Actual finance blog

Facebook’s stock market debut finally came and went — but for all the breathless hype, shares ended right near their offering price.

On Thursday night, Facebook () set its final IPO price at $38 a share. When the stock began trading at 11:30 a.m. ET on Friday, the first trade came in at $42.05 per share — a gain of nearly 11%.

What is an IPO?

But the stock quickly reversed course, dropping down to hover right around the $38 IPO price for much of midday trading. Though shares rose modestly for short bursts of time throughout the day, they ended the session at $38.23.

While the price itself didn’t move much, trading was fast and intense. More than 80 million shares changed hands in the first 30 seconds of trading. By the end of the day, volume had spiked to around 567 million shares.

That easily set a new volume record for IPOs, smashing the previous record that automaker General Motors (, Fortune 500) set in 2010 with trading of around 450 million shares.

Facebook’s trading had been expected to start around 11 a.m. ET, but the opening was delayed.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq opening bell remotely, from the company’s headquarters in California. Facebook celebrated its public debut by gathering its staff Thursday night for an all-night hackathon.

At the $38 IPO price, Facebook is on track to raise $16 billion — making it the largest tech IPO in history. It’s the third largest U.S. IPO ever, trailing only the $19.7 billion raised by Visa (, Fortune 500) in March 2008 and the $18.1 billion raised by automaker GM in November 2010, according to rankings by Thomson Reuters.

Underwriters have the option to purchase an extra 63.2 million shares to cover any so-called over-allotments for excess demand. If that happens, Facebook will sell 484.4 million shares in total. That would bring the amount raised to $18.4 billion.

How much Facebook is worth: At $38 per share, Facebook’s market capitalization would be around $81 billion on IPO day.

Many Facebook employees and executives hold unexercised stock options. If all of those shares were exercised, Facebook’s outstanding share count would rise to around 2.8 billion — pushing the company’s total valuation closer to $107 billion.

Among all global companies, Facebook has the third-highest IPO-day valuation in history, according to data from DealLogic.

SecondMarket, an exchange on which people can buy and sell stock in private companies, posted data on Friday about Facebook’s private-trading history.

It wasn’t until 2010 that SecondMarket’s Facebook trades racked up significant volume, so Facebook’s trades before that tended to be one-off deals at a low per-share price. In April 2010, Facebook fetched an average price of $9.82 per share on a monthly average basis. One year later, the rate jumped to $31.46.

As of April 5, Facebook shares were trading for an average of $42.72 each — nearly $4 higher than the IPO price.

Who’s selling shares: Zuckerberg plans to sell 30.2 million shares in the IPO offering. That will net Zuckerberg about $1.1 billion.

But Zuckerberg won’t be hanging on to his cash. Facebook said he will use the "substantial majority" of the windfall to cover the massive tax bill he’ll be hit with, thanks to his plan to exercise a large stock-options grant that will increase his ownership stake in the company he founded.

After the offering, Zuckerberg will still hold 503.6 million shares, or about 31% of the company. That stake is worth $19.1 billion at the IPO price.

Venture capital firm Accel Partners, which is the largest shareholder outside of Zuckerberg, is selling 49 million shares in the offering. That’s about a quarter of its Facebook holdings.

– CNNMoney’s Chris Isidore and Maureen Farrell contributed reporting. 

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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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There’s a rumble brewing over how you get your beer. And the newest front has opened right in the backyard of America’s biggest brewer.

Beer wholesalers — the people who truck the suds from brewery to store shelf — are pushing a bill in the Missouri Legislature that would protect their role as middlemen, by banning brewers from owning wholesalers and codifying the industry’s vaunted three-tier distribution system into state law.

It’s a pre-emptive strike against Anheuser-Busch InBev, which wants to streamline its complex distribution network, and a sign of increased tension between the big brewer and the people who deliver its product. The fallout from that dispute could eventually affect everything from the price of beer to what brands are on the shelf.

While state laws vary, the three-tier system — in which separate companies make beer, ship it, and sell it to consumers — has been in place since the end of Prohibition, when it was designed to rein in aggressive sales tactics and streamline regulation. The system is in sharp contrast to other consumer goods — Procter & Gamble, for instance, sells toothpaste and detergent straight to Walmart — and unique in the global beer industry.

