Finance topics

Brazil doubled a tax on consumer loans yesterday as the government shifts its focus from waging war against exchange-rate appreciation to fighting the fastest inflation in more than two years.

Starting today, consumer loans excluding mortgages will be subject to a 3 percent annual tax, up from the previous rate of 1.5 percent, according to a Finance Ministry statement.

Policy makers are adopting a blend of higher interest rates, measures to curb credit growth and budget cuts as they try to prevent inflation from breaching the 6.5 percent upper limit of their target range. President Dilma Rousseff’s team has turned its attention to quelling inflation because there isn’t much more it can do to prevent the currency from strengthening, said Pedro Tuesta, an economist for Latin America at 4Cast Inc.

“They still have tools to work on inflation, whereas in the foreign-exchange market they seem to have run out of tools,” Washington-based Tuesta said. “As hard as it is for them to accept a stronger real, they have to.”

Policy makers are trying to cool the economy after inflation in March reached 6.3 percent, the fastest in 28 months, and Brazilian manufacturers increased the use of installed capacity to a record 83.6 percent in February. The government aims to slow credit growth to an “adequate” level of 12 percent to 15 percent a year, Finance Minister Guido Mantega said.

Real’s Strength

On April 6, Mantega extended a tax on foreign-based loans in an effort to stem gains in the real after the currency appreciated to a two-and-a-half year high this week. Even so, the currency continued to strengthen yesterday, going beyond 1.60 per dollar for the first time since August 2008. The real appreciated a further 1.1 percent to 1.5703 per dollar at 8:06 a.m. New York time.

Total outstanding credit in Brazil’s economy rose 21 percent from a year earlier in February, to 1.74 trillion reais ($1.1 trillion). Brazil’s central bank President Alexandre Tombini told lawmakers March 22 that growth in consumer credit above 15 percent needs to be monitored “very carefully” to avoid “excessive risks.”

The central bank forecasts credit growth of 13 percent in 2011, Tulio Maciel, acting head of the bank’s economic research department, said March 29. The average rate charged on consumer loans was unchanged at 43 free credit score.8 percent in February, while the default rate rose for a third straight month, to 5.84 percent.

Traders are betting the central bank will raise borrowing costs 0.25 percentage point to 12 percent at its April board meeting, according to Bloomberg estimates based on interest-rate futures.

More to Come

Mantega said policy makers could take additional steps to curb demand. “There isn’t only one tool against inflation; there are many tools that can be used and we are using them all,” he said.

“It signals a willingness on the part of the government to incrementally do more,” said Tony Volpon, Latin America strategist at Nomura Holdings Inc. in New York. “That’s a very powerful signal for the banking sector that unless loan growth slows down to the 12-15% level he’s talking about they will do more.”

In December, the central bank raised reserve and capital requirements as part of its plan to fight inflation by reducing credit. The government has also increased taxes on foreign loans with the goals of slowing credit and limiting capital inflows that fueled a 46 percent rally in the real since the end of 2008.

‘Potent’ Weapon

In the minutes of its March 1-2 policy meeting, the central bank said that so-called macro-prudential measures to curb bank lending are a “rapid and potent” weapon.

“It helps curb credit growth while likely reducing the need for the central bank to hike the interest rate, which would exacerbate the real’s appreciation pressures,” said Gustavo Rangel, chief Brazil economist for ING Financial Markets in New York.

Macro-prudential financial policies are “essential to contain financial-sector exuberance,” the International Monetary Fund said in a report published yesterday.

The central bank raised borrowing costs by half a percentage point at its January and March meetings, lifting the benchmark rate to 11.75 percent. The central bank targets inflation of 4.5 percent, plus or minus two percentage points.

The yield on the interest rate futures contract maturing in January 2013, fell five basis points, or 0.06 percentage point, to 12.66 percent at 8:06 a.m. New York time.

