There are still some dark clouds in the air,” European Union Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said today at a press conference in Brussels. “Clearly, turning the European economy back on a strong and sustainable path is now our overriding objective.”

The February drop in the confidence index was the first in 11 months. Economists had projected an increase to 96.4 from a previously reported January reading of 95.7, according to the median of 25 forecasts in a Bloomberg News survey.

The euro declined against the dollar and was at $1.3489 as of 1:12 p.m. in London, down 0.4 percent. The yield on the German 10-year bond fell 2 basis points to 3.11 percent.

Cautious Outlook

The German economy, Europe’s largest, may fail to grow in the three months through March before expanding 0.3 percent in the following two quarters, the commission forecast. France may grow 0.4 percent in the first quarter and stall in the second. The U.K., which isn’t part of the euro area, is seen expanding 0.2 percent in both quarters.

The commission sees the euro-area economy expanding 0.7 percent this year after a 4 percent contraction in 2009, unchanged from its previous forecast in November. In the fourth quarter, the economy expanded just 0.1 percent.

Carrefour SA doesn’t “see any change in the European environment for the next six months at least,” Chief Executive Officer Lars Olofsson said on Feb. 19, after Europe’s largest retailer reported a 70 percent drop in full-year profit.

Separate data today showed that loans to households and companies in Europe declined in January from a year earlier after the economic expansion curbed demand for credit. German unemployment increased for a second month in February.

Deficit Woes

Concern about Greece’s ability to finance its deficit and debt has roiled financial markets since the government revealed it had a budget gap of 12 guaranteed approval cash loans.7 percent of GDP last year. That’s more than four times the limit allowed for countries using the euro and the highest in the 27-nation EU.

Standard & Poor’s said late yesterday that it may lower its BBB+ rating on Greece by the end of March and Moody’s Investors Service said today that it may reduce its A2 grade in a few months.

The commission said its deficit forecasts remain “broadly unchanged” from its November assessment, when it projected the region’s average budget gap would widen to 6.9 percent of GDP in 2010. All euro-area nations will breach EU deficit limits this year and next, the commission forecast.

It also said there’s a possibility that the impact of sliding sovereign bonds could be “broader, weighing further on the recovery” by pushing up financing costs.

Euro-Area Inflation

Euro-area inflation may accelerate to 0.8 percent in the current quarter and 1.3 percent in the second quarter, according to the commission. For the full year, the commission sees inflation averaging 1.1 percent, compared with 0.3 percent in 2009. In the confidence report, a gauge of consumers’ price expectations over the next 12 months rose to the highest since March 2009.

The European Central Bank, which aims to keep inflation just below 2 percent, earlier this month kept borrowing costs at a record low of 1 percent. The Frankfurt-based central bank will decide next month on a further “gradual” phasing-out of emergency measures introduced to fight the economic crisis, ECB council member George Provopoulos said.

“It’s premature to talk about a self-sustaining, jobs- creating recovery,” said Martin Van Vliet, an economist at ING Group in Amsterdam. The confidence data “highlight the need for the ECB to tread carefully in unwinding unconventional stimulus and to keep interest rates firmly on hold for the time being.”

Companies across Europe are already seeking ways to expand in faster-growing economies to help boost sales. Paris-based Pernod Ricard SA, the world’s second-largest liquor maker, said on Feb. 18 that sales from China will shortly overtake those in Spain, and emerging markets such as Russia are “starting to turn around.”

“The question is how robust the global cycle will prove to be and how much EU economies will benefit from it,” the commission said. “A rather cautious export outlook is therefore warranted.”

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Goldman Sachs has filed a lawsuit against seven former Atlanta-based executives in its wealth management division for soliciting employees and former clients after their departure for rival Credit Suisse.

The suit, filed Feb. 17 in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, alleges that Credit Suisse facilitated the executives’ departure promising payouts worth of millions of dollars.

The suit seeks to block the defendants from contacting their former Goldman clients and colleagues.

