>>> Greece PM Tsipras: Seek an agreement with creditors that ends talk of "Grexi

Greece PM Tsipras: Seek an agreement with creditors that ends talk of "Grexit" for once and for all - Parliament comments 
- Greece aims for a solution not just an agreement- Says lenders want to humiliate Greece
- Time for Europe to make a decision for the future of the Euro Area
- ECB insisting on oine of financial 'asphyxiating' the past few months
- Will not succumb to treats of continuing policies inspired by failed IMF policies

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>>> America Movil May Buy More Cos. in Europe, CFO Says: (English)

Slim is out to conquer Europe



Carlos Slim bet in the telecommunications business in the European market; to gain control and 60% of Telekom Austria, a company with operations in seven countries, America Movil will accelerate its expansion on the continent, through investment in infrastructure as well as the possible purchase of more companies.

The next big bet Carlos Slim in the telecommunications business is in Europe. After trying unsuccessfully to acquire KPN, America Movil (AMóvil) Dutch accelerate its expansion in East and Central European stock by Telekom Austria, which firm has 60 percent of its shares.

"We will invest very strong in Europe in the deployment of infrastructure in the coming years ... it is a market with great potential ... do not rule out buying companies," said Carlos Garcia Moreno, CFO of America Movil, in an interview with El Financiero .

According to the executive, the company will begin to increase their share and profitability in the countries of Eastern Europe, including Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia, which has 20 million subscribers.

However, the company could easily move into countries like Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania with a focused strategy prepayment schemes attractive to subsequently convert these into postpaid users.

A third step would be to bet on more mature markets such as Germany, Switzerland and other Northern European, which compete with giants such as Telefonica, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange.

All this, to the strict regulations that America Movil faces in Mexico, where it seeks to spin off assets to exit the preponderance, and because it is a leader in most of the 17 Latin American markets where it operates.

"In Latin America, America Movil has difficulty growing, while Europe has a minimum footprint with many options for acquisitions in a stage of industry consolidation. There are currently more than 100 operators who could buy, "said Jorge Negrete, director of Mediatelecom.

REGION WITH OPPORTUNITIES

The European market has a value equivalent to the US, with 443 billion euros (MDE) and 438 million lines associated with a smartphone.

In 2014, America Movil earmarked some 60 billion pesos to the European market, which accounted for 75 percent of its investments in acquisitions and licenses, according to its annual report.

In 2015 the company plans to invest 8000 $ 900 million worldwide and analysts expect similar amounts for subsequent years, increasingly focused on Europe.

"We can expect infrastructure investments and purchases of small operators in these markets due to the leverage (less than 2 times its net debt / EBITDA) of the company," said Fernando Bolaños, analyst at Monex.

In 2014, Telekom Austria America Movil generated sales of 37 thousand 392 million pesos, equivalent to 4.4 percent of its consolidated revenues.

The market in Eastern Europe has great potential profitability compared to Mexico. At the end of the first quarter of 2015, the EBITDA of the company in Mexico margin was 32 percent, versus 14 percent in Eastern Europe.

America Movil May Buy More Cos. in Europe, CFO Says: Financiero
2015-06-16 11:55:25.488 GMT


By Karen Eeuwens
(Bloomberg) -- Click here for original story in Spanish.


For Related News and Information:
First Word scrolling panel: FIRST<GO>
First Word newswire: NH BFW<GO>

To contact the reporter on this story:
Karen Eeuwens in Sao Paulo at +55-11-2395-9064 or
keeuwens@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Giulia Camillo at +55-11-2395-9177 or
gcamillo@bloomberg.net

>>> America Movil May Buy More Cos. in Europe, CFO Says: Financiero


Slim se lanza a la conquista de Europa 



Carlos Slim apostará al negocio de telecomunicaciones en el mercado europeo; al obtener el control y el 60% de Telekom Austria, empresa con presencia en siete países, América Móvil acelerará su expansión en el continente, a través de inversión en infraestructura, además de la posible compra de más empresas.

La próxima gran apuesta de Carlos Slim en el negocio de telecomunicaciones está en Europa. Tras haber intentado adquirir infructuosamente a la holandesa KPN, América Móvil (AMóvil) acelerará su expansión en el Este y Centro del Viejo Continente a través de Telekom Austria, firma de la cual posee 60 ciento de sus acciones.

