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(Money Magazine) — You know the part of the classic wedding ceremony in which couples vow to stick together “for richer, for poorer”? Well, a lot of spouses lately are really putting the latter part of that promise to the test.Blame the economy for shaking up once-solid unions. Marital roles are shifting as onetime breadwinners adjust to long bouts of unemployment. Husbands and wives are blaming each other for bad investments and onerous debt. Spouses who once smoothed over spats with a little shopping therapy can no longer afford to fill that prescription. “It’s the biggest stress on married couples in the past 60 years,” says Margaret Shapiro, a clinical social worker in Philadelphia.How are you and your spouse coping with the challenges you’re facing? And what can you do to ensure you pull together to solve those problems instead of being torn apart by them? The following quiz provides insights into the specific ways the economy may be affecting your marriage, plus the steps you can take to strengthen your relationship — and your finances.Question 1: Your company reduced salaries 10% this year, and you’re looking hard for ways to cut your family’s expenses. But your spouse insists that you’re exaggerating the financial difficulties and resists attempts to ratchet back your lifestyle. Every conversation about money is turning into a battle. What is most likely to result in a lasting solution to the tension?C. Split up your finances so you don’t have to discuss every purchase.Answer : B. While some couples might benefit from dividing their money or looking the other way when one makes an occasional indulgent purchase, one of the biggest breeding grounds for arguments is simply that most spouses appear to be operating under different sets of “facts” about the resources they have to work with.According to a study by Jay Zagorsky at Ohio State University’s Center for Human Resource Research, the typical husband reports that the couple earn 5% more and have a net worth 10% higher than his wife thinks they do. And men believe household debt is lower than their wives do. Moreover, the gap between what husbands and wives say their household earns, saves, and owes gets bigger the longer they are married. (The study didn’t reveal which spouse is usually closer to the mark.)Rather than fight about whether you can afford to take a ski vacation this winter or whether it’s necessary to ditch your premium cable-TV channels, get the facts you need to make an informed decision. Block out time to sit down together and sort out the basics. At a minimum you both need to know — and agree on the numbers for — your income (look at last year’s tax return and this year’s most recent pay stubs), your assets (check your account balances online and get a rough estimate of your home’s market value at zillow.com), and your liabilities (add up your most recent loan and credit card statements to see how much you owe overall and do a back-of-the-envelope total of your monthly expenses). That way you’ll know for sure whether you need to cut back and what extras you can swing.If the exercise reveals you can’t afford the slopes in Vail, find a compromise. Ask your spouse why the trip matters so much: family tradition of a big trip? Relaxation? Love of snow? Then see if you can find a cheaper way to fulfill that goal.NEXT: Is the economy ruining your marriage?123456

Source:CNN

(Money Magazine) — Call it anxiety marketing. Sellers of big-ticket items have been rolling out special deals that basically amount to layoff insurance. The gist: If you’re let go soon after making a purchase, the company will either help you with the tab or let you wiggle out of the obligation. Automakers, airlines, and even homebuilders have all been pushing the no-worries pitch. Some promotions have come and gone, but more are likely to crop up as the unemployment rate tops 10%. So should you bite? None of the major programs Money looked at are bait-and-switch tricks. Yes, there’s some fine print to watch out for. But the real catch is the way these programs can influence your buying psychology. Pay too much attention to the offers, and you could miss out on a better bargain. What they’re offeringHyundai promises to take back a new car if you’re laid off in the 12 months after buying or leasing. Meanwhile, JetBlue is promising full refunds on plane tickets or getaway packages booked by year’s end. (No, you don’t get to go on the trip.) And homebuilders Ryland and Lennar are offering to help buyers cover mortgage payments within 24 months of purchasing a home. Why are they doing this? Marketing experts say the goal is to put a halo around the brand. The companies are hoping you’ll be grateful to them for assuaging your anxiety — and are meanwhile betting they’ll generate enough sales to more than make up for the cost of paying out on the promises. “It’s all about building relationships,” says University of Virginia Darden School of Business professor Rajkumar Venkatesan. Forget the warm and fuzzyThat’s all very nice, but in this economy, you need to be a smarter consumer than ever. To that end, if you’re seriously concerned about losing your job, you shouldn’t even be thinking about these purchases, says Jack Gillis of the Consumer Federation of America. You should be shoring up your cash accounts, not making payments on a new car. If your