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Japan’s business confidence fell after last month’s tsunami disaster and the ensuing nuclear crisis, and manufacturers were feeling more pessimistic about the economy, the central bank said Monday.

The Bank of Japan’s closely watched “tankan” survey of business sentiment showed the main index for large manufacturers slumped to 6 after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, down from 7 before the disasters.

The index of sentiment among big manufacturers in the next three months tumbled to minus 2 from 6. That among small-and mid-sized manufacturers in the coming three months also plummeted to minus 18 from minus 6.

The tankan figure represents the percentage of companies saying business conditions are good minus those saying conditions are unfavorable, with 100 representing the best mood and minus-100 the worst.

The central bank released a post-quake version of its March tankan survey to reflect the impact of the disasters and the nuclear crisis they spawned on the country’s business sentiment.

“The results underscored growing worries among all manufactures after the tsunami,” said Yoko Takeda, an economist at Mitsubishi Research Institute Inc. “Some companies lost their factories in the tsunami, while many others were forced to shut down production due to massive disruptions in supply chains.”

Last month’s magnitude-9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami decimated much of northern Japan, killing up to 25,000 people. More than 12,000 are confirmed dead, and another 15,500 are missing.

The March 11 disaster also destroyed many plants in the region, forcing a string of companies, including Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Corp., to suspend output due to a shortage in components.

The quake and tsunami also damaged Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s nuclear plant in Fukushima, forcing it to cut its daily power supply in Tokyo and its environs. Power shortages forced many factories to suspend output.

The tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant has continued to spew radiation which has made its way into vegetables, raw milk, tap water in Tokyo, and now the ocean.

Japan’s government has said the cost of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northeast could reach $309 billion, making it the world’s most expensive natural disaster on record.

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The yield on Portuguese five-year debt reached a euro-era record amid speculation the nation may be nearing a request for financial aid. Bunds rose for a third day as stocks fell after an earthquake struck northern Japan.

Ten-year Portuguese bonds fell for a fifth day. When asked whether his country was preparing to request a bailout, Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira Dos Santos said European leaders must understand the “seriousness” of the region’s debt crisis. He made the remarks at a press conference in Lisbon before a European summit later today. Spanish and Italian bonds jumped, while Irish and Greek securities fell.

The minister’s comments “might indicate that financial support for Portugal will be discussed at the weekend,” said Michael Leister, a fixed-income analyst at WestLB AG in Dusseldorf, Germany. “Yields show that the market is concerned, and is waiting for something,” he said.

The yield on the Portuguese five-year bond rose 22 basis points to 7.99 percent as of 4:45 p.m. in London, the most since at least 1997 when Bloomberg began collecting the data. The 6.4 percent securities maturing in February 2016 dropped 0.83, or 8.30 euros per 1,000-euro ($1,386) face amount, to 93.725. The yield premium for the securities over similar-maturity German debt widened to a record 546 basis points, or 5.46 percentage points.

The 10-year yield was 10 basis points higher at 7.74 percent. Credit-default swaps on Portuguese government debt rose 14 basis points to 520, the highest since Jan. 11, according to CMA. Contracts on Greece rose 8 basis points to a record 1,048.

Leaders Meeting

EU leaders gather today in Brussels, aiming to agree on a blueprint to improve competitiveness, a plan Germany demanded as a condition for expanding the bailout effort. Investors will also be looking for signs that differences over how to solve the debt crisis are narrowing ahead of a second meeting on March 24- 25 that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said will produce a comprehensive package of measures.

“We’re going to wait for this meeting to take place,” Dos Santos said after announcing additional budget-cutting measures equivalent to 0.8 percent of gross domestic product in 2011 and 2.5 percent next year. “I hope the European leaders understand the seriousness of the situation we’re facing.”

Portugal may be moving closer to seeking a bailout, Fabio Scacciavillani, chief economist of Oman Investment Fund, said yesterday in an e-mailed response to questions, citing the nation’s “deteriorating” debt position.