The five vice presidents and two associates are accused of “pirating” Goldman’s clients and trying to coax employees to defect to Credit Suisse in violation of non-solicitation clauses, the suit alleges. The suit was first reported by Reuters.

Named in the suit were: David Greene, Craig Savage, Andrew Thompson, Sharran Srivatsaa, John Pitt, Stephanie Dennard and Kim Tyson.

Atlanta’s wealth management firms have been embroiled in the industry-wide shakeup of personnel and clients, with established players and newcomers fighting over top talent.

The lawsuit states that the seven investment executives “abruptly” left Goldman on Feb. 5, after Credit Suisse offered the team “tens of millions of dollars to leave.”

The group “immediately began soliciting Goldman Sachs’ clients and employees in violation of non-solicitation clauses” that Greene, Savage, Thompson, Srivatsaa and Pitt had previously accepted. The suit alleges that Dennard and Tyson did an end around the non-solicitation clauses by approaching former colleagues and clients on their superiors’ behalf to convince them to move over to Credit Suisse, and also improperly used confidential Goldman information.

The suit states that Greene and Savage met with the head of Goldman’s Atlanta office late Feb. 5 and announced their intent to leave, and later Greene said in a phone call that he had been promised $11 million to join Credit Suisse.

The suit also alleges that the defendants told clients about a shakeup and claimed that it had destabilized the Atlanta office.

Another Goldman executive claimed in the suit he received an unsolicited offer to leave for Credit Suisse in exchange for $10 million.

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St. Louis University will tap into the large pool of laid-off Pfizer scientists to launch a new research center focused on discovering drugs to treat medical problems in the developing world.

SLU has committed $5 million over the next two years to fund the Center for World Health & Medicine, which will launch in July, Raymond Tait, SLU’s vice president for research, said Wednesday. The school initially plans to hire a dozen soon-to-be former Pfizer researchers.

In November, Pfizer announced it would lay off 600 of its 1,000 employees in St. Louis, part of a 15 percent reduction of the drugmaker’s global work force. The reductions followed Pfizer’s $68 billion acquisition of the drugmaker Wyeth. Pfizer’s main research campus in the area is located in Chesterfield.

SLU began discussions in early December to figure out ways to keep some of those scientists in St. Louis. In a time of strained university resources, this reflects SLU’s commitment to the region, Tait said.

"St. Louis U. worked with uncharacteristic speed," he said. "The initial reaction was a form of horror to think about the impact of (the layoffs) on the St. Louis region. After we had a chance to digest it, we then thought, ‘Gee, this also provides us with an important opportunity that could be transformative for research at St. Louis U.’"

This is a somewhat unusual venture, in that universities have not typically delved into the realm of drug discovery, Tait acknowledged.

"We’re not going to compete with Pfizer and Wyeth," he said. "We’re not going after blockbuster drugs."

Rather, the appealing part of this idea was that the school could follow its Jesuit mission by helping underserved populations, he said.

Steve Johnson, senior vice president of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association, said SLU’s move is a small but important step in the right direction if St. Louis hopes to plug the leakage of high-skilled workers to other areas.

There are between 1,700 and 2,000 laid-off scientists and skilled technical workers in the region right now, Johnson said. Keeping them, and their skills, in St. Louis is becoming an increasingly high priority, he said.

"That represents a tremendous amount of talent," Johnson said payday advance. "You don’t want to dehumanize people, but those are marketable assets for the region."

They are the kind of assets that can help lure other big medical and technology firms here, or that can seed startups, or that, as in this case, can help launch research groups at local universities.

"We applaud (SLU’s effort)," Johnson said. "And we’ll be digging into this whole issue and look at what other regions are doing."

SLU still has to hash out many of the details about the new center — such as whom exactly it will hire, where it will be housed, and what areas it will focus on.

"This is still a work in progress," Tait said. "Give us another couple of months where we can flesh out who will be working with us."

