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It takes Mikael Ohlsson five minutes _ and the help of one other person _ to assemble IKEA’s Ektorp sofa.

After 33 years at the Swedish home-ware chain, the 54-year-old chief executive is an expert at configuring IKEA’s famous flat-pack furniture.

But Ohlsson is not bragging about the fact that he can beat the assembly time the company itself advertises by some 10 minutes. What makes him proud is that the Ektorp can be flat-packed at all.

Seated on a “Blekinge white” example of the Ektorp in a cozily furnished exhibition room at an IKEA store in Zaventem, Belgium, Ohlsson recounts how, until recently, the popular couch also came packed in one of the company’s biggest cardboard boxes _ a pain for customers to squeeze into their cars or carry up narrow staircases.

But then in 2010, IKEA’s product designers came up with a way of breaking the Ektorp into different pieces. The results was a package half its former size, which the company claims took some 7,477 trucks off the roads and cut its yearly CO2 emissions by 4,700 tons. Savings in production and transport costs knocked euro100 ($128) off the price IKEA charges its customers, Ohlsson pointed out.

It’s innovations like these, the CEO says, that make IKEA so successful even in the uncertain economic times that some of its biggest markets are facing.

On Friday, IKEA reported a 10.3 percent jump in net profit to euro2.97 billion ($3.81 billion) for the year ended Aug. 31, even though it cut prices by 2.6 percent. Revenue rose 6.9 percent to euro25.17 billion in the same period and Ohlsson says the sales pace has been accelerating since then _ even as stock markets around the world have taken a dive amid the worsening financial crisis in Europe.

“We are becoming a more natural choice when people are looking after their spending or are concerned about the future,” says Ohlsson, his black trousers, black sweater and half-rimmed glasses all possessing the understatement of a Billy bookcase.

“A lot of people see that home is a very important place, maybe the most important place in their lives.”

While sales have fallen in some Southern European countries like Greece, Ohlsson says IKEA has gained market share in all of them.

Over the past decade, the company expanded into big emerging markets like Russia and China, although 79 percent of its sales are still generated in Europe. In the next two or three years, IKEA wants to open stores in Serbia and Croatia and it has recently bought land in South Korea.

But the biggest opportunity may lie in India, a fast-growing country of around 1 bad credit unsecured personal loans.2 billion people, that Ohlsson says IKEA has been eyeing “patiently but also impatiently” for years.

“The impatience is that of course there are a lot of people that are moving into the city, have better incomes and want to furnish their homes and that’s why there is space for us,” says Ohlsson. “And patient because we wanted FDI (foreign direct investment) legislation to change.”

That change happened last week, when the Indian Commerce Ministry announced it would allow foreign companies that sell products under a single-brand name, such as IKEA, to own 100 percent of their stores there.

Ohlsson and his chief financial officer, Soeren Hansen, say the company is still studying the fine print, to make sure, for instance, that requirements to source a certain percentage of products locally won’t interrupt its cherished value chain, where it controls design, production, storage and retail.

In contrast to other companies, which are under pressure to quickly produce new value for shareholders, IKEA can move more slowly. The retailer is not traded on the stock market, but is owned by a foundation controlled by the family of its octogenarian founder Ingvar Kamprad.

That structure not only protects IKEA from being split up or taken over, but, says Ohlsson, allows him to make investments in new markets or store upgrades that may not pay off for several years.

Throughout the conversation, the CEO stresses IKEA’s eco-friendly policies and humble origins in a poor area of Sweden. In the Zaventem store on the outskirts of Brussels, solar panels on the roof provide up to 20 percent of the energy. The company owns several wind parks and one of its Berlin stores uses local wastewater to control internal temperatures.

IKEA has come a long way from its start in the Smaland region in Southern Sweden. Today it employs 131,000 people in 41 countries and its 287 stores drew in 655 million customers last year.

Ohlsson says he believes the urge to upgrade and become more comfortable does not seem to recede during an economic downturn. Asked whether IKEA’s business was “recession-proof,” Ohlsson laughs somewhat embarrassed.

“I wouldn’t say it like that and it would not be humble to say it,” he said.

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Australia unexpectedly lost jobs for a second straight month in December, capping the nation

Ralcorp board OKs spinoff — Ralcorp Holdings Inc.’s board has approved the spinoff of its Post cereals business, the food maker said Tuesday, and the stock distribution is set to happen Feb. 3. The St. Louis company said it will complete the separation of the two businesses by giving at least 80 percent of Post Holdings Inc.’s outstanding stock to Ralcorp shareholders of record as of Jan. 30. Each stockholder will get one share of Post for every two shares of Ralcorp held on the record date. Ralcorp will maintain a stake in Post. Ralcorp’s stock will continue to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the “RAH” ticker symbol. Post is expected to start trading on the NYSE under the “POST” ticker symbol Feb. 3.