gig is relatively stable, you’re already in the market for what’s being marketed, and all else is equal, these deals can be a nice bonus. But rarely is all else equal. Perhaps it could be true for the JetBlue offer: There’s not much difference between flying that airline vs. others, and it has been known to undercut its competition on price. A house, however, is an investment with a 30-year obligation attached. And other factors — such as location, construction, and so on — rank far above the promise of temporary mortgage-payment coverage. Most important, you shouldn’t let such assurance programs distract you from haggling as hard as you might. While you can’t argue down the price of a plane ticket, cars and houses are, of course, all about negotiation. And you’ve probably never had stronger leverage than today. So try to put the deals in the back of your mind. Or use them to your advantage in negotiations with the competition: Let the Ford salesman know how much the Hyundai deal appeals to you. Finally, the fine printIf you do find all other factors to be equal, keep these important restrictions in mind: You’ll have to fit their definition of “unemployed.” In some cases you need only be eligible for unemployment benefits; others require you to show proof you’re collecting them. Certain programs — such as Lennar’s — won’t kick in while you’re getting severance. Coverage isn’t a family affair. The benefit is typically limited to the buyer, not the household. The unemployed person must be the primary on the car loan in order to qualify for Hyundai’s takeback. You may still owe something. Hyundai will cover only up to 7,500 in negative equity. So depending on your financing terms and the residual value of the car at the time of return, you may have to dip into your wallet to make up for what’s left on the loan. With the mortgage deals, payment is limited to the laid-off person’s share of family income; so if the partner who made 25% of the money is let go, you’ll only get a quarter of the maximum benefit, which ranges from 1,500 to 2,500. Such restrictions further reduce the value of a benefit you might never even have cause to claim.

Source:CNN

NEW YORK: Call it the Bobby McFerrin market. Investors are no longer worried. They’re happy. All those concerns about the economy heading into July seem to have subsided for now. The S&P 500 surged 7% last week and was up again Monday on reports that troubled business lender CIT Group (CIT, Fortune 500) was about to get a short-term lifeline to keep it from bankruptcy. If Monday’s early gains hold, the S&P 500 could wind up closing at its highest point of 2009. And if it finishes above 950, it would be the first time since November.So is this Christmas in July rally really an indication that investors are sensing the worst is over for the markets and the economy?Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist with BTIG, an institutional brokerage firm in New York, thinks the rally could continue. He notes that a lot of investors who remain unconvinced about an economic recovery are left with no choice but to buy stocks as the market heads higher or they’ll be left behind. O’Rourke pointed to the fact that the weekly level of investor sentiment from the American Association of Individual Investors showed that the percentage of people considering them bullish, while up from the nearly two-decade low set in early March, is still a relatively low 38%.As such, O’Rourke said he would not be surprised if stocks gained another 20% or so from current levels. “I still get a lot of negative feedback from people about the market. There still is a lot of bearish sentiment out there,” he said. “But that means a lot of people are being forced to play catch-up and chase performance.” But at the end of the day, sentiment is going to be fueled by corporate profits and economic data. Bulls could morph back into bears in a heartbeat if the numbers start to look ugly again.Talkback: Do you feel more confident about the economy than you did four months ago? Leave your comments at the bottom of this story. Investors celebrated healthy earnings from a slew of banks and tech companies last week, and investors are hoping for more of the same once some other big blue chips, including Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500), Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), report their latest quarterly results this week. In addition, there were some encouraging macroeconomic signs last week, most notably a much bigger-than-expected drop in weekly jobless claims to their lowest level since early January. So Wall Street will be watching closely this Thursday to see if claims dip again, or if last week’s report was a fluke.”We are still in a battle between the economic bulls and the skeptics. Last week, the bulls got the upper hand,” said David Joy, chief market strategist with RiverSource Investments, a money management firm based in Minneapolis. “That’s encouraging but this market is still jittery. A couple of bad data points could take stocks down even though the evidence is building toward an economic recovery.”Be optimistic, but realisticWhile this may be a good time for some guarded optimism, investors shouldn’t ignore some of the big risks that remain. CIT may be getting a private “bailout,” but the fact that it came thisclose to collapsing shows that there are still some ticking time