While many of the scientists have already vacated their laboratories, they are still under contract with Pfizer, Tait said. So SLU has not yet officially hired anyone, but it has spoken with several people who are very interested in the new center, he said.

Targeting childhood diarrhea is one area that some scientists have expressed a special interest in, he added.

Tait said he hopes the center will be sustained down the line in part through research grants, subcontracting work, and perhaps foundation support.

"We’ll see if we cannot make this viable," he said. "Over time, we suspect we will get some intellectual property, but intellectual property is not the lifeblood."

SLU has already started writing up an application for a federal stimulus-funded research grant at the new center, he said.

Down the line, Tait said, SLU could work with pharmaceutical companies — including, but not limited to, Pfizer.

"I don’t see us undertaking clinical trials," he said. "What I can see us doing is identifying some promising treatment approaches, working to where we have some evidence or sense that they are safe. But in order to bring them to market, we will have to partner."

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Carolynn Ingerson Hoffman says she knew even as a little girl that she wanted to become a nurse and help sick people get better.

She says she also gained a strong work ethic from her father, who held two or three jobs at a time to earn enough to support a family of six girls and a boy in north St. Louis County.

Hoffman didn’t let a lack of money for education and partial deafness stemming from illnesses get in her way while pursuing her goal of a nursing degree. She got a scholarship and studied hard. Compounding the difficulty was that she was a divorced mother with a young son.

Then, after working as a registered nurse for several years, she pursued a new dream: a business to provide nursing services throughout the St. Louis area.

Her business, now called MediNurse Inc., marks its 25th anniversary this year. The business, originally named CompreHealth Inc., employs more than 100 full- and part-time workers and provides a wide range of nursing services for hospitals, businesses, organizations and individuals.

I understand that you overcame great personal difficulties to get to where you are in life. What is your best advice for others who similarly face great odds?

I guess I would say that growing up in a large family when I did had its challenges, certainly monetarily. I could also take you through the ’60s and ’70s and tell you what it was like at the time being a divorced mother who had to work.

Now, that was a challenge — just getting housing and credit were challenges. I’d like to think, and I do know, that it was because of women like me who opened doors — or crashed through them — that many women today have been able to move forward and upward. We fought the battles so that they could win the war.

My best advice for anyone is to just keep going. Don’t give up, find a way around every obstacle and find the opportunity in every challenge. You have to take control and make things happen — things you want to happen.

How has your hearing loss affected the way you’ve operated your business?

It has affected my career greatly. In the beginning, I was treated with kid gloves — kind of pitied. That surprised me, because I was elated I could even hear! I didn’t consider wearing hearing aids a handicap but rather blessings.

But because everybody seemed to be so sympathetic, I decided to use it to my best advantage in business. I could always get the best seat in a conference room and could say "excuse me" when I needed to think for a moment. I never hid the fact that I was hearing impaired.

I do need the best seating possible to hear. I do have trouble distinguishing words. Now I have to take a second person on marketing calls just to make sure I’m hearing correctly.

The need for nursing services seems to be ever increasing. Did you foresee that trend when you started your business?

In this business and others you have to pay attention to the trends and stay one step ahead of them. We’ve been through shortages, we’ve been through periods of oversupply. Now we’re looking at a national shortage of nurses unlike all others.

It was perfectly predictable. The largest block of nurses, the baby boomers, are retiring. There aren’t enough qualified faculty available in order to admit more nursing students. Nurses have so many more opportunities today other than actual bedside nursing. Add it all up and it spells shortage.

Would the legislation being considered in Congress do enough to address the nation’s health care crisis and bring affordable care to more people?

I haven’t read the Senate bill. I did, however, read the House bill — every page of it — and was appalled. …

Do I think what we are doing is good for health care and this country? No, I do not.

It seems to me we could have purchased insurance for everyone who didn’t have it, pay the premiums each year and it would have been less than this, and the majority would still have their insurance.

What could we do to make health care more affordable? Let us buy the insurance that meets our needs from any state.

Tort reform also is needed. Physicians practice too much defensive litigation to the extent that it impacts every aspect of health care. Simply put, they’re concerned they will be sued.

I have great concerns about what is happening in Washington. I’ve become a political activist at 64!

Even as your business has grown and thrived, do you wish you had done anything differently along the way?

Yes. I was going to franchise and, in fact, had a check for $50,000 in my hand to take to the lawyers to get started. It was the day the stock market crashed (in 1987). I canceled the appointment, which was the right decision at the time. However, I should have done the franchising when conditions were favorable again.

I try not to look back and second-guess myself. I have always been guided by a strong work ethic and commitment to doing what is right, while maintaining a good profit margin. I got these traits from my father.

We have been number one in size, visibility and profitability. I really don’t have the need to do that again.

Don’t get me wrong — I am very committed to being successful. However, being successful means to me helping others as well as guiding my company into the future.

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A key measure of consumer confidence gained slightly in November, snapping a two-month declining streak, a research group said Tuesday.

The Conference Board, the New York-based research group, said its Consumer Confidence Index rose to 49.5 in November from an upwardly revised 48.7 in October.

Economists were expecting the index to dip to 47.5, according to a Briefing.com consensus survey. The figure, which is based on a survey of 5,000 U.S. households, is closely watched because consumer spending makes up two-thirds of the nation’s economic activity.

The overall index remains at historically low levels. A reading above 90 indicates the economy is solid, and 100 or above signals strong growth.

Despite the modestly upbeat figure, Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board, said "consumers are entering the holiday season in a very frugal mood."

The index component that evaluates consumers’ judgment of the present situation was virtually unchanged, slipping to 21 in November from 21.1 the previous month. The measure stands at the lowest level since the 17.5 measured in February 1983.

Consumers’ assessment of the job market also continued to deteriorate. The percentage of those claiming that jobs are currently hard to get reached a new high of 49.8%, while the number of consumers claiming that jobs are "plentiful" hit a new low at 3.2%.

Employers continued to cut jobs from their payrolls in October, as the unemployment rate rose to 10.2% and hit another 26-year high last month, according to a report from the Labor Department.

The percentage of consumers expecting their incomes to increase declined to 10% from 10.7%.

Despite their current outlook, however, consumers are optimistic about a recovery.

The expectation index, which measures consumers’ outlook over the next few months, climbed to 68 payday loan no fax no credit check.5 from 67 last month.

Franco said the "moderate improvement was a result of a decrease in the percent of consumers expecting business and labor market conditions to worsen, as opposed to an increase in the percent of consumers expecting conditions to improve."

While the percentage of those expecting the job market to improve edged down to 15.2% from 16.8%, the percentage of consumers expecting fewer jobs dropped to 23.1% from 26.1%.

Likewise, the percentage of consumers expecting an improvement in business conditions over the next six months dropped to 20% from 20.8%, but those expecting conditions to worsen decreased to 15.1% to 18.2%.

But even the "underlying data is abysmal," said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo.

"Fewer people think things will get worse, which isn’t very comforting. You’d have to be a real pessimist to think things will get worse than they already are," said Vitner, adding that the consumers’ assessment of the economy might be "overly bleak."

Given the amount of stimulus the government has pumped into the economy, Vitner said he is "disappointed that this is all we’re getting in consumer sentiment for economic recovery."

For a healthier reading, Vitner said consumers need to believe jobs will be created and incomes will rise so they will increase spending.

The data followed a government report that said GDP, the broadest measure of economic activity, rose at an annual rate of 2.8% in the third quarter of this year, less than the 3.5% it originally reported. 

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Immigrants face lower wages and are more likely than Canadian-born workers to be forced into temporary or part-time jobs, according to a new study.

The report from Statistics Canada, made public Monday, also found newcomers tend to end up in jobs for which they are overqualified.

