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Square Feet: Ambitious Paris Project Takes Shape in the Suburbs

May 22, 2013 by Leave a Comment

In response, the city government has begun an ambitious program of large-scale, mixed-use developments on the periphery. The goals are twofold: creating an engine for economic growth while preserving the Belle Époque Paris beloved by tens of millions of tourists; and integrating the prosperous city with struggling inner-ring suburbs, or banlieues.

Though France, and much of Europe, remains mired in economic malaise, one such development, the Clichy Batignolles project in northwest Paris, is gaining momentum this year after more than a decade of planning.

The first residents moved in last fall, the second phase of a much-loved and much-needed park is close to completion, an office complex that will be owned by the New York real estate company Tishman Speyer is seeking tenants, and site preparation is nearly done for a soaring courthouse designed by Renzo Piano’s studio that will be one of the tallest buildings in Paris.

Mr. Piano first made his mark in Paris with the radical Pompidou Center in the mid-1970s. He acknowledged that the courthouse and the Clichy Batignolles project were taking Paris in a different direction — but a necessary one, he argued in an interview at his Paris workshop.

“We are celebrating a shift in the history of the town,” he said. “We are bringing the fertilizing elements to the periphery. You are changing something, and changing something is not easy.”

By the numbers, the 133-acre project is impressive for any city: 12,700 projected jobs; 3,400 housing units, subsidized and market-rate; 1.5 million square feet of office space; 410,000 square feet of public facilities, including schools; 334,000 square feet of shops and services — and 90 courtrooms and offices to accommodate some 8,000 people a day in the 524-foot-tall courthouse.

Garbage and recyclables will be collected with a system of pneumatic tubes, sharply cutting emissions and odors. Buildings with “green” roofs with vegetation, slabs of photovoltaic cells and geothermal heating point to an ambitious goal of carbon neutrality.

The project will offer commuters and residents a range of transportation options, including two new Metro stations, an extension of the tramway that nearly circles the city, a regional rail station and a 600-space underground parking garage.

But Paris being Paris, the prospect of high-rise offices, glossy apartment blocks and a large influx of low-income housing has not been received with great enthusiasm.

Brigitte Kuster, the maire, or mayor, of the 17th Arrondissement, protested that the area already had a large amount of subsidized housing, said Hubert Jamault, her chief of staff. Ms. Kuster, he said, “is not against the construction of social housing, but she does not want all the difficulties to be concentrated in the same place.”

Now, he said, after a petition drive, appeals to the city council and “numerous” public meetings with the city, her concerns have largely been addressed.

The decision to allow buildings up to 50 meters tall (about 160 feet) “has been the subject of a broad dialogue with local residents,” said Anne Hidalgo, a deputy mayor of Paris and a champion of the project. (The courthouse is an exception.)

Ms. Hidalgo, a leading candidate for mayor in elections next year, said the height of the buildings would be in proportion to the park — similar to Central Park in New York — and would allow for innovative architecture, and views and light for inhabitants.

“I’m quite happy with the results,” Ms. Hidalgo said via e-mail, “which offer Paris a new neighborhood that is ecological, a pleasant place to live, innovative in all ways, very Parisian, and resolutely turned toward the future.”

Clichy Batignolles, named for the adjoining neighborhoods, was first planned in 2001 under Mayor Bertrand Delanoë of Paris and Ms. Hidalgo, said Didier Bailly, director general of Paris Batignolles Aménagement, the corporation formed to oversee much of the project.

In the subsequent years, transportation, housing and office components were added, and — reminiscent of the Hudson Yards development in Manhattan — the site became a centerpiece of Paris’s bid for the 2012 Olympics, which were captured by London.

By 2008, Mr. Bailly said, all the components of the project were in place with the deal to build the courthouse. That year, though, the persistent recession that the French call “la crise” struck.

“The crisis means that investors are extremely demanding,” Mr. Bailly said. “They have means, but they’re very attentive to how it’s invested; they want to ensure the safety of their investment.”

Some developers have delayed building in Clichy Batignolles, hoping that the market will improve. No large commercial tenants have yet committed to the project.

Tishman Speyer, for one, is confident enough in the project, and the French economy, to have invested about 200 million euros (about $260 million) in two office buildings — even before work started and any tenants had signed on. The project, called Pont Cardinet, will offer a total of about 25,000 square meters (about 270,000 square feet) of office space and is expected to be finished early next year.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 22, 2013

Because of an editing error, a summary with an earlier version of this article misstated the size of the Clichy Batignolles project in northwest Paris. It is 133 acres, not 154.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/realestate/commercial/ambitious-paris-project-takes-shape-in-the-suburbs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Trade Deal Between U.S.-Europe May Pick Up Steam

November 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

FRANKFURT — A free-trade agreement between the United States and Europe, elusive for more than a decade but with a potentially huge economic effect, is gaining momentum and may finally be attainable, business and political leaders say.

Arduous negotiations still lie ahead, but if technical hurdles can be overcome, supporters of a pact argue, it could rival the North American Free Trade Agreement in scale and be a cheap way to encourage growth between the European Union and the United States, which are already each other’s biggest overseas trading partners.

“There is now, for the first time in years, a serious drive towards an E.U.-U.S. free-trade agreement,” Karel De Gucht, the European trade commissioner, said in Dublin earlier this month.

Within days, if not hours, of President Barack Obama’s re-election, numerous European leaders, including Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and David Cameron, the British prime minister, were urging Mr. Obama to push for a free-trade agreement. The Europeans hope that eliminating frictions in U.S.-E.U. trade would provide some badly needed economic growth.

Corporations and business groups on both sides of the Atlantic are also pushing hard for a pact. Tariffs on goods traded between the United States and the European Union are already low, averaging less than 3 percent. But companies that do substantial amounts of trans-Atlantic business say that even a relatively small increase in the volume of trade could deliver major economic benefits.

“The reason we care about this is because these base line numbers are so huge,” said Karan Bhatia, a former deputy U.S. trade representative who is now vice president for global government affairs at General Electric in Washington. “This could be the biggest, most valuable free-trade agreement by far, even if it produces only a marginal increase in trade.”

Noting that a free-trade agreement would not cost taxpayers any money, Mr. Bhatia said, “This is the great, untapped stimulus.”

While China has dominated the political debate in the United States, U.S. trade with Europe is much larger, totaling $485 billion in goods in the first nine months of this year, compared with $390 billion in trade with China.

Perhaps more important for U.S. companies, Europe buys much more from the United States than China does. U.S. exports of goods to Europe through September totaled $200 billion, according to U.S. government data , while China imported $79 billion worth of U.S. goods.

“The economic music is between America and Europe,” said Fred Irwin, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany. The organization has been among groups lobbying energetically for a comprehensive agreement to replace the potpourri of existing tariffs and regulations and also to roll back national rules in Europe that may impede trade.

The chamber estimates that an agreement that eliminated tariffs and other barriers between the United States and Europe could add 1.5 percentage points to growth on both sides of the Atlantic. While that may be optimistic, economists agree that trade increases when barriers fall.

Supporters of an agreement hope that Mr. Obama will visit Europe early in 2013 and that he agree while there on a framework for negotiations that could lead to a detailed agreement within several years. They argue that a pact would offer Mr. Obama an opportunity to improve his relations with the business community while reaching out to European political leaders who feel he has taken them for granted.

“The Europeans believe that Obama does not care about Europe,” said Mr. Irwin, who has met with E.U. government leaders on the trade issue.

Asked about the U.S. position, Andrea Mead, a spokeswoman for Ron Kirk, the U.S. trade representative, said in an e-mail that the working group “continues to work to assess how best to increase U.S.-E.U. trade and investment to produce additional economic growth and jobs, and improve our international competitiveness.”

There does not seem to be any broad-based political opposition to an E.U.-U.S. trade agreement, as there was to Nafta. But some industry groups have expressed concern about how a free-trade accord would affect them.

Last week, a coalition of food and agricultural groups led by the National Pork Producers Council in the United States wrote to Mr. Kirk, expressing concern that a free-trade agreement might leave them out.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/26/business/global/trade-deal-between-us-europe-may-pick-up-steam.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Weak Sale of Bonds Tests Germany’s Stature in Crisis

November 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Analysts cautioned against reading too much into a single bond issue — one of nine this year that has failed to sell out, according to the German Finance Ministry. But the dismal sale results helped push down stocks worldwide and contributed to the atmosphere of fear that prevails in Europe: that the crisis is getting ahead of the political will to solve it.

In the first steps toward the closer political and financial integration that many have come to believe is essential for the survival of the euro, the European Commission proposed Wednesday that countries surrender more power over their national finances to the European authorities, giving Brussels the right to request a rewrite of spending plans that seem too profligate.

The commission, the executive agency of the European Union, also floated ideas for the issuance of bonds backed by all the countries of the euro zone — a measure that, despite German opposition, is gaining acceptance as a means of market reassurance as the crisis persists.

“Without stronger governance in the euro area it will be difficult, if not impossible, to sustain the common currency,” José Manuel Barroso, president of the commission, said in Brussels.

With the debt crisis gaining momentum rather than abating, and threats growing to countries at the core of the currency zone, measures that were politically impossible just a year ago are now being actively discussed, though it remains to be seen whether they will be enough to reassure markets that the crisis has been contained.

“The commission is slowly but surely becoming a European Finance Ministry, one step at a time,” said Sony Kapoor, managing director of Re-Define, an economic research group.

The proposals, which must be approved by E.U. governments, align Brussels with Germany on the issue of budgetary oversight, though they stop short of the veto power that Berlin has urged over profligate spending plans.

They go further toward supporting a common euro zone bond than Germany has so far been willing to go. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, during a budget debate Wednesday in Berlin, reiterated her opposition to the creation of the bonds, but she has not completely ruled out the possibility of issuing bonds based on collective euro zone obligations at some future date.

If Germany’s borrowing costs continue to rise, it would be a blow to the country’s prestige and could profoundly shift the debate about how to cope with the euro crisis. About one-third of a €6 billion, or $8 billion, issue of German bonds found no buyers, twice as much unsold stock as normal, the country’s central bank reported.