bombs in the financial sector.Corporate profits also need to be scrutinized more closely. While many companies did post better-than-expected earnings, a fair number of companies did so thanks to lower expenses, not increased demand for their products.”A lot of the better earnings results were due to cost-cutting. That suggests that businesses are stabilizing, not that they are getting better,” said Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at Key Private Bank in Cleveland. “Companies are on the fence about expanding their businesses since they want evidence that the consumer will come back and sales are going to flow again.”Joy said that investors have been willing to tolerate declining sales in this quarter but that won’t be the case in the latter half of the year. If this really is an economic recovery, the market will want to see companies reporting increased revenue.”Everybody knows the economy is not yet robust. So you can’t fault for companies for reporting no top line growth this quarter,” Joy said. “Investors won’t have continued patience for a lack of sales growth though. They won’t be as forgiving in the third and fourth quarter.” Watch out for inflationBut many feel the consumer may not come back until there are concrete signs that the job market is improving. So that creates a conundrum for many businesses. 0:00
/3:14Strong earnings? So what.Companies can continue to lay off people — or hold off on hiring new workers — to meet profit targets. But by doing so, they just make matters worse for consumers and could make it that much more difficult for a sustainable recovery to unfold.”If companies are still looking to cut operating expenses, they are not going to be doing a lot of hiring,” said Romeo Dator, manager of the U.S. Global Investors All American Equity fund in San Antonio. “And in an economy that’s based on consumption, if you don’t have job growth that’s going to be a problem.” Inflation hawks are squawking rather loudly as well. The dollar continues to weaken against the euro and other global currencies. The yield on the 10-year Treasury is inching back toward 3.75% and the price of gold is hovering around 950 an ounce. And as countries around the globe seek to stimulate their way out of this worldwide recession, Dator thinks inflation is inevitable. For that reason, he said he’s more interested in investing in energy and basic materials companies and less so in banks, technology and consumer stocks.McCain also said inflation could be a concern over the next year, but he thinks that investors will probably overlook some of the warning signs for now. That might not last forever though.”I’m pretty confident about the potential for this rally lasting up until the early part of next year, but worried about long-term growth being hobbled enough that the economy could sink back later next year,” he said. “Investors may need to have a well-defined exit strategy if things start to fade.”In other words, it’s OK to feel more optimistic. But keep an eye out for any potholes on what’s certain to be a long road to recovery.Talkback: Do you feel more confident about the economy than you did four months ago?

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Bank of America joined the ranks of big banks posting better-than-expected first-half profits this week.The Charlotte, N.C., bank posted second-quarter earnings of 3.2 billion, or 33 cents a share Friday. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) made 3.4 billion, or 72 cents a share, in the second quarter of 2008.Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were looking for a profit of 28 cents a share.In a statement, BofA chief executive officer Ken Lewis said that posting a profit in “an extremely challenging environment speaks to the diversity and strength of our business model.”Lewis added, however, that “continued weakness in the global economy, rising unemployment and deteriorating credit quality” would impact the company for the remainder of this year and next. But he maintained that “Bank of America will weather the storm and emerge as an acknowledged leader in financial services in the United States and around the world.” The solid report from BofA comes on the heels of strong numbers out this week from BofA rival JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) and trading titan Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500).It also comes at a welcome time for Lewis, BofA’s longtime CEO. He has come under fire from shareholders for two acquisitions over the past year of big, deeply troubled financial firms, mortgage lender Countrywide Financial and investment bank Merrill Lynch.BofA’s poor performance in the past year — the firm has needed 45 billion in loans from the Treasury Department to cope with losses — and the hubbub over the Merrill deal cost Lewis his chairmanship this spring. Congress has held three hearings on the behind-the-scenes jockeying that took place in December, in which then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told Lewis he would be sacked if he walked away from Merrill as losses there soared.But the banking industry has appeared to stabilize following a round of capital-raising this spring. BofA has raised some 33 billion in recent months, and the bank’s shares have quadrupled off their March lows. The stock was up slightly in pre-market trading Friday, to about 13.26 a share.