Anheuser-Busch has more than 500 distributors across the country — five in the St. Louis area — nearly all of which are independent companies with an exclusive contract to sell A-B beer in a certain geographical area. It’s a lucrative franchise; distributors typically take about $4 per case, according to calculations by Beer Business Daily. And in recent years, the so-called “red network” of A-B wholesalers has won extra profits by shedding exclusivity agreements and carrying more craft beer, with higher margins and few extra costs.

But Anheuser-Busch InBev has started to push back, encouraging wholesalers to consolidate, urging tighter “alignment” with the brewery and blasting those who sell non-A-B products against A-B in neighboring markets.

“I’m loyal to my wholesalers,” A-B InBev North American president Luiz Edmond told the Wall Street Journal in March. “Why would I not expect the same loyalty to me?”

At stake is a lot of money.

Matter of efficiency

Wall Street analysts say more efficient distribution could play a big role in A-B InBev’s target of $1 billion in U.S. cost savings. By buying out the middleman and self-distributing, the brewery could tap wholesaler profits estimated at about $1 a case, and centralize functions such as phone operations and truck maintenance.

“It’s a good way to squeeze out costs,” said Harry Schuhmacher, editor of Beer Business Daily.

These kind of acquisitions are legal in about 20 states, and A-B InBev already owns 14 distributorships — which it calls “branches” — including some in big, if not especially profitable, markets such as New York and Los Angeles. It has bought two just since December, with a third deal pending in Seattle.

A-B InBev is likely to keep buying wholesalers where it can, and to encourage consolidation where it can’t, wrote Tony Bucalo, an analyst with the Spanish bank Santander, in a research note last month. All in a bid to drive down costs.

“We estimate that ABI could hypothetically control nearly 50 percent of its distribution, compared to 8 percent today,” Bucalo wrote. “We believe it will continue to move in that direction.”

But A-B’s “costs” are distributors’ profits, and distributors are pushing back.

Even as the brewer has talked of consolidation, wholesaler groups are resisting. They warn of job cuts and short-term profit-taking. They argue that the big brewer could restrict sales of other brands at its branches, making it harder for craft beers and imports to find a market.

Those arguments have gained traction in state legislatures no fax needed payday loans. In the past two years, laws banning self-distribution have been passed in Louisiana, Wisconsin, Nebraska and Illinois — where lawmakers acted after A-B InBev’s attempt to buy a majority stake in its Chicago distributorship prompted a federal lawsuit.

In Missouri, though, the idea has been a tougher sell. The big brewer’s clout in Jefferson City has long been the stuff of legend. Even today it wields considerable influence, employing nine lobbyists and doling out more than $340,000 in political donations statewide in 2011, according to the Missouri Ethics Commission.

Last year, a bill blocking brewery ownership of distributors went nowhere. So far this spring, it has received a hearing and the blessing of a committee in the Senate, but not in the House.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, did not return calls seeking comment, nor did local Anheuser-Busch distributors, who have been silent on the matter. But Brian Gelner, vice president of Premium Beverage, a MillerCoors distributor in Springfield, and legislative chairman of the Missouri Beer Wholesalers Association, said he was hopeful that the bill would at least get to a full floor vote.

“The three-tier system has been a really good system,” Gelner said. “Anything that changes that by taking one tier out hurts the whole industry.”

Flexing muscles

A-B says it agrees on the value of three tiers, and insists it has no plans to buy Missouri wholesalers. But the brewery says it wants the option to do so if necessary, and is lobbying against the bill.

“We support keeping the existing system in place because it works and fosters competition,” said Mark Bordas, A-B’s regional vice president for state affairs, in a statement. “This system for many years has allowed for brewers to own a wholesaler in Missouri. If a wholesaler decides to sell, and if it makes sense for us to buy, our ability to own a wholesaler assures that our products are able to strongly compete.”

Some say this is a lot of fuss about very little.

Joe Thompson is president of Georgia-based Independent Beverage Group, which helps broker wholesaler acquisitions. When the owner of an A-B house wants to sell, he said, A-B is always a potential buyer — in the states where it’s allowed — but just one of many. And while the big brewer usually has right of first refusal in its network, distributors are free to take the best offer.

