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Automobiles

First Drive: 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe

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By Jeremy Korzeniewski

2013 Hyundai Sante Fe

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Standing Out In A Segment Of Me-Too Crossovers

This may sound strange, but bear with us – there is indeed a point to this little exercise. Okay, ready? We’d like you to close your eyes and imagine a crossover. Any modern crossover is fine.

Done? Good. Recall what you saw in your mind’s eye. What did it look like? Did it have a somewhat aggressive shape – an upright greenhouse, pronounced wheel wells with some type of body cladding, a bold grille up front bracketed by large headlamps and hulking bodysides with a bit of visual flair provided by creases or rising shoulder lines? Did it sit jacked up a tad on oversized alloy wheels, distancing itself from any thoughts of mere station wagons? Yep, that was a crossover all right.

Point being, there isn’t all that much to differentiate today’s crop of car-based utility vehicles, at least when it comes to visuals and overall impressions, which means, to use a somewhat tired phrase, the devil is in the details. Clearly, what makes a family choose one over another has a lot to do with their individual wants and needs, and each automaker is building a vehicle (or two, or three) designed to appeal to these masses, but with ever-so-slightly differing formulas.

It was with all these thoughts swirling through our minds that we accepted an invitation to drive the new three-row 2013 Hyundai Santa Fe in San Diego, California for a full day of highways, twisty roads and ocean breezes. We were rewarded mostly with confirmation of our preconceived notions, but also with a few genuinely surprising details designed to attract the eyes and wallets of buyers all across North America.

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2013 Hyundai Santa Fe originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 18 Mar 2013 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Automobiles

Teased: Mexico set to get second automaker, and it's a sports car company, too

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By Seyth Miersma

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With Mastretta and its home-cooked MXT-R already softening the beachhead for Mexican-made sports cars, a new company called VŪHL – an acronym that stands for “Vehicles of Ultra-lightweight and High-performance”­ – is coming to the scene.

The teaser image that you see above shows the VŪHL 05, which is tantalizingly described as a “road-legal lightweight supercar.” The details are pretty scarce beyond that, save that we will witness the launch of the 05 at the 2013 Goodwood Festival of Speed.

VŪHL itself was started by brothers Iker and Guillermo Echeverria, who claim to have picked up their love of high performance cars from their GT and formula car-racing father, Guillermo Echeverria Sr. It is the Echeverria brothers’ design firm, Etxe, that has penned the lines for the 05, while the production (of the bodies, at least) will take place in Canada and final assembly will happen in Mexico City. A report by Skiddmark.com indicates that big name suppliers like Magna Steyr, Mutimatic and Ford have a hand in the car, and some funding has come from the Mexican Government, as well. Consider our interest piqued.

Mexico set to get second automaker, and it’s a sports car company, too originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 18 Mar 2013 08:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Market Minute: Cyprus Bailout, Bank Run Spook Markets

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By DailyFinance Staff

Euro crisis

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Produced by Drew Trachtenberg

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A new crisis may be brewing in Europe, and AT&T may sell some assets

The Dow’s 10-session win streak came to end on Friday, but all three major averages posted gains for the week. The Dow rose 0.8 of a percent, the S&P 500 rose 0.6 and Nasdaq edged up by 0.1 of a percent.

Markets around the world are lower today after a run on bank deposits in Cyprus over the weekend. That followed a decision by euro-zone officials to tax depositors to help pay for a national bailout. There’s concern that the new bank crisis could spread to Italy, Spain and beyond.

AT&T (T) indicated it may sell some non-core assets in order to keep paying its dividend or to buy back stock. The Wall Street Journal says the company could sell some of its 10,000 cellphone towers, or a big stake in a Mexican phone company.

The Wall Street Journal reports that it is the subject of a Justice Department investigation into charges that employees in China bribed officials there for information. The Journal is owned by News Corp. (NWS), which is in the process of spinning off its newspaper division into a separate company.

A couple of well-paid executives to tell you about. Boeing’s (BA) chairman and chief executive received compensation last year totaling $27.5 million dollars, up 20 percent from the year before. And Ford’s (F) CEO took home $21 million, but that was down 29 percent from the previous year.

Qualcomm (QCOM) has reportedly delays making the second installment of a big investment in the struggling Japanese electronics maker Sharp.

