BUSINESS

That Ford Australia recently slashed ­production to about 33,000 cars a year and laid off 440 employees are by means already telltale signs it will soon be padlocking the doors of its plants permanently in Australia.

Ford Australia has pledged to locally assemble vehicles in the country until 2016 and that’s it, according to an automotive industry expert, who added the exit of the global carmaker has been a foregone conclusion.

The smartphone market will continue to grow, analysts said, but at a slower pace compared to previous years when the gadget’s introduction reaped billions of revenue to key global players.

Once again global market rallied higher on Friday, boosted by renewed expectations that The European European Central Bank (EBC) will announce a new form of stimulus for the European markets when it meets on Thursday. On Friday night the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti all agreed more needs to be down to help stabilise the markets and the Euro. The market is now expecting this will mean that the ECB could resume its bonds...

While American households suffered a 30 per cent decline in their wealth for the six-year period 2004 to 2010, Australian households enjoyed a 20 per cent increase for the same time frame.

Due to soaring energy prices because of gas shortage caused by the export of coal seam gas (CSG) to Asia, Queensland residents are clamoring to reserve 15 per cent of the state's gas reserves for domestic use.

Asian Markets rallied on Friday due to reassurance made by European Central Bank President Mario Draghi that "the ECB is willing to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro," whilst Samsung Electronics noted record profit.

Japan based company; Toshiba Corp has made plans to cut down their production of flash memory chips by about 30% after facing problems of tumbling prices and oversupply of their chips. Toshiba is one standout performer among the battered chipmakers in the country of Japan.

After over a year of the scandal with the Murdoch's media empire in United Kingdom, Rupert Murdoch, aged 81, has decided to resign from a string of directorship controlling News Corporation' U.K. newspapers behind The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times.

Thanks to a strong session, the Australian market finished the week a touch higher. The All Ordinaries Index (XAO) gained by 1.5 pct or 60.6 pts to 4234.4. The mining, energy and financial sectors all ended significantly higher, with some of the country's largest miners leading the way.

Telstra Corporation said on Friday that upward adjustments on its home and mobile communication will be implemented effective at the start of October 2012, according to a blog post by the country’s premier telco.

Samsung disclosed on Friday that its overall operations in the three months leading to end of June netted $US5.9 billion, 70 per cent of which contributed by its Galaxy smartphone product lines.

WOW! What a turnaround. The European markets rallied higher overnight on uplifting comments from the European Central Bank (EBC) President Mario Draghi. ECB´s Draghi said that the bank is ready to do ´´whatever it takes´´ to help support the euro. Now the next big item that the markets will be waiting out for is the ECB interest rate meeting on Thursday.

In anticipation of businesses ripping off motorists due to the Thursday announcement of the closure of the Caltex Kurnell refinery in New South Wales, the Automobile Association of Australia (AAA) warned of deceptive practices similar to what happened to the carbon tax.

Earlier this week we asked whether Australia had blown the mining boom. It's a question we'll attempt to answer today. In doing so, we'll also take a look at a recent speech by Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens. He called it 'The Lucky Country'. Hmmm...

A report by Fairfax Media claims that Thalidomide, the drug which caused thousands of babies to be born with congenital defects, was initially tested on pregnant Australian women.

By Rudi Filapek-Vandyck, Editor FNArenaI joined Twitter. Not because I am curious what this celebrity has to say about her kids, or to read that another one is waiting for a connecting flight, impatiently.

By Guillermo Calvo, Fabrizio Coricelli and Pablo OttonelloEconomic output in the US seems to have recovered since the Great Recession ? but jobs have not.

By Greg PeelThe Dow rose 211 points or 1.7% while the S&P jumped 1.7% to 1360 and the Nasdaq added 1.4%.

The local share market closed higher today, boosted by company news and a lift in energy and banking stocks. By close, the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) was up 22.4pts or 0.5pct to 4173.8.

Hybrids without batteries, remote Honda EV apps and personal car-sharing hitches a ride with GM's OnStar.

Again, Apple created the same amount of market buzz that normally accompanies its quarterly results but this time around, apprehensions ruled investors’ sentiments instead of the usual excitement that had marked the tech titan’s previous financial reports.

The Australian Financial Review's front page recently featured a headline that is either delusional or pure genius.

It would appear not. There's just not that much that bothers investors these days. Central bankers have it all under control. After waiting for months for another round of quantitative easing, Ben Bernanke reckons there's no pressing need to do anything. Or so he said on day one of his two-day testimony to the US Congress.

The local share market is tracking higher in the early session, boosted by company news and a lift in blue chip US shares overnight. At lunchtime in the East, the All Ordinaries Index (XAO) is up 10.8pts or 0.3pct to 4162.2.

Coles gained the upper hand in its battle for the number position with Woolworths as the number one supermarket by reporting on Thursday a yearly sales growth of 6.1 per cent to $33.7 billion.

'Falling export prices a risk to surplus' says today's front page headline in the Financial Review. The article draws on a recent report by Chris Richardson at Deloitte Access Economics. The crux of the argument is that the mining investment boom is about to peak. Given China's slowdown, there are no new big projects on the horizon. So Richardson reckons the mining boom has two years left, max.

Recently a BRW Cover had the title "Secrets of the Real Estate Industry" in big bold type with a sub heading stamp, "What they won't tell you", written by Nassim Khadem and heavily featuring Andrew Blanchut from PropertyNow. The article really takes a dive in the deep end and have some pretty strong words for real estate agents, just look at this quote from Andrew!

The iPhone first released in 2007 was based on a personal digital assistant units produced by Sony in the prior years, according to a new court filing by Samsung in reply to Apple’s allegations that Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones designs were made to look and feel like the million-selling Apple mobile phone.