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Sino-Forest Short Seller Carson Block Says China Consumption ‘Overblown’

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-15/short-seller-muddy-waters-block-says-chinese-consumer-demand-overstated.html

Carson Block, the short seller who runs research firm Muddy Waters LLC, said U.S. investors are too eager to put their money into China where consumer demand is overstated. “The idea of the Chinese consumer has always been somewhat overblown,” Block said yesterday on a panel at a Bloomberg Link Conference in New York. “Part of the reason for that is that you have luxury-goods manufacturers such as Louis Vuitton that report outstanding sales in China.” Muddy Waters research alleging Sino-Forest Corp. (TRE) had overstated timber holdings prompted a 67 percent slump in the company’s shares. Sino-Forest has denied the allegations. Businesses are turning to China to bolster sales as rising unemployment and government indebtedness damp confidence in developed nations. Foreign direct investment in China climbed 11.1 percent in August from a year earlier, a government report showed yesterday, as the nation’s growth encourages companies from Volkswagen AG to Caterpillar Inc. to expand. Inflows of overseas cash are inhibiting Premier Wen Jiabao’s campaign to control inflation, while higher interest rates and tighter lending limits are undermining attempts to make consumers a bigger driver of the world’s second-largest economy. Chinese government data last week showed retail sales growth slowed to 17 percent in August, less than the average of the past five years. Shiny Buildings Analysts at Capital Economics , a London-based research group, estimate that private consumption in China may have fallen to 34 percent of gross domestic product last year, the lowest level since the country began opening its economy to market mechanisms more than three decades ago. Just 10 years ago, the share was 46 percent, Capital Economics calculates. “We see the tall, shiny buildings in Shanghai or Beijing and we meet with the Chinese who have graduated from Harvard, who have somewhat been inculcated with western values, and we mistakenly extrapolate this to the large portion of the economy,” Block said. Sales of luxury goods in the world’s most populous nation are projected to surge eightfold to 74 billion euros ($103 billion) in the 10 years to 2020, according to Credit Agricole SA’s CLSA Asia Pacific Markets unit. Asia accounted for 28 percent of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA (MC) ’s revenue in the six months through June, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Paris-based maker of Celine handbags and TAG Heuer watches reported a 25 percent increase in first-half profit on July 26. Shares of Hong Kong- and Mississauga, Ontario-based Sino- Forest have slumped 67 percent in Toronto since Muddy Waters issued research questioning the company’s timber holdings on June 2. Canada ’s main securities watchdog said some Sino-Forest directors may have engaged in acts “related to its securities” that they “knew or should have known” perpetuated a fraud. Block had a short position on Sino-Forest shares, as disclosed in the report. Short selling is the sale of borrowed shares with the hope of profiting when they fall. To contact the reporters on this story: Saijel Kishan in New York at skishan@bloomberg.net ; Richard Frost in Hong Kong at rfrost4@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at cbaumgaertel@bloomberg.net

Kazatomprom First-Half Profit More Than Doubled to $199 Million

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-31/kazatomprom-first-half-profit-more-than-doubled-to-199-million.html

Kazatomprom, Kazakhstan ’s state- owned uranium mining company, more than doubled profit in the first half. Net income rose to 29.7 billion tenge ($199 million), compared with 11.9 billion tenge a year earlier, the Almaty- based company said on its website today. To contact the reporter on this story: Nariman Gizitdinov in Almaty at ngizitdinov@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Voss at sev@bloomberg.net

Wealthy in U.S. Prioritize Gains Over Safety, BofA Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-21/wealthy-in-u-s-prioritize-gains-over-safety-bofa-says.html

Millionaires have reversed their priorities in the past year to focus on making money rather than preserving it as they wait to move their cash into stocks. About 60 percent of individuals with at least $3 million in investable assets said asset growth is a higher priority than preservation, according to an annual survey by Bank of America Corp. ’s U.S. Trust unit being released tomorrow. In 2012, 58 percent of respondents said protecting their wealth was more important than seeking higher returns in riskier investments. The attitude change hasn’t translated into action by most, said Keith Banks, president of U.S. Trust. More than half of those surveyed, or 56 percent, said they hold a large amount of money in cash accounts. Sixteen percent said they plan to move the money in the next couple of months. “People are recognizing the equity market is back,” Banks said in an interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. “Their mindset has shifted but they’re not connecting the dots.” Affluent investors will shift more cash into equities once they gain more confidence in the economy and job growth, Banks said. Last year, the wealthy pointed to uncertainties about European debt and the U.S. presidential election as reasons for avoiding stocks, Banks said. While they’ve talked less about those issues in 2013, some families haven’t invested their cash after gains in the stock market, he said. “Now people are saying: ‘I missed it,’” Banks said. Market Rally The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) of stocks returned 31 percent in the 12 months ended May 17. Investors poured money into bond funds and cash accounts after the 2008 global financial crisis, when the S&P 500 dropped 38 percent during the year. While U.S. stock mutual funds attracted $21.5 billion in the three months ended March 31, the most in a quarter since 2004, fixed income continued to lead asset classes, according to Morningstar Inc. (MORN) Taxable-bond funds saw deposits of $69.1 billion in the first quarter, the Chicago-based researcher said. Wealthy investors have become less risk averse, Banks said. About 37 percent this year said pursuing a higher return even with more risk is a priority, compared with 30 percent in 2012. Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said they don’t consider themselves more financially secure today than five years ago, in part because of a sense that their situation could change at any time. Eighty-six percent said a long-term buy-and-hold approach is the best investment strategy and about 40 percent said they plan to gradually invest their cash holdings over 12 to 24 months. The survey didn’t ask respondents to give a value or percentage of their holdings in cash. Generation Y Investors ages 18 to 32, known as Generation Y, were among the most wariest in terms of equities, survey data show. About half said investing in the stock market is overrated, compared with 19 percent of Baby Boomers ages 49 to 67. The U.S. Trust survey was based on responses from 711 non-U.S. Trust clients over age 18, each of whom said they had $3 million or more in assets not including the value of their primary residence. About one-third of respondents had $5 million to $10 million and another third had more than $10 million. It was conducted online by research firm Phoenix Marketing International in February and March. U.S. Trust is part of the global wealth and investment management unit of Charlotte , North Carolina-based Bank of America. It oversees about $332 billion in client balances and serves those who usually have at least $3 million in investable assets. To contact the reporter on this story: Margaret Collins in New York at mcollins45@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at cbaumgaertel@bloomberg.net

Commodities Fall for Second Day on Oil Inventories, Fed Minutes

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-04/commodities-fall-for-second-day-on-oil-inventories-fed-minutes.html

Commodities fell for a second day as oil tumbled after U.S. stockpiles surged the most since 2008 and as the Federal Reserve signaled it may refrain from more monetary stimulus. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index of 24 commodities dropped as much as 2 percent as West Texas Intermediate oil futures, which has a weighting of 30.25 percent in the index , fell after the Energy Department reported inventories rose 9.01 million barrels last week. Gold and silver tumbled as the dollar strengthened after the Fed’s statement. Oil inventories gained as U.S. domestic output rose 2.9 percent to 6.05 million barrels a day, the most since 1999, department data showed. The Fed will refrain from increasing monetary accommodation unless the economic expansion falters or prices rise at a rate slower than its 2 percent target, according to minutes of the March 13 meeting released yesterday. “The fundamentals for the energy sector are bearish,” said John Caruso, a Chicago-based commodities broker at RJO Futures. “Commodities are falling and it’s a direct result from what we’ve heard yesterday with the Fed minutes. Investors are worried and they are parking their money on the sidelines.” The GSCI declined 1.6 percent to 686.35 at 12:02 p.m. Oil for May delivery fell $2.31, or 2.2 percent, to $101.70 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after touching $101.20, the lowest level since Feb. 16. Silver Slips Silver was the biggest decliner in the index. The most active May contract plunged 5.7 percent to $31.385 an ounce on the Comex in New York. Gold for June delivery slumped 3.1 percent to $1,619.60 an ounce on the Comex. The Dollar Index (DXY) , which tracks the U.S. currency against six counterparts including the euro and the yen, gained 0.4 percent, rising for a second day. A stronger dollar erodes demand for raw materials as alternative assets. Crude stockpiles increased 9.01 million barrels to 362.4 million barrels last week, the highest level since June 17, according to the Energy Department. Inventories were projected to increase 2.5 million barrels, according to the median estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. “Today’s report is evidence that there is sufficient oil supply out there,” said James Williams , an economist at WTRG Economics, an energy-research firm in London , Arkansas. To contact the reporter on this story: Moming Zhou in New York at mzhou29@bloomberg.net ; To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net

Russia Central Bank May Be Able to Limit Deposit Rates, RIA Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-11/russia-central-bank-may-be-able-to-limit-deposit-rates-ria-says.html

Russia ’s government submitted a draft law to parliament that is supposed to grant the central bank the right to limit bank deposit interest rates, RIA Novosti said, citing the office of the lower chamber of parliament. The draft law is expected to let the central bank appoint its representatives to Russia’s top 100 banks by amount of assets or deposits, the agency said. To contact the reporter on this story: Marina Sysoyeva in Moscow at msysoyeva@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net

HTC Bets on ’One’ to Break Vicious Cycle of Slumping Sales

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-19/htc-one-smartphone-polishes-media-in-bid-to-reverse-sales-slump.html

HTC Corp. released its most important smartphone for the year as investors wait to see if HTC One can revive fortunes at a company that’s seen its market share and revenue more than halve in 18 months. Chief Executive Officer Peter Chou took to the stage in London to tout a handset with an aluminum body, a camera that captures three times more light than any other, and new software aimed at differentiating it from competitors including Samsung Electronics Co. , Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. “We see this as a huge opportunity for us to bring new excitement to the smartphone experience,” Chou said. “We as an industry need a new approach to the smartphone.” HTC’s global smartphone ranking dropped to eighth in the fourth quarter, from fourth six quarters prior, as Asian rivals offer a mix of cheaper and more-advanced devices to consumers from Europe to Asia. With its stock down more than 70 percent since a peak in 2011, success of HTC One will be key to whether profit can rebound after five quarters of decline. “This is their most important product for the year and will determine whether earnings double or halve in 2013,” said Lu Chia-lin , who rates the stock hold at Daiwa Securities Group in Taipei. “They’re already in a vicious cycle of failed launches leading to lower brand awareness which hurts future releases.” ‘Halo Product’ HTC posted earnings per share last year of NT$20.16, down from NT$73.32 a year earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. A successful product release could boost EPS to NT$40 this year, while a “mediocre” device may see it fall to NT$10, Lu said by phone. Its shares fell 0.7 percent to NT$280 as of 10:09 a.m. in Taipei today, taking its decline this year to 6.8 percent compared with a 4.2 percent gain in the benchmark Taiex index. This year’s decline follows a 40 percent drop last year and a 42 percent slide in 2011. HTC One includes front-facing stereo speakers, a 4.7-inch 1080p full high-definition display and a Qualcomm Inc. Snapdragon 600 1.7 Gigahertz quad-core processor. Models with 4G LTE Internet will be available in some markets, it said. “I could see it being a hero product for them, a halo product,” said David McQueen , an analyst for market researcher Informa Telecoms & Media in London. Among the new software is BlinkFeed, an application that updates news, photos and social media in real time on the handset’s home screen. HTC Zoe transforms photos into three- second videos, and HTC Sense TV acts as an interactive program guide and television remote control. Revenue Drop “Smartphones are going to go from being smart to being alive,” AOL Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong said at the London event while showing content features of the HTC One. “It’s going to serve a real consumer need, which is getting instantaneous updates from content.” HTC’s revenue last quarter dropped to NT$60 billion ($2 billion), less than half the NT$124 billion it posted in the second quarter of 2011 when it was the world’s fourth-largest smartphone vendor at 10.7 percent share. Its plunge to eighth, with a 3.1 percent share, puts it behind BlackBerry, according to data from Bloomberg Industries and IDC Corp. Component shortages and product defects hampered sales of the One series of handsets, which were unveiled in February last year and released in April with three basic models -- V, S and X -- for the low, middle and high-end. “They need to avoid a repeat of last year’s HTC One series which had many complaints right from launch,” said Jeff Pu , who rates HTC add at Fubon Financial Holding Co. in Taipei. HTC will benefit from stronger support from mobile operators seeking alternatives to the iPhone, which commands higher operator subsidies that cut into profits, Pu said. Over 185 operators will offer the device starting from March, HTC said. That’s more than the 140 which sold the One X last year, Pu said. To contact the reporter on this story: Tim Culpan in Taipei at tculpan1@bloomberg.net ; Amy Thomson in London at athomson6@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net .

Rosneft Still Weighing Arctic, Swap Deal Before May 16 Deadline on BP Deal

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-13/rosneft-still-weighing-arctic-swap-deal-before-may-16.html

BP Plc (BP/) remains “optimistic” of agreeing on a share swap with state-run OAO Rosneft as a May 16 to reach a deal approaches. Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, is still weighing its decision, Rustam Kazharov, a spokesman for the Moscow-based company, said by phone today. An arbitration court ruled on May 6 that the share swap may go ahead if Rosneft agrees to replace BP in an Arctic exploration deal with the U.K. company’s local venture, TNK-BP. “I can’t comment about time but I’m sure we’ll see a deal sooner or later,” BP Chief Executive Officer Robert Dudley said today in St. Gallen , Switzerland. BP’s billionaire partners in TNK-BP won an injunction in February on the Rosneft alliance, saying their shareholder agreement gives their 50-50 venture exclusive rights to pursue opportunities in Russia. The BP-Rosneft alliance was set to become Dudley’s biggest deal since becoming head of the U.K. producer following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year. TNK-BP, set up in 2003, made BP the biggest foreign producer in Russia and now accounts for a quarter of BP’s output and a fifth of its reserves. Five years later, the billionaires, represented by a group called AAR, ousted Dudley as head of TNK- BP as part of their resolution of a shareholder battle over strategy. Tribunal on TNK-BP Rosneft agreed on April 14, the day the swap agreement initially expired, to move the deadline to May 16, giving BP and the billionaires a month more for arbitration. The tribunal on May 6 allowed BP to swap 5 percent of its shares for about 9.5 percent of Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, as long as Rosneft agrees to take on TNK-BP as its partner for Kara Sea exploration. The stakes, each valued at about $7.8 billion when the alliance was announced on Jan. 14, may be held for investment purposes only, and neither Rosneft nor BP is allowed seats on each other’s boards, according to the tribunal. “The company will make a decision that best meets its shareholders’ interests,” Kazharov said, declining to give a timeframe on a decision. “The company wants to take a very balanced approach to making a decision.” Kara Sea Rosneft CEO Eduard Khudainatov said it needs BP’s expertise to explore offshore Arctic resources, rather than a partnership with TNK-BP. The Kara Sea blocks Rosneft offered to BP contain as much as 100 billion barrels of oil equivalent. "TNK-BP is unlikely get into the project on the back of the court ruling," Lev Snykov and Svetlana Grizan, analysts at VTB Capital, said in a May 10 research. Rosneft could ally with another producer, buy out AAR jointly with BP, or, “somewhat less likely,” BP’s stake with AAR, the analysts said. BP offered its partners participation in the Arctic, cash and international projects to allow BP to proceed with the Rosneft deal, Dudley said last month. The Russian partners also rejected a $27 billion buyout offer from BP and Rosneft. A BP and Rosneft alliance is “attractive” and the two companies are continuing talks, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said today, declining to comment on TNK-BP. To contact the reporters on this story: Anna Shiryaevskaya in Moscow at ashiryaevska@bloomberg.net ; Leigh Baldwin in Zurich at lbaldwin3@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net

DER PAO CONSTRUC November Sales Fall 90.83% (Table) : 2523 TT

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-07/der-pao-construc-november-sales-fall-90-83-table-2523-tt.html

DER PAO CONSTRUC said unconsolidated sales in November fell 90.83% to NT$1,180,000 from NT$12,868,000, according to a statement filed to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. (Figures are in thousands of New Taiwan dollars) ================================================================= 11/2011 11/2010 Sales 1,180 12,868 YOY% -90.83% -----------------Year-to-date----------------- Sales 41,383 216,856 YOY% -80.92% =================================================================

Telefonica, Iberdrola, Amadeus, Acerinox: Iberian Equity Preview

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-13/telefonica-iberdrola-amadeus-acerinox-iberian-equity-preview.html

The following companies may have unusual price changes in Spanish and Portuguese trading today. Stock symbols are in parentheses and share prices are from the previous close. Spain’s IBEX 35 Index (IBEX) slid 1.69 percent to 9,950.8 in Madrid. Portugal’s PSI-20 Index (PSI20) dropped 1.61 percent to 7,291.09. Spanish stocks: Telefonica SA (TEF) : The Europe’s second-largest telecom operator said in a filing that it suspended its initial public offering for Atento Inversiones & Teleservicios SA due to “unfavorable market conditions.” The stock fell 1.49 percent to 16.19 euros. Iberdrola SA (IBE) : Spain’s largest utility is among 11 companies that submitted proposals to develop offshore wind turbine power plants in New Jersey, the government of the State said in a statement. The stock fell 1.93 percent to 5.98 euros. Amadeus IT Holding SA (AMS) : The flight-reservations provider will use proceeds from the sale of its Opodo online travel agency to cancel a loan of 400 million euros ($578 million), said newspaper El Pais, without saying how it got the information. The shares rose 0.46 percent to 14.14 euros. Acerinox SA (ACX) : The world’s largest stainless-steel producer said in a filing it will carry out a reorganization to make its structure more “coherent” by allowing its operational businesses to develop through units. The shares fell 1.05 percent to 12.26 euros. To contact the reporter on this story: Esteban Duarte in Madrid at eduarterubia@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Armstrong at parmstrong10@bloomberg.net .

Saudi Arabia Sells 165,000 Tons of October Naphtha, ICIS Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-23/saudi-arabia-sells-165-000-tons-of-october-naphtha-icis-says.html

Saudi Arabian Oil Co. sold 165,000 metric tons of naphtha for loading in the second half of October at premiums of $20 to $23 a ton over Middle East benchmark prices, ICIS reported, citing traders it didn’t identify. To contact the reporter on this story: Ann Koh in Singapore at akoh15@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net

Real’s Slump Prompts Brazil Soybeans Farmers to Accelerate Oilseed Exports

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-22/real-s-slump-prompts-brazil-soybean-farmers-to-accelerate-oilseed-exports.html

Soybean growers in Brazil , the world’s second-largest producer, are stepping up the pace of sales from the new crop after the local currency plunged 16 percent this month, boosting revenue from dollar-denominated exports, the Celeres crop-research group said. Growers have sold about 20 percent of the crop to be harvested next year, up from a five-year average of about 17 percent to 18 percent, said Leonardo Menezes, an analyst for the Uberlandia, Brazil-based group. Celeres will release a report on sales on Sept. 26. “From Mato Grosso to Parana state, growers all over Brazil are speeding up sales,” Menezes said in a telephone interview today. “The dollar’s rise has been surprisingly steep and it didn’t go unnoticed by farmers.” The Brazilian real’s drop against the dollar this month makes it the second-worst performer among 17 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg. Brazil will produce a record 75.2 million tons of soybeans next year, up from 74.9 million tons this year, Celeres said. Planting starts this month and the harvest begins by January. The dollar’s rally “more than compensates” for a drop in soybean prices, Menezes said. “By selling next year’s crop in advance, farmers are securing a profit margin of as much as 40 percent,” he said. “That’s pretty amazing.” Soybean futures have fallen 11 percent this month on concerns that Europe ’s debt crisis will curb demand for food and animal feed. Contracts for November delivery fell 37.5 cents, or 2.8 percent, to close at $12.83 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, the eighth decline in nine sessions. The U.S. is the world’s largest soybean producer. To contact the reporter on this story: Lucia Kassai in Sao Paulo at lkassai@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net

South Africa Cricket Coach Gary Kirsten Won’t Renew Contract

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-10/south-africa-cricket-coach-gary-kirsten-won-t-renew-contract.html

South Africa cricket coach Gary Kirsten won’t renew his contract in order to spend more time with his family. Kirsten, 45, was appointed for two years in August 2011, with an option to renew for another two years. He had to inform Cricket South Africa by April 30 whether he wanted to exercise the option. “Gary has a young family and it is understandable that he wishes to spend more time at home,” CSA President Chris Nenzani said in a statement. “I would like to thank him for his tremendous contribution to the well-being of the Proteas over the past two years.” The ICC Champions Trophy in England and Wales next month will be Kirsten’s final tournament in charge. “I would like to thank Cricket South Africa for the confidence they showed in entrusting me with the fortunes of the national team,” Kirsten said. “It has been a huge privilege to represent my country as player and coach and to have been given the responsibility of growing the team.” South Africa moved to the top of the International Cricket Council’s Test rankings last August with a 2-0 series win over then-No. 1 England. The Proteas also topped the one-day and Twenty20 rankings at one point last year, becoming the first team to hold the No. 1 spot in all three formats of the game at the same time. They currently rank fourth in ODI and sixth in Twenty20. With the Proteas set to tour Sri Lanka and July and August and then host India and Australia next season, Nenzani said “it is important that we move quickly to identify” Kirsten’s successor. “Gary certainly leaves the Proteas in good health and, although we are disappointed to lose him as head coach, he has put the foundations in place to carry us forward,” he said. Kirsten coached India to the World Cup title on home soil in 2011 before taking over South Africa. He scored 7,289 runs in 101 Test matches as an opening batsman for the Proteas, and also scored 6,789 runs in 185 one-day matches. To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Bensch in London at bbensch@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Elser at celser@bloomberg.net .

Auto Sales May Top Analysts’ Earlier Estimates on Jobs Recovery

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-11/auto-sales-may-top-analysts-earlier-estimates-on-jobs-recovery.html

U.S. automobile sales this year may rise faster than analysts had earlier anticipated as the improving job market prevents higher gasoline prices and supply disruptions in Japan from derailing the industry’s recovery. Total sales of cars and light trucks may rise to 13 million this year, the average of 18 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The average estimate was 12.9 million in a Bloomberg survey of 17 analysts in January. Light-vehicle sales last year rose to 11.6 million from a 27-year low in 2009. Auto sales ran at seasonally adjusted annual rate of 13.1 million in the first quarter, the fastest pace since the quarter ending June 2008, according to Autodata Corp. Demand held up while gasoline prices rose to the highest in more than two years and Japan’s earthquake disrupted production and tightened inventories of some models. “Despite it all, people still need cars,” said Jessica Caldwell, an analyst at industry researcher Edmunds.com, which kept its estimate at 12.9 million. “There’s still that issue of pent-up demand that we see in the marketplace that you can’t ignore.” The U.S. economy added jobs for six consecutive months through March, with payrolls rising by 478,000 in the first quarter, and the unemployment rate fell to a two-year low of 8.8 percent, according to Labor Department figures. Seven analysts raised their estimates for full-year auto sales since the beginning of the year. IHS Automotive lowered its estimate to 12.9 million vehicles, from as high as 13.3 million in February, citing higher oil prices and disruptions following Japan’s earthquake. Oil Prices, Japan The higher cost of oil accounts for a 150,000-vehicle reduction in IHS’s estimate, and Japan-related production losses account for the remainder, said George Magliano, a New York- based senior economist for the researcher. “We’re a little more optimistic on the job market, which we think has finally turned,” Magliano said in a telephone interview. “Credit has begun to loosen up a bit more. That made us feel better about where the year was going. Now, we’ve got two things working against us.” U.S. consumer borrowing rose for a fifth straight month in February on an increase in non-revolving credit, which includes borrowing for autos, the Federal Reserve reported April 7. Lenders began expanding credit to new-car buyers last year, according to Experian Automotive, which tracks auto-lending data. Buyers with nonprime or weaker credit scores accounted for 19.8 percent of the new-vehicle financing market in the fourth quarter, up from 16.8 percent a year earlier, Costa Mesa, California-based Experian said. Credit Expands “The lenders are coming to the consumers, and the consumers are doing everything they can to improve their standing so they can hopefully meet in the middle,” said Dan Montague, an analyst at the Autofacts forecasting unit of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, which raised its estimate for full- year deliveries to 13 million from 12.5 million. Ford Motor Co. (F) , the second-largest U.S. automaker, closed its truck plant in Louisville, Kentucky , last week because of a Japan-related parts shortage. The factory makes F-Series pickups and the Lincoln Navigator and Ford Expedition SUVs, according to Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford’s website. General Motors Co. (GM) , the largest U.S. automaker, also reported production disruptions the week of March 21 at its pickup plant in Shreveport, Louisiana , and factories in Zaragoza, Spain , and Eisenach, Germany. ‘Temporary’ Japan Impact Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) , the world’s largest carmaker, has said it lost 140,000 units of production from March 14 to March 26, citing a shortage of electronic parts, rubber and plastics. The company said today it may lose output of 35,000 vehicles at its North American factories through April 25. A shortage of vehicles for Japan-based automakers including Toyota, Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. will be a temporary headwind, said Efraim Levy , an analyst with Standard & Poor’s Equity Research, which kept its 13 million 2011 sales estimate. “There will be some makeup of those sales in the second half of the year, but in general consumers will mostly opt to find an alternative vehicle and purchase now, rather than wait,” said Levy, who’s based in New York. “That’s a potential benefit to U.S. and Korean automakers and a minor impact on overall sales for the year.” GM repeated this month its forecast that sales this year may be as much as 13.5 million when including medium- and heavy- duty trucks. A “significant slowdown” as a result of the Japan earthquake is unlikely, said Don Johnson, Detroit-based GM’s vice president of U.S. sales, said on a conference call. Pent-Up Demand “The biggest problem I have is not having enough cars, and that’s about the best problem to have,” said Robert Morris, president of a Cadillac, Buick and GMC dealership in North Olmsted, Ohio , near Cleveland. “People can only stay down for so long before they just kind of snap themselves out of it. The pent-up demand is breaking loose.” The sales estimates compiled by Bloomberg range from as high as 14 million predicted by Morgan Stanley (MS) to 12.6 million projected by AutoPacific Inc. More of the labor force is settling for part-time work, which is skewing a recovery in the job market, said Ed Kim, an analyst at AutoPacific in Tustin, California. “Part-time work generally doesn’t cut it as far as having the income necessary to buy a new vehicle,” said Kim, who raised his estimate to 12.6 million vehicles from 12.4 million at the beginning of the year. “I don’t think that necessarily translates into a significantly higher number of consumers who can buy a new vehicle now.” Annual U.S. deliveries were 16.8 million on average from 2000 to 2007, according to Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey-based Autodata. The following table shows estimates for 2011 light-vehicle sales in the U.S. Estimates are in millions of vehicles. To contact the reporter on this story: Craig Trudell in Southfield, Michigan , at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jamie Butters at jbutters@bloomberg.net .