Source:CNN

NEW YORK: Bernard Madoff, otherwise known as federal prisoner no. 61727-054, has been transferred to the medium security prison in Atlanta, according to the government’s prison Web site.Ironically, Madoff’s new home once housed Charles Ponzi, the namesake of the scheme to which Madoff pleaded guilty on March 12. It was not immediately clear if Atlanta will be Madoff’s permanent home.Madoff had been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York since his guilty plea on 11 counts.”Mr. Madoff has left New York,” Judi Garrett, a spokeswoman for Bureau of Prisons, said Monday. She would not say where Madoff was headed or how he was getting there.Madoff, age 71, was sentenced to 150 years on June 29. His release date is Nov. 14, 2139. He is also being forced to forfeit property to comply with a 170 billion legal judgment against him.0:00
/1:17Madoff gets the maxBefore Madoff was sentenced, many of the thousands victimized in his scam wrote letters to Judge Denny Chin of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, describing how they were financially ruined by his scheme and requesting life in prison for the Ponzi mastermind. Madoff’s lawyer Ira Lee Sorkin requested to the judge that Madoff be sent to Federal Correctional Institution Otisville. The medium-security prison is located about 70 miles northwest of New York City, where Madoff lived in a 7 million apartment before admitting to the scheme on March 12.The judge said that he would recommend that Madoff be transferred to a prison in the Northeast, but he did not say where. The bureau has the final say in deciding where Madoff will live.FCI Otisville is a medium security prison with an adjoining prison camp, a textile factory, a full-time rabbi and “one of the largest and most active religious programs for Jewish inmates in the Bureau of Prisons,” according to Alan Ellis, a prison consultant and author of the “Federal Prison Guidebook.”Madoff’s wife Ruth has also left the 7 million apartment, and has been allowed to keep 2.5 million which has not been connected to the Ponzi scheme.About a decade before the international postal stamp scheme that made him famous, Charles Ponzi served nearly two years at the Atlanta prison after he pleaded guilty to illegally smuggling aliens into the United States from Canada, according to the book “Ponzi’s Scheme,” by Mitchell Zuckoff. Ponzi was released from the facility in 1912. — CNNMoney staff writer Catherine Clifford and assistant managing editor Mark M. Meinero contributed to this report.
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Source:CNN

NEW YORK: Madoff has left New York.Bernard Madoff, otherwise known as prisoner no. 61727-054, has been incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correctional Center since March 12, when he pleaded guilty to 11 federal counts related to running his Ponzi scheme. “Mr. Madoff has left New York,” said Judi Garrett, spokeswoman for Bureau of Prisons. She would not say where Madoff was headed or how he was getting there.Madoff, age 71, was sentenced to 150 years on June 29. His release date is Nov. 14, 2139. He is also being forced to forfeit property to comply with a 170 billion legal judgment against him.0:00
/1:17Madoff gets the maxBefore Madoff was sentenced, many of the thousands victimized in his scam wrote letters to Judge Denny Chin of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, describing how they were financially ruined by his scheme and requesting life in prison for the Ponzi mastermind. Madoff’s lawyer Ira Lee Sorkin requested to the judge that Madoff be sent to Federal Correctional Institution Otisville. The medium-security prison is located about 70 miles northwest of New York City, where Madoff lived in a 7 million apartment before admitting to the scheme on March 12.The judge said that he would recommend that Madoff be transferred to a prison in the northeast, but he did not say where. The Bureau has the final say in deciding where Madoff will live.FCI Otisville is a medium security prison with an adjoining prison camp, a textile factory, a full-time rabbi and “one of the largest and most active religious programs for Jewish inmates in the Bureau of Prisons,” according to Alan Ellis, a prison consultant and author of the “Federal Prison Guidebook.”Madoff’s wife Ruth has also left the 7 million apartment, and has been allowed to keep 2.5 million which has not been connected to the Ponzi scheme.
