If there is one thing a soccer fan likes to have at the match, it’s a beer. And if there’s one thing that big-event organizers love to have, it's major corporate sponsorship.

The former is what led FIFA to inform the next two countries scheduled to hold the men’s World Cup to “drop restrictions on beer sales in stadiums,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

"Alcoholic drinks are part of the FIFA World Cup, so we're going to have them. Excuse me if I sound a bit arrogant but that's something we won't negotiate," FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke commented at a press conference in Brazil, the BBC reports.Continue reading...

Sir Richard Branson is indeed taking over the world. And now he may be taking over your money.

The billionaire Brit and founder of all things Virgin on earth — including Virgin Atlantic Airways, Virgin Records, Virgin Mobile — and beyond, with Virgin Galactic aiming to talk regular folks into space — is this week pushing Virgin Money, the Virgin-branded bank that's taking over Northern Rock's 75 branches in the U.K. and 21,000 staff members for £747million ($948.3 million), according to the Mirror.

After the Northern Rock acquisition was announced, Virgin moved to add an annual £60 ($78) fee on every account, but then changed course and decided to offer it as an option, the Mail reports. As a sweetener, the bank will likely “offer perks such as discounts on Virgin flights or gym memberships,” the paper notes.Continue reading...

British Petroleum has rarely been out of the spotlight since the Deepwater oil spill in 2010 that put nearly five million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. This week it's back in the news again, with word that the still-in-turnaround energy giant has extinguished its solar power business.

The simple reason, according to The Guardian, is that — despite being one of the world's largest solar companies — BP says it can't turn a profit on selling panels at a time while it spends $20 billion annually on its oil and gas businesses.

Despite its much-ballyhooed aim to move "beyond petroleum," BP has been quietly closing its solar panel factories in recent years, with around 1,750 workers laid off just in the last three years according to the Guardian. "At the same time," the report adds, "the company has gradually retreated from other areas such as carbon capture and storage and shut down its separate London headquarters for BP Alternative Energy."

Where BP is not scaling back its financial investment: sports, as a London 2012 Olympics partner, and the arts.Continue reading...

Two different gambling-related trademarks have led to legal cases involving millions of dollars. One was decided Monday and resulted in two men losing a $5 million case against the Georgia State Lottery, while the other remains a mess between a Minnesota casino and a Las Vegas signage maker.

The Georgia State Lottery folks must feel like they just won one of their own games since two men that were suing the organization for $5 million lost their case on Monday, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

The suit involved the logo for Georgia’s MONEYBAG$ game, a velvet pouch with wooden tiles, which George Kyle had registered as a trademark in 1995. It was used by the Georgia Lottery with permission from 1999 to 2002, but it also appeared on scratch-off tickets in 2005 and 2007, the Journal-Constitution reports.

“Scientific Games, which prints the tickets for the Georgia Lottery, did not seek Kyle's permission to use the logo again” and the Georgia Lottery went ahead with the game and grossed profits of $2.4 million in 2005 and $2.6 million in 2007, the paper reports.

In Monday’s 4-3 ruling, the state Supreme Court said that “the Georgia Lottery is shielded from liability by sovereign immunity,” the AJC reports, and that Kyle and another involved party, Frank Mankovitch “failed to legally establish trademark rights for their logo.”Continue reading...

Their timing simply could not be better. BankSimple, the banking 3.0 startup we covered in April, has changed its name to Simple and opened its virtual doors (at Simple.com, naturally) to the public. Not really a bank at all, Simple partners with banks and financial institutions to offer money management services online.

Simple is capitalizing on the growing frustration with big banks and the name change, “is a better representation of what we aspire to. It releases us from the constraints of an industry in desperate need of innovation,” writes Joshua Reich, Simple co-founder and CEO, in a blog post.

The public beta follows a September sneak peak on their blog which stated: "The product isn’t finished. It will never be finished. We’re constantly improving. But we’ve now reached the point where we’ve learned as much as possible from testing internally and in a few weeks we’ll be shipping cards to our first real customers."

Simple offers no fees for ATM withdrawals, no monthly management fees, no overdraft fees, no minimum balance, live customer support and dedicated account interfaces for mobile and web platforms. The goal is no less than to overhaul traditional front-end banking as banks are under increasing public scrutiny for their part in the global financial crisis.Continue reading...

Walmart has been trying to return to its roots as purveyor of a huge variety of goods, merchandised in a charmingly busy way, at the reliably lowest prices. Now the world's largest retailer may benefit from applying the same sort of approach to one of its newest areas of endeavor: financial services.

This may cause some cognitive dissonance for the Occupy Wall Street crowd, which surely is populated with many Walmart haters as well as Wall Street haters. But it turns out that Walmart is coming to the rescue of ordinary Americans with low-fee check-cashing services that undercut the huge debit-card and other fees being layered on by banks -- much to the chagrin of the protesters and many other Americans.

Long ago, Walmart tried to obtain a federal charter for a bank, but withdrew in the face of opposition by the banking industry and lawmakers. So instead, its Money Centers have resorted to putting together a menu of a la carte services to appeal to the vast numbers of "unbanked" and "unhappily banked" Americans.Continue reading...

While some companies are embracing the ‘Occupy’ demonstrations popping up across the United States, others like Bank of America have made the decision to ignore the impact that these demonstrations can have on consumer sentiment.

Less than two weeks after ‘Occupy Wall Street’ demonstrations began in downtown New York, executives at Bank of America thought it a good time to roll out a new $5 monthly charge to its customers making check card purchases in a given month. Two other large banks, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo, are also reported to be considering similar fees.

Bank of America is now taking heat (including being spoofed on Ellen) for its recent fee introduction from both legislators and the media. Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill. urged customers to take their money to different banks. A Fox Business Network anchor went further and made headlines when she cut up a Bank of America debit card on air.

Consumer watchdogs will argue that the fee is not fair and that the government needs to protect consumers; however, the damage for Bank of America has already been done thanks to all of the negative press its announcement has received. Recent reports of sluggish performance on the bank’s website over the past few week have even been attributed to the bank’s fee announcement.Continue reading...

Following a strategic review of its global operations that was announced in May, HSBC will reap $2.4 billion by selling its credit card and retail services operations in the U.S. to Capital One. The $32.7 billion deal called "a home run" by TheStreet.com.

Stuart Gulliver, HSBC Group CEO, stated in a press release: "This transaction continues the execution of the strategy we announced at our Investor Day on 11 May to focus our US business on the international needs of customers in Commercial Banking, Global Banking & Markets, Retail Banking and Wealth Management and onshore Global Private Banking. Although dilutive in the short term, this transaction will reduce Group risk-weighted assets by up to US$40bn which, together with an estimated post-tax gain on sale of US$2.4bn, will allow capital to be redeployed over time."Continue reading...