A New Dawn for Zimbabwe?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-17/a-new-dawn-for-zimbabwe-.html

For many years travelers have avoided Zimbabwe, aware that the country was ruled by a brutal regime. But Robert Mugabe’s time is growing short, safari lodges are filling up, and the spectacular wildlife is flourishing again. I'm having lunch on the terrace of the Victoria Falls Hotel, something I never would have done a few years ago. Even now, as I look out over the manicured lawns and the baboons and spider monkeys romping among the trees, I am uneasy. When Robert Mugabe's power as leader of Zimbabwe was at its cruel height, this hotel provided the dictator with a reliable flow of hard currency and served as a showpiece of the dictatorship. Mugabe's men could point to the tourists here and say, "See, everything is normal." I didn't want to be part of that charade. Today Mugabe, eighty-eight and ailing, still rules the country with an iron fist. There is a sense, though, that his time is almost up. The economy is in the hands of Tendai Biti, a leader of the opposition who has a reputation for honesty. Animals are no longer perishing in great numbers; poaching has fallen off; and tourists are starting to come back to Zimbabwe. Earlier, midway through Mugabe's rule, the country was still an enchanting place to be. When I came on safari in 1990, I followed elephants on foot with an Afrikaner guide through the sweeping savanna of Hwange, the country's largest national park; stayed in colonial-style luxury on a houseboat in Lake Kariba; and paddled with a young black guide down the hippo-filled Zambezi River, sleeping on the sandy banks at night. But when I was here in 2005, I saw a country reeling from drought and corruption. Hwange was in ruins—its animals were dying of thirst and disease because the government couldn't afford to keep the water holes filled. This time, everywhere I go on my ten-day tour, I'm struck by the beauty, the abundance of wildlife, and the optimism that's taking hold. Old journalist friends I speak with in Harare sound relieved, at times amazed, at how things have settled down, and note new restaurants and weekend getaways to game parks as signs of stability. "At last it's possible to imagine having a real life here," BBC producer Firle Davies, who recently moved back to Zimbabwe, tells me. I look around the packed terrace. The hotel bottomed out in 2008, when the occupancy rate sank to twenty-five percent and menu prices had to be changed hourly to keep up with inflation. "Everything was out of stock," says my lunch companion, the hotel's general manager, Karl Snater. "The staff were not earning a fair wage." Beyond the garden, I can hear the distant roar of Victoria Falls, which has symbolized the continent's natural splendor ever since 1855, when the Scottish explorer David Livingstone became the first European to set eyes on the cataract—called Mosi-oa-Tunya, or the Smoke that Thunders, by the Makololo tribe. Snater tells me that occupancy is now up to fifty-five percent and the hotel will turn a profit for the first time in a decade. The idea that this combustive country of twelve million blacks and fewer than a hundred thousand whites may be emerging from Mugabe's ruinous reign is a seductive one. The sad history is well known: Mugabe, hailed as a liberation hero when he took power in 1980, devolved into a despot who dispatched underlings to beat and kill opponents. He seized three thousand white-owned farms and handed them out to cronies and wovits, "war vets" of the country's liberation battles (fought between 1972 and 1979)—unemployed, uneducated men, mostly from rural areas, who served as the regime's shock troops. Agriculture collapsed, factories closed, and unemployment skyrocketed. Hyper­inflation made the Zimbabwe dollar worthless. People were starving. A severe drought in 2005 brought further misery. The country's wildlife suffered horribly. Hungry Zimbabweans hunted the animals for food. Some of the worst slaughter was taking place on private white-owned farms and game reserves overrun by wovits and poor squatters. In 2007, the World Wildlife Fund estimated that eighty percent of wildlife on such private land had been killed. In November 2010, a Zimbabwean camper was attacked by a pride of lions while showering outdoors at a fishing camp near Mana Pools; conservationists suggested that the killing was the result of "traumatized" wildlife being pushed off private land by wovits and seeking sanctuary in the national park. And between 2006 and 2009, Zimbabwe lost more than twenty-five percent of its rhino population to poaching. The reasons for the recent positive turn are multi-fold. Violence against white Zimbabweans has dropped dramatically, partly because most white farms have already been seized but also because of pressure put on Mugabe since 2009 by South African president Jacob Zuma and other regional leaders. In recent years, foreign investors have started renovating lodges and putting money into new hotels and safari camps. This has been aided by Zimbabwe's adopting the U.S. dollar, as well as the fact that Mugabe was forced in 2008 to share power with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai. And all this, of course, has led to a noticeable increase in visitors to Zimbabwe's famed parks and reserves: Tourism revenues have climbed to about $26 million annually—still a long way from the $777 million peak in 1999. This is all happening despite the fact that Mugabe is still around—evidenced by threats against opposition supporters and the eviction of pro-opposition Anglican priests from their homes. While the government is now in theory a coalition, Mugabe still controls the army, the police, and the courts. "One side has all the power, and the opposition is desperately fighting for space," a human rights activist in Harare tells me. The day before I arrive, retired general Solomon Mujuru, a onetime Mugabe associate who turned against him, was found burned to death in his farmhouse. Mugabe called the death accidental. The single-engine Cessna 206 touches down at dusk on a dirt airstrip in Hwange National Park, 5,600 square miles of acacia groves, savanna grass, and mopani scrub on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Created by the British in 1928, Hwange stood as a model of African wildlife conservation. Lacking natural sources of water during the dry season, the park owes its existence to eighty man-made ponds, or pans, filled by pumps that bring groundwater from hundreds of feet beneath the surface. Even during the worst of the Mugabe years, this fragile system managed to support one of Africa's largest concentrations of elephants—between 25,000 and 30,000. And with 105 species of mammals here, including herds of buffalo, eland, zebras, sables, and wildebeests, along with 250 lions, Hwange also has one of the highest levels of biodiversity of any game park in Africa. I've barely left the airstrip when the first herd comes into view: two hundred Cape buffalo shambling along the savanna, a pair of jackals prowling at the edge. I'm on my way to Little Makalolo, a lodge operated by Wilderness Safaris. After the economy imploded, Wilderness Safaris—whose concession, with four tented camps, occupies seven percent of Hwange—considered closing up shop. Most of the two dozen other lodges and tented camps in the park went out of business. But the company's directors diverted income from Botswana operations and funds from its nonprofit Wilderness Wildlife Fund to pay the Hwange camp's staff and keep its dozen water holes running. "When there was a drought and no fuel, forty percent of the animals in the whole park migrated to our concession," says Sibahle "Sibs" Sibanda, a guide, as we walk from the rustic lodge to my luxury tent through a grove of leadwood trees. Poaching, while still an issue, has receded, a strong disincentive being the authorization of anti-poaching patrols to shoot to kill (if fired upon). Last May, two rhino poachers were killed by an anti-poaching squad at the edge of Hwange Park. There are also gentler approaches: Dean McGregor, a safari guide at Bumi Hills Safari Lodge in Matusadona National Park, helps run an unarmed anti-poaching unit that removes wire snares and frees trapped animals. "Poachers were trucking meat out of here in the backs of pickups and selling it in the villages," he told me. "We've been repopulating the area with game. You would not have seen animals like this a couple years ago. It was desolate." And to help fight hunger—the main reason for illegal bush-meat poaching—Wilderness Safaris runs a program that feeds children in surrounding communities. Encouraged, new players are emerging in Hwange. Among the most enterprising is Beks Ndlovu, a thirty-five-year-old former guide who owns Somalisa Camp. Somalisa is in a grove of acacia trees at the edge of a pan that draws a steady flow of animals throughout the day, including a breeding herd of elephants which appear at sunset to drink. I chat with Ndlovu, one of the country's most successful black safari operators, on a teak deck leading to a small swimming pool, where guests sip drinks while bobbing in the chilly water, waiting for the elephants to arrive. In 2005, Ndlovu, who grew up near Hwange, saw an opportunity. "The white tour operators were put out of business. They left and went to Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, other neighboring countries," he says. "The parks department was desperate to revive tourism in Hwange and bring in some revenue." With a handful of European investors, he put in an offer for a concession in Hwange. He's now turning a profit and operates another tent camp in Zimbabwe's Mana Pools National Park and two more in Botswana. Ndlovu tells me he believes the unity government has provided the economic stability to attract tourism. As we sit talking on the deck, I hear a rustle in the trees, and a procession of elephants approaches the pan. The animals—mothers and calves, including two wobbly infants—crowd around the water hole. A few braver ones approach the swimming pool, where the water apparently tastes better. They're so close that I could lean forward and touch them, but I sit frozen in place, silently observing the spectacle. I head to Mana Pools National Park, seventy miles down the Zambezi from Lake Kariba, where Nick Murray, a trained zoologist, runs the Vundu Camp. Mana Pools is known for its six thousand hippopotamuses, robust herds of elephants, and one of southern Africa’s largest populations of wild dogs. Murray and I are walking through a copse of leadwood and mahogany trees draped in a bright-green creeper known as combretum. In the distance, I hear hippos grunting on the banks of the wide, sluggish Zambezi. Trumpeter hornbills dart overhead, and wild dogs lope through the grass, snouts smeared with blood after a morning antelope kill. “We go through times when we see lions and wild dogs every day,” Murray tells me. “Ten years ago, it might have been two weeks between sightings.” Murray has been a player in Zimbabwe’s racial dramas since he was a boy. His father, a member of a white Rhodesian Army mounted unit called the Grey’s Scouts, fought Mugabe’s freedom fighters during the civil war and was killed in action in 1978, when Nick was nine. In 2003, when many white guides were fleeing the country, Murray and his wife took over a concession along the river from a bankrupt operator. “It was a gamble,” he tells me, “but we wanted to be in the right place if tourism started to build.” War veterans at a government plantation hijacked lumber and forced the Murrays to pay double the agreed-on price; the government made them redo their environmental-impact statement, setting the project back months. In 2008, the Murrays opened Vundu, five canvas tents pitched around a lodge, built on eight-foot-high eucalyptus stilts, with a thatched roof. Life has certainly gotten easier for all Zimbabweans in recent years, but the racial tensions that exploded a decade ago still simmer. A young woman who works in the Murrays’ camp was a neighbor of Mike Campbell’s, a septuagenarian white farmer who had purchased his farm before Zimbabwe’s independence. Campbell later resisted attempts by Mugabe’s men to seize it and, along with his son-in-law Ben Freeth, was abducted, severely beaten, and dumped on the road in 2008; Campbell eventually died from complications of his beating, and his farm was burned to the ground. “It can still happen to any one of us,” the young woman tells me over dinner at the camp. “We’re all potential targets.” Another serious challenge to camp owners is Mugabe’s Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Law, which requires all foreign-owned businesses worth more than $500,000 to cede fifty-one percent of their shares to black Zimbabweans. In January 2011, two hundred wovits invaded the Admiral’s Cabin, a popular white-owned safari lodge and restaurant inside the Kuimba Shiri Bird Park on Lake Chivero. Owner Gary Stafford, who stood his ground with his son, told reporters that the assailants cited the law as justification. “They are saying they want ‘to empower the people,’ ” Stafford says. Several independent newspapers in Zimbabwe have reported that Mugabe’s nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, covets the camp. The repeated blows and threats have taken a toll on Murray, who feels the longer the coalition government is in place, the better for everyone. The alternatives—a corrupt dictator or an inept oppositionist—could be worse: “We need to wait until a qualified leader emerges out of the opposition,” he says—or risk the collapse of renascent tourism and animal conservation efforts. The next day, Murray and I climb into a boat and paddle downstream on the Zambezi. I am eyeing the waters, mindful of a story he told me. Five years ago, a fourteen-foot crocodile had climbed over the stern of his canoe, snatched his backpack and rifle, and made a lunge for him. He shot the reptile between the shoulders with his Magnum pistol, and “the crocodile went into his death roll and took the canoe over with him.” The fierce heat of midday has begun to subside, and I lean back in my bow seat, listening to the rhythmic dipping of Murray’s paddle into the coffee-colored water. To my left, the bush-covered hills of Zambia rise beyond a shoreline studded with fishing camps; to my right in Zimbabwe, thick stands of acacia and mahogany extend to yellow sand banks populated with pods of hippos and solitary crocodiles. The hippos plunge into the river with pig-like grunts, bobbing up and down, eyes following us. We paddle through muddy channels, past islands covered with phragmites, a wetland grass that grows to fifteen feet. Murray keeps an eye out for buffalo and elephants in the thickets. The marsh abounds with malachite kingfishers—tiny birds with turquoise heads and wings and bright-orange breasts—as well as with white egrets, fish eagles, Egyptian geese, and massive Goliath herons. Singita Pamushana Lodge, in the Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve, may be a sneak peek into Zimbabwe’s future. The 105,000-acre reserve is owned by the nonprofit Malilangwe Trust, backed by the fifty-seven-year-old hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones and some friends, and it embodies the idea that to protect animals you must also offer a livelihood to the neighboring people. Even during Zimbabwe’s hardest years, Singita Pamushana kept local people fed and poachers at bay. A Toyota Land Cruiser takes me from a private airstrip through arid hills speckled with baobab trees to a boom gate, where a golf cart is waiting for me. My cottage could be an Africa theme park on steroids: curving mud-colored walls decorated with chevron patterns of red, green, and white, based on the fabrics of the local Shangaan tribe; shields; beaded chandeliers; an oversized teak bed shrouded in mosquito netting; and a private plunge pool. Five other cottages and one large villa are scattered across the property. In 1995, the trust bought this former ranch and imported thousands of animals, including forty endangered black rhinos and white rhinos from South Africa. It hired seventy scouts to police the property and surrounded it with an electric fence. Over a dinner of parsnip and potato soup with white truffle oil, red snapper fillet, and pumpkin pie with crystallized ginger strips, general manager Jason Turner tells me that three years ago, Pamushana could go two months without a guest. The lodge now averages thirty a month, with celebrities such as Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Shakira turning up. The Malilangwe Wildlife Reserve has one of Africa’s most successful rhino reintroduction and protection programs. The trust also operates irrigation works, community gardens, and a feeding program in the nearby Chiredzi district that provided meals to 45,000 children per day during the worst of Zimbabwe’s food shortages—it now feeds 22,000 kids. But even good guys have to play politics. Singita Pamushana lies in the heart of Zimbabwe’s Masvingo Province, previously a stronghold of Mugabe’s ruling party, and the trust has worked hard to cultivate cordial relations with the local governing council, controlled by a Mugabe loyalist. “When we hear rumblings, people talking negatively about Singita Pamushana, we get information so we can quickly rebut it,” says Turner. The fact that Pamushana is owned by a nonprofit trust—rather than by an individual white owner—“has taken the personalization out of it.” Even so, there have been a few close calls. For two weeks, a gang of wovits camped on an adjacent property while the private security force stood back, wary of picking a fight with an outfit that apparently had Mugabe’s backing. Instead, the council chief and other powerful local politicians persuaded them to leave. Singita Pamushana’s privacy and amenities don’t draw just celebrities. Saadi Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan dictator’s soccer-playing son, came here with six friends during Ramadan in September 2010. The chef worked around the clock, preparing iftar feasts and midnight and pre-dawn meals, while a local documentary filmmaker gave Qaddafi personal tours of the Malilangwe reserve. “He’d gotten three pieces of land [from Mugabe], and he was showing them to me on the map,” says Turner, who spent months pressing the Libyan embassy to pay the six-figure bill. “We were happy to see the last of them.” I head out with Tengwe Siabwanda, a staff guide, to see the animals. Alighting from our vehicle, Siabwanda spots a family of white rhinos (the term—a corruption of wide rhinos—refers to their wide mouth, not their color) grazing in a grove of mopanis, and leads me on hands and knees toward them. We creep to within fifteen yards of the beasts and watch them in silence. I note the massive haunches, the huge horns. Then the rhinos turn and run, crashing through the brush away from us. Speaking by phone from his base in Bulawayo, in southern Zimbabwe, Education Minister David Coltart points out that, though Mugabe’s party still controls the Ministry of Mines, Environment and Tourism (which runs the national parks), most tourist revenue currently flows through the Finance Ministry, which is controlled by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Coltart, a human rights lawyer from Bulawayo who helped found the MDC, is now the only white member of Zimbabwe’s parliament; I’ve met him repeatedly over the years during my clandestine visits to the country and have found him to be one of its most insightful politicians. He sees Mugabe weekly at cabinet meetings, sitting a few seats down the table from the dictator. “Some in civil society may support a boycott—mainly those in exile,” Coltart says. “But I think most would not, and certainly none of the political parties would, including the MDC.” A few leaders of the anti-Mugabe movement—mostly people who are overseas—urge tourists to stay away from Zimbabwe, arguing that entry receipts from the national parks and lease fees paid by safari operators give legitimacy to an outlaw regime. On the other hand, it’s questionable whether Mugabe and his men really care about tourism. Not far from Malilangwe lie the Chiadzwa diamond fields, seized by Zimbabwe’s army in November 2008—where much greater profits are to be made. “The amount of money that Mugabe and his crew get from tourism is insignificant,” says Angus Shaw, the Harare correspondent for the Associated Press and a Zimbabwean who has covered Mugabe since he came to power. He is one of many leading Zimbabweans who believe that Western tourist dollars do far more to protect wildlife and provide employment than they benefit the aging dictator and his friends. “Mugabe has so much money, he doesn’t need tourism,” says Dean McGregor, the safari guide who helps run the Bumi Hills Anti-Poaching Unit. “Maybe if you’ve got aspirations to become a big hotelier, that will attract attention. But nobody in Zimbabwe is going to open a Four Seasons Hotel in the near future. Mugabe doesn’t care about bush camps.” It remains unclear what kind of leadership will come after Mugabe. Prime Minister Tsvangirai, an inspiring campaigner who dared to fight against Mugabe despite getting severely beaten several times, is considered to be honest but has earned a reputation among his critics for being more at home on the golf course than in the halls of government. Ibbo Mandaza, a former freedom fighter, believes that many MDC leaders are more interested in “feeding at the trough” than in governing the country effectively. Nonetheless, there is a sense among everyone I talk to that Zimbabwe will become a new country when Mugabe finally passes from the scene. Smart and dedicated leaders are coming up—including Finance Minister Tendai Biti, who has restored a degree of fiscal responsibility and transparency, and Coltart, who has brought teachers back to work after the collapse of the country’s schools under Mugabe. On my last day, I join Nick Murray, owner of Vundu Camp, for a dawn walk in search of wild dogs. These animals’ survival, he tells me, depends upon both tourists and conservationists; without them, the anti-poaching teams will disintegrate for lack of money, and research will grind to a halt. Standing on the banks of the Zambezi River, listening to Murray talk with such passion about his work, I wonder if tourism might one day play an even bigger role in Zimbabwe’s recovery, pumping more cash into the game reserves, funding additional conservation and research programs, allowing the national parks to become self-sustaining, and providing more jobs for local people. I can envision the Zambezi Valley, Hwange National Park, and the southern bushveld becoming as lucrative as Kenya’s Masai Mara Reserve or South Africa’s Kruger National Park. As the sun rises over Mozambique, across the river, we find the “Vundu pack” on a grassy plot—seventeen feral creatures with black snouts and mottled black-and-yellow fur, in pursuit of a family of warthogs. “They’ll chase them, but they won’t try to kill them,” Murray says. “The warthogs have tusks—they’re too high-risk.” Sure enough, soon the dogs give up and bound back down the road, heading for their den. More from Condé Nast Traveler :

Surgutneftegas Said to Sell Russian Urals to Lukoil, Repsol

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-30/surgutneftegas-said-to-sell-russian-urals-to-lukoil-repsol.html

OAO Surgutneftegas, a Russian oil producer, sold 340,000 metric tons of Urals crude for loading in July to OAO Lukoil and Repsol YPF SA through a tender, said three traders who participate in the market. Lukoil purchased 140,000 tons for loading from Novorossiysk on the Black Sea and 100,000 tons from the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk, while Repsol secured 100,000 tons from Primorsk, according to the people, who declined to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak on the matter. Details of the sales are as follows: To contact the reporter on this story: Sherry Su in London at lsu23@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net

Judicial Minimalism Triumphs in Affirmative Action Case

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-24/judicial-minimalism-triumphs-in-affirmative-action-case.html

In today’s affirmative action case, Fisher v. University of Texas , the most important thing to know may be the U.S. Supreme Court’s vote: 7 to 1. With the exception of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , every member of the court joined Justice Anthony Kennedy ’s majority opinion. (Justice Elena Kagan recused herself.) Affirmative action has long divided the justices as well as the nation, and the remarkable near-unanimity of the court speaks volumes. In a little-noticed speech in 2006, Chief Justice John Roberts argued in favor of unanimous decisions from the court, suggesting that unanimity leads to modest, incremental and minimalist rulings. In his words, the “broader the agreement among the justices, the more likely it is a decision on the narrowest possible grounds.” The basic idea is that if a diverse group of justices is able to agree on an opinion, that opinion is more likely to steer clear of intense controversy and avoid the largest theoretical disputes. This, in the chief justice’s view, is entirely desirable, as he explained with an aphoristic summary of the minimalist position in constitutional law: “If it is not necessary to decide more to dispose of a case, in my view it is necessary not to decide more.” The chief justice added that the “rule of law is strengthened when there is greater coherence and agreement about what the law is.” Race Factor For 35 years, the law governing affirmative action at public universities has been relatively settled. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, decided in 1978, Justice Lewis Powell cast the decisive vote. He concluded that the Constitution doesn’t impose a flat ban on affirmative-action programs but that universities must avoid quota systems, and that they are permitted to consider race as a “factor” only if they can demonstrate that doing so is necessary to achieve the educational benefits that come from a diverse student body. In 2003 , a sharply divided court essentially endorsed Powell’s reasoning. The court’s majority held that the Constitution allows flexible, quota-free affirmative-action programs, but also that judges must apply “strict scrutiny” to assess whether such programs are both necessary and narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling educational goal. This approach rejects two more extreme positions. Some people, including Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas , believe the Constitution calls for colorblindness. They insist that under the Equal Protection Clause, the general rule is that no public institution may take into account the race of a student or applicant. Others, including Justice Thurgood Marshall, have argued that the Equal Protection Clause was designed above all to eliminate a system of racial subordination. In their view, the idea of colorblindness is not part of the Constitution, and judges should uphold affirmative-action programs unless they are genuinely unreasonable. In Fisher, many people hoped -- or feared -- that a majority of the court would take the opportunity to insist on colorblindness. Instead, the court’s brief, technical, narrow opinion reaffirms the constitutional status quo. The central thrust of the opinion is that the federal appeals court that ruled in favor of the Texas program had failed to undertake the careful inquiry required by the Supreme Court ’s precedents. The court of appeals wrongly said that it would defer to a university’s “educational judgment” that diversity “is essential to its educational mission.” Kennedy responded that “it is for courts, not the university administrators,” to decide whether the university’s choice to use race is necessary and narrowly tailored “to achieve the educational benefits of diversity.” Appeals Court The fact that the university was acting in good faith (as emphasized by the court of appeals) wasn’t enough. Federal judges must give “close analysis to the evidence of how the process works in practice.” Thus, the Supreme Court remanded the case to the appeals court so that it could assess whether the university’s affirmative-action program was, in fact, narrowly tailored. Scalia and Thomas wrote separately to reiterate their view that the Constitution always forbids consideration of race. But for present purposes, what is most important is that both of them were willing to join Kennedy. The court’s ruling is emphatically minimalist in the sense that it breaks no theoretical ground and declines to make novel pronouncements about the nature of the Constitution’s equality principle. Its simple message is that lower courts must apply the principles that the Supreme Court has already established. With that message, it leaves those principles undisturbed. No one should deny that minimalism can produce mistakes. If the Constitution really does require colorblindness, then there may be nothing wrong with a 5-4 decision in favor of colorblindness. And if the court’s precedents are fundamentally wrong, then there is nothing wrong with revisiting them. Nonetheless, Roberts was right to emphasize that a consensus within the court is likely to produce greater stability in the law, and that it tends to produce narrow, humble decisions, too. In this light, it is misleading to say the court “punted” in the Fisher case. On the contrary, the court’s modest, cautious ruling keeps faith with decades of constitutional law -- and declines to destabilize the background against which countless educational institutions, both large and small, have been doing their work. (Cass R. Sunstein, the Robert Walmsley University professor at Harvard Law School , is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is the former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the co-author of “Nudge” and author of “Simpler: The Future of Government.”) To contact the writer of this article: Cass R. Sunstein at csunstei@law.harvard.edu. To contact the editor responsible for this article: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.net .

Assad Running Out of Time, Russia’s Medvedev Says on CNN

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-26/assad-running-out-of-time-russia-s-medvedev-says-on-cnn.html

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chances of remaining in power are diminishing and he must sit at the negotiating table with all of Syria ’s ethnic and religious groups to bring an end to the country’s civil war, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said. Medvedev has called Assad several times urging him to negotiate, the Russian premier said in an interview with CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” program at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The interview is scheduled for broadcast today. The conflict in Syria is a threat to ally Russia as well as Europe and the U.S. because Syria’s opposition is increasingly represented by Islamic radicals who will infiltrate other countries, Medvedev said. The Syrian people must decide their own future through “genuine national dialogue,” he said. Russia’s goal has never been to preserve Syria’s current political regime, he said. “With every day, with every week, with every month, the chances of him surviving are becoming less and less,” Medvedev said through a translator, according to a transcript provided by CNN. “I personally a few times called Assad and said ‘You need to start reforms, you need to sit at the negotiating table.’ Unfortunately, the Syrian authorities turned out not to be ready for this.” Civil War Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Druze and Christians need to be represented in efforts to end a civil war for which both sides, the Syrian authorities and the opposition, are responsible, Medvedev said. Syrian rebels, mostly Sunni Muslims, have been fighting to oust Assad since March 2011 in a conflict that, according to the United Nations, has left at least 60,000 people dead. Along with winter weather, shortages of food and fuel have increased the hardships for Syrians in cities torn by fighting. Medvedev was also asked about Russia ’s decision to halt U.S. adoptions of Russian children, which he said was motivated by cases of mistreatment of Russian orphans adopted by Americans, and wasn’t retaliation for U.S. actions in the case of Sergei Magnitsky. Magnitsky, a lawyer for Hermitage Capital Management Ltd., died at the age of 37 while in pre-trial detention after uncovering the biggest known tax fraud in Russian history, a theft of $230 million from the national treasury. The case sparked a diplomatic row, with the U.S. imposing sanctions on Russian officials accused of having a role in Magnitsky’s death. Moscow barred Americans from adopting Russian orphans last month. Discussing his own political career, Medvedev said it would have been “pointless” and “counterproductive” to fight against his friend Vladimir Putin to win a second term as president. Medvedev’s switch to the role of prime minister last year as Putin assumed the presidential role “achieved the main goal, to ensure continuity,” he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Cotten Timberlake in Washington at ctimberlake@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net

S. Korea’s Power Utilities Pledge to Raise Renewables Portfolios

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-21/s-korea-s-power-generators-pledge-to-raise-renewable-portfolios.html

South Korea ’s 13 power utilities pledged to increase the use of renewable sources for electricity generation as the government plans an alternative-energy quota in 2012 to reduce emissions. The generators signed contracts with the government to cooperate on meeting the mandatory quotas and to install renewable-energy power generators at all their sites by 2013, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said in an e-mailed statement today. The generators, each with more than 500 megawatts of capacity, include six units of state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEP) , Posco Power Corp., GS Power Co. and Korea District Heating Corp. Korea Energy Management Corp. will provide technical and other aid as an accredited approval organization for the renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, according to the statement. The quota will increase investment in cleaner energy as South Korea’s government seeks to bolster the nation’s share of the world markets for solar and wind-power equipment to 15 percent of each by 2015. South Korea had 11 percent of the global solar market and 4 percent of the wind market in 2010, according to government data. The quota for electricity generated by renewable sources will be raised to 10 percent in 2022 from 2 percent in 2012, the ministry said today. As current solar-energy technology is less economically viable, the government will impose separate energy quotas on those generators in the first five years to foster the industry, the ministry said. South Korea announced a voluntary goal in December to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. To contact the reporter on this story: Sangim Han in Seoul at sihan@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net

Intel Says Computer Users May Be Denied Class Status in Antitrust Lawsuit

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-29/intel-says-computer-users-may-be-denied-class-status-in-antitrust-lawsuit.html

Intel Corp. , the world’s biggest chipmaker, said a special master appointed to review an antitrust lawsuit brought by computer users recommended rejecting their request for class-action status. The recommendation will become the court’s ruling unless the plaintiffs object within 21 days, Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said today in an e-mailed statement. The purchasers of computers with Intel microprocessors “have not established that they will be able to demonstrate an antitrust violation through common proof,” Special Master Vincent J. Poppiti wrote in a report yesterday to U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Santa Clara, California-based Intel said July 13 it logged record sales for the quarter, beating analysts’ estimates, with more than $11 billion in sales. The consolidated lawsuit “generally accuses Intel of wrongfully offering discounts to computer manufacturers,” allegedly inflating prices, according to Mulloy. Intel fell 30 cents to $21.03 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading in New York at 4:30 p.m. The lead case is Paul v. Intel Corp., 05CV485, U.S. District Court, District of Delaware (Wilmington). To contact the reporter on this story: Phil Milford in Wilmington at pmilford@bloomberg.net

Indonesia Takes Steps to Reduce Cash as Interest Rate Held

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-10/indonesia-holds-key-rate-as-rupiah-drop-flags-inflation-risk.html

Indonesia took steps to reduce excess funds in the economy while extending a pause in interest-rate cuts as a declining currency and the threat of higher fuel prices push up inflation risks. The rupiah rose. Bank Indonesia will raise the rates on central bank bills and term deposits of all tenors starting today to absorb liquidity, it said in Jakarta, without specifying the levels. Governor Darmin Nasution and his board held the reference rate at 5.75 percent, a decision predicted by all 21 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Pressure to reverse monetary easing is mounting in Southeast Asia ’s biggest economy after inflation accelerated to 4.5 percent in April, with the government’s bid to contain fuel subsidies and a weakening rupiah threatening to boost prices. At the same time, a growth slowdown to 6.3 percent last quarter has reduced the scope for raising rates. “This is a signal that BI will start to normalize its monetary policy,” said David Sumual, a Jakarta-based economist at PT Bank Central Asia. “The period for cutting rates is over unless there’s a risk of a deepening global slowdown.” The rupiah climbed 0.9 percent to 9,183 per dollar at 4:05 p.m. in Jakarta, paring its loss this year to about 1 percent. Before today’s central bank measures, the currency had fallen about 2 percent this year, the worst performer after the yen in a basket of 11 Asian currencies tracked by Bloomberg. It fell to its weakest in almost two years last week. Yields Rise The yield on the government’s 7 percent bonds due May 2022 climbed four basis points, or 0.04 percentage point, to a four- month high of 6.21 percent, according to closing prices from the Inter Dealer Market Association. It’s climbed 17 basis points this week. Asian nations have diverged as some kept rates steady or cut borrowing costs to shield their economies from Europe ’s debt crisis and a growth slowdown in China , while others tightened to limit price gains. Indonesia has kept its benchmark unchanged for three straight meetings since an unexpected reduction in February, while South Korea held borrowing costs at 3.25 percent for the 11th time today. Bank Indonesia is raising the rates of all its monetary instruments of all tenors because of inflationary pressure and the rupiah’s weakness, Hendar, director of monetary policy at the central bank, said today. The purpose is to push up the yields of medium and long-term government bonds , said Hendar, who uses only one name. Preferred Course The central bank sold 7.17 trillion rupiah ($781 million) of nine-month bills at 4.23785 percent and 220 billion rupiah of nine-month Shariah-compliant bills at a yield of 4.23785 percent, it said in a statement today. Tightening via short-term monetary instruments “rather than via the policy rate, is the preferred first course of action,” said Chua Hak Bin, a Singapore-based economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “BI will likely keep the policy rate on hold given the uncertainty over fuel prices and inflation outlook.” Consumer-price pressure is manageable, Bank Indonesia said today, adding it would continue to absorb liquidity in the market. It maintained its gross domestic product growth forecast for the year at 6.3 percent to 6.7 percent. Inflation Target The monetary authority said the rupiah would strengthen, and kept its inflation target for 2012 and 2013 at 3.5 percent to 5.5 percent. Lending growth was 24.9 percent from a year earlier as of March. The country’s parliament rejected a proposal for a 33 percent increase in subsidized-fuel prices from April 1 after public protests. Lawmakers instead allowed the government to raise prices only if the Indonesia Crude Price exceeds the state budgetary assumption of $105 a barrel by 15 percent over a six month period. Authorities now plan to cap the sale of below market-rate fuel for certain vehicles. “Even if subsidized fuel prices are not raised this year, we would expect headline inflation to get close to 6 percent by year-end, rising further during the course of 2013,” said Robert Prior-Wandesforde , Singapore-based director of Asian economics at Credit Suisse Group AG. “Nevertheless, in view of what we see as a ‘go for growth’ policy in Indonesia, it seems unlikely that the politically sensitive policy rate would be hiked” until inflation is at least half a percentage point higher, he said. To contact the reporters on this story: Novrida Manurung in Jakarta at nmanurung@bloomberg.net ; Hidayat Setiaji in Jakarta at hsetiaji@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net