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Source:CNN

NEW YORK: Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the credit crunch should be over by now. But just ask anyone who has tried to get a loan recently, and they’ll tell you a different story.Greenspan’s measure of credit flow, a gauge known as the Libor-OIS spread, fell to 0.33 percentage points on Thursday — its lowest level since February 2008 and just eight-hundredths of a point above the 0.25 level that the Maestro called “normal.”So are things back to normal? There’s no easy answer.”It’s more complicated than that, obviously,” said Scott Anderson, senior economist at Wells Fargo. “Greenspan’s right in one respect: the liquidity crisis is over. But consumers’ and business’ access to credit remains extremely tight.”The “credit crunch” began in the fall of 2007, when the housing market began to unravel and the value of many mortgage-backed securities, held by most banks, started to tumble. With losses piling up at financial institutions, banks tightened their lending standards and offered more conservative loan products to customers.The crunch escalated into a “liquidity crisis” last September, after Lehman Brothers collapsed, worrying banks that their lending partners might not be around when it came time to repay their loans. Banks sat on their reserves, interbank lending came to a virtual standstill, and the premium on short-term loans went sky-high. Banks turned to issuing debt rather than making loans to stay afloat.The crisis has passed, experts say. But the crunch is here to stay for awhile.Why the liquidity crisis is over. Beginning in October, the Fed unveiled nearly a trillion dollars in liquidity programs, and the Treasury Department lent hundreds of billions of dollars in TARP funds to banks. Both efforts were aimed at getting banks to lend to one another again. Experts say the programs have largely worked: Banks have started repaying their TARP funds, interbank lending has increased and the Libor-OIS spread has fallen back to normal.The Libor-OIS spread is a good credit market gauge because it measures the difference between what banks are actually charging each other for three-month loans and what traders believe the baseline Fed rate will average over the course of the loan. Banks charge a lot more than the Fed wants them to charge when credit is tight, because of supply and demand: When no one is issuing loans, they can charge whatever they want. When everyone is lending, they have to be competitive.0:00
/2:30Stimulus stumble”The systemic risk in the banking system has been mitigated,” said Andrew Brenner, senior vice president of MF Global. “There’s been huge move away from banks having to issue debt to stay alive, and banks that were firing are hiring again.”The spread averaged 0.11 percentage points over the four years before August 2007. That increased to about 0.85 points just before Lehman’s meltdown. In mid-October, before TARP was doled out and the Fed’s liquidity programs began, the spread rose to a record 3.65 points. But it has fallen steadily since then.Why the credit crunch is still here. If banks are healthier, why haven’t we noticed?Mostly, because the economy still stinks. With unemployment levels closing in on 10%, household wealth deteriorating, foreclosures still rising and credit delinquencies at a record high, banks aren’t quite ready to fork over their dough to you without being absolutely sure you can pay it back.Accordingly, the Fed reported Wednesday that consumer borrowing fell by 3.22 billion in May after dropping a record 16.5 billion in April.Furthermore, just because liquidity is essentially back to normal, that doesn’t mean that financial institutions are healthy again. Losses are still mounting, markets are still volatile and banks are still hanging onto billions of dollars in toxic assets.”There’s a long way to go,” said Anderson. “Banks still have a lot of losses to make up.”Will it get better?”Absolutely. Everything goes in cycles,” said Brenner, who predicts the credit crunch will end in about a year. “These low rates will probably spur inflation at some point, and banks will make more money.”But some aren’t so sure the future will look like the past.”It won’t ever go back to the way it was before the crisis erupted in the fall of 2007,” said Anderson. “There’s a new normal as far as banks are concerned, in terms of tighter standards and the types of loan products offered.”