Last summer, yellow page publishers DEX One (DEXO) and Super Media (SPMD) agreed to merge. Now, both companies are filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The companies hope to continue trading on exchanges while they restructure.

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Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Obama Set to Announce New Labor Secretary

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By The Associated Press

obama new labor secretary thomas perez

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(Ross D. Franklin/AP) President Obama‘s is expected to nominate Thomas Perez as his new Secretary of Labor on Monday. Perez, an assistant attorney general, is shown in this 2012 photo along with Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Roy Austin.

By JIM KUHNHENN and SAM HANANEL

WASHINGTON — Seeking to fill yet another second-term Cabinet vacancy, President Barack Obama is set to nominate Thomas Perez, an assistant attorney general, to be the next secretary of labor, the White House says.

If confirmed by the Senate, Perez, who has been head of the Justice Department‘s Civil Rights Division for 3½ years, would take over the Labor Department as Obama undertakes several worker-oriented initiatives, including an overhaul of immigration laws and an increase in the minimum wage.

Before taking the job as assistant attorney general, Perez was secretary of Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, which enforces state consumer rights, workplace safety and wage and hour laws.

Obama plans to nominate Perez, 51, on Monday.

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In choosing Perez, the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Obama would be placing an already high-ranking Hispanic official in a Cabinet slot. Perez, a lawyer with a degree from Harvard Law School, would replace Hilda Solis, a former California congresswoman and the nation’s first Hispanic labor secretary.

Perez’s nomination has been expected for weeks, and comes with vigorous support from labor unions and Latino groups. But a newly released report by the Justice Department‘s inspector general is likely to provide fodder for Republicans who say the Justice Department‘s Civil Rights Division has been too politicized.

The report, released last week, said Perez gave incomplete testimony to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights when he said the department’s political leadership wasn’t involved in the decision to dismiss three of the four defendants in a lawsuit the Bush administration brought against the New Black Panther Party.

The report also concluded that Perez didn’t intentionally mislead the commission and that the department acted properly. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said Perez appeared to be “woefully unprepared to answer questions” from the Civil Rights Commission.

Lynn Rhinehart, general counsel at the AFL-CIO, said the report shows that Perez, who was first hired by the civil rights division as a career attorney under President George H.W. Bush, restored integrity to the voting rights program at the Justice Department.

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Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Pity the Rich Investing in Hedge Funds. Seriously.

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By Rich Smith

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George Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management. (Akos Stiller, Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Hedge funds. Everyone wants to invest in them, but if you want to get into one, you generally have to meet either one of two conditions, laid down by the Securities and Exchange Commission: Either you must earn $200,000 or more a year, or you must have net worth of more than $1 million.

That exclusivity has helped fuel explosive growth in America’s hedge fund industry, which has expanded from $300 billion in assets under management 15 years ago, to $2.2 trillion today. Clearly, this is a popular investment party — one that (statistically speaking) you probably aren’t invited to.

Oh, the Unfairness of It All

At first glance, it seems unfair that average people can’t invest in the rich-folk hedge funds. And, as explained in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.Money magazine, it is unfair … not to us ordinary investors, but to the rich folks whose hedge fund investments consistently underperform the stock market.

How unfair is it? Here are a few facts and figures to draw you a picture:

  • The average hedge fund charges its clients 2 percent of whatever money they invest with it — payable every year. Plus, if the hedge fund makes a profit, the manager skims 20 percent off the top of this profit. (Conversely, when a hedge fund loses money, the manager does not give money back to investors.) What it all works out to is that your average hedge fund manager has to earn 12 percent per year in profit in order for his clients to just match the 8 percent long-term average return they could get on a plain vanilla S&P 500 index fund.
  • That’s not easy to do, and in fact, according to Hedge Fund Research (HFR), the average hedge fund does not outperform the market. Rather, over the past three- and 10-year terms, the average hedge fund underperformed it. Over longer periods of time, the results have been similarly bleak. A 2009 study conducted by Emory University and Harvard Business School determined that the average hedge fund investor earned just 6 percent annually on his investments.
  • What’s worse, funds making it into HFR‘s underperformance study only included those funds still alive at the end of the study. Factor in the total losses of hedge funds that have gone bust, and the underperformance would look even worse.

So to answer the perennial question: Is the system for investing in hedge funds unfair?

Yes. It’s unfair to rich folk.

Motley Fool contributor Rich Smith once considered investing in a hedge fund, but decided against it. Now you know why.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance