Sprinting away, beating bad loans

NEWS AT A GLANCE SPRINT NEXTEL LOSES MONEY AND SUBSCRIBERS Sprint Nextel, the No. 3 U.S. wireless carrier, posted a worse-than-expected $505 million quarterly loss, as high-value monthly

customers defected to other carriers. (Reuters) Sprint said it lost about a million customers in the quarter, about the same number as it lost all last year. (AP in Yahoo! Finance) AT&T

picked up 1.3 million wireless customers last quarter, and Verizon Wireless brought on an extra 1.5 million. “Sprint has had a really bad reputation for customer service,” said analyst Steve

Clement at Pacific Crest Securities “They’ve struggled to figure out a way to market themselves, and I think they’re still struggling.” (Bloomberg) SUBSCRIBE TO THE WEEK Escape your echo

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to your inbox. HSBC PROFITS DESPITE BAD LOANS HSBC, Europe’s largest bank by market value, said that it had a profitable first quarter, despite taking a $3.2 billion charge for bad loans in

the U.S. and $2.6 billion in writedowns at its investment bank. The bad debt charge, tied to U.S. home loans, was smaller than expected. (MarketWatch) HSBC said it was increasingly probable

the U.S. would enter a recession this year, but that strong growth in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America made up for a decline in U.S. earnings. “The U.S. provisions are less than

some of the more aggressive forecasts,” said analyst Simon Maughan at MF Global Securities in London, but “people need remember how strong Asia can be.” (Bloomberg) CABLEVISION SCOOPS UP

NEWSDAY Tribune Co. agreed to sell its New York newspaper _Newsday_ to Cablevision Systems for $650 million, after News Corp. dropped out of the bidding war over the weekend. The other

remaining suitor, with a $580 million bid on the table, was Mortimer Zuckerman, who owns the N_ew York Daily News_. (_Newsday_) News Corp. already owns two area papers, _The Wall Street

Journal_ and the _New York Post_. (AP in Yahoo! Finance) Cablevision, controlled by the Dolan family, owns cable TV networks and several New York sports and entertainment properties. “We

find it incredibly hard to believe the Cablevision board can find an acquisition of a local newspaper in shareholders’ best interests,” said Pali Capital analyst Richard Greenfield.

(Bloomberg) A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com CHINA’S GROWING OUTSOURCING PROBLEM The cost of labor is rising in coastal

China, and that is pushing Chinese textile and toy industrialists to Vietnam, India, and other areas with lower costs and access to ports, despite Chinese government subsidies to encourage

the manufacturers to move to inland China. The shift isn’t expected to affect the Chinese economic juggernaut, as coastal manufacturers switch to more valuable products like computer chips

and electronics. But it is increasing the income disparity between the wealthy southeaster provinces and the poorer inland areas. “It is absolutely key that China push its development model

westward,” says Stephen Roach at Morgan Stanley inHong Kong. “The jury’s out on whether they will pull it off.” (Bloomberg)