Obama Defends Bailouts, Handouts and Cop-Outs: Steven Greenhut

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-25/obama-defends-bailouts-handouts-cop-outs-commentary-by-steven-greenhut.html

State of the Union addresses provide insight into the vision of America embraced by the president, and in that regard Tuesday’s address by President Barack Obama didn’t disappoint. He envisions a country where the federal government protects and creates union jobs and where the public sector is leading the charge to create a better America. “Think about the America within our reach: A country that leads the world in educating its people,” the president said. “An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high- paying jobs.” This is standard State of the Union boilerplate, but then the president ticked off many ways the federal government will accomplish this -- through programs to retrain employees, subsidies to the green and automotive industries, grand infrastructure-building programs and through a new federally directed “blueprint” to rebuild the manufacturing industries. He said the federal government’s bailout of General Motors Co. and Chrysler was the key to saving the auto industry. In his view, the feds demanded responsibility in exchange for aid, which resulted in a new era of harmonious relations between workers and management. But as Investor’s Business Daily reported, “Obama broke normal bankruptcy procedure when he bailed out GM so his union pals could get special treatment.” Perhaps the speech should be called the State of the Unions, given that Obama’s policies seem designed mainly to protect union workers from reform. President’s Speech “It’s time to apply the same rules from top to bottom: No bailouts, no handouts and no cop-outs. An America built to last insists on responsibility from everybody,” the president said, even as he defended such bailouts, handouts and copouts. He called for a new era of responsibility, yet his aid packages have promoted irresponsibility, as local officials vie for added federal dollars rather than make the hard choices necessary to deal with their debt burdens. The president spoke about underpaid public servants, referring to teachers in particular, but here in California it has been the unsustainable growth in public-sector compensation that most threatens the government programs and infrastructure-building efforts the president says are so necessary to saving our nation. The president sees a starving public sector unable to adequately meet the needs of the public, a world where heroic teachers must dig deeply into their own pockets to pay for school supplies. But public schools are short on cash not because of a lack of taxpayer support, but because of misdirected priorities driven by a lack of competition, bureaucratic inertia and union demands. Obama said we should stop “bashing teachers,” which was a not-so-fair shot directed presumably at Republicans who have battled with those teachers’ unions that are the main obstacle to educational reform. “Of course, it’s not enough for us to increase student aid,” the president added. He said that if colleges can’t stop tuition from going up, then funding will go down. He also called on states to make “higher education a higher priority in their budgets.” The president has it backward. Tuition keeps increasing because government aid keeps increasing. Free money keeps educational institutions from making tough choices and using their funds wisely. His misunderstanding of how Other People’s Money drives spending epitomizes the basic misunderstanding at the foundation of his speech and his administration. His point about state education priorities is off the mark. California Schools In California, education is guaranteed by constitutional amendment to receive at least 40 percent of the general-fund budget. Yet the system is a mess, and some of the highest-funded districts are the ones most plagued by corruption and incompetence. Obama should talk to the Democratic mayor of Los Angeles or a former Democratic state senator who leads an education-reform group about obstacles to reform, which revolve around union intransigence and bureaucracy more than funding. Here in California the lush pay and benefit packages that many local officials have secured over the past decade are putting cities deeply in the hole, with compensation to police and firefighters often consuming 70 percent to 80 percent of their budgets. One liberal editorial page quipped that public agencies are becoming pension providers that offer public services on the side. This threat is not just financial. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, a Democrat, told Vanity Fair that “Our police and firefighters will earn more in retirement than they did when they were working.” He continued, “It’s staggering. When did we go from giving people sick leave to letting them accumulate it and cash it in for hundreds of thousands of dollars when they are done working? There’s a corruption here. It’s not just a financial corruption. It’s a corruption of the attitude of public service.” The president railed against inequality, but doesn’t mention the growing retirement chasm between workers in the public and private sectors. He criticized “bad debt and phony financial profits” but wasn’t speaking of the multibillion- dollar government pension debt or the phony rate-of-return projections used by pension funds to mask the growing debt burden. The president’s reference to greed applied solely to a financial sector that did what its Washington regulators insisted it do: provide home loans to people who couldn’t afford them. I’m assuming his new “Financial Crimes Unit” will spare investigations of the legislators who crafted those rules. And yet the president also said that “responsible homeowners shouldn’t have to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom to get some relief.” The president is right that it’s time for an economy based on responsibility, but he’s wrong to believe we’ll ever achieve that as long as his administration promotes more bailouts and protects the public sector from accountability. (Steven Greenhut is editor in chief of CalWatchdog.com and a Sacramento-based newspaper columnist. In February, he is joining the Franklin Center as vice president of journalism. The opinions expressed are his own.) Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View. To contact the writer of this article: Steven Greenhut at SGreenhut@pacificresearch.org. To contact the editor responsible for this article: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.net .

OpenTable Shares Signaling Anxiety Over New Competitors: Retail

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-07/opentable-shares-signaling-anxiety-over-new-competitors-retail.html

OpenTable Inc. (OPEN) , the restaurant- reservation service that went public during the worst of the recession and saw its market value triple by the end of 2010, is reeling as investors lose their appetite for the stock. The company’s shares have tumbled 67 percent from a record $115.62 in April amid a continued slow economy, a sluggish effort to enter the European market, and domestic competition from newer, cheaper services such as Livebookings Ltd. Google Inc., which recently purchased restaurant guide Zagat Survey LLC, is also casting a shadow over OpenTable’s shares. “Expectations have come down materially,” said Clayton Moran , a Delray Beach , Florida-based analyst at Benchmark Co. who has a hold rating on the shares. “Growth has now decelerated, and you’ve had these added competitive concerns.” Shares of San Francisco-based OpenTable, which went public in May 2009 at $20, trade at 46 times earnings, even after the stock’s recent declines. That’s a higher valuation than 96 percent of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The shares are at an especially “lofty” valuation considering that the company hasn’t yet proved it has a plan to maintain its market leadership, said Justin Patterson, an analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Nashville, Tennessee. Online Reservation Market The company dominates the market for reservations in the U.S., with more than 16,000 restaurant subscribers, and may reach 20,000 in 2012, Moran said. Eatery owners pay for OpenTable ’s computer system, which lets them manage table inventory and maintain a profile of customers who have dined there, on top of other fees. Those owners include A.J. Gilbert, who runs San Francisco ’s Luna Park , a restaurant serving modern American food that costs about $20 for a dinner entree. He estimates that OpenTable brings in about 60 percent of his restaurant’s reservations. Those bookings come at a price. Gilbert paid $2,351 on his last monthly OpenTable bill. “The market is ready for some price competition,” he said. “OpenTable has kind of stumbled into this monopoly. They support their product really well. They’re just really expensive.” Well, not really, according to Matthew Roberts, chief executive officer of OpenTable. For every $1 OpenTable charged in fees for logged reservations, diners spent an average of $43 in North America last year, he said. Considering Alternatives That argument is hard to make to restaurants trying to shave costs in challenging economic times. One alternative may be Livebookings , Europe’s largest online restaurant-reservation provider, which started a free service in the U.S. last month that lets restaurants enable online reservations on their own websites and Facebook pages. OpenTable estimates it has signed up 64 percent of reservation-taking restaurants in San Francisco. The company may be hitting a wall in pushing beyond that level in the city, as well as in its other key markets such as New York , Washington and Chicago , Patterson said. Roberts disagrees. “We’re not seeing that we’re running into any kind of wall relative to growth,” he said last month on Bloomberg Television. The company estimates it has signed on 37 percent of the 35,000 reservation-taking restaurants it has identified as its potential market in North America. The Google Question The question is, what will Google do? Its September takeover (GOOG) of Zagat , the review service known for its burgundy- colored restaurant guides, has already contributed to OpenTable’s share price decline. If Google decides to use Zagat to start a restaurant-booking service, OpenTable would face competition from the world’s largest Internet-search provider. As it stands now, the company benefits from Google. In August, OpenTable said that 5 percent to 10 percent of traffic on its site comes from Mountain View , California-based Google and other affiliates, including Zagat and Yelp Inc. “If we were to get any sense that Google was going to remove the uncertainty of it potentially doing reservations directly, it would help the stock,” Moran said. In the meantime, a sluggish economy isn’t helping OpenTable’s prospects. An unemployment rate hovering around 8.6 percent means people may choose to dine out less, weighing on revenue. Last year, 48 percent of OpenTable’s sales came from fees it charged restaurants for seating each individual diner. The company increased revenue just 1.7 percent in this year’s second quarter from the prior period, and sales were also little changed sequentially in the third quarter. Revenue will rise 7 percent to $36.7 million in the last three months of this year compared with the third quarter, according to the average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg. By comparison, OpenTable sales jumped 25 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010 from the previous period. New Cities The company needs to find new business in cities such as Dallas where it hasn’t yet established itself, Patterson said. International expansion has also taken longer than expected, Moran said. The company hasn’t identified what the next growth driver will be if the effort doesn’t turn around, he said. Livebookings is its largest rival, with about 9,000 restaurant subscribers, mostly in Europe , while OpenTable logged 7,629 in its international markets, including Germany , Japan and the U.K., in the third quarter. OpenTable bought its way into the European market in 2010 with the acquisition of Toptable.com, a restaurant-reservation service then based in London , for $55 million. The company is making Toptable’s website more user-friendly and expects it to start generating more growth in the U.K. in the second half of 2012, Roberts said. “There’s nothing that we’ve learned that indicates London should be any different than Manhattan or San Francisco,” Roberts said in an interview. To contact the reporter on this story: Danielle Kucera in San Francisco at dkucera6@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net

Wheat Rises as Rain to Curb Russian, Ukraine Output; Corn Gains

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-07/soybeans-rise-to-one-week-high-as-rains-seen-slowing-harvesting.html

Wheat futures rose for the fourth time in five sessions on speculation that wet weather will curtail production in Russia and Ukraine, boosting demand for U.S. supplies. Corn also climbed, while soybeans fell. Russia may plant 13 million hectares of grain for harvest next year, down from 16 million expected earlier, Nikolai Fedorov, the agriculture minister said at a news conference today. Ukraine winter-wheat planting may be 30 percent less than targeted after record rainfall, the national weather center in Kiev said Sept. 27. “The drop in planted area in Russia and Ukraine will continue to provide support for the market,” Shawn McCambridge , the senior grain analyst for Jefferies Bache LLC in Chicago , said in a telephone interview. “A further rally in prices may begin to slow demand.” Wheat futures for delivery in December increased 0.9 percent to $6.9325 a bushel at 10:11 a.m. on the Chicago Board of Trade. Last week, the grain rose 0.6 percent, the third straight gain and the longest rally in a year, after the government said U.S. inventories on Sept. 1 fell to the lowest in six years. Corn futures for delivery in December added 0.7 percent to $4.465 a bushel in Chicago, heading for a third straight gain. Soybean futures for delivery in November slipped 0.2 percent to $12.93 a bushel on the CBOT, after rising as much as 0.8 percent. Informa Economics Inc. in Memphis , Tennessee , cut its soybean harvest forecast last week by 1.5 percent to 3.176 billion bushels, partly as crop conditions fell. Analysts in a Bloomberg survey predicted 3.161 billion, more than the USDA’s estimate last month of 3.149 billion. The USDA’s scheduled update of estimates on Oct. 11 may be delayed by the federal government’s partial shutdown that began Oct. 1. To contact the reporters on this story: Jeff Wilson in Chicago at jwilson29@bloomberg.net Whitney McFerron in London at wmcferron1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Patrick McKiernan at pmckiernan@bloomberg.net

AES Begins Operating Electric-Battery Storage in Ohio

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-30/aes-begins-operating-electric-battery-storage-in-ohio.html

AES Corp. (AES) , a power provider in 23 countries, began operating a 40-megawatt electric battery storage system in Ohio. AES’ Dayton Power & Light utility will use the storage at its Tait generating station in Moraine, Ohio, to stabilize an electric grid that supplies electricity to more than 60 million people, the company said today in a statement. The facility is Ohio’s largest electric-storage system, with 800,000 cells, and adds to 60 megawatts of battery capacity the Arlington, Virginia-based company operates in the region. To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Martin in New York at cmartin11@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net

Sinopec Plans 100 Billion Yuan Refining Complex, Daily Reports

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-17/sinopec-plans-100-billion-yuan-refining-complex-daily-reports.html

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (600028) is planning a 100 billion yuan ($15.5 billion) refining complex in the coastal province of Jiangsu, National Business Daily reported, citing an unidentified local government official. The project at Lianyungang includes two refineries with total processing capacity of 32 million metric tons a year and a liquefied natural gas terminal with capacity of 5 million tons a year, according to the report. Huang Wensheng , the Beijing- based spokesman for Sinopec, as China Petroleum is known, didn’t return three phone calls to his office seeking comment. The local government, which will take a stake in the project, hasn’t reached an accord with Sinopec on how costs may be split, the Shanghai-based daily said. The Hong Kong-listed refiner may bring in a foreign company to invest in the project, the newspaper said, citing President Wang Tianpu. The refining complex will be developed in two phases, with a 12 million ton-a-year plant to be built first, according to the newspaper. The National Development and Reform Commission, China ’s top economic planner, is expected to approve the first phase in 2013 and the refinery may begin operations in 2016, the daily said. The Jiangsu government’s media relations department declined to comment on the report. To contact the reporter on this story: Baizhen Chua in Beijing at bchua14@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexander Kwiatkowski at akwiatkowsk2@bloomberg.net .

Sydney Opera House Luxury-Home Auction Hurt by Rate Increase

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-08/sydney-opera-house-luxury-home-auction-hurt-by-central-bank-rate-increase.html

A luxury home auction at the Sydney Opera House yesterday managed to sell only two of the 11 Australian homes on offer as the most aggressive round of interest rate increases by a Group of 20 member saps demand. The auction, in a housing market the International Monetary Fund said may be overvalued by as much as 15 percent, raised A$4.11 million ($4.15 million), a fraction of the A$30 million of properties on sale. They included 10 homes in New South Wales, five of which were in Sydney, and one in Brisbane, and were valued at A$2 million to A$10 million each, according to Ray White, the biggest property broker in Australia and New Zealand. “House prices have been going sideways since June,” said Alan Oster , chief economist at National Australia Bank Ltd. “You’ve got interest rates that are going up and have further to go, and that’s not helping.” The Reserve Bank of Australia raised its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.75 percent on Nov. 2 and said it welcomed a cooling of house prices, even as home- price growth slowed for a third straight quarter from July to September. Auction clearance rates averaged 54.7 percent across Australia’s eight capital cities during the Nov. 5 weekend, compared with an average of 63.8 percent the weekend of May 29, according to data from real estate research group RP Data. Home values in the top 20 percent of Australian suburbs by price fell 2 percent in the three months to July, compared with declines of less than 0.7 percent for the rest of the market, according to an RP Data-Rismark index. Rates hit Last week, “the Reserve Bank seemed to give the indication that they were keen to keep the lid on prices, and that’s not what buyers want to hear,” Brian White , chairman of the Ray White Group , which organized the event, said in an interview after the auction. “That’s a very bearish sentiment.” With Sydney’s median home price at A$506,000 in the three months to September, according to RP Data, even buyers of properties in the low millions could be susceptible to rising interest rates, White and Oster said. Ray White is in talks with potential buyers and expects to sell three more of the properties in “the next couple of days,” White said. He said he had hoped to sell at least five houses during the auction. More than 100 people turned up to the event, the first Ray White auction to be held at the Opera House, which was marketed both domestically and internationally. About 20 were registered bidders, according to Chief Auctioneer Sam Kelso. Brisk Start After a brisk start -- with two parties almost doubling the opening price to A$1.56 million for a country home in Mittagong in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales -- the next seven properties either received low offers or none at all. The other successful offer was a A$2.55 million bid for a riverfront development in Birdwood, 400 kilometers (250 miles) north of Sydney. Some properties -- including a six-bedroom rural lakefront home with a tennis court, billiards room, pool and sauna in Tuncurry, about 300 kilometers north of Sydney, and a three- level home with under-floor heating and a 12-person lift in Blakehurst, a south Sydney suburb -- failed to receive any bids. Sellers Disappointed Others, such as a seven-acre, five-bedroom estate in Belrose, in Sydney’s northern beaches, and the five- bedroom Brisbane penthouse apartment that included full butler’s quarters and three outdoor entertaining areas, received bids that didn’t meet the owners’ expectations. The only offer for the Belrose property was A$3.4 million, A$500,000 below the owner’s price, and the highest bid for the Brisbane apartment was A$3.5 million, missing the seller’s A$4.3 million expectation. The broker expects more interest in the remaining properties in the coming month, White said. The company plans to hold similar auctions each November and March. More sellers are now putting prime properties up for sale than at the start of the year, according to Ray White. “With the top end of the market toughening a little bit, we wanted to offer our top-end clients a point of difference,” Kelso said in a telephone interview on Nov. 5. Luxury properties are taking longer to sell and about 25 percent fewer homes are changing hands than 18 months ago, though there is still demand, Bill Malouf, principal at real- estate chain LJ Hooker in the eastern Sydney suburb of Double Bay, said last month. Acute Shortage An “acute” housing shortage, credit constraints and income growth will keep Australian home prices from falling, Westpac Banking Corp. said on Oct. 28, joining Commonwealth Bank of Australia in refuting speculation about a bubble. Preliminary results of a stress test on mortgages by Fitch Ratings found banks could handle an unlikely worst-case loan default scenario. Bidders based in Singapore, China and Indonesia expressed interest in the properties following Ray White’s marketing campaign in Asia, White said yesterday. Johann Boyke Nurtanio, who works for Ray White in Indonesia and attended the auction, said he’s on the lookout for properties in Australia priced at A$500,000 to A$2 million for clients whose children are considering attending university in the country. Ray White isn’t the only group trying to draw overseas buyers, even after a change in rules by the federal government in April made it more difficult for foreigners to invest in Australian properties. Colliers International is holding a property exhibition in Hong Kong to market its new Dominion residential estate in Darlinghurst, an inner suburb of Sydney, on Nov. 13 and 14. To contact the reporter on this story: Nichola Saminather in Sydney at nsaminather1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andreea Papuc at apapuc1@bloomberg.net .

Egyptian Stocks Retreat to Lowest in a Month on Deadly Clashes

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-20/egyptian-stocks-retreat-to-lowest-in-a-month-on-deadly-clashes.html

Egyptian stocks dropped to the lowest in a month after security forces and protesters clashed for a fifth day in central Cairo and the government removed subsidies on energy-intensive industries. Commercial International Bank (COMI) , the biggest publicly traded bank in Egypt, retreated to the lowest since May 2009 and Orascom Construction Industries lost 1.8 percent. The EGX 30 Index (EGX30) dropped 2.5 percent to 3,706.3, the lowest since Nov. 22, at the 2:30 p.m. close in Cairo as 28 stocks fell and two were unchanged. The measure has tumbled 48 percent this year, making it the third-worst performer globally after Cyprus and Greece. Soldiers and police stormed Tahrir Square injuring dozens, according to demonstrators who pointed to bloodstains on their clothes and the tarmac. Hisham Sheeha, a health ministry official, said 28 people were injured today and 12 have died since Dec. 16. The clashes are the latest between protesters demanding an immediate end to military rule and the generals who took interim power after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. “Ongoing violence, the lack of a catalyst and the lifting of subsidies on energy intensive industries” is weighing on stocks, said Ashraf Akhnoukh, senior equity sales trader at Cairo-based Commercial International Brokerage. Egypt will lift subsidies on energy-intensive industries, Planning and International Co-operation Minister Fayza Aboulnaga said yesterday, without giving a time frame. Commercial International Bank declined 4.2 percent to 19.85 Egyptian pounds. Orascom Construction Industries (OCIC) , the largest publicly traded builder in the country, fell to 202.61 pounds. To contact the reporter on this story: Mahmoud Kassem in Cairo at mkassem1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Maedler at cmaedler@bloomberg.net

Argentina Seizes Repsol's YPF, Control of Oil

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-17/argentina-seizes-repsol-s-ypf-control-of-oil.html

The Spanish government pledged to take “decisive” action against Argentina after President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner seized YPF SA, the Argentine oil company majority-owned by Repsol YPF SA. (Source: Bloomberg) Running Time: 01:00

Lotte Chemical Said to Buy Naphtha Cargoes for April Delivery

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-18/lotte-chemical-said-to-buy-naphtha-cargoes-for-april-delivery.html

Lotte Chemical Corp. (011170) bought four naphtha cargoes totaling about 100,000 metric tons for second- half April delivery to South Korea, according to two traders who participate in the market. The company bought the cargoes last week from an unidentified seller at a premium of $25 to $26 a ton to Japan benchmark prices, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is confidential. To contact the reporter on this story: Ann Koh in Singapore at akoh15@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mike Anderson at manderson34@bloomberg.net

RBS Loss Wider Than Estimated on Greece, Compensation

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-23/rbs-posts-greater-than-estimated-3-1-billion-loss-for-the-full-year.html

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc , Britain’s biggest state-owned lender, reported a wider-than- estimated loss on impairments in Ireland, writing down Greek debt and compensating customers for improperly sold insurance. The net loss for 2011 was 2 billion pounds ($3.1 billion) compared with 1.1 billion pounds a year earlier, the U.K.’s second-largest bank by assets said in a statement today. That was worse than the 1.1 billion-pound median estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. RBS took an impairment of 1.1 billion pounds on holdings of Greek government securities and said it “exceeded run-off targets” in its non-core businesses, bringing forward some of its losses. Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hester , 51, who has said his job is equivalent to defusing the “biggest time bomb in history,” has shrunk the bank’s assets by more than 700 billion pounds and cut more than 35,000 jobs since he took over from Fred Goodwin in 2008. “While there is still work to be done to get RBS into a position where it is generating attractive returns for shareholders, the glide path to normality is increasingly clear,” UBS AG analysts John-Paul Crutchley and Alastair Ryan said in an e-mailed note. RBS’s loss would have been narrower if it hadn’t taken 850 million pounds in charges relating to compensation for U.K. customers who were improperly sold personal-loan insurance. Shares Rise The loss at RBS’s Irish unit, Ulster Bank Ltd., increased to 1.02 billion pounds in 2011 from 760 million pounds in the previous year on impaired mortgages. RBS has injected as much as 10 billion pounds into its Irish unit since 2008. The lender reduced its medium-term target for return on equity to 12 percent from 15 percent. “We have three jobs at RBS -- to support our customers, to defuse our legacy risks and rebuild a successful, profitable bank,” Hester said in the statement. “In 2011 we showed results across all three goals, though with much still to do.” Shares of RBS rose 5.1 percent to 28.72 pence at the close in London, compared with a 0.7 percent loss by the Bloomberg Europe Banks Index. After sinking 48 percent last year, the stock has rebounded 42 percent this year. By contrast, shares (RBS) of Commerzbank AG and Credit Agricole SA, which also reported earnings hurt by Greek writedowns today, both declined. ‘Enormous Progress’ “The management team have clearly made enormous progress and the market recognizes that,” said Christopher Wheeler , a banking analyst at Mediobanca SpA with a “neutral” rating on the stock. “However, RBS is still dogged by some serious issues, such as Ulster Bank.” Operating profit at the bank’s consumer unit rose 45 percent to 1.99 billion pounds last year, while operating profit at the corporate unit slid 3.3 percent, RBS said. RBS’s results were also affected by rising borrowing costs as the bank weans itself off low-interest government loans and takes on costlier funding in wholesale markets. The bank opted in December to go the European Central Bank for an emergency 5 billion euro loan as its own costs of borrowing reached an unsustainable level, a person familiar with the matter said. The U.K. rescued RBS at the height of the financial crisis, injecting 45.5 billion pounds of taxpayer money into the lender, making it the costliest bailout of any bank. Banker Pay RBS’s compensation ratio, a measure of pay against revenue, rose to 41 percent compared with 34 percent for 2010. The bank’s bonus pool fell 21 percent to 985 million pounds, and total salaries fell 1 percent to 5.42 billion pounds. “We have aligned the longer-term rewards our people receive with our shareholders’ interests,” RBS Chairman Philip Hampton said in a letter to shareholders. “We have led the way in changing how we pay our people.” Hampton and Hester last month relinquished their bonuses for 2011 amid a storm on the issue in the U.K. media. The investment-banking unit set aside 390 million pounds of bonus, including cash, shares and deferred awards, a 58 percent drop from the year earlier, and an average of 22,941 pounds per worker. Operating profit at the investment bank slid 54 percent to 1.6 billion in 2011 compared with the previous year. RBS paid employees at its securities business an average of about 112,000 pounds each including salary, bonus and pension, spokeswoman Linda Harper said by phone today, down from 152,000 pounds last year. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said last month banks must show “proper regard” in limiting bonuses. “What needs to happen is a sense of restraint,” Cameron told reporters in Brussels after a meeting of European leaders. “They need to do a better job of demonstrating how pay is related to performance. What I care about is the taxpayer going to get the money back.” To contact the reporter on this story: Gavin Finch in London at gfinch@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net

DiDonato Elopes to Vegas, Rages Against Arts Cuts: Interview

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-11/didonato-elopes-to-vegas-rages-against-arts-cuts-saves-fees-interview.html

Although mezzo Joyce DiDonato swings both ways, operatically speaking, now even she has a juicy new opportunity for gender bending. “This is the first opera I’ve sung where I play the girl instead of the guy in the all-female love duets,” she says. “It’s really sweet.” London ’s Royal Opera House is staging Massenet’s 1899 opera “Cendrillon,” based on the story of Cinderella, as a star vehicle for the Kansas-born singer. The title role needs a mezzo with a rich middle register, soaring high notes and great acting skills, all of which she has in spades. When I catch up with DiDonato, 42, at Covent Garden, my first question is not about fairy tales. It’s about her leg. She last appeared at the Royal Opera as Rosina in Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” and broke her shin on opening night. Hardy trooper that she is, she finished the run in a wheelchair. Is she fully recovered now? “Yes, everything’s fine,” she says, twirling her toes to prove it. “Though you know what? About eight months after that first accident, I tripped on stage again and tore all the ligaments in the same foot. The expletives were pouring out of my mouth then, I can tell you.” A date with the surgeon’s knife in Geneva sorted her out. “I didn’t make a big deal of it at the time. I felt, ‘Enough with the foot story already.’ And now everything’s fine.” Superb Prince There are happier memories attached to “Cendrillon.” She first sang the role when Laurent Pelly’s staging premiered in Santa Fe, New Mexico , in 2006. “That was one of my top two or three favorite productions of all time,” DiDonato says. “When the Royal Opera asked me if there was anything I’d like to sing, I suggested this.” It was a good choice. Pelly’s charming staging has some amusing costumes and a sprinkle of fairy-tale magic about it. DiDonato is terrific in the title role, and she has a superb Prince Charming in Alice Coote. There are other reasons why she recalls it fondly. “I married my husband during that run in 2006,” DiDonato says. “We took off to Las Vegas one weekend without telling anybody, and came back married. You could say we eloped.” Her husband Leonardo Vordoni is an Italian musician who, in a twist of fate, is now in Santa Fe himself conducting a production of Puccini’s “La Boheme.” “So Santa Fe is a lot in my thoughts at the moment,” she says. Has marriage changed her? “It’s wonderful to be with someone in the business, who understands the pressures of performing,” she says. “We coordinate our schedules to be able to spend as much time as possible together.” Kansas Cuts Kansas is as much on her mind as New Mexico. Sam Brownback , the Republican governor of DiDonato’s home state, recently erased all state arts funding. The matching federal arts funding was thus withdrawn too. DiDonato wrote an angry blog about it in which she argued what a positive cultural and financial impact the arts have on life. It was picked up and printed by two newspapers, and cause much comment. Has it made a difference, I ask her? “I haven’t a clue,” she says. “I’m just happy I spoke my mind. I understand that cuts are necessary across the board, but he singlehandedly eliminated every single penny for the arts. It’s so misguided, so shortsighted. Staying silent wasn’t an option for me.” DiDonato’s keen to use her high profile to highlight issues she cares about. She also uses her privileged access to the great and good of opera in other ways. Her hobby is photography, and she often takes shots of her colleagues during rehearsals. Her pictures of soprano Diana Damrau rehearsing in “Le Comte Ory” at the Met, taken from the wings, have snap and crackle. On her Flickr photosharing page (details below), there are lively rehearsal shots of “Cendrillon.” Dior Bag At the moment, it’s opera -- not photography -- that brings in her A-list earnings. What does she do with her fees? “I splurge on holidays, and the rest of the time I save,” says DiDonato. No diva-like impulse buying of glamorous frocks? “I had a busy season a while ago in Milan, and picked up a few extra fees,” she says. “So I decided to be a diva for a change. I’ve never paid more than about $40 for a handbag, so I thought I’d treat myself to something fashionable in Milan.” DiDonato went to the Dior shop, and found a gorgeous purse. “When the assistant told me it was 2,600 euros ($3,647), I froze. ‘I could send someone to college for that,’ I gasped. I just couldn’t buy it.” She hoots with laughter, “Honey, I am so from Kansas !” Joyce DiDonato performs in “Cendrillon” in repertory through July 16 at the Royal Opera. Information: http://www.roh.org.uk or +44-20-7304-4000. The production will be broadcast around the U.K. as part of the BP Summer Big Screen project on July 13, http://www.roh.org.uk/bpbigscreens. Her photosharing page can be found at http://www.flickr.com/photos/yankeediva. (Warwick Thompson is a critic for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.) To contact the writer on the story: Warwick Thompson, in London, at warwicktho@aol.com. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Beech at mbeech@bloomberg.net .

