Actual finance blog

Facebook investors hoping for a tangible marker of their ownership stake are out of luck. The company won’t be offering paper stock certificates, despite earlier indications that it planned to make them available.

The operators of two stock-sale websites, OneShare.com and GiveAShare.com, said they learned of Facebook’s change of heart late last week. Computershare, which handles Facebook’s shareholder records, contacted them to say no paper stock certificates would be forthcoming.

"It was a complete surprise, given that they had it in their IPO filing," says Rick Roman, the founder of GiveAShare.com. Facebook’s IPO documents include a mock-up of its planned stock certificate.

Both Facebook () and Computershare declined to comment on the reversal.

Facebook joins a growing number of companies that no longer issue paper stock certificates. Regulatory changes over the past decade have made it easier to go all-digital, which is generally cheaper and more convenient for both companies and their shareholders. The "no paper" list now includes major tech companies like Apple, Intel (, Fortune 500) and Microsoft (, Fortune 500), which ditched its paper certificates last month.

Related story: How to buy 1 share of Facebook stock

Going paperless is more efficient, but it’s a bummer for fans of the iconic certificates. They’ve become collector’s items that are sometimes worth more than the stock itself. A share of Apple (, Fortune 500) currently sells for around $560, but on Scripophily.com, a website that deals in old certificates, a 1998 Apple stock certificate will set you back $695.

Facebook’s digital-only move was a frustrating curveball for sites that specialize in selling single stock shares to collectors and brand fans. IPO-day demand for Facebook shares was intense, they say.

"We got more orders in a couple of hours than we do for the whole Christmas season," Roman says of Friday’s sales rush.

"It was huge," says OneShare.com CEO Lance Lee. "The last time we had a day that big was when Pixar was bought by Disney. For all the fans of Pixar, it was the last chance to get the stock certificate."

With Facebook, both OneShare and GiveAShare switched gears quickly. They came up with placeholders to offer buyers and adjusted their listings to make it clear exactly what customers would be getting.

GiveAShare.com plans to issue a keepsake certificate facsimile, along with a statement from Facebook’s transfer agent showing the customer’s account number and their official single-share holding. OneShare.com is creating a "statement of ownership," free of any legally problematic trademarks or logos. It’s a plan the company’s securities lawyers signed off on, Lee says.

"On the plus side, I think it’s going to be more visually interesting," Lee says. "On the negative side, it’s not the official stock certificate. We’re calling it a symbolic certificate."

It’s a tactic he’s resigned — reluctantly — to having to use again as more companies go the digital-only route.

"I’m hoping they’ll change their mind," Lee says of Facebook. "Look at it another way: You have a group of people that are buying your stock and never plan on selling it. These people don’t see themselves as customers. They see themselves as part-owners." 

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If you thought the "SUV craze" was over, you’re wrong. Very wrong. Market share for SUVs in recent months is the largest it has ever been.

During the height of the so-called "SUV craze" in the late 1990s and early 2000s, about one in five vehicles sold in America was an SUV. Today, in an era of near $4 gasoline and heightened environmental awareness, nearly one in three vehicles sold is an SUV.

Far from becoming forgotten relics of our misguided past, SUVs have survived and prospered by adapting to changing consumer tastes.

A decade ago, SUV buyers climbed up into huge vehicles that were, essentially, heavily modified trucks designed to excel in off-road driving and for hauling heavy trailers. They got terrible fuel economy and, with their tendency to tip over, they were dangerous, as well.

Today, big truck-based vehicles make up a tiny sliver of the SUV market. Ninety percent of the SUVs sold are mid-sized or smaller and the vast majority have nothing to do with trucks. These are high-riding cars. Most are front-wheel-drive, or if they’re not, they’re all-wheel-drive.

Electronic stability control, now required by law on all vehicles, has greatly reduced rollover risk in SUVs. ESC systems can help prevent a vehicle from skidding or tipping over during abrupt maneuvers.

Many of these new SUVs get fuel economy that’s as good or better than passenger cars sold just a few years ago. General Motors’ (, Fortune 500) new Chevrolet Equinox SUV, for instance, gets better combined city and highway mileage than a 4-cylinder 2010 Honda Accord.

Finally, on-road handling and performance is actually a selling point for many of these new, smaller vehicles. That’s made possible by lighter weight construction, more sophisticated suspension systems, and some serious compromises. Any notion drivers of these vehicles may have of serious off-road use must be put aside.

