Global companies from semiconductor makers to shipbuilders faced disruptions to operations after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan destroyed vital infrastructure and knocked out factories supplying everything from high-tech components to steel. Thousands of people have been killed and millions have been left without water, electricity, homes or heat after the 8.9 magnitude quake triggered a massive tsunami which tore across a wide swathe of coastline north of Tokyo. The earthquake has forced many firms to suspend production and shares in some of Japan’s biggest companies have tumbled, with Toyota Corp and Sony Corp falling eight percent and nine percent, respectively. Plant closures and production outages from Japan’s host of high-tech companies were among the biggest threats to the global supply chain, analysts said. “Japan remains critical to the global tech food chain,” analysts at CLSA said in a report. “Beyond damage to facilities, supply chain disruptions driven by road-port-power outages are key factors to watch,” CLSA said, estimating a fifth of all global technology products are made in Japan. Korean shipbuilders and US solar power companies were among other companies facing the threat of disruptions to supply, but with initial damage assessments still being made, companies and analysts said it was too early to accurately gauge how long disruptions might last. Rolling power blackouts are likely to affect Tokyo and surrounding areas, adding to the existing challenge of inspecting and repairing north Japan plants amid continuing aftershocks and the threat of major radiation leaks from damaged nuclear power plants. […]

Nationalised lender Irish Nationwide has had a near 100 percent take-up for its coercive buyback of £146.2m ($236m) of subordinated debt at an 80 percent discount. The lender, being wound down as part of an EU/IMF bailout, said investors holding £125.7m of bonds due 2016 and £20.5m of notes due 2018 had agreed to the buyback by an early deadline of March 8. Irish Nationwide had said the offer applied to £126m of bonds due 2015 and £20.6m due 2018. The company has extended the deadline for its early tender payment to March 18 due to the strong response. Bondholders who do not accept the offer by March 18 will be offered 0.001 percent of the bonds’ face value. Irish banks have been imposing losses on junior bondholders as part of government efforts to claw back some of the cost of bailing out the banks after years of reckless property lending. Ireland’s banking crisis forced the government to seek emergency assistance from the EU and the IMF and the eventual cost of purging the sector of bad debts and recapitalising it could top an eye-watering €80bn, over half of Ireland’s annual economic output.

Do what you like. Just count us out. That, in essence, is the message that Britain is sending its European partners as the 17 countries that share the euro move towards closer economic integration. In a departure from half a century of British diplomacy, PM Cameron has adopted a strategy of benign disengagement from the core project of the EU to appease the numerous eurosceptics in his Conservative party. Rather than seeking like his predecessors to shape and restrain European integration, he is watching from the sidelines as an inner circle of eurozone states launch separate annual summits and move forward with coordinating economic policy. Cameron has said Britain has a vital interest in the success of the eurozone, its biggest trade partner, and he chose pragmatically to participate in an EU/IMF-led bailout of Ireland in December because of strong British economic ties there. “There is a bit of apprehension about being left too much on the sidelines,” said Iain Begg, professor of European affairs at the London School of Economics, who said Cameron was trying to be as constructive as Conservative Eurosceptics would permit. But he is now effectively pulling up the drawbridge with the continent by enacting a “United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill” that would make any further transfer of power from London to Brussels subject to a national referendum. Britain opted out of the single currency when the Maastricht Treaty on monetary union was negotiated in 1991, but Labour governments between 1997 and 2009 were committed to […]

With a leading Republican candidate yet to emerge, the biggest risk to President Obama’s quest for a second term next year is a jobless rate that has hovered between 9 and 10 percent for months. March 4’s jobless report is expected to show nonfarm payrolls soared in February by 185,000 jobs, but the overall unemployment rate is nonetheless expected to edge up to 9.1 percent. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is edging toward entering the presidential race but heavyweight Republicans like him have yet to formally line up to oppose Obama in the 2012 election, making the monthly unemployment report one of the best early guides to the president’s re-election prospects. Analysts say the jobless rate needs to drop below eight percent by autumn 2012 for voters to feel optimistic about the economy – and Obama’s handling of it – when they go to the polls that November. “The problem for President Obama is that the window to achieve that kind of growth is closing. Without significant job growth this year, he will be in an economically challenging position to open the 2012 race,” said Matt McDonald, an analyst at the Washington policy advisory firm Hamilton Place Strategies. US voters may be temporarily captivated by turmoil in the Arab world, disputes between Republican state governors and unions or policy squabbles in Congress, but no issue preoccupies Americans as persistently as their own bank accounts and job outlook. “Unemployment is the best-known measure of the health of the US economy and […]