Market Access

“Portugal is a clear case of a country that’s going to lose market access,” Nouriel Roubini, the economist who predicted the global financial crisis, told Maryam Nemazee on Bloomberg Television’s “Countdown” in London today. “There is not going to be a comprehensive plan that resolves the problems of the peripherals of the euro zone” after the EU leaders’ meeting, he said.

Greek 10-year yields rose six basis points to 12.81 percent and similar-maturity Irish yields jumped 14 basis points to 9.65 percent. The nations both accepted rescues from the EU and International Monetary Fund last year.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny rebuffed conditions set out by Merkel for easing bailout terms, rejecting proposals for a common corporation tax across the euro area. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou today called for “strong decisions, to calm the markets.”

Spanish Bonds Rise

Spanish and Italian bonds rose as investors bet assistance for Portugal would reduce debt-crisis “contagion” to other nations, according to WestLB’s Leister.

The 10-year yield on Spanish bonds fell eight basis points to 5.43 percent and similar-maturity Italian yields fell 11 basis points to 4.87 percent. Italy sold 1.98 billion euros of bonds maturing in March 2026 and 2.81 billion euros of 2015 securities today.

The yield on the benchmark German bund was four basis points lower at 3.21 percent as stocks fell in Asia and Europe after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake rocked buildings in Japan’s financial center and a tsunami as high as 10 meters was reported in northern Japan, boosting demand for government bonds. Euribor futures rose, sending the yield on the contract due in December down six basis points to 2.045 percent as investors cut bets for higher interest rates.

Saudi Protests

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index of shares declined as much as 1.8 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 600 Index lost as much as 1.1 percent.

As violence escalates in Libya, protests are scheduled today in Saudi Arabia, holder of the world’s largest oil reserves.

Security forces broke up a protest yesterday in Qatif, Saudi Arabia. Police fired above the crowd of 120-150 people to end the rally after a policeman taking video to document the event was attacked, Major General Mansour al-Turki, an interior ministry spokesman, said in an interview. Three people were injured, two protesters and one policeman, he said.

“There are safe-haven flows because of the Japanese earthquake, the crisis in North Africa and uncertainties about the debt crisis,” said Birgit Figge, a bond strategist at DZ Bank AG in Frankfurt. “There are a lot of uncertainties in the market and that’s driven bunds higher.”

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U.S. mortgage rates jumped to the highest level since April, reducing affordability for homebuyers as the housing market struggles to recover.

The average rate for a 30-year fixed loan rose to 5.05 percent in the week ended today from 4.81 percent, Freddie Mac said in a statement. The average 15-year rate climbed to 4.29 percent from 4.08 percent last week, according to the McLean, Virginia-based mortgage-finance company.

Mortgage rates are rising along with yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which a reached a nine-month high this week. The increase in borrowing costs from record-low levels in November has already shown signs of reducing demand for home purchases and refinancing.

“Higher mortgage rates have clearly dampened activity,” Paul Dales, senior U.S. economist for Capital Economics Ltd. in Toronto, wrote in a note to clients yesterday after a drop in home-loan applications. “With demand for mortgage borrowing still so weak, it is hard to see housing activity strengthening much this year.”

Mortgage applications fell for the second time in three weeks, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s index showed yesterday. The group’s gauge of purchases decreased 1.4 percent in the week ended Feb. 4, and its refinancing measure dropped 7.7 percent.

The Obama administration is expected to present a report as soon as Friday with three options on how the government can phase out its involvement in the mortgage market, two people familiar with the plan said this week. One option would eliminate Freddie Mac and fellow mortgage-finance company Fannie Mae and their government-backed guarantee of mortgages. Another option would adhere more to the present system.

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German authorities ordered hundreds of pigs at a farm slaughtered Tuesday after tests showed high levels of a cancer-causing chemical for the first time in swine, as the nation’s dioxin scandal widened beyond poultry and eggs.

