Profitability ahead of glamour in Flights

On Nov. 25 Singapore Airlines will stop its 100-passenger daily run from Singapore to Newark, N.J., the world's longest nonstop commercial flight. After that, Singapore Air passengers such as Gill who are used to making the 19-hour slog in one sitting will have to fly to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after a stop in Frankfurt - adding five hours to their journey. The carrier is stopping the all-business-class service on a four-engine Airbus A340-500 after ending the second-longest flights, from Los Angeles to the island city, on Oct. 22.  The routes' well-heeded flyers are not pleased. "The more time you add on the way," says Gill, "the further it keeps you from either working or being at home." The demise of the two signature flights is the latest sign that the airline industry is putting profitability ahead of glamour. With oil prices tripling in the past decade, Singapore Air has struggled to ferry executives like Gill on the ultralong flights profitability for the past nine years. "The plane burns a lot of fuel but carries very few passengers," says Siyi Lim, an analyst at OCBC Investment Research in Singapore. "It didn't make sense to continue." (Bloomberg Businessweek November 4 - November 10, 2013 Page 30)

Volume of Global Trade

When HSBC Holdings' global economists recently pooled their forecasts, all had a similar projected source of growth: exports. The impossibility of every nation selling more than it buys means some of the analysts must be wrong - unless the rest of the solar system becomes a source of demand for the globe's products, Stephen King, HSBC's chief economist, said at an Oct. 16 conference in London. "Export claims are just far too optimistic," said King, a former U.K. Treasury official. The bet on trade is flopping for companies and policymakers who had hoped it would power recoveries held back by weak domestic demand. During the week of Oct. 20, Caterpillar and Unilever said demand from foreign customers was sliding. The CBP Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis released a report on Oct. 24 that estimated the volume of global trade fell 0.8 percent in August from a year earlier, the most since February. (Bloomberg Businessweek November 4 - November 10, 2013 Page 21)

How the NBA Stole Christmas

For generations, Christmas Day has been the time when families gather to sing carols, exchange gifts, and share meals around the holiday table. Thanks to the National Basketball Association, millions of Americans have embraced another yuletide tradition: watching hoops. For the six straight year, the league has scheduled five games to be broadcast nationally on Dec. 25, which has become professional basketball's antidote for too much family, turkey, or both. Although the NBA regular season begins in late October, Walt Disney's ABC television network - which pays $485 million per year for 90 regular-season NBA games and playoff rights it shares with sister cable network ESPN - saves its first national broadcasts for Christmas Day. And the league makes sure to provide the network with plum matchups. The 2013 slate features last season's champion (the Miami Heat) and runner-up (the San Antonio Spurs), four teams from the top two markets (the New York Knicks, Brooklyn Nets, Los Angeles Lakers, and Los Angeles Clippers), plus some championship contenders (the Chicago Bulls, Houston Rockets, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Golden State Warriors.)  (Bloomberg Businessweek November 11 - November 17, 2013 Page 30)

Blackstone Begins an Empire in Spain

Blackstone Group, builder of the biggest single-family rental home business in the U.S., is using its experience to replicate the model in Spain, where property prices have dropped 40 percent since the 2007 peak. The world's largest private equity firm agreed in July to purchase 18 apartment buildings from the city of Madrid for EUR(€) 125.5 million ($173 million). "Building a business from scratch without a single employee and buying something like $150 million in homes per week requires a learning process," Anthony Myers, senior managing director of real estate at Blackstone, said at a conference in Barcelona in mid-October. "When we looked at the situation in Spain, we thought we could replicate a lot of the systems and technology that we created in the U.S." (Bloomberg Businessweek November 11 - November 17, 2013 Page 50)

At the SEC, Lunch is Under Surveillance

Add the ability to eat quickly to the list of skills needed to work at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In a dispute that has sent pangs of resentment - and perhaps hunger - across the agency, the SEC's employee unison president is warning workers to keep lunch breaks to a half-hour or risk being disciplined as "absent without leaves." "Despite the fact that most SEC employees are often told that they may take an hour for lunch, technically, we are only entitled to thirty minutes," wrote Greg Gilman, an SEC lawyer who heads the agency's union chapter, in an e-mail sent to colleagues on Oct. 24. "Do not fall into the trap of believing that because you are a 'professional' the rules do not apply to you." In his message, Gilman cautioned employees to "be careful not to take a walk to get coffee, even with your supervisor," because "a case may be built very easily based upon these types of behaviors." (Bloomberg Businessweek November 11 - November 17, 2013 Page 38)