Juncker Says Discussions Under Way With IIF on Greek Haircut

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-13/juncker-says-discussions-under-way-with-iif-on-greek-haircut.html

Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker , who leads the group of euro-area finance ministers, said talks are under way with the Institute of International Finance on the cost to investors of a second bailout package for Greece. Asked if bondholders might face a loss of more than 21 percent, Juncker said: “One can’t say that at the moment. We’re in the process of having discussions at all levels, also with the IIF. One has to wait until the European Council and a special meeting of the euro group before we can comment on that.” Juncker said in an interview in Luxembourg today that the date of the euro-area finance ministers’ meeting isn’t set. European Union leaders are scheduled to meet on Oct. 23. To contact the reporter on this story: Stephanie Bodoni in Luxembourg at sbodoni@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Patrick Henry at phenry8@bloomberg.net

Woman Vintner Puts Rhone Valley Jaboulet Back on Map

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-08/woman-vintner-puts-rhone-valley-jaboulet-back-on-map.html

French winemaker Caroline Frey, in chic white jacket over a sparkly T-shirt and slim velvet pants, hardly looks like a fighter. Still, she was ready to block roads to prevent construction of a massive TV tower on the Rhone Valley’s most famous vineyard spot and source of her best wine, the hill of Hermitage. Her efforts, along with other winemakers, paid off: in June, it received protected status. Frey’s tougher job has been resurrecting the reputation of wines from the venerable Rhone firm Domaines Paul Jaboulet Aine. When her father, real estate entrepreneur Jean-Jacques Frey, purchased the wine company in 2006, quality was inconsistent, even for flagship Hermitage La Chapelle, one of the world’s legendary reds, and the Jaboulet brand had lost its cachet. My recent tastings, however, suggest that 35-year-old Frey, born in Champagne , trained in Bordeaux, and winemaker at her family’s Chateau La Lagune , is beginning to turn the Jaboulet wines around. It helped that 2009 and 2010 were stellar vintages in the Northern Rhone, where the red grape is syrah and whites are marsanne, roussanne, and viognier. The Jaboulet family’s Rhone history dates back to 1834. For much of the 20th century, it was the most important negociant and producer there, with 280 acres (113 hectares) of vines, including 52 acres in Hermitage. Pouring Money After taking over, the Freys poured in money, just as they did after purchasing Chateau La Lagune in 2000. “First I stopped pesticides and herbicides and began plowing with horses to allow the vine roots to go deep in the soil,” explains Frey, pulling out bottles for tasting at Vinexpo in Bordeaux. As proprietor, she has created new domaine wines from Jaboulet vineyards, built a new winery, and revived Hermitage La Chapelle white. Defunct since 1962, this rarity seems aimed at collectors. Drastic sorting and selection, Frey says, also upped quality. Only 2,000 cases of 2009 Hermitage La Chapelle were bottled, compared to nearly 9,000 cases in 2000. Some of the 30-plus wines are works in progress. I never liked the winery’s boring Parallele 45 red, white, and rose ($10), and still don’t. The 2011 Domaine Mule Blanche Crozes Hermitage Blanc ($40), a tart, citrusy marsanne-roussanne blend, lacks personality. Orange Rind I preferred the full, lush 2011 Domaine des Grands Amandiers Condrieu ($78), made from viognier, with its notes of minerals, orange rind and white flowers. The best red value, despite a 30 percent price rise last year, is the glossy Domaine de Thalabert Crozes Hermitage ($52), made from 60-year-old vines. The 2010 is all pepper, licorice and spice; the 2011 is round and luscious with smoky, savory fruit. I also like the inky, powerful, almost beefy 2011 Domaine de Saint-Pierre Cornas ($100) from a four-hectare parcel of 40-year-old vines. The star, Hermitage La Chapelle, is back on track, though it now faces tough competition from other producers such as Jean-Louis Chave, whose brilliant Hermitage red and white have a cult following. The Jaboulet wine is named for the 13th-century stone chapel built, according to legend, by a wounded knight back from the Crusades seeking a peaceful refuge. Czar Fan Louis XIII boosted the fame of Hermitage wines in his court. The Russian Romanovs, including Czar Nicholas II, were fans. And great 19th-century Bordeaux were “hermitaged” -- mixed with Rhone wine to give them color and body. Unlike some producers, Jaboulet blends together grapes from granite and limestone plots for La Chapelle. The ripe, deep 2009 ($200) was the turn-around vintage, while the dense, luscious, smoky 2010 ($240), with its suede texture and taste of candied violets, is a step up. The smooth, blackberry-and-licorice 2011 ($140 as futures), to be released in January, will be ready to drink much sooner than the 2009 and 2010. While a few critics suggest the Jaboulet wines haven’t yet established a style, I see a definite vision at work. Frey is aiming for wines that are pure, balanced and not theatrical or high in alcohol. Liv-Ex’s September Market Report shows increased interest in both Northern and Southern Rhone wines last month. Auction Demand Auction demand for Northern Rhone wines is tightly focused on the very best Cote-Rotie and Hermitage wines from top producers such as Chave, E. Guigal, and Jaboulet, says Jamie Ritchie, chief executive officer and President of Sotheby’s (BID) Wine for the Americas and Asia. One way Frey has drawn more international attention is by offering bottles of Hermitage La Chapelle direct from the Jaboulet cellars at Sotheby’s auctions. On Saturday, Sept. 7 , in Hong Kong , the New York auction house held its third successful Jaboulet sale, with vintages spanning 1949 to 2010. A private Asian bidder paid $94,231 for six bottles of the 1961, nearly double the high estimate. Still, that wasn’t quite as high as the price paid for the 1961 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong sale last December, when, after enthusiastic bidding, three bottles brought $22,000 each, 165 percent above estimate. That works out to about $3,666 per four-ounce glass. I’ve sipped this velvety red on only three occasions, and it was one of the best wines I’d ever tasted, up there with 1945 Mouton Rothschild. Other top vintages are 1978 and 1990. Whether 2010 is in their league remains to be seen. “I think there’s a big difference between the quality of Jaboulet wines today and the perception of them,” Frey says. “It takes years to change opinions. That’s so frustrating.” (Elin McCoy writes on wine and spirits for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.) Muse highlights include Greg Evans on U.S. TV, Warwick Thompson on U.K. theater and Scott Reyburn on the art market. To contact the writer of this story: Elin McCoy at elinmccoy@gmail.com To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net

Japan Securities Watchdog Files Complaint in Wal-Mart Unit's Trading Case

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-08/japan-securities-watchdog-files-complaint-in-wal-mart-unit-s-trading-case.html

Japan’s securities watchdog said it filed a complaint with prosecutors over possible insider trading by the husband of a former board member of Seiyu GK , the local unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The man and his company bought 268,000 shares of Tokyo- based Seiyu for 23.4 million yen ($280,000) between Oct. 2 and Oct. 19, 2007, after hearing from his wife that Wal-Mart was about to take over the supermarket chain, the Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission said yesterday. The regulator didn’t identify the couple in its statement. The price translates to an average of 87 yen per share. The stock traded at an average of 90 yen when the purchases took place, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bentonville, Arkansas-based Wal-Mart announced its plan on Oct. 22, 2007, to pay 140 yen a share to take full ownership of Seiyu. “We’re fully cooperating with authorities for their investigation,” Kumie Wama, a Seiyu spokeswoman, said by telephone. “We decline to comment further.” To contact the reporter on this story: Naoko Fujimura in Tokyo at nfujimura@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Frank Longid at flongid@bloomberg.net

Brazil Rate-Futures Yields Fall to Record on Shrinking Industry

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-03/brazil-rate-futures-yields-fall-to-record-on-shrinking-industry.html

Yields on Brazilian interest-rate futures contracts dropped to a record low on speculation the central bank will deepen cuts in borrowing costs after a report showed industrial production fell more than economists forecast. Yields on the futures contract due in January 2014 fell two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 7.82 percent in Sao Paulo after touching a record low 7.79 percent. The real snapped a two-day gain, depreciating 1.5 percent to 2.0155 per U.S. dollar , the biggest loss in almost two weeks. Output declined 0.9 percent in May from a month earlier, the national statistics agency said today in Rio de Janeiro. Economists had expected a decline of 0.6 percent, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 40 analysts. “The industrial sector is what suffers most from the global deceleration, which the market should be interpreting as a possibility for more stimulus,” Flavio Serrano, senior economist at Banco Espirito Santo de Investimento , said in a phone interview from Sao Paulo. The real rallied yesterday to a level stronger than 2 per dollar for the first time in a month after the central bank supported it with currency swap auctions three times last week. The bank has sold the swaps on 11 days since May 18 for $16.8 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The swaps are a reversal of the bank’s dollar purchases, which increased to $7.2 billion in April, the most in 13 months, to weaken the currency and support the country’s exporters. The bank abandoned those purchases in May. ‘Surprised Again’ “We could be surprised again by the central bank,” Italo Abucater, head of currency trading at Icap do Brasil CTVM, said in a phone interview from Sao Paulo. “If the real rises above 1.95 per dollar, we could see the bank buying dollars again.” Brazil ’s gross domestic product expanded 2.7 percent in 2011, down from growth of 7.5 percent in 2010. Analysts surveyed by the central bank reduced their 2012 growth forecast for an eighth week to 2.05 percent, a report showed yesterday. The central bank has cut its target lending rate by 4 percentage points since August, the most among Group of 20 nations, to a record low of 8.5 percent. Traders are betting policy makers will reduce the benchmark to 7.75 percent by the end of next month, interest-rate futures yields indicate. To contact the reporters on this story: Telma Marotto in Sao Paulo at tmarotto1@bloomberg.net ; Blake Schmidt in Bogota at bschmidt16@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net

U.S. Federal Reserve Beige Book: Dallas District (Text)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-18/u-s-federal-reserve-beige-book-dallas-district-text-.html

The following is the text of the Federal Reserve Board’s eleventh District-- Dallas. ELEVENTH DISTRICT--DALLAS The Eleventh District economy grew at a moderate pace over the past six weeks. Overall manufacturing activity continued to expand. Demand for business services remained solid, and transportation services activity increased. Respondents said retail sales grew at a somewhat slower pace than the last report, and automobile sales held steady. The housing sector continued to improve, and commercial real estate leasing activity held steady. Financial firms noted mixed loan demand. Overall energy activity remained strong, although gas-directed drilling continued to decline. Agricultural conditions deteriorated slightly. Employment levels were steady to slightly higher, and prices were mostly unchanged. Wage pressures remained minimal. Outlooks across industries were generally positive, but some respondents expressed concern about European debt issues, U.S. political uncertainty, and healthcare costs. Prices Most responding firms said prices were unchanged from the last reporting period. However, accounting firms noted a modest rise in rates, airlines reported higher fares, and some construction- related manufacturers said they were able to raise selling prices as a result of improved demand. Overall, input costs were flat to down, with reports of lower prices for cotton, scrap metal, and steel. The recent decline in fuel prices lowered costs for airlines and freight transportation firms. The price of WTI ranged from around $83 per barrel in early June to near $85 in early July. Natural gas prices remained depressed but rose 50 cents to around $2.85 per thousand cubic feet over the same period. The price of gasoline declined about 40 cents over the reporting period. Prices for several petrochemical products fell sharply due in part to softening global demand. Labor Market Most responding firms said employment levels were flat to up slightly. Staffing firms reported demand remained steady at very high levels and noted rising demand for financial analysts, steel and metal fabricators, and construction workers. Reports of hiring came from some retailers, automobile dealers, and primary metals, lumber, paper, and food manufacturers. Wage pressures remained minimal, although legal contacts said raises and bonuses had improved, and rising wages were noted for manufacturing workers with specialized skills such as machine operators. Manufacturing Overall demand for construction-related products held steady since the last report, and respondents’ outlooks have become slightly more guarded. Producers of stone, clay, and glass reported improved demand and higher capacity utilization rates compared to earlier in the year. Contacts in the lumber industry noted a pickup in demand, while primary metals manufacturers reported slight declines. Producers of fabricated metals reported steady sales activity, but said they were concerned about the continuity of some private projects. Conditions weakened in the high-tech manufacturing sector since the last report. Most respondents said growth in orders slowed or remained flat largely due to a weakening global economy and more uncertainty in outlooks. Contacts said that inventories were close to desired levels and that employment levels were stable. High-tech manufacturers expect growth to remain flat or weaken slightly--a change from earlier in the year when most contacts expected a pickup in the second half. Demand for paper products held steady, and contacts said they expect modest sales growth for the year. Food producers said sales activity increased over the past six weeks and orders were up significantly from year-ago levels. One food manufacturer reported adding several new workers in part due to strong demand. Automobile and aviation equipment manufacturers said demand held steady since the last report. Expectations are for seasonal pickup in automobile sales over the summer, but aviation manufacturers expect sales to remain flat. Petrochemicals producers reported a sharp decline in prices due to softening global demand, lower feedstock prices, and capacity coming back online following unplanned outages earlier in the year. Still, margins have remained relatively healthy for ethylene and polyethylene producers. Domestic demand for PVC, tied to residential construction, strengthened, and exports continued to be a major source of sales. Contacts noted inventories of gasoline and distillates were below normal, and Gulf Coast refineries were operating at rates above 90 percent in order to catch up. Retail Sales Retail sales increased but the pace of growth decelerated slightly compared to earlier in the year. Sales of apparel, bedding, household items, and small furniture fared well. Discount retailers said sales of food and sundries continued to perform the strongest. Overall sales growth in the Eleventh District continued to outpace the nation, on average, according to three large retailers. Outlooks are cautiously optimistic and contacts say it appears as if the environment has improved slightly for the consumer. Automobile sales continued to grow at a steady pace. Inventories were at desired levels and prices remained stable. Auto dealers expect sales growth to continue at the same pace through year end. Services Demand for staffing services remained steady at very high levels, and contacts noted an increase in orders for financial analysts, construction workers, and steel and metal fabricators. Outlooks were mostly positive but slightly more cautious than the last report. Accounting firms noted a seasonal slowdown in demand. Demand for energy and audit-related services increased modestly while advisory, transactional, and tax services activity softened slightly. Legal firms reported a pickup in demand, with continued strength in real estate, intellectual property, energy, and tax-related services. Reports from transportation service firms were positive. Railroads noted a slight increase in shipments, with particularly strong growth in petroleum products, motor vehicles and equipment, crushed stone, and metals. Air cargo, container, and small parcel shipments increased modestly during the reporting period. Airlines reported stable passenger demand over the past six weeks. Domestic demand remained strong buoyed by both corporate and leisure travel. Demand for international travel was strongest for travel to South America and Mexico. Airlines expect passenger demand to soften in the fall and ramp back up over the holiday season. Construction and Real Estate Contacts in the single-family housing industry said demand picked up over the past six weeks. Respondents noted that demand was outstripping supply in some areas, leading to falling inventories. Construction activity was picking up as result. Realtors and builders remained cautiously optimistic. Apartment market respondents continued to report solid demand. While rental rates continued to rise, the pace slowed slightly. Apartment construction activity is expected to pick up in coming months. Commercial real estate leasing activity remained steady since the last report. Energy and technology sectors continue to drive demand for space, particularly in Houston. Contacts were optimistic but remained concerned about the pace of U.S. economic activity. Financial Services Overall, financial firms reported mixed loan demand. National banks said middle-market lending declined, while auto and energy lending activity remained positive. Regional and community banks noted improvement in C&I and commercial real estate lending. Consumer lending appeared to be steady, with strong mortgage demand and a healthy backlog of loans in the pipeline. Loan pricing remained competitive at very low rates. The quality of outstanding loans continued to improve slowly and deposit growth was mixed. Outlooks are slightly more pessimistic than the last report in part due to European debt issues and regulatory and political uncertainty. Energy Respondents at energy-related firms said activity remained strong, and the District rig count grew modestly over the past six weeks. The rapid shift from dry-gas drilling to oil-directed drilling has not reduced the overall pace of activity, and business remains strong with long lead times and growing backlogs. Activity in the Gulf of Mexico increased further, and the success of a recent auction of offshore acreage suggests continued interest in the region. Agriculture Agricultural conditions deteriorated slightly due to hot and dry weather. Planting neared completion and crops were mostly in fair to good shape, with conditions much better than a year ago. Since the last report, livestock producers have seen pastures dry out, cattle prices fall, and feed costs increase. Crop prices generally increased over the past six weeks, particularly for corn, although cotton prices fell sharply.

APACER TECHNOLOG February Sales Rise 4.41% (Table) : 8271 TT

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-07/apacer-technolog-february-sales-rise-4-41-table-8271-tt.html

APACER TECHNOLOG said unconsolidated sales in February rose 4.41% to NT$637,080,000 from NT$610,165,000, according to a statement filed to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. (Figures are in thousands of New Taiwan dollars) ================================================================= 2/2012 2/2011 Sales 637,080 610,165 YOY% 4.41% -----------------Year-to-date----------------- Sales 1,180,504 1,457,792 YOY% -19.02% =================================================================

Swaps Show Treasury Auctions Limit Fed Buying Impact, Deutsche Bank Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-27/swaps-show-treasury-auctions-limit-fed-buying-impact-deutsche-bank-says.html

Movements in interest-rate swaps show government debt auctions diminish the impact Federal Reserve purchases of Treasury securities have on government debt yields, according to Deutsche Bank AG. Rallies in the swap rate matching the maturities of the debt the Fed was buying were an average of 6 basis points, or 0.06 percentage point, in the two days before the central bank’s scheduled purchase when there were no note or bond auctions, compared with 2 basis points for all of the instances that the Fed purchased debt, Deutsche Bank analysts led by London-based Francis Yared said in a report released Sept. 24. The rallies reverse course after the purchases, wrote the analysts, who studied 25 buyback operations from March 25 to June 8 in 2009 excluding two operations involving inflation- linked debt. The Fed will buy inflation-indexed debt tomorrow maturing from January 2011 to February 2040, while the Treasury will sell $35 billion in five-year notes. “ Buyback operations should be expected to have a greater impact when there is no contemporaneous supply pressure, the analysts wrote. “When there is issuance, the concession pricing” dominates the movement of yields, they wrote. The Fed completed a program of quantitative easing in March, purchasing $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and about $175 billion of agency debt. The central bank was the biggest buyer of Treasuries when it bought $300 billion of U.S. debt in 2009. The central bank said on Aug. 10 that it would reinvest the proceeds of maturing mortgage securities in Treasuries in order to maintain its securities holdings at $2 trillion to prevent money from draining out of the financial system. The Fed has bought $34.062 billion of Treasuries since Aug. 17. Fed ‘Accommodation’ The Fed said on Sept. 21 that it’s prepared “to provide additional accommodation if needed to support economic recovery and to return inflation, over time, to levels consistent with its mandate.” The difference between the rate to exchange floating- for fixed-interest payments for 10 years and the comparable-maturity Treasury note yield, known as the swap spread, decreased 0.25 basis point to 3.25 basis points at 4:02 p.m. in New York The two-year spread narrowed 0.6 basis point to 18.25 basis points. The 10-year interest-rate swap spread has widened from negative 0.75 basis point on Aug. 9, the day before the Fed announced it would reinvest maturing mortgage proceeds in Treasuries. The yield on 10-year notes has fallen 31 basis points to 2.51 percent during that period. The first round of quantitative easing lowered the 10-year yield from 50 to 60 basis points since November 2008, said Joseph Gagnon , a former Fed official who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, in an interview. He estimated that a second round would “likely be at least $1 trillion” and have a smaller market reaction. To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Kruger in New York at dkruger1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dave Liedtka at dliedtka@bloomberg.net

Airbus Works on Final U.S. Air Force Tanker Bid, Claiming Edge on Boeing

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-17/airbus-works-on-tanker-bid-with-plane-boeing-says-is-oversized-.html

Airbus Military said it’s working on a final bid in the $35 billion U.S. Air Force airborne tanker contest as it seeks to trump Boeing Co. in a delayed competition that has already spanned nine years. Airbus’s defense arm is bullish about winning the order because its A330 airliner-based model offers greater capability than Boeing’s 767, Domingo Urena Raso , the unit’s chief executive officer, said in an interview in Toulouse, France. “Our plane is bigger, it has a cabin in which you can do medical evacuation or transport soldiers or ground crews, and it provides more fuel capacity, hence flying further and being able to refuel more fighters,” he said. “You’d otherwise need two or three different aircraft to perform the same types of mission.” Boeing said its bid meets all mandatory requirements and that Airbus’s plane is “oversized.” The Air Force said Nov. 20 it would delay making a choice until early 2011 after mistakenly disclosing both bidders’ data on combat-mission analysis. Urena Raso declined to comment on how the proposals might be affected by the revelations, which didn’t include pricing information. Airbus is still answering final questions about its plane, which would carry 270 troops and ground equipment in addition to fuel, Urena Raso said, and expects the Pentagon to ask for final bids shortly, ahead of an evaluation period to pick the winner. Going Solo The Airbus tanker was originally chosen by the U.S. Air Force over Boeing’s proposal in 2007, only for the award to be quashed after its rival contested the decision. While Airbus and parent European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. were junior partners to U.S.-based Northrop Grumman Corp. in the initial contest, this time round they’re competing alone. Airbus has already beaten Boeing in bids to supply the U.K. and Australia with refueling planes and can draw on those designs if it wins the U.S. order, Urena Raso said on Dec. 15. It also won contests in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, while Boeing was selected in Japan and Italy. A tanker destined for Britain’s Royal Air Force this week made its first contact with a jet fighter using a hose trailing from the rear fuselage to provide a higher fuel flow than wing- mounted gear. That completes tests for every combination of fuelling option, the executive said. Boeing’s 767-based aircraft would burn 24 percent less fuel than the Airbus plane while meeting the Pentagon’s 372 bid requirements, spokesman William Barksdale said in an e-mail. The Chicago-based company’s proposal is based on proven technology from the KC-10 and KC-135 tankers and will also incorporate cockpit displays from the new 787 Dreamliner, he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Rothman in Toulouse at aerothman@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Benedikt Kammel at bkammel@bloomberg.net

Google’s Android Extends Lead in U.S. Smartphone Software Market

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-04/smartphone-market-expands-65-percent-in-second-quarter-idc-says.html

Google Inc. (GOOG) ’s Android extended its lead as the most widely used U.S. smartphone software last quarter, while Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) lost share, ComScore Inc. said. Android’s share widened to 40.1 percent in the three months that ended in June from 34.7 percent in the first quarter, ComScore said in a statement. That followed a separate report from IDC that showed Apple Inc. (AAPL) was the biggest seller of smartphones worldwide last quarter, with 19.1 percent share of shipments. Apple and Google are vying for leadership in the market for smartphones, which IDC says will rise 55 percent globally this year as more consumers opt for phones that offer swift Web surfing and access to thousands of downloadable applications. While the iPhone is the best-selling handset, Android is more widely used partly because it’s carried by multiple vendors. “Google Android continued to gain ground in the smartphone market,” Reston, Virginia-based ComScore said in a statement. Apple’s iOS software overtook Research In Motion’s BlackBerry operating system for second place, according to ComScore. Apple’s U.S. share advanced to 26.6 percent from 25.5 percent in the prior three months, ComScore said. Research in Motion, Microsoft and Nokia Oyj (NOK1V) all lost share. In global smartphone sales, Apple’s iPhone share rose from 13 percent a year earlier, according to IDC research, which was also released today. Samsung Electronics Co.’s share rose to 16.3 percent. That echoed research released July 29 from Strategy Analytics that said Apple and Samsung surpassed Nokia for the first time last quarter. The worldwide smartphone market expanded about 65 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, with 106.5 million units shipped, IDC said. Canalys also said on Aug. 1 that Android was the biggest smartphone platform worldwide, with a 48 percent market share. -- Editors: Tom Giles , John Lear To contact the reporter on this story: Olga Kharif in Portland , Oregon, at okharif@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net .