Will new car sales rise? — That clunker in America’s driveway has reached a record old age, but there are signs that people may be growing confident enough in the economy to get a whiff of that fresh new car scent very soon. The average age of a car or truck in the U.S. hit a record 10.8 years last year as job security and other economic worries kept many people from making big-ticket purchases. That’s up from the old record of 10.6 years in 2010, and it and continues a trend that dates to 1995, when the average age of a car was 8.4 years, according to a study of state vehicle registration data by the Southfield, Mich.-based Polk automotive research firm. However, Polk Vice President Mark Seng says that a rebound in sales last year and expected growth for the next couple of years is likely to slow the growth rate in the age of cars as a whole in America.

Airbus touts record in orders — Airbus took in a record number of orders for new commercial aircraft last year as strong demand for its revamped single-aisle plane helped it best U.S. rival Boeing Co. in the race for orders for the fourth year running. The European jet maker said Tuesday that it took in 1,419 net new orders in 2011, worth $140 billion, well above Boeing’s total of 805 aircraft. That topped the previous record of 1,413 net orders recorded by Boeing in 2007. Airbus also delivered 534 aircraft last year, up from 510 a year earlier and keeping the title of world’s biggest jet maker that it has held since 2003. Boeing delivered 477 aircraft last year.

Yahoo co-founder leaves firm — Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is leaving the struggling company’s board. The departure, announced Tuesday, comes just two weeks after Yahoo Inc. hired former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as its CEO. Yang expressed his support of Thompson in his resignation. He had been on Yahoo’s board of directors since the company’s 1995 inception. Yang also is stepping down from the boards of China’s Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. Yahoo is negotiating to sell its stakes in both companies.

earnings

Citigroup’s loan portfolio improved late last year, partly because Americans were better about paying down credit card debt. But choppy financial markets hurt its investment banking profits, and the bank missed expectations. Profit fell 11 percent in the last three months of last year. to $1.16 billion, or 38 cents per share, on revenue of $17.2 billion. A year earlier, Citigroup made $1.3 billion on revenue of $18.4 billion.

Lee Enterprises, owner of the Post-Dispatch and other newspapers, reported a profit of $14.6 million, or 32 cents per share, for the quarter that ended Dec. 25. That compares to $19 million, or 42 cents per share, in the same quarter of 2010. Lee, based in Davenport, Iowa, said the year-over-year comparison would be positive if not for refinancing costs and other unusual items. Excluding such matters, profits would equal 38 cents per share for the recent quarter, compared with 32 cents a year earlier. Operating revenue was down 3.9 percent in the quarter compared with a year earlier. As in earlier periods, Lee showed sharp gains in digital advertising while print ads, which make up the bulk of its advertising, continued to decline. Combined print and digital advertising was down 6.1 percent. Lee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, submitting a reorganization plan pre-approved by the vast majority of its creditors. Chief Financial Officer Carl Schmidt said Tuesday that the court will be asked to set Jan. 30 as the date to make the plan effective, allowing the company to exit bankruptcy. (Staff reports)

Pulaski Financial Corp., owner of Pulaski Bank, reported a slight decline in profit in the first fiscal quarter, compared with a year earlier. The bank earned of $2.525 million, or 23 cents per share, compared with $2.601 million, or 24 cents, a year earlier. CEO Gary Douglass said he expects “meaningful, year-over-year earnings improvement” for this year. (Jim Gallagher)

TD Ameritrade said its fiscal first-quarter net income grew 5 percent, though its revenue was almost unchanged. The online brokerage posted $152 million in net income, or about 27 cents per share, up from $145 million, or 25 cents, a year earlier. Revenue fell less than 1 percent to $653.4 million.

A steadier mortgage business, higher commercial lending and an increase in deposits lifted Wells Fargo & Co.’s fourth-quarter profit by 20 percent. The bank reported that the amount of mortgages it wrote in the last three months of last year jumped 35 percent compared with the third quarter, to $120 billion. Overall loan balances rose to $769.6 billion, up 2 percent from a year earlier. The bank, the largest consumer lender in the U.S., reported a 2 percent increase in commercial loans, to $5.6 billion, reflecting direct lending and the purchase of portfolios from other lenders. The bank’s brokerage division, Wells Fargo Advisors, is based in St. Louis.

— Find full versions of these stories at stltoday.com/business

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Those that count out exact change for their morning brew at Tim Hortons will either have to practice ordering a different size or fork over a few extra pennies.

The beloved Canadian coffee joint will shift the names of its sizes starting next Monday to make room for a 24 oz. cup

Despite warnings from professionals, many individuals had minds of their own. Or maybe it wasn’t their minds at all but rather their stomachs that led them away from the nauseating stock market losses and spasms of the last few years.