The real reason for all this push-back, Thompson said, is that many wholesalers don’t want to go up against the deep pockets of the brewery, which could easily undercut them on price.

“They’d rather compete against you or me than Anheuser-Busch,” said Thompson, who is representing Seattle-based K&L Distributors in its sale to A-B. “Fundamentally, it’s just that they don’t want a giant in their neighborhood.”

But others who have been watching this unfold say the distributors’ worries are well-founded.

From Chief Executive Carlos Brito on down, A-B InBev executives have made clear they have plans to save money on wholesaling, said John Conlin, a distribution consultant in Denver. And the more states where A-B owns wholesalers, the less leverage the stand-alone outfits will have.

Whatever happens in Jefferson City and elsewhere, Conlin said, the long-cozy relationship between the people who make Budweiser and the people who ship it is changing, perhaps for good.

“A-B has been flexing its muscles lately,” he said. “And there’s a lot of fear out there right now.”

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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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Swedish truck maker AB Volvo said Thursday that higher costs contributed to a 2 percent drop in profits in the first quarter even though a buoyant performance in North America helped it record its strongest-ever sales for the period.

The sales performance impressed investors and the company’s share price spiked 5 percent to 94.10 kronor ($13.97) in early market trading on the Stockholm stock exchange.

The Goteborg-headquartered group recorded a net profit of 4.01 billion kronor ($595 million) for the first three months of the year, down slightly from the 4.08 billion kronor earned in the same period a year earlier. Costs, and especially those linked to research and development, dragged the bottom-line figure down compared with last year.

However, revenues jumped 10 percent to 78.84 billion kronor however _ the highest Volvo has ever recorded during a first quarter. They were boosted primarily by sales in the company’s key truck unit in North America. The trend in Europe stayed more or less unchanged from the previous year after a fall in demand in the fourth quarter, it said.

CEO Olof Persson said his company “showed its strength in being a global operation, when setbacks in some of our important markets were offset by positive developments in other markets.”

He also said that Volvo will keep investing in growth markets “by developing new products and further strengthening the sales and service networks.”

Volvo appeared a bit more optimistic about the European outlook as it revealed plans to ramp up production and raised its forecast for the heavy-duty truck market. It now expects an order intake of 230,000 trucks in 2012.

The forecast for North America remained unchanged, while production will be reduced in South America in May and June as the market switches over, and adapts to stricter emission requirements.

“We anticipate the demand will rise again in the second half of the year,” Persson said, noting the full-year forecast for Brazil therefore remains unchanged.

The outlook for Japan was also kept unchanged.

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From oil fields to wind turbines to coal mines, size and scale rule the economics of energy.

But the nuclear industry is thinking small these days.

The latest evidence came last week when Ameren Missouri and Westinghouse Electric Co. announced plans to pursue a $452 million federal subsidy to advance development of small modular reactors that could be built alongside the utility’s much larger Callaway nuclear plant near Fulton, Mo.

While some utilities are still pursuing full-scale plants, there is a parallel push for smaller reactors that could be easier for utilities to finance and minimize sticker shock for regulators and consumers. But despite a lower total cost, there’s no evidence yet that tiny fission factories would be able to produce electricity at a competitive cost in an era of abundant, cheap natural gas.

“There just isn’t any proof that small reactors are going to be any more economic than larger ones,” said Peter Bradford, an adjunct law professor at Vermont Law School and a former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member. “At this point, it’s all about hype and hope.”

The so-called small nuclear reactors promise the same benefits as larger ones: namely, an option for around-the-clock, low-carbon electric generation that could be a key in replacing aging coal plants.

For utilities considering nuclear technology, the smaller size means a smaller price. Even using the most generous cost estimates, a new nuclear plant the size of Ameren Missouri’s existing Callaway plant could rival or exceed the $7.5 billion market value of the utility’s entire parent company.

But the differences go beyond size. For one, the small reactors envisioned would be modular, able to be manufactured at a central factory, shipped by rail, ships or truck and assembled on site. That means a potentially larger market for vendors like Westinghouse.

“This (small) plant will appeal to a very broad market,” Kate Jackson, a Westinghouse senior vice president and chief technology officer said last week.

SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVES

The pursuit of small reactors represents a new path to the oft-referenced nuclear renaissance.