Immigrants who landed in Canada 10 years ago or more tend to fare better, with their work experience more closely resembling that of people who were born here.

The report, based on data from last year’s labour market, found that the average weekly hours worked by immigrants in their main job was 38.3, only slightly higher than the 38.1 hours of Canadian-born workers.

The average hourly wage of a Canadian-born employee aged from 25 to 54 was $23.72, compared with $21.44 for an immigrant worker, a difference of $2.28 an hour, Statistics Canada noted.

The widest gap, $5.04 per hour, involved immigrants who had landed within the previous five years, the paper said, but the overall wage gap existed "regardless of when the immigrants landed." It narrows to $1.32 for immigrants in Canada for a decade or longer.

The difference in wages between immigrant workers and Canadian-born colleagues was widest among those with university degrees, with immigrants earning an average of $25.31 an hour, about $5 less than Canadian-born counterparts.

Immigrants with multiple jobs worked an average of 50 hours per week in 2008, about 2.3 hours longer than Canadians who hold down more than one job, StatsCan said.

Among part-time workers, 38 per cent of newcomers said working part-time was involuntary, higher than the 30 per cent of Canadian-born workers who agreed. Last year, 9.7 per cent of newcomers were in temporary positions, slightly more than the 8.3 per cent of Canadian-born employees.

The report also found 42 per cent of immigrant workers 25-54 had a higher education level for their job than normally required, while 28 per cent of Canadian-born workers were similarly overqualified.

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Malaria. Tuberculosis. Alzheimer’s disease. AIDS. Flu. Genital herpes. Urinary tract infections. Grass allergies. Traveler’s diarrhea. You name it, the pharmaceutical industry is working on a vaccine to prevent it.

Many could be on the market in five years or less.

Contrast that with five years ago, when so many companies had abandoned the business that half the U.S. supply of flu shots was lost because of factory contamination at one of the two manufacturers left.

Vaccines are no longer a sleepy, low-profit niche. Today, they’re starting to give ailing pharmaceutical makers a shot in the arm.

The lure of big profit, advances in technology and growing government support has been drawing in new companies, from nascent biotechs to Johnson & Johnson. That means recent remarkable strides in overcoming dreaded diseases and annoying afflictions likely will continue.

"Even if a small portion of everything that’s going on now is successful in the next 10 years, you put that together with the last 10 years (and) it’s going to be characterized as a golden era," says Emilio Emini, Pfizer Inc.’s head of vaccine research. Pfizer has a facility in Chesterfield.

Vaccines now are viewed as a crucial path to growth, as drugmakers look for ways to bolster slowing prescription medicine sales amid intensifying generic competition and government pressure to cut down prices.

Unlike medicines that treat diseases, vaccines help prevent infections by revving up the body’s natural immune defenses against invaders. They are made from viruses, bacteria or parts of them that have been killed or weakened so they can’t cause an infection.

Investment in partnerships and other deals to develop and manufacture vaccines has been on a tear — and accelerating since the swine flu pandemic began. Billions in government grants are bringing better, faster ways to develop and manufacture vaccines. Rising worldwide emphasis on preventive care, plus the advent of the first multibillion-dollar vaccines, have further boosted appeal.

While prescription drug sales are forecast to rise by a third in five years, vaccine sales should double, from $19 billion last year to $39 billion in 2013, according to market research firm Kalorama Information. That’s five times the $8 billion in 2004.

"What was essentially 25 years ago a rounding error now has become real money," says Robin Robinson, director of the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research Development Authority.

That jump is due to a couple of new blockbuster vaccines and rising use of existing ones. The government’s list of recommended vaccines for children has more than doubled since 1985 to 17. It now also calls for a half-dozen vaccines for everyone over 18, and up to four more for adults.

The last decade brought vaccines against pneumococcal disease and rotavirus — two of the world’s top killers — meningitis, cervical cancer and more.