Regardless of intent, their approach to investing turned out to be a winning one. As the early-year stock surge gave way to a 17 percent plunge and record volatility after May, many an individual fled from stock funds and clung to bonds, savings accounts and gold.

By the end of 2011, they had earned a shocking 17 percent in 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds, an unusual gain given the historic average of just 5.5 percent a year in Treasurys and the warnings from professionals that U.S. government bonds were likely to turn into losers.

Investors also earned almost 10 percent in gold, and they avoided a 20 percent loss if they ignored the emerging-market funds that professionals had been lauding while the U.S. and Europe struggled with debt problems.

It turned out that financial troubles in Europe crimped demand for emerging markets’ basic materials. And as stressed European banks held off on loans to developing countries, the refuge that investment professionals had envisioned began to fade. Although the Standard & Poor’s 500 ended 2011 up less than a half percent, funds that invest in Latin America declined 22 percent, and China funds fell 24 percent, according to Lipper.

Whipsawed by historically high stock market volatility, a collapse of confidence in American and European leadership, the threat of a global banking crisis and a fragile economy, investors pulled $112 billion out of U.S. stock funds for the year and poured $133 billion into bond funds as a safe haven, said Charles Biderman, chief executive of Trim Tabs.

But the quest for safety went farther than bond funds.

People poured $710 billion into savings accounts, the fifth-highest amount in history, Biderman said.

“People have been burned so many times in equities in the last decade they weren’t going to take a chance,” said Biderman. “It’s going to take a long time for huge inflows into equity funds again.”

In fact, investors have been scared since 2008. During the last three years, investors have poured a remarkable $900 billion into bond funds and yanked $242 billion from U.S. stock funds, said Biderman. Despite stronger performance by the U.S. stock market than foreign markets, investors bet more on global funds than U.S. funds. They have put about $89 billion into global funds.

Investors have not regained the money they lost when the market started its 57 percent decline in October 2007. Investing in the Wilshire 5000, or the full stock market of large and small stocks, has left investors with a loss of about 17 percent, or about $4 trillion collectively free online credit report.

Sticking with solid dividend-paying stocks in defensive sectors such as health care, utilities and consumer staples such as soap and toothpaste did help in 2011, as investors worried about the global economy’s sliding back into a recession. The Dow Jones industrial average of blue-chip stocks climbed about 5.5 percent for the year, and funds that invest in health care stocks and utilities averaged gains of more than 7.5 percent as investors sought security and income from dividends. The Vanguard High Dividend Yield exchange-traded fund, which selects stocks paying high dividends, gave investors a 10.5 percent gain.

Amid worries of a new global banking collapse, banks throughout the world were among the worst performers. Funds that invest in U.S. banks declined about 13 percent.

One of the biggest mistakes of the year was to equate precious metal stock funds with gold investing. The precious metal funds, which include gold and silver mining companies, lost 22 percent, while the SPDR Gold Trust exchange-traded fund gained 9.6 percent. The gold ETF invests in gold bullion, not stocks. Still, gold shed a significant amount of its gains late in the year. By August, as investors worried about U.S. and European debt, gold had climbed 33 percent in 2011.

The other mistake was to bet on interest rates’ rising. If rates had risen, advisers’ warnings to avoid bonds would have been wise. But instead, Treasurys soared 17 percent, and the average U.S. bond fund climbed about 8 percent because investors worried about a recession. In recessions, investors tend to want the safety of bonds, and as they pour money into them, interest rates and yields drop while values of the bonds climb.

With yields near record low levels, it’s not likely Treasurys can repeat 2011 gains again.

“Investors need to realize they can lose money in bonds” if interest rates start climbing, said Biderman. Still, 2011 was humbling for anyone making any prediction, and analysts are expecting the same for early this year, as great uncertainty remains about Europe’s fate.

Given that scenario, holding a mixture of roughly half stocks and half bonds may be the best policy. It will relieve dependence on either stocks or bonds and insulate investors from losses in each. That approach with funds for people retiring in 2015 gave near-retirees a 0.11 percent loss in 2011 — a disappointment, to be sure, but also not the type of loss that will ruin a retirement.

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A wave of explosions struck two Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 23 people and intensifying fears that insurgents are stepping up attacks after the U.S. troop withdrawal that was completed last month.

The attacks began with the explosion of a bomb attached to a motorcycle near a bus stop where day laborers gather to look for work in the Sadr city neighborhood. The blast killed eight people, police said.

One of those who witnessed the attack said it filled the area with thick black smoke.

“People have real fears that the cycle of violence might be revived in this country,” said Tariq Annad, a 52-year-old government employee who lives nearby.