German Health Insurers to Raise Premiums, Financial Times Deutschland Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-22/private-patients-face-6-8-premium-increases-by-german-insurers-ftd-says.html

Germany’s private health insurers will have to raise premiums by between six percent and eight percent to assure reserve funds for their elderly members, Financial Times Deutschland reported today, citing its own calculations. The insurers, which have reserve funds worth 144 billion euros ($201 billion), guarantee interest rates on the assets of 3.5 percent, which they can’t realize at the moment because of the low interest rate level, the newspaper said. To contact the reporter on this story: Holger Elfes in Dusseldorf at helfes@bloomberg.net ; To contact the editor responsible for this story: Celeste Perri at cperri@bloomberg.net

Gold Fields Says South Deep Strike Hearing Provisionally Set For Next Week

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-10/gold-fields-says-south-deep-strike-hearing-provisionally-set-for-next-week.html

Gold Fields Ltd. said a hearing over the planned strike by South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers at its South Deep mine has been provisionally scheduled for next week. The hearing, at the Labour Court in Johannesburg, has been set for Nov. 15 and Nov. 16, company spokesman Sven Lunsche said in an e-mailed response to questions today. To contact the reporter on this story: Carli Lourens in Johannesburg at clourens@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alastair Reed at areed12@bloomberg.net

Mexican Peso Drops Most in Three Weeks on Moody’s Europe Review

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-12/mexican-peso-weakens-to-one-week-low-on-moody-s-europe-review.html

Mexico ’s peso dropped the most in three weeks after a report showed industrial production rose less than forecast and Moody’s Investors Service said it will review the ratings of all European Union countries. The peso declined 1.9 percent to 13.8342 per U.S. dollar at 11:54 a.m. in Mexico City, from 13.5744 on Dec. 9. The currency fell 2.1 percent on Nov. 21. Earlier today it tumbled as much as 2.3 percent to 13.8832, the weakest since Nov. 29. Local markets are closed for a national holiday today. Disappointment spread after last week’s summit on the European debt crisis offered few new measures, with all except three of the top 25 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg declining today. Mexico’s factory output rose 3.3 percent in October from a year earlier, the national statistics agency said today, trailing the 3.9 percent median estimate of eight analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. “It’s the global combined with the lack of liquidity because the Mexican market is off,” Eduardo Suarez , a Latin America currency strategist at Scotia Capital Inc., said in a telephone interview from Toronto. The weaker-than-forecast industrial production data in Mexico may also have fueled the peso’s decline, according to Suarez. “That should have an impact,” he said. “The numbers had been quite good and this one actually disappointed.” Europe Debt Summit European leaders unveiled a blueprint after meetings on Dec. 8 and 9 for a closer fiscal accord, adding 200 billion euros ($264 billion) to their bailout fund and tightening rules to curb future debts. They also said they would start a 500- billion-euro rescue fund next year. The agreement offered few additional measures and doesn’t diminish the risk of credit-ranking revisions, Moody’s said in its Weekly Credit Outlook. “Our intention as announced in November is to revisit the level and dispersion of ratings during the first quarter of 2012,” the company said. The yield on Mexico’s benchmark peso-denominated bond rose two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 6.61 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The price of the security fell 0.24 centavo to 129.52 centavos per peso. To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Bain in Mexico City at bbain2@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net

German Inflation Unexpectedly Remained Unchanged in July

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-29/german-inflation-seen-slowing-for-first-time-since-april.html

(Corrects to show non-harmonized inflation accelerated in sixth paragraph.) German inflation unexpectedly remained unchanged in July at the highest level in five months. Germany ’s consumer price index , calculated using a harmonized European Union method, rose 1.9 percent from a year ago, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. That exceeds economists’ forecasts for a slowdown to 1.8 percent, according to the median of 24 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Prices increased 0.4 percent from June. “Prices rose a bit more than expected but overall, everything is still under control,” said Heinrich Bayer, an economist at Deutsche Postbank AG (DPB) in Bonn. “The increase is typical for the season, if you keep travel costs in mind. Overall, the price climate is rather calm, without any drivers, except food prices.” Food-price inflation accelerated to 5.7 percent in July from 5.4 percent in June, the statistics office said. Energy costs rose 2.9 percent from a year earlier, down from 3 percent in June. The Bundesbank forecasts German inflation will average 1.6 percent this year and 1.5 percent in 2014. The Frankfurt-based central bank reduced its 2013 growth projection for Germany last month to 0.3 percent from the 0.4 percent it predicted in December, citing a worse-than-expected first quarter and warned that Europe ’s sovereign debt crisis still poses risks to the economic recovery. Euro-Area Inflation German non-harmonized inflation accelerated to 1.9 percent in July from 1.8 percent, with prices rising 0.5 percent from June. Consumer price gains in the 17-nation euro area accelerated to 1.6 percent in June from 1.4 percent the previous month and 1.2 percent in April as energy prices rebounded, data from the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg showed July 16. Data for this month will be published on July 31. The European Central Bank last month cut its 2013 inflation forecast for the region to 1.4 percent from 1.6 percent and left the 2014 estimate unchanged at 1.3 percent. Of 63 economists in a Bloomberg News survey , 62 expect the ECB to keep its benchmark interest rate at a record low of 0.5 percent when policy makers meet this week in Frankfurt. ECB President Mario Draghi pledged on July 4 to keep rates low for an “extended period of time” as the currency bloc tries to emerge from its longest-ever recession. The economy shrank for a sixth quarter in the first three months of this year. To contact the reporter on this story: Stefan Riecher in Frankfurt at sriecher@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Craig Stirling at cstirling1@bloomberg.net

U.S. Treasuries Advance With 30-Year Bond Yield Falling to 3.11%

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-14/u-s-treasuries-advance-with-30-year-bond-yield-falling-to-3-11-.html

U.S. government bonds advanced as a report showed German investor confidence rose less than economists forecast in May. Thirty-year Treasury yields fell two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 3.11 percent at 10:04 a.m. London time. Ten-year rates declined one basis point to 1.91 percent. To contact the reporter on this story: Emma Charlton in London at echarlton1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Dobson at pdobson2@bloomberg.net

Allstate Has $620 Million Loss, First in Two Years, as Storms Raise Costs

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-01/allstate-posts-620-million-loss-first-in-two-years-on-tornado-expenses.html

Allstate Corp. (ALL) , the second-largest U.S. home and auto insurer, posted its first quarterly loss in more than two years as tornadoes led to a surge in claims costs. The stock gained as results beat estimates. The second-quarter net loss of $620 million, or $1.19 a share, compares with profit of $145 million, or 27 cents, a year earlier, the Northbrook, Illinois-based insurer said today in a statement. The operating loss, which excludes some investment results, was $1.23 a share, beating by 35 cents the average estimate of 21 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Wilson , 53, added auto customers in most states excluding New York and Florida , where the firm has scaled back to boost profitabilty. He’s also raising rates for homeowners’ coverage after storms caused catastrophe costs in the second quarter to balloon to $2.34 billion, an expense the insurer had previously disclosed. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel” if they can reduce their homeowners exposure and increase the number of auto-insurance customers, said Tom Lewandowski, an analyst at Edward Jones & Co., in an interview. “There’s a lot of pessimism priced into these shares.” He advises clients to buy the stock. Allstate rose 82 cents, or 3 percent to $28.54 at 9:38 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The insurer had declined 13 percent this year through July 29 while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed 2.8 percent. The insurer had been profitable every quarter since reporting a $274 million net loss for the period ended in March 2009. Bank Unit Shuttered The insurer plans to shutter its banking unit after the collapse of a deal to sell deposits to Discover Financial Services, Allstate said today. “We are continuing with plans to wind down the Allstate Bank’s operations and anticipate obtaining regulatory approval to cancel its banking charter by year-end 2011,” Allstate said in a regulatory filing. Catastrophe costs in the second quarter were $2.34 billion, compared with $636 million a year earlier. Allstate lost 23.3 cents for every premium dollar in its property and liability coverage unit compared with a gain of 3.2 cents a year earlier. Using the so-called underlying ratio, which excludes items such as catastrophes, the company made 12.5 cents for every premium dollar in the second quarter. Tornado Damage More than 1,600 tornadoes have been reported this year, compared with 1,282 in all of 2010, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Storms in the U.S. contributed to $14.7 billion in direct insured losses to property in the second quarter, ISO, a unit of Verisk Analytics Inc., said in a June 22 statement. Premium revenue in Allstate’s property and liability business fell to $6.46 billion from $6.51 billion a year earlier as the company’s auto and home policy counts declined. Wilson announced a deal in May to purchase Esurance, the online seller of auto coverage, and Answer Financial from White Mountains Insurance Group Ltd. for about $1 billion. “The actions we took during the quarter, including our pending acquisition of Esurance and Answer Financial, position us well,” Wilson said in today’s statement. The departure last month of Joseph Lacher, president of Allstate Protection since 2009, sent shares tumbling. Lacher had overseen Allstate’s auto-coverage business, which has lost customers for most of the last three years. Direct-to-consumer rivals such as Progressive Corp. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Geico unit have added policies as drivers shun agents and purchase coverage over the Internet. Home Insurance Lacher also managed Allstate’s business that covers residential property. Allstate said in June that returns from the homeowners unit were “inadequate.” Allstate has received approval in 18 states to raise homeowners rates, according to today’s statement. The company competes with policyholder-owned State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., the largest U.S. home and auto insurer. “I don’t know if you can necessarily put the blame on Joe fully for not being able to turn things around” since some of the trends predate his tenure, said Brian Meredith, an analyst at UBS AG. Lacher “was actually in the process of trying to fix it.” Book value, a measure of assets minus liabilities, slumped to $35.95 a share from $36.51 at the end of March. Wilson has reshaped Allstate’s investment portfolio since 2008, when writedowns contributed to an annual loss of $1.68 billion. He bought corporate bonds while cutting back on stocks, commercial mortgage-backed securities and municipal debt. Allstate posted $57 million in realized investment gains in the second quarter, compared with a loss of $451 million a year earlier, on fewer writedowns and narrower derivative losses. To contact the reporter on this story: Noah Buhayar in New York at nbuhayar@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Kraut at dkraut2@bloomberg.net

Yuan Completes Fifth Quarterly Gain on Economic Recovery Signs

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-30/yuan-set-for-fifth-quarterly-gain-on-economic-recovery-signs.html

China’s yuan completed its fifth straight quarter of gains on stronger central bank fixings amid signs Asia’s largest economy is recovering from a slowdown. The People’s Bank of China raised its daily reference rate , which limits the yuan’s daily moves to 1 percent on either side, by 0.5 percent to 6.1480 this quarter. Manufacturing activity increased for q second month in September, while exports advanced for a second month in August, official data show. The yuan’s appreciation has slowed since end-June after gaining the most since 2011 in the previous three months amid a cash squeeze engineered by authorities to curb excessive lending. “The yuan was supported by improving growth momentum,” said Andy Ji, a Singapore-based currency strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. “Onshore demand for the yuan is not as strong as a quarter ago due to the liquidity crunch.” The Chinese currency gained 0.25 percent this quarter to 6.1220 per dollar in Shanghai, after strengthening 1.2 percent in the previous three months, China Foreign Exchange Trade System prices showed. It slipped 0.03 percent today. The yuan has appreciated 1.8 percent this year, the only gainer among Asia’s 11 most-traded currencies tracked by Bloomberg. The PBOC wants to keep the yuan “stable,” said Ji. For today, the market is watching developments in the U.S., where the House of Representatives voted 231-192 to stop many of the Affordable Care Act’s central provisions for one year, tying it to an extension of government funding through Dec. 15. Should the Senate reject the bill today, the government could be shut down from tomorrow. PMI, Economy China ’s Purchasing Managers’ Index from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics rose to 50.2 in September from 50.1 in August, data showed today. The economy probably grew 7.7 percent in the third quarter, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey this month, up from an estimate of 7.5 percent in August. Growth was 7.5 percent last quarter, the second-weakest in four years. Twelve-month non-deliverable forwards on the yuan climbed 1.4 percent this quarter to 6.2010 per dollar in Hong Kong, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The contracts slipped 0.01 percent today and traded at a 1.3 percent discount to the onshore spot rate. In Hong Kong’s offshore market, the yuan rose 0.31 percent this quarter to 6.1177 per dollar, data compiled by Bloomberg show. It weakened 0.01 percent today. One-month implied volatility in the onshore yuan, a measure of expected moves in the exchange rate used to price options, dropped 58 basis points, or 0.58 percentage point, this quarter to 1.23 percent. It slipped one basis point today. Citigroup Inc. and Bank of China Ltd. announced yesterday they will participate in Shanghai ’s free trade zone as the Chinese government inaugurated the experiment in more relaxed financial and investment controls. To contact the reporter on this story: Lilian Karunungan in Singapore at lkarunungan@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net

MACRONIX INTL April Sales Fall 15.99% (Table) : 2337 TT

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-07/macronix-intl-april-sales-fall-15-99-table-2337-tt.html

MACRONIX INTL said unconsolidated sales in April fell 15.99% to NT$1,804,179,000 from NT$2,147,686,000, according to a statement filed to the Taiwan Stock Exchange. (Figures are in thousands of New Taiwan dollars) ================================================================= 4/2012 4/2011 Sales 1,804,179 2,147,686 YOY% -15.99% -----------------Year-to-date----------------- Sales 6,887,483 8,720,423 YOY% -21.02% =================================================================

RBS Said in Talks to Sell $402 Million WorldPay Stake

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-06/rbs-said-in-talks-to-sell-402-million-worldpay-stake.html

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc is in talks to sell its minority stake in credit-card processor WorldPay Ltd. to its private-equity co-owners, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. Britain’s largest publicly owned lender is negotiating with Advent International Corp. and Bain Capital LLC to sell its remaining holding of about 20 percent in the Cambridge, England-based company for 250 million pounds ($402 million) within the next month, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. RBS sold a majority stake in WorldPay to the two Boston-based private-equity firms in a deal valued at 1.9 billion pounds, including a 1.2 billion-pound debt package, in 2010. In March, WorldPay’s owners increased the company’s debt, paying themselves a 340 million-pound dividend and repaying lower-ranking debt holders. WorldPay generated 305 million pounds of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2012. Officials at Edinburgh-based RBS, Bain and Advent declined to comment. A WorldPay spokesman didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail request seeking comment. To contact the reporters on this story: Kiel Porter in London at kporter17@bloomberg.net ; Gavin Finch in London at gfinch@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net

Michelin Tightens Cost Controls as Currency Burdens Sales

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-28/michelin-tightens-cost-controls-as-currency-headwinds-sap-sales.html

Michelin & Cie. (ML) , Europe’s largest tiremaker, said currency shifts in the U.S., Japan and South America more than offset global delivery gains causing it to review spending plans after third-quarter revenue dropped. Sales fell to 5.12 billion euros ($7.06 billion) from 5.44 billion euros a year earlier, even as delivery volumes rose 2 percent, the Clermont-Ferrand, France-based company said late yesterday in a statement. That missed the 5.33 billion-euro average of five analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The stock fell the most in three months. The tiremaker forecast that operating profit will rise by about 150 million euros before one-time items and currency effects, which will be “more deeply negative” than anticipated at the beginning of the year. The depreciation of the dollar and yen has undone the French manufacturer’s efforts to boost volumes by growing outside Europe , where demand has been hit by recession. The company is investing in additional capacity in new markets and by selling tires for mining equipment and other large vehicles. Europe’s contraction has already prompted the tiremaker to look at ways to trim costs in the region, where about 59 percent of its 107,000 workers are employed. Shares Drop The stock fell as much as 4.6 percent, the biggest drop since July 25, and was down 3.9 percent at 76.68 euros as of 9:11 a.m. in Paris trading. The shares have gained 7 percent this year, valuing the company at 14.4 billion euros. Michelin expects foreign-exchange fluctuations to burden full-year operating profit by about 250 million euros, Chief Financial Officer Marc Henry said on a conference call. The company previously forecast a negative currency impact of as much as 150 million euros for 2013. Nine-month revenue declined 5.3 percent to 15.3 billion euros. To offset foreign-exchange headwinds, the company will further tighten control over costs. Michelin still sees global volumes steady as Europe recovers from the effects of the sovereign-debt crisis. Car, truck and specialty tires global markets all advanced over the first nine months of the year. “In light of the outlook for volume growth in the fourth quarter, Michelin confidently maintains its full-year objective of stable volumes,” the company said in the statement. Michelin laid out a strategy on Sept. 18 to deliver 1 billion euros in structural free cash flow a year by 2020, as well as at least a 15 percent return on capital employed. The company expects its expansion outside Europe to ease foreign-exchange risks over time, as costs and revenues in various currencies are more balanced. “What is clear to us is that Michelin provides a natural hedging through a balanced geographic portfolio,” said CFO Henry on the call. “The geographical portfolio and the portfolio of activities of Michelin is bringing us a natural hedge that is quite impressive.” To contact the reporter on this story: Mathieu Rosemain in Paris at mrosemain@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net

Mvelaphanda, Brimstone Plan to List Health Interest on Johannesburg Bourse

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-22/mvelaphanda-brimstone-plan-to-list-health-interest-on-johannesburg-bourse.html

Mvelaphanda Group Ltd. and Brimstone Investment Corp. Ltd. plan to list their health interests in a separate entity on the JSE Ltd.’s Johannesburg Securities Exchange. Brimstone will dispose of its entire indirect shareholding in Life Healthcare Group Holdings Ltd. in exchange for a stake in a new listed entity to be known as Health, which will be listed on or about Aug. 16. The only asset of the listing following a restructuring of Brimstone and Mvelaphanda’s assets will be a 26.6 percent direct holding in Life Healthcare.

Corn, Soybeans Gain as Drought Seen Eroding Crops; Wheat Rallies

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-20/corn-soybeans-gain-as-drought-seen-eroding-crops-wheat-rallies.html

Corn futures rose to the highest in more than a week and soybeans rallied on speculation that the worst U.S. drought since 1956 will cause more crop damage than the government forecast. Wheat also rallied. Production of corn in the U.S., the world’s largest grower and exporter, may be less than the 273.8 million metric tons forecast by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Aug. 10, and soybean output may slip below the 73.3 million tons predicted by the agency, said Jamey Kohake, a broker at Paragon Investments. Participants in the annual Professional Farmers of America tour began a seven-state tour of Midwest fields today. “There’s speculation about lower yields,” Kohake said by telephone from Silver Lake, Kansas. “The corn harvest yields are pretty pathetic.” Corn futures for December delivery jumped 2 percent to settle at $8.2375 a bushel at 2 p.m. on the Chicago Board of Trade, after reaching $8.25, the highest for a most-active contract since rallying to a record $8.49 on Aug. 10. The price has jumped 63 percent since mid-June because of the drought. Soybean futures for November delivery rose 2.3 percent to $16.835 a bushel in Chicago. The price has gained 28 percent since June 15. Soybean meal, used to feed livestock, jumped 2.6 percent to $512.80 per 2,000 pounds, after reaching a record $513.50 today. Wheat futures for December delivery advanced 0.9 percent to $9.0275 a bushel on the CBOT. The price had increased for four straight sessions. Corn is the biggest U.S. crop, valued at $76.5 billion in 2011, followed by soybeans, hay and wheat, government figures show. To contact the reporter on this story: Tony C. Dreibus in Chicago at tdreibus@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net

Asian Stocks Rise to Five-Month High on U.S. Deal, China

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-19/asian-stocks-rise-to-five-month-high-on-u-s-deal-china.html

Asian stocks rose for a second week, with the benchmark index climbing to a five-month high, after U.S. lawmakers reached an accord to reopen the government and avoid a default. Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) , a maker of smartphones and televisions that gets 43 percent of its sales in the Americas and China , advanced 2 percent. GungHo Online Entertainment Inc. soared 12 percent in Tokyo after the game developer and parent SoftBank Corp. agreed to buy Finland’s Supercell Oy. Sands China Ltd. (1928) reached a record high in Hong Kong after the Macau casino operator reported a surge in profit. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index gained 1.8 percent to 143.45 this week, the highest close since May 21. Shares also gained after data yesterday showed China’s economic growth accelerated. “You had this cloud over the debt ceiling being resolved, and this opens the door for a new leg in the equity market toward year-end,” said Nader Naeimi, Sydney-based head of dynamic asset allocation at AMP Capital Investors Ltd., which manages $131 billion. “Fundamentals are improving and you see solid numbers out of China and start seeing a turnaround in China’s growth.” Japan’s Topix index added 0.7 percent this week, while South Korea’s Kospi Index gained 1.4 percent. New Zealand’s NZX 50 Index climbed 0.4 percent. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index rose 1.7 percent after the nation’s central bank said it retains the option to loosen policy further to spur growth, according to minutes of the body’s Oct. 1 meeting. Singapore’s Straits Times Index advanced 0.4 percent. Taiwan’s Taiex Index added 1.1 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (HSI) gained 0.5 percent, while China’s Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.5 percent. Impasse Resolved Asian shares gained this week after the U.S. Senate crafted a bipartisan deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt limit. Lawmakers passed the bill by wide margins before it was signed into law by President Barack Obama. BlackRock Inc. and Pacific Investment Management Co. say the Federal Reserve will postpone tapering as a result of the debt-ceiling stand-off. Policy makers in September said bond purchases this year will be cut from a record $85 billion a month. The central bank next meets Oct. 29-30. Companies that do business in the U.S. advanced. Samsung added 2 percent to 1.47 million won. James Hardie Industries SE, an Australian maker of building materials that gets about 70 percent of sales from the U.S., rose 2.5 to A$10.76. Nissan Motor Co. (7201) , a Japanese carmaker that gets about 34 percent of its car sales from North America , gained 1.8 percent to 1,027 yen. China Growth China’s gross domestic product rose 7.8 percent from a year earlier in the July-September period, the National Bureau of Statistics said yesterday in Beijing, matching the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. Industrial production advanced in September by 10.2 percent, in line with projections, while retail sales gained 13.3 percent. GungHo Online Entertainment jumped 12 percent to 81,100 yen after parent SoftBank said they will buy a 51 percent stake in gamemaker Supercell for $1.53 billion. SoftBank rose 0.7 percent to 7,280 yen. Sands China soared 13 percent to a record HK$58 as earnings surged after its new resort in Macau drew more gamblers. Third-quarter net income for the casino operator rose 89 percent to $617.9 million from a year earlier, according to parent Las Vegas Sands Corp.’s filing. Boral, Kansai Boral Ltd. advanced 4.2 percent to A$4.94 after USG Corp. agreed to pay the Australian company as much as $575 million to create a jointly owned building-materials business spanning Asia and the Middle East. Kansai Electric Power Co. added 4 percent to 1,341 yen. The Japanese utility reported an unexpected first-half profit and its equity rating was raised to overweight at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Among stocks that fell, SBI Holdings Inc. lost 3.8 percent to 1,241 yen. The Japanese brokerage announced it plans to sell 30 billion yen ($306 million) in convertible bonds. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index traded at 13.8 times average estimated earnings yesterday, compared with multiples of 15.8 for the Standard & Poor’s (SPX) 500 Index and 14.6 for the STOXX Europe 600 Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. To contact the reporter on this story: Yoshiaki Nohara in Tokyo at ynohara1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sarah McDonald at smcdonald23@bloomberg.net

Nordic Power Market Regulator to Increase Nord Pool Monitoring

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-25/nordic-power-market-regulator-to-increase-nord-pool-monitoring.html

Norway ’s energy and water directorate NVE will increase monitoring of Nordic electricity trading on the Nord Pool Spot AS exchange in Oslo, it said. The regulator will set up a new department to oversee electricity trading starting Jan. 1 in a bid to comply with regulations laid out in the EU’s so-called third energy package, it said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. The bloc, of which Norway is not a member, adopted a legislative package to open up internal gas and electricity markets in 2009 to promote free trading across the union. It also stipulated that each country should have an independent energy market watchdog. NVE’s measure, carried out at its own initiative, comes ahead of proposed amendments from the country’s ministry of petroleum and energy to laws governing how the EU legislation should be implemented, it said. NVE monitors Nord Pool Spot , the world’s largest multinational power exchange, where 370 buyers and sellers from 20 countries match supply and demand and price electricity for the following 24 hours in Norway, Sweden , Finland and Denmark , as well as Estonia and Lithuania. To contact the reporter on this story: Torsten Fagerholm in Helsinki at tfagerholm@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lars Paulsson at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net

U.S. August Farm-Raised Catfish Sales by Product

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-20/u-s-august-farm-raised-catfish-sales-by-product-table-.html

Following is a table detailing U.S. catfish sales according to the Department of Agriculture: To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Rose in Washington at srose31@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alex Tanzi at atanzi@bloomberg.net

Thai Baht Has Best Week in Two Months on Fund Inflows to Bonds

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-22/thai-baht-set-for-best-week-in-two-months-on-inflows-bonds-rise.html

Thailand ’s baht had its biggest weekly gain in two months as the country’s improving economy attracts fund inflows into the bond markets from abroad. Cash is flowing into Thai assets as global investors shun Malaysia , which is close to an election, and Indonesia owing to its current-account deficit, Bank of Thailand Governor Prasarn Trairatvorakul said on March 20, adding that special measures to stem the inflows aren’t needed yet. The baht touched a 16-year high this week as options contracts betting on gains became more expensive than those used to protect against declines. “Unlike Malaysia and Indonesia in Southeast Asia, Thailand doesn’t have a big concern that shakes the country at this moment,” said Tsutomu Soma , manager of Rakuten Securities Inc.’s fixed-income business unit department in Tokyo. “With lots of liquidity supplied by central banks in developed nations, funds are coming to Southeast Asia, and Thailand stands out with its economic growth and political stability.” The baht climbed 0.8 percent this week, the most since the five-day period ended Jan. 18, to 29.30 per dollar as of 3:19 p.m. in Bangkok, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The currency declined 0.3 percent today, having touched 29.08 on March 20, the strongest level since a devaluation sparked the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Global funds purchased $442 million more sovereign debt than they sold this week through yesterday, taking this month’s net purchases to $2.5 billion, Thai Bond Market Association data show. Overseas funds poured in a net $2.7 billion in February and $3.7 billion in January. International investors sold a net $220 million of local equities this week through yesterday, exchange data show. Volatility Rises One-month implied volatility, a measure of expected moves in the exchange rate used to price options, climbed 23 basis points, or 0.23 percentage point, from a week ago to 5.19 percent. The rate climbed eight basis points today. Call options granting the right to buy the baht in a month’s time cost 0.14 percentage point more than put contracts, compared with a discount of 0.03 percentage point on March 15. The yield on Thailand’s 3.625 percent bonds due June 2023 dropped seven basis points this week to 3.55 percent, the lowest level since Feb. 8, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The rate declined three basis points today. To contact the reporter on this story: Yumi Teso in Bangkok at yteso1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Regan at jregan19@bloomberg.net

Mitchells & Butlers Sales Growth Slows as World Cup Keeps Pub Diners Away

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-22/mitchells-butler-sales-growth-slowed-amid-world-cup-u-k-budget-cuts.html

Mitchells & Butlers Plc , the U.K. pub owner that had a board shakeup in January, said sales growth slowed during soccer’s World Cup and uncertainty remains about “discretionary” consumer spending. Like-for-like sales in the nine weeks to July 17 rose 1.2 percent, compared with a 1.8 percent increase in the 33 weeks to May 15, the Birmingham, England-based company said in a statement today. The World Cup had a “negative impact” on food sales, reducing overall like-for-like sales by about 2 percent, it said. “If there’s a challenge it’s managing the consumer uncertainty,” Chief Executive Officer Adam Fowle told reporters on a conference call today. “The emergency budget has raised the spectre of hardship for consumers. That’s the risk. They are still massively more confident that they were in November.” U.K. consumer confidence measures by Nationwide Building Society fell to the lowest in a year in June as the government’s planned budget cuts spooked consumers. In May Mitchells posted first-half net income of 52 million pounds ($78.8 million) compared with a year-earlier loss of 6 million pounds on increased food sales and declining finance costs. Like-for-like sales in the first 42 weeks of the financial year increased 1.6 percent, with total sales up 2.1 percent in the period, Mitchells said today. Mitchells fell 3.7 pence, or 1.2 percent, to 299.7 pence in London trading as of 8:15 a.m. The stock has gained 21 percent this year, giving the company a market value of 1.22 billion pounds. To contact the reporter on this story: Colm Heatley in Belfast at cheatley@bloomberg.net .

Groupon China Venture to Merge With Tencent-Backed FTuan

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-26/groupon-china-venture-to-merge-with-tencent-backed-ftuan.html

Groupon Inc. (GRPN) , the biggest daily coupon website, is combining its Gaopeng online-commerce venture in China with FTuan, a company backed by local partner Tencent Holdings Ltd. (700) Gaopeng, in which Chicago-based Groupon owns a minority stake, will continue to offer its own brand alongside FTuan after the merger, according to a statement from Groupon and Tencent yesterday. The transaction with FTuan, which provides consumers low-priced deals for dining and purchases, is part of Groupon’s strategy to “strengthen” its investment in China, Groupon said. Terms weren’t disclosed. Groupon is deepening its partnership with Tencent, China’s biggest Internet company, as they compete against hundreds of similar group buying sites offering discount deals for online shoppers. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Chairman Jack Ma’s Yunfeng Capital is also among investors in Gaopeng, which had struggled to adapt to the Chinese market since starting last year, according to Alex Wang at research company iResearch. “Gaopeng was a newcomer to the Chinese market,” Wang, a Beijing-based analyst, said by phone. “Gaopeng and FTuan will benefit from savings in product sourcing and operations.” Tencent rose 3.2 percent to HK$225.60 in Hong Kong trading today, the biggest contributor by index points to the 1 percent climb in the city’s benchmark Hang Seng Index. (HSI) Groupon gained 3.6 percent to $10.25 in New York yesterday, the third-best performing stock in the Nasdaq Internet Index. (QNET) FTuan Views FTuan, based in Beijing, had an average of 566,000 daily page views last month, making it the ninth most-popular group- buying site in China, according to iResearch. Gaopeng ranked 10th with 486,000 views, according to the researcher. “It takes time to cultivate the market in China,” said George Zhang, who represents Gaopeng at the Bite Communications public relations agency in Beijing. “It’s too early” to assess the performance of Gaopeng’s business, said Zhang, who couldn’t immediately provide user numbers. China’s group-buying industry is “consolidating” as the number of operators declined to fewer than 1,000, from more than 3,000 last year, iResearch’s Wang said. Meituan.com is the industry leader with almost 4 million average daily page views, Wang said. Groupon faced setbacks in China last year, when it fired workers for poor performance, a person with knowledge of the matter said at the time. Former and current employees of Gaopeng said the joint venture closed more than 10 offices in the country, and a lawyer representing former Gaopeng employees estimated that about 400 people were fired, according to the Wall Street Journal. Industry Sales China’s online group-buying market generated estimated revenue of 4.3 billion yuan ($676 million) last year, more than doubling from 1.5 billion yuan in 2010, according to iResearch. FTuan attracted about $30 million of investment from Tencent in March 2011. It raised a further $60 million in September 2011 from several investors including Tencent, according to FTuan. Tencent said last month it plans to invest $1 billion in e- commerce operations. To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Lee in Hong Kong at wlee37@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net

Irish Building Industry Shrinks for the 50th Consecutive Month

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-07/irish-building-industry-shrinks-for-the-50th-consecutive-month.html

Ireland’s building industry contracted in July for the 50th month in a row, an index showed. The Ulster Bank Construction PMI index rose to 42.1 from 40.5 in June, Ulster Bank Ltd. said in a monthly report published today. A reading below 50 indicates contraction. “Near-term prospects continue to be hampered by a dearth of new business, as new orders registered an eleventh consecutive monthly fall,” Simon Barry, chief economist for the Republic of Ireland at Ulster, said in an e-mailed statement. To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Dara Doyle at ddoyle1@bloomberg.net

France May Propose Green Taxes to Spur Investment, Batho Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-18/france-may-propose-green-taxes-to-spur-investment-batho-says.html

France will study new environmental taxes to try to change habits and fund green energy investment, Environment and Energy Minister Delphine Batho said. A first series of measures may be proposed before June, she said in a speech in Paris today as a commission set up to examine potential policies met for the first time. The Socialist government wants to cut reliance on nuclear power and promote energy efficiency. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy was forced to scrap a tax on carbon emissions in 2010. “We must learn lessons from past failures,” Batho said. France collected 40 billion euros ($53 billion) in 2011 from environmental taxes, three-quarters of which were on energy used, mostly from fossil fuels, according to a ministry document released today. The taxes may be a way to pay for a planned shift in energy sources, as well as helping to cut pollution and conserve resources, Batho told reporters. To contact the reporter on this story: Tara Patel in Paris at tpatel2@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net

Teresa Heinz Kerry Taken to Hospital, Spokesman Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-08/teresa-heinz-kerry-taken-to-hospital-secretary-s-spokesman-says.html

(Corrects spelling of spokesman’s name in second paragraph.) Teresa Heinz Kerry was taken by ambulance today to Nantucket Cottage Hospital in Massachusetts , according to a spokesman for her husband, Secretary of State John Kerry. “Once doctors had stabilized her condition, she was transferred to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston ,” the spokesman, Glen Johnson, said in an e-mailed statement. He said Secretary Kerry accompanied his wife throughout. Johnson didn’t provide any information on her ailment or condition, saying the family asked for privacy. The Associated Press reported earlier that Heinz Kerry was in critical but stable condition. To contact the reporter on this story: Larry Liebert in Washington at lliebert@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net

Indian Service-Industry Growth Reaches One-Year High, PMI Shows

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-05/indian-service-industry-growth-reaches-one-year-high-pmi-shows.html