Better technology to create and mass produce vaccines is bringing progress in preventing tropical dengue fever and new threats like superbugs MRSA and C. difficile, even ending addiction to cocaine and nicotine. Success on some vaccines in development, particularly for Alzheimer’s and AIDS, likely would bring billions a year in sales.

Just this fall and early next year, swine flu vaccines are expected to bring their makers at least a couple billion extra dollars.

But a horde of biotech companies, many using multimillion-dollar government grants, already are testing state-of-the-art technology for the next pandemic. Scientists — including some at J&J’s new vaccine partner, Holland’s Crucell — even are working to develop the holy grail: a universal flu vaccine targeting a part of the virus that doesn’t change year to year.

And some future vaccines will come in patches, pills and nasal sprays, rather than painful shots.

Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline is gunning to become the world’s top vaccine manufacturer by revenue, unseating Merck. Glaxo, which sold only one vaccine in the U.S. 13 years ago, now sells 12 here — and 30 worldwide. It has 20 more in testing, including ones for meningitis and malaria.

J&J, which previously avoided vaccines, plans to build a full vaccine portfolio, starting with universal flu and Alzheimer’s vaccines, says research head Dr. Paul Stoffels.

Even Pfizer Inc.’s $68 billion acquisition of Wyeth in October was partly about getting its vaccine expertise. Wyeth makes the most successful vaccine ever, Prevnar, which protects children from ear infections, pneumonia and blood infections. Prevnar brought in $2.7 billion in 2008 sales.

Experts call Prevnar the "game changer." It was the first vaccine to exceed $1 billion in annual sales, followed by Merck’s cervical cancer shot Gardasil, with $2.3 billion in 2008 sales.

"Vaccines are now perhaps seen to be more attractive than drugs," says Dr. Stanley Plotkin, a former University of Pennsylvania professor and industry researcher who helped develop the German measles and rotavirus vaccines.

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If AOL’s announcement on Thursday of another 2,500 job cuts is anything to go by, the painful layoffs that have ravaged the media industry over the past year are nowhere near over.

Even though U.S. media conglomerates have largely reported stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings and their CEOs are touting a long-awaited uptick in advertising spending, analysts and recruiters warn that more cost cuts lie ahead.

Much of the earnings upside came from lower costs instead of revenue growth, meaning future improvement could be more challenging as these companies face comparisons against year-ago periods when restructurings were already in place.

“I think many of these major companies have cut to the point that it is starting to affect their operations,” said Hal Vogel, head of trading and consulting firm Vogel Capital Management.

He did not believe there was an immediate need for a large round of cuts but said, “Out of the woods we are not.”

AOL on Thursday said it would cut one-third of its workforce to reduce annual costs by $300 million, as part of the Internet media company’s planned spin-off from Time Warner Inc in December.

The cuts come after an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people have lost jobs at major media companies like General Electric Co’s NBC Universal, Viacom Inc, Walt Disney Co, Sony Corp and others since 2008.

“There’s no studio that hasn’t cut significantly. It’s understood that most of those jobs aren’t coming back,” said Standard and Poor’s analyst Tuna Amobi.

Some recruiters, job tracking experts and economists cite hiring upticks in certain areas like cable networks and the digital arms of studios check cash advance.

But even then, challenging consumer spending trends, declining DVD sales and unpredictable box office receipts will likely pressure media profits and payrolls in 2010 and beyond.

“I think you’re going to see a little bit of an upturn in hiring as advertising makes a bit of a rebound, but this is an industry in the midst of major change and many people are looking for a more steady line of work,” said Jack Kyser, an economist at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

CALIFORNIA UNEMPLOYMENT TO CLIMB

Film production and its attendant industries generate $38 billion for California’s economy and employ nearly 250,000 people. Analysts expect the state’s jobless rate to climb well into next year, even as broader U.S. unemployment is expected to ease from its peak of 10 percent in early 2010.

