Actual finance blog

European planemaker Airbus will make one fewer A380 superjumbo aircraft than planned in 2009 after agreeing to push a delivery into 2010, reminding investors of challenges facing Europe’s largest industrial venture.

Airbus cut its 2009 delivery target on Tuesday from the most recent target of 14, as reported by Reuters. A spokesman said it would still deliver over 20 A380s next year.

Separately, Belgium’s defense minister, Pieter De Crem, said everything pointed to a deal on Europe’s largest defense project, the delayed Airbus A400M military transport, being reached by year-end as planned.

Also on Tuesday, global airlines body IATA said passenger traffic was recovering from the global recession but the industry remained far from a return to profit.

Shares in Airbus parent EADS, Europe’s largest aerospace group, were down 0.9 percent at 155.01 euros at mid-session.

A380 production targets have been revised down repeatedly since wiring installation flaws were exposed in 2006, leading to a crisis from which Franco-German-Spanish EADS is recovering.

This time the impetus for the delay appeared to come from the buyer, but analysts said it stoked up lingering fears Airbus may not have eliminated all the gremlins that have cost it a total of more than two years of A380 production.

Paris brokerage Oddo Securities said in a note that EADS, already facing a potential major provision for the A400M, might be forced to take a further charge this year for ongoing A380 production problems.

“The delivery of one fewer aircraft in 2009 has a margin revenue impact and is almost invisible at EADS operating income level but this delay puts Airbus execution risks back in focus.”

Singapore Airines is one of three carriers operating the world’s largest airliner, which sells for $327 million at list prices. The airline said this month it wanted to delay a total of eight future A380 deliveries, becoming the latest airline to push back new aircraft in the face of a slump in travel.

EADS chief executive Louis Gallois told Reuters on Monday this could result in one plane slipping to 2010.

He described as a “non-event” an incident in which a Singapore Airlines A380 turned back to Paris after one of its four Rolls-Royce engines failed on Sunday

ENTERING WAVE 2

The 525-seat superjumbo has dazzled aviation enthusiasts but provided a turbulent ride for EADS investors.

EADS shares have risen 25 percent this year, outperforming the Paris market’s blue-chip index by 5 percent. 

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It has been 31 years since the last trains left Union Station. And 24 years since its $140 million renovation as a hotel, shopping and entertainment spot on Market Street. But today the station is a shell of what it once was.

Banana Republic? Gone. Talbot’s? Gone. Body Shop, Brookstone, Nature Co.? Gone, gone, gone.

The space formerly occupied by Nature Co. is a gift shop called Fat Sassy’s. Nearby, a shop that calls itself a newsstand has one magazine rack near the front door and several shelves of liquor behind the counter.

But don’t write of this downtown landmark just yet.

A large expansion by Marriott, which in December took over the station’s hotel from Hyatt, is about to get under way. Marriott will move the front desk to the atrium near the station’s western end, allowing greater use of the barrel-vaulted Great Hall for

private events. Marriott also will extend its meeting and restaurant space into much of the retail area along the midway.

As a result, Union Station’s shops will be concentrated along the eastern concourse, where the food court is situated beneath the arched train shed, which dates to 1894. Whether this transformation — the station’s most extensive since the 1980s — will revive the place is yet to be seen.

Barbara Geisman, deputy mayor for development, said city officials hope better times are ahead.

"We would certainly like to see as much retail as possible in Union Station," she said. "As the downtown residential and business population grow, we think there’s a market for more mainstream retail there."

Resuscitating shopping at Union Station will require "some big-time marketing," Geisman said.

"A lot of this is that you get a name draw and then that kind of sets the tone for the rest of it," she said. "We think the station presents opportunities for larger retail."

Bass Pro Shops, based in Springfield, Mo., took a look a few years ago but passed on Union Station, Geisman said. She added that shopping habits have changed since the 1980s, when "festival markets" such as Quincy Market in Boston, South Street Seaport in New York and Union Station drew big crowds. All have faded.

"Things have changed a lot since then," Geisman said. "Instead of people going there on a whim because they want to see a neat old building, you now have a lot of people with disposable income who like to shop."

Frances Percich, Union Station’s marketing manager, said "serious" discussions are under way with two retailers, including one that would be new to St. Louis. She declined to name them. Percich said the station will continue to market itself as a tourist attraction with numerous spring and summer events.