“Vamos a invertir muy fuerte en Europa en el despliegue de infraestructura en los próximos años… es un mercado con mucho potencial… no descartamos la compra de más empresas”, dijo Carlos García Moreno, CFO de América Móvil, en una entrevista con El Financiero.

De acuerdo con el directivo, la empresa empezará por aumentar su participación y rentabilidad en los países de Europa del Este, incluyendo a Austria, Bielorrusia, Bulgaria, Croacia, Eslovenia, Macedonia y Serbia, donde tiene 20 millones de suscriptores.

Sin embargo, la compañía podría incursionar fácilmente en países como Polonia, República Checa, Hungría y Rumanía con una estrategia enfocada a esquemas de prepago atractivos para posteriormente convertir a estos en usuarios de pospago.

Una tercera etapa sería apostar por mercados más maduros como Alemania, Suiza y otros de Europa del Norte, donde competiría con gigantes como Telefónica, Vodafone, T-Mobile y Orange.

Todo esto, ante las regulaciones estrictas que América Móvil enfrenta en México, donde busca escindir activos para salir de la preponderancia, y debido a que es líder en la mayoría de los 17 mercados latinoamericanos donde tiene presencia.

“En América Latina, América Móvil tiene dificultades para crecer, mientras que en Europa tiene una huella mínima con muchas opciones para realizar adquisiciones en una etapa de consolidación de la industria. Actualmente hay más de 100 operadores que podría comprar”, comentó Jorge Negrete, director de Mediatelecom.

REGIÓN CON OPORTUNIDADES

El mercado europeo tiene un valor equivalente al estadounidense, con 443 mil millones de euros (mde) y 438 millones de líneas asociadas a un smartphone.

En 2014, América Móvil destinó cerca de 60 mil millones de pesos al mercado europeo, lo cual representó 75 por ciento de sus inversiones en adquisiciones y licencias, de acuerdo con su informe anual.

En 2015 la firma planea invertir 8 mil 900 millones de dólares a nivel global y los analistas estiman montos similares para los siguientes años, cada vez más enfocados a Europa.

“Podemos esperar inversiones en infraestructura y compras de operadores pequeños en estos mercados debido al apalancamiento (menos de 2 veces su deuda neta/EBITDA) de la compañía”, dijo Fernando Bolaños, analista de Monex.

En el 2014, Telekom Austria generó a América Móvil ventas de 37 mil 392 millones de pesos, equivalentes al 4.4 por ciento de sus ingresos consolidados.

El mercado de Europa del Este tiene un gran potencial de rentabilidad en comparación con México. Al cierre del primer trimestre del 2015, el margen EBITDA de la firma en México fue de 32 por ciento, frente al 14 por ciento de Europa del Este.

America Movil May Buy More Cos. in Europe, CFO Says: Financiero
2015-06-16 11:55:25.488 GMT


By Karen Eeuwens
(Bloomberg) -- Click here for original story in Spanish.


For Related News and Information:
First Word scrolling panel: FIRST<GO>
First Word newswire: NH BFW<GO>

To contact the reporter on this story:
Karen Eeuwens in Sao Paulo at +55-11-2395-9064 or
keeuwens@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Giulia Camillo at +55-11-2395-9177 or
gcamillo@bloomberg.net

FT : Eurozone officials discuss holding emergency summit on Greece

Eurozone officials discuss holding emergency summit on Greece
Idea raised as fears mount that finance ministers will fail to reach deal

Eurozone officials are discussing holding an emergency summit on Sunday for leaders to tackle the crisis in Greece amid mounting fears a deal to break an ongoing impasse between Athens and its bailout creditors will not be reached at a high-stakes finance ministers meeting on Thursday.

According to two senior officials, the idea of holding a summit of eurozone heads of government was mooted in meetings among representatives of Greece’s creditors on Monday, a day after last-ditch negotiations to reach a deal to release €7.2bn in much-needed bailout aid collapsed.

They said that although the idea was discussed, there is considerable resistance to convening the summit among several creditors since technocratic issues like Greek pension reforms and tax rates are not normally the province of EU presidents and prime ministers.

“If there’s nothing to discuss among finance ministers, there wouldn’t be anything to discuss among heads,” said one official from a Greek creditor institution.

Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s finance minister, said the country has no plans to present new proposals at the finance ministers meeting, signalling the country won’t make further concessions to unlock bailout funds needed to avoid default.

He told Germany’s Bild newspaper: “The eurogroup is not the forum for presenting positions and plans which have not previously been discussed and negotiated at a lower negotiating level.”

