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Smisek Says Airline M&A `Very Good' for Industry: Charlie Rose

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/smisek-says-airline-m-a-very-good-for-industry-charlie-rose.html

United Continental Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Smisek talks with Charlie Rose about the merger of of United Airlines parent UAL Corp. and Continental Airlines Inc., the airline industry, and U.S. transportation policy. ("Charlie Rose" airs weeknights on PBS and Bloomberg Television. Source: Charlie Rose) Running Time: 28:26

Dementia Risk Factors May Begin as Early as Adolescence

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/dementia-risk-factors-may-begin-as-early-as-adolescence.html

A person’s chance of getting dementia before age 65 may develop as early as adolescence, according to a study that suggests teens with high blood pressure or who drink excessively are at risk. Other risk factors for dementia include stroke, use of antipsychotics, father’s dementia, drug intoxication, as well as short stature and low cognitive function, according to a study of Swedish men published by the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. The finding bolsters research efforts that have begun to look at healthy people to discover who may be at risk for dementia in the future. The study released yesterday also suggests that late-life illness can be foreshadowed in youth. “The idea of lifelong factors playing a role, that activities and behaviors at an early age matter, seems intuitive,” Heather Snyder, the director of medical and scientific operations for the Alzheimer’s Association , said in a telephone interview. “There may be other types of public health interventions that can be incorporated” in dementia prevention, she said. The study also helps confirm some risk factors discovered in previous research. Having a close family member who suffers from dementia, low cognitive function and alcohol abuse are known to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, said Snyder, who wasn’t involved in the study. Earlier Hints Previous research has seen hints that physical activity and mental stimulation were protective against dementia, she said. The idea that heart health also plays a role has been suggested by earlier studies as well. More than 5 million people in the U.S. have Alzheimer’s, a progressive disease that erodes a patient’s memory, thinking and ability to carry out simple tasks. The cause of the illness is unknown and there is no known cure. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, which may affect 65.7 million people worldwide by 2030, the World Health Organization has estimated. In the research released yesterday, Swedish scientists followed more than 480,000 men conscripted for military service from September 1969 to December 1979. The men were 18 years old, on average, at first examination. Over the course of 37 years, 487 of the men developed dementia. The study finding suggests that some noninherited factors, like high blood pressure, may worsen other processes that cause early-onset dementia, according to an editorial written by Deborah Levine , an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Health System. The study is limited because it didn’t include women, and it may not have measured all the factors that play a role in the disease. The data sources used by the researchers also may understate the amount of information on other, later-in-life risks. To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Lopatto in San Francisco at elopatto@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net

Getting the Liability Out of Lead Paint

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/getting-the-liability-out-of-lead-paint.html

Should we be able to sue the manufacturers of lead paint for the harms it has caused? Lead is very bad for you, as Kevin Drum has amply documented. It causes all sorts of neurological problems, particularly if ingested by children, and may have been behind the great midcentury crime wave that rocked the Western world. It’s a very good thing that we took lead out of the atmosphere and the paint that decks our walls. Unfortunately, a good bit of lead paint is still hanging around. And then there are the people who were damaged by lead paint as youngsters. I myself dimly recall chewing on a sweet-tasting paint chip while my mother was DIY-ing our apartment in the 1970s (insert all the obvious jokes here). Should I be able to sue over the exposure? Lilly Fowler, writing at Mother Jones , chronicles the difficulties that state and local governments have faced in suing the manufacturers of lead paint. Even with quotes cherry-picked to make paint manufacturers sound awful, however, the case seems weak. The plaintiffs argue that the companies knew lead was toxic as early as 1900, but the quotations in question clearly refer to large quantities employed in industrial settings, not tiny quantities trapped in the paint on your walls; we lacked the analytical and epidemiological tools in the early 20th century to detect small, widespread effects. By the time the quotes show executives in the record actually discussing the harms from lead-based paint, these sorts of paints were already being phased out, which is why lead paint problems are mostly limited to badly maintained homes built before 1950. Besides, there’s what litigation experts call an “empty chair” problem: There’s no way to know whose paint color is on your walls from 70 years ago. The cases are modeled on the asbestos litigation torrent of the 1970s through 1990s, but pinpointing the harm from lead paint is much harder. Asbestosis and mesothelioma are pretty much exclusively linked to asbestos exposure; if you get them, you know who to blame. But there’s no way to say how much higher your IQ, or stronger your impulse control, would have been without the lead paint. Even absent these problems, the question would remain: Should you be able to sue a manufacturer under today’s laws for products that were manufactured 75 years ago, with less knowledge about effects and very different liability laws? When Sherwin-Williams and DuPont and all the other companies were manufacturing these products in the first half of the 20th century, liability law was very, very different. In " The Rule of Lawyers ," Walter Olson lists the changes in product liability law that took place in midcentury, as people began to view the courts not just as a means for narrow redress, but also as a venue in which cosmic injustices might be righted: We’ll leave the discussion of whether U.S. liability law is soundly premised for another day. For today, we have another question: Should you be able to sue a manufacturer under the current standards for products that were manufactured under earlier, quite different standards? Recall that most of the paint that concerns us is in houses built before 1950. When they made lead paint, they had no “duty to warn,” even if we could show that they knew lead in paint was hazardous. If the stuff contained what you said it contained, and did basically what you said it did, you were fulfilling all your obligations under the law. Should you face penalties for doing something that the law allowed? It’s not as if we can punish the people who decided to make paint with lead in it; they are long dead, or perhaps, if they were unusually healthy, in nursing homes. Nor can going after them serve as much deterrence: “Don’t do something that you don’t necessarily know is hazardous, but which might later become illegal or liable under laws that don’t yet exist” does not seem like a very useful threat. We can, perhaps, compensate the victims -- but recall, too, that lead paint only becomes a problem when a property isn’t well maintained, which is why it mostly affects poor kids. Lead paint is not dangerous when it is sitting sedately on your wall; it becomes a danger when it gets old and flakes off, and then either gets eaten or pulverized into a fine powder that goes airborne. Your house needs to be pretty dilapidated (or your mother needs to be chipping off five decades of slopped-on paint) for the stuff to become a problem. Why should Sherwin-Williams pay because you (or your landlord) have allowed a product they manufactured 70 years ago to degenerate into a dangerous state? Merely because they have deep pockets? This is not a brief for the manufacturers of lead paint. I am very much in favor of laws against lead paint; we shouldn’t be painting hazardous stuff on our walls that could irreparably damage the kids of the future. I am also in favor of paying for lead paint abatement if families can’t afford to do it themselves. But trying to get today’s paint companies to cough up for the unfortunate error of decades long past seems like a bridge too far. Opening up potentially unlimited liability doesn’t make manufacturers extra careful; it actually erodes the deterrent effect of liability law. If I can’t know whether what I’m doing is legit, or not, then why bother to guard against the things that are currently verboten? The law should change, when it has to. But it shouldn't become unpredictable. People, and companies, need to be able to know whether what they’re doing is potentially illegal, or the grounds for a lawsuit. If they can’t know this, they can’t plan for the future … which is to say, they can’t invest in making the world a better place.

LDK Solar Expects a Return to Profit After EU Trade Deal

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/ldk-solar-expects-a-return-to-profit-after-eu-trade-deal.html

LDK Solar Co. (LDK) , the Chinese solar-panel maker that’s reported eight straight quarterly losses, expects to return to profit this year on domestic demand and as a tariff deal promises better sales in Europe. The company, which is scheduled to report second-quarter earnings on Aug. 14, started generating positive cash flows from selling wafers used in solar cells in June, President Tong Xingxue said in an interview at his Xinyu office. “This is the first time in two years we witnessed obvious improvement,” he said. “The market is steadily rising and our demand has exceeded supply. The basic barrier to Europe has been overcome” and the domestic market is taking off, he said. LDK’s debt rose to $2.9 billion as of the end of the first quarter after a supply surplus drove a 20 percent drop in module prices last year. Sales are set to improve after European Union and Chinese negotiators struck an agreement last month to curb EU imports of solar panels in exchange for exempting the shipments from punitive tariffs. “The oversupply is easing in 2013 and some top solar manufacturers can even make profits in the second half,” Lian Rui, an analyst at NPD Solarbuzz in Beijing, said by phone. The solar market is becoming more diversified, with demand seen in Japan， China ，Europe and Australia, and emerging markets including Africa，the Middle East and Thailand , Tong said in the Aug. 8 interview. “LDK will have half of its market in China，with the rest abroad,” Tong said. He expects module prices to increase in the second half. LDK’s wafer production is operating at almost full capacity of 4.5 gigawatts from about 30 percent capacity at the beginning of the year, Tong said. The company has kept almost no inventory for the last two quarters, he said. LDK plans to revive production at its polysilicon plants once prices reach at least 140 yuan ($23) a kilogram from about 120 yuan now，Tong said. The company also plans to develop 600 megawatts of solar farms this year once it secures buyers, Tong said. To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Feifei Shen in Beijing at fshen11@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net

Apple Said to Prepare Holiday Refresh of IPhones to IPads

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/apple-said-to-prepare-thinner-ipad-for-release-this-year.html

Apple Inc. (AAPL) plans to introduce new versions of the iPhone and iPad in time for the holiday shopping season, seeking to entice shoppers who delayed purchases amid a dearth of new models so far this year. The new iPhone will be unveiled at a Sept. 10 event, according to a person with knowledge of the plans who asked not to be named because the timing isn’t public. Updated iPad models, including an iPad with a thinner body design and an iPad mini with a high-resolution screen will be unveiled later, two people said. Software for the devices, as well as for Mac computers, will also be revamped, Apple said in June. The updates will enable Apple to present a refreshed lineup of its top-selling products to consumers ahead of the year-end holiday shopping season. The iPhone and iPad accounted for almost 70 percent of the company’s sales last quarter. The releases come at a critical time for Apple, whose stock has slumped by a third from a record in September amid slowing profit growth and a scarcity of new products. “To drive growth you need to have that next iPhone and iPad refreshed,” said Brian Marshall , an analyst at ISI Group in San Francisco. He said Apple will probably introduce a less expensive iPhone next month to appeal to budget-conscious customers, especially those in developing markets outside of the U.S. and Europe. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has said the company will introduce new products starting in the fall and “across 2014.” Trudy Muller , a spokeswoman for Cupertino, California-based Apple, declined to comment. iPad Upgrades After popularizing the use of touch-screen smartphones and tablets, the company is battling rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) , Google Inc. (GOOG) and Asustek Computer Inc. (2357) The planned new full-size iPad, with a 9.7-inch screen, will have a body that more closely resembles the current iPad mini, with a thinner bezel than the current version, said the people. It will be the first redesign since March 2012, when Apple introduced a high-resolution iPad with the current shape. The iPad mini being sold now, with a 7.9-inch screen, doesn’t have the same high-definition display featured on the iPhone and larger iPad. Apple’s share of the tablet market slid to 32 percent in the second quarter, from 60 percent a year earlier, according to market-research firm IDC. Tablet shipments are slowing in anticipation of new models from the company, IDC said last week. Software Revamp Apple rose 4.8 percent to $489.57 at the close in New York , paring the stock’s decline for the year to 8 percent. The Wall Street Journal previously reported about the iPad design changes. AllThingsD said Apple would debut an iPhone on Sept. 10. The new iPhones and iPads will also feature an overhaul of the company’s mobile operating system, iOS 7, which includes changes to e-mail, calendar and other applications, as well as new color schemes and icon designs. Carl Howe , an analyst at Yankee Group , predicts Apple will garner record sales of the products during the holiday quarter. Other companies tend to move their releases to avoid being overshadowed by Apple, he said. “This makes it so all eyes are on Apple, and that’s exactly what Apple loves,” said Ramon Llamas , an analyst at IDC. He said Apple will see a big spike in sales after the products debut, during a boom lasting about six months. To contact the reporters on this story: Tim Culpan in Taipei at tculpan1@bloomberg.net ; Adam Satariano in San Francisco at asatariano1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Pui-Wing Tam at ptam13@bloomberg.net

Prudential Jumps to Record as Profit Beats Forecasts on Asia

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/prudential-first-half-profit-beats-estimates-as-asia-sales-rise.html

Prudential Plc (PRU) surged to a record in London trading after the U.K.’s biggest insurer by market value reported first-half profit that beat analyst estimates, buoyed by rising sales in Asia and a jump in U.S. earnings. Operating profit climbed 22 percent to 1.42 billion pounds ($2.2 billion) in the first six months, the London-based insurer said in a statement today. That beat the 1.3 billion-pound estimate of 17 analysts provided by the company. The stock surged to the highest since at least 1988 as the firm raised its dividend and posted record profit for its fund management unit. “There is still plenty of potential in that share price,” Chief Executive Officer Tidjane Thiam said on a conference call with reporters from London. Today’s results “provide further evidence of our ability to deliver both earnings growth and cash. We look forward to the rest of the year with confidence.” The stock, which has more than doubled since Thiam became CEO in October 2009, advanced 4.1 percent to 1,232 pence in London. That’s bringing gains this year to 42 percent, compared with a 23 percent increase for the FTSE 350 Insurance Index. Record Sales Thiam, 51, said the insurer has achieved four of the six 2013 objectives that were set out in 2010, and remains on track to achieve the last two, which include doubling Asia’s 2009 operating profit by year end. Asia reported a 18 percent jump in the first half, with seven of its units in the region posting record sales in the second quarter. Asia remains a “significant driver” of earnings for the company, according to Thiam, given the rebalancing of global economic growth toward the region and low penetration rate of insurance policies in countries such as the Philippines and Vietnam. The CEO said the insurer is close to completing the reorganization of is Asia business into one single legal entity, potentially making it easier to sell in the future. “Rebalancing is under way of the world economy, it’s rapid and substantial,” Thiam told reporters. “One of our successes as a group has been an early recognition of this.” New business profit, or NBP, in Asia jumped 20 percent to 659 million pounds from a year ago. Sales of life insurance products rose 42 percent in China , 38 percent in the Philippines and Korea and 28 percent in Vietnam, the company said. ‘Strong Results’ It was “a characteristically strong set of results from Prudential, with continued strong growth in operating profits from the major growth engines” of Asia, the U.S. and asset management, Christopher Esson, a London-based analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG with an outperform rating on the stock, wrote in a note. “With NBP remaining on a strong trajectory in Asia, forward momentum is likely to remain robust.” Operating profit from Jackson National Life, Prudential’s U.S. business, jumped 32 percent to 582 million pounds in the first half, helped by sales of Elite Access, a variable annuity product. Thiam said the company will benefit from the retirement of America’s 77 million baby boomers, adding that he remains “open minded” to the future of the U.S. division including a potential sale. In the U.K., Prudential’s fund management arm M&G increased operating profit 17 percent to a record 204 million pounds as the business reported net inflows of 4.8 billion pounds, boosted by increased sales in continental Europe. Prudential raised its interim dividend 16 percent to 9.73 pence a share. To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Jones in London at sjones35@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net

AIMCo Says Fund Would Consider Investing in BlackBerry

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/aimco-says-fund-would-consider-investing-in-blackberry.html

Alberta Investment Management Corp., which manages pension funds for the western Canadian province, would consider an investment in BlackBerry Ltd. (BB) if the smartphone maker went private. “It’s early days,” AIMCo Chief Executive Officer Leo De Bever said today in a telephone interview. “No one has approached us with anything that is baked.” If BlackBerry went private and AIMCo was approached by a lead investor, the Edmonton-based firm would consider it, he said. The fund manager had assets of C$68.6 billion ($66.6 billion) at the end of last year. Mark Wiseman , CEO of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the second-largest pension fund manager in the country, said in an interview Aug. 9 he would weigh an investment in BlackBerry should the company decide to go private. To contact the reporter on this story: Katia Dmitrieva in Toronto at edmitrieva1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net

Baum's View on Money

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/baum-s-view-on-money.html

Welcome to the new week. Here are some of the articles and opinion pieces I found interesting since you last heard from me. Where's the front-page profile of Janet Yellen ? New York Times' readers were greeted Sunday with a front-page, above-the-fold profile of Larry Summers, whom President Obama is considering for the post of Federal Reserve chairman. The article traced Summers's career -- and millions earned -- since he was booted from the presidency of Harvard University in 2006. Considering both the placement and timing (Obama has said he will announce his nominee this fall) of the article, I can't help but wonder if there wasn't some kind "forward guidance" involved from a not-so-invisible hand. Before you could say "price/rent ratio" The prices of single-family homes went from cheap to expensive, according to this ratio, in a span of 2 1/2 years. Investors have been snapping up homes for cash and are renting them out. Yes, houses are still affordable, but with nationwide prices up 12 percent in the past year, "the recent brief era of cheap prices is over," according to the Wall Street Journal. It's hard to believe that before 1997, housing prices rose in line with the consumer price index. No double-digit ups and downs from one year to the next. Amazing what government incentives, in the form of favored tax treatment, can do. Paul Krugman buries Milton Friedman For days, Paul Krugman has been burying Milton Friedman on his blog. Keynes is back, Hayek is back, but a few decades from now Friedman will be regarded as "little more than an extended footnote," Krugman wrote on Aug. 8. In today's column, Krugman resuscitates Friedman, who believed government action was necessary to prevent depressions, but only enough to lance his real target: the Republican extremists who would do away with the central bank. Tyler Cowen revives him. And provides lots of interesting links to Friedman in his own words on subjects such as the key lender-of-last-resort role for a central bank to prevent a banking panic. Sometimes Krugman's filter can be, shall we say, a bit cloudy? Cracked glass and broken chairs Regular readers are familiar with Frederic Bastiat's parable of the broken window. Now comes Don Boudreaux, professor of economics at George Mason University and a senior fellow at the university's Mercatus Center, with a broken chair. In this case, the chair is an expedient source of firewood compared with schlepping out to the woodpile on a snowy night. It's a short-sighted decision that implies future sacrifice. I bet you can figure out where this is going. (Caroline Baum is a Bloomberg View columnist. Follow her on Twitter.)