7 beautiful spring car deals

When Ford Motor Co (, Fortune 500). was creating its new Explorer SUV, the automaker decided to use a car-based design shared with the Taurus sedan rather than the truck-based engineering used in previous generations. Ford’s customer research showed that, despite the old Explorer’s vaunted off-road capabilities, very few Explorer owners ever ventured far from paved streets.

Once the new car-based design was introduced, Explorer sales nearly tripled, according to data from J.D. Power and Associates.

As the downsides of SUV ownership dwindle with improved fuel economy, ride quality and handling, more consumers are switching out minivans and cars, said Jeff Schuster, an industry analyst with the consulting firm LMC Automotive. The attraction, as it has always been, is that SUVs offer the cargo space and flexibility of minivans and wagons but with an added dash of excitement.

"It’s rejuvenated the image of the multi-purpose vehicle," he said.

The biggest growth, however, has been among small SUVs like the Ford Escape, Honda CR-V and the new Mazda CX-5.

"For all intents and purposes, we’re sold out," Mazda spokesman Jeremy Barnes said of the CX-5.

Overall marketshare for small SUVs has more than doubled over the past seven years, said Ford sales analyst Erich Merkle. Today, they represent 45% of all SUVs sold. One reason is just that there are so many more small SUVs to choose from.

Besides providing more options, that variety actually generates more interest from consumers, said Schuster. Buyers who would have never considered an SUV before are looking now because they’re confident they’ll find something they like.

Small and mid-sized SUVs are attracting both the older and younger buyers for different reasons.

Older buyers are trading down into smaller SUVs as their kids leave home and they no longer need the space the larger vehicles offered, said Schuster.

Also, older drivers like having vehicles that they can get in and out of easily, said Merkle. SUVs, with their high seating, are easier to gracefully enter and exit than ordinary cars with seats down near ground level.

Younger buyers like the new smaller SUVs’ cool looks and the fact they’re clearly distinct from anything Mom and Dad ever drove.

"Nobody wants to drive what their parents drove," said Mazda’s Barnes. 

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ST. LOUIS • Six, seven and, finally, eight times, Geoffrey Baer walked across the lobby of the Wainwright Building until the director got the camera shot he wanted for a future public broadcasting program.

“10 Buildings that Changed America,” scheduled to air early next year, will include the Wainwright, in downtown St. Louis, and nine other buildings. The buildings span 215 years of American architecture, from the Virginia State Capitol, designed by Thomas Jefferson, to Frank Gehry’s steel-clad Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

Baer, an affable longtime public broadcasting presence in Chicago, will host the program. WTTW, the public broadcasting station in Chicago, is producing it. Recording began in April. Baer, director Dan Protess and camerman Tim Boyd were in St. Louis last week to examine the Wainwright, the granddaddy of all skyscrapers.

Though not the first tall building with a structural steel frame, the Wainwright showed in 1891 that steel could allow even brick to appear to soar. Famed Chicago architect Louis Sullivan designed for St. Louis financier Ellis Wainwright the nine-story office building of narrow red brick piers that wrap the vertical portions of the steel framework.

Baer said that Sullivan, through his design of “soaring verticality,” demonstrated with the Wainwright how a building could resemble a column with a base, a shaft and a capital.

“The Wainwright is the one that defined what skyscrapers should look like,” he said.

Inclusion of the Wainwright, a National Historic Landmark, was a no-brainer for the 19 architects and architectural historians who helped determine what buildings to squeeze into the one-hour PBS program, Baer said.

“I think Wainwright was never in doubt,” he said. “I think it was always on the list.”

Other buildings featured will include a 19th-century church, an early Ford assembly plant, the first enclosed shopping mall and a post-modernist house.

There were some eligibility rules: All the buildings had to be in different cities and no architect could have more than one building presented. For example, Eero Saarinen’s most famous work is the Arch but the program features his Dulles International Airport terminal near Washington.

Each of the 10 buildings will only get five minutes of air time. Baer and Protess, who double as the program’s writers (and whose wives are from St. Louis), will present the structures in the order built and describe their innovations in style and construction. Baer said the program is not meant as a “10-best” list but as an effort to show buildings that had a lasting influence on American architecture.

“It’s not a competition — it’s not a horse race,” he said.

Among Sullivan’s contributions to the Wainwright was a demonstration of how a steel frame freed architects to design office buildings to be more pleasant for their occupants business cards. He included large windows that improved ventilation and provided more natural light in a time of primitive electric lighting. (Advances by Elisha Otis and others produced safer and faster elevators, making the modern skyscraper a practical reality.)

Only one true skyscraper, the 38-story Seagram Building in New York, made the program’s cut. Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe’s design, completed in 1958, epitomizes the sleek international style that stripped away exterior ornamentation and emphasized the building’s structural elements.

