Here is a look at some of Monday's top business stories:
Car parts suppliers facing consolidation
LONDON, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- Leading vehicle parts makers will have to consolidate or go out of business within just a few years, as the increasing complexity of vehicles is likely to leave room for only 20 to 30 global suppliers by 2010.
The Financial Times reports on a study to be released Monday, by IBM Business Consulting. The study concludes that the industry is heading towards the supply model of the software industry, with leading manufacturers working more closely with suppliers.
The FT says that despite years of consolidation in the parts industry, "investment bankers expect many of the hundreds of smaller groups -- with turnover of $1 billion or less -- to be forced to sell in the near future."
Venezuela strike hurting U.S. firms
MIAMI, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- Companies around the United States that do business with Venezuela are being hurt by the national strike that began Dec. 2.
The strike has paralyzed Venezuelan oil exports and closed many businesses, but it's also having an impact on U.S. companies from airlines to oil refineries and from traders to soft-drink bottlers, the Miami Herald says. That's especially true in southern Florida.
With tourism down steeply, airlines have cut operations. United Airlines shut its office in Caracas and canceled its daily Miami-Caracas flight, and American Airlines suspended its routes to Caracas from Dallas/Fort Worth and San Juan, Puerto Rico, until Jan. 31. On flights that still serve Caracas, schedules are being shifted so crews and planes don't have to stay overnight, the newspaper says.
In Miami, trading firms that handle import-export shipments to Venezuela can't send many cargoes. The ports are technically open, but shipping lines don't want to serve the country.
Other parts of the United States are feeling the impact, too. The Herald says things are difficult as well for Tulsa, Okla.-based Citgo Petroleum, which is wholly owned by Petroleos de Venezuela and receives about half of its crude from Venezuela.
Citgo's four U.S. refineries process 865,000 barrels of oil per day to supply 14,000-plus gasoline stations in the United States.
The company has kept going by using the spot oil market, but the crude shortage might get so severe that the U.S. government will have to bail it out as a matter of national security.
Tech downturn cuts traffic in Seattle
SEATTLE, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- The recession has hit some areas of Washington state so hard, there's measurably less motor vehicle traffic.
The Seattle Times, citing new statistics from the four-county Puget Sound Regional Council, says that traffic has plunged in some areas since 2000 as the city experiences its worst economic downturn in two decades.
Altogether, the four counties have 4.6 percent fewer jobs than in late 2000, and "when nearly one job in 20 has disappeared, it follows there would be fewer trips to and from work," it says.
Using average daily volumes in fall 2000 (before the recession) and spring 2002, the council found that in the Renton, Bellevue and Redmond areas, traffic fell 12 percent to 19 percent. These parts of the Seattle area are home to many technology firms.
Global retirement savings decline sharply
LONDON, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- A study to be released Monday finds that global savings for retirement fell dramatically last year, with losses that have left some pension funds in a disastrous state.
The Financial Times cites a 10-year study by consulting firm Watson Wyatt. The global head of the consultancy's investment business, Roger Urwin, told the FT that the losses last year were the worst ever seen.
Said the FT: "He warned that last year's fall in assets, combined with the rising value of pension fund liabilities caused by tumbling bond yields, had created a $2.5 trillion hole in the global balance sheet position of pension funds. This amounted to a drop of more than 20 percent."
The survey showed that the world's pension fund industry had its single biggest drop in assets in 10 years last year: 11 percent vs. falls of 7 percent in 2001 and 3 percent in 2000.
Before this, it had risen each year from 1992 to 1999.
At the peak, assets were $13.485 trillion, more than double the $6.161 trillion recorded seven years earlier. By end-2002, pension fund assets totaled $10.8 trillion.