Derivatives Margin Losses Could Help Save CCPs, Regulators Say

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/derivatives-margin-losses-could-help-save-ccps-regulators-say.html

Derivatives traders should be prepared to lose the initial margin they post at clearinghouses if it’s needed to prevent a financial crisis, global markets regulators said. The “margin is likely to constitute a very large pool of assets which would, if it can be used, provide a high degree of loss-absorbency” to help stabilize a central counterparty, or CCP, the International Organization of Securities Commissions and the Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems said in a joint report published today. The Group of 20 nations has ordered a global overhaul of rules governing derivatives contracts, mandating the use of CCPs by traders. Regulators have sought tougher rules for over-the-counter derivatives since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the rescue of American International Group Inc., two of the largest traders of credit-default swaps. “Resolution of firms from other financial sectors has lagged behind the progress made in relation to banks,” Mark Carney , governor of the Bank of England and chairman of the Financial Stability Board, said in an e-mailed statement. The guidelines will “ensure that greater reliance on CCPs does not result in a new category of too-big-to-fail institution.” Clearinghouses such as London’s LCH.Clearnet Ltd. and Eurex Clearing AG operate as central counterparties for every buy and sell order executed by their members, who are required to post collateral, reducing the risk that a trader defaults on a deal. Madrid-based Iosco brings together national market regulators from more than 100 countries to coordinate rules and share information. The CPSS, which is part of the Basel, Switzerland-based Bank of International Settlements, is made up of central bankers from developed and emerging economies and sets standards for payment, clearing and settlement systems. The group today also proposed guidelines on financial regulators’ access to data at trade repositories , as well as a progress report on how national supervisors are implementing rules to safeguard clearinghouses against a financial crisis. To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Moshinsky in London at bmoshinsky@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lindsay Fortado at lfortado@bloomberg.net

China Urbanization to Hit Roadblocks Amid Local Opposition

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/china-urbanization-to-hit-roadblocks-amid-local-opposition-1-.html

China ’s plan to encourage hundreds of millions of rural residents to settle in cities to boost growth faces opposition from local governments, according to Li Tie, an official with the nation’s top economic planning agency. Officials, researchers and company executives highlighted challenges at an urbanization forum in Beijing on Aug. 10. They cited the strain on local-government finances, the dangers of overbuilding and the cost of scrapping the hukou, or residence permit, system that denies migrants the welfare, health and education benefits of city dwellers. Premier Li Keqiang has championed urbanization as a “huge engine” for growth as he seeks to shift the world’s second-largest economy toward a model that relies on consumption rather than investment and exports. As policy makers draft plans for the new leadership’s reform agenda ahead of a key Communist Party meeting later this year, Li is grappling with vested interests that could stymie some of his plans. “Nobody wants such a big group of migrants to be their neighbors and share their so-called civilized space. This is a conflict of interest,” Li, director-general of the China Center for Urban Development under the National Development and Reform Commission, said at the forum. “We are facing rejection from the hearts of so many mayors and city elites who have enough ability to influence decision making.” Stocks Climb The Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.3 percent as of 12:06 p.m. local time today amid optimism that government measures will arrest an economic slowdown. The South China Morning Post reported today that Agricultural Bank of China signed an agreement with the Shanghai city government for a 250 billion yuan ($41 billion) loan that will help to fund developments including a free-trade zone and a Disneyland. Nomura Holdings Inc. cited the reported deal as a sign of the government’s willingness to support growth. Li Keqiang is banking on more than 260 million migrant workers and their families becoming permanent urban residents to boost consumption and sustain growth at his bottom line of 7 percent a year, as the government restructures an economy that’s expanded at an average 10.2 percent a year over the last two decades. Gross domestic product may rise 7.5 percent this year, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 55 economists last month, the least in 23 years. The World Bank estimates annual GDP growth will slow to an average 7 percent in the five years through 2020 and 5.9 percent through 2025. Boosting Consumption Speaking at his first news conference after becoming premier in March, Li said, “Urbanization will usher in a huge amount of consumption and investment demand, increase job opportunities, create wealth for farmers, and bring benefits to the people.” HSBC Holdings Plc estimated in an October report that the movement of 10 million rural residents to become urban residents every year for the next 20-30 years would create more than 100 billion yuan ($16.3 billion) a year in additional consumer spending. Policy makers, planners and government advisers are drafting proposals on how to implement Li’s urbanization vision that will be presented to the Communist Party’s top leaders at a meeting later this year. The event, known as the third plenum, may decide on economic and social reforms after a once-a-decade leadership transition that was completed in March. “Urbanization isn’t only about changing people’s residency, it’s about their overall development and an improvement in the quality of their lives,” Li Lianzhong, head of the economy bureau at the Policy Research Center of the Communist Party Central Committee, said at the Aug. 10 forum. Ending the hukou system and replacing it with identity cards will signal the “victory of reforms,” he said. Welfare Costs One of the thorniest issues facing policy makers is who pays for urbanization - the cost of the physical infrastructure and the recurring annual spending on providing millions of new urbanites with health care, welfare and education services. In a report last month, HSBC estimated the total fiscal cost for local and central governments on public housing and children’s education would be 6.24 trillion yuan for 260 million migrant workers in cities, equivalent to 53 percent of China’s national fiscal revenue in 2012. Local authorities are barred from directly selling bonds or borrowing from banks and can’t run budget deficits. To raise money to fund spending they set up thousands of financing vehicles, racking up debts that Fitch Ratings Ltd. said in April increase risks to the country’s financial stability. Too Expensive Mao Daqing, executive vice president of China Vanke Co. (000002) , the biggest developer by market value traded on the country’s stock exchanges, told the forum some local governments may be hard pressed to pay for urbanization. Taking Beijing as an example, Mao said that assuming 700,000 people moved into the city each year, it could cost the local government at least an extra 77 billion yuan a year in urbanization-related spending, equivalent to doubling its annual land sales or a 25 percent increase in tax revenue. “This is totally beyond the affordability of a local government, Beijing can’t afford it,” Mao said. He also questioned whether China needs more cities when most migration has been to the 70 biggest conurbations. “These big cities interest people because they have more job opportunities, education opportunities and medical resources,” Mao said. “Those other 610 cities can’t attract people even though they already exist,” he said, adding “it indicates some of those 610 cities have problems or can’t survive.” Urban Shift More people lived in China’s towns and cities than in rural areas for the first time in the country’s history in 2011, government data show, with 691 million living in urban areas compared with 657 million in the countryside. The urbanization rate will rise to about two-thirds by 2030, meaning about 13 million more people will move to cities every year, the World Bank estimates. While the urbanization ratio includes small towns, they often have worse living conditions, infrastructure and public services, Zhao Hui, director of the Village and Town Construction Department at the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development , said at the forum. The country needs to do a better job of establishing smaller conurbations as these tend to cost less to develop, are more energy efficient and environment-friendly, and hence more supportive of sustainable development, Zhao said. Separately, a deputy director of the China Center for Urban Development, Qiao Runling, warned that reckless expansion of cities in China has left many of them empty, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Aug. 10. “China now has an oversupply of cities, given the number of new urban districts that we have,” the report quoted Qiao as saying at a forum held in southern Jiangxi province last week. The issue is especially serious in small and medium-sized cities in central and western regions, Qiao said. To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Hu Shen in Beijing at hshen33@bloomberg.net ; Daryl Loo in Beijing at dloo7@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Panckhurst at ppanckhurst@bloomberg.net

Deutsche Bank Said to Face Bafin Call Over Libor Rigging

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-12/bafin-said-to-finalize-first-deutsche-bank-libor-report.html

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) may be told as soon as this month by the German financial regulator to improve its controls to prevent a repeat of attempts to manipulate benchmark interest rates, according to a person familiar with the matter. Bafin is finalizing its first report into the rigging of Libor and similar benchmarks and will submit it to the Frankfurt-based lender as soon as this month, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the review isn’t public. Bafin will present its findings to Deutsche Bank management, telling them to adhere to standards set by the regulator, the person said. The report is part of a broader investigation by Bafin into allegations that traders at Deutsche Bank tried to manipulate rates. Under its rules, Bafin cannot publish the findings or disclose actions it takes on individual banks without the lender’s consent. The regulator will oversee how the measures are implemented. The move may bring the bank closer to facing fines from U.S., U.K. and EU regulators, who are waiting on the German watchdog to finish their reviews. Barclays Plc (BARC) , UBS AG (UBSN) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc have paid a total of about $2.5 billion in fines for colluding to rig benchmark interest rates for profit or to mask their true cost of borrowing. Trader Oversight Bafin is in the final stages of reviewing the report, compiled by the Bundesbank, Germany ’s central bank, on whether Deutsche Bank’s systems and controls failed to prevent traders from trying to manipulate rates to benefit their own trades, the person said. The Bundesbank investigators looked at who at the bank had oversight of the traders reporting rates, whether rate reporting procedures required two people to look at submissions, and how transparent the processes were, according to the person. Deutsche Bank shares gained 0.4 percent closing at 34.30 euros in Frankfurt. Bafin’s press office declined to comment. Christian Streckert, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, declined to comment on the report. He said the bank is cooperating with regulatory investigations and conducting its own review into the allegations. “As per the current status of investigations, we can say that no current or former member of the management board had any inappropriate involvement in the interbank offered rates matters under review,” Streckert said. The bank “has also found that certain employees, acting on their own initiative, engaged in conduct that falls short of the bank’s standards, and action has been taken accordingly.” Bafin has also commissioned an auditor to look into possible wrongdoing by Deutsche Bank staff and management. That inquiry, testing findings of the lender’s own internal investigation, is ongoing and will yield a separate report, the person said. To contact the reporter on this story: Karin Matussek in Berlin at kmatussek@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lindsay Fortado at lfortado@bloomberg.net

Burkina Faso's President Replaces Prime Minister After Mutiny by Soldiers

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/burkina-faso-s-president-replaces-prime-minister-after-mutiny-by-soldiers.html

Burkina Faso ’s leader, Blaise Compaore, appointed a new prime minister as members of the presidential guard who began a mutiny on April 15 apologized for their actions and called for an end to the insurrection. Luc Adolphe Tiao, the West African country’s ambassador to France , will replace Tertius Zongo as premier, Compaore said in a statement read on national television late yesterday. Tiao, a 56-year-old journalist, is a former director of Sidwaya , the state-owned newspaper, and was also previously president of the Supreme Council for Communication, the media regulator. Compaore has dismissed the chiefs of staff of the army, air force and police and dissolved his government in the past week as he seeks to quell rioting by soldiers protesting over their living conditions. The mutiny has spread to at least four towns in the country. Gunfire was heard through the night in Gorom Gorom, about 340 kilometers (211 miles) from the capital, said resident Agali Almaouna. The shooting ended around 4 a.m. local time, he said. “We regret this mutiny, plunder and disorder,” Moussa Ag Abdoulaye, a spokesman for the protesting soldiers, said in a statement read on Radio Television du Burkina , the state-owned broadcaster, in the capital, Ouagadougou. “We reaffirm our respect and our support for the president of Burkina Faso and call others in the country to stop shooting.” Demonstration Deaths Compaore, 60, has ruled sub-Saharan Africa ’s biggest cotton producer since seizing power in a 1987 coup. The country has been in turmoil since February, when five people were killed during demonstrations against police following the death of a student in their custody. Gold miners including Montreal-based Semafo Inc. (SMF) and London-based Avocet Mining Plc (AVM) have operations in Burkina Faso. Semafo said yesterday the unrest hasn’t disrupted operations at its Mana Mine, while Avocet said the same on April 15. Shopkeepers who protested the soldiers’ looting in a demonstration April 16 reopened their stores today, said Seydou Zangre, president of a network of informal merchants. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net

Bullish Bets on Indian Banks Climb After HDFC Bank Profit Beats Estimates

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/bullish-bets-on-indian-banks-climb-after-hdfc-bank-profit-beats-estimates.html

Futures traders boosted bullish bets on Indian lenders after HDFC Bank Ltd. (HDFCB) , the third-largest, reported better-than-expected earnings yesterday. Open interest, or the number of contracts held by traders, on the National Stock Exchange’s CNX Bank Index, rose 2 percent to 37,299, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The 12-member index gained 0.4 percent to 11,585.8 at 12:15 p.m. in Mumbai. “HDFC Bank beat expectations and the street is expecting others to report stable margin growth,” said Rizwan Khan, senior derivatives strategist at Aditya Birla Money Ltd. Open interest in State Bank of India Ltd., the largest, climbed 4.4 percent to 23,565, and by 5.3 percent to 40,757 in ICICI Bank Ltd., the second-biggest, the data show. Axis Bank Ltd. (AXSB) , the fourth-largest lender that’s due to report earnings on April 22, saw a 4 percent rise in open interest to 8,746. HDFC Bank gained 1.4 percent to 2,343.1 rupees as of 11:41 p.m. after reporting a fourth-quarter profit of 11.1 billion rupees ($249 million), exceeding the 10.9 billion rupee average estimate of 26 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The earnings were announced after the market closed yesterday. To contact the reporter on this story: Santanu Chakraborty in Mumbai at schakrabor11@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reinie Booysen at rbooysen@bloomberg.net ; Darren Boey at dboey@bloomberg.net

U.S. Treasury Said to Wait for GM Results Before Decision on Selling Stake

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/u-s-treasury-said-to-wait-for-gm-results-before-decision-on-selling-stake.html

The U.S. Treasury Department will wait for General Motors Co. (GM) ’s first-quarter earnings before deciding whether to sell more of its investment in the nation’s largest automaker, a person familiar with the matter said. The Treasury can sell some of its remaining 500 million GM shares, which equals 33 percent ownership, starting May 22. Officials are waiting for GM’s earnings and to see what happens to the stock when bondholders in GM’s bankrupt predecessor company receive shares as partial compensation for their losses, said the person, who didn’t want to be identified because the plans aren’t public. GM has dropped 20 percent this year in New York trading and 10 percent from its initial public offering price. While the Treasury may be willing to take a loss on the shares, which closed today at $29.59, the Obama administration is looking to sell at least in the range of the $33 IPO price, the person said. The government would need to sell the shares at about $53 apiece to break even on the investment. “They will tell us when they’re getting out; I will not tell them when they’re getting out,” Dan Akerson, GM’s chief executive officer, told reporters today at an industry forum in New York. “There are many variables in their consideration and they don’t share that with us. They’ll notify us when they want to position for the sale.” Mark Paustenbach , a Treasury spokesman, declined to comment. GM hasn’t said when it will report first-quarter earnings. GM fell 38 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $29.59 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares slid as much as 2.7 percent earlier to the lowest price since the IPO in November. S-1 Filing The Treasury may file to sell shares with a traditional S-1 filing after a lockup period expires on May 22. The Securities and Exchange Commission would then review the offering like an IPO, which would delay the actual sale until June, the person said. If the department waits until July 1, the government would be able to sell the shares with a less-thorough review and could get the offering started more quickly. In that case, the Treasury likely would wait until Detroit-based GM reports second-quarter earnings before selling more stock, delaying the sale until August, the person said. The Treasury may make a third offering of shares in November or December and doesn’t need to sell all of the shares this year, the person said. Geithner’s Decision The department’s auto task-force members haven’t met with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner , who would decide on any GM share sale, to discuss the timing of a possible secondary offering, the person said. The Treasury, which owned 61 percent of GM after its 2009 bailout of the automaker, sold shares equal to a 28 percent stake during the IPO. In a January interview, Ron Bloom , who was head of the Obama administration’s auto-industry task force at the time of the IPO, said the government wanted to sell its GM shares “as soon as practical.” To contact the reporters on this story: David Welch in Southfield, Michigan , at dwelch12@bloomberg.net ; Rebecca Christie in Washington at rchristie4@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Orland at korland@bloomberg.net ; Chris Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net

Czechs Wedded to Nuclear Boost Utility CEZ as Germany’s Atomic Age Wanes

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/czechs-backing-more-reactors-boost-cez-as-germany-shuts-plants.html

Some couples dream of a sunset wedding on a beach. Jana Sistikova and Antonin Pazdera exchanged their vows at a nuclear power station’s visitor center near the Czech Republic’s border with Germany. As the wedding party filed past the four giant concrete cooling towers of the Temelin atomic plant on a cold April day, the newlyweds applauded CEZ AS (CEZ) ’s plans to start building two more reactors at the site. Like most Czechs, the couple agree with the government’s nuclear expansion program, even as Japan battles the worst atomic crisis since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. “We support nuclear plants,” said Sistikova, 25, an elementary school teacher who lives in the nearby village of Chrastany. “This way of generating electricity is safe and has a future.” An opinion poll taken after Fukushima found that 55 percent of Czechs believe the country should build more reactors. In Germany, by contrast, anti-nuclear sentiment stoked by Japan’s disaster has led Chancellor Angela Merkel to halt the oldest plants and press to speed up a total exit from nuclear energy. Germany’s nuclear retreat pushed European power prices to a 19-month high this month and has boosted CEZ shares, up 8.7 percent since the accident, over utilities like E.ON AG (EOAN) and RWE AG (RWE) , both down more than 5 percent. The volume of Czech power exports to Germany has jumped as much as fivefold. CEZ Benefits “The transmission capacities on the Czech-German border are very high, hypothetically allowing the Czech Republic to export over 20 terawatt-hours of electricity,” or about 25 percent of its total output, said Jan Tomanik , an analyst at Wood & Co. brokerage in Prague who advises clients to buy CEZ shares. “It allows CEZ to fully benefit from the upward move in the German power prices.” CEZ shares gained as much as 1.1 percent and were up 0.2 percent to 880 koruna at 12:33 p.m. in Prague. The Czech Republic currently exports one quarter of its electricity, the biggest percentage in the European Union, which also makes it the EU’s third-biggest exporter in absolute terms, according to the International Energy Agency. The government “would have to be a bunch of fools” to put a lid on the Temelin project, Prime Minister Petr Necas said in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. Lessen Dependence The landlocked country of 10 million with very little seismic activity was a member of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact during the Cold War and sees nuclear as a way to lessen dependence on Russian natural gas imports. With limited capacity for generating electricity from renewable resources such as wind, water and solar energy, atomic generation is also a route to cutting emissions. Sixty-nine percent of Czechs think the nation’s six reactors are safe compared with 14.5 percent who think they aren’t, according to a survey by Sanep polling agency conducted March 19, more than a week after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that triggered a partial meltdown at the Fukushima Dai- Ichi plant. Fifty-five percent believe the country should increase atomic capacity, the poll found. The Czech nuclear plants, built according to a Russian design, are among Europe ’s youngest. Dukovany was switched on in 1985. The construction of Temelin was temporarily halted after the 1989 collapse of the country’s communist regime and the two Russian-built reactors were subsequently equipped with Westinghouse Electric Corp.’s operating and safety systems. The plant was connected to the grid in 2000. ‘We’re Lucky’ “We’re lucky that nuclear energy enjoys huge support in the Czech Republic,” said Martin Roman, chief executive officer of CEZ, central Europe’s biggest utility. “It’s the most ecological source of energy, it has absolutely no CO2 emissions,” he said in an April 11 radio interview. The flow of electricity to Germany is higher than the level before Merkel ordered the shutdown, and was almost five times that level from March 15 to March 20, according to data from Czech grid operators CEPS. Over one-third of state-controlled CEZ’s electricity is generated by nuclear reactors, and the percentage may increase if CEZ adds two more reactors to Temelin as planned. France ’s Areva SA (CEI) , Westinghouse and a Russian-Czech group led by ZAO Atomstroyexport are competing for the project, estimated by analysts to be worth as much as $12 billion. EU Safety Regulations While the government has pledged it will stick to its 2013 deadline for choosing the winner of the tender, tightening of nuclear safety regulations in the EU could slow things down and add to the cost, Wood & Co.’s Tomanik said. “The risk of stricter safety requirements being implemented for new reactors could negatively affect the capex and timeframe of the construction of the two new blocks at Temelin,” he said. “There is a risk Germany will try to push ahead with measures against nuclear energy on an EU-wide basis.” The Czechs also face opposition from neighboring Austria , which feels threatened by the proximity of both Temelin and Dukovany nuclear plants to its northern border. Austrian activists and politicians have expressed worries about safety at the two plants. Back in Temelin, no such fears plagued the newlyweds. The couple, who are due to have a baby girl in August, took their vows in the mansion that serves as the plant’s information center, where visitors can watch a movie on how nuclear power works and look at models of reactors. CEZ has held two weddings in Temelin so far this year and has bookings for six more. “We were intrigued as soon as we saw the pictures,” Sistikova said after the ceremony. “Then we came to visit Temelin and decided it was perfect.” To contact the reporter on this story: Ladka Bauerova in Prague at lbauerova@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net

Egyptian Stocks: Alexandria Cement, CIB Egypt, Orascom Telecom

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/egyptian-stocks-alexandria-cement-cib-egypt-orascom-telecom.html

Egypt ’s benchmark EGX 30 Index (CASE) rose for the first time in four days, gaining 2.1 percent to 5,061.35 at 11:28 a.m. in Cairo. The following stocks rose or fell in Egypt. Symbols are in parentheses. Alexandria Portland Cement Co. (ALEX EY) advanced for the first time in three days, gaining 1.1 percent to 17.15 Egyptian pounds. Shareholders of the company, a unit of Titan Cement Egypt, approved a dividend of 1.73 pounds per share. The company paid shareholders 1.33 pounds per share last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Commercial International Bank Egypt SAE (COMI) rose 2.2 percent, the most in a week, to 28.63 pounds. Egypt’s central bank urged lenders to carry out stress tests to assess the impact of the political crisis on their credit portfolios. National Development Bank (DEVE EY) gained as much as 2.7 percent before trading 0.3 percent higher at 4.08 pounds. The Cairo-based unit of Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank said its chairman Mohamed Alwe resigned. The lender appointed Chief Executive Officer Niveen Lotfi as acting chairman. Orascom Telecom Holding SAE (ORTE) fell 1 percent to 4.16 pounds, heading for its lowest close since March 24. North Africa’s biggest mobile-network operator posted a fourth-quarter loss of $178.8 million. CI Capital and Beltone Financial had estimated profit of $78 million and $56 million, respectively. To contact the reporter on this story: {Ahmed A Namatalla} in Cairo at anamatalla@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Maedler at cmaedler@bloomberg.net