"When people walk in here expecting a mall, they will be disappointed," she said. "We’re not a mall. We have no anchor store."

Among the few Union Station visitors one afternoon last week were Russ and Donna Clark of Yuba City, Calif. They were staying at the Marriott for a meeting. The Clarks said they had been unsure whether Union Station’s emptiness resulted from a renovation still under way or from a lack of business.

Told that the renovation was completed in 1985 and that the station had been in decline for years, Donna Clark said: "Wow, that’s a shame. This looks like a great idea. It’s disappointing not to see a lot of people."

Union Station’s current retail occupancy is 79 percent, Percich said. Ownership has changed in recent years. In 2003, the inability of St. Louis Station Associates, the investment group behind the 1980s renovation, to pay the mortgage led to foreclosure by Regency Savings Bank of Oak Park, Ill. Park National Bank of Chicago bought the property from Regency and owns it through Union Station Holdings LLC.

Doug Dean, the Marriott’s general manager, said the hotel renovation will restore some of the inn’s original 1890s configuration. He noted that the original front desk was off the atrium, remarkable for its glass-block floor. All 539 rooms, including the 67 in the station’s original "headhouse," will be redone. Dean declined to specify the overall cost, saying it remained "a moving target."

Four meeting rooms and a restaurant will be built near the new lobby. One floor above, the existing restaurant will be used mainly for private events. Beginning with a ballroom freshening done by November, the renovation project will be completed in late 2011, he said.

Hotel and shopping areas will remain open during the renovation.

Across Market from Union Station is the western end of the Gateway Mall, the milelong park that extends east to the Old Courthouse. Tricia Roland-Hamilton, head of the project to redo the mall, said that to thrive, the Union Station area must have more offices, residents and stores.

"The key to livening up that space, not just Union Station but that part of the mall, is density," she said. "And we don’t have that right now."

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Maybe, when all is said and done, Jamestown Mall won’t be a mall at all.

Maybe it’ll be a mix of things. Some offices. Some condos. Stores and restaurants. A YMCA. With a swath of green grass down its spine. A sort of town center for its corner of far north St. Louis County. With a different name. Maybe call it Lindbergh Place.

That’s the vision a team of national real estate experts sketched out Friday morning to a crowd of about 100 area residents and officials who packed a church meeting room down the street from the ailing Jamestown Mall.

They’d been brought in by St. Louis County officials, via the Urban Land Institute, and given a week to talk to people, study the area and come up with some new ideas for the half-empty shopping center.

What they came up with was a total redesign of the entire 142 acre site. Starting over from scratch.

"This mall as a regional mall cannot continue," said Arun Jain, an urban designer from Portland, Ore., who sat on the panel. "There are things you can do, short-term strategies to prolong the mall. But in the end, they’re short-term. The case for change and the time for change is now."

A key first step, the panel said, is for St. Louis County to take over the entire site, chunks of which today are owned by five companies, all from outside the area. It should buy them out, through eminent domain if necessary. And then …

"Take it down," said Ray Brown, a planner from Memphis who chaired the panel. "Bulldoze it and start over."

That may sound extreme, he said, but it’s the only way to create a fresh start, to build something new that is big enough and great enough and unique enough to draw people there, like people go to the Loop or the Central West End now. County officials should talk with the neighboring communities and figure out what people want to see, what they’d use, and what might draw shoppers from outside the immediate area to the new Lindbergh Place.

It is a chance for big vision, said Philip Hart of Hart Realty Advisers in Los Angeles cash advance no fax. It is not a time to be timid.

"We need to be brave," he said. "We need to be bold. We need to have a sense of urgency."

When the panel was done, there was applause. And almost immediately, the thorny questions began.

What would happen to existing businesses that are in the mall now? Why should residents trust the government when it has trouble with so many other problems in north county? Most of all, how will this get paid for?

Those are questions for the community to figure out, Brown said. After all, his group was flying home Friday afternoon. And County Executive Charlie Dooley said he planned to launch a series of discussions with residents, businesses and officials, to figure out where to go next, and what that might look like. The weeklong planning blitz — which cost the county $120,000 — was just a first step.