India’s service industries expanded at the fastest pace in a year in January, a private survey showed, after the government overhauled policies to revive economic growth. The purchasing managers’ index rose to 57.5 from 55.6 in December, HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics said in a statement today. A number above 50 indicates growth. Services account for about 57 percent of gross domestic product, Finance Ministry data shows. The government has opened India’s economy to more foreign investment since September, stepped up efforts to curb fiscal and trade gaps and tried to speed up road, rail and port projects. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh aims to bolster the weakest economic expansion in a decade, a slowdown that led to a central bank interest-rate cut last month. “A pick up in services needs to be backed up by a lift in industry and there is no indication of that as of now,” Dharmakirti Joshi , chief economist at Crisil Ltd., said before the release. “Inflation pressure is still there and it is something to watch out for.” Indian GDP my climb as little as 5.7 percent in the year through March 2013, the least since 2002-2003, according to the Finance Ministry. Inflation eased to a three-year low of 7.18 percent in December, while remaining the fastest in the BRIC group of major emerging nations that also includes Brazil, Russia and China. The Reserve Bank of India cut the repurchase rate to 7.75 percent from 8 percent on Jan. 29. To contact the reporter on this story: Tushar Dhara in New Delhi at tdhara1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net

UBS Hires Citigroup’s Doug Brengel, Bill Frauenhofer for Technology Group

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-15/ubs-says-citigroup-s-brengel-frauenhofer-join-techonology-group.html

UBS AG (UBSN) , Switzerland’s biggest bank, hired Doug Brengel and Bill Frauenhofer from Citigroup Inc. (C) to head its technology group in the latest exchange of executives between the two firms. Brengel will become a managing director and chairman of technology banking and Frauenhofer will join as a managing director, the Zurich-based company said in an internal memo. Both held similar positions at Citigroup. Brengel will be based in Los Angeles and Frauenhofer in San Francisco , UBS said. They will report to Mark Zanoli and start in late August. Earlier this month, New York-based Citigroup hired four executives from UBS, including Cary Kochman, global co-head of mergers and acquisitions, and James Glerum, head of Asian industrials. UBS has lost at least 50 dealmakers from its U.S. investment bank after cutting its bonus pool during the 2008 credit crisis. UBS also appointed Stephen Cruise and Jonathan Herbst as co-heads of Midwest coverage and the firm’s Chicago investment- banking unit, the company said today in a separate internal memo. Cruise and Herbst will report to Aryeh Bourkoff, head of investment banking for the Americas, according to the memo. Cruise, who joined UBS in 2004, is a managing director and led the investment-banking coverage for some of the firm’s top Midwest clients in the manufacturing industry, according to the memo. Herbst is a managing director in the firm’s technology, media and telecommunications group, the memo said. To contact the reporters on this story: Serena Saitto in New York at ssaitto@bloomberg.net ; Laura Marcinek in New York at lmarcinek3@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net

RealPlayer Simplifies Video Sharing: Rich Jaroslovsky

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-16/realplayer-simplifies-video-sharing-rich-jaroslovsky.html

There’s no reason you need to know what a codec is. Unless you’ve tried to view or share video shot on one type of device, say an Android phone, on another, like an iPhone. Until now, that could have plunged you into a frustrating world of obscure technical jargon, not to mention running into file-size limits imposed by your e-mail system. But a new service from digital-media pioneer RealNetworks (RNWK) reduces the pain considerably. It’s called RealPlayer Cloud, and it combines online viewing, sharing and storage into a smooth, comprehensive experience. The basic problem with sharing videos is that they aren’t photos. There are only a few widely used digital-photo formats, and pretty much any device can view them, making possible sites like Yahoo (YHOO) ’s Flickr and Facebook (FB) ’s Instagram for easy personal storage and sharing. Videos, by contrast, come in a bewildering array of formats that often require tinkering to get them to play on devices other than what they were created on. That’s where RealPlayer Cloud comes in. Like Dropbox, Google Drive and Apple (AAPL) ’s iCloud, it lets you save your videos to the Internet, where they can be accessed remotely. Unlike those other services, though, it also prepares them for viewing across platforms. Free Apps You access the service via free apps available in Apple’s App Store for iPhones and iPads and the Google Play store for Android devices, as well as on Windows PCs and Roku’s set-top TV box. A version for Macs is in the works, the company says; in the meantime, Mac users can still access most of the cloud features via a web browser. Apple TV users can view clips via the AirPlay feature in iOS devices. To test the service, I used a variety of clips created on an iPhone 5 and 5s and two Android devices, Samsung (005930) ’s Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy S III, plus some content I downloaded from the web. First, I tried sending a brief iPhone clip via e-mail to the Galaxy S III. It had to be brief; my e-mail choked on anything longer than about a minute. No matter. Attempting to watch it on the Galaxy yielded an error message: “No app can open this attachment for viewing.” Seamless Streaming I then uploaded the same video using the RealPlayer Cloud app on the iPhone and accessed it from the app on the Galaxy; it opened and ran seamlessly. I repeated the process with a number of clips, all of which ran well. I also watched them on a PC, uploaded and watched much longer clips than e-mail could have handled, and shared them with recipients who neither had nor needed the RealPlayer service. A lot goes on behind the scenes to make all this possible. RealPlayer employs a technology it calls SurePlay that automatically reformats a video to adjust for the type of playback device, size of the screen and available bandwidth and local storage. But all that is, mercifully, invisible to the user; the video just plays. The basic, free service comes with two gigabytes worth of free storage, which is about enough to store an hour of high-definition video, or three to four hours of standard-def. You can earn more free storage, up to 3.5 gigabytes, by adding devices to your account. More Storage You can also buy additional capacity starting at $5 a month, or $49 a year, for 25 gigabytes and ranging up to $30 a month, or $299 a year, for 300 gigabytes. Forget about using the top tier to share your collection of movies or TV shows, though. As an anti-piracy measure, videos longer than 15 minutes that are uploaded via computer can only be viewed by the account-holder, not by anyone else. (There’s no such restriction for videos shot on a mobile device.) The conversion process, though swift, isn’t instantaneous. RealNetworks says clips uploaded to the cloud should immediately begin to play on another device, but I found that, while they showed up in a moment, it sometimes took two or three minutes before they were playable. In addition, the soundtrack of a video shot on the iPhone appeared slightly out of sync a couple of times when viewed using Google (GOOG) ’s Chrome browser on a PC. (RealNetworks says it hasn’t encountered that issue before.) And a feature that was supposed to let enabled devices on the same Wi-Fi network recognize each other for easier file transfers wouldn’t work in my office, though it did at home. RealPlayer Cloud certainly isn’t the only way to view and share video across different devices. YouTube, for one, has been doing it for years, and has options allowing you to restrict who can see your content. But YouTube is more about reaching an audience. RealPlayer Cloud’s personal storage and easy sharing make for a useful combination. ( Rich Jaroslovsky is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.) Muse highlights include Jason Harper on cars and Lance Esplund on art. To contact the reporter on this story: Rich Jaroslovsky in San Francisco at rjaroslovsky@bloomberg.net. On Twitter: www.twitter.com/richjaro. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net .

Greece Will Default on Debt After EU Plan: S&P

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-27/greece-will-partially-default-on-debt-after-eu-plan-takes-place-s-p-says.html

Greece will partially default on its debt once European officials push through a plan that will see bondholders foot part of the bill of a second bailout agreed to last week in Brussels, Standard & Poor’s said. The rating company also cut its ranking for Greece to CC, two steps above default, from CCC, according to a statement published in London today. The outlook on the debt is negative. “The proposed restructuring of Greek government debt would amount to a selective default under our rating methodology,” S&P said. “We view the proposed restructuring as a ‘distressed exchange’ because, based on public statements by European policy makers, it is likely to result in losses for commercial creditors.” EU leaders agreed last week that bondholders will contribute 50 billion euros ($72 billion) to a new rescue package, with euro-region governments and the International Monetary Fund putting up a further 109 billion euros. The July 21 accord strengthened the region’s bailout mechanism to offer protection to other euro-region nations such as Ireland and Spain to avert contagion. “The risk of default at those levels is pretty inevitable,” said Vincent Truglia, managing director at New York-based Granite Springs Asset Management LLP and a former head of the sovereign risk unit at Moody’s Investors Service. “You’re going to get, at the minimum, a distressed exchange. Greece will become a serial defaulter because the amount of debt reduction that’s proposed is not really adequate.” Euro Falls The euro fell 1 percent to $1.4369 at 2:27 p.m. in New York , after the S&P announcement. Greece hired BNP Paribas SA, Deutsche Bank AG and HSBC Holdings Plc to act as joint dealer-managers of its voluntary bond exchange and debt-buyback plan, the Athens-based Finance Ministry said in a statement today. The lenders will provide a committed financing facility to Greece, the ministry said. S&P’s move followed Moody’s Investors Service, which on July 25 cut Greece’s long-term credit rating by three steps to Ca, its second-lowest rating. Fitch Ratings cut Greece by three levels to CCC on July 13. The cost of insuring against a default by Greece was at 1,695 basis points today, implying a 76 percent chance the government will fail to pay its debts within five years. The price of the contracts soared to a record 2,568 basis points on July 18, when the probability of default approached 90 percent, according to CMA. Not a ‘Big Shock’ “There hasn’t been a big shock to the market as it’s mostly water under the bridge,” said David Keeble , head of fixed income strategy at Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank in New York. “I think the market is prepared for the next step, which is selective default and which should happen in a month or so.” S&P said its recovery rating of ‘4’ for Greece remained unchanged, signaling an estimated 30 percent to 50 percent recovery of principal by bondholders, including on bonds subject to a 20 percent reduction in net present value as estimated under the Institute for International Finance’s proposal. Under the EU’s second rescue program for Greece in 15 months, banks will voluntarily write down the value of their bonds by 21 percent as part of the exchanges, the IIF, which represents banks and insurers, said July 22. The plan will lengthen the average maturity of privately held Greek debt to 11 years from six years. S&P, in a separate report, said some provisions of the EU’s rescue plan would help protect Ireland and Portugal. “We think these maturity extensions and interest-rate reductions should be beneficial for the debt sustainability of both Ireland and Portugal,” S&P said. S&P assigns a selective default when it decides a borrower has defaulted on a specific class of obligations yet will likely meet other payment obligations in a timely manner. To contact the reporters on this story: Bob Willis in Washington at bwillis@bloomberg.net ; John Fraher in London at jfraher@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Fraher at jfraher@bloomberg.net

A Tea Party at Sea: The Ticker

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-04/a-tea-party-at-sea-the-ticker.html

Outside Michele Bachmann's gloomy caucus party last night at the West Des Moines Marriott, a lone sentinel dressed in Revolutionary War garb -- the Tea Party equivalent of gang tats -- stood watch over the disaster. Bachmann's campaign, which mustered only 5 percent of Iowa caucus votes, will not be crossing the Delaware anytime soon. It is currently navigating the River Styx. Texas Governor Rick Perry, another Tea Party favorite, invested heavily in Iowa and finished with a dismal 10 percent. Newt Gingrich , who channeled Tea Partyers' contempt even as he gave them whiplash on their core issues, emerged with an unlucky 13 percent. Gingrich has enough money (perhaps) and venom (surely) to cause some modest trouble for Mitt Romney, whom he called a "liar" the other day, but not enough to defeat him. So leaving Iowa , the front-running campaigns belong to Romney, a technocrat from Massachusetts who is viscerally distrusted by the Tea Party base; Rick Santorum, a social conservative from Pennsylvania whose soon-to-be-highlighted Congressional record from the faraway 1990s will not jibe with Tea Party dogma circa 2012; and Ron Paul, the Republican Brother From Another Planet. One of the ironies of the current Republican landscape is that the Tea Party is having a ball in Washington , D.C., where its acolytes keep House Speaker John Boehner on a short leash (attached to a spiked collar, it seems, judging from the perpetual grimace on Boehner's face). Out in the heartland, however, the sacred soil where the Real Americans of Tea Party lore hold sway, the Tea Party is getting its grandfather's clock cleaned. (Francis Wilkinson is a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board.) For a look at Bloomberg View's full coverage of the Iowa caucuses, see our latest entry at Storify .

China Money-Market Rate Falls to Three-Week Low After Reserve-Ratio Cut

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-28/china-money-rate-reaches-three-week-low-after-reserve-ratio-cut.html

China ’s money-market rate touched a three-week low on speculation the supply of cash is increasing since the reduction in banks’ reserve ratios took effect. The seven-day repurchase rate , which measures interbank funding availability, dropped for a third day after the People’s Bank of China suspended one-year bill sales for a ninth week. The central bank issued 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) of 28-day repurchase contracts, according to a trader required to bid at the auctions. “Liquidity has improved a lot after the reserve-ratio cut became effective on Feb. 24,” said Liu Junyu, a bond analyst in Shenzhen at China Merchants Bank Co., the nation’s sixth-biggest lender. “The central bank probably won’t resume bill sales this week because bill redemptions are too low.” The seven-day repurchase rate was steady at 3.66 percent as of 4:30 p.m. in Shanghai , according to a weighted average rate compiled by the National Interbank Funding Center. It touched 3.45 percent, the lowest level since Feb. 6. A total of 2 billion yuan of central bank bills and repurchase contracts will mature this week, Liu said. The one-year swap contract, the fixed cost needed to receive the floating seven-day repurchase rate, was unchanged at 3.35 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The yield on the 3.44 percent government bond due June 2016 was unchanged at 3.16 percent, according to the Interbank Funding Center. -- Judy Chen. Editors: Andrew Janes, Simon Harvey To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Judy Chen in Shanghai at xchen45@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sandy Hendry at shendry@bloomberg.net .

New Energy Index Sinks to Two-Year Low as Global Markets Decline

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-22/new-energy-index-sinks-to-two-year-low-as-global-markets-decline.html

The Wilderhill New Energy Global Innovation Index sank to the lowest since March 10, 2009, as global economies face slower growth and incentives for clean technologies such as solar panels and wind turbines decline. The index of 99 companies including First Solar Inc. (FSLR) and battery maker Ener1 Inc. (HEV) today sank as much as 5.5 percent to 138.17, and has dropped 35 percent this year. The S&P 500 Index slumped 3 percent, extending this week’s decline to almost 6.9 percent. To contact the reporter on this story: Christopher Martin in New York at cmartin11@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Todd White at twhite2@bloomberg.net

Egyptian Teacher Arrested for Defaming Prophet on Facebook

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-31/egyptian-teacher-arrested-for-defaming-prophet-on-facebook.html

An Egyptian teacher was detained yesterday after posting cartoons on Facebook that allegedly defame Islam, the Prophet Mohammed and Egypt ’s first Islamist president, the state-run Ahram Gate website reported late yesterday. Bishoy Kamel, 32, a Coptic-Christian from the governorate of Sohag in Upper Egypt, has been detained for four days pending investigation, the news website said. He has also allegedly insulted Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi and members of his family, Ahram Gate reported. Kamel has admitted managing the Facebook page in question, however he said the page was hacked on July 28 and that he’s not responsible for the content, Ahram Gate said. To contact the reporter on this story: Salma El Wardany in Cairo at selwardany@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net

China Must Improve Foreign Investment Climate, U.S. Group Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-24/china-must-improve-foreign-investment-climate-u-s-group-says.html

China must allow foreign companies to invest more in sectors including telecommunications and health-care to avoid a slowdown in growth as wages rise, a U.S. business group said. Improving the foreign-investment climate and removing the monopoly status of state-owned companies will boost productivity and economic growth, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said in a report today. Doing so will help China escape the stagnant growth that has befallen other rapidly industrializing countries, the group said. “Productivity in the Chinese economy must increase and improve if China is going to develop beyond middle income status,” Amcham China President Chris Murck said at a briefing. “Many multinational companies in the U.S. and Europe and Japan and other places have been focused for a long time on how to increase productivity and how to manage costs.” More foreign investment should be allowed in banking, health-care and telecommunications, according to the report. Murck said that air pollution in China is “a truly negative factor” that has led some companies to bring back hardship premiums for their expatriate staff in Beijing. In an annual survey released last month, the Chamber said U.S. companies operating in China believe rising labor costs are the biggest risk to their business in the country. To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Michael Forsythe in Beijing at mforsythe@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at phirschberg@bloomberg.net

Colombian Yields Drop as Echeverry Predicts Narrowing Budget Gap

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-08/colombian-yields-drop-as-echeverry-predicts-narrowing-budget-gap.html

Colombia’s peso bonds rose, pushing yields down to the lowest in a month, after Finance Minister Juan Carlos Echeverry said the budget deficit may narrow. The yield on the government’s 10 percent peso-denominated debt due in July 2024 dropped two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 7.04 percent, according to the central bank. That is the lowest closing yield since May 8. The price rose 0.219 centavo to 123.543 centavos per peso. The budget deficit will be 1.2 percent of gross domestic product this year and may fall below 1 percent next year, Echeverry said yesterday in Cartagena. “It takes some of the pressure off for bond offerings next year,” Pedro Ospina, a fixed-income analyst at Interbolsa SA in Bogota, said in a phone interview. “There’s optimism because of many reasons, including the sustainability of the debt, while inflation is still under control. Those fundamentals have led to a drop in yields.” The central bank cited in minutes of the May policy meeting published today cooling demand and “moderate” inflation risk in its decision to hold borrowing costs steady. Colombia ’s central bank isn’t contemplating reductions to its target lending rate even as Europe ’s debt crisis casts a “gray cloud” over the Andean economy, central bank board member Cesar Vallejo said in an interview in Cartagena yesterday. The 5.25 percent target lending rate neither cools nor stokes inflation, according to Vallejo. Vallejo’s comments are also helping drive gains in the benchmark peso bonds due in July 2024, according to Ricardo Bernal , head analyst at brokerage Serfinco SA in Bogota. “His comments are reassuring in that the central bank doesn’t see an impact on the Colombian economy so strong that there is a need to cut rates as the market has been pricing in,” Bernal said. The peso depreciated 0.4 percent to 1,776.75 per U.S. dollar today, the biggest decline among major Latin American counterparts tracked by Bloomberg. The local currency advanced 3 percent for the week. To contact the reporter on this story: Christine Jenkins in Bogota at cjenkins28@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net

Australia Cuts Iron Ore Estimate as Prices Drop on China Outlook

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-26/australia-cuts-iron-ore-estimate-as-prices-drop-on-china-outlook.html

Australia, the world’s largest iron ore exporter, lowered its price estimates for the steelmaking raw material this year and 2014 as economic growth in China slows while supply increases. Prices will average $117 a ton in 2013, compared with $119 forecast in March, the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics said in a report. Australia may ship 571 million tons this year and 664 million tons in 2014, compared with March estimates of 554 million tons and 662 million tons, the Canberra-based bureau said. Exports totaled 494 million tons in 2012. Iron ore has tumbled 28 percent from a 16-month high in February, slipping into a bear market in May, on concern that economic growth in the biggest ore buyer is faltering. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. this week joined banks from Barclays Plc to HSBC Holdings Plc in paring projections for China this year to 7.4 percent, below the government’s 7.5 percent goal. Prices have declined “in line with changing sentiment over China ’s economic growth and steel output,” the report said. “It is expected that the monthly rates of production will moderate as the year progresses,” it said, referring to steel. China’s steel production climbed to a record 67 million metric tons in May, according to the statistics bureau. The country will import 774 million tons of iron ore this year and 805 million tons in 2014, compared with the 773 million tons and 805 million tons estimated in March, the bureau said. Prices will average $112 a ton in 2014, compared with $114 forecast in March, the bureau said. The bureau’s price forecasts refer to ore with 62 percent iron content free-on-board Australia. The same grade delivered to the Chinese port of Tianjin fell 2.2 percent to $114 a dry ton yesterday, according to data from The Steel Index Ltd. Prices, which reached $158.90 on Feb. 20, have averaged $137.52 in 2013. Iron ore can be measured in dry tons, or metric tons less moisture. At Tianjin port moisture can account for 8 percent to 10 percent of the ore’s weight. To contact the reporter on this story: Phoebe Sedgman in Melbourne at psedgman2@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net

Edson Spencer, Honeywell CEO Who Gave Up IBM Fight, Dies at 85

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-27/edson-spencer-honeywell-ceo-who-gave-up-ibm-fight-dies-at-85.html

Edson Spencer, who as head of Honeywell Inc. first battled IBM’s dominance of the computer market in the 1980s, then gave in and focused his company on automation and aerospace technology, has died. He was 85. He died on March 25 at his home in Wayzata, Minnesota, after battling progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurodegenerative brain disease, his daughter, Linda Spencer Murchison, said today in an interview. In his 34-year career at Honeywell -- known as Honeywell International Inc. (HON) since its acquisition in 1999 by AlliedSignal Inc. -- Spencer rose from an aeronautical engineer to the company’s chief executive officer from 1974 to 1987. Midway through his tenure, Honeywell’s top competitor in mainframe computers , International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) , settled a long-running antitrust investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that had constrained its growth. IBM’s “power wasn’t recognizable before then,” Spencer told Computerworld magazine in 1986. With the antitrust case behind it, IBM invested in new factories and took on Japanese competitors, “and the government permitted them to go after new market share without fear of antitrust reprisal. That’s when the name of the game changed, and that’s the point at which we had to redirect our own strategies.” Honeywell, he said, had become “the freewheeling entrepreneurs who are charging off in our own direction.” ‘Outstanding Opportunity’ Within a year after that interview was published, Honeywell , then located in Minneapolis , spun off its computer unit into a venture shared with NEC Corp. of Japan and Groupe Bull SA, France ’s state-owned computer maker. As part of the restructuring, Honeywell pledged to eliminate 4,000 jobs, the Associated Press reported. It also purchased the Sperry Aerospace Group, maker of electronic gear for military and commercial aircraft, from Unisys Corp. In a statement at the time, Spencer called the purchase “an outstanding opportunity for Honeywell that positions us for the long term in a market that is expected to have significant growth for the next 10 years, commercial and military aviation.” Today, Honeywell’s aerospace unit, which makes cockpit controls and auxiliary power units, is the second-largest of the company’s four divisions, behind automation and control solutions. It had $11.5 billion of sales last year, or 31 percent of total sales of $36.5 billion for the company, now based in Morris Township, New Jersey. Railroads, Meat Packing Edson White Spencer was born on June 4, 1926, and raised in Chicago , the son of William M. Spencer, chairman of the North American Car Corp., which leased and operated railroad cars, and the former Gertrude White. His maternal grandfather, F. Edson White, worked his way up to the presidency of the Armour & Co. meat-packing business and served on the board of Chase National Bank. Spencer attended Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut , and was an usher at the 1947 wedding of his classmate and friend, William Clay Ford, grandson of the founder of Ford Motor Co., to Martha Parke Firestone, daughter of the president of the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. and granddaughter of its founder. After being discharged in 1946 as an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he graduated from Williams College and earned a master’s degree from Oxford University, which he attended for two years as a Rhodes scholar, according to his resume on the website of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota , where he was a former chairman of the Deans Advisory Council. Climbing Honeywell’s Ladder He worked for Sears Roebuck & Co. in Sioux City, Iowa ; La Crosse, Wisconsin ; and Venezuela before settling in Minneapolis in 1954. After joining Honeywell in 1954, he worked as regional manager for Honeywell Asia based in Tokyo from 1959 to 1964, according to a death notice in the New York Times. He became an executive vice president in 1969 and was promoted to president and CEO in October 1974. After stepping down as CEO in 1987, he remained chairman for another year. U.S.-Japanese relations were among his passions, and he served on the U.S.- Japan Business Council and the Trilateral Commission, according to the notice. Spencer and his wife of 62 years, the former Harriet McClure Stuart, were founders and longtime supporters of the Yellowstone Park Foundation. In addition to Murchison they had three children: Douglas Stuart Spencer and James McClure Spencer and Edson W. Spencer Jr., founder and chairman of Affinity Capital Management in Minneapolis. To contact the reporter on this story: Laurence Arnold in Washington at larnold4@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Charles W. Stevens at cstevens@bloomberg.net

N. Korea Tests Don’t End ‘Provocation Pause,’ U.S. Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-20/n-korea-tests-don-t-end-provocation-pause-u-s-says.html

North Korea’s test firings of six short-range missiles in three days may not reflect a return to a pattern of provocations by Kim Jong Un’s regime, according to the U.S. military’s top spokesman. The launches don’t in themselves end a “provocation pause” and “do not necessarily violate” North Korea’s international obligations, Pentagon spokesman George Little , told reporters yesterday in Washington. “I think we can safely say we remain in a period of tensions that are relatively small-scale by comparison” in the months after Kim’s government tested a nuclear device in February. North Korea has not fired any projectiles today as of 10:35 a.m. local time and such actions appear to have “significantly diminished,” South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok said today. The regime, which fired two missiles yesterday and four over the weekend, said it is exercising its right to test-fire rockets as part of regular military drills. North Korea’s threats have moderated since annual U.S.- South Korean military exercises ended last month. Officials in Washington and Seoul have intensified diplomatic efforts to ease tensions and boost China ’s participation in global sanctions that target the North’s nuclear weapons program. “We are monitoring what is happening,” Little said. “We hope that over time the North Koreans continue to look hard at the need for peace and stability on the peninsula.” Won Rises South Korea ’s won rose 0.5 percent against the dollar after yesterday touching a four-week low, while the benchmark Kospi stock index was little changed at 1:47 p.m. in Seoul. The totalitarian state’s official Korean Central News Agency said yesterday that its missile exercises were intended to boost deterrence against rising threats from the U.S. and South Korea. Before last weekend, attention had focused on whether North Korea would conduct a test firing of its midrange Musudan rocket. With a range of 3,000 miles (4,827 kilometers) to 3,500 miles, the Musudan poses a potential threat to Guam , a U.S. territory, though not to Hawaii or the U.S. mainland, according to testimony before Congress given in April by Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of the U.S. Pacific Command. North Korea doesn’t yet have the ability to launch a nuclear-armed missile, President Barack Obama said on April 16. While South Korea sees no unusual North Korean troop movements, its military is “closely monitoring the situation” and is ready to respond to any escalation, Defense Ministry spokesman Kim said. ‘Armed Protest’ “The North is likely testing these missiles as an armed protest against the recent military drills jointly conducted by the U.S. and South Korea” in March and April, said Yang Moo Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. After the nuclear weapon test in February, Kim’s regime threatened preemptive nuclear strikes against South Korea and the U.S. The warnings led the U.S., South Korea and Japan to boost defenses and raised concern in China, the North’s biggest ally. North Korea ’s pattern of hostile behavior seems more diverse and provocations since its long-range missile test in December “are more frequent and intense in comparison to the past,” South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung Se said today in a speech in Seoul. ‘Safeguarding Peace’ “Safeguarding peace and stability on the Korean peninsula is inevitable and what everyone wants,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said yesterday. “We hope under the current circumstances all parties will do things that will ease tensions and improve relationships.” While the Obama administration has said it would seek to increase pressure on North Korea should it test a missile or nuclear device, previous UN measures have failed to deter the Kim regime. The Security Council twice this year tightened existing penalties passed in 2006 and 2009 against weapons development, financial transactions and travel. The U.S. and South Korea have repeatedly called on China, the North’s biggest trading partner, which has shielded the nation from stronger UN actions, to make greater efforts to enforce sanctions targeting the North’s nuclear weapons program. A Chinese state bank closed the account of a North Korean lender earlier this month, signaling a possible change in stance. China Evolving “There are some indications that China is slowly evolving its thoughts and stance vis-a-vis North Korea,” Yun said. North Korea’s “erratic behavior” is taking a toll on China and there is a “growing recognition” the North is becoming “a liability, instead of a strategic asset,” he added. The U.S. Air Force said yesterday that it will conduct a test of an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental missile today from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The launch, originally scheduled for April 9, was postponed to avoid misinterpretation by Kim’s regime as preparation for a preemptive attack to destroy North Korea’s nuclear weapons facilities, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of access to classified intelligence. To contact the reporters on this story: Sangwon Yoon in Seoul at syoon32@bloomberg.net ; Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net ; John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net

Noda Says Government Is Ready to Take Action on Currency If Necessary

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-02/noda-says-government-is-ready-to-take-action-on-currency-if-necessary.html

Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said the government is watching markets closely and is ready to take bold action on currencies if necessary. He said Japan will cooperate appropriately with the U.S. and Europe. The movement of the yen has been one-sided in the past few days, Noda said in a briefing after a cabinet meeting. To contact the reporter on this story: Toru Fujioka in Tokyo at tfujioka1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steven McPherson at smcpherson@bloomberg.net

Hungary’s Pledge to Work With IMF on Loan Boosts Markets After Bond Rout

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-06/forint-rallies-as-orban-meeting-hungarian-central-bank-eases-aid-concern.html