That attack was followed by the explosion of a roadside bomb nearby that killed another person. Police found a third bomb nearby and defused it.

Less than two hours later, two blasts struck the Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah in the north of the capital, killing 14 people.

Officials said the Kazimiyah blasts occurred almost simultaneously, with at least one caused by a car bomb.

Hospital officials confirmed the causalities, which included at least 60 wounded.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

Iraqi leaders have warned of a resurgence of Sunni and Shiite militants and an increase in violence following the departure of U no credit check payday loans.S. troops.

The early morning blasts followed deadly attacks Wednesday that targeted the homes of police officers and a member of a government-allied militia. Those attacks, in the cities of Baqouba and Abu Ghraib outside Baghdad, killed four people, including two children, officials said.

The latest violence comes as Iraqi politicians remain deadlocked in a festering political crisis that threatens to re-ignite simmering sectarian tensions in the country.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, dominated by Iraq’s majority Shiites, issued an arrest warrant for the country’s top Sunni politician last month. The Sunni official, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, is currently holed up in Iraq’s Kurdish north _ effectively out of reach of state security forces.

Al-Maliki’s main political rival, the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc, is boycotting parliament sessions and Cabinet meetings to protest what they say are efforts by the government to consolidate power and marginalize them.

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Yemeni soldiers battled al-Qaida-linked militants Monday outside the southern city of Zinjibar, which remains partly under the control of the Islamists. Five soldiers and four fighters were killed, a military official said.

The intense fighting in northern and eastern Zinjibar included artillery and rocket shelling on militant hideouts, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

He said the military units were engaged in pitched battles with armed gangs deployed on the streets, and have advanced on areas controlled by the militants.

At least 60 people, including 23 soldiers, have been killed in the fighting since last week.

Islamic militants, including some with links to the al-Qaida branch in Yemen, seized control of Zinjibar and another town in April and May. They were taking advantage of the turmoil surrounding the popular uprising against President Ali Abdullah Saleh to expand their area of operations.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula was behind several nearly successful attempts to attack U.S. targets, including the failed attempt to down a passenger jet bound for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. Washington believes it is the most dangerous of several al-Qaida’s offshoots around the globe.

President Saleh has cooperated with the U.S. in fighting the group and used the threat of al-Qaida in arguing that he could not relinquish power in Yemen despite the protests calling for him to go since February payday loans.

The U.S. withdrew its support of Saleh in the summer, and the autocratic leader signed a deal last month to transfer power in exchange for immunity from prosecution over the deaths of protesters and corruption during his 33 years in power.

The deal has failed to quell the protests in Yemen, which have recently expanded to include labor strikes, calling for Saleh loyalists to be removed from office and for Saleh to be put on trial.

On Monday, Yemen’s military agreed to replace a commander accused of corruption, apparently settling a brief strike by 1,000 soldiers, said Anwar Abdullah, an officer in a military department that deals with public affairs and army morale. Abdullah said that the strikers demanded the ouster of department head Maj. Gen. Ali al-Shater for mismanagement, accusing him of running his own prison, in which some soldiers were jailed even for minor offenses. Some were kept in chains.

Abdullah said after the prime minister intervened in the dispute Monday, it was agreed that al-Shater would be replaced.

The soldiers said they would end their strike when the defense minister appoints a new commander.

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Natural rubber demand in China, the world

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Four Yemeni soldiers and two al-Qaida-linked militants were killed in clashes in the country’s south, military and medical officials said Sunday.

The fighting took place overnight outside the city of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province that Islamic militants seized earlier this year, a military official said. A medical official said six soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to talk to the media.

Al-Qaida-linked militants have overrun swaths of territory in Abyan, taking advantage of a security vacuum that has developed as a result of Yemen’s ongoing political unrest amid nine months of massive protests demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Fighting with the militants has continued as Yemen tries to emerge from its crisis. Saleh is due to step down by the end of the month in return for immunity from prosecution under a deal he signed last month. Under the U.S.- and Saudi-backed deal, a national unity government has already been formed, bringing in opposition parties.

Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has also formed a military committee joining both pro-regime forces and military units that defected to the opposition. On Saturday, the committee had succeeded in removing fighters, weapons and equipment of both sides from two main streets of the capital, Sanaa. But armed pockets of the rival forces could still be seen in side streets nearby.

The U.N. secretary-general’s envoy to Yemen, Jamal bin Omar, told reporters before he left Yemen Saturday that the military committee should end its work next Saturday in separating the rival sides, which at times engaged in heavy battles in the capital.

Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, the commander of the First Armored Division who defected and joined the protesters in March, expressed his backing for the military committee after meeting Sunday with ambassadors supervising enforcement of the deal.

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