Greece remained willing to find a solution but creditors need to take Greece’s proposals seriously to end the impasse, he said, urging German Chancellor Angela Merkel “to take the lead”.

A spokesman for Donald Tusk, the European Council president who would be responsible for convening a summit, said there were currently no plans to hold a special session of leaders.

“The next and hopefully decisive step is the eurogroup [on] Thursday,” said the spokesman, Preben Aamann. “Any further steps will be decided in light of the eurogroup outcome. There should be no illusions that an agreement becomes easier or more advantageous over time.”

Still, the fact the idea was discussed reflects mounting concerns that a deal on a list of Greek economic reforms to release the €7.2bn tranche, which Athens needs to avoid defaulting on its debts, remains elusive ahead of what many officials believe is a make-or-break finance ministers’ session.

Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has publicly insisted that he will not be presenting any new compromise proposals at the Thursday meeting, and officials said the discussion at the eurogroup of finance ministers on Greece could end up being perfunctory as a result.

In addition, some officials believe Athens’ decision to send Mr Varoufakis, the combative finance minister, to the eurogroup session could preclude a deal being worked on Thursday. Eurozone officials have in the past attempted to work directly with Mr Tsipras, who they view as a more pragmatic negotiator than his finance minister.

The two sides remain far apart on what would constitute an acceptable list of economic reforms that Athens would need to adopt to release the bailout funds and avoid default, which could come as soon as two weeks when a €1.5bn loan repayment falls due to the International Monetary Fund.

Athens has resisted suggestions by creditors of cuts to Greece’s public sector pensions and tax increases on sensitive items like electricity. Creditors have insisted they are open to ideas of other budget savings to replace those measures, but so far the Greek government has not responded with proposals the creditors believe are credible.

WSJ : The $50 Billion Question: Can Uber Deliver?

The $50 Billion Question: Can Uber Deliver?

Investors are counting on Uber to upend the delivery business much as it has for taxis, but progress has been slow so far

Uber Technologies Inc. became one of the world’s most valuable startups by creating a new way to transport millions of people in more than 300 cities. But using the same formula to upend the delivery business has turned into a slog.

For more than a year, the San Francisco company has been trying to build what its chief executive once called “an urban logistics fabric” that enables drivers who shuttle passengers with the tap of a smartphone to pick up food, grocery items and packages along the way. In a sign of Uber’s potential, it has more than 200,000 active drivers, roughly double the size of the delivery workforce at United Parcel Service Inc.
So far, though, an Uber same-day delivery program launched a year ago with plans to sign up dozens of retailers has announced partnerships with just six. And one of those, e-commerce company Gilt Groupe Inc., says its arrangement fell short of expectations, partly because Uber was unable to insure high-priced items sold through Gilt’s online store, according to a Gilt spokeswoman.

In recent months, Uber lost out on the opportunity to make deliveries in some cities for Apple Inc. and Starbucks Corp., which discussed tie-ups with Uber but then made deals with startup courier servicePostmates Inc., according to people familiar with the discussions. Popular food-ordering apps Eat24, owned by Yelp Inc., and GrubHub Inc. also held talks with Uber but haven’t reached any agreements.

A food-delivery service called UberEats, launched last fall to speed lunch and dinner items from popular restaurants to Uber users in parts of New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto and Barcelona, sometimes has so few customers that drivers have to throw away food at day’s end.

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Uber says it remains committed to making deliveries and still is in an early phase of testing new approaches to the business. “We will continue to experiment and test new products that benefit both customers and the cities in which we operate,” Jason Droege, who runs the delivery project, known internally as UberEverything, wrote in an email to the Journal.

A spokeswoman adds that response to UberEats “has been overwhelmingly positive.” The service could expand to as many as 15 cities in coming months.

Rivals of Uber in the nascent world of on-demand delivery also are betting that the smartphone era is breeding a new kind of shopper who will want many kinds of products delivered as quickly as the hailing of a car.

Investors in Uber are enthusiastic about the potential, valuing the privately held company at $41 billion in its last funding round. Uber is in talks to raise a new funding round at a valuation of $50 billion or more, people familiar with the matter have said, roughly equal to FedEx Corp.’s stock-market value.

“There’s nobody who has as big of a real-time logistics network than Uber,” says Jason Calacanis, a serial entrepreneur who was one of Uber’s first investors. “If they can make another business line work with this infrastructure, that could transform the business.”

Uber, which had revenue last year of roughly $400 million and is planning to invest more than $1 billion in China this year, hasn’t said publicly how big it hopes to become in the delivery business.