"Everything’s on the table," Dooley said. "Now we’ve got people thinking about what the possibilities are."

When the event was done, Barbara Brown and Carol Whittier stood in the hall outside, talking about what they’d like out of Jamestown. They both live in Spanish Lake and are tired of having to drive all the way to the Galleria to shop, or go a long way for a good restaurant.

"We don’t even have a Red Lobster around here," Whittier said.

What they’d love to see, Brown said, is something that brings people in, a place nice enough to draw visitors from Chesterfield or St. Charles, instead of the other way around.

"We want those tour buses coming here, as a destination," she said. "Coming to see … whatever."

What that’ll be, they’re not yet sure. But Friday’s meeting, Brown and Whittier said, was a good way to start thinking about it.

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Sara Lee Corp will sell its personal care brands like Sanex and Brylcreem for $1.87 billion (1.275 billion euros) to consumer goods giant Unilever and set a $1 billion share buyback plan, sending its stock up 6 percent.

Sara Lee also said on Friday it has seen significant interest in its household products business, which includes Ambi Pur air freshener and Kiwi shoe polish. The divestitures allow it to focus on its food and beverage businesses like Sara Lee baked goods and Hillshire Farm meats.

The deal also reinforces Anglo-Dutch Unilever’s global lead in deodorants and skin cleansing and marks the first major acquisition for new Chief Executive Paul Polman. The businesses it is acquiring from Sara Lee see 85 percent of their sales in Europe.

Sara Lee CEO Brenda Barnes said she expected the entire household and body care business to be reported as discontinued operations in the current fiscal first quarter, a sign the company expects to be able to sell the other businesses.

“As the process proceeded, it became clear that there were different people who had far more interest in different pieces of this,” Barnes told Reuters in an interview. She did not say which companies were interested in which businesses.

Credit Suisse analyst Charlie Mills said the price Unilever is paying of 10 times core operating profit, or EBITDA, is not huge by industry standards, which reflects the fairly disparate collection of brands.

“We’re not convinced that this is the greatest collection of assets but another acquisition shows Unilever still moving from the back foot (cost cutting and disposals) to the front foot (volume growth and acquisitions),” he said.

KEY EUROPEAN MARKETS

Unilever says the Sanex, Radox and Duschdas brands will complement its Dove, Axe and Rexona at slightly lower prices and strengthen its European business in key markets such as Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Denmark.

Sara Lee said the brands sold accounted for 55 percent of the profits from its businesses up for sale.

BMO Capital Markets analyst Kenneth Zaslow said the deal is valued at about 1.7 times sales and 15 to 16 times earnings before interest and taxes, about in line with past household personal care deals.

The rest of the businesses Sara Lee is trying to sell are likely to receive lower valuations since the household business has a lower growth rate, but Sara Lee is still likely to receive total proceeds at the higher end of BMO’s $2 billion to $2.5 billion estimate, Zaslow said in a research note.

Sara Lee also reiterated it intended to maintain its current quarterly dividend of 11 cents for the next four quarters regardless of the timing of disposals.

Sara Lee’s board also approved a $1 billion share repurchase program. The plan is in addition to 13.5 million shares remaining to be bought back under a previous share repurchase program.

Unilever Plc shares were down slightly at 17.35 pounds in London, while Sara Lee shares were up 64 cents or 6.1 percent at $11.18 in early afternoon on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange. 

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U.S. lawmaker Barney Frank is making key changes to the White House plan for an agency to protect consumers from risky financial products, according to a congressional document obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.

Financial firms will not be required to offer plain vanilla products and services, such as mortgages with simple terms and contracts, the document said.

Representative Frank, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, is expected to soon release a revised discussion draft about the proposed consumer agency, which has drawn criticism from businesses and banking regulators.

Businesses fear the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) will stifle innovation and erode profits as consumers seek out government-approved products. Regulators fear the consumer agency will take away some of their authority.

According to the document, the consumer agency will not have the authority to approve or change business plans. Banking regulators will coordinate and consult with the consumer agency on timing, scope and results of the exams to “ensure minimum regulatory burden.”

Depository institutions will have simultaneous federal safety and soundness and consumer compliance exams unless they want separate exams, the document said.