The top agriculture official in Lower Saxony state in northern Germany called for the animals killed after tests showed illegally elevated levels of dioxin in swine at a farm in Verden known to have purchased tainted feed from the company believed to be responsible for the scandal.

German firm Harles & Jentzsch GmbH, which produced fat used in tainted feed pellets, is being investigated on allegations it did not alert authorities to the tainted product for months. Samples of the fat contained more than 70 times the approved amount of dioxin, according to tests by the Schleswig-Holstein state agriculture ministry.

“We were specifically investigating this farm, because they had bought their livestock feed from Harles & Jentzsch, the company that delivered tainted feed to all the other farms that had to be banned,” Lower Saxony’s Agriculture Minister Gert Hahne said.

Hahne did not know yet how high exactly the dioxin levels in the pigs were, but said they were above the allowed maximum levels.

The scandal broke last week when German investigators found excessive levels of dioxin in eggs and then some chicken meat. Authorities then froze sales of poultry, eggs, and, as a precaution, pork, from thousands of farms. Some 558 farms remained closed on Tuesday, said Holger Eichele, a spokesman for the federal agricultural ministry in Berlin.

Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner said Monday that, while the tainted products posed no direct health risk to humans, officials were working nonstop to find out who and what had contaminated the feed sent to thousands of farms and vowed tough legal action against those responsible.

She said companies should be banned from producing both industrial fats and fats used for livestock, to avoid the possibility that industrial fats could end up in animal feed. Harles & Jentzsch chief Siegfried Sievert has said the company believed that byproducts from palm, soy and rapeseed oil used to make organic diesel fuels were safe for use in livestock feed.

Aigner said her ministry was in talks with the European Union on better controls and monitoring and she was confident they could “find a common European solution.”

In Denmark, the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration said Tuesday it was closely monitoring the German scandal and that the tainted feed had also been bought by a Danish company and given to its hens.

The government agency said it and a university concluded that “right now there are no health problems for consumers” if they eat the eggs. It is now also investigating where the eggs may have been used, it said. The hens were bred for laying eggs and not for slaughter.

The EU’s food safety system warned Danes on Sunday about the tainted German feed entering Denmark.

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Jan Olsen contributed reporting from Copenhagen, Denmark.

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South Korean consumer confidence declined in December as people became less optimistic about the economy and job prospects.

The sentiment index fell to 109 from 110 in November, the Bank of Korea said in an e-mailed statement in Seoul today. A number exceeding 100 indicates optimists outnumber pessimists.

The central bank left borrowing costs at 2.5 percent this month after an appreciation in the nation’s currency contributed to a moderation in economic expansion. It increased interest rates by a quarter percentage-point each in July and November from a record-low 2 percent. Gross domestic product growth will cool to 4.5 percent next year, from 6 low fee pay day loans.1 percent in 2010, the monetary authority said on Dec. 10.

A sub-index measuring consumers’ views of the economic outlook dropped to 105 in December from 108 in November, while the sub-index on the job outlook fell to 100 from 104. The expected inflation rate over the next year rose to 3.3 percent from 3.2 percent.

The consumer confidence index is based on survey responses from 2,103 households in 56 cities and was conducted by mail and telephone between Dec. 13 and Dec. 20.

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Holiday procrastinators packed stores Friday morning, grabbing those last few presents, gift cards and the finishing touches for Christmas dinner.

For stores, this 11th-hour dash caps the best holiday season since 2007, and possibly the best ever. With Christmas falling on a Saturday this year, Friday is a holiday for most workers. That allowed shoppers to hit the stores first thing in the morning.

“I’m calling it Fantastic Friday, because I really do think it’s going to be one of the busiest days of the year,” said Marshal Cohen, chief fashion industry analyst with researcher NPD Group.

A strong Christmas Eve would round out a surprisingly successful holiday season for retailers. The National Retail Federation predicts that holiday sales will reach $451.5 billion this year, up 3.3 percent over last year. That would be the biggest year-over-year increase since 2006, and the largest total since sales hit a record $452.8 billion in 2007. A strong finish could even give 2010 the crown.