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NEW YORK (Fortune) — At 6 a.m. this morning, the Sci Fi Channel officially became Syfy, and if fans commenting on its site are to be believed, science-fiction lovers everywhere went into a self-satisfied state of mourning, convinced that the corporate makeover of their fringe fantasyland was at last complete. As one fan wrote, “NBC is what happened to Sci Fi.” But on the Web, as in life, hard-core fans aren’t always the best judge of business strategy. Syfy parent company NBC Universal’s USA and Bravo networks have both undergone high-profile revamps in recent years, with what most would call positive results. And at the Sci Fi Channel, says network president Dave Howe, transformation has been a topic of conversation for years. “We were always talking about changing the name,” says Howe, “because it didn’t capture all that we could do. The network wasn’t just about aliens, space, and the future, but that’s what people thought when they heard Sci Fi.”Rebranding a successful network is no small undertaking, though, and so executives took only small steps, such as updating the logo in 2002. And whatever the limitations of the “Sci Fi” moniker, they didn’t stop the network from growing, culminating in 2008 with its best year ever: Average viewership grew 7% to 1.3 million total viewers, making Sci Fi the No. 5 cable network with adults 25-54 and the No. 9 network among adults 18-49, according to Nielsen. (Female viewers, who make up 45% of total network viewership, also increased, with a 13% spike in women ages 18-49.)These milestones, along with the spreading global dominance of sci-fi- and fantasy-themed film, television, and gaming properties, actually made the issue of rebranding all the more pressing, as Sci Fi looked to expand onto new platforms, into bigger businesses, and around the world. As the network explored its possibilities in gaming, mobile and films, “Sci Fi” proved problematic. Because the word itself was just an abbreviation of an existing genre, it was impossible to trademark. “That might not have been an issue when we started in 1992 and there were a handful of networks just on television,” says Craig Engler, Syfy senior vice president of digital, “but today, you’d type ‘Sci Fi’ into Hulu, and, sure, you’d get hundreds of results. But not one on the first page was a Sci Fi Channel show.” Hulu has since partnered with the network to rectify that, Engler says, but it’s emblematic of Sci Fi’s ownability problem — one that execs couldn’t fix without changing the network’s name. 0:00
/02:32Hollywood helps Michigan joblessThen there was the question of global presence: Last year, Sci Fi had 15 channels primarily in the West. By the end of 2010, Syfy will reach 50 channels globally. In many of those places, “Sci Fi” is as much a nonsense word as “Syfy” — and it presents myriad comical pronunciation possibilities to non-English-speakers, as Howe is fond of demonstrating. (“Skiffee,” anyone?)That may sound like a whole lot of spin, but the numbers have already begun to bear out the business case for this multimillion-dollar rebrand. According to Chris Czarkowski — who, in a vote of confidence from NBC Universal, became Syfy’s first dedicated ad sales representative last year — news of the rebrand drew 12 new advertising clients to the network in the first quarter. “These are high-end clients who wouldn’t have considered us before,” says Czarkowski, citing Cheerios, Twizzlers, and embedded automotive and travel advertisers for network hits “Eureka” and “Ghost Hunters,” which is cable’s No. 1 show on Wednesday among adults 25-54. For advertisers and viewers alike, the essential hurdle has been envisioning Sci Fi Channel as more than niche programming. That shouldn’t be so hard given science fiction’s increasing mainstream cachet with films such as “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” bringing in big box-office numbers, says Czarkowski, “but when I walk into a presentation and ask who’s a sci-fi fan, only a few people will raise their hands. Then I’ll ask what movies people saw in the last year. “Ironman?” “Dark Knight?” Do they like “Star Wars” or “The Matrix?” And all these hands go up. Then someone might say, ‘Okay, but my wife or daughter doesn’t like it.’ And I’ll ask, ‘Well, did they see “Twilight?’”It’s those fans — fans who don’t even know they’re fans — that Howe hopes to attract with Syfy’s “brand evolution.” That’s why the rebrand will launch with the premiere of Syfy’s newest addition, “Warehouse 13,” a show about two federal agents sent to a remote warehouse that holds the world’s supernatural relics. “It’s a human story — about relationships, about isolation — and when we tested it, people said they’d never expect it on Sci Fi,” says Howe, who also counts the upcoming “Alice” miniseries (based on “Alice in Wonderland”) and “Battlestar Galactica” prequel series Caprica among the network’s diverse offerings. “It isn’t about abandoning our dedicated fanbase,” he says. “It’s about including all those people who don’t realize Syfy has anything to offer them. The point at which we change identity is when people don’t see us so narrowly.” Of course, the Sci Fi Channel’s notoriously vocal fanbase isn’t necessarily inclined to believe Howe, so the rebrand has been a carefully orchestrated process of fan chats and focus groups that Howe says has muted the backlash a bit and brought new fans onboard. “We all thought we were going to get laughed out of the room when we walked in to the focus group to show this for the first time,” Howe says. “But they loved it. They thought it looked cooler, more innovative, like a fun, modern brand they’d want to check out. It was an amazing moment, actually.” And even getting to the focus group stage was a slog, as execs — anticipating the response to anything less than a stellar idea — labored over potential names and logos. “I’m sitting in my office, bleary-eyed, staring at hundreds of S-C-I-F-I logos created by some of the best talent in the country, lamenting the fact that no matter what we do, how sharp a design we create, we can never really own a category,” says Michael Engleman, Syfy vice president of creative. “I knew how important our roots are, and knew where we wanted to go in the future, and I asked myself a simple question. What if we could change the name without ever changing the name? Five minutes later, with a ballpoint pen and a piece of scrap paper, Syfy was born.”Since then, the logo has been at the root of a massive marketing plan. An entire nine-page document was devoted to the question of how to present it in press and advertising materials (in black, white, or purple — and never, ever, in a box) and intercaps — Syfy or SyFy? — were the subject of heated debate. But the logo’s most important role, says digital head Engler, has been as a symbol of a new, happier, more relatable Syfy. “It allows us to do so much more,” he says. “The letters just look like they’d be great big plush toys, the ‘y’s smile at you, and the added dimensionality and expanded color palette inspire the design of all the branding, especially on the site. There was only so much that could happen with purple, black, and Saturn.”Endless opportunity, naturally, has also meant endless work for Syfy’s rebrand task force, helmed by creative head Engleman — from the minutiae of overhauling the network’s stationery and stenciling, to huge projects, such as creating an elaborate two-minute “brand film” to introduce the new Syfy brand. (Called “House of Imagination,” it stars a slate of network talent and visual effects by the Moving Picture Company, whose credits include “Watchmen” and “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”) And there have certainly been bumps: After careful changeover negotiations with all the cable providers, the Syfy team was horrified to find last week that Time Warner Cable had mistakenly posted the new branding — with (gasp) intercaps! And the week before that, as promotional cards for “Wyfy from Syfy” in New York City were hitting the presses, Engler — looking over a prototype passed around the task force meeting — noted they didn’t actually include the new syfy.com address, sending the young woman overseeing them rushing out of the room to catch the printer. Then there was the announcement, a few weeks before that, that the Empire State Building would not in fact be purple for July 7. (There had been talk.)Syfy was officially unveiled in the form of giant letters this morning at “Imagination Park” — a Syfy creation featuring props like a giant View-Master, from the brand film — in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Plaza. Syfy will also be providing public Wi-Fi for a year in Rockefeller Plaza and, starting later this summer, in Union Square and other pedestrian hubs in Manhattan. While the service stresses Syfy’s civic-mindedness, says Howe, it offers the additional upside of directing the million projected users to a Syfy-branded login page. And Syfy will be sponsoring “Movies with a View” at the Brooklyn Bridge this summer, as well as a retrospective of Tim Burton’s work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art starting in November. And all this, the Syfy faithful hope, will be enough to woo both the sci-fi faithful and fresh fans around the world to — as the new tagline goes — Imagine Greater.”

