The biggest chain retailer in the world, Wal-Mart announced it would cut 11 200 employees of the warehouses of wholesale chain Sam’s Club. The majority of the cuts will affect staff in charge of promotions in stores Sam’s Club, after the leadership of Wal-Mart has decided to assign these functions to external marketing company Shopper Events. Mike Duke, who is CEO of Wal-Mart, said at the end of 2009, the trading environment for the entire group continues to be difficult. In these 600-store chain wholesaler Sam’s Club employs approximately 110 thousand employees. Promotion of the products they were responsible for the marketing company Shopper Events in an attempt to attract more customers and boost declining sales of the chain. Sam’s Club trying to win customers from their competitors, led by the biggest chain of wholesalers in the U.S. Costco, and to this end of the chain stores began to offer more everyday goods like groceries, beauty products and health, in same time reduced the supply of furniture and clothes. However, the revenues of Sam’s Club is shrugged their nearly 1 percent on an annual basis to 11.55 billion dollars in the last three months of 2009 at the same time, Wal-Mart reported a sales increase of 1.2% yoy to 61.81 billion.
(more…)

The Central Bank of China has ordered banks in the country to raise the level of reserves as new rules come into force from today forward CNBC, citing unnamed sources. Thus in practice has entered into force the decision to increased requirements to the level of reserves for which the information leaked last week. The new provision requires that the level of reserves to increase by 0,5 percentage points. Information that currently is not official, says that the requirements imposed on certain financial institutions, which officials say have a risky behavior. Last week Reuters reported that similar requirements are imposed on CITIC Bank, which is the seventh largest bank in the country and the largest lender Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
(more…)