The Seagram will appear in the second half of “10 Buildings.” Immediately after the Wainwright, viewers will see the Robie House, the Chicago residence designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who briefly worked for Sullivan.

That the Wainwright survives is a tribute to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which took an option on the building, and the state of Missouri, which bought it for renovation in 1981 as offices. The neighboring Title Guaranty building, designed by architecture firm Eames and Young and built in 1898, was demolished in 1983. Gateway One, the building that includes Peabody Energy’s headquarters, occupies the site now.

During a downpour last Monday, Protess directed Baer to walk repeatedly across the Wainwright’s lobby while Boyd changed camera angles. Protess eventually got his desired shot of Baer striding across the tile floor as Boyd tilted the camera to capture the host gazing up toward the skylight added in the 1980s renovation.

PBS viewers will not see that Baer had to avoid a large rainwater puddle that spread across the floor below — a skylight leak. Protess fretted that rain would disrupt the next day’s shooting schedule.

“Tomorrow morning, I want it to be beautiful,” he muttered.

It was.

THE BIG 10

Here is a list of the program’s buildings with location, designer and year completed.

1. Virginia State Capitol, Richmond, Thomas Jefferson, 1788

2. Trinity Church, Boston, H.H. Richardson, 1877

3. Wainwright Building, St. Louis, Louis Sullivan, 1891

4. Robie House, Chicago, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1910

5. Highland Park Ford Plant, Highland Park, Mich.; Albert Kahn, 1910

6. Southdale Center, Edina, Minn.; Victor Gruen, 1956

7. Seagram Building, New York, Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, 1958

8. Dulles International Airport, Chantilly, Va.; Eero Saarinen, 1963

9. Vanna Venturi House, Chestnut Hill, Penn., Robert Venturi, 1964

10. Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, Frank Gehry, 2003

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Wholesale prices in the U.S. fell in April for the first time in four months, led by a decline in fuel costs that signals inflation may cool.

The producer price index dropped 0.2 percent after no change in March, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists projected the gauge would be unchanged in April, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. The 1.9 percent increase over the past 12 months was the smallest since October 2009.

Falling raw-material costs mean companies will have less incentive to charge customers more. Slowing inflation would underscore views of some Federal Reserve policy makers who have said higher fuel prices will have only a temporary effect, allowing the central bank to stick to its plan to keep interest rates low at least until late 2014.

OAKVILLE, ONT.

Federal Reserve plans for rules on credit risk may hamper monetary policy in Japan and have an

Shoppers in Latin America, the Asia Pacific and the Middle East powered a 25 percent increase in MasterCard’s profit for the first three months of the year.

The Purchase, N.Y.-based payments processor reported income of $682 million Wednesday, or $5.36 per share, on revenue of $1.8 billion. That exceeded Wall Street’s expectations of $5.29 per share on revenue of $1.73 billion.

Ajay Banga, MasterCard’s chief executive officer, said the amount of purchases the company processed jumped 29 percent, the highest growth rate since the company went public.

MasterCard usage in the U.S. grew 14 percent as people spent more in restaurants and on apparel, hardware and electronics. Ajay Banga, MasterCard’s chief executive officer, told analysts on a conference call that the U.S. economy would have to do better for that growth to continue.

“For this trend to continue for a sustained period of time, we’re going to look for additional improvement in unemployment and a positive turn in housing prices,” Banga said.

In the last couple of years, MasterCard Inc. has focused on expanding its international business by acquiring an international card processing system called DataCash and a global prepaid travel card manager called Access Prepaid Worldwide.

Both of those acquisitions have paid off in the quarter, contributing to 25 percent profit growth, said Banga.

In the Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa, usage of its cards grew 23 percent.

During the first quarter of 2012, MasterCard repurchased 652,500 shares at a cost of approximately $248 million. The company said it is authorized to repurchase another $556 million worth of stock.

MasterCard increased rebates and incentives, a common practice in the industry where processors offer banks and other issuers breaks to persuade them to switch the logos on the cards they offer their customers.

In the quarter costs related to such incentives grew 24 percent, taking a bite out of the company’s revenue. Analysts don’t like to see too much of an increase in these costs because it weakens results.

MasterCard’s stock fell 2 percent to $446 in early trading.

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A U.K. factory index fell more than economists forecast in April and U.S. manufacturing probably slowed as the world economy stayed reliant on China to drive economic growth.

The gauge of British factory output dropped to 50.5 from 51.9 in March, London-based Markit Economics said today. The median forecast of 27 economists in a Bloomberg News survey was for a decline to 51.5. The Institute for Supply Management

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