At the CVS drugstore in Decatur, Ga., Lisa Belcher, 42, was picking up a heating pad and gift cards for “a dinner and a movie.”

“I usually end up having to get something on Christmas Eve,” she said.

Many still didn’t know what they wanted.

“When I walk past it, I’ll know,” said Jewelyn Sanders, 57, of Washington, D.C., who was looking for gifts for her three sisters in the linen section of Macy’s in downtown Washington. She had already bought them Wal-Mart gift cards but wanted something more for each of them.

Plenty of others were desperate.

“I don’t have time to look for deals,” said Rob Tibbo, of Hooksett, N.H., who was finishing up his buying at the Steeplegate Mall in Concord. Tibbo started shopping Thursday was buying his wife a Coach bag.

While both are heavy shopping days, Christmas Eve draws a different breed of buyer than Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving and the unofficial start to the holiday shopping season.

“Those who get up and brave the cold on Black Friday are usually looking for hot items, not only to buy gifts but to score something for themselves,” said Kathy Grannis, a spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation. “They’re planners, and they map out what they want to buy.”

Shoppers who come out on Christmas Eve, on the other hand, were either waiting for the biggest discounts or they didn’t have the money to spend earlier, she said. Or they just tend to dilly-dally.

While many Black Friday shoppers relish the hunt, last-minute buyers are harried and focused on getting things done. At toy stores, shopping is particularly intense as parents scramble to find the perfect toy.

“Stores are packed,” said Jerry Storch, CEO of Toys R Us, which for the first time has all stores open for 88 hours straight, until 10 p.m. Friday.

“This is a big day in terms of the intensity of shopping,” he said. Storch noted that shoppers are out looking for all kinds of toys, but he can’t guarantee parents will find some of the season’s hottest. Mattel Inc.’s Monster High line is scarce, while shoppers will probably be out of luck getting a Dance Star Mickey.

And true to stereotype, procrasinators are mostly men, said Dan Jasper, spokesman for Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.

Accordingly, stores push men’s and women’s sweaters in their circulars, while shoes and children’s apparel take a back seat fast payday loan no faxing. Jewelry also tends to be a top last-minute gift item, though that category has been strong throughout the season.

E-commerce has driven much of the holiday’s spending growth, as more Americans responded to online sales and free shipping offers. For the season to-date, $36.4 billion has been spent online, a 15.4 increase over last year, according to MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse.

Many people who postponed their shopping this year blame busy schedules. The number of hours U.S. workers are putting in at the office each week has been on the upswing since the official end of the recession in June 2009, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That leaves less time for shopping during the week.

Procrastinators shouldn’t hit too many snags, if they’re open-minded. Macy’s and others had plenty of sweaters and other fashions, for example. Store inventories are not as depleted as last year, when merchants scared about having too many leftovers saw some empty shelves near the end of the season.

Sanders of Washington said she hadn’t been able to get everything on her list. A sporting goods store she went to was sold out of New York Giants slippers and jerseys she wanted for her brother-in-law.

Shoppers are not seeing the 75-percent-off-everything fire sales that characterized the 2008 holiday. Still, many stores deepened discounts this week. Express’s store at the Manhattan Mall in midtown had a huge yellow sign in its storefront window promoting an “end of the season 50 percent sale” on selected items.

At CVS, there are buy-two-get-one free deals on bath-and-body gift sets and discounts on a 7-inch LCD TV and DVD player combo.

If all else fails, shoppers will fall back on gift cards. Spending on the plastic vouchers is expected to reach nearly $25 billion this holiday season, 5 percent more than last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

Retailers say shoppers have mostly stuck to a big lesson taught by the recession: using cash, not credit. Toward the end of the season, they pulled out the plastic a little more often, but that’s normal. Overall, analysts consider the increased spending a sign more consumers have paid down debt and have cash to spend.