Job requirements for entertainment professionals are changing as well. New employees will need to not only demonstrate a knowledge of the media industry but also understand fast-changing technologies.

“The last several years have seen belt-tightening across the sector. Business models are still in flux,” said Chris Marangi, analyst with Gabelli & Co. “It’s a balancing act. I think it varies by segment and by company, but some areas in media will grow (by headcount) and some will slim down.” 

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Can you tell the difference between a plastic shoe and a luxury sports car?

Porsche, the famed German car company, is entangled in a legal spat with Crocs, the maker of rubber shoes. At issue: The shoe company’s use of the name Cayman for a line of footwear.

Porsche also has a product called the Cayman, and it claims that Crocs’ (CROX) use of the name infringes on Porsche’s trademark.

In Porsche’s case, the Cayman is a two-seat hard-top sports car with a starting price of about $51,000. Crocs’ Cayman is the familiar rubber clog with thick soles, holes covering its upper surfaces and a starting price of about $30 a pair.

The blog Footnoted.org spotlighted the quirky legal fight this week after finding it disclosed in the fine print of Crocs’ most recent quarterly report, which Crocs filed last week.

Crocs Europe, a division of the Niwot, Colo payday cash advance.-based shoe company, received a letter from Porsche on May 11 claiming that the Crocs’ use of the Cayman name violated Porsche’s trademark rights. Porsche demanded that Crocs immediately stop using the name, and also requested payment for the legal costs incurred in writing the cease-and-desist notice.

That was followed on July 30 by an injunction against Crocs Europe’s use of the Cayman name in Germany.

"The company intends to vigorously defend itself against these claims," Crocs said in its quarterly filing.

Neither Crocs nor Porsche was immediately available to respond to a request for comment on the legal spat. 

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China’s ties with Africa have been a magnet for critics worried about corruption and human rights on a continent struggling with both, but its investments are bringing more growth than risk for countries starved of trade.

Two-way trade flows have ballooned tenfold since 2000, to $107 billion last year, as China builds infrastructure, sells cheap goods and buys much-needed energy and mineral resources.

These deals have drawn criticism from activists and politicians, often Western, who say China is stripping Africa of raw materials while shoring up corrupt and oppressive regimes.

But African and Chinese businessmen and academics say Beijing is filling a yawning need for key infrastructure, and Chinese firms are also shaking up moribund markets where Western companies were doing little to develop local economies.

“We always talk about trade being more important than aid,” said Adrian Davis, the China head of Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID), which works with Beijing to support development in Africa.

“This is money going into Africa … We are investing in health and education, but Africa also needs physical infrastructure which we in the West haven’t been doing.”

China’s critics also say they are concerned about what it is funding, and how, as roads, stadia and government buildings built with Chinese cash spring up around the continent — some of them aid, some of them trade, but many something in between.

Beijing entwines business and assistance more closely than Western governments, using infrastructure to pay for resources and often disbursing donated funds through the Commerce Ministry quick payday loan.

This makes it hard to put a figure on handouts, and the only official number for Africa covers all spending from 1949 to 2006.

“We put everything into a very big basket called economic cooperation; investment, humanitarian assistance, contracts. So it is difficult to figure out what belongs purely to aid,” said He Wenping, an Africa expert at an official Beijing think-tank.

CUTTING OUT CASH

But Beijing is aware of the risk to its reputation and market access if projects are derailed by sleaze and its bankers have used their trade-aid model to curb dangers, experts say.

Bypassing host governments and paying Chinese firms directly to build a road or hospital, which is handed over when completed, cuts opportunities for the most predatory graft that often left other aid projects unfinished.

“The Chinese say: ‘We will take your gold and put in so many schools, we will take your copper and put in a railway line’,” said Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, a Ghanian citizen who is Professor at the China Europe International Business School.

“If that happens, that is a more effective way of developing the system than giving loans and aid money that go into the pockets of politicians and other people who squander it.” 

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