NEW YORK (Fortune) — JPMorgan Chase is grabbing a bigger slice of a smaller dealmaking pie — leaving less for rival Bank of America. New York-based JPMorgan (JPM, Fortune 500) was the biggest fee earner on Wall Street in the first half of 2009, according to figures released Thursday by markets data firm Dealogic. JPMorgan generated 2.4 billion in fees for arranging stock and bond sales and mergers worldwide, Dealogic said. JPMorgan was the leading arranger of debt and equity offerings in the first half, displacing last year’s No. 1 underwriter, the combination of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. BofA Merrill fell to second in debt underwriting and fourth in equity underwriting. The first half declines aside, BofA is hardly starving. BofA earned underwriting fees of 1.4 billion, in the first half, according to Dealogic data. Neither JPMorgan Chase nor BofA was able to supplant Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) as the top mergers and acquisitions adviser, though. JPMorgan was second and BofA fifth this year — the same as last year.JPMorgan’s gains came as merger activity and equity issuance slowed along with the global economy, in spite of a flurry of second-quarter debt and equity sales tied to the bank stress tests and Troubled Asset Relief Program repayments.Worldwide stock sales in the first half were at their lowest level since 2005, while M&A volume plunged 36% from a year earlier, Dealogic said. The weak equity numbers came despite a record number of follow-on stock offerings as financial firms raised capital.Still, more than half of JPMorgan’s total fee windfall — 1.3 billion — came from equity underwriting, Dealogic said.Nothing succeeds like successAnalysts have been gushing about JPMorgan’s success during the financial crisis of the past two years. Led by CEO Jamie Dimon, the bank has benefited from the tumult, having been chosen by the government to buy troubled rivals Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual when they were at death’s doorstep. Dimon has also boasted of having built a “fortress balance sheet,” in contrast to rivals such as Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) that have had to resort to federal assistance to shore up their capital. JPMorgan repaid its 25 billion TARP loan this month.JPMorgan shares have gained 8% this year, and bulls such as BernsteinResearch analyst John McDonald, who rates the stock a buy, see more good times ahead.”The market may not fully appreciate the extent to which JPM has spent the cycle not just ’surviving’ — but actually building, investing, and acquiring platforms for future growth,” McDonald wrote in a note to clients this month. He said those gains should let the bank “emerge from the recession with greater earnings power and business momentum than it entered.” JPMorgan’s momentum was especially apparent in Dealogic’s rankings of debt underwriters. JPMorgan served as bookrunner, or lead arranger, on debt deals worth 185 billion in the first half. That’s up from 172 billion last year. By contrast, BofA Merrill’s debt underwriting volume dropped to 140 billion from 243 billion a year earlier, according to the Dealogic report. 0:00
/3:46BofA’s Lewis gets grilledThe weak underwriting performance comes after a tumultuous period at Charlotte, N.C.-based BofA. CEO Ken Lewis has come under fire for his decision to spend billions buying two struggling financial companies, Countrywide and Merrill Lynch, when their problems were getting worse. Shareholders stripped Lewis of his chairman’s title in April, though he remains CEO. He has also been questioned on Capitol Hill over the government’s role in the Merrill deal. In January, the government provided BofA with 20 billion in capital and 118 billion in debt guarantees to ensure the bank would complete the purchase.

Source:CNN

Setanta ‘is on brink of collapse’
Setanta faces administration “within days” unless backers provide more funds to pay 30m it owes to the English Premier League, reports suggest.The broadcaster has already failed to pay the Scottish Premier League 3m it owes in television rights money. Setanta, which also shows cricket, golf and rugby union, has about 1.2m subscribers, but is losing up to 100m a year, analysts say. Deloitte is set to step in to run the firm if it goes into administration. ‘Weaker’ matchesThe rights to show the English Premier League – and the subscribers that this pulls in – lie at the heart of Setanta’s business model. But the firm had only about 60% of the subscribers it needed to break even, said Professor Chris Brady of the BPP Business School. “They have predicated the whole thing on getting those subscribers. The problem is they are taking on Goliath in BSkyB,” he told the BBC. Not only did Setanta have only a small percentage of televised Premier League games, but they tended to be “weaker” matches, he added. There had also been problems with customer service, Prof Brady told the BBC. Falling values?Setanta’s viability was cast into doubt earlier this year when it lost the rights to show 46 live Premier League matches from 2010/2011. In future it will show only 23 games per season, compared with BSkyB’s 115, with industry observers saying that thousands of customers would give up their subscriptions. It is expected that a rival broadcaster – perhaps ESPN – would buy up its Premier League football rights. But the worsening economy has led observers to suggest that the rights to 46 games which Setanta holds for next season, the final year of its current contract, would not be worth as much as they had been. There are also doubts about whether the Premier League could match the 159m Setanta paid for the right to screen 23 Premier League games each season from 2010-11. A shared deal with ITV saw them secure rights for England and FA Cup matches for 425m – and it is likely another firm would buy up these rights.
Source:BBC