Albaraka Turk Seeks Partnerships in Albania, Bosnia, Star Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/albaraka-turk-seeks-partnerships-in-albania-bosnia-star-says.html

Albaraka Turk Katilim Bankasi AS, an Islamic bank based in Turkey , is in talks with two banks to set up strategic partnerships in Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Star newspaper reported, citing Albaraka Turk Chairman Fahrettin Yahsi. Click here for web link To contact the editor responsible for this story: Aydan Eksin at aeksin@bloomberg.net

Dreyfus Cash Management Funds Daily Values as of Apr 18, 2011.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/dreyfus-cash-management-funds-daily-values-as-of-apr-18-2011-.html

The following are the closing values for the Dreyfus Cash Management Funds as of Apr 18, 2011. Name of the Fund Daily Weekly Maturity Assets Cusip # Yield% Yield% <days> <000’s> ________________________________________________________________ ____ _____________________INSTITUTIONAL SHARES___________________________ 0719 Dreyfus Cash Management Plus, Inc., Institutional Shares 261934-10-3 0.09 0.08 41 4,463,265 (MILLRATE: .000002338) 0288 Dreyfus Cash Management, Institutional Shares 26188J-20-6 0.11 0.11 46 26,390,667 (MILLRATE: .000003065) 0289 Dreyfus Government Cash Management, Institutional Shares 262006-20-8 0.00 0.00 57 17,664,455 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0227 Dreyfus Government Prime Cash Management, Institutional Shares 262006-88-5 0.00 0.00 40 2,473,862 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0521 Dreyfus Treasury & Agency Cash Management, Institutional Shares 261908-10-7 0.01 0.01 55 10,201,454 (MILLRATE: .000000274) 0761 Dreyfus Treasury Prime Cash Management, Institutional Shares 261941-10-8 0.00 0.00 49 13,973,863 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0132 Dreyfus Municipal Cash Management Plus, Institutional Shares 261950-10-9 0.11 0.10 26 314,145 (MILLRATE: .000003023) 0264 Dreyfus Tax Exempt Cash Management Funds 26202K-20-5 0.07 0.07 27 2,733,513 (MILLRATE: .000002051) 0287 Dreyfus New York Municipal Cash Management, Institutional Shares 261954-10-1 0.10 0.10 28 440,059 (MILLRATE: .000002839) 0099 Dreyfus Institutional Cash Advantage Fund, Institutional Advantage Shares 26200V-10-4 0.15 0.14 48 38,898,284 (MILLRATE: .000004037) 0142 Dreyfus Institutional Cash Advantage Plus Fund, Institutional Advantage Sh. 26200V-50-0 0.04 0.05 25 720,939 (MILLRATE: .000001213) 6139 Dreyfus Liquid Assets, Inc., Class 2 Shares 262015-20-9 0.10 0.11 49 3,385,891 (MILLRATE: .000002730) 6188 Dreyfus California AMT-Free Municipal Cash Management, Institutional Shares 26202K-70-0 0.13 0.11 28 204,552 (MILLRATE: .000003623) ________________________INVESTOR SHARES_____________________________ 0671 Dreyfus Cash Management Plus, Inc., Investor Shares 261934-20-2 0.00 0.00 41 753,248 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0670 Dreyfus Cash Management, Investor Shares 26188J-30-5 0.00 0.00 46 2,987,787 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0672 Dreyfus Government Cash Management, Investor Shares 262006-30-7 0.00 0.00 57 1,786,798 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0610 Dreyfus Government Prime Cash Management, Investor Shares 262006-70-3 0.00 0.00 40 576,814 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0673 Dreyfus Treasury & Agency Cash Management, Investor Shares 261908-20-6 0.01 0.01 55 1,752,356 (MILLRATE: .000000274) 0674 Dreyfus Treasury Prime Cash Management, Investor Shares 261941-20-7 0.00 0.00 49 3,727,351 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0676 Dreyfus Municipal Cash Management Plus, Investor Shares 261950-20-8 0.00 0.00 26 230,250 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0675 Dreyfus Tax Exempt Cash Management Funds 26202K-30-4 0.00 0.00 27 315,183 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0677 Dreyfus New York Municipal Cash Management, Investor Shares 261954-20-0 0.00 0.00 28 274,894 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0100 Dreyfus Institutional Cash Advantage Fund, Investor Advantage Shares 26200V-30-2 0.00 0.00 48 20,381 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0143 Dreyfus Institutional Cash Advantage Plus Fund, Investor Advantage Shares 26200V-70-8 0.00 0.00 25 30 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 6189 Dreyfus California AMT-Free Municipal Cash Management, Investor Shares 26202K-80-9 0.00 0.00 28 150,520 (MILLRATE: .000000001) _____________________ADMINISTRATIVE SHARES__________________________ 0579 Dreyfus Cash Management Plus, Inc., Administrative Shares 261934-30-1 0.00 0.00 41 614,372 (MILLRATE: .000000109) 0566 Dreyfus Cash Management, Administrative Shares 26188J-40-4 0.01 0.01 46 734,712 (MILLRATE: .000000363) 0567 Dreyfus Government Cash Management, Administrative Shares 262006-40-6 0.00 0.00 57 1,151,568 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0557 Dreyfus Government Prime Cash Management, Administrative Shares 262006-80-2 0.00 0.00 40 531,850 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0568 Dreyfus Treasury & Agency Cash Management, Administrative Shares 261908-30-5 0.01 0.01 55 430,133 (MILLRATE: .000000274) 0582 Dreyfus Treasury Prime Cash Management, Administrative Shares 261941-30-6 0.00 0.00 49 979,611 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0584 Dreyfus Municipal Cash Management Plus, Administrative Shares 261950-30-7 0.01 0.01 26 395,902 (MILLRATE: .000000367) 0583 Dreyfus Tax Exempt Cash Management Funds 26202K-40-3 0.00 0.00 27 64,089 (MILLRATE: .000000037) 0585 Dreyfus New York Municipal Cash Management, Administrative Shares 261954-30-9 0.00 0.00 28 45,612 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0093 Dreyfus Institutional Cash Advantage Fund, Administrative Advantage Shares 26200V-20-3 0.08 0.07 48 747,063 (MILLRATE: .000002117) 0139 Dreyfus Institutional Cash Advantage Plus Fund, Administrative Advantage Sh 26200V-60-9 0.00 0.00 25 55 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 6187 Dreyfus California AMT-Free Municipal Cash Management, Administrative Sh 26202K-88-2 0.04 0.03 28 7,524 (MILLRATE: .000001053) _______________________SERVICE SHARES___________________________ 6181 Dreyfus Cash Management Plus, Inc., Service Shares 261934-50-9 0.00 0.00 41 3,041 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 6183 Dreyfus Treasury & Agency Cash Management, Service Shares 261908-50-3 0.01 0.01 55 4,617 (MILLRATE: .000000274) _______________________SELECT SHARES___________________________ 6182 Dreyfus Cash Management Plus, Inc., Select Shares 261934-60-8 0.00 0.00 41 7,947 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 6184 Dreyfus Treasury & Agency Cash Management, Select Shares 261908-60-2 0.01 0.01 55 16,875 (MILLRATE: .000000274) _______________________PARTICIPANT SHARES___________________________ 0599 Dreyfus Cash Management Plus, Inc., Participant Shares 261934-40-0 0.00 0.00 41 235,357 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0596 Dreyfus Cash Management, Participant Shares 26188J-50-3 0.00 0.00 46 867,024 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0597 Dreyfus Government Cash Management, Participant Shares 262006-50-5 0.00 0.00 57 346,564 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0587 Dreyfus Government Prime Cash Management, Participant Shares 262006-60-4 0.00 0.00 40 421,524 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0598 Dreyfus Treasury & Agency Cash Management, Participant Shares 261908-40-4 0.01 0.01 55 429,898 (MILLRATE: .000000274) 0592 Dreyfus Treasury Prime Cash Management, Participant Shares 261941-40-5 0.00 0.00 49 2,186,210 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0594 Dreyfus Municipal Cash Management Plus, Participant Shares 261950-40-6 0.00 0.00 26 22,679 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0593 Dreyfus Tax Exempt Cash Management Funds 26202K-50-2 0.00 0.00 27 10,704 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0595 Dreyfus New York Municipal Cash Management, Participant Shares 261954-40-8 0.00 0.00 28 21,494 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0094 Dreyfus Institutional Cash Advantage Fund, Participant Advantage Shares 26200V-40-1 0.00 0.00 48 260,131 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 0140 Dreyfus Institutional Cash Advantage Plus Fund, Participant Advantage Sh. 26200V-80-7 0.00 0.00 25 30 (MILLRATE: .000000001) 6190 Dreyfus California AMT-Free Municipal Cash Management, Participant Shares 26202K-60-1 0.00 0.00 28 54,331 (MILLRATE: .000000001) FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON DREYFUS CASH MANAGEMENT FUNDS AND THE DREYFUS ELECTRONIC TRADING SYSTEM TYPE DREY AND HIT GO BUTTON. TO SPEAK TO A DREYFUS INSTITUTIONAL CLIENT ADMINISTRATOR, PLEASE CALL (800)346-3621 OR (718)895-1650. Anibal Arrascue in the Bloomberg Princeton office. (609)279-5084 #<704025.996834.2.1.67.17757.25># -0- Apr/19/2011 09:06 GMT

Americans Shun Most Affordable Homes in Generation as Owning Loses Appeal

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/americans-shun-most-affordable-homes-in-generation-as-owning-loses-appeal.html

Victoria Pauli signed a one-year lease last week to stay in her rental home in Fair Oaks, California. She had considered buying in the area, where property prices have slumped 57 percent since a 2005 peak. In the end, she decided it wasn’t worth it. “I know people who have watched their home values get cut in half, and I know people who are losing their homes,” said Pauli, 31, who works as a property manager for a real estate company. “It’s part of the American dream to want to own your own home, and I used to feel that way, but now I tell myself: Be careful what you wish for.” The most affordable real estate in a generation is failing to lure buyers as Americans like Pauli sour on the idea of home ownership. At the end of 2010, the fourth year of the housing collapse, the share of people who said a home was a safe investment dropped to 64 percent from 70 percent in the first quarter. The December figure was the lowest in a survey that goes back to 2003, when it was 83 percent. “The magnitude of the housing crash caused permanent changes in the way some people view home ownership,” said Michael Lea, a finance professor at San Diego State University. “Even as the economy improves, there are some who will never buy a home because their confidence in real estate is gone.” Worse Than Depression Historically, homes have been a safer investment than equities. During 2008, the worst year of the housing crisis, the median U.S. home price declined 15 percent, compared with a more than 38 percent plunge in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Americans stay in their homes for a median of eight years, according to the National Association of Realtors in Chicago. Someone who bought a home in 2002 and sold in 2010 saw a 4.8 percent increase in value, based on the annualized median price measured by the group. The average annual gain in the past 20 years was 4.2 percent. Falling prices have made real estate the best buy in at least four decades. Housing affordability reached a record in December, according to National Association of Realtors data that go back to 1970. The group bases its gauge on property prices, mortgage rates and the median U.S. income. The median U.S. home price tumbled 32 percent from a 2006 peak to a nine-year low in February, data from the Realtors show. The retreat surpassed the 27 percent drop seen in the first five years of the Great Depression, according to Stan Humphries , chief economist of Zillow Inc., a Seattle-based real estate information company. Not Risk-Free “If we’ve learned anything from this mess, it’s that housing is not a risk-free investment,” said Michelle Meyer , a senior economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Research in New York. “Everyone knows someone underwater in their mortgage or struggling to sell a home.” About 11 million U.S. homes were worth less than their mortgages at the end of 2010, according to CoreLogic Inc., a Santa Ana , California-based real estate information company. An additional 2.4 million borrowers had less than five percent equity, meaning they’ll be underwater with even slight price declines, according to the March 8 report. The two categories add up to 28 percent of residences with mortgages. Future Plans The share of Americans who said they plan to purchase a home in the next six months tumbled 23 percent in March, according to the Conference Board research firm in New York. The National Association of Realtors probably will say tomorrow that existing-home sales were at a 5 million annual rate in March, up 2.5 percent after a 9.6 percent plunge in February, according to the median estimate of 74 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Work began on 549,000 houses at an annual pace in March, up 7.2 percent from the prior month, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The gain failed to make up for ground lost in February, when starts fell to the lowest level in almost two years. The drop in homebuyer confidence may be temporary. Home sales probably will rise 4.1 percent to 5.1 million in 2011, with the biggest increases in the second half of the year, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in an April 14 report. In 2012, sales may climb 5.9 percent to 5.4 million, the highest pace since 2007, the Washington-based trade group estimated. A rebound in home sales depends on the availability of jobs, the mortgage association said. The unemployment rate probably will decline every quarter of this year and next, falling to 7.9 percent by 2012’s end, the trade group said. It was 8.8 percent last month, the lowest in two years. Improving Employment “We expect that purchase activity will pick up slowly as the improvement in the job market eventually leads to greater willingness to buy,” the mortgage bankers group said. Borrowing costs are at historic lows. The average U.S. rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage was 4.69 percent last year, the lowest in annual data going back to 1972, according to mortgage financier Freddie Mac , based in McLean, Virginia. The rate in March was 4.84 percent, the company said. By 2012’s fourth quarter, the average fixed rate may rise to 6 percent, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. “If you can jump through the hoops to get a mortgage, and there will be hoops, then this is an amazing time to purchase real estate,” said Robert Stein , a senior economist at First Trust Portfolios LP in Wheaton, Illinois , and the former head of the Treasury Department’s Office of Economic Policy. “There are going to be a lot of people kicking themselves a few years from now because they didn’t take advantage of the low prices and the low mortgage rates.” Tighter Lending Cheap financing hasn’t done enough to boost home sales in part because lenders are being more selective with applicants, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Fed policy makers have described the housing market as “depressed” in statements following their last eight meetings. “Although mortgage rates are low and house prices have reached more affordable levels, many potential homebuyers are still finding mortgages difficult to obtain and remain concerned about possible further declines in home values,” Bernanke said in Congressional testimony last month. The share of banks reporting tighter mortgage standards in the first quarter rose to 16 percent, the highest since 1991, according to the Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Survey. Federal regulators are proposing rules that may make lending even more stringent, including a requirement that banks and bond issuers keep a stake in home loans they securitize if the mortgage borrowers have imperfect credit and down payments of less than 20 percent. Borrowers who don’t meet the criteria would pay higher rates to compensate lenders for risk. Fannie Phase-Out As mortgage requirements rise, rates could follow as Congress and the Obama administration consider phasing out government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The companies hold federal charters mandating they increase the availability of mortgages through securitization. In Fannie Mae’s case, that order goes back to the Great Depression, when it was created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. “There are a lot of unsettled policy issues on the table right now that, if they’re not handled right, could further set back the housing market,” said Richard DeKaser , an economist at Parthenon Group in Boston. “Fannie and Freddie have historically lowered interest rates , and eliminating them will increase the cost of home ownership.” Lowest in Decade The U.S. home ownership rate dropped to 66.5 percent in the fourth quarter, the lowest in more than a decade, according to the Census Department. The rate probably will retreat another percentage point by 2013, according to Meyer, of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Lea, the finance professor. That would put it back to a 1997 level. “People will still aspire to own their own homes,” Lea said. “They’ll just be a lot more practical about it.” Pauli, the California renter, said she has no such aspirations, at least for now. She pays $1,500 a month for her three-bedroom, single-family home with a two-car garage, granite kitchen countertops and stainless-steel appliances. Her neighbors who bought before the housing crash typically have mortgage payments of about $2,800 a month, Pauli said. “I don’t see myself purchasing, even with all the great prices I see,” Pauli said. “Going to bed every night worrying about your home value doesn’t sound like a good time to me.” To contact the reporter on this story: Kathleen M. Howley in Boston at kmhowley@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net .

UN Security Council Not Pushing Libya Regime Change, Lavrov Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/un-security-council-not-pushing-libya-regime-change-lavrov-says.html

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called for an immediate ceasefire in Libya and said the United Nations ’ Security Council is not pushing for regime change in Libya or any other country in the region. “The Security Council has never put a change of regime in Libya or any other country as its goal,” Lavrov, on a one-day official visit to Belgrade today, told reporters, adding that those “who use the Security Council resolutions to change regimes are violating the mandate of the United Nations.” Lavrov said opposition parties in Libya, backed by some western countries, were refusing to “sit at the negotiating table” and that the international community should be supporting “dialogue, not confrontation.” Opposition parties in other countries, including Yemen, “seem to think they can reject sitting at the negotiating table because they expect assistance from abroad,” he said. “That is a very dangerous logic which can cause chain reactions.” To contact the reporter on this story: Gordana Filipovic in Belgrade at Gfilipovic@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James M. Gomez at jagomez@bloomberg.net

Reunert Says Six-Month Earnings Per Share to Rise Up to 115% on Asset Gain

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/reunert-says-six-month-earnings-per-share-to-rise-up-to-115-on-asset-gain.html

Reunert Ltd. (RLO) said earnings per share for the six months through March are expected to rise between 105 percent and 115 percent from a year earlier. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alastair Reed at areed12@bloomberg.net

CSX Profit Climbs 30% as Recovery Boosts Volumes

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/csx-quarterly-profit-climbs-30-as-recovery-boosts-volumes-1-.html

(Corrects fourth paragraph of story published April 19 to specify trade group’s volume total is for one week only and excludes intermodal freight.) CSX Corp. (CSX) , the third-biggest U.S. railroad, said quarterly profit gained 30 percent as shipping volumes rose because of the economic recovery. Net income climbed to $395 million, or $1.06 a share, from $305 million, or 78 cents, a year earlier, the Jacksonville, Florida-based company said today in a statement. While that beat the average of $1.04 of 28 analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg, the shares slid 2 percent to $74.50 in late trading. “Railroads through 2010 have been delivering results well above Street expectations,” Walter Spracklin , an RBC Capital Markets analyst in Toronto who recommends holding CSX, said in a telephone interview. “This I wouldn’t call blowing out the lights. This is modestly better than expected.” U.S. railroads moved 299,903 carloads excluding intermodal cargo in the last week of the first quarter, 1.9 percent more than a year earlier, according to the Association of American Railroads. CSX said volume increased 7 percent, and sales rose 13 percent to $2.81 billion. Automotive shipping climbed 20 percent, the biggest gain among CSX’s divisions. Coal shipments, which accounted for 31 percent of the company’s sales last year, advanced 3 percent. CEO’s View “We’re continuing to see, quarter after quarter, the markets keep improving,” Chief Executive Officer Michael Ward said in an interview at Bloomberg News’ New York headquarters on April 6. He said at the time that volumes were “running 5 to 7 percent up” from a year earlier. CSX fell $1.54 to $74.50 at 4:55 p.m. after regular New York Stock Exchange trading following the earnings release. The shares rose 69 cents earlier to push the gain for the year to 18 percent. Operating costs rose 10 percent in the quarter, paced by a 42 percent jump in fuel spending, CSX said. The operating ratio, a measure of expenses divided by sales, was 72.5 percent, down 210 basis points from a year earlier, CSX said. CSX reiterated its operating-ratio forecast, saying it will achieve a “high-60s” percentage this year. CSX has predicted it will reduce that ratio to 65 percent by 2015. Union Pacific Corp. (UNP) , the largest U.S. railroad by sales, will report earnings tomorrow at 1 p.m. New York time. Burlington Northern Santa Fe , which is owned by Warren Buffett ’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc ., is the second-biggest U.S. railroad by 2010 revenue. (CSX will hold a call for investors at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow at +1-888-327-6279.) To contact the reporter on this story: Natalie Doss in New York at ndoss@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ed Dufner at edufner@bloomberg.net