Other service providers, such as accountants, lawyers, telecom, and cable companies, will not be required to comply with the consumer agency rules if they are acting in their “traditional capacities,” said the document.

The Federal Reserve will partially fund the agency so that financial institutions are not unduly burdened with more fees.

All non-bank financial institutions that provide financial products and services for consumers will be required to register with the CFPA.

(Reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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This week is slated to be the biggest for initial public offerings in the United States in nearly two years — and some say the resurgence could be sustainable.

There are eight deals on deck and they are expected to raise $3.5 billion, which would increase 2009’s total so far by 66 percent. In an additional sign of strength, they run the gamut from real estate investment trusts created to buy toxic assets to a clean tech company that has never made a profit.

That broadening of industries shows how much the IPO market has healed since a six-month virtual drought ended in February, with the recovery in the IPO market that started in China and Brazil making its way to the United States.

“It’s too early to say ‘everything’s fine, everyone come back into the pool,’ but we are seeing signs that more and more types of investors are coming back to the market and there is robust interest in IPOs,” said Mary Ann Deignan, head of equity capital markets for the Americas at UBS Investment Bank.

The number of deals could make it the busiest since the week of December 9, 2007, when 11 IPOs came to market. So far this year, there have been only 22 IPOs.

LESS RISK AVERSE?

Among the IPOs ready to test investor appetite for risk is Foursquare Capital Corp, a REIT that will be run by a unit of money manager AllianceBernstein and plans to raise $500 million with which to buy “toxic assets” under a U.S. Treasury program.

Two other REITs, Colony Financial Inc and Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance Inc, created by Leon Black’s private equity firm, are each seeking hundreds of millions to buy commercial mortgage-backed securities, betting that their values will rebound allied insurance.

IPO investors are becoming more adventurous again.

“Investors are looking more broadly across all sectors now. It’s not just defensive names that are appealing,” Deignan said.

But a flop or two next week, or a sudden end to the recent stock market rally, could be enough to send investors running for the doors again, an analyst said.

People could be frightened if some of these deals do badly,” said Nick Einhorn, a research analyst at Connecticut-based investment firm Renaissance Capital.

Despite considerable buzz, A123 Systems Inc, a promising lithium car battery maker gunning for $225 million, may give investors pause as it would be the first this year by an unprofitable company.

Two of the offerings are carve-outs from large companies: Swiss bank Julius Baer’s U.S. asset management unit Artio Global Investors Inc ($585 million) and Chinese media company Shanda Interactive’s spin-off of its gaming unit Shanda Games Ltd in a $725 million IPO.

Investors have been receptive to carve-outs this year. Shanda Games’ rival Changyou.com Ltd was carved out of Chinese Internet portal Sohu.com and has risen 156 percent since its IPO in April in the best performance of the year, leading some analysts to say Shanda could see the strongest first day jump of this week’s crop. 

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St. Louis’ temperate climate makes the region an ideal ground zero — so to speak — for geothermal heating and cooling systems that drastically slash home energy costs, experts say.

Among the growing number of users here is Gary Pedersen, a retired Bayer Corp. policy analyst. He says the utility costs at his two-year-old Kirkwood home are half those at his nearly identical former home in Eureka, which had a conventional forced-air system.

Pedersen, 69, said his geothermal system "was a little bit more expensive, but over the long run it will more than pay for itself."

Architects, builders and engineers familiar with geothermal systems said this part of the Midwest has limitless potential for low-cost heating and cooling.

Geothermal energy currently provides a sliver of the nation’s residential needs. But if enough homes use free energy stored in the earth, utilities will no longer need to continue building costly and polluting power plants, geothermal advocates say.

Among them is Yunsheng "Shawn" Xu, an associate professor of engineering at the University of Missouri who is designing a geothermal system to drop his home’s energy costs to zero. He will install the system in his family’s house, which he plans to start building next month west of Columbia. Xu (pronounced "shoe") met this week with the project’s architect, Tom Tyler, founder of Answers Inc., and one of the home’s builders, Matt Belcher, president of Belcher Homes, both of St. Louis.

Orienting Xu’s 2,600-square-foot home on the 15-acre semirural site to make the best use of the sun’s effects and figuring out where to place rooms consumed part of the meeting. Xu, 47, is in charge of the home’s geothermal system.