It was only a few years ago that the industry focused strategy on certification of a few large reactor designs that would, in theory, eliminate the risk and uncertainty, cost overruns and construction delays that tainted the last nuclear plant boom.

While new reactors are going forward in Georgia and South Carolina, a full-tilt nuclear revival hit a wall for several reasons. Among them: the inability of utilities to finance projects that cost multiple billions of dollars.

In fact, more than half of the new reactors for which construction and operating licenses were sought have been deferred or cancelled, including Ameren Missouri’s proposed 1,600-megawatt Callaway 2 plant.

Andrew Klein, a nuclear engineering professor at Oregon State University, sees small reactors as part of a new strategy that could help utilities get over the hump by adding new capacity in small bites. They could then use revenue from the first small reactors to help finance subsequent units as more generating capacity is needed.

“It’s an entirely different business model,” he said.

The Obama administration, which is pushing for development of low-carbon energy technologies, sees potential, too. And the president wants the United States to take the lead in developing the industry.

Last month, Obama proposed $452 million to help speed up development of small modular reactors. The funding availability would come on top of $8 billion in loan guarantees for the Vogtle twin-reactor nuclear project in Georgia low fee payday loans.

The federal funding, which has yet to be appropriated by Congress, would support engineering, design certification and licensing of up to two plant designs that have the potential to be licensed and in commercial operation in a decade.

Westinghouse says it believes it has an advantage because the 225-megawatt reactor it’s developing is an offshoot of the company’s full-size AP1000 reactor that has already been certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“The path from here to the end is shorter for us than anyone else,” Jackson said. No other vendor has been through the new licensing process and has technology that’s already been licensed.”

PIECE OF THE PIE

At least two other groups have indicated they will seek a share of the federal grant. Both are eyeing the Department of Energy-owned Savannah River site in South Carolina, and are being backed by NuHub, an economic development initiative in South Carolina.

Holtec International Inc. on Tuesday said it intends to seek a share of the federal funding to speed up development of its 160-megawatt small modular reactor. Two weeks ago, NuScale Power, based in Corvalis, Ore., announced plans to seek funding to accelerate development of its 45-megawatt nuclear modules at Savannah River site.

Other nuclear industry players are pursuing modular designs. And at least one other utility has publicly expressed interest in small reactors.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has said it is looking at Babcock & Wilcox’s small reactor design for a project on a utility-owned site near the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

For all the hype, small reactors, are still at least a decade away. And that’s if design, licensing and commercial development go at the pace hoped for by the nuclear industry.

And even then, the potential for small reactors hinges on how they compete in the energy marketplace. More than concerns about nuclear safety in the wake of Fukushima disaster in Japan or the dilemma of where to dispose of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel, the technology’s future will be dictated by economics.

Jackson said Westinghouse aspires to make small reactors whose costs are equal to or less than full-size reactors.

For now, there’s no cost data for small reactors, and no firm evidence they will produce electricity at a lower price than larger plants.

“It’s too early to determine that,” Klein said. “We’re going to have to see some built.”

Ameren Corp. CEO Thomas Voss said at Tuesday’s shareholder meeting that if a new power plant was needed today, the lowest cost option would be a natural gas-fired power plant, not nuclear.

But gas prices have been especially volatile over the past several years. After spiking to more than $14 per thousand cubic feet in mid-2008, prices have plunged to less than $2 — the lowest level in about a decade.

That kind of volatility makes utilities hesitant to commit to natural gas-fueled power over the long haul, so Ameren continues to pursue nuclear development in Missouri to keep the option available in years to come, Voss said.

“We continue to believe nuclear power will to play a role in meeting Missouri’s energy needs,” he said.

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ST. LOUIS •Two Israeli citizens pleaded guilty Monday and were sentenced for sending more than 9,000 shipments of unapproved prescription drugs worth more than $1.4 million to the U.S., the U.S. Attorney’s office said Tuesday morning.

Benny Carmi, 58, was sentenced Monday afternoon to 10 months in prison, fined $30,000 and agreed to forfeit $50,000 for introducing misbranded prescription drugs into interstate commerce, smuggling prescription drugs into the United States, and selling counterfeit prescription drugs, prosecutors said..

Moshe Dahan, 37, was sentenced to a year of probation, fined $15,000 and agreed to forfeit $15,000 for smuggling prescription drugs.