CapitaMalls, Maybank, United Malayan: Malaysia Equity Preview

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/capitamalls-maybank-united-malayan-malaysia-equity-preview.html

Shares of the following companies may have unusual moves in Malaysia trading. Stock symbols are in parentheses and prices are as of the previous close, unless stated otherwise. The FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBMKLCI) Index rose 0.4 percent to 1,527.92. CapitaMalls Malaysia Trust (CMMT) : The retail property trust reported a profit of 31.4 million ringgit ($10.4 million) in the first quarter ended March 31. The company achieved a distributable income of 26 million ringgit, it said in a statement. There are no comparable year-earlier figures as the company was established in June 2010, it said. The stock was unchanged at 1.12 ringgit. EP Manufacturing Bhd. (EPMB) : Horizon Growth Fund NV has emerged as a substantial shareholder of the Malaysian auto-parts maker after buying 8.7 million shares, or a 5.4 percent stake, an exchange filing showed. The stock was unchanged at 67.5 sen. Ken Holdings Bhd. (KEN) : The property developer said first-quarter profit surged fourfold from a year earlier to 5.08 million ringgit on higher sales, according to a stock exchange filing. The stock gained 4.4 percent to 1.20 ringgit. Malayan Banking Bhd. (MAY) : Malaysia’s biggest bank by assets secured approval from the Securities Commission to issue as much as $2 billion of multi-currency medium-term notes, which will be used for working capital, general banking and corporate purposes. The program will allow the lender to issue from time to time notes in currencies other than the ringgit, it said in a statement. Maybank, as the bank is known, was unchanged at 8.71 ringgit. Poly Glass Fibre (M) Bhd. (PGF MK): The manufacturer of fiber glass wool agreed to sell a warehouse and office building to PM Steel and Alloys Industries Sdn. for 13 million ringgit, according to a company statement. The shares were unchanged at 36.5 sen on April 14. Seremban Engineering Bhd. (SERES) : The maker of process equipment and metal structures proposed a share buyback of as much as 10 percent of its outstanding capital, according to a company statement. The stock dropped 3.2 percent to 60 sen. United Malayan Land Bhd. (UML) : The property developer will partner Singapore-based Raffles Campus Pte. to build an international school in the southern state of Johor, according to a company statement. The project is estimated to cost 35 million ringgit to build, the company said. The stock fell 0.5 percent to 1.89 ringgit. Zhulian Corp. (ZHCB MK): The multi-level marketing company’s first-quarter net income fell 14 percent from a year earlier to 21.3 million ringgit because of lower profit margins, according to a company statement. Zhulian was unchanged at 1.78 ringgit. To contact the reporters on this story: Chan Tien Hin in Kuala Lumpur at thchan@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Darren Boey at dboey@bloomberg.net

Gladiator, Doctor Who Visual-Effects Maker Gets LBO Funding

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/gladiator-doctor-who-visual-effects-maker-gets-lbo-financing.html

The Mill, an Oscar-award winning video-content provider for the movie “Gladiator” being acquired by Barclays Private Equity Ltd., raised debt financing for the buyout. Lloyds Banking Group Plc, Bank of Ireland Plc and General Electric Capital Corp. provided loans for the deal, the leveraged buyout unit of Barclays Plc (BARC) said today as it agreed to buy the Mill from Carlyle Group in a transaction that values it at 119 million pounds ($194 million). The Mill , established in 1990, won an Academy Award for its work on Ridley Scott-directed film “Gladiator” in 2001 and a British Academy Film Award, or Bafta, for the creation of images for drama “Doctor Who” in 2009. The company also produces visual effects for brands including Nike. “The proliferation of the opportunities for brands to interact with their customers via the moving image play to the Mill’s core strengths,” Steven Silvester, a director at Barclays Private Equity, said in the statement. The investments will help support the expansion of the Mill, based in London, New York and Los Angeles, into markets in Asia and South America , Barclays said. Buyout firms, which fund acquisitions by taking out debt in the name of target companies, arranged $7.7 billion of loans in Europe in the first quarter, a more than three-fold increase from last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Expansion Under Carlyle Carlyle Europe Technology Partners bought the Mill in 2007, valuing the company at about 50 million pounds, according to a person familiar with the situation. Under Carlyle, Mill’s annual sales almost doubled to 74.2 million pounds, according to Robert Easton, co-head of the private-equity firm’s European technology division. Carlyle boosted headcount to 625 from less than 300. “There is a secular trend for increased use of computer- generated images by the media, which makes it a very attractive industry to invest behind,” Easton said today in a telephone interview. “Software is a big focus for us.” Global advertising spending will rise by 4.2 percent this year to $470.8 billion, Barclays said, citing a March forecast from Zenith Optimedia Group. To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Kuo in London at pkuo2@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Faris Khan at fkhan33@bloomberg.net

Pusaka Jaya Seeks to Buy 960,000 Tons of Power-Plant Coal

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/pusaka-jaya-seeks-offers-for-960-000-tons-of-power-plant-coal.html

PT Pusaka Jaya Palu Power , an Indonesian private power utility, said it’s seeking offers for the supply of as much as 960,000 metric tons of coal in contracts that may last between two and five years. Jakarta-based Pusaka Jaya plans to buy 16,000 tons of coal a month with a heating value of 5,600 kilocalories to 5,800 kilocalories a kilogram with first delivery to start in May, the company said in a notice published in Media Indonesia. Individual or group suppliers that own mining licenses from the government can register for the tender on April 20 and April 21, the notice said. To contact the reporter on this story: Yoga Rusmana in Jakarta at yrusmana@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Clyde Russell at crussell7@bloomberg.net

Philippine Peso, Bonds Drop After S&P Cuts U.S. Rating Outlook

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/philippine-peso-bonds-drop-after-s-p-cuts-u-s-rating-outlook.html

The Philippine peso fell to a two- week low and bonds dropped as investors shunned emerging-market assets after Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. rating outlook. The currency dropped to its lowest level in two weeks after the ratings company said the world’s largest economy risks losing its AAA credit rating unless policy makers agree on a plan by 2013 to cut budget deficits and the national debt. “It’s a knee-jerk reaction that pushes investors toward safe-haven assets,” said Radhika Rao, an economist at Forecast Pte in Singapore. “The Philippines’ favorable fundamentals” should limit the drop in the peso, she said. The peso fell as much as 0.4 percent before closing 0.2 percent weaker at 43.323 per dollar as of 4 p.m. in Manila, according to Tullett Prebon Plc. It touched 43.425, its weakest level since April 5. The Philippines ’ international reserves climbed to a record $66.2 billion in March and may reach $70 billion by the end of the year, central bank Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla said on April 15. The S&P’s move should serve as a reminder to policy makers around the region to diversify their reserves, Forecast’s Rao said. “More than 50 percent of reserves of Asian economies are probably in U.S. Treasuries,” said Rao. The nation had a $2.02 billion surplus in the balance of payments in March, the most since November, the central bank reported today. The yield on the 9.125 percent bond due September 2016 rose 10 basis points, or 0.10 percentage point, to 5.20 percent, according to Tradition Financial Services. The Bureau of the Treasury didn’t sell additional bills today, Deputy Treasurer Eduardo Mendiola said. To contact the reporter for this story: Clarissa Batino in Manila at cbatino@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sandy Hendry at shendry@bloomberg.net

Treasury 30-Year Bond Yields Approach Four-Week Low as Stocks Pare Advance

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/treasuries-advance-as-stocks-erase-gain-10-year-yield-reaches-3-week-low.html

Treasuries rose, pushing the 30- year bond yield to the lowest level in almost four weeks, as stocks pared an advance, burnishing the appeal of fixed- income securities. Ten-year notes gained for a third day as Europe ’s debt crisis overshadowed a cut in the U.S. credit-rating outlook yesterday by Standard & Poor’s. Greek bond yields reached euro- era records amid concern the country will need to restructure debt. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said he’s confident U.S. political leaders will bridge differences on spending. “Peripheral concerns in Europe are still underpinning the market, providing a flight-to-quality bid,” said Ian Lyngen , a government bond strategist at CRT Capital Group LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. Ten-year yields decreased two basis points, or 0.02 percentage point, to 3.36 percent at 12:57 p.m. in New York, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices. They touched 3.34 percent, the lowest level since March 24, after earlier rising to 3.41. The price of the 3.625 percent security due in February 2021 rose 6/32, or $1.88 per $1,000 face amount, to 102 7/32. Yields on 30-year bonds fell two basis points to 4.44 percent. They touched 4.43 percent, the lowest since March 23, after earlier increasing three basis points to 4.49 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was 0.2 percent after earlier gaining 0.4 percent and falling 0.1 percent. Fed Purchase The Federal Reserve bought $6.68 billion of Treasuries maturing from January 2014 to February 2015 as part of its program to acquire $600 billion of U.S. debt through June to spur economic growth. U.S. two-year notes rose earlier as Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said at a press conference in Tokyo that U.S. debt remains “attractive” even after the S&P lowered the country’s rating outlook. S&P, citing rising U.S. budget deficits and debt, said yesterday there’s “a material risk that U.S. policy makers might not reach an agreement on how to address medium- and long- term budgetary challenges by 2013.” It affirmed the U.S. AAA long-term rating. “Equities aren’t doing well today, and people don’t want to make big moves given the shortened week, so Treasuries have remained bid,” said Paul Horrmann, a broker in New York at Tradition Asiel Securities Inc., an interdealer broker. “The market is more worried about equities than Treasuries after the S&P announcement.” Holiday Schedule The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association recommends that trading in U.S., U.K. and Japanese financial markets cease at 2 p.m. New York time on April 21 and remain closed the following day for the Easter holiday weekend. Geithner said he “absolutely” didn’t have to reassure overseas buyers of U.S. debt after S&P’s statement yesterday. “We have an opportunity now over the next two months to make some real progress,” Geithner said in an interview on Bloomberg Television today. “What we agree on is putting in place strong targets for savings, deficit reduction over a specific time frame with enforceable limits,” he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Cordell Eddings in New York at ceddings@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robert Burgess at bburgess@bloomberg.net

Metalloinvest Holds Talks With Mitsui, Usmanov Tells Kommersant

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/metalloinvest-holds-talks-with-mitsui-usmanov-tells-kommersant.html

Metalloinvest, Russia ’s largest iron-ore producer, is continuing talks with Japan ’s Mitsui & Co. about a possible partnership after a deal stalled, billionaire shareholder Alisher Usmanov said today in an interview published today in Kommersant. Mitsui demanded “excessive” guarantees in talks last year about buying 15 percent of Metalloinvest’s Lebedinsky iron-ore processing plant in the Belgorod region, Usmanov said in the interview, which was confirmed by spokeswoman Yulia Mazanova. To contact the reporter on this story: Ilya Khrennikov at ikhrennikov@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Torrey Clark at tclark8@bloomberg.net

Petrobras Sells First Cargo of Deepwater Lula Oil to Chile

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/petrobras-sells-1-million-barrels-of-pre-salt-oil-to-enap.html

Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4) , Brazil’s state-controlled oil producer, will export its first cargo from the country’s second-largest crude field to Chile in mid-May. Petrobras agreed to sell 1 million barrels of oil from the offshore Lula field in the so-called pre-salt area to Chile’s Empresa Nacional de Petroleo, or Enap, the Rio de Janeiro-based producer said today in an e-mailed statement. Petrobras aims to double production by 2020 as it develops Lula and other deepwater oil discoveries lying two miles below the ocean surface and another two to four miles beneath the seabed. The field, with recoverable reserves of 6.5 billion barrels, trails the Brazilian government’s nearby Libra field that may hold as much as 15 billion barrels. “The company has a lot of potential to become a major world exporter,” said Max Bueno, an analyst at Spinelli in Sao Paulo. Demand growth in Brazil’s domestic market is unlikely to outpace production increases, he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Millard in Rio de Janeiro at Pmillard1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net

Flyers, Penguins Win to Lead NHL Playoffs 2-1; Bruins Defeat Canadiens

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/flyers-penguins-win-to-lead-nhl-playoffs-2-1-bruins-defeat-canadiens.html

The Philadelphia Flyers beat the Buffalo Sabres 4-2 on the road for their second straight win in the National Hockey League playoffs. The Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Canadiens 4-2 and the Pittsburgh Penguins topped the Tampa Bay Lightning 3-2 in today’s other Eastern Conference first-round playoff games. Jeff Carter, Danny Briere , Nikolay Zherdev and Kimmo Timonen scored goals for the Flyers, who never trailed at HSBC Arena in Buffalo, New York. Philadelphia, the second seed in the Eastern Conference, took a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven postseason series. The Flyers have totaled nine goals in the past two games after being shut out in the opener. Game 4 is scheduled for April 20. David Krejci, Nathan Horton and Rich Peverley scored as the third-seeded Bruins opened a 3-0 lead and held off the Canadiens at Bell Centre in Montreal. Chris Kelly added an empty-net goal with 26 seconds left for Boston, which lost the first two games of the series at home and now trails 2-1. Tyler Kennedy’s third-period goal snapped a 2-2 tie for the fourth-seeded Penguins at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, Florida. Pittsburgh rebounded from a 5-1 home loss in Game 2 to take a 2-1 lead in the series. The Detroit Red Wings visit the Phoenix Coyotes in tonight’s final playoff game, seeking to take a 3-0 lead in their Western Conference series. To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Matuszewski in New York at matuszewski@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net

Larsen Shareholders to Vote on Possible Electrical Unit Sale

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/larsen-shareholders-to-vote-on-possible-electrical-unit-sale.html

Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (LT) , India ’s biggest engineering company, will seek shareholder approval for a possible transfer or sale of its electrical and automation unit as it focuses on project and construction businesses. The company will hold a postal ballot on the proposal with a May 23 deadline, it said in a stock exchange statement today. The result will be announced two days later. Larsen, based in Mumbai, is in talks to sell the unit, which makes switchgears, electrical meters and industrial automation systems, for as much as $3 billion, Reuters said last week, citing two people with knowledge of the matter. Schneider Electric SA and Eaton Corp. are among possible buyers, it said. Three calls to Larsen’s Chief Financial Officer Yeshwant Moreshwar Deosthalee’s mobile phone went unanswered today. The unit’s gross sales were 36.8 billion rupees ($830 million) in the year ended March 2010, a 15 percent increase, according to today’s statement. Profit before interest and taxes climbed 20 percent to 3.9 billion rupees. Larsen will hold onto the unit’s medical-imaging equipment business, it said. To contact the reporter on this story: Siddharth Philip in Mumbai at sphilip3@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Neil Denslow at ndenslow@bloomberg.net .

Kazakh Tenge Gain May Not Slow Inflation, Central Bank Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/kazakh-tenge-gain-may-not-slow-inflation-central-bank-says.html

A stronger currency doesn’t necessarily help slow inflation in countries like Russia and Kazakhstan , according to Grigori Marchenko, governor of the National Bank of Kazakhstan. “In Russia they’ve allowed the ruble to appreciate, while their inflation rate is still the same as Kazakhstan’s” and the tenge’s gains were one-sixth those of ruble, Marchenko said in response to questions from reporters in the financial capital of Almaty today. Russian inflation slowed to 9.5 percent from a 15-month high of 9.6 percent in January as Bank Rossii allowed the ruble, which it manages by buying and selling foreign currency, to strengthen 7.8 percent against the dollar from the start of the year. The tenge, which is also controlled by policy makers, appreciated only 1.3 percent in the period as Kazakhstan’s inflation coooled to 8.6 percent in March from a 22-month high of 8.8 percent the previous month. “Russia let the ruble strengthen significantly, but we didn’t,” Marchenko said today. “We’ll see what the consequences will be.” The National Bank of Kazakhstan will be forced to allow the nation’s currency, the tenge, to strengthen 7.7 percent over the next year to bring down prices on imported goods, ING Groep NV said in an April 8 report. The regulator will favor currency gains over interest-rate increases to help tame price growth, Citigroup Inc. said March 1. ‘Comfort Level’ The tenge is a “managed” free float in that the central bank allows it to move until it surpasses a particular “comfort level” for the Kazakh economy, the National Bank said in an e- mailed statement on March 1. Last month the regulator abolished the corridor it had been using to control the tenge since a 20 percent devaluation in February, 2009. The central bank has purchased about $700 million of foreign currency to moderate the tenge so far in April, boosting the country’s total international reserves to more than $70 billion, Marchenko said. “The situation calmed down on the whole,” he said. The tenge was little changed at 145.4150 per dollar by 3:29 p.m. in Almaty, and the ruble was 0.3 percent down against the greenback at 28.3620 per dollar, according to prices compiled by Bloomberg. To contact the reporters on this story: Nariman Gizitdinov in Almaty at ngizitdinov@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Steve Voss at sev@bloomberg.net .