Hungary ’s bonds and the forint rallied for a second day as Prime Minister Viktor Orban pledged to cooperate with central bank President Andras Simor after a dispute about the bank’s independence threatened the country’s bailout. Ten-year government bonds (GHGB10YR) in forint climbed, cutting the yield 34 basis points to 10.06 percent, according to generic prices compiled by Bloomberg. Hungary’s currency appreciated as much as 1 percent and traded 0.4 percent stronger at 317.77 per euro by 12:26 a.m. in Budapest, paring this week’s loss to 0.9 percent after reaching a record low of 324.24 yesterday. It’s in Hungary’s interest to get an International Monetary Fund agreement “as soon as possible” and there’s a “good chance” for swift talks, Orban told reporters in Budapest after meeting with Simor today. The government will hold daily consultations with the central bank and do “everything” to help the institution maintain economic stability, Orban said. “The government’s commitment to an agreement with the IMF and EU has increased,” Levente Papa, a Budapest-based strategist at OTP Bank Nyrt. (OTP) , Hungary’s largest lender, said by e-mail today. “That’s shown by the fact that the prime minister met the central bank president despite the earlier tensions. Today’s developments certainly ease market concerns.” The cost of insuring Hungary’s debt through credit-default swaps reached an all-time high this week and the forint touched a record low against the euro after aid negotiations with the IMF and the European Union broke off because of new laws that threaten to undermine the central bank’s independence. The CDS contracts fell to 695 basis points from 735 basis points yesterday, the highest close on record, data provider CMA said. The central bank confirmed in a statement today that it will hold “regular consultations” with the government. The central bank law is “fully compatible” with EU regulations and the government will continue to respect the Magyar Nemzeti Bank’s independence, Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy said in a letter sent to European Central Bank President Mario Draghi and published by the ministry yesterday. Orban’s comments may not have a longer-term impact on the forint as Hungary still needs to change its central bank law to get an IMF agreement, Raffaella Tenconi, a London-based economist at Bank of America Corp., said in a telephone interview today. “It will depend on how quickly and how smoothly the negotiations go,” Tenconi said. The benchmark BUX (BUX) stock index rose 0.9 percent as OTP Bank advanced 2.1 percent and Magyar Telekom Nyrt., the country’s former phone monopoly, rose 1.5 percent. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andras Gergely at agergely@bloomberg.net

Rays’ David Price Avoids Arbitration With 1-Year Deal, ESPN Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-02/rays-david-price-avoids-arbitration-with-1-year-deal-espn-says.html

Cy Young Award-winning pitcher David Price of the Tampa Bay Rays avoided arbitration by agreeing to a one-year contract with the team, ESPN reported. Price, who made $4.35 million last season, will make about $10 million in 2013, ESPN said , citing a person within Major League Baseball it didn’t identify. Price, 27, will be eligible for free agency after the 2015 season. He went 20-5 last year with a 2.56 earned run average to win the Cy Young Award as the American League’s best pitcher. In five seasons in the major leagues he’s 61-31 with a 3.16 ERA. To contact the reporter on this story: Mason Levinson in New York at mlevinson@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net

Farmers at Center of Mad Cow Probe Grumble Over Tainted Image

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-26/farmers-at-center-of-mad-cow-probe-grumble-over-tainted-image.html

Mike Correia and four other weathered men in blue jeans and soiled work boots gathered for coffee at a gas station outside Hanford, California. The farming center is where the fourth case of mad cow disease ever found in the U.S. has surfaced. The topic was the media. “The dairy business is hurting already and we don’t need this,” said Correia, seated at a dinette table near the cash register. He grows feed for cattle nearby in the southern San Joaquin valley. “Dairy down here makes the world go.” Farmers fear a repeat of 2003, when the first confirmed U.S. case led to losses estimated as high as $4.7 billion in 2004 for the American beef industry. Within hours of the latest announcement, cattle futures plummeted to a nine-month low. Some South Korean retailers said they would suspend imports of U.S. beef. “Mad cow disease” was the most-searched term on Google for a time yesterday. Correia, 56, and the other farmers gathered around that table complained about how television news showed stock footage of sickened cows that was unrelated to the case in California. “People are going to think it’s in the food chain and the media is blowing it out of proportion,” Correia said. “They are scaring people and they have nothing to worry about.” The diseased cow arrived April 18 at a Baker Commodities Inc. facility just outside of Hanford, where so-called deadstock are held before going to a rendering plant, Dennis Luckey, executive vice president of operations at Los Angeles-based Baker, said in a telephone interview. Rendering Products Cattle and dairy farmers typically pay such rendering companies to haul away cows not intended for the dinner table. The company turns the carcasses into protein supplements for chickens and pigs, an ingredient in pet food, and other products, according to Baker’s website. A dead dairy cow at the company’s transfer station in Hanford was identified by a routine test for the brain-wasting disease, known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, agriculture officials said April 24. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sought to reassure the public, saying the infected animal didn’t enter the human food chain. “People are going to panic,” Dave Thomas, who owns a small dairy farm with 300 cows and two workers just west of town, said as he inspected his milking stalls. “There’s nothing I can do about that.” Scientists say the disease is spread through feed that contains brain or spinal cord tissue from infected animals. People can get it from eating products containing such tissues, including head cheese. Since 1997, feed made from mammals has been banned from cattle rations, and high-risk materials such as brains have been kept from the human food supply , according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. ‘Atypical’ Disease The California cow tested positive for so-called atypical BSE, which the Agriculture Department said isn’t generally associated with an animal consuming infected feed. Such cases can occur spontaneously in older animals, according to the department. In Hanford, a community of 55,000 about 200 miles northwest of Los Angeles , many people were taking the development in stride. The community is a trading hub for hundreds of sprawling dairy farms, orchards and crop fields in the surrounding area. The public should be reassured by the routine and random testing, said Steve Maddox, named 2011 Outstanding Dairy Producer of the Year by Western DairyBusiness magazine. “The nice thing about this situation is that the system works,” said Maddox, who milks about 3,500 cows in Hanford. “Our controls and systems that we have in place are doing what they’re supposed to do.” After the USDA announcement, Maddox said he spent 45 minutes on the telephone with his congressman, U.S. Representative Jim Costa, a Fresno Democrat. ‘Rumors Kill Us’ “He asked me what he could do to help,” Maddox said. “I told him the most important thing right now is that accurate information gets out. It’s the rumors that kill us.” Mad cow disease has been most prevalent in the U.K., which has had 184,000 cases since 1987. Last year, 29 cases were reported worldwide. Canada , the biggest U.S. agricultural trading partner, had 19 as of February 2011, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The discovery in California spurred fresh calls for increased monitoring of the U.S. meat supply. In 2003, after the first case, dozens of countries shut their doors to U.S. shipments. Some nations, including China , have maintained part of the restrictions ever since. Sold for Slaughter “We beefed some cows just today, and I was afraid the price would drop, but we got lucky and they paid us the same price,” said Joseph Parreira, referring to the sale of some of the 5,000 dairy cows on his father’s farm. Dairy cattle that aren’t producing enough milk to be profitable are often sold for slaughter. Live-cattle futures were up 0.2 percent at $1.12525 a pound by 11:25 a.m. London time on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The price lost 2.6 percent on April 24 as the U.S. Department of Agriculture disclosed the disease, before rebounding 0.6 percent yesterday. Parreira said he has no plans to eat less beef. “Your chances of dying from an infected cow aren’t high enough to even register or worry about,” he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Michael B. Marois in Hanford, California, at mmarois@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net

Persimmon CEO Retires as Homebuilder Reports Revenues Growth

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-08/persimmon-ceo-retires-as-homebuilder-reports-2012-revenue-gain.html

Persimmon Plc (PSN) , the U.K.’s largest homebuilder by market value, said Chief Executive Officer Mike Farley will step down after 30 years at the company. Farley, who has been CEO for seven years, will be replaced by Jeff Fairburn, the York, England-based company said in a statement today. Revenue in 2012 rose to 1.72 billion pounds ($2.77 billion) from 1.54 billion pounds in 2011, it said. “I intend to continue with the strong discipline that we have got in place,” Fairburn, who has been with Persimmon for 23 years, said in an interview. “I will continue to see strategic land being promoted and brought through.” Margins are expanding after the housing market’s collapse in 2008 forced homebuilders to slash costs to compensate for a slump in demand. At the same time, they exploited falling prices to snap up land cheaply. U.K. home values are little changed over the past 18 months as a lack of homes for sale supports prices while restricted mortgage lending and a weak economic recovery deter buyers. Persimmon targets an underlying operating profit margin of 15 percent to 17 percent compared with a 13 percent margin in 2012. The company owned and controlled 68,000 plots of land approved for development at the end of the year compared with 63,335 a year earlier. Persimmon’s cash balance was around 200 million pounds at the end of last year, compared with 41 million pounds a year earlier, according to the statement. Cash Positive “The big win for us is the cash position,” Farley, who turns 60 in June, said in a phone interview. “We are generating as much cash as anybody in the industry.” The homebuilder expects sales to those buying their first home to increase as the U.K.’s spring selling period begins. The company said it will be allowed to use the government’s FirstBuy financial guarantee program for an additional 3,000 properties. Though U.K. mortgage approvals rose to the highest in 10 months in November, Persimmon is unlikely to increase the number of homes it builds, according to Fairburn, who will replace Farley in April. “Until such time where there is significantly better money in the system for mortgages, our volumes are going to be subdued unfortunately,” Fairburn said by telephone. “We just want to see a mortgage market that functions for the buyer.” Home completions increased 6 percent to 9,903 and average prices gained 6 percent to 173,400 pounds from a year earlier, the company said in the statement. The outlook for this year’s housing market is mixed, with Hometrack Ltd. expecting a 1 percent decline and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and Rightmove Plc (RMV) both seeing a 2 percent increase. To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Spillane in London at cspillane3@bloomberg.net ; Dalia Fahmy in Berlin at dfahmy1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Blackman at ablackman@bloomberg.net

U.K. Stocks Decline After Three-Day Gain; Intertek Drops

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-19/u-k-stocks-decline-after-three-day-gain-intertek-drops.html

U.K. stocks fell as investors weighed valuations and awaited releases from central banks this week that may shed light on the path of monetary policy. Intertek Group Plc, which offers product-inspection services, dropped 2.5 percent after reporting a slowdown in revenue growth. Smiths Group Plc (SMIN) , a maker of security scanners, declined 2.3 percent after it updated investors on its results. EasyJet Plc (EZJ) jumped 7.1 percent as Europe’s second-biggest discount carrier said it will pay an additional dividend after full-year profit increased 51 percent. The FTSE 100 Index (UKX) fell 25.45 points, or 0.4 percent, to 6,698.01 at the close of trading in London. The benchmark gauge has climbed 14 percent this year, reaching a valuation of 13.7 times the estimated earnings of its members, near the highest since 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The broader FTSE All-Share Index (ASX) lost 0.4 percent today, and Ireland’s ISEQ Index slid 0.9 percent. Stocks “are not overvalued nor incredibly attractive,” Patrick Armstrong, who helps oversee $200 million as chief investment officer at Armstrong Investment Managers in London , said by phone. “You could easily see a melt-up into year-end as exuberance kicks in and as people tend to position themselves positively. But also, there is no clear catalyst that could drive us higher from here. I don’t expect a big move.” Fed, BOE Investors tomorrow will scrutinize minutes from the most recent Federal Reserve and Bank of England meetings to assess the prospects for monetary-policy changes. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its global growth forecasts for this year and next as emerging-market economies including India and Brazil cool. The world economy will probably expand 2.7 percent in 2013 and 3.6 percent in 2014, instead of the 3.1 percent and 4 percent predicted in May, the Paris-based OECD said in a semi-annual report today. Intertek (ITRK) lost 2.5 percent to 3,102 pence. The company said revenue excluding acquisitions increased 3 percent in the July-to-October period, down from 6.3 percent in the first half. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts reduced their earnings estimates for the company following the results, saying that growth “continues to slow.” Smiths Group Smiths Group, which has climbed 20 percent this year, dropped 2.3 percent to 1,400 pence. The company said trading in the three months to Nov. 2 and its outlook for the year are in line with expectations. Smiths Group warned that foreign-exchange rates are a “headwind” that may affect earnings. Shares of Paddy Power Plc (PWL) plunged 8.1 percent to 57.44 euros in Dublin. Ireland’s biggest bookmaker fell the most in five years after saying that poor results from sports bets will reduce operating profit more than expected. EasyJet rallied 7.1 percent, the biggest gain in the FTSE 100, to 1,345 pence after proposing to pay 44.1 pence a share, in addition to a regular dividend of 33.5 pence. Pretax profit for the 12 months to Sept. 30 rose to 478 million pounds ($770 million), topping the average analyst estimate in a Bloomberg survey and up from 317 million pounds a year earlier. Enterprise Inns Plc (ETI) jumped 12 percent to 154 pence. The second-biggest U.K. pub chain said Chief Operating Officer Simon Townsend will replace Chief Executive Officer Ted Tuppen next year. Tuppen, who was CEO for more than 20 years, will retire Feb. 6, the company said. Enterprise Inns has fallen more than 85 percent since May 2007. Afren Plc (AFR) , a U.K. energy explorer in Africa and Iraq , rose 8.1 percent to 161 pence after finding more oil off Nigeria than previously forecast. The company more than tripled its estimate of recoverable oil at the Ogo prospect, drilled with Optimum Petroleum Development Ltd. and Lekoil Ltd., to 774 million barrels from 202 million barrels. Keller Group Plc (KLR) , the builder that drilled foundations for the Chicago Trump Tower, rose 4.3 percent to 1,048 pence. The company forecast today full-year results “slightly above” the top end of current market estimates as trading in the four months through October has continued to improve. To contact the reporter on this story: Alexis Xydias in London at axydias@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Cecile Vannucci at cvannucci1@bloomberg.net

Nicklaus Lewis Meets Namesake in 54-Year-Old Dad’s Masters Debut

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-05/nicklaus-lewis-meets-namesake-in-54-year-old-dad-s-masters-debut.html

Randy Lewis wasn’t the only member of his family to fulfill a lifelong quest today at the Masters Tournament. Nicklaus Lewis, the 19-year-old son of golf’s Mid-Amateur champion, tracked down his namesake, Jack Nicklaus , moments after the six-time Masters winner hit ceremonial tee shots with Arnold Palmer and Gary Player to start the year’s first major tournament. “I showed him my nametag and told him that I have the two best last names in golf, his and my dad’s,” Nicklaus Lewis said while watching his father play Augusta National Golf Club’s 11th hole. “It was brief, but it’s been something I always wanted to do. I don’t care about any of the other big names. I just care about my dad and I wanted to meet Jack, so I’m living the dream, too.” Randy Lewis, a 54-year-old financial planner for Raymond James & Associates’ DLP Financial Group in Alma, Michigan , shot a 9-over-par 81 in what is believed by the club to be the oldest rookie appearance in Masters history. He ended up in Augusta, Georgia, by winning last year’s Mid-Amateur, a championship staged by the U.S. Golf Association created in 1988 after the U.S. Amateur began to be dominated by college players. Mid-Amateur competitors must be at least 25. “We all still have a hard time imagining what Randy has truly accomplished at the age of 54 -- for that matter -- at any age,” Daniel De Jong, who works with Lewis, said in an e-mail. “This couldn’t have happened to a nicer individual.” Support Group Nicklaus Lewis, a student at Central Michigan University, walked the undulating fairways with his older brother, Christopher; their mother, Melanie; and a throng of the elder Lewis’s supporters. All wore green bracelets with the words, “We’re pulling for you Randy.” Randy Lewis had visited the club numerous times to play practice rounds since winning the Mid-Amateur in September. On April 2, he played the course with five-time British Open champion Tom Watson , at 62 one of the few players in the tournament who is older. Lewis had written Watson a letter asking if he could play with him, telling the 1977 Masters winner that his runner-up finish in the 2009 British Open had inspired him. When Watson responded to the letter, Melanie Lewis framed it next to her husband’s Masters invitation. “I kind of have a shrine for him,” she said. When he leaves the club, Lewis will also have a closet full of Masters-logoed clothes. He has spent about $800 on merchandise and said he plans to wear a hat or shirt from the tournament as often as he can. “I’m going to be one of those guys always wearing something from here,” he said in an interview. Weekend Unlikely Lewis is unlikely to become the first Mid-Amateur champion to make the 36-hole cut for weekend play. Still, he plans to stick around as a spectator through the finish of the tournament on April 8. “They’re probably going to have to get security to escort me out of here,” he said. “I wish things would slow down, this is going way, way too fast. It’s just a place that you, gosh, just want to be here as much as you possibly can.” His son’s name can always serve as a reminder of the tournament. “We kind of subjected him to a life of having a misspelled first name,” the father said of the son. “Jack was always my hero, so it’s pretty cool.” To contact the reporter on this story: Mike Buteau in Augusta, Georgia at mbuteau@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net

EU Offers $6.7 Billion Bonds for Portugal, Ireland Bailouts

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-23/eu-s-bailout-fund-starts-selling-6-7-billion-bonds-for-portugal-ireland.html

The European Union is selling 4.75 billion euros ($6.7 billion) of 10-year bonds to help fund the bailouts of Ireland and Portugal. The EU is offering the bonds through its European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism, or EFSM, according to three people with knowledge of the transaction, who declined to be identified before it’s completed. The deal is the third from the fund and follows Portugal’s request for rescue loans on April 7. “The sale should be very well-supported given it’s a triple A rated asset,” said David Schnautz , a fixed-income strategist at Commerzbank AG in London. The EU is preparing to sell the top-rated bonds after saying last week it plans to raise a total of 15.3 billion euros for the two nations by July 15, through the EFSM and another fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility. Global markets have been roiled by concern some euro region countries won’t be able to repay their debt. Amadeu Altafaj, economic policy spokesman at the Brussels- based European Commission, which runs the EFSM, didn’t reply to an e-mailed request for comment. The bonds may be priced to yield about 16 basis points more than the mid-swap rate and the sale’s due to be completed tomorrow, said the people. The deal is being managed by BNP Paribas SA, Credit Agricole CIB, Credit Suisse Group AG, DZ Bank AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co, the people said. Five-Year Sale The EFSM will subsequently issue five-year notes in a deal to be arranged by Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Societe Generale SA and UBS AG, another banker said. The price of the EFSM’s 4.6 billion of existing 2018 securities sold in March climbed to 100.60 from 99.53 when it started trading, while its 5 billion euros of bonds due December 2015 fell to 99.39 from 100.34 on Jan. 10, according to Bloomberg composite prices. The EFSF -- which is overseen by euro-area governments -- made its debut bond sale in January. The EU rescue funds will sell four benchmark bonds in the second quarter valued at 3 billion euros to 5 billion euros each, and a further six deals in the second half, the commission said in a May 19 statement. The two funds are each providing 26 billion euros for Portugal, which is also getting an equivalent amount from the International Monetary Fund. For Ireland, the EFSF is providing 17.7 billion euros and the EFSM 22.5 billion euros. To contact the reporter on this story: Esteban Duarte in Madrid at eduarterubia@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Armstrong at parmstrong10@bloomberg.net

Oaktree Reports Fourth-Quarter Profit on Gains From Investments

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-14/oaktree-reports-fourth-quarter-profit-on-gains-from-investments.html

Oaktree Capital Group LLC , the world’s largest distressed-debt investor, reported a fourth- quarter profit after a loss a year earlier as it realized more gains on investments. Net income was $39.3 million, or $1.30 a share, compared with a loss of $28.9 million, or $1.28 a share, a year ago, Los Angeles-based Oaktree said in a statement today. Assets under management declined to $77.1 billion from $81 billion at the end of the third quarter as the firm distributed capital to investors. Oaktree, which went public last year, has told clients it’s targeting the lowest returns it has sought as it aims for gross returns of 15 percent in its distressed strategies, Chairman Howard Marks said in December. The firm is hunting for returns in the emerging markets, starting its first fund to buy dislocated debt in those countries, according to an investor letter obtained by Bloomberg News. The firm also plans to raise $3 billion for its latest distressed-debt fund that seeks to take control of companies, according to people familiar with the matter. “Asset values are fairly reasonable,” Marks said yesterday at Credit Suisse Group AG’s financial services conference in Miami. “Equity price-to-earnings ratios are below average, high-yield bond spreads are generous and real estate prices are down. So that’s not a scary outlook.” Oaktree reported results before U.S. markets opened for trading. The shares have advanced 16 percent to $49.90 since the firm’s April 11 initial public offering. Oaktree raised $380 million in the IPO, selling 8.84 million shares for $43 each, the bottom of the proposed range. Adjusted net income, a measure of profit excluding some costs, rose to $220.4 million, or $1.36 a share, from $76.7 million, or 33 cents, a year ago, Oaktree said. Adjusted net income excludes some expenses, including noncash equity compensation and income taxes. To contact the reporter on this story: Devin Banerjee in New York at dbanerjee2@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at cbaumgaertel@bloomberg.net

BAT Kenya First-Half Profit Increases 14% as Exports Help Revenue Surge

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-08/bat-kenya-first-half-profit-increases-14-as-exports-help-revenue-surge.html

BAT Kenya Ltd., East Africa’s biggest cigarette maker, said first-half profit grew 14 percent as revenue surged amid increased domestic sales and higher exports. Net income climbed to 1.17 billion shillings ($13 million) in the six months through March from 1.02 billion shillings a year earlier, the Nairobi-based company said in a statement handed to reporters today. Revenue jumped 51 percent to 9.1 billion shillings, it said. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net

Mugabe, Party Allies Own Half of Seized Zimbabwe Land, Zimonline Reports

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-02/mugabe-party-allies-own-half-of-seized-zimbabwe-land-zimonline-reports.html

President Robert Mugabe and officials in his party own almost half the land seized from Zimbabwe’s white farmers since 2000, Johannesburg-based Zimonline said, citing its own research. Along with military and police officers, judges, cabinet ministers from the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front party and senior civil servants, Mugabe’s closest allies own almost 5 million hectares (12,355,269 acres) of farmland, the news agency said. About 2,200 people affiliated with Zanu-PF control the farms previously owned by white farmers, Zimonline reported. The seized land now owned by Mugabe and Zanu-PF officials totals about 13 percent of Zimbabwe’s 390,757 square-kilometer (150,872 square-mile) land mass or an area bigger than Denmark. The other half of the confiscated property is in the hands of members of the public who belong to the party, Zimonline said. Calls seeking comment on the report from Mugabe’s spokesman, George Charamba , and Zanu-PF’s Harare headquarters weren’t answered today. To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Latham in Durban, South Africa, at blatham@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net .

Indiana Board to Consider Tea Party Questions on Lugar Residency

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-22/indiana-board-to-consider-tea-party-questions-on-lugar-residency.html

The Indiana Election Commission is being asked to determine whether U.S. Senator Richard Lugar is a resident of the state and deserving of a place on this year’s ballot. The Tea Party-backed challenge gives Democrats a new avenue of attack in a race in which their candidate starts out with a financial disadvantage against the six-term Republican. “Whether or not it’s legal, it’s not right,” Ben Ray, a spokesman for the Indiana Democratic Party, said in a telephone interview, referring to Lugar’s residency status. If Lugar survives the primary, he would face Democratic U.S. Representative Joe Donnelly, who has been making a point on his campaign kickoff tour of telling voters that he works in Washington , then spends most weekends in Indiana. Backers of Lugar’s challenger in the May 8 Republican primary, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, asked for the ruling on the legality of Lugar’s candidacy, given that Lugar sold his home in Indiana in 1977 after he was first elected to the Senate and moved his family to McLean, Virginia. The complaint is on the agenda of the Feb. 24 meeting of the four-member Election Commission. Lugar’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment today. The senator told RTV 6, an Indianapolis television station, he had received assurances from two state attorneys general that his “residency situation” was “proper and correct.” The station also reported that Lugar said he wasn’t sure of the address on his driver’s license, and presumed it listed the house he sold in 1977. Lugar’s Advantage As 2012 began, Lugar had a 4-to-1 cash advantage over both Donnelly and Mourdock. Lugar’s campaign reported $4.04 million on hand, compared with $847,000 for the Donnelly campaign and $363,000 reported by the Mourdock campaign. On Feb. 14, the anti-tax group Club for Growth endorsed Mourdock. Lugar subsequently started running a television ad labeling Mourdock a “mudslinger,” according to a report in the Evansville Courier and Press. In an e-mailed statement, Mourdock spokesman Chris Conner said the campaign was making the argument that Lugar is out of touch. “He has actively chosen not to live in our state since 1977 so he doesn’t hear the concerns of the people of our state,” the spokesman said. To contact the reporter on this story: Kathleen Hunter in Washington at khunter9@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Katherine Rizzo at krizzo5@bloomberg.net

Dialog Semiconductor Drops on Weak Apple Sales: Frankfurt Mover

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-24/dialog-semiconductor-drops-on-weak-apple-sales-frankfurt-mover.html

Dialog Semiconductor Plc (DLG) , a maker of chips used in Apple Inc. (AAPL) ’s iPhone, slumped in German trading after the company, its biggest customer, reported the weakest sales growth in 14 quarters and forecast second-quarter revenue that fell short of analyst estimates. Dialog, based in Kirchheim, Germany , fell as much as 5.5 percent, making it the largest decliner in the HDAX Index (HDAX) of 110 most highly capitalized stocks traded on the Frankfurt exchange. Volume was 62 percent of the three-month daily average after 24 minutes of trading. The German supplier depends on Cupertino, California-based Apple for 37 percent of its revenue, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Of 18 analysts that rate the stock, 10 have buy recommendations and six advise holding Dialog shares. Two analysts recommend that investors sell, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Cullen in Frankfurt at acullen8@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Angela Cullen at acullen8@bloomberg.net

Big Companies ‘A Bit Wary’ on Technology Spending, HP Chief Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-09/big-companies-a-bit-wary-on-technology-spending-hp-chief-says.html

Large corporations are exercising caution about large-scale information technology spending amid concerns about global economic growth and fiscal uncertainty, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) Chief Executive Officer Leo Apotheker said. While technology upgrades are under way at many companies, “everybody’s a bit cautious in an environment like this,” Apotheker said today on the sidelines of the Rencontres Economiques conference in Aix-en-Provence, France. “People are still a bit wary.” Providers of computer hardware and services are benefiting unevenly from a rebound in technology spending. HP’s rival Oracle Corp. (ORCL) reported a surprise decline in hardware sales last month. Still, IT spending by companies and governments in the U.S. is expected to grow 5.6 percent this year, about double the estimated rate of growth in gross domestic product, according to market researcher IDC. Apotheker, who took over HP last November after leaving SAP AG, is looking to slice costs and spur sales after cutting $1 billion from the company’s annual revenue projection in May. Under its new CEO, HP is shifting toward cloud-based services and new devices like tablet computers to reduce reliance on traditional personal computers. In May, he warned employees to expect “another tough quarter” in the July period and urged managers to cut expenses. HP is continuing discussions with other hardware manufacturers on licensing its WebOS mobile operating system for their devices, Apotheker said today, and isn’t concerned such agreements could cannibalize sales of its own TouchPad tablet. That device went on sale July 1. Samsung Electronics Co., the maker of devices based on Google Inc.’s Android software including the Galaxy Tab and Nexus smartphone, is in talks to use WebOS in future devices, three people with knowledge of the discussions said earlier this year. Apotheker declined to identify the company’s potential partners in licensing the software. To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Campbell in Aix-en-Provence, France at mcampbell39@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net

Wheat Gains as Worsening U.S. Winter-Crop Condition Dims Outlook

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-07/wheat-gains-as-worsening-u-s-winter-crop-condition-dims-outlook.html

Wheat climbed for the first time in three days after the government said winter-crop conditions worsened in the U.S., the largest shipper, reigniting concern that production will suffer. Corn and soybeans advanced. Wheat for delivery in July rose as much as 0.8 percent to $7.085 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, after losing 3.5 percent in the past two days. Futures were at $7.06, up 0.5 percent, by 9:42 a.m. in Singapore on volume that was 48 percent below the 100-day average for that time of day. About 32 percent of the winter-wheat crop was rated good- to-excellent as of May 5, down from 33 percent a week earlier and 63 percent a year earlier, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Some 23 percent of the spring-variety was planted, behind last year’s 82 percent and an average of 50 percent in the previous five years, the USDA said yesterday. “The USDA’s weekly crop progress report showed a further deterioration in the U.S. winter-wheat crop conditions and underlined the slow pace of spring wheat seeding,” Luke Mathews , a commodity strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia , wrote in a report e-mailed today. Corn for July delivery gained as much as 0.6 percent to $6.405 a bushel in Chicago, before trading at $6.3775. Planting of corn in the U.S., the largest grower, was 12 percent complete in the week ended May 5, the slowest pace for that week since 1984, according to the USDA. The slow pace of planting “should ensure production concerns remain a feature of the corn market over the next week or so,” Mathews said. Soybeans for July delivery advanced 0.3 percent to $13.7375 a bushel. About 2 percent of the soybean crop was seeded, trailing the average of 12 percent for that week in the previous five years, a USDA report showed. To contact the reporter on this story: Luzi Ann Javier in Singapore at ljavier@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net

U.S. Stock Futures Rise as French Borrowing Costs Decline After Auction

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-16/u-s-stock-futures-decline-on-as-rating-cuts-raise-european-debt-concerns.html