Bill Gurley, a partner at venture-capital firm Benchmark in San Francisco and director at Uber, says he has never seen a financial projection for Uber which includes revenue from deliveries. “This company is growing faster than any company I think there’s ever been in Silicon Valley, and that’s on the core product offering,” Mr. Gurley says.

A lukewarm burrito
Same-day delivery has become fiercely competitive, ranging from upstarts such as Instacart Inc. and Deliv Inc., which carry shipments from grocers and shopping-mall retailers, to technology giants Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc. and Google Inc. Even Lyft Inc., Uber’s largest U.S. rival in ride-sharing, is exploring its own fast-delivery service, says a person familiar with the matter.

The business is a logistical quagmire. One recent evening, Jim Pekarek had 30 minutes to pick up a $7 burrito in San Francisco’s Mission District and deliver it to a customer four miles away.

Driving for ride-hailing service Sidecar Technologies Inc., Mr. Pekarek fetched the burrito from Taqueria Pancho Villa, hurried back to his car, parked halfway on a curb, and sped off. But his recipient was nowhere in sight and didn’t answer the phone.

After consulting a map, circling the block and talking to two customer-service representatives, Mr. Pekarek discovered there was a mix-up between 29th Street and 29th Avenue. He delivered the lukewarm burrito 30 minutes late to the customer, who had sent increasingly impatient text messages that included “Forget it.”

“I’m wondering how this makes financial sense,” says Mr. Pekarek, 33 years old, a videogame developer who picks up passengers and packages for Sidecar, based in San Francisco. Sidecar wouldn’t comment on its financial results.

FedEx offers same-day delivery in more than 20 markets, but such shipments are just a sliver of its overall business. Most customers are happy to wait a day or more for e-commerce shipments, according to Frederick W. Smith, FedEx’s chairman, president and chief executive.

“I think there’s just an urban mythology out there that the app somehow changes the basic cost input of the logistics business,” Mr. Smith told analysts about Uber. “That’s just incorrect.” Uber declines to comment.

Uber has tested deliveries of sushi in Barcelona, designer suits in Manhattan and condoms in Washington, D.C. Mr. Droege’s team now appears to be focusing on UberEats.

He joined the company last year from electrical stun-gun maker Taser International Inc. and was Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s classmate at the University of California, Los Angeles. The two men joined forces on their first startup, a file-sharing service called Scour.

Uber’s network has one big potential cost advantage. Thousands of its drivers, including 22,000 in San Francisco, are constantly passing by homes and businesses, and those drivers pay for their own cars, gas, insurance and maintenance. Half of Uber’s rides in San Francisco occur through UberPool, a service that matches passengers with others heading the same way.

Mr. Gurley, whose firm is an early Uber investor, says the same technology could match packages and people along similar routes.

One of Uber’s main goals with UberEats is to give drivers a way to earn income and stay on the road from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., a slow period when drivers are prone to drop off the service, according to a person who has discussed the program with Mr. Kalanick. UberEats also keeps drivers downtown so they are nearby when people leave work.

Customers pay a delivery fee of $3, and participating drivers get $12 an hour plus $2 per order and temporary bonuses of as much as $20 a day to start making UberEats deliveries, drivers in Chicago say. Those rates may vary in other cities. Uber won’t comment.

Uber drivers in major U.S. cities have average hourly pay of about $19, excluding out-of-pocket costs, according to Uber.

“As a driver, it’s a win-win,” says Ramon De Leon, 47, a former pizza delivery driver turned social-media strategist who drives a red Volkswagen Tiguan for Uber in Chicago. “We dedicate three hours of our day, and with a guaranteed base [pay] plus commission, it’s well worth your time.”

But delivering food creates new challenges for drivers, who have to get out of their cars to pick up the food from a drop-off point, store hot items in heated bags plugged into their cars’ cigarette-lighter outlets and sometimes park illegally while they wait for customers to show up at the curb.

Mr. De Leon says some people have ordered UberEats unintentionally when they actually want an Uber. The company shuts off the delivery service at 2 p.m. and instructs drivers to throw away any remaining food.

He doesn’t expect Uber to disrupt the food-delivery business as much as it has with taxis because it would be hard for Uber to expand beyond the two menu items it offers a day. “What Uber’s doing is getting you a burger from a place you can’t walk to,” Mr. De Leon says.

