Australia & New Zealand Banking Group , is going to cut 900 jobs are the Australian real estate market slumps. Financial Jobs are facing a carnage with banks cutting down left , right and centre .ANZ which is one of the 4 largest banks in Australia joins its couterparts around the world in sharply cutting banker jobs as the global slowdown bits the financial industry. Note the outlook in the Financial Industry is that of a Depression even as the world economy faces some hiccups from the European Debt Crisis . Real Estate Markets have been distorted globally by bad regulation , low interest rates etc. While China is seeing the first signs of a troubled real estate market, USA has been feeling the effects since the last 3-4 years. Australia has also joined in with the popping of the real estate bubble. Alongwith construction and real estate companies , financial companies who make the real estate mortgages are the worst hit in general.
The Indian Solar Power has been one bright spot in the gloomy infrastructure and engineering sectors in 2011. With share prices crashing with growing corruption, land acquisition and financing problems, Solar Energy has surged in India thanks to government support and subsidies . While a number of Green Technology companies have started up to capitalize on the growing renewable energy trend, the established constuction companies in India have not been far behind . While utilities like Tata Power, Adani, Reliance Power, NTPC have already built or are setting up power plants based on solar panels , L&T has become a major solar EPC players . L&T is now raising debt with a $100 million issue to fund its solar expansion plans .
The Indian government is going to set targets for large power users so that their energy usage is capped. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) is going to supervise this program in which Energy Saving Certificates will be awarded . This certificates can be traded on the energy exchanges providing an incentive for large energy users to improve energy efficiency . Note Renewable Energy Certificates (REC) are already trading successfully on IEX since the last year . REC have promoted the usage of Renewable Energy by providing a market linked mechanism to find prices for green energy in India.
The Financial Industry will shed another 150,000 jobs according to Richard Bove, an analyst at Rochdale Securities LLC . Royal Bank of Scotland the bankrupt UK bank that was taken over the British government is going to kill a number of investment banking divisions and will fire 3500 people. RBS has already fired thousand before in wholesale and corporate banking . Now RBS will completely exit from a number of divisions like M&A, Cash Equities etc. which will mean thousands of firings . In an environment when financial jobs are scarce , this means that the fired thousands will have a tough time getting into the workforce again.RBS is going to fire 3500 people in addition to 2000 already announced. This would bring down the 24,000 pre crisis headcount by almost 45% .
The number of solar factories closing in Europe has increased tremendously in the 2nd half of 2012 despite a record surge in Germany which would have raised 2011 solar growth to 25%. However the relentless price pressure from Chinese solar panel companies has decimated the solar companies in the West. While there have been a number of famous cases of bankruptcy like Solyndra and Solon, there have been bigger solar factory closedowns. REC has closed down more than 1 GW of wafer capacity while a pure play Spanish solar wafer factory also closed down recently . British solar wafer maker PV Crystalox is also near the verge of failure. Solar Wafer prices have fallen by almost 60% in the last 1 year with the prices much below the cost of production in Europe. It seems unlikely that any solar wafer maker will remain alive in Europe by 2013.
Popular Indian mainstream media organizations are spreading a report by Barclays that links the building of tall skyscrapers in India and China to an imminent crash in the economies of both . Note China has been building skyscrapers for a long time and the real estate downfall has already started . India is barely building 4-5 skyscrapers none will be the highest , so the Indian theory is even more specious. However the content scraping mainstream media outlets continue to propagate the story to the top of the news