It will be infinitesimally smaller than the ones he helped design for the Olympic Village and the 91,000-seat "Bird’s Next" stadium built for the Beijing Games last year. Huge or small, geothermal systems are simple. They work like this:

— A fluid — mostly water — circulates through coils of plastic pipe placed horizontally a few feet below the ground surface or in holes bored 150 to 200 feet deep.

— In winter, the fluid warmed underground is pumped from the earth and after heated further by a compressor is distributed through a building’s conventional duct work.

— In summer, the process is reversed. The geothermal coils return the building’s interior heat to the ground, much the way a refrigerator sheds heat through its coils. The rule of thumb is that a geothermal system is at least 70 percent more efficient than a natural gas furnace.

Experts say the St. Louis region is especially geothermal friendly because its infrequent triple-digit temperature swings over a given year mean the ground temperature just a few feet below the surface is a constant 60 degrees or so. As a result, heating and cooling demands on a geothermal system are low.

Xu will bury geothermal coils beneath his home’s gravel driveway and boost efficiency with a solar panel that will provide the electricity needed to power the system’s small pump. Lots of wall and roof insulation, plus moveable exterior window blinds also will help cut reliance on utility-supplied electricity to zero, he said.

"It’ll be nice," Xu added.

He said the geothermal system’s cost — roughly double that a conventional heating and cooling system — helps push his three-bedroom home’s construction budget to about $400,000. At about $154 per square feet, the cost remains solidly in the range of custom-built homes in the St. Louis area. He plans to recoup 30 percent of the geothermal system’s cost through the federal tax credit that applies to geothermal systems as well as solar panels, solar water heaters, small wind energy systems and fuel cells.

Tyler and Belcher predict the number of geothermal homes in the St. Louis area will grow. St. Louis has "a certain sense of practicality that allows it to adapt some of these technologies," Tyler said. In the St. Louis area, using the earth to heat and cool homes is more efficient than trying to do the job with solar or wind energy, he added.

Belcher said a few local lenders are beginning to realize that geothermal systems enhance a home’s value. St. Louis electricity costs are relatively low but will inevitably rise, making super-energy-efficient homes even more desirable, he added.

"Every time Ameren talks about bumping its rates, it seems like my phone rings a little more often," Belcher said.

How many geothermal systems are in homes nationwide is difficult to determine, but according to the National Association of Home Builders, the number has grown in the past two years, said Calli Schmidt, an association spokeswoman.

The government’s Energy Information Administration reported in July that of the nearly 100 quadrillion BTUs consumed in the United States last year, 7 percent came from renewable energy sources. Of that amount, 5 percent came from geothermal energy. Though still small, geothermal energy use doubled between 1995 and 2007, the Census Bureau has reported.

Pedersen said he and his wife, Sharon, appreciate their system’s lack of a noisy outside air-conditioning compressor and the whisper of quiet fans that gently move air to and from the geothermal coils. Summer cooling costs are low, and "in the winter, we pretty much get everything out of the earth," he said.

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NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that he would put the Air Force in charge of awarding a $35 billion contract for refueling tankers even though it botched two earlier efforts.

Boeing Co. and a joint venture that includes Northrop Grumman Corp. and the European aircraft maker of Airbus SAS are competing for the contract. Air Force officials plan to release a draft proposal within the next two weeks that details the type of plane they are seeking.

While Gates said he would let the Air Force run the competition instead of having his office do it, he cautioned that the Pentagon "cannot afford the kind of letdowns and parochial squabbles and corporate food fights that have bedeviled this effort over the last number of years."

He also said, in a speech at an Air Force Association convention, that his office would continue to have "a robust oversight role."

The Air Force’s first effort to obtain new tankers collapsed in 2004 amid corruption charges involving a proposed leasing deal with Boeing guaranteed fast personal loans. Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., known as EADS, then teamed up and won a competition last year against Boeing, which has its defense operations based in Hazelwood.

Boeing protested that award, saying the Air Force unfairly gave extra points to the Northrop and EADS team for offering a larger plane than the service had sought and made other mistakes in evaluating the proposals. The Government Accountability Office, a congressional auditing agency, said some Boeing complaints were valid and blocked the award.