Synthes Takeover by J&J Would Make Chairman Wyss Switzerland’s Richest Man

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/wyss-may-replace-bertarelli-as-richest-swiss-man-in-synthes-sale.html

Synthes Inc. (SYST) Chairman Hansjoerg Wyss, a Bern-born billionaire who lives in the U.S., stands to become Switzerland’s wealthiest man if the medical device-maker is sold. Wyss, 75, ranked the world’s 154th-richest man by Forbes with $6.4 billion, owns about 40 percent of West Chester , Pennsylvania-based Synthes and has led the company for 30 years. Synthes, the biggest maker of devices to treat bone fractures and traumatic injuries, said this week that it’s in talks with Johnson & Johnson over a possible takeover. The chairman’s stake, plus a share controlled by his family foundation, are valued at 8.36 billion Swiss francs ($9.36 billion) based on yesterday’s closing price. Selling at that level may make Wyss Switzerland ’s top billionaire, surpassing Ernesto Bertarelli, who sold his family’s share of biotechnology company Serono SA to Merck KGaA in 2006 for 10.7 billion francs. It may also allow Wyss to fund more education, art and environmental projects. “He’s got a lot of money and it’s important to him to use it for concrete cultural enterprises,” said Peter Schwaller, the former president of the Furka foundation who is working with Wyss to save a historic chairlift about 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Bern, the Swiss capital and Wyss’s hometown. Harvard Graduate Wyss graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1959 with a degree in civil and structural engineering. He worked for U.S. automaker Chrysler Corp. in Pakistan , Turkey and the Philippines , before going to Harvard Business School , where he earned his MBA in 1965, according to the school’s website. “I didn’t speak in class for the first five weeks,” Wyss said in an interview posted on Harvard’s website after he won an alumni achievement award in 2007. “My classmates were all the creme de la creme, with button-down shirts I had never seen before.” Wyss declined an interview request from Bloomberg News through Gilgian Eisner, Synthes’s spokesman. “Nobody knows me, and I hope that it stays like this,” Wyss told Swiss newspaper Berner Zeitung in a May interview. The publicity-shy billionaire donated $125 million to Harvard University in 2009, the biggest philanthropic gift in the school’s history, allowing for the creation of the Boston- based Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. The institute aims to discover the engineering principles that nature uses to build living things, and using those discoveries to create materials and devices that will improve health care, according to its website. ‘Many Rich People’ “We have so many rich people in Switzerland,” Wyss told Swiss magazine Bilanz in a 2003 interview. “They should take more responsibility for the general public. There is almost no tradition of philanthropy here anymore, unlike in the U.S.” Synthes’s statement this week was the first time Wyss has said publicly that he would consider selling the company, Eisner said. Synthes said on April 18 that “no assurance can be given as to whether, when or on what terms any possible transaction might occur.” Synthes and Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) have declined to comment further on the talks. Synthes, whose shares trade in Zurich, also won’t comment on whether it is in talks with other potential suitors, as reported by Zurich-based newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, Eisner said. Selling Airplanes Wyss was working for a steel company in Brussels when he met the Swiss surgeon who would change his life. Wyss, a pilot, had a side business selling airplanes, Eisner said in an interview. He sold one to Martin Allgoewer, who helped to start the Davos, Switzerland-based AO Foundation. The foundation developed plates and screws to mend broken bones and trained surgeons to use them. The group had licensed products to two other Swiss companies, Straumann Holding AG and Mathys Medizinaltechnik AG, to be sold in Europe , Latin America and Asia. After Allgoewer’s introduction, the group agreed to let Wyss sell AO’s products in North America under the name Synthes, which comes from the group’s German name, Arbeitsgemeinschaft fuer Osteosynthese. Synthes acquired Stratec, a Straumann spinoff, in 1999 and Mathys in 2003. Synthes now has more than 11,000 employees and sales last year of $3.69 billion, compared with $2.4 billion in 2006. CEO Post Wyss gave up the post of chief executive officer in 2007 after 30 years. The company promoted Michel Orsinger, then the chief operating officer, to the CEO post. Wyss remains chairman. “One-third of every board meeting is devoted to new products,” Wyss told Harvard. “It continues to fascinate me, because it represents the future.” While Wyss has several U.S. homes, according to Eisner, he’s maintained his Swiss roots. He is president of Fondation Beyeler , a foundation in Basel that aims to make 250 art works collected by Hildy and Ernst Beyeler accessible to the general public through the operation of a museum. Wyss also founded Stiftung GegenwART , which funds art programs and is affiliated with a Bern museum. In addition to saving the chairlift, Wyss worked with the Furka foundation to restore historic train tracks between Gletsch and Oberwald in central Switzerland, close to the Gotthard pass. Wyss donated about 3.7 million Swiss francs to the project and visited Oberwald to see how the work was going, Schwaller, the foundation’s former president, said yesterday in a telephone interview. “He didn’t want to be recognized by anyone,” Schwaller said. “He can’t be compared to anyone else with such a fortune. Others always want something in exchange.” Wyss Foundation He established the Wyss Foundation , based in Washington , D.C., to focus on land conservation in the mountainous western part of the U.S., according to its website. It also sponsors graduate-level education in conservation science and policy. The private foundation controlled 8 percent of Synthes at the end of 2010, according to the company’s annual report. Bertarelli, 45, and his family are ranked by Forbes as the world’s 81st-richest with $10 billion. He won the America’s Cup sailing competition for landlocked Switzerland in 2003, becoming the first European to capture sailing’s most prestigious championship. To catch Bertarelli, Wyss would have to agree to sell the company he built up over three decades. When making big decisions, Wyss usually confides in “long-term friends,” Eisner said. “Two things are vital for me,” Wyss told Berner Zeitung. “I’ve always had people who protected me, and I’ve always had people who helped me. Before I decide, I consult with three, four people who I trust.” To contact the reporter on this story: Allison Connolly in Berlin at aconnolly4@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Phil Serafino at pserafino@bloomberg.net

U.K. Bank Bonuses ‘Inappropriate’ Amid Taxpayers’ Support, Lawmakers Say

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/u-k-bank-bonuses-inappropriate-amid-public-aid-lawmakers-say.html

A cross-party panel of British lawmakers said it is “inappropriate” for banks to award staff large bonuses and reap excessive profits while they rely on support from taxpayers. British banks, which have received more than 1 trillion pounds ($1.6 trillion) of government bailouts guarantees since 2008, benefit from an “implicit expectation” that taxpayers will rescue them, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said in a report published in London today. No new mechanism has been developed that would transfer that risk to shareholders and bondholders, the committee said. “It is inappropriate for banks dependent on taxpayer support to be generating excessive incomes, unnecessary bonuses or dividends at the expense of exiting public support,” Margaret Hodge, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party who chairs the panel, said in a statement. Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is urging banks to show restraint as it pushes through the deepest cuts in public spending since World War II. Public backing for banks was reduced to 512 billion pounds as of December, Hodge said. “There must be an end to the dependence of the banks on taxpayer support,” she said. Barclays Plc gave its chief executive Robert Diamond as much as 10.1 million pounds in salary, bonuses and stock, while HSBC Holdings Plc planned to pay Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver as much as 13.3 million pounds this year. In a separate report, the same parliamentary committee called for the Treasury to take steps to safeguard taxpayers’ interests in one of the support programs known as the Asset Protection Scheme, which insured potentially toxic bank loans. Hodge criticized Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY) for failing to give a clear picture of the assets that were insured. To contact the reporter on this story: Gonzalo Vina in London at gvina@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net

Singapore's Lee Calls General Elections as Economic Growth Provides Edge

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/singapore-dissolves-parliament-paving-way-for-elections.html

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong called for elections next month, taking advantage of record economic growth to keep his party’s grip on the city- state it has ruled since before independence in 1965. Elections will be held on May 7 after President S.R. Nathan dissolved parliament on the advice of the prime minister, according to e-mailed statements from the government yesterday. The economy grew at an unprecedented pace last year, spurring inflation and boosting property prices, leaving some Singaporeans behind as the wealth gap widens. The island’s growth has been partly fueled by an influx of foreign workers, sparking calls for limiting immigration. The government said in February it will give cash to all adult citizens as a “dividend” from the record expansion. “The incumbents may get fewer votes as it gets more expensive for Singaporeans to put food on the table or maintain a roof over their heads,” said Song Seng-Wun, an economist at CIMB Research Pte. in Singapore. The island of 5.1 million people, of which more than a third are foreigners, has been run by Lee’s People’s Action Party, known as PAP, since 1959 when the island was still part of the British empire. Singapore joined the Federation of Malaysia in September 1963 before it was expelled and became independent in August 1965. New Candidates The last polls, held on May 6, 2006, returned the PAP to power with about 67 percent of the votes cast, down from 75 percent in the 2001 elections. The party has named 24 new candidates who will compete in the coming elections to replace parliamentarians who retired or stepped down. “Singapore’s economic performance has been pretty strong in the past year and against that backdrop, I think the government should be confident of being re-elected,” said David Cohen , a Singapore-based economist at Action Economics LLC. Singapore’s parliament is currently made up of 82 PAP lawmakers, two elected opposition politicians, one non-elected opposition member and nine non-elected independents. A law passed last year allowed as many as nine opposition politicians to sit in the legislative body even if the candidates lose. There will be 87 seats contested in these elections. In these elections, a new law designated the eve of voting as a cooling-off day, when campaigning is prohibited. “This 24-hour campaign silence period is to give voters some time to reflect rationally on issues raised during the election before going to the polls,” the Elections Department said on its website. Casinos, Taxes Since he took office in August 2004, Lee has lifted a ban on casinos, cut corporate taxes and boosted the financial and legal services industries to reduce the nation’s reliance on exports. Lee is the son of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, who was prime minister from 1959 to 1990. Gross domestic product increased at an annual rate of 23.5 percent last quarter from the previous three months and the government predicts an expansion of as much as 6 percent this year. The economy added about 116,000 jobs last year when the economy grew a record 14.5 percent, while wages increased an average 5.6 percent in that period. Singapore’s consumer prices are forecast by the central bank to be at the upper end of the 3 percent to 4 percent range in 2011, prompting the central bank to tighten monetary policy for the third time in a year this month. Policy makers in January introduced more measures to curb property speculation after private home prices and transactions reached records. Attempts to rein in prices had started in 2009. Growing Wealth Gap The gap between Singapore’s most affluent and poorest people widened last year as higher wage earners received bigger increases in income. Singapore’s Gini coefficient , a measure of income inequality , climbed to 0.48 last year from 0.478 in 2009, according to the statistics department. A reading of zero means income equality, while a reading of one means complete income inequality. Immigration had been a key component of Singapore’s population and economic strategy, given the failure of other incentives offered since 1987 to arrest a birth-rate decline -- such as tax breaks, subsidies and cash bonuses. In August, Lee said the influx of foreign workers is a “trade-off” that Singapore cannot avoid. “Higher growth that will benefit our workers also means accepting more foreign workers to come and work in Singapore,” he said. “If you choke off the foreign workers, the economy is stifled, growth is not there, our workers will suffer.” Swelling Population Hundreds of thousands of people were granted citizenship and permanent residence in the past five years, while companies brought in thousands more to work at hotels, shipyards and restaurants. The population has increased by about 810,000 people since the end of 2005, government figures show. Disgruntled Singaporeans say the immigration policy means crowded public transportation, more competition with newcomers for jobs, public housing and places in choice schools for their children. Lee has said the government will slow the pace of immigration because the country can’t increase its population by more than 100,000 a year indefinitely. “It’s more challenging for incumbents against the backdrop of strong economic growth compared to putting the fear into voters during a recession, but they will still have a tight grip on power,” CIMB’s Song said. “Singaporeans know the government has delivered and they will be voted into power again.” To contact the reporter on this story: Shamim Adam in Singapore at sadam2@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lars Klemming at lklemming@bloomberg.net

Corn Rises as Wet, Cold Weather Threatens U.S. Crop Prospects

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/corn-rises-as-wet-cold-weather-threatens-u-s-crop-prospects.html

Corn futures rose for the second straight day on speculation that cold, wet Midwest weather will delay planting, threatening prospects for crops in the U.S., the world’s biggest producer. Fields will get frequent storms in the next two weeks with occasional flooding expanding across the southern growing region, where crops need to be planted early to avoid summer heat, World Weather Inc. said today in a report. About 7 percent of the crop was planted as of April 17, down from 16 percent a year ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said yesterday. “The forecasts will continue to make farmers nervous and support corn,” said Don Roose , the president of U.S. Commodities Inc. West Des Moines , Iowa. “The market will continue to focus on the weather until planters start to roll actively” across the Midwest, he said. Corn futures for July delivery rose 0.5 cent to $7.60 a bushel at 10:39 a.m. on the Chicago Board of Trade. Yesterday, the price climbed 1.3 percent. The most-active contract has doubled in the past year after adverse weather reduced the size of last year’s U.S. crop and demand for livestock feed and grain-based fuel rose. U.S. corn inventories before this year’s harvest are forecast at 675 million bushels, down from 1.708 billion a year ago and the lowest since 1996, the USDA said on April 8. Corn is the biggest U.S. crop, valued at $66.7 billion in 2010, government figures show. To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Wilson in Chicago at jwilson29@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Stroth at sstroth@bloomberg.net .

Hoover Executive Pulls Ads After ABC Ends Mom’s Soaps, AP Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/hoover-executive-pulls-ads-after-abc-ends-mom-s-soaps-ap-says.html

Hoover, the vacuum cleaner maker, is pulling advertising from ABC to protest the TV network’s decision to cancel the soap operas “All My Children” and “One Life to Live,” the Associated Press reported. The action was taken after the wife and mother of Hoover marketing executive Brian Kirkendall became upset about the cancellation of the TV programs, AP reported, citing an interview with him. A posting by Kirkendall on the company’s Facebook page spurred messages of support, according to AP. The company, controlled by Techtronic Industries Co. (669) , had purchased time for six ads to air on the network this week, according to AP. ABC is owned by Walt Disney Co. (DIS) To contact the reporter on this story: Romaine Bostick in Washington at rbostick@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kevin Miller at kmiller@bloomberg.net .

Laos to Delay $3.8 Billion Mekong River Dam Over Environmental Concerns

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/laos-to-delay-3-8-billion-mekong-river-dam-over-environmental-concerns.html

Laos agreed to delay construction of a $3.8 billion hydropower dam because of concerns among neighboring Mekong River countries that the project would disrupt fish catches and rice production downstream. The group “agreed that a decision on the prior consultation process for the proposed Xayaburi hydropower project be tabled for consideration at the ministerial level, as they could not come to a common conclusion on how to proceed with the project,” it said in a statement today. To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tony Jordan at tjordan3@bloomberg.net

Ford Offers Fuel Options for Taurus as Model Updates Speed Up

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/ford-offers-fuel-options-for-taurus-as-model-updates-speed-up.html

Ford Motor Co. (F) will sell a revamped Taurus sedan with more fuel-efficient engines next year as the second-largest U.S. automaker looks to continue updating its vehicles more rapidly. The 2013 Taurus being unveiled at the New York auto show this week will follow the current version by less than three years, Dearborn, Michigan-based Ford said yesterday at a briefing for media in New York. The automaker has updated its entire car lineup in the past three years, said Mark Fields , Ford’s president of the Americas. “When we develop our product lineup and our product plan, the most important metric we have is the average age of our showroom,” Derrick Kuzak , Ford’s product-development chief, told reporters. “We’re building this constant cadence of every three to 3.5 years, basically a new product for our customers.” The revamped Taurus will be Ford’s first car in North America to have two of its EcoBoost engines available, Kuzak said. The EcoBoost engines add power from turbochargers and feed precise amounts of fuel to the cylinders to improve efficiency. The smaller, four-cylinder EcoBoost engine will get at least 31 mpg on the highway and the larger six-cylinder EcoBoost will get up to 25 mpg on the highway, Ford said. The third and standard engine offering will be a six-cylinder that gets more power than the current version, Kuzak said. The Taurus, once the U.S.’s best-selling car, will probably compete in a shrinking portion of the market as gas prices climb, Kuzak said yesterday. Gas Price Impact “The large-car segment is probably decreasing a little bit, and the small and midsized segments are growing, given fuel economy,” he said. “What we’re trying to do here is provide for customers who are interested in the size and comfort of a large sedan and still give them exceptional fuel economy.” U.S. deliveries of the Taurus in 2010 climbed 51 percent to 68,859, according to Autodata Corp. Ford introduced the current Taurus in August 2009, Kuzak said yesterday. The 2013 Taurus will begin sales in the spring of next year, Marisa Bradley, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. While higher gas prices may shift consumer demand to smaller vehicles from larger, more-profitable trucks and sport- utility vehicles, Fields reiterated Ford’s previous forecast that the company’s North American operating margins this year will be equal to or higher than 2010. “That puts into perspective costs, what we’re doing on revenue and how consumers are seeing our products,” he said. Ford will release pricing on the 2013 Taurus later, Kuzak said. The 2011 Taurus starts at $26,245 for the standard version and $37,845 for the higher-performance Taurus SHO, according to Ford’s website. To contact the reporter on this story: Craig Trudell in New York at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kevin Orland at korland@bloomberg.net

U.S. Stocks Advance as Housing Data, Earnings Exceed Forecasts

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/u-s-stock-index-futures-retreat-texas-instruments-declines-on-forecast.html

U.S. stocks rose, as benchmark indexes rebounded from the worst declines in a month, after housing starts increased and earnings beat estimates at companies from Johnson & Johnson to Steel Dynamics Inc. (STLD) A gauge of homebuilders in S&P indexes gained 2.2 percent as all of its 12 stocks advanced. Johnson & Johnson, the second- biggest seller of health products, rallied 3.7 percent, the most in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Steel Dynamics added 5.7 percent as its profit also beat projections. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. rose 2.2 percent, pacing gains in raw- material producers, as gold touched a record $1,500.50 an ounce. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 0.6 percent to 1,312.62 at 4 p.m. in New York. Yesterday, the benchmark gauge slid 1.1 percent as S&P Ratings Service cut the long-term U.S. credit outlook. The Dow average advanced 65.16 points, or 0.5 percent, to 12,266.75 today. “Buy the dips, sell the rips,” said Burt White, who helps oversee $284 billion as chief investment officer at LPL Financial Corp. in Boston. “This market has been very resilient. Things are better than people think as far as the economy goes. Today’s housing numbers were pretty good. You’ve got a bellwether such as Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) coming out with good news. The market is excited to see that.” Corporate Profits The S&P 500 has risen 4.4 percent in 2011, extending last year’s 13 percent rally, amid government stimulus measures and corporate earnings that beat analysts’ estimates. Earnings-per- share beat analysts’ estimates at about 76 percent of the 33 companies in the S&P 500 that reported results since April 11, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. About 6.6 billion shares changed hands on U.S. exchanges, compared with the average over the past 50 days of 7.6 billion, as trading slowed for the Passover holiday. Stock futures extended gains before the open of regular trading as Commerce Department figures showed that work began on 549,000 houses at an annual pace, up 7.2 percent from the prior month and exceeding the 520,000 median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Starts fell 19 percent in February to the lowest level in almost two years. Homebuilders rallied. PulteGroup Inc., the largest U.S. homebuilder by revenue, gained 5.1 percent to $8.24. Lennar Corp. (LEN) added 2.5 percent to $18.79. “The economy is in a sustainable recovery,” said Jeffrey Saut , chief investment strategist at Raymond James & Associates in St. Petersburg , Florida , who helps manage $275 billion. “The market is trading on fundamentals. Earnings are going to continue to surprise on the plus side.” Record Streak Investors counting on a record streak of higher-than- forecast profits to keep driving share prices may get clues from 79 companies reporting this week with the best history of earnings surprises. Apple Inc. (AAPL) , maker of the iPhone, and General Electric Co. (GE) , the world’s biggest builder of jet engines , are among companies that have topped analysts’ projections in the last four quarters and had estimates boosted since February, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. S&P 500 companies will probably report average net income growth of 10 percent in the period, data compiled by Bloomberg show. “You can call it momentum, progress or improvement, but there’s always interest in companies that can do better and better each quarter, come up with something new, pull a rabbit out of the hat,” said John Carey, a Boston-based money manager at Pioneer Investments, which oversees about $250 billion. “At the same time, there were some unusual, striking events in the first quarter that upset and distracted investors.” Earnings Companies in the S&P 500 have beaten analyst earnings estimates for eight straight quarters, the most since at least 2006, helping propel the index as much as 99 percent from the market bottom on March 9, 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Johnson & Johnson rallied 3.7 percent to $62.69. Earnings excluding one-time items of $1.35 topped the $1.26 average estimate of 16 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. J&J forecast full-year earnings of $4.90 to $5 a share, more than an outlook for $4.80 to $4.90 in January as results were boosted by new drugs and a weaker dollar. Twenty-one analysts surveyed by Bloomberg estimated an average of $4.85. A gauge of raw-material producers had the biggest gain in the S&P 500 within 10 industries, rallying 1.8 percent. Gold futures for June delivery rose $2.20, or 0.1 percent, to settle at $1,495.10 an ounce in New York after topping $1,500 during the day. Debt Concerns U.S. debt concerns weighed on the dollar, boosting demand for the precious metal as an alternative investment. The greenback dropped against the euro on speculation that the European Central Bank will continue to raise borrowing costs even as some nations struggle to contain sovereign debt. Steel Dynamics climbed 5.7 percent to $18.46. The producer of the metal posted a first-quarter profit of 46 cents a share, exceeding the average analyst estimate by 5 cents. Zions Bancorporation rose 3.9 percent to $23.85. The Salt Lake City-based bank reported first-quarter profit of 9 cents a share, excluding certain items. Analysts had estimated a loss of 15 cents a share on average. Harley-Davidson Inc. (HOG) declined 5.3 percent to $37.61. The biggest U.S. motorcycle maker reported first-quarter earnings from continuing operations were 51 cents a share, missing the 55-cent average estimate by analysts. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) fell 1.3 percent to $151.86. The fifth-biggest U.S. bank was cut to “neutral” from “buy” at Rochdale Securities LLC. Goldman posted a 21 percent drop in first-quarter profit, a smaller decline than analysts estimated, as fixed-income trading revenue more than doubled from a weak fourth quarter. Net income fell to $2.74 billion from $3.46 billion a year earlier, Goldman Sachs said in a statement. Earnings per share, which includes the cost of preferred dividend payments to Warren Buffett ’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., dropped to $1.56 from $5.59. The average estimate of analysts was for 81 cents. To contact the reporter on this story: Rita Nazareth in Sao Paulo at rnazareth@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Regan at mregan12@bloomberg.net

South Africa's Eskom Workers to Demand 16% Wage Increase Today, Union Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/south-africa-s-eskom-workers-to-demand-16-wage-increase-today-union-says.html