Carmi and Dahan ran an online prescription drug business that operated under a number of names, including “allpillsrx.com,” “newpharm.net,” “pharmacy-online.com,” “pricepills.com,” and “pharmacy-pal.com,” prosecutors said. They have agreed to forfeit those names.

The websites sold popular drugs including those used to aid weight loss or treat erectile dysfunction, and did not require a prescription, prosecutors said.

But they were also selling drugs that were manufactured in unapproved plants and were not approved for sale in the U.S., prosecutors said, including some that were not of the full potency advertised, according to lab tests of drugs obtained through undercover purchases guaranteed unsecured personal loan.

They also hid the shipments from authorities by labeling them “gifts” and claiming that they had no value.

Dahan, also known as Mark Young, and Carmi sent just over 9,000 shipments of pharmaceuticals to customers, including almost 100 in Missouri.

After investigators traveled to Israel and executed search warrants related to the companies, Carmi and Dahan agreed to waive extradition and appear in U.S. District Court in St. Louis Monday to plead guilty and be sentenced with the help of a Hebrew interpreter.

“Counterfeit pharmaceuticals pose a very serious threat to our public health and safety,” said Gary Hartwig, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations office in Chicago, which worked the case with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations and Israeli police. “People shouldn’t have to put their health in jeopardy because they bought a prescription drug online that is fake, substandard, tainted or untested,” Hartwig’s prepared statement said.

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European stocks faltered Wednesday after two days of gains but Asian markets jumped on speculation Japan might take new measures to spur its economy.

Stocks in Europe recovered their poise this week after a run of losses, with sentiment bolstered by solid U.S. corporate earnings, a surprise improvement in German investor sentiment and relatively well-received Spanish bond auctions. An upward revision to the International Monetary Fund’s global growth forecast also underpinned confidence.

How European markets close out the week will depend on Spain’s ten-year bond auction on Thursday. If it goes badly, investors will likely fret once again about the country’s ability to get a handle on its debts.

Spain has become the main source of concern in Europe’s debt crisis as investors worry about the government’s ability to push through a raft of austerity measures at a time when unemployment stands at a startling 23 percent and the economy is in recession.

The yield on the country’s ten-year bond on Monday spiked above 6 percent, not far off the 7 percent rate that eventually forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal into seeking financial help from their partners in the eurozone.

In the past two days, however, it has edged back down to more manageable levels. On Wednesday, it was down a further 0.15 of a percentage point at 5.74 percent.

Despite the drop in the yield, Spanish stocks continued to oscillate wildly. On Wednesday, the main IBEX index down 2.2 percent. Elsewhere in Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was 0.1 percent lower at 5,760 while Germany’s DAX fell 0.5 percent to 6,769. The CAC-40 in France was 1.1 percent lower at 3,254 poor credit personal loans.

The euro was also faring poorly in the risk-averse environment, trading 0.4 percent lower at $1.3074.

Wall Street was poised for modest losses at the open after registering one of its strongest gains in a month. How it will actually perform will depend on the next run of U.S. quarterly corporate earnings.

“With the U.S. earnings season in full flow, investors will be looking to see if earnings reports continue to beat expectations,” said Chris Beauchamp, market analyst at IG Index.

Earlier in Asia, sentiment was buoyed by indications that the Bank of Japan may do more to prop up the economy. Kyodo news agency reported that Deputy Governor Kiyohiko Nishimura’s suggested the central bank might take additional stimulus steps to tackle deflation.

That helped the Nikkei 225 index in Tokyo to soar 2.1 percent to 9,667.26 and the dollar to rise 0.5 percent to 81.46 yen.

Other stock markets were up too, including Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, which gained 1.1 percent to 20,780.73.

Mainland Chinese shares rose on hopes for financial reforms aimed at regulating private lending and creating new institutions to serve private borrowers better, analysts said. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 2 percent to 2,380.85. The Shenzhen Composite Index gained 2.1 percent to 956.49.

Oil markets were subdued, with the benchmark New York rate down 6 cents at $104.14 a barrel.

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Pamela Sampson in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Source

BNP Paribas SA (BNP) economist Ryutaro Kono, rejected by lawmakers as a nominee for the Bank of Japan (8301)