Besides sales, retailers are finding other ways to accommodate procrastinators.

Many stores, including Best Buy Co., let shoppers order online and then pick up the merchandise at the store. Best Buy’s deadline to order on its website is 3 p.m. Christmas Eve, and most stores close at 6 p.m.

Best Buy’s store in Union Square in Manhattan had about 300 people in the store Friday morning, said store manager Amy Adoniz. And she said more than 100 online orders are coming in every hour for store pickup. Among the top sellers are e-readers, cameras and video-game systems.

“People are in the holiday spirit. They’re feeling more at ease,” she said.

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AP Retail Writer Mae Anderson in Atlanta; AP Business Writer Tom Murphy in Indianapolis; and AP Writers Jessica Gresko in Washington, D.C.; and Holly Ramer, in Concord, N.H., contributed to this story.

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China and India vowed to boost their bilateral trade by two-thirds to $100 billion in the next five years, following talks in New Delhi between prime ministers Wen Jiabao and Manmohan Singh.

The governments of the world’s fastest-growing major economies agreed to increase investment and bank access in each other’s economies and “to take measures to promote greater Indian exports to China with a view to reduce India’s trade deficit,” said a joint statement released after the talks. It said details of how to ease cross-border banking remain to be worked out.

Treading lightly on points of tension between the two countries, the statement said they will “work together to maintain peace and tranquility” in disputed areas of their 4,200-kilometer (2,600-mile) Himalayan border, where Indian media reported incursions by Chinese troops earlier this year. The statement omitted any reference to China’s close ties to India’s rival, Pakistan, or its position on the conflict over Kashmir, which have drawn criticism from Indian officials.

Wen met Singh on the second of his three days in India, after which he flies to Pakistan for a stay that will include a speech to the National Assembly.

Regarding India’s campaign for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, Wen stopped short of the endorsements delivered by U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in their India visits in the past six weeks. China “understands and supports India’s aspiration to play a greater role in the United Nations, including in the Security Council,” the statement said.

Multilateral Cooperation

The governments repeated earlier commitments to oppose terrorism “in all its forms” and to cooperate on multilateral issues such as climate change, trade liberalization, energy and food security and international financial reforms.

Annual trade between the world’s most populous countries has jumped in a decade from less than $3 billion to an expected $60 billion this year, a level that should “substantially increase,” Wen told a business conference in New Delhi yesterday. The countries “make up nearly a tenth of the world’s economic output, yet China-India trade accounts for a mere 0.2 percent of the global total,” he said.

During his visit, Chinese companies will sign $16 billion of deals with Indian counterparts, Wen said. Commerce Ministry official Liang Wentao told reporters in Beijing on Dec. 13 the agreements will include an $8 instant credit reports.3 billion sale of coal-fired power generators by Shanghai Electric Group Co. to Reliance Power Ltd.

Indian Exports

India’s ICICI Bank Ltd. finalized a $1 billion financing agreement with Industrial & Commercial Bank of China and Shanghai Electric Group Co. Reliance Communications Ltd. will borrow $2 billion from China Development Bank Corp.

Wen said his government will respond to India’s request that China widen access to its markets for Indian goods — notably pharmaceuticals, information technology and agricultural products — to reduce a trade deficit that reached $18 billion as of November, according to Chinese figures.

Wen yesterday dismissed the idea of relations as a “rivalry between the dragon and the elephant” and said “there is enough space in the world for the development of both.

The Chinese leader began today with a ceremonial welcome at the presidential palace in central Delhi where he said he hoped to use his trip to deepen relations between the people of both countries and achieve an “important strategic consensus” with Indian leaders.

Bilateral Investment

At yesterday’s business conference, Wen called for development of joint tourism, finance and investment, saying each area is under-developed for the size of the two economies. India’s gross domestic product climbed 8.9 percent for a second straight quarter in July to September, while China’s economy grew at a 9.6 percent annual pace in the same period.

