Economy Watch – ICSC Predicts Slightly Improved Holiday Season for Retailers
By: Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor
Sep 29, 2009 – The International Council of Shopping Centers expects holiday sales among U.S. retailers to rise 1 percent this year compared with last year, when retail sales fell off a cliff (down 5.8 percent compared with the pre-recession holiday season of 2007). It’s a slightly more optimistic forecast than some other organizations that track retail activity, such as the flat 2009 holiday sales predicted by Retail Forward, as previously reported by CPE.
“This year’s holiday-spending season will be a lot better than last year,” Mike Niemira, the ICSC’s chief economist, said in a statement. “The wear and tear of the recession and financial crisis on the consumer psyche is slowly giving way to renewed hope, optimism and most likely gift buying.”
Or maybe just more coffee drinking, to sooth those battered consumer psyches. Starbucks Corp., which is rolling out its own brand of instant coffee–called “VIA Ready Brew”–on Tuesday to all of its U.S. and Canadian locations, is betting that in the months ahead consumers will buy this Starbucks-branded instant, and pay a premium for it too, since it costs more than the likes of Nescafe Tasters Choice or Sanka. The product will be offered not only at coffee shops, but also such big boxes as Target, Office Depot and REI, as well as warehouse chain Costco.
According to LaSalle Investment Management’s 11th European Regional Economic Growth Index, released Monday, the best city in Europe for commercial property investors is now Munich. London, which had been number one for several years on previous indexes, dropped to number three; Paris took second place.
Property fund managers LaSalle posited that weak GDP in the UK, as well as high unemployment, make the medium-term outlook for commercial property in the British capital not as promising as in previous years. Munich, with a more diversified local economy, will weather the current downturn better than anywhere else in Europe, according to LaSalle.
Wall Street had a significant up day on Monday, seemingly inspired by Xerox’s $6.4 billion acquisition of Affiliated Computer Services, as well as Abbot Labs move to buy a Belgian drug company for $6.6 billion. In terms of M&As, it seemed just like the old days (ca. 2005) for a little while, anyway. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 124.17 points, or 1.28 percent. The S&P 500 was up 1.78 percent and the Nasdaq advanced 1.9 percent.