In addition, the market yield on German 10-year bonds climbed close to the comparable British security, an unusual development considering that Britain has higher inflation than Germany and is more indebted. Germany has been able to boast that its solid economy and low debt are proof that austerity is the answer to the sovereign debt crisis. But if investor faith in the country slips, Germany’s moral authority could weaken.

“Losing that bargaining power could be massive for Germany,” said Silvio Peruzzo, euro area economist at Royal Bank of Scotland. “That is one of the pillars on which Germany has based its policy approach.”

Another few bad auctions, he said, “could shift the debate to, The austerity is too strong, we need growth.”

The German bond auction was one of several factors weighing down world markets Wednesday. Stocks fell in Asia and Europe after reports that manufacturing activity in China and the euro zone had weakened in the third quarter.

The continuing political crisis in Belgium sent the risk premium on Belgian sovereign bonds over German bonds to its highest level since the creation of the euro. The cost of insuring against default in 15 European governments rose to an all-time high Wednesday, according to data compiled by Markit.

Also Wednesday, a second credit rating agency, Fitch, warned that France could lose its prized triple-A rating because its commitment to the euro zone bailout fund was straining its finances. Moody’s Investors Service has issued a similar warning recently.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/24/business/global/Euro-Fears-in-Markets-Spread-to-Germany.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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2 Years After a Bankruptcy, Chrysler Posts a Profit

May 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Chrysler, the only Detroit automaker to lose money last year, earned $116 million in the quarter, after losing $197 million in the period a year ago. Revenue grew 35 percent, to $13.1 billion, while sales were up 18 percent.

“Chrysler Group’s improved sales and financial performance in the first quarter show that our rejuvenated product lineup is gaining momentum in the marketplace and resonating with customers,” Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of Chrysler and its Italian partner, Fiat, said in a statement. “These results are a testament to the hard work and dedication of our employees, suppliers and dealers, all of whom are helping Chrysler create a new corporate culture built on the quality of our products and processes, and simple, sound management principles.”

Chrysler said it had $9.9 billion in cash on hand as of March 31, an increase of $2.6 billion in three months, and $13.3 billion in debt.

The results are a milestone for Chrysler, which narrowly avoided liquidation after its decade-long tie-up with the German carmaker Daimler dissolved and a private equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, failed in its revival efforts. The profit comes almost exactly two years after President Obama forced Chrysler to file for bankruptcy protection and form a partnership with Fiat because he and other officials believed it could not survive on its own.

Chrysler reported operating profits in each quarter of 2010, but each time interest payments to the American and Canadian governments, which totaled $1.23 billion for the year, resulted in losses over all. Chrysler lost $652 million last year.

In its report the company reiterated its previous forecast for net income this year of $200 million to $500 million.

The company plans to significantly reduce its interest payments by refinancing the $7.5 billion in government loans it received before and during its bankruptcy. On Monday, Chrysler said it would repay the loans by the end of June by selling $2.5 billion in bonds and borrowing from new secured credit facilities totaling $5 billion.

Interest payments in the first quarter totaled $348 million, up from $311 million in the period a year earlier. Mr. Marchionne declined last week to say how much Chrysler would save through its refinancing.

Chrysler introduced or revamped 16 models in 2010, and it said increased sales of many of them played a role in its first-quarter profit, as market share increased in the United States and Canada, its two largest markets.

Jesse Toprak, vice president for industry trends and insight at TrueCar.com, said Chrysler still needed to make its vehicle lineup more appealing, particularly in the small-car segments that have become more popular amid rising gas prices.

“The outstanding issue for them is their continued reliance on S.U.V.’s and trucks,” Mr. Toprak said. “They’re on the road to recovery, but there’s much more to be done to really claim that Chrysler is back on their feet and healthy.”

Pickups and other light trucks accounted for 78 percent of Chrysler’s first-quarter sales in the United States compared with about 60 percent for General Motors and the Ford Motor Company.

Some Chrysler dealers began selling the tiny Fiat 500 car this spring, and it plans to bring out more small cars based on Fiat designs and technology within the next several years, but most of its focus since bankruptcy has been on redoing larger models like its Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango sport-utility vehicles.

Chrysler remains far less profitable than its domestic competitors. Ford earned $6.6 billion last year and $2.55 billion in the first quarter of 2011. Ford’s sold 3.5 times as many cars and trucks as Chrysler last quarter, and its profit was 22 times as much as Chrysler’s.

G.M., which filed for and emerged from bankruptcy a month later than Chrysler, earned $4.7 billion in 2010. It is scheduled to reveal first-quarter results Thursday.

The United States and Canada own a combined 10.8 percent of Chrysler, which is expected to have an initial public offering later this year or in early 2012. Chrysler is 30 percent owned by Fiat, which plans to pay $1.27 billion for an additional 16 percent stake when the government loans are repaid. Chrysler’s majority owner is currently a trust fund set up to cover the cost of health care for hourly retirees.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=3a04cc2df5a185e55d07a064766299fc

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