A sole proprietorship, also known as a sole trader, is owned by one person and operates for their benefit. The owner may operate the business alone or with other people.
A partnership is a business owned by two or more people. In most forms of partnerships, each partner has unlimited liability for the debts incurred by the business. The three most prevalent types of for-profit partnerships are general partnerships, limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships.
The owners of a corporation have limited liability and the business has a separate legal personality from its owners. Corporations can be either government-owned or privately owned. They can organize either for profit or as not-for-profit organizations.
Often referred to as a "co-op", a cooperative is a limited liability business that can organize for-profit or not-for-profit. A cooperative differs from a corporation in that it has members, not shareholders, and they share decision-making authority.
In recent decades, various states modeled some of their assets and enterprises after business enterprises. In 2003, for example, the People's Republic of China modeled 80% of its state-owned enterprises on a company-type management system
GM Financial says information about approximately 2,200 of its customers was "inappropriately accessed" by a former employee who was recently charged in connection with an identity theft scheme, CBC News has learned.
ON FRIDAY, the Swiss National Bank (SNB), Switzerland’s central bank, reported second quarter losses of 20 billion Swiss francs ($20 billion). Following an equally bad first three months of the year, the SNB’s losses so far for 2015 now amount to a whopping 50.1 billion Swiss francs, equivalent to 7.5% of Switzerland's GDP (see chart).
The SNB's losses were large but not unexpected. For years, the Bank has intervened in foreign exchange markets to prevent the Swiss franc from appreciating above its euro exchange rate cap, set at 1.20 francs per euro in September 2011. In January, the SNB abruptly abandoned its currency peg as the European Central Bank geared up for its €1.1 trillion quantitative easing programme. That caused the franc to immediately jump in value by more than 20% against the euro.
Scrapping the currency peg has had two nasty consequences. First, the appreciation of the franc made Swiss exports more expensive for foreigners, prompting the Swiss economy to start shrinking in the first quarter of 2015. Second, the depreciation of the euro against the franc led to significant currency losses on the SNB’s $550 billion foreign-exchange reserves, of which some $230 billion is held in the single currency. This alone accounted for 94% of the central bank's losses in the first half of the year.
The SNB must now strike a delicate...Continue reading
Source :Business and finance http://ift.tt/1JXgAED
THIS week's print edition has an array of economics articles that may be of interest. The following have particularly caught our eye:
Moldova's economy: Gutted (Finance)
Renewable energy: Puffs of hope (Leaders)
Turkey's economy: Flightless (Finance)
And don't forget to take a look at this week's Free Exchange column, which looks at how ways of fighting poverty.
Pacific Rim trade ministers have failed to clinch a deal to free up trade between a dozen nations. The sticking points include issues relating to auto trade, access to dairy markets and drug patents.
Pacific Rim trade ministers have failed to clinch a deal to free up trade between a dozen nations. The sticking points include issues relating to auto trade, access to dairy markets and drug patents.
Kraft Dinner is out, and KD is in. The company is hoping that name change brings back some of its former customers, who called the meal KD as kids, but may have drifted away since.
Kraft Dinner is out, and KD is in. The company is hoping that name change brings back some of its former customers, who called the meal KD as kids, but may have drifted away since.