South Africa ’s National Union of Mineworkers will submit its demand for a 16 percent pay increase to power utility Eskom Holdings Ltd. today, Lesiba Seshoka , a spokesman for the union, said by mobile phone today. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Carli Lourens at clourens@bloomberg.net

Nigerian Eurobonds, Stocks Advance as Jonathan Wins Election

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/nigerian-eurobonds-rise-to-record-as-goodluck-jonathan-wins-the-presidency.html

Nigeria ’s Eurobonds rose to a record and the nation’s stocks climbed on speculation the election of incumbent Goodluck Jonathan as president will help protect oil production in Africa ’s biggest producer of the commodity. Nigeria’s dollar bonds due 2021 added 0.6 percent to 103.450 cents on the dollar as of 5:19 p.m. in London, the highest level since the debt was issued in January, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The yield fell eight basis points to 6.27 percent. The $500 million of bonds are Nigeria’s only international notes. The nation’s All-Share Index added 0.3 percent to 25,384.10 by the 2:30 p.m. close in Lagos, according to a statement on the bourse’s website, the longest winning streak since Jan. 6. Jonathan, 53, a Christian from the oil-rich Niger River delta region, won 22.5 million, or 57 percent, of the votes cast, compared with 12.2 million, or 31 percent, for former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari , 68, a northern Muslim, the electoral commission said. Violent protests in the north of the country killed at least six in Africa’s most populous nation with 150 million residents, roughly split between a mostly Muslim north and a largely Christian south, a divide reflected in voting for the April 16 election. “Investors are taking a measured view of the risk; the key is that given Jonathan’s victory oil output is unlikely to be under any threat,” Razia Khan , London-based head of Africa research at Standard Chartered Bank Plc, said in a phone interview today. “The protests were in the north and of course the oil comes from the delta and the delta is firmly in support of Jonathan.” Jonathan has promised to continue an amnesty for former militants in the Niger River delta in the south of the nation, a policy that has helped boost oil output there by 27 percent since July 2009. Attacks by rebels in the region cut Nigeria’s oil output by more than 28 percent between 2006 and 2009. To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Kay in London at ckay5@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gavin Serkin at gserkin@bloomberg.net

Ugandan Coffee Development Authority’s Arabica Prices

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/ugandan-coffee-development-authority-s-arabica-prices-table-.html

The Uganda Coffee Development Authority today quoted indicative prices for exports of arabica, which accounts for 15 percent of the nation’s shipments. Uganda is Africa ’s second-biggest coffee producer, after Ethiopia , and the continent’s biggest robusta grower. Nearby delivery refers to deliveries to be made within 45 days and forward delivery is between 45 and 90 days. Indicative prices refer to those used by exporters to determine prices. Prices quoted today by the authority are in U.S. cents per pound, based on free on board rail/truck from Kampala: On April 12, the authority quoted indicative export prices for arabica as follows: To contact the reporter on this story: Fred Ojambo in Kampala at fojambo@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net

Japan Stocks: Dainippon Screen, Daito Trust, Sapporo

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/daito-trust-nissan-shiseido-toyota-japan-equity-preview.html

Japan ’s Nikkei 225 (NKY) Stock Average rose 134.61, or 1.4 percent, to 9,575.64 at the 11 a.m. trading break in Tokyo. The following are among the most active shares in the Japanese market today. Stock symbols are in parentheses after company names. Intel impact: Semiconductor-related firms advanced after Intel Corp. (INTC) , the world’s biggest chipmaker, forecast second-quarter sales that may top analysts’ estimates. Dainippon Screen Manufacturing Co. (7735 JT) jumped 3.7 percent to 736 yen. Ibiden Co. (4062 JT) leapt 6.3 percent to 2,569 yen. Shinko Electric Industries Co. (6967 JT) surged 6.9 percent to 841 yen. Tokyo Electron Ltd. (8035) (8035 JT) climbed 3.8 percent to 4,465 yen. Toshiba Corp. (6502) (6502 JT) rose 4 percent to 417 yen. Daito Trust Construct Co. (1878 JT), a developer, fell 3 percent to 6,200 yen. The company reported in a preliminary earnings statement it had full-year net income of 43.1 billion yen ($521 million), missing its forecast by 5.1 percent. The company cited delay in construction of buildings due to last month’s earthquake. Hitachi Ltd. (6501) (6501 JT), an electronics and power-equipment company, increased 3.4 percent to 400 yen. The company will join a test in southwest England of technologies for distributing electricity from alternative sources over a power grid , the Nikkei newspaper reported. Hogy Medical Co. (3593 JT), a maker of surgical tools, retreated 3 percent to 3,255 yen. The company said net income for the year ended March 31 fell 9.5 percent to 4.45 billion yen, missing its forecast by 12 percent. The company forecast the profit will drop 5.7 percent this year. Itoham Foods Inc. (2284) (2284 JT), a producer of processed meat products, climbed 3.3 percent to 313 yen. The company said 289 employees applied for buyout packages this month. The company, which had aimed to cut 150 jobs, will book a 3 billion yen charge for the fiscal year ended March. Sapporo Holdings Ltd. (2501) (2501 JT), a beverage maker, rallied 3.2 percent to 324 yen. The company’s beer shipments may return to pre-earthquake levels next month, the Nikkei newspaper reported, citing an interview with President Tsutomu Kamijo. Yamato Kogyo Co. (5444 JT), a railway-track component maker and builder of electric steel furnaces, gained 3.9 percent to 2,622 yen. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. rated the company “buy” in new coverage, citing the company generates strong cashflow and its profit in Japan will likely recover on reconstruction demand after the earthquake disaster. To contact the reporters on this story: Akiko Ikeda in Tokyo at iakiko@bloomberg.net ; Takako Iwatani in Tokyo at tiwatani@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Gentle at ngentle2@bloomberg.net .

SMIC Shares Surge on China Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/smic-shares-surge-on-china-sovereign-wealth-fund-investment-1-.html

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (981) , China’s biggest chipmaker, rose the most in six months in Hong Kong trading after saying it may get a $250 million investment from the nation’s sovereign wealth fund. SMIC jumped 8.2 percent to 66 Hong Kong cents, the biggest gain since Oct. 19. The stock has advanced 18 percent this year, compared with the 2.1 percent increase in the city’s benchmark Hang Seng Index. (HSI) China Investment Corp. agreed to buy 360.6 million convertible preferred shares that may be exchanged for an 11.6 percent stake in SMIC, the Shanghai-based chipmaker said in a statement yesterday. The transaction is valued at the equivalent of 53.9 Hong Kong cents a share, a discount of about 11.6 percent to the stock’s closing price yesterday, according to the statement. SMIC said the proposed investment from the sovereign wealth fund will help it finance capital spending and repay debt. The chipmaker said last month it may need to invest $12 billion over the “next several years” to expand capacity. Under the agreement, China Investment will also receive warrants that allow it to subscribe for an additional 2.3 percent stake in SMIC, according to the statement. SMIC, which posted a profit in 2010 after a run of five straight annual losses, counts state-owned Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Holdings Co. and local government-backed Shanghai Industrial Investment (Holdings) Co., among its investors. Bank of America Merrill Lynch was SMIC’s adviser in the proposed transaction. To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Lee in Hong Kong at wlee37@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net

Sudan Town Burned in Oil-Producing State, Clooney’s Satellite Project Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/sudan-town-burned-in-oil-producing-state-clooney-s-satellite-project-says.html

A Sudanese town was deliberately burned in the oil-producing state of Southern Kordofan, where elections will be held next month, the Google Inc (GOOG) .-backed Satellite Sentinel Project said in a statement today. The project, which George Clooney set up using Google’s Map.Maker technology, said on its website that it “has confirmed that at least 356 structures in the town of el-Feid” were burned in northern Sudan’s only oil-producing state. The state’s gubernatorial and state legislative elections, now scheduled for May 2, were postponed from last year’s nationwide vote. Ahmed Haroun, who’s wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague over allegations he was responsible for war crimes in the western region of Darfur, is the candidate of President Umar al-Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party. “This is fabricated news,” Rabie Abdel Ati, a senior NCP member and adviser to the information minister, said by phone today from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. “This is all political propaganda to be used in the election campaign.” While Southern Sudan , which accounts for 75 percent of Sudan ’s daily oil production of 490,000 barrels, is scheduled to become independent on July 9, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile states remained part of the north and were promised a “popular consultation” exercise in a 2005 peace agreement that ended a two-decade civil war between the north and south. Details of the process weren’t explained in the accord. Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co. and Petro Energy E&P Co. operate blocks in Southern Kordofan. The concessions are mostly owned by China National Petroleum Corp. Other stakes are held by Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd, or Petronas, India ’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp. Ltd. and Sudan’s state-owned oil company, Sudapet. To contact the reporter on this story: Maram Mazen in Khartoum at mmazen@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net .

Corporate Bond Risk Falls in Europe, Credit-Default Swaps Show

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/corporate-bond-risk-falls-in-europe-credit-default-swaps-show.html

The cost of protecting European corporate bonds from default fell, according to traders of credit-default swaps. Contracts on the Markit iTraxx Crossover Index of 40 companies with mostly high-yield credit ratings dropped 6 basis points to 367, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. at 7:30 a.m. in London. The index is a benchmark for the cost of protecting bonds against default and a decline signals improved perceptions of credit quality. The Markit iTraxx Europe Index of 125 companies with investment-grade ratings fell 1.5 basis points to 99.25 basis points. The Markit iTraxx Financial Index linked to the senior debt of 25 banks and insurers dropped 3.5 basis points to 130 and the subordinated index was down 5.5 at 230. A basis point on a credit-default swap protecting 10 million euros ($14.4 million) of debt from default for five years is equivalent to 1,000 euros a year. Swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements. To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Shanahan in London mshanahan3@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Armstrong at Parmstrong10@bloomberg.net

Tunisian Tribal Violence in Southern Town Snad Leaves Two Dead

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/tunisian-tribal-violence-in-southern-town-snad-leaves-two-dead.html

Two people were killed and 43 injured in violence that erupted among high-school students from two tribes in southern Tunisia , the Interior Ministry said. About 2,000 people, most of them students armed with hunting rifles, stones and other weapons, were involved in the unrest that took place in the southern town of Snad, resulting in the deaths of a young man and woman, the ministry said in a faxed statement today, without giving a reason for the fighting. Authorities imposed a curfew on Snad from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. local time, the state-run Agence Tunis Afrique Presse reported. To contact the reporter on this story: Jihen Laghmari via the Cairo newsroom at jlaghmari@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mahmoud Kassem at mkassem1@bloomberg.net

Citigroup's Pringle to Head Equities Trading as Unit Overhauls Management

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/citigroup-s-pringle-to-head-equities-trading-as-unit-overhauls-management.html

Citigroup Inc. (C) , the third-biggest U.S. bank, promoted Mike Pringle to a new position leading global equities trading as the lender overhauls the unit’s management to earn more from emerging markets. Pringle, appointed in 2009 to lead equities in Europe , Middle East and Africa , will oversee risk, trading personnel and use of capital, according to a memo from Derek Bandeen, who heads equities at the New York-based bank. Adrian Faure, in charge of equities for Asia-Pacific, will become the unit’s global head of emerging markets, a new post, according to the memo. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit , 54, is pushing into emerging markets in Latin America and Asia. The securities and banking unit, which runs trading and investment banking, made 73 percent of its first-quarter profit from continuing operations outside the U.S., compared with 55 percent in the same period last year. “I firmly believe that these changes will help build an ever stronger business with a balanced combination of regional strength and global connectivity,” Bandeen said in the memo, which was confirmed by Danielle Romero-Apsilos, a Citigroup spokeswoman. Shakil Ahmed, co-head of electronic trading with Daniel Keegan, also will oversee electronic market-making, according to the memo. The bank last month started electronic equity trading in Brazil and Mexico. Ahmed will be “concluding his role” as head of quantitative strategies for equity markets with Citi Capital Advisors , a hedge-fund unit within the bank, according to the memo. The restructuring follows Pandit’s promotion in January of James “Jamie” Forese to head the securities and banking division. Citigroup’s equity-trading revenue in the first quarter declined 12 percent from the same period a year earlier to $1.07 billion. The Financial Times reported the appointments earlier today. To contact the reporter on this story: Donal Griffin in New York at dgriffin10@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net

Ineos Reports Olefins Unit Upset at Chocolate Bayou Plant

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/ineos-reports-olefins-unit-upset-at-chocolate-bayou-plant-1-.html

Ineos Group Holdings Plc reported an upset at the ethylene unit at its Chocolate Bayou chemical plant in Alvin, Texas , according to a filing with state regulators. “The olefins 1 unit experienced an upset when the p-rich feed was lost to two of the furnaces resulting in flaring off spec ethylene product,” Ineos said a filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. “Operations stabilizing the unit to bring ethylene product back on spec and decreased feed to the furnaces,” the Lyndhurst, United Kingdom-based company said in the filing. The Chocolate Bayou plant includes two olefins units and has one of the largest hydrocarbon crackers in the U.S., according to the company website. The plant is located in Alvin, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) south of Houston. To contact the reporters on this story: Aaron Clark in New York at aclark27@bloomberg.net ; Leela Landress in Houston at llandress@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Richard Stubbe at rstubbe1@bloomberg.net

Ryanair to Test Reserved Seating, Ending 25-Year Free-For-All

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/ryanair-to-test-reserved-seating-ending-25-year-free-for-all.html

Ryanair Holdings Plc (RYA) , Europe ’s largest discount carrier, will introduce reserved seating next month for the first time since adopting its low-cost model 25 years ago, encouraging passengers to pay extra for more legroom. The front two rows of planes flying from Dublin to London Gatwick and Malaga airports from May 16 can be booked for 10 euros ($14) extra each way, Ryanair said in a statement. Roomier seats can also be reserved in emergency-exit rows over the wing. Discount airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet Plc (EZJ) have typically eschewed reserved seating as adding to back-office costs and slowing the rapid turnaround of jets that’s crucial to the low-cost model. Both are now seeking to lure more business travelers and boost average fares after exhausting most avenues for raising revenue through paid-for perks such as checked bags. “Reserving seats is a reasonably low-cost way of squeezing a bit more cash out,” said Gert Zonneveld , an analyst at Panmure Gordon in London who recommends buying Ryanair stock. “There will be demand for this and people who will take it up.” Passengers will still be able to separately buy priority passes that allow them to board ahead of other customers for 4 euros each way, Ryanair said. “If this new service proves popular with passengers then we will roll it out selectively on other Ryanair routes in coming months,” spokesman Stephen McNamara said in the statement. Ryanair rose as much as 1.5 percent to 3.39 euros and was trading at 3.37 euros as of 3:56 p.m. in Dublin, where the company is based. The stock has declined 11 percent this year, valuing the carrier at 5.02 billion euros. To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Rothwell in London at srothwell@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net

Oceanic of Nigeria Falls Most in Week as First Bank Talks End

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/oceanic-of-nigeria-falls-most-in-week-as-first-bank-talks-end.html

Oceanic Bank International Plc (OCEANIC) , a Nigerian lender bailed out by the central bank in 2009, fell the most in a week after saying recapitalization talks between it and First Bank of Nigeria Plc had ended. The stock lost 10 kobo, or the maximum 5 percent daily limit, to 1.90 naira by 2:02 p.m. in Lagos, its biggest intraday decline since April 12. Both sides decided to discontinue the talks because they were unable to agree on the terms of the consideration, they said in an e-mailed statement today. Oceanic said it is “working at concluding other recapitalization plans and details of such will be unveiled in the next couple of weeks,” according to the statement. A debt crisis arising from loans to speculators on the local stock market and operators in the oil and gas industry threatened the banking industry with collapse, prompting the Central Bank of Nigeria to use 620 billion naira ($4 billion) to bail out some lenders in 2009, and fired the chief executives of eight of the lenders. The central bank set up the Asset Management Corp. of Nigeria to buy bad debts from the lenders and recapitalize the bailed-out banks, before matching them with potential investors. First Bank ended the talks to purse an “organic growth,” Group Managing Director Bisi Onasanya said in an interview with Johannesburg-based CNBC Africa television yesterday. “We had always been clear from the beginning that we would only do a deal that would bring value to our shareholders,” Onasanya said. To contact the reporter on this story: Vincent Nwanma in Lagos at vnwanma@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net .

Britain Sends Military Team to Libya as NATO Planes Hit Qaddafi Loyalists

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/britain-sends-military-team-to-libya-as-nato-planes-hit-qaddafi-loyalists.html

The U.K. dispatched a team of military advisers to assist Libyan rebels fighting to topple Muammar Qaddafi as NATO jets destroyed tanks, armored vehicles and rocket launchers near a rebel-held city. The contingent of “experienced British military officers” will help the rebels organize communications and logistics, Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement from London. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said its warplanes bombed a convoy of Qaddafi loyalist armored-vehicles bound for the besieged port city of Misrata, where NATO has been unable to stave off attacks that have killed and injured civilians. As the nearly monthlong violence in Misrata intensified, rebels still struggled to take and hold cities in Libya ’s central coastal areas, the focus of most of the fighting since the uprising began in February. Many Qaddafi forces have changed tactics and use pickup trucks similar to those of the rebels. “Developments change on the ground so what we have to do to implement the UN resolution does change over time,” Hague said in a Sky News television interview. “I expect other countries also to be involved in this but they must make their own announcements.” The U.K. said its military team is within the framework of the five-week-old United Nations mandate authorizing the military intervention. British officers won’t be involved in training or arming rebels or planning military operations. ‘Fluid’ Conflict “At the moment on the ground, I don’t know if it’s a stalemate; certainly it’s not necessarily moving forward,” Admiral Giampaolo di Paola, the chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, said today in Rome. “The eastern front is constantly moving up and down. It’s fluid, but it’s in the same area.” Allied targets overnight included a rocket battery firing into Misrata as well as the headquarters south of Tripoli of the elite 32nd brigade, which has been commanded by Muammar Qaddafi’s youngest son, Khamis. That military force has spearheaded operations threatening civilians, NATO said. Five days after NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told alliance foreign ministers in Berlin that commanders needed more ground-attacks jets, Brigadier General Mark van Uhm said the alliance had more military assets than it did last week. He declined to say what the new assets were or which countries had supplied them. Van Uhm, the mission’s chief of allied operations, said more than 30 percent of Qaddafi’s military forces had been eliminated. Earlier, the Italian government said it’s helping Libyan rebels sell oil from the opposition-held parts of the country. Oil Sales “We are working to allow the sale of oil products” from rebel areas “through the use of transparent financial instruments,” Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said at a press conference in Rome after meeting with the head of Libya’s rebel council, Mustafa Abdel Jalil. The rebels have agreed to honor existing treaties between Italy and Libya, Frattini said. Oil exports from Libya, which has Africa’s biggest oil reserves, dropped by about 1.3 million barrels a day to a “trickle,” the Paris-based International Energy Agency said last month. Oil fell for a second day amid signals that oil prices at their highest level since 2008 are pressuring the economy and may cause fuel demand to falter. Crude oil for May delivery fell 42 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $106.70 a barrel at 9:48 a.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier, prices touched $105.50. Futures have risen 31 percent in the past year. NATO aircraft enforcing the UN-mandated no-fly zone and sanctions on Libya flew 53 missions to identify and engage possible ground targets on April 17. To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net ; Jeffrey Donovan in Rome at jdonovan26@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net ; James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net

Dog-Poop Project in France Seeks to Turn Feces Into Fertilizer

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/dog-poop-project-in-france-seeks-to-convert-sidewalk-feces-into-fertilizer.html

Across the street from a bowling alley in Toulouse, a French scientist in a white smock unlocks the passageway to a hidden refrigerated laboratory where a centuries-old blight is about to be wiped up. “Show him Project Propec,” says Cedric Cabanes, president of Agronutrition SAS, a boutique fertilizer company with annual sales of 18 million euros ($26 million), which may be on the cusp of transforming a global industry that plowed 163.7 million metric tons of nutritional muck into the soil last year. The metal door swings open and the foul aroma of the excremental experiment inside the chamber overwhelms the possibility of accurate visual observation. “What we have here is endomycorrhiza, the molecular detoxifying mechanism for a diffusive airborne substance with a 100 meter radius that provokes an immediate intestinal ejection at a precise position,” microbiologist Hicham Ferhout says, thumping shut the steel door. “In layman terms, we’ve finally discovered how to make a dog sh*t in a specific spot, disinfect the deposit and convert it into environmentally friendly energy or fertilizer. I have to think like a dog.” The origin of feces is no laughing matter in France , where pedestrians can come upon little piles of dog poop on pavements in even the most fashionable of streets in cities from Paris to Bordeaux. France has 8.8 million dogs , according to the Societe de Protection des Animaux. At an average of 22 pounds a year each, they produce about 194 million pounds of stools, some in public spaces, costing the country millions to clean up, according to Toulouse Deputy Mayor Jean-Michel Fabre. Office of Tranquility For the 400,000 residents of Toulouse , says Fabre, who’s also a veterinarian, the postcard-perfect southwestern town is otherwise soiled by 50,000 dogs that step outside to leave tons of their excrement annually. In tow are 300 sanitation workers, 100 of them with scoopers-at-the-ready, spending as much as 33 percent of the city’s 153 million-euro sanitation budget on shoveling canine fecal matter. “Toulouse has industrial quantities to offer,” says the 50-year-old Fabre who, to illustrate his point, is standing in a sand-filled “boite de crotte,” or dog latrine, in the fragrant Jardin Pierre Goudouli behind the town hall. “Look,” the deputy mayor says with a sweep of the hand, “there’s merde everywhere but in here.” As Fabre tells it, Toulouse’s scatological action plan to clean up the mess and turn squalor into dollars began when he in 2009 created France’s first “ Office of Tranquility .” The city’s official grievance bureau in its first two years received more than 600,000 calls. Monetizing Dog Poop “The majority of the people complained about dog merde,” Fabre says. “We have seven dog parks, but the dogs refused to use them.” Historical research showed that it wouldn’t be easy or pleasant to monetize dog droppings. The only successful venture in this field took place in Victorian England, when the homeless wandered city streets to collect what was then called “pure” or “scitan” (a noun in which the “sc” is pronounced “sh”) for use in tanning leather. Fabre says solving the problem required a fresh strategy. He called Cabanes and their government-private sector partnership was born. The duo immediately decided to attack the dilemma from the rear. “Everyone was looking in the wrong direction for an answer,” says Fabre, who began his veterinary career working with goats in Africa. “It’s not the dog owner who chooses the place his dog will poop. It’s the dog who makes the decision and it required a lot of deep thought and analysis to get the dog owners of Toulouse to realize it.” ‘Turdometers’ Back in the lab, Cabanes reckons that dogs have tricked their masters into believing otherwise, inspiring the creation of what the folks at Pet Butler Inc. in Seattle call the “Turdometer.” The on-line gizmo calculates the number of American canine egesta the poop-collection firm has picked up since 1988. That’s 70 million and counting. Pet Butler franchises start at $30,000 and its business -- with America’s 72 million dogs annually depositing between 14 pounds and 30 pounds of undigested kibble -- is a growth sector in the $70 billion U.S. pet industry. “Toulouse has so far invested 70,000 euros and Agronutrition has put up 180,000 euros,” Cabanes says of the project that will require a total of 400,000 euros to complete and market. “I’ve absolutely no doubt that our product will have an instantaneous global customer base. You can’t help but smell the possibilities.” Toxic Waste Cabanes says the American solution, a $10.99 can of Poop Freeze Aerosol Freeze, is not ecologically sound, even when employed in conjunction with either Doody Danglers, Snugg-Ease doggie diapers or the Cinch-Lock Tail Anchoring System. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, back in 1991, categorized dog crap a “nonpoint source of pollution,” lumping it in the same group as toxic waste and chemicals. Research conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta show that one gram of the stuff can contain 23 million fecal coli from bacteria, along with camplobacter, leptospira and a boxcar load of zoonotic diseases easily transmitted to humans. The French haven’t fared any better in burying the problem. According to a series of government reports over the past decade, Paris has 200,000 dogs dropping 15 tons of stools a day that cost the city 9 million euros a year to mop up. The city on the Seine has tried motorcycles with vacuum cleaners, “Pince-a-Crotte” poop tongs, “Inspecteurs de Salubrite,’ or caca cops, and 9,100-euro fines for repeat offenders. While fines in New York , London and other major cities have kept the dogs at bay, the poop crisis continues unabated in Paris. ‘Miracle Industry’ “Bacteria, chemicals and pharmaceuticals reside in the feces of all organisms,” Cabanes says. “The key to making dog excrement a product is sterilizing those toxins and turning what’s left into energy. Once we’ve done it with dogs, we can do it with humans.” Ferhout says the initial tests getting 34 female beagles to poop as directed were 100 percent successful and that field experiments at seven sites throughout Toulouse are scheduled to begin this fall. “The attractor is a mélange of dog feces, urine and sex pheromones,” Ferhout says of the product that comes in easy-to- scatter pellets or in a colorless aerosol spray. “I can’t right now say that it will work with 100 percent certainty,” Cabanes says. “But if it does, Toulouse will become the center of a miracle industry.” Not Funny Ferhout riffles through a pile of research charts marked “canine olfactory studies.” He says the data is the key to successfully attracting dogs and investment capital. “Then we collect the waste, detoxify it with endomycorrhiza and we have organic fertilizer,” he said. “Beagles have middle-spectrum olfactory sensitivity capacity,” he says. “Dogs like Dobermans and German Shepherds have the best and poodles have the worst. Getting all of them to one spot is a question of blend. The science here is good.” As for the secret ingredient, Ferhout will only reveal it’s a specific meat protein irresistible to all Rovers. Perched on a stoop overlooking a colossal silo that’s whipping up a batch of Axofol SR, a luxury organic fertilizer designed to enhance the fruity flavor of white-wine grapes, Cabanes says his 64 employees view Project Propec as a homeopathic solution to a growing global health and energy issue that others are too squeamish to tackle. “Project Propec is all about sustainability” the 53-year- old agronomist says over the machine’s great groaning blades. “What we’re developing is a business based on dog sh*t. People will find it either offensive or funny -- until they step on it.” To contact the writer on the story: A. Craig Copetas in Paris at ccopetas@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net .

Detroit Pension Boards Sue Michigan Governor Snyder Over Emergency Powers

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/detroit-pension-boards-sue-governor-over-emergency-powers-1-.html

Detroit workers’ pension boards sued Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, asking a court to declare unconstitutional a new law granting state-appointed financial managers emergency powers to terminate employee contracts and suspend collective bargaining. Snyder said the law, signed March 16, would help keep Michigan communities out of bankruptcy. Michigan has emergency managers running the schools in Detroit, as well as the cities of Pontiac, Ecorse and Benton Harbor. The law would “impermissibly modify the Detroit city charter and various collective bargaining agreements between the city of Detroit and its uniformed and non-uniformed workers,” the pension boards said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Detroit. The law authorizes “the modification and termination of constitutionally protected contract rights and the seizure of control of retirement systems,” according to the complaint. The pension boards, which also named the Michigan treasurer as a defendant, asked for a court order blocking the law from taking effect. The complaint was filed yesterday by the General Retirement System of the City of Detroit, the Police and Fire Retirement System, and four individuals, including the chairs of both boards. The Detroit pension funds have “performed in the top 20 percent of municipal pension funds nationwide in recent years,” despite “the recent global economic meltdown,” they said in the complaint. Tigi Habtemariam, Snyder’s spokeswoman, didn’t immediately return a call for comment. The case is General Retirement System of the City of Detroit v. Snyder, 2:11-cv-11686, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan (Detroit). To contact the reporter on this story: Margaret Cronin Fisk in Southfield, Michigan, at mcfisk@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net

Shuanghui Plunges as Trading Resumes Following Meat Recall

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/shuanghui-plunges-as-trading-resumes-following-meat-recall-1-.html

Henan Shuanghui Investment & Development Co., the publicly traded unit of China’s biggest food company, fell by the daily limit in Shenzhen trading as shares resumed trading after being suspended amid a probe into illegal additives found in its meat products. Shuanghui slumped by 10 percent to 70.15 yuan as of the 11:30 a.m. break. The stock had been suspended since March 16 after the company confirmed a report by China Central Television that an affiliate of Shuanghui purchased pigs which were fed a banned additive that induce the growth of lean meat. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) holds an indirect stake in the parent company of Shuanghui, Angela Yu, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for the U.S. bank said today. “The incident will affect Shuanghui’s sales by between 2 billion yuan and 4 billion yuan ($306 million-$612 million) in 2011,” Tong Xun and Man Zhen, Shanghai-based analysts at Shenyin & Wanguo Securities Co., said in a report today. They cut their earnings per-share forecast for this year by 15 percent to 2.88 yuan. China is tightening food-safety controls after milk powder tainted with the chemical melamine killed at least six children in 2008. The government executed at least two people for their roles in the scandal. Shuanghui, based in central China ’s Henan province, spent 31 million yuan in March to recall and dispose of meat products, the company said in a statement yesterday after the stock market closed. March sales were reduced by 1.34 billion yuan, according to the statement. ‘Leading’ Position At least 22 people, including seven pig farm managers and one purchaser at Shuanghui’s affiliate, were detained in connection with the use of illegal additive, the Xinhua News Agency reported last month. Shenyin & Wanguo recommends buying Shuanghui’s shares if the shares drop below 65 yuan, citing the medium- and long-term prospects of the meat industry and the company’s “leading” position. The price of 65 yuan represents 22.6 times estimated earnings for 2011, according to the brokerage. First-quarter profit may increase between 10 percent and 12.5 percent from a year earlier to 265 million yuan and 270 million yuan, Shuanghui said in yesterday’s statement. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Darren Boey at dboey@bloomberg.net

Peru Stocks: Buenaventura, Relapasa, Southern Copper, Volcan

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/peru-stocks-buenaventura-relapasa-southern-copper-volcan.html

The following companies had unusual price changes in Peru trading. Stock symbols are in parentheses and share prices are as of 4:10 p.m. New York time. The Lima General Index rose 0.8 percent to 18,999.17. The MSCI All Peru Capped Index advanced 1.2 percent to 2,570.84. Industrial stocks and utilities gained as U.S. stocks rebounded, said Arlen Lahura, a trader at Lima-based brokerage Coril SAB. Empresa Agroindustrial Pomalca SA (POMALCC1 PE), a unit of Grupo Oviedo, gained 4.2 percent to 50 centimos. Telefonica del Peru SAA (TEF PE), the local unit of Telefonica SA (TEF) , rose 4.1 percent to $25.50. Grana y Montero SA (GRAMONC1) (GRAMONC1 PE), Peru’s largest construction firm, climbed 2.9 percent to 5.05 soles. Refineria la Pampilla SA (RELAPAC1 PE), a unit of Spain ’s Repsol YPF SA, rose 1.4 percent to 1.50 soles. Miners rose after metals advanced in New York and London. Volcan Cia Minera SAA (VOLCABC1 PE), Peru’s largest zinc and silver producer, gained 4 percent to 2.87 soles after Celfin Capital analyst Isabel Darrigrandi raised the stock’s rating to “buy” from “hold.” Southern Copper Corp. (SCCO) , Peru’s biggest copper producer, rose 3 percent to $36.60 after announcing first-quarter net income jumped 25 percent to $478.4 million. Cia. de Minas Buenaventura SAA (BVN PE), the country’s biggest precious-metals miner, rose 3 percent to $39.40 after gold rose to a record in New York. Rio Alto Mining Ltd. (RIO) , a Canadian gold exploration company, advanced 1.6 percent to $1.96. To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Emery in Lima at aemery1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net

Dalton’s Bhat Says Monsoon Forecast May Ease Inflation Pressure

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/dalton-s-bhat-says-monsoon-forecast-may-ease-inflation-pressure.html

U.R. Bhat, managing director of Dalton Capital Advisors India Pvt. in Mumbai, comments on the forecast for normal monsoon rainfall in the South Asian nation. Rainfall will be 98 percent of the 50-year average in the June-September season, a level considered normal, the India Meteorological Department said today after the markets closed. Bhat spoke in a telephone interview in Mumbai. “As far as gross domestic product growth is concerned, agriculture growth is a swing factor. If agriculture growth is zero or negative then GDP tends to be lower. If agriculture is higher, GDP swings higher and approaches 9 percent. A good monsoon is a precursor for good aggregate demand, and therefore good growth in the economy and the manufacturing sector.” “Derived demand from agriculture for automobiles, cement and consumers goods will be higher. If agriculture does well, then the non-performing assets of lenders will come down.” “Consumer goods companies are dependent on raw materials, which mostly come from agriculture. If there’s a bountiful harvest, they might even be able to maintain their margin and pass on some of the benefits to consumers.” The rain forecast may help ease inflationary expectations, Bhat said. He favors shares of non-state lenders, automakers, and software and consumer goods companies. To contact the reporter on this story: Rajhkumar K Shaaw in Mumbai at rshaaw@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Darren Boey at dboey@bloomberg.net

U.K. Pound Declines Versus Euro on Bets BOE Will Increase Rates After ECB

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/pound-declines-versus-dollar-for-third-day-boe-interest-rate-bets-decline.html

The pound depreciated against the euro, snapping four days of gains, amid speculation the Bank of England will raise interest rates at a slower pace than its European counterpart. Britain’s currency gained versus the dollar before the central bank releases minutes of policy makers’ April 7 meeting tomorrow. Short-sterling futures due in December have declined just twice since April 6, with the yield dropping 32 basis points during that time as investors trimmed bets on higher borrowing costs. Data last week showed U.K. consumer price inflation unexpectedly declined in March. “Even before the CPI data, the market was pricing out an early rate hike,” said Jane Foley, a senior currency strategist at Rabobank International in London. “Unless the euro falls through the floor on the back of the peripheral issues, sterling will continue to be vulnerable against the euro in the next one- to-three months. It’s quite possible that the euro will continue to find decent support from interest-rate differentials.” Sterling weakened 0.3 percent to 87.76 pence per euro as of 4:45 p.m. in London. Against the dollar, the pound rose 0.3 percent to $1.630. The 10-year gilt yield was little changed at 3.55 percent. The 30-year yield was at 4.28 percent. The 30-year breakeven rate, a gauge of U.K. inflation expectations derived from the yield difference between index- linked and conventional bonds, gained for the first day in eight, reaching 3.53 percentage points. It earlier slipped to 3.51 percent, the lowest since Dec. 7. U.K. consumer price data for April will be published on May 17. “The rate situation in the U.K. is going to hinge on the next consumer-price index print,” said Elizabeth Gregory, a Geneva-based market strategist at Swissquote Bank SA. “It would be very damaging to the pound’s prospects if next month’s CPI is going to be another downside surprise.” The Debt Management Office today auctioned 900 million pounds of inflation-linked bonds maturing in 2050, with investors demanding 1.97 times the amount of securities on offer. To contact the reporter on this story: Lucy Meakin in London at lmeakin1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Tilles at dtilles@bloomberg.net .

Egypt’s CIB Gains Most This Month as Central Bank Eases NPL Rule

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/egypt-s-cib-gains-most-this-month-as-central-bank-eases-npl-rule.html

Commercial International Bank Egypt SAE (COMI) advanced the most this month, leading gains among Egyptian lenders after the country’s central bank eased requirements for booking provisions on non-performing loans. Commercial International, the nation’s biggest publicly traded lender, rose 2.2 percent to 28.63 Egyptian pounds at the 2:30 p.m. close in Cairo. National Societe Generale Bank, the country’s second-largest, gained 3.4 percent, the most in three weeks, to 37.24 pounds. The EGX 30 Index climbed 2.5 percent. Banks can extend the period to classify a retail loan as non-performing to three months from the time payment was due, the central bank said yesterday. Previously, lenders were required to move the loans to the non-performing portfolio after 30 days. That gives banks more time before having to book provisions against defaulted loans. "The previous strict rules would have required the banks to raise provisions especially for retail clients who had a drop in business recently," said Monette Doss, banking analyst at Cairo- based Prime Holding (PRMH) who had forecast an increase in Commercial International provisions to 80 million pounds ($13 million) this year from 6 million pounds in 2010. “This will help their bottom lines.” To contact the reporter on this story: Ahmed A Namatalla in Cairo at anamatalla@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Maedler at cmaedler@bloomberg.net

European Stocks Rebound From Biggest Decline in a Month; LVMH, SKF Advance

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/european-stock-index-futures-advance-tesco-lvmh-may-see-active-trading.html

European stocks rose, rebounding from the biggest drop in a month, as results from LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA (MC) to SKF AB (SKFB) and Novartis AG (NOVN) beat analysts’ estimates. LVMH, the world’s largest luxury-goods maker, climbed 5 percent after first-quarter sales topped projections. SKF, the biggest maker of ball bearings, rallied 6.4 percent after reporting record quarterly profit. Novartis, Europe ’s second- largest drugmaker by sales, advanced the most in four months. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index gained 0.5 percent to 274.42 at the 4:30 p.m. close in London. The gauge tumbled 1.7 percent yesterday as Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service cut its long-term sovereign credit outlook for the U.S., the world’s largest economy, to negative from stable. The benchmark measure of European equities has still climbed 4.7 percent from this year’s low on March 16. “Earnings have been of good quality,” said Jerome Forneris, who helps manage $11 billion at Banque Martin Maurel in Marseille. “If the whole earnings season is like this, we hope the market will make that its focus. This is good news, but in a calmer environment, the market would be gaining more. The market still is timid.” Of the 16 companies in the Stoxx 600 that have reported earnings since April 11, 11 have beaten estimates for per-share profit, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In the U.S., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. posted a smaller decline in earnings that projected today. CAC 40, FTSE National benchmark indexes rose in all of the 18 western European markets. France ’s CAC 40 added 0.7 percent, the U.K.’s FTSE 100 rose 0.5 percent and Germany ’s DAX gained 0.2 percent. European services and manufacturing growth unexpectedly accelerated in April, suggesting the economy is weathering surging energy costs and tougher austerity measures. A composite index based on a survey of euro-area purchasing managers in both industries rose to 57.8 from 57.6 in March, London-based Markit Economics said today. A reading above 50 indicates growth. A gain in U.S. housing starts in March failed to make up for ground lost the prior month as homebuilders continue to struggle almost two years into the economic recovery. Work began on 549,000 houses at an annual pace, up 7.2 percent from the prior month and exceeding the 520,000 median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, figures from the Commerce Department showed today. Starts fell 19 percent in February to the lowest level in almost two years. Luxury Goods Gain LVMH advanced 5 percent to 115.20 euros, pacing gains in luxury-goods shares. The company said first-quarter sales rose 17 percent, topping analysts’ estimates, as wealthy customers bought more Givenchy handbags and Hublot watches. Burberry Group Plc (BRBY) rallied 6 percent to 1,215 pence, a record high. The U.K.’s largest luxury retailer reported fiscal fourth-quarter sales that beat estimates and said adjusted full- year profit will be near the top end of market expectations. Christian Dior SA (CDI) climbed 3.8 percent to 100.90 euros. Cie. Financiere Richemont SA, the world’s largest jewelry maker, added 3.7 percent to 52.25 francs. SKF surged 6.4 percent to 186.90 kronor. The maker of ball bearings said first-quarter net income rose to 1.57 billion kronor ($250 million) from 1.03 billion kronor a year earlier. Analysts on average expected net income of 1.43 billion kronor, a survey of 17 estimates compiled by Bloomberg showed. Novartis, Daimler Novartis gained 3.5 percent to 50.30 Swiss francs, the largest increase since December. The drugmaker’s first-quarter profit fell 6 percent to $2.77 billion, surpassing the $2.57 billion average estimate in a Bloomberg survey. Daimler AG (DAI) advanced 0.9 percent to 49.08 euros as auto- industry shares led gains in the Stoxx 600. The carmaker sees “significant” growth in China ’s car market, with annual industry sales of 20 million to 30 million vehicles “within reach” over the next five to 10 years, Chief Executive Officer Dieter Zetsche said in Shanghai today. Faurecia (EO) SA advanced 4.3 percent to 25.75 euros. Europe’s biggest maker of car interiors had first-quarter revenue of 3.96 billion euros ($5.7 billion), compared with 3.2 billion euros a year earlier. Zodiac Aerospace (ZC) SA increased 2.7 percent to 51.50 euros. Europe’s largest maker of aircraft seats had first-half net income of 114.3 million euros, up from 44.1 million euros a year earlier. Electricite de France SA jumped 3.9 percent to 27.66 euros after the French government matched the price requested by the utility for the sale of its nuclear power to competitors. Leoni AG (LEO) , a maker of electric cables and wires, soared 6.4 percent to 32.99 euros after raising its guidance. The company said it sees earnings before interest and taxes of about 210 million euros in 2011 and sales of about 3.4 billion euros. TeliaSonera AB (TLSN) retreated 2.2 percent to 48.69 kronor. Sweden’s largest phone company said first-quarter net income declined to 4.65 billion kronor from 4.72 billion kronor a year earlier. Analysts on average had forecast net income of 4.81 billion, a survey of 14 estimates compiled by Bloomberg showed. To contact the reporter on this story: Adria Cimino in Paris at acimino1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Rummer at arummer@bloomberg.net .