Uber is also experimenting with bike couriers. Last year, the company started UberRush in New York, aimed at small businesses that see it as a more modern alternative to a traditional bike messenger service.

Shoppers who buy a new suit on Suitsupply’s website during certain promotional periods can select UberRush as a same-day delivery option for $15 extra, compared with free one-day shipment from UPS. At checkout, Uber’s software summons a bike courier to the retailer’s shop in SoHo to pick up the suit and deliver it.

Retailers and customers can watch on a smartphone screen as a package moves across a map. “By being an Uber customer, I already knew how this service worked,” says David Heath, co-founder of New York socks retailer Bombas, who has used UberRush to send socks across town.

Uber’s smartphone savvy doesn’t automatically win over larger businesses, partly because they often rely on complex enterprise software to track inventory and manage shipments.

For example, one national apparel retailer discussed letting Uber handle same-day deliveries from its Manhattan locations to nearby customers but decided to pass because Uber didn’t have a way to link to the retailer’s inventory-management software, a person familiar with the matter says.

If a customer ordered a shirt, Uber’s software had no way of determining if the shirt was available in a specific size and color.

Insurance problems
Gilt hoped that offering free same-day delivery last December through Uber would appeal to last-minute holiday shoppers. But Uber’s insurance policy covered only up to $1,000, forcing Gilt to use a local bike messenger for pricier items, including a $24,000 handbag sold in the promotion. “It was a worthwhile initiative overall that yielded incremental revenue,” says a Gilt spokeswoman.

There was a different snag when Uber announced short-term partnerships last year to deliver high-end jewelry for Alexis Bittar Inc. to customers in New York. When the retailer got “multiple orders at a time, we could not secure that number of Ubers at once,” says a spokeswoman.
Uber ended an experiment delivering toiletries and other household items in Washington, D.C., after six months. There was no minimum purchase price, which meant drivers could go across town to deliver a $1 pack of chewing gum.

“This rarely every happened,” Uber’s spokeswoman says. Uber learned “what our users valued” and “areas where we can make the experience even better.”

Many of Uber’s favorite transportation tactics, such as raising fares to lure drivers onto the road during peak demand, won’t work in the world of logistics, where shipments happen at a fixed price and in a specific amount of time.

“If you are running a supply-chain operation and it starts giving you ‘surge’ pricing of 30% more than you are used to paying, your transportation budget can get blown very quickly,” says David Vernon, a logistics analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein and former executive at shipment giant DHL.

Uber won’t comment on how many deliveries are needed for the business to be profitable. Sidecar’s chief executive, Sunil Paul, says that “sending a driver to go pick up a $4.99 package and have them go spend 30 minutes on a delivery is not a profitable activity.”

Mr. Paul is working to solve the problem through what he calls “bundling,” or moving packages in tandem with people who are traveling a similar route. Hundreds of Sidecar drivers are now shuttling flowers, hot meals and even bags of weed, through a partnership with a medical marijuana service.

Sidecar says half of its rides in San Francisco are now package deliveries. The company guarantees Mr. Pekarek $22 an hour to $35 an hour when he does deliveries, more than he typically makes driving people. But he hasn’t yet gotten a delivery request and a passenger at the same time.

A Sidecar spokeswoman says the reason is because most of Mr. Pekarek’s deliveries have been hot food orders, which require faster movement. “People and packages in the same car are ideally suited for deliveries with bigger delivery windows such as two to four hours,” she says.

In order for Sidecar and Uber to sharply increase delivery volume, both companies might need to direct drivers to pick up certain items at a specified time. That could cause a legal headache for Uber, which is fighting two lawsuits that argue drivers should be classified as full-time employees.

Uber has countered that drivers are independent contractors, citing their ability to choose which passengers they want to pick up.

“As Uber tries to exert more control over how and when the drivers are doing work, that brings them closer to an employee status,” said Jeffrey Hirsch, a law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jeff Holden, Uber’s chief product officer and one of Amazon’s earliest supply-chain executives, says Uber’s delivery business is “still very nascent.” Mr. Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, “is not about celebrating things that are not there yet. He likes to talk about what’s really working in scale.”

When Uber celebrated its fifth anniversary this month, there were subtle signs that Mr. Kalanick has reined in his ambitions.

“In a world where technology can deliver the ride you need within five minutes, just imagine all the other goods and services that you could one day get delivered quickly and safely with just the single touch of a button,” he said. The comment was Mr. Kalanick’s only reference to deliveries, and it came in the last 90 seconds of a 30-minute speech.