While India and China “have received more foreign direct investment than any other country,” investment between them “falls short of $700 million,” Wen said. He called for easier procedures for moving capital and people between the countries to create “more favorable conditions for mutual investment.”

Wen’s visit, six weeks after a similar trip by Obama and days before the arrival of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, illustrates the rivalry to court India, said Bates Gill, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Despite their regional disputes, “the interest at least in the near-to-medium term for the two countries is to create a constructive context in their relationship to try to settle differences,” Gill said in a Dec. 8 interview.

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Strong sales of jewelry in the U.S. and overseas helped Tiffany & Co’s third-quarter net income rise 27 percent.

The jewelry maker famous for its iconic turquoise box also on Wednesday forecast a strong holiday season and raised its yearly guidance well above expectations.

Luxury spending has rebounded as the affluent have recovered from the recession faster than others as the stock market rebounds.

Net income rose to $55.1 million, or 43 cents per share, from $43.3 million, or 34 cents per share same day payday loans. Excluding costs related to a pending move of headquarters staff, net income was 46 cents per share. That beat analyst expectations of 37 cents per share, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue rose 14 percent to $681.7 million. Analysts expected $652.8 million.

Revenue in the U.S., Canada and Latin and South America, which accounts for about half of Tiffany’s business, rose 9 percent. Revenue rose 24 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, 22 percent in Europe and 12 percent in Japan.

Revenue in stores open at least a year rose 7 percent. That figure is considered a key measure of a retailer’s health since it excludes stores that open and close during the year.

CEO Michael Kowalski said revenue was helped by new stores. The company has opened 6 so far this year. New products such as yellow diamonds and a leather goods collection also helped.

“We are now a few weeks into the all-important two-month holiday season and sales growth is exceeding our expectations, although the majority of the holiday season is certainly still ahead of us,” he said 24 hour payday loans.

Tiffany raised its full-year earnings outlook to $2.72 to $2.77 per share from $2.60 to $2.65. Analysts expect $2.64 per share.

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Ohio’s top law enforcement official, firing another shot across the bow of Ally Financial, asked a judge on Friday to stop the sale of foreclosed homes in cases that relied on faulty paperwork.

State Attorney General Richard Cordray sued the lender last week, alleging that the bank and its employees had signed and filed at least hundreds and potentially thousands of false affidavits in foreclosure cases.

The cornerstone of the state’s case is the testimony of Jeffrey Stephan, who has admitted to signing thousands of affidavits on Ally’s behalf without person knowledge of the facts of each case, as required by law.

Ally has previously announced that it was temporarily suspending evictions and post-foreclosure closings in the 23 states in which judges must sign off before someone loses their home.

The company, previously known as GMAC, the finance arm of General Motors, has also hired outside accounting and legal firms to examine its foreclosure procedures in all 50 states.

But Cordray, who has been among the nation’s most aggressive attorney generals on the issue of robo-signing, alleges that Ally is not acting to slow the foreclosure process in any meaningful way.

"GMAC is generally not moving to vacate the fraudulently obtained judgments. Indeed, often GMAC counsel is telling the courts that soon they expect to again request that the applicable Sheriffs sell the properties and evict the homeowners," according to a request for an injunction filed by Cordray Friday.

For its part, Ally denies it is proceeding with sales.

"GMAC Mortgage is not proceeding with foreclosure sales in Ohio using defective affidavits, spokesman Jim Olecki said in a statement. "We announced weeks ago that we were suspending evictions and foreclosure sales in the 23 judicial states, including Ohio, until a review was conducted and any needed remediation activity was completed in those affected cases."

On Wednesday, the top prosecutors in all 50 states announced a coordinated probe into improper foreclosures by the nation’s largest loan servicers, but stopped short of calling for a freeze on all foreclosures.

The group of attorneys general and bank regulators will work to put an immediate stop to improper mortgage foreclosure practices. It will also review past and present practices by loan servicers and come up with potential remedies. 

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