Boeing and Northrop Grumman both released statements Wednesday saying they were ready to renew the battle. If anything, the political and economic stakes seem even higher now, with spending on big military programs expected to tighten and high-paying jobs in the balance.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Blockbuster Inc. may close as many as 960 stores by the end of next year, shedding more dead weight as the struggling video rental chain tries to reverse its losses and fend off rapidly growing rivals Netflix Inc. and Redbox.

The cuts would leave Blockbuster with about 20 percent fewer U.S. stores, according to documents filed Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The documents didn’t identify the locations of the endangered stores. Blockbuster hasn’t made any final decisions on the possible store closures, Chief Executive James Keyes said in an interview Tuesday.

Keyes described the closures as something that Blockbuster is considering as it sets up more DVD-rental kiosks in the stores of other merchants. It’s a concept that has been popularized by Redbox.

By the middle of next year, Blockbuster hopes to have 10,000 kiosks scattered around the country. It had just 500 kiosks at the end of August.

"We could have fewer physical stores and still have more rental points for our customers," Keyes said.

Blockbuster’s shift serves as another reminder of video stores’ waning appeal as consumers buy and rent movies through the mail, on the Internet and through cable connections and standalone kiosks.

The shift has threatened to turn once-mighty Blockbuster into a dinosaur. The Dallas-based company has been trying to evolve by embracing kiosks and expanding into rentals delivered through the mail and the Internet free credit report online.

But it hasn’t been enough to justify keeping so many stores open. About 18 percent of Blockbuster’s stores aren’t making money.

Blockbuster is thinking about closing between 810 and 960 of its U.S. stores before 2011, up from the 380 to 425 stores that normally would be closed during that time span, according to Tuesday’s filing.

As of mid-August, Blockbuster had closed 276 stores this year.

Besides closing stores, Blockbuster indicated that it will convert at least 250 stores into smaller outlets.

If Blockbuster hits the high end of the new target for store closures, it will represent 22 percent of its 4,356 stores in the United States.

Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service has hit Blockbuster particularly hard as more households have embraced the concept of picking out their rental choices online before the DVDs are delivered through the mail. In the last two years, Netflix lured even more customers by building up its library of movies available for instant viewing over high-speed Internet connections.

Netflix now has 10.6 million subscribers and, unlike Blockbuster, is becoming more profitable.

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As Beijing launched a case Monday against new U.S. tariffs on Chinese tires, President Barack Obama defended the duties, saying trading agreements must be enforced in order for trading systems to work.

The conflict adds to a series of disputes over poultry, auto parts and other goods that have threatened to strain relations as Beijing and Washington cooperate on complex issues including the economic crisis and North Korea.

It comes as the two world powerhouses prepare for a global economic summit meeting next week in Pittsburgh.

News of China’s complaint filed with the World Trade Organization sent Asian markets down 2 percent and more Monday on worries about the potential impact on the global economic recovery. But investors appeared to take a less dire view of the dispute as the day wore on. U.S. markets were flat by midday.

While China’s quick response to Friday’s tariff decision threatened to escalate the battle, many economists said they expected that both sides would find a way to avoid a full-blown trade war.

Economists said that both nations have too much at stake economically to allow the dispute to get out of control.

The U.S. is a huge export market for Chinese products while China is the largest holder of U.S. Treasury securities.

The Chinese complaint to the WTO in Geneva triggers a 60-day WTO process in which the two sides are to try to resolve the dispute through negotiations. If that fails, China can request a WTO panel to investigate and rule on the case.

Beijing’s quick response to the tariff decision shows the urgency communist leaders attach to maintaining exports, employment and social stability. Officials have said as many as 30 million laborers lost factory jobs last year as exports plummeted. Many have found new employment, but the government is anxious to avert more job losses.

Frustration over the tire tariffs has been fanned by news reports citing a rubber industry group that said as many as 100,000 jobs could be affected and losses to Chinese producers could top $1 billion.

Obama approved the tire duties to slow the rapid growth of U.S. imports of Chinese-made tires blamed for the loss of thousands of American jobs. The order raised tariffs for three years on Chinese tires — by 35 percent in the first year, 30 percent in the second and 25 percent in the third.

On Sunday, Beijing announced it would investigate complaints that American auto and chicken products are being dumped in China or are benefiting from subsidies.

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