U.S. stock-index futures rose as French borrowing costs fell in the first sale of bills since Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country. Carnival Corp. (CCL) tumbled 14 percent in German trading after its Costa Concordia cruise liner ran aground off Italy’s Tuscan coast, killing at least six people and injuring 60. S&P 500 Index (SPX) futures expiring in March rose 0.2 percent to 1,291.4 at 11:30 a.m. in New York, paring an earlier drop of 0.6 percent. The equity gauge climbed 0.9 percent last week and reached a five-month high on Jan. 12. U.S. markets are closed for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday today. “The bill auctions have been carried out without a problem, which is helpful for market sentiment toward the euro area,” said Orlando Green , a fixed-income strategist at Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank in London. “The reaction to the S&P downgrade has been somewhat muted. The move wasn’t a surprise and was well-flagged for a number of the issuers.” France sold 1.9 billion euros ($2.4 billion) of one-year notes today at a yield of 0.406 percent, down from 0.454 percent on Jan. 9. as investors shrugged off S&P’s downgrade. The agency warned on Jan. 13 that the euro area’s efforts to fight its sovereign-debt crisis have fallen short as it lowered the top ratings of France and Austria by one level to AA+. It downgraded Italy, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus by two steps and cut Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia by one level. It affirmed the grades of countries including Germany, Belgium and Ireland. Quarterly Results Investors will be watching fourth-quarter earnings. Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. (C) and Microsoft Corp. are among the U.S. companies due to report this week. S&P 500 companies, which beat estimates in the previous 11 quarters, are forecast to report a 4.6 percent increase in per-share profit during the September-December period, according to projections compiled by Bloomberg. Carnival, the world’s biggest cruise operator, slumped 14 percent to $29.64 in German trading today after a cruise ship belonging to its Costa Crociere unit capsized off Italy’s Tuscan coast. The incident will cost the company $95 million this fiscal year, and Carnival said it anticipates additional expenses that are impossible to determine at this time. The London-listed shares tumbled 16 percent to 1,878 pence, the biggest drop since October 2000. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCL) , the world’s second-largest cruise operator, fell 7.1 percent to $26.72 in German trading. To contact the reporters on this story: Lynn Thomasson in Hong Kong at lthomasson@bloomberg.net ; Tom Stoukas in Athens at astoukas@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew Rummer at arummer@bloomberg.net ; Nick Gentle at ngentle2@bloomberg.net

Daimler Extends Zetsche as CEO as Bernhard to Run Trucks

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-21/daimler-extends-zetsche-s-ceo-contract-until-end-of-2016.html

Daimler AG (DAI) extended Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche ’s term and named manufacturing manager Wolfgang Bernhard to run the truck unit in a possible step to the top job at the world’s third-biggest luxury-car maker. Zetsche’s contract as CEO will be prolonged until the end of 2016, Stuttgart, Germany-based Daimler said today in a statement. Bernhard will become head of the Daimler Trucks division, the world’s largest maker of heavy vehicles, switching roles with Andreas Renschler , who will oversee production and purchasing at Mercedes-Benz cars and vans. “The chances that Bernhard could succeed Zetsche as CEO have increased further with today’s announcement,” Roman Mathyssek, a Frankfurt-based analyst at IHS Global Insight, said by phone. “There’s an unwritten law at Daimler that the CEO has to prove himself at the truck division.” Zetsche vowed 1 1/2 years ago to return the Mercedes brand to its No. 1 rank among luxury carmakers. Since then, the division has fallen further behind Munich-based Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) and Volkswagen AG (VOW) ’s Audi unit in global sales. BMW overtook Mercedes as the world’s biggest luxury-car brand in 2005. Audi, building on a presence in China , has been in second place since 2011. Shorter Contract Zetsche’s three-year contract extension is shorter than the five-year renewals common in German industry. Volkswagen prolonged CEO Martin Winterkorn ’s term by five years in 2011 and BMW approved a similar extension for CEO Norbert Reithofer in September 2010. “The supervisory board is acting in accordance with good corporate governance rules, which imply that board members who are 60 years old or turn 60 during their tenure get a contract extension of three years instead of five,” Joerg Howe, a Daimler spokesman, said in a telephone interview. Zetsche turns 60 in May. The shares dropped 1.04 euros, or 2.3 percent, to 44.09 euros at the close of trading in Frankfurt today. The stock has gained 6.7 percent this year, valuing the German company at 47.1 billion euros ($62.2 billion). Bernhard, 52, will be taking charge of the Daimler division that includes the Freightliner commercial-vehicle brand in the U.S. and Fuso in the Japan , in addition to Mercedes-Benz heavy vehicles built in Europe and Brazil. He returned to Daimler in 2009 after a five-year absence that included a stint at VW, and took the Mercedes car division’s production post in 2010. Zetsche and his predecessor Juergen Schrempp both worked in the commercial-vehicles division before becoming CEO. Swapping Jobs Renschler, 54, has overseen the truck business since October 2004, managing the division’s investments in emerging markets such as Russia and India. His work at the Mercedes car unit, which Zetsche leads, will involve implementing efficiency measures at a division that has a goal of cutting 2 billion euros in spending by 2014. As the European car market heads into a sixth consecutive annual decline, Daimler is forecasting that earnings before interest and taxes from ongoing business in 2013 will remain unchanged from last year, when operating profit dropped 10 percent to 8.1 billion euros. “A three-year contract makes sense,” said Daniel Schwarz , an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “If Mercedes is going to close the gap to BMW and Audi, then results of Zetsche’s efforts should be evident by then. A five-year contract could have been seen critically by some investors.” New Models Zetsche’s strategy at Mercedes includes rolling out 13 new vehicles without predecessor models over the next eight years and fixing a disjointed sales strategy in China. He’s targeting an increase in profit starting next year, while balancing the costs of adding models, such as the CLA coupe and a compact sport-utility vehicle, with the spending-reduction targets. The CEO joined Daimler in 1976 and has since held various positions at the manufacturer’s car and commercial-vehicle divisions, including a period running the truck business. His total compensation for 2011, including fixed salary, bonuses and long-term stock options , was calculated at about 8.65 million euros, with a possible increase if Daimler beats performance targets in coming years. A member of Daimler’s management board since 1998, Zetsche was also CEO of U.S. carmaker Chrysler, a Daimler unit at the time, from 2000 to 2005. Zetsche became head of the Mercedes- Benz car division in September 2005 and succeeded Schrempp as Daimler CEO three months later. Remaking Daimler Zetsche has largely stripped the company of Schrempp’s legacy, imitating Chrysler’s separation in 2007, deciding in 2011 to discontinue the ultra-luxury Maybach brand and proceeding with an exit from European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. (EAD) , the parent of planemaker Airbus that Daimler helped found, with the sale of a 7.5 percent stake in December. Daimler also extended Thomas Weber ’s contract as development chief through 2016. The engineer, 58, was promoted to Daimler’s management board in 2003 and has been responsible for research and development since May 2004, overseeing the introduction of the four-door CLS coupe. Weber, who joined the then Daimler-Benz AG in 1987, has a PhD and was awarded an honorary professor title from the university of Stuttgart in 2010. To contact the reporter on this story: Christoph Rauwald in Frankfurt at crauwald@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net

Zloty Advances to Snap Three-Day Retreat on Improving U.S. Data

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-15/zloty-advances-to-snap-three-day-retreat-on-improving-u-s-data.html

The Polish zloty advanced for the first time in four days after reports showed New York-area manufacturing grew and fewer Americans filed jobless claims in a sign the global economy is improving. The zloty appreciated 0.8 percent to 4.1277 per euro as of 4 p.m. in Warsaw. It was the third-steepest gain among 25 emerging-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg. To contact the reporter on this story: Piotr Skolimowski in Warsaw at pskolimowski@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gavin Serkin at gserkin@bloomberg.net

Tourre Juror Says Panel Found Goldman Banker ‘Shady’

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-02/tourre-juror-says-panel-found-goldman-banker-shady.html

Fabrice Tourre was seen as likable, unbelievable and “a bit shady,” said one of the jurors who found the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) vice president liable for fraud in a failed $1 billion investment. Beverly Rhett, a retired special-education teacher who lives in the Bronx, New York, said the panel agreed with the government that he should have disclosed the fact that Paulson & Co., the hedge fund owned by billionaire John Paulson , helped structure the “Abacus” deal intending for the assets behind it to fail. Rhett originally spoke on condition of anonymity. She agreed yesterday to be identified by name. Tourre, 34, was found liable on Aug. 1 in Manhattan federal court on six of seven claims filed against him by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He faces penalties that U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest said will be determined later, with filings due in court later this month, and may be barred from the securities industry. The key to the verdict, Rhett said, was the government’s evidence, including documents and e-mails, that showed Tourre’s alleged duplicity. The nine jurors delivered their verdict on the second day of deliberations, giving a victory to the SEC in one of the most prominent trials to grow out of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Specialized Language Rhett said she and the others had a hard time at first following specialized Wall Street language that the lawyers and witnesses were using. At times, some of the jurors looked bored, distracted and drowsy. “I think it was too much information -- information overload for someone that’s not in that field,” she said. That changed over the course of the two-week trial. “By the end, we had people who sounded like experts” on the transaction, she said of her fellow jurors. While the jurors liked Tourre, Rhett said, she didn’t believe his story. In particular, she said she thought he misled Laura Schwartz, an executive with ACA Management LLC, a key SEC witness, about the Abacus deal. “Someone in his post should have known” that Schwartz wasn’t told about the true purpose of the deal, she said. The SEC claimed Tourre tricked ACA into serving as a third-party agent to select the assets behind the transaction by leading her to believe Paulson wanted it to succeed, rather than shorting it. ‘Critical’ Belief ACA’s former chief executive, Alan Roseman, testified that his belief that Paulson was taking a long position in Abacus was “critical” to his company’s participation. Rhett said Paolo Pellegrini , a former top Paulson executive, came across to jurors as “defensive, somewhat arrogant.” Pellegrini spent much of his time on the stand sparring with the SEC’s lead lawyer, Matthew Martens, at one point accusing the agency of tricking and intimidating him in its investigation into the Abacus deal. “That’s kind of unanimous, that he was a character,” she said of the jurors’ view of Pellegrini. Jurors based much of their decision-making on documents and e-mails the SEC argued were evidence of Tourre’s scheme. Rhett said the panel focused on Tourre’s responsibility but she believes that others at New York-based Goldman Sachs were involved in wrongdoing in the Abacus deal. ‘An Incentive’ “Twenty million dollars is certainly an incentive to scheme,” Rhett said, referring to Goldman Sachs’s anticipated fee from Abacus. “It seemed like it would have had to involve more people than him.” The firm settled SEC allegations for $550 million in July 2010, a record at the time. In the settlement, Goldman Sachs acknowledged that marketing materials for Abacus contained “incomplete information.” There was little tension among jurors, Rhett said. An early vote on one count was unanimous. They mostly spent the deliberations struggling to work through the evidence and jury instructions, she said. “We agonized and we really delved into the language as best we could,” she said. The process was about “needing to think things through” rather than getting dissenters to agree with the majority. The jurors completed their verdict around a table covered with papers, soda and water bottles and cups of coffee. In the back of the room, to the side of a plate of pastries, they drew diagrams in colored markers on a white board mounted on the wall. Tiring Work Several jurors declined to be interviewed the day of the verdict, saying they were tired from their work. As she left court, juror Beth Glover, 47, an Episcopal priest from the Riverdale section of the Bronx, said, “It was a long, slow process.” Another juror, Reece Pate, 37, a graphic designer from Rockland County, New York , said only, “It’s been a long day.” Rhett declined to disclose her age. “I have had my AARP card for a few years, now,” she told the judge during jury selection. She plans to take a cruise starting Aug. 5. “We didn’t talk a lot about the personal e-mails,” Rhett said, referring to Tourre’s notes to his then-girlfriend, in which he alternated musings about his work creating complex investments with pillow talk. In one e-mail, Tourre wrote about the “monstruousities” he was creating and quoted a friend’s nickname for him, which would later become indelible: Fabulous Fab. While jurors thought the e-mails were “somewhat invasive,” they also showed he was “a bit shady,” Rhett said. Assessing Lawyers The jury’s impressions of the lawyers in the case varied, with John “Sean” Coffey, one of Tourre’s attorneys, viewed as animated and humorous. Tourre’s lawyer Pamela Chepiga was “more deliberate, no humor, grim.” And the SEC’s Martens, who won the case, was seen as “serious, steadfast, no nonsense.” Rhett said she and the other jurors got along well. They exchanged e-mail addresses and plan a post-trial get-together. “I’m glad I served,” she said. “It was arduous. But I’m glad I was a part of it.” The juror had some advice for Wall Street, urging bankers to be “honest in your dealings.” “Explain everything,” she said. “Do not omit anything that’s pertinent to the decision-making.” The case is SEC v. Tourre, 10-cv-03229, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York ( Manhattan ). To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Van Voris in federal court in Manhattan at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net .

Dollar Strengthens as Stocks Fluctuate Amid Bernanke Speculation

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-24/dollar-strengthens-as-stocks-fluctuate-amid-bernanke-speculation.html

The dollar strengthened against all of its most traded counterparts as stocks fluctuated amid speculation whether Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will say this week that the central bank is willing to provide more stimulus the economy. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dave Liedtka at dliedtka@bloomberg.net

Obama Budget Cuts Set to Squeeze Infosys’ Sales: Corporate India

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-14/obama-budget-cuts-set-to-squeeze-infosys-sales-corporate-india.html

Infosys Ltd. (INFO) , the Indian software developer which plunged last week after forecasting sales that lagged estimates, may struggle to win clients as U.S. President Barack Obama ’s $85 billion in spending cuts prompts companies to rein in spending. Fifteen percent of prospective contracts for Infosys were canceled in the year ended March 31 as customers reduced discretionary spending for “rainy day regulations,” said Ashok Vemuri, head of Americas at the Bangalore-based company. U.S. budget cuts in manufacturing and financial services may prompt companies in those industries to reduce investment in information technology products, he said. Infosys, India ’s second-largest provider of IT services, made 62 percent of its revenue in North America last fiscal year. The reductions in Obama’s budget, which undercut his push to increase funding for research, education and infrastructure, may mean Infosys’ sales will lag behind their estimate, according to Harit Shah, an analyst with Nirmal Bang Equities Pvt. in Mumbai. “We will start to see these cuts in bits and pieces over the next couple of quarters as they trickle down to industry,” Vemuri said in a phone interview from Bangalore. “The symptom of that is the number of deals that die before they come to the table has gone up because companies are saving cash piles to cover new regulation.” Sales Forecast Infosys’ shares fell 21 percent, the biggest slump in a decade, on April 12 after saying revenue in the year that started April 1 will grow 6 percent to 10 percent. The drop made Infosys the worst-performing stock in the 1000-company MSCI Asia Pacific Index. (MXAP) The company’s American depositary receipts lost 21 percent in New York. The company’s stock gained 1.9 percent to 2,339.05 rupees in Mumbai after dropping as much as 4 percent. The S&P BSE Sensex rose 0.6 percent. The company forecast for sales growth was less than the median 13 percent estimated by 66 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Indian information technology industry body Nasscom said sector sales may rise 12 percent to 14 percent in the year to March 31. The company’s earnings margin before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in the three months ended March 31 narrowed to 26.5 percent, according to Batlivala & Karani Securities Pvt. That’s the lowest since at least 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Infosys is “a good company but unfortunately demand for its services isn’t just picking up,” Gary Greenberg, a fund manager at Hermes Fund Managers Ltd., said in an interview to Bloomberg TV. “Infosys is trying to make a transition to becoming a consultancy company but that’s harder than it looks. We happily don’t own Infosys.” Option Contracts Volumes in Infosys’ put options in India jumped to 313,902 contracts on April 12 from 125,421 a day earlier. They fell to 124,711 contracts today. Puts give the right to sell a security for a certain amount, called the strike price, by a given date. Volume of calls, which convey the right to buy, were at 161,752. Chief Executive Officer S.D. Shibulal didn’t provide an earnings-per0-share forecast, saying the “unknowns are substantial.” Shibulal and six colleagues started the company after borrowing $250 from their wives in 1981. “There’s a chance that they could miss their next guidance, but as the CEO said, there are too many variables that remain unclear to really predict what’s going to happen,” said Nirmal Bang’s Shah. “The confidence in this company has clearly gone for a toss.” Defense Contractors President Obama signed the $984 billion government funding bill into law on March 27, locking in spending cuts for research, education and infrastructure. Obama unveiled a $3.78 trillion fiscal year 2014 budget on April 10 that would end the sequester cuts. That may not reduce the “detrimental impact on spending,” Infosys’ Vemuri said. “Sequestration has already had an impact on IT services here in the U.S.,” said Washington D.C.-based Bloomberg Government analyst Afzal Bari. “The federal government gives a lot of money to states for Medicaid systems and that money is subject to cuts. States often hire Indian outsourcing companies for those projects.” Obama’s budget may reduce spending on information technology by $2.5 billion by 2015, according to Bloomberg Industries’ Anurag Rana. Companies including Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) , Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) , the world’s largest defense contractor, and SAIC Inc. (SAI) may be affected, Rana said. Manufacturing companies including defense contractors and aircraft makers accounted for 22 percent of Infosys’ revenue in the three months ended March 31, while banking, financial services and insurance contributed 34 percent. Tata Consultancy Sequestration may also hurt Infosys’ rivals including Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. (TCS) , Asia ’s biggest software developer by market value, and HCL Technologies Ltd. (HCLT) , Nirmal Bang’s Shah said. Tata Consultancy Chief Executive Officer Natarajan Chandrasekaran and HCL Technologies Chief Financial Officer Sandeep Kanwar said their companies haven’t been affected by the U.S. budget cuts. Tata Consultancy on April 17 may say profit increased 10 percent to 36.1 billion rupees from 29.3 billion in the quarter ended March 2012, according to Bloomberg’s survey of 38 analysts. Net income rose 23 percent in the preceding three months, while Infosys reported a 0.1 percent drop. Spending on information technology services worldwide is estimated to climb 4.5 percent this year, faster than in 2012, Gartner Inc. said on March 28. An economic revival in North America may help boost sales at software developers. U.S. Economy Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist Vincent Reinhart sees a 3 percent pace of growth for the world’s biggest economy in the quarter ending in June, up from 0.08 percent in December. Top information technology service providers are predicted to post “double-digit” growth as a recovery in the U.S. and in financial services stokes demand, according to Rana. Infosys, “as indicated by a dismal topline growth guidance, continues to struggle competitively, including win rates and project ramp-ups,” Moshe Katri and Avishai Kantor, analysts at New York-based Cowen & Co. said in a note to clients on April 12. “We believe Infosys’ issues continue to be company-specific rather than industry-specific.” To contact the reporter on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in New Delhi at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net

NML Urges Court Not to Delay Argentine Bond Payments

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-14/nml-urges-court-not-to-extend-stay-in-argentine-bond-case.html

Elliott Management Corp.’s NML Capital Fund and other holders of defaulted Argentine bonds urged a court not to allow the country to go forward with $3 billion in scheduled payments on restructured debt next month without paying them as well. Lawyers for the bondholders yesterday asked U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa in Manhattan to enforce rulings he made and delayed that would require Argentina to pay on its defaulted debt whenever it makes payments on the restructured debt. In a Nov. 9 conference, Griesa said he will keep the orders on hold until he rules on two remaining issues in the case, which he said he will do by Dec. 1. Argentina is seeking a longer stay so it can go forward with the December payments while it tries to appeal. A federal appeals court in New York ruled Oct. 26 that Argentina can’t favor the restructured bondholders over holders of defaulted notes. The nation yesterday asked for a rehearing, either before the three-judge panel that ruled against it or before the entire U.S. Court of Appeals in New York. The case is NML Capital Ltd. v. Republic of Argentina, 08- CV-6978, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Van Voris in New York at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net

Popular CEO Says He Was ‘Not Involved’ in Loans to Board Members

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-20/popular-ceo-says-he-was-not-involved-in-loans-to-board-members.html

Popular Inc. (BPOP) Chief Executive Officer Richard Carrion said today he was “not involved” in approving delinquent or troubled loans made to some board directors. “They were made with the approval of the board of directors. I was certainly not involved in that approval,” Carrion, who’s also the bank’s chairman, said today on a conference call following the San Juan-based lender’s first- quarter results. Carrion, 59, who’s been Popular’s CEO for almost two decades and sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York , is seeking to help the bank recover from losses on soured home loans and repay $935 million to the U.S. government after a 2008 bailout. His sister and two of his nephews, one of whom is also a Popular director, have delinquent property loans to the lender, according to a regulatory filing. The bank has also restructured the loans of another director, the board’s head of corporate governance, and classifies his debts as “troubled,” the filing shows. “In the past few years, things have not worked out exactly as we expected in Puerto Rico ,” Carrion said in response to an analyst’s question. “We expect that these loans at this current level will get paid.” Popular reported first-quarter net income that more than quadrupled to $48.4 million, or 5 cents a share, from last year. It rose 3.9 percent to $1.89 at 4:30 p.m. in New York trading. The shares gained 36 percent this year. ‘Internal Procedures’ “All related party transactions are subject to internal procedures and banking laws and regulations that require they be made on market terms and conditions,” said Teruca Rullan, a spokeswoman for Popular, in a statement e-mailed earlier this week. Any transaction involving directors and their “related business interests must be approved in advance by the board of directors, which is overwhelmingly comprised of independent directors,” she said, declining to comment further on behalf of Carrion’s family members and the directors. To contact the reporter on this story: Laura Marcinek in New York at lmarcinek3@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net

New Zealand Dollar Touches Two-Month High on Bets China Will Ease Policy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-12/new-zealand-dollar-touches-two-month-high-on-bets-china-will-ease-policy.html

New Zealand ’s dollar touched a two- month high as a report showed China’s inflation cooled for the fifth straight month in December, increasing speculation the Asian nation will provide more monetary stimulus. The so-called kiwi held a three-day gain versus the greenback and the yen before data that may show U.S. retail sales grew, supporting demand for riskier assets. The Australian dollar was little changed as Spain and Italy prepared to auction debt this week amid concern Europe ’s fiscal crisis is worsening. “I think inflation is still cooling and that’s going to provide scope for Chinese authorities to support markets and the economies more,” said Jonathan Cavenagh , a currency strategist at Westpac Banking Corp. in Singapore. “Both the Aussie and kiwi still continue to do quite well against the U.S. dollar .” New Zealand’s currency gained to 79.81 U.S. cents, the highest since Nov. 9, before trading at 79.65 at 1:42 p.m. in Sydney, little changed from yesterday’s close in New York. It earlier rose to 61.35 yen, also the most since Nov. 9, before changing hands at 61.243 yen from 61.25. Australia’s dollar traded at $1.0304 from $1.0310 yesterday and fetched 79.21 yen from 79.24. It was at 80.98 euro cents from 81.14 yesterday, when it reached a record high of 81.20. China’s consumer prices rose 4.1 percent from a year earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said in Beijing today. That compares with the median estimate of 4 percent in a Bloomberg News survey and 4.2 percent in November. The People’s Bank of China in November cut the amount of cash that lenders need to set aside as reserves, the first reduction since 2008. Sales at U.S. retailers probably climbed 0.3 percent in December, following a 0.2 percent gain in November, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists before the Commerce Department issues the figure today. Spain will sell bonds due in 2015 and 2016 today. Italy will auction bills today and debt due in 2014 and 2018 tomorrow. To contact the reporter on this story: Mariko Ishikawa in Tokyo at mishikawa9@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Garfield Reynolds at greynolds1@bloomberg.net

OECD’s Gurria Says Food Production Needs ‘Big’ Investment Boost

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-07/oecd-s-gurria-says-food-production-needs-big-investment-boost.html

OECD Secretary General Jose Angel Gurria said boosting food stockpiles in emerging and developing nations will require increased government and private spending. “Most of the potential to increase production is outside the OECD countries,” Gurria, head of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said today at a conference in Montreal. “That is where there is land available and where the gap between the current and the potential yields is enormous. But a big increase in investment is needed there.” The cost of food is projected to remain elevated into 2012. Global wheat production will lag behind demand, helping to keep food prices high and volatile at least through next year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said today on its website. Gurria offered two possible solutions to prevent future surges in food costs. “Governments could roll back the measures which mandate and subsidize biofuel consumption and production, which have created conflicts between fuel and food,” he said. “Governments could also refrain from beggar-thy-neighbor policies such as import and export restrictions.” Prices for staple foods including corn will more than double in two decades unless action is taken, Oxfam International said last week. World grain stocks will fall for a second year by the end of June 2012, the International Grains Council said May 26. The increase in food prices is “not exclusively an agricultural issue,” Gurria said. “Macroeconomic factors, energy policy , the financial and economic crises, the weather, they have all contributed.” When asked at a news conference today if the U.S. Federal Reserve’s $600 billion Treasury-purchase program, scheduled to expire at the end of the month, contributed to the recent rise in commodity prices, Gurria said, “Frankly, I don’t see a very direct link.” The OECD, comprised mostly of developed nations in Europe and North America , has 34 member states. To contact the reporter on this story: Timothy Homan in Montreal at thoman1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net

Dell, HP Earnings Expected to Herald the End of PC Era

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-15/death-be-not-proud-as-dell-to-hewlett-packard-show-pc-end-tech.html

(Corrects story that ran Nov. 15 to show Wasatch no longer holds Hewlett-Packard shares.) The PC era is ending. More evidence of the monumental shift away from personal computers will come when Dell Inc. (DELL) reports results later today, and Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) announces its earnings next week. As more consumers and businesses flock to smartphones and tablets, companies led by Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) that long benefited from demand for PCs are feeling the pain. Dell will report a 10 percent drop in sales, while Hewlett-Packard’s revenue fell 6 percent in the most recent quarter, estimates compiled by Bloomberg show. The declines mark a reversal from the 1980s, when Microsoft co-Founder Bill Gates and Dell Founder Michael Dell helped usher in the PC age with low-cost machines that transformed how companies work and made it easy for consumers to use computers. The PC shunted aside bigger, pricier, more complex minicomputers and mainframes that once dominated the industry. “PC makers are succumbing to the fate of those who don’t learn from history, not even their own,” said Erik Gordon , a professor at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. The industry’s reaction has been “like responding to the early auto industry by trying to attach wheels to the hooves of horses.” Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett-Packard are introducing their own tablet computers, and Microsoft has revamped its mobile- phone software in time for the year-end shopping season. Yet all three lag behind Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. in tablets, and Microsoft’s share of smartphones is a fraction of the slice commanded by Apple and Google. PC Woe PC shipments tumbled 8.3 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to market researcher Gartner Inc., and are forecast to fall this year for the first annual decline since 2001, according to IHS iSuppli. Windows sales fell 33 percent in Microsoft’s most recent quarter, and revenue in Intel Corp.’s key third quarter -- when PC makers typically stock up on chips for the holiday season -- declined sequentially for the first time in more than 20 years. The news probably won’t get better soon. Round Rock, Texas-based Dell may report third-quarter sales fell to $13.9 billion and earnings excluding some items tumbled 27 percent to 40 cents a share, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Growth at the computer maker has stagnated, even after an acquisition spree since 2009 to diversify into storage, information-technology services and networking gear for corporate data centers. ‘Lackluster Innovation’ “They are de-emphasizing the PC business,” said Abhey Lamba , an analyst at Mizuho Securities USA. “There will be revenue headwinds from that, and their other businesses need investment.” Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, California , may be in even worse shape. Fourth-quarter sales may drop to $30.5 billion and earnings excluding some items may fall 3 percent to $1.14 a share, according to analysts’ average estimate. Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman has said a turnaround won’t happen anytime soon, and the company on Oct. 3 slashed its earnings forecast, sending shares to a 10-year low. “The innovation coming from those two companies has just been lackluster,” said Pat Becker Jr., a fund manager at Portland, Oregon-based Becker Capital Management Inc. The PC makers’ stocks have been battered, which means investors aren’t paying much for already meager profit. Hewlett- Packard is trading at 3.3 times next year’s projected earnings and Dell at 5.5 times, among the cheapest companies among their peer group, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Smartphone Ascent Dell rose 1.9 percent to $9.58 at the close in New York yesterday, trimming the year-to-date decline to 35 percent. Hewlett-Packard was little changed at $13.14, and the stock is down 49 percent this year. While PC sales languish, smartphone shipments of 488 million last year overtook the number of PCs shipped for the first time, according to market researcher Canalys. Sales of iPads and other tablets are forecast to increase 26 percent to $79.4 billion next year, according to NPD DisplaySearch. In notebooks -- the category the PC makers just a few years ago counted on for growth -- Apple has surpassed Hewlett-Packard as the top supplier in terms of revenue. To be sure, PCs aren’t going away any time soon. The industry will ship 348.7 million of them this year, according to IHS iSuppli. Microsoft’s Surface -- a hybrid tablet computer that converts into a small laptop -- has received mostly positive reviews. Tombstone Written “There are plenty of people who’ve already written the tombstone, and you could say that’s a bit premature,” said Michael Shinnick, a portfolio manager at Wasatch Advisors Inc. in South Bend, Indiana , which holds Dell shares. Windows 8, Microsoft’s much vaunted new software release, may be a mixed bag for the industry, though. Any new release of Windows spurs a wave of buying, which lifts all companies in the PC ecosystem. Yet many companies may eschew buying Windows 8 as they keep machines longer and are just now upgrading to the last version. Old alliances are splintering too: Microsoft’s recently released Surface tablet runs a version of Windows called RT built for chips made by ARM Holdings Plc (ARM) -- not its longtime partner Intel. And it competes directly with machines made by Hewlett-Packard, Dell and other electronics makers. Microsoft may have a hard time selling business users on Surface instead of the iPad if they don’t need its stalwart Office suite of productivity programs, said Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura Holdings Inc. The machine and Windows 8 are designed around a revamped home screen featuring colorful tiles that launch programs and update users with current information from the Internet. “If you don’t need Office, you don’t need Windows 8,” he said. “This is the concern everyone has about Microsoft right now.” To contact the reporter on this story: Aaron Ricadela in San Francisco at aricadela@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net