EU Says UN Emissions Board Not Reasonable on Margins of Error

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/eu-says-un-emissions-board-not-reasonable-on-margins-of-error.html

The European Union said a draft United Nations standard on margins of error for greenhouse gas- cutting projects may be unreasonable, according to a submission. The International Emissions Trading Association, the Geneva-based industry lobby group, requested more than two years ago that regulators adopt a 5 percent margin of error when estimating how much heat-trapping gas they remove from the atmosphere. A draft standard by the Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board would apply 5 percent for small-scale projects and 0.5 percent for projects that yield more than 500,000 metric tons a year of tradable credits. “An absolute level of assurance” contained in the board’s draft would mean that every parameter was checked to ensure that every material error was taken into account, according to a submission to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn by Hungary on behalf of the EU. “This level of assurance cannot reasonably be asked,” it said. The EU emissions trading system and the Voluntary Carbon Standard require a “reasonable level of assurance” during verification, the bloc said. “The EU would be in favor of using this standard.” Adoption of margins for error will cut transaction costs in the market, the world’s biggest offset program, according to a submission by the UN Development Programme based in New York. ‘Pedantic Application’ “Currently, transaction costs and times, particularly for unusual, unique or first-of-a-kind projects, can easily surpass $100,000 and well over a year, just to reach registration,” it said. “The increased complexity of procedures, and the pedantic application of meticulous rules has delivered no significant improvement in environmental integrity of the CDM,” the UNDP said, citing the World Bank. A submission from China said the introduction of the concept of materiality should help to improve the efficiency of the CDM, providing more flexibility to audit firms that validate projects and count emission reductions. The EU proposed a category recognizing “micro-scale” projects such as power plants with capacity of less than 5 megawatts and a 10-percent margin of error. Wind turbines can have capacities of as much as 7 megawatts. The CDM board should implement the concept of materiality in validation of projects, verification of emissions cuts and reviews “as soon as possible,” the EU said. In December, UN climate negotiators dropped an option to include the concept. A draft decision published Dec. 6 at talks in Cancun, Mexico , included the possibility of introducing the “concept of level of assurance and materiality” by last month. A later draft requested a UN body “consider the issue of materiality” and perhaps make a recommendation later. To contact the reporter on this story: Mathew Carr in London at m.carr@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net

BofA Merges Corporate, Investment Banking Units With Eye on Global Markets

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/bofa-merges-corporate-investment-banking-units-with-eye-on-global-markets.html

Bank of America Corp. (BAC) ’s global banking and markets chief Thomas K. Montag combined the division’s corporate and investment-banking units and promoted a European manager to co-head of the new operations. Christian Meissner, head of investment banking in Europe , the Middle East and Africa , will lead global corporate and investment banking with Michael Rubinoff and Paul Donofrio, according to a memo sent yesterday. Previously, Rubinoff and Purna Saggurti ran the investment bank and Donofrio was head of corporate banking for the Charlotte , North Carolina-based firm. The changes underscore the importance of growth outside the U.S. for Bank of America’s units that serve the world’s biggest corporations. The division gets 28 percent of revenue from overseas, and Montag told investors last month that figure may reach 50 percent in five years. Most senior hires have been non- U.S. managers; Meissner and Donofrio are based in London while Rubinoff works from New York. “We’ve been attacking the international opportunity,” Montag, 54, said at a March 8 conference. “If there’s anything that’s happened over the last two years, I think that people are more international now than they’ve ever been, and the growth of countries around the world is faster than anybody thought it was going to be 10 or 15 years ago.” New Roles Donofrio, 51, will lead capital markets, leasing, loan products and treasury solutions, according to the memo. Meissner, 42, and Rubinoff, 48, are responsible for the strategic direction of the unit and will run mergers and acquisitions with Donofrio. Saggurti, 52, will be chairman of the new unit, responsible for maintaining relationships with CEOs and directors of large corporations. All of the executives report to Montag. “Common leadership of both products and coverage will enhance our ability to serve clients and improve profitability,” Montag said in the memo. The global corporate and investment-banking unit had $11.5 billion in revenue last year, or 40 percent of the division’s overall revenue, compared with $17 billion for sales and trading. The division was formed two years ago with Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co., creating what now ranks as the biggest U.S. lender by assets. The unit has more than 12,000 employees operating in about 40 countries. Last week, Montag’s operations reported first-quarter profit of $2.1 billion, compared with $701 million in the fourth quarter and $3.2 billion a year earlier. Investment-banking fees of $1.5 billion rose 24 percent from a year earlier, fueled by mergers and acquisitions and debt and equity issuance, the company said. John Yiannacopoulos, a spokesman for Bank of America, confirmed the memo’s authenticity. The moves were reported earlier by the Financial Times. To contact the reporter on this story: Hugh Son in New York at hson1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net .

Swaps Regulator Watchdog Failed U.S. Government Standards Audit

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/swaps-regulator-watchdog-failed-u-s-government-standards-audit.html

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission ’s internal watchdog has “significant deficiencies” in its auditing systems and received a failing grade in a government-required review completed in March. From October 2006 through March 2010, the agency’s Office of the Inspector General failed to meet government standards for quality control procedures, overseeing independent accountants, documenting budget requests, and auditing contractors, according to the 37-page review. The IG’s office also failed to regularly make its reports available on the Internet, the review said. The office’s auditing system was “not suitably designed and complied with to provide CFTC OIG with reasonable assurance of performing and/or reporting in conformity with applicable professional standards in all material respects,” according to the review, conducted by Lynne A. McFarland , inspector general of the Federal Election Commission. The report was compiled to comply with federal guidelines requiring inspectors general to undergo a peer review every three years. The review, which is a public document, was sent as three letters, dated March 31, to CFTC Inspector General A. Roy Lavik. Three of four deficiencies identified in a 2007 peer-review audit of the watchdog office were left uncorrected, according to the review, which has not been posted on the Internet. Lavik’s office responded as part of the report, repeatedly pledging to “implement the recommendation” and “amend our policies and procedures as necessary to assure compliance with the recommendation within six months.” Lavik and his office didn’t immediately respond to phone calls or emails requesting comment. New Authority The CFTC was granted broad new authority under the Dodd- Frank Act to write and enforce new regulations for the $583 trillion international swaps market. Enacted last year, the law requires the regulations to be finalized by mid-July. The watchdog office questioned the agency’s cost estimates for swap rules in a report dated April 15. The CFTC has relied mainly on lawyers instead of agency economists to produce “one- size-fits-all” cost estimates of new derivatives regulations, according to the investigation requested by Representative Frank D. Lucas, an Oklahoma Republican, and Representative K. Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican. The agency has faced criticism from Republicans, CME Group Inc., the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and other parts of the financial industry for not adequately estimating the costs of new derivatives regulations. To contact the reporter on this story: Silla Brush in Washington at sbrush@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lawrence Roberts at lroberts13@bloomberg.net

Gain in March Starts of U.S. Homes Probably Failed to Make Up Lost Ground

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/gain-in-march-starts-of-u-s-homes-probably-failed-to-make-up-lost-ground.html

A gain in housing starts in March probably failed to make up for ground lost the prior month as U.S. homebuilders continued to struggle almost two years into the economic recovery, economists said before a report today. Work began on 520,000 houses at an annual pace, up 8.6 percent from the prior month, according to the median estimate of 77 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Starts fell 23 percent in February, the most since 1984, to the lowest level in almost two years. Housing, which pushed the economy into the recession, remains the weak link in the recovery and continues to weigh on consumer spending as home prices fall. The prospect of more foreclosures and joblessness forecast to average 8.7 percent this year means any recovery in housing may take time to develop. “Builders can’t sell homes and make a profit with so many distressed homes on the market,” said Patrick Newport , an economist at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. “What’s keeping activity down now are foreclosures and falling prices.” The Commerce Department’s report is due at 8:30 a.m. in Washington. Survey estimates ranged from 475,000 to 620,000. Building permits increased to a 540,000 annual pace, up 1.1 percent from a 534,000 rate, according to the survey median. Permits slumped 5.2 percent in February. Confidence among U.S. homebuilders fell in April, led by a decline in the outlook for sales. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo sentiment index declined to 16 this month from 17 in March, data from the Washington-based group showed yesterday. A measure of sales expectations for the next six months dropped to the lowest level since October. Record Low New-home sales fell to a record-low annual rate of 250,000 in February, the Commerce Department reported on March 23. The median price dropped to the lowest level since December 2003. Sales of existing homes, which make up more than 90 percent of the market, rose 2.5 percent to a 5 million annual pace in March, economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast the National Association of Realtors may report tomorrow. Existing-home sales have been gaining market share from new homes due to increased cash purchases of distressed homes. Lending rates are rising as the broader economy recovers. The average rate on a 30-year fixed loan increased to 4.98 percent the week ended April 8, the highest since Feb. 18, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Borrowing costs have climbed since reaching 4.21 percent in October, the lowest since the group’s records began in 1990. Foreclosure Forecast Even with home seizures currently clogged in the pipeline as banks and state attorneys general struggle to agree on new guidelines, foreclosure filings will climb about 20 percent in 2011, reaching a peak for the housing crisis, RealtyTrac Inc. said Jan. 13. CoreLogic Inc. last month estimated about 1.8 million homes were delinquent or in foreclosure, a so-called “shadow inventory” set to add to the 3.5 million existing homes already on the market. “Activity in the housing market continued to be depressed, held down by the large inventory of foreclosed or distressed properties on the market and by weak demand,” Federal Reserve policy makers said in minutes of their March 15 policy meeting released April 5. Homebuilders aren’t optimistic. KB Home (KBH) , the Los Angeles- based homebuilder that targets first-time buyers, this month reported a bigger-than-expected loss for the quarter ended Feb. 28 as orders plunged. Buyer Concerns “Today’s consumers remain very cautious, whether they have concerns about home prices falling further, their job status, their ability to qualify for a loan, or general confidence in the economy,” President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Mezger said during a conference call with analysts on April 5. “A sustained, broad-based housing recovery will not occur until we start to experience material job creation.” Homebuilders have underperformed the broader stock market. The Standard & Poor’s Supercomposite Homebuilder Index has gained 1.4 percent so far this year, compared with a 3.8 percent increase for the broader S&P 500 Index. To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Willis in Washington at bwillis@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Wellisz at cwellisz@bloomberg.net

Cameron Says Former Premier Brown Might Not Be ‘Most Appropriate’ IMF Head

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/cameron-says-brown-might-not-be-most-appropriate-person-to-take-imf-job.html

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said his predecessor, Gordon Brown, might not be the “most appropriate” person to head the International Monetary Fund because the job needs someone who “understands the danger of excessive debt.” “It’s important the IMF is run by somebody extremely competent and capable,” Cameron said in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program in London this morning. “If you have someone who didn’t think we had a debt problem in the U.K. when we self-evidently do have a debt problem, he may not be the most appropriate person to work out whether other countries around the world have debt and deficit problems.” While current IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss- Kahn’s term doesn’t end until October 2012, political opinion polls show strong support for him in his native France in the approach to next year’s presidential election. If he decides to run, he would need to declare by July, the deadline for his Socialist Party’s shortlist. Strauss-Kahn declined to comment on his plans during the IMF’s semi-annual meetings last week. Cameron took office last year after a campaign in which his Conservative Party questioned Brown’s stewardship of the U.K. economy after he oversaw the deepest recession since World War II and the budget deficit swelled to a record. Brown, who was in Washington during the IMF’s meetings, blames the global financial crisis for the size of the shortfall. His Labour Party, now in opposition, has criticized Cameron’s government for cutting the deficit too fast. ‘Eminently Qualified’ Asked about Cameron’s comments at a press conference in London, Labour leader Ed Miliband said Brown is “eminently qualified” for the job, adding that the IMF post is not vacant at present. Cameron signaled he may support breaking the tradition of a European running the IMF in exchange for an American helming the World Bank. That approach was endorsed at talks in Washington last week of the Group of 24 developing nations. “It might be time to have a candidate from another part of the world,” given the rise of India and China , Cameron said. “It may well be that actually when you think the IMF has to be listened to and taken seriously by countries not just in the West but all over the world.” To contact the reporters on this story: Thomas Penny in London at tpenny@bloomberg.net ; Simon Kennedy in London at skennedy4@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.net

Copper Climbs for First Day in Seven as Decline Spurs Buying

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/copper-climbs-for-first-day-in-seven-as-decline-spurs-buying.html

Copper in London climbed for the first time in seven days as a drop to a one-month low attracted buyers. Zinc and lead also advanced. Three-month-delivery copper on the London Metal Exchange rose as much as 1.3 percent to $9,345 a metric ton and was at $9,340 at 9:07 a.m. Singapore time. The contract dropped to $9,207 a ton yesterday, the lowest since March 17. “The drop close to $9,000 is considered quite attractive to physical buyers in China these days so that’s been keeping prices supported above $9,000,” Lin Jihan, a manager at Shanli Futures Co., said from Wenzhou. July-delivery copper on the Comex in New York gained as much as 0.8 percent to $4.2525 a pound. The metal for June- delivery on the Shanghai Futures Exchange fell as much as 1.8 percent to 69,800 yuan ($10,685) a ton. “The U.S. dollar has also been driving direction recently,” said Lin. “Even if the rest of the world tightens, we’ll still face the problem of excess liquidity if the U.S. doesn’t.” The dollar was little changed against a basket of six currencies after rising the most since January yesterday. The currency gained even as Standard & Poor’s put a “negative” outlook on the long-term AAA credit rating of the U.S., sending the S&P 500 down by the most in a month. China boosted banks’ reserve requirements this week for the fourth time this year, two weeks after it hiked interest rates to help contain inflation and limit the risk of asset bubbles. Central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan said April 16 that monetary tightening will continue for “some time.” European Tightening The European Central Bank raised rates this month for the first time since July 2008 as consumer prices accelerated. In the past week, Governing Council members Ewald Nowotny and Luc Coene signaled the ECB will keep tightening monetary policy this year to curb inflation as the economy strengthens. The Federal Reserve on the other hand has kept the benchmark interest rate close to zero since 2008. Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will hold his first press conference following the Federal Open Market Committee statement on April 27 after a two- day meeting in Washington. Zinc in London advanced 0.3 percent to $2,331.25 a ton, lead increased 1.3 percent to $2,560 a ton and tin climbed 0.8 percent to $32,600 a ton. Aluminum dropped 0.4 percent to $2,664.75 a ton, and nickel fell 0.4 percent to $25,407 a ton. To contact the reporter on this story: Glenys Sim in Singapore at gsim4@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Poole at jpoole4@bloomberg.net

BofA Merges Corporate, Investment Banking Units, FT Reports

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/bofa-merges-corporate-investment-banking-units-ft-reports.html

Bank of America Corp. (BAC) has put together its corporate and investment banking units and named Christian Meissner, Paul Donofrio and Michael Rubinoff to run the business jointly, the Financial Times reported. Purna Saggurti will be the chairman, the newspaper said. To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Purkiss in London on apurkiss@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Colin Keatinge at ckeatinge@bloomberg.net .

Boeing, Lockheed Venture Sues U.S. to Stop Debarment Over Document Dispute

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/united-space-alliance-sues-u-s-to-stop-contracting-debarment.html

United Space Alliance LLC , a joint venture equally owned by Boeing Co. (BA) and Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) , sued the U.S. in a bid to prevent being barred from government contracts over a dispute involving pay data. United Space Alliance, the largest U.S. space shuttle contractor, asked a federal court in Washington today to block an April 11 Labor Department order requiring the company to turn over detailed compensation data within 30 days or face debarment. “Debarment of United Space from receiving future government contracts will subject United Space to irreparable harm because its primary government contract is winding down based on completion of the Space Shuttle program,” said the company, which had $1.81 billion in government contracts last year according to Bloomberg Government data. The Houston-based company said the Labor Department order stems from a probe into gender pay disparity. Tracy Yates, a United Space spokeswoman, didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment. United Space announced April 15 that after the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle Program this year, the company will cut its workforce by up to 50 percent. The company currently employs 5,600 people in Florida , Texas and Alabama. The case is United Space Alliance v. Solis, 11-cv-00746, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington). To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Schoenberg in Washington at tschoenberg@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Hytha at mhytha@bloomberg.net .

Southern Copper’s Quarterly Net Rises on Metal Prices

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/southern-copper-s-quarterly-net-rises-on-metal-prices-1-.html

(Corrects timeframe in first paragraph.) Southern Copper Corp. (SCCO) , the largest producer of the metal in Peru and Mexico, said first-quarter profit rose 25 percent on rising copper prices and output. Net income climbed to $478.4 million, or 56 cents a share, from $383.2 million, or 45 cents, in the year-earlier period, the Phoenix-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. Profit, excluding items, was expected to be about 82 cents a share, the average estimate of six analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Sales increased 31 percent to $1.6 billion as New York- traded copper futures averaged 33 percent higher in the quarter than a year earlier. Average silver prices rose 89 percent. Southern also benefited from the restart of its Cananea copper mine in Mexico , which ended a three-year strike in June 2009. Southern Copper fell 9 cents, or 0.3 percent, to $35.67 at 1:21 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock has gained 9.4 percent in the past year. (Southern Copper will hold a conference call today at 11 a.m. New York time. Dial-in: 1-631-813-4732, Conference ID: 59298898.) To contact the reporter on this story: Alexander Emery in Lima at aemery1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexander Emery at aemery1@bloomberg.net

Germany May Use Capacity Payments to Add Plants, Barclays Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/germany-may-use-capacity-payments-to-add-plants-barclays-says.html

The German government may consider paying utilities including RWE AG (RWE) and E.ON AG (EOAN) capacity payments to boost construction of new power plants after events in Japan closed nuclear plants, analysts said. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition plans to expand offshore wind parks and build more gas plants to plug a potential gap in power generation that will likely follow a retreat from nuclear power. Merkel, who plans to accelerate Germany’s exit from nuclear power, last month ordered the operators of the country’s seven oldest atomic plants to idle the reactors for a safety check after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station. “We believe that targeted capacity payments to incentivize the construction of flexible fossil fuel generation are a possible outcome, similar to what the U.K. government is proposing,” Barclays Capital analysts including Peter Bisztyga and Monica Girardi said in a note to investors yesterday. Seeking to meet climate change targets and replace aging power stations, the British government is considering reforms including capacity payments. The payments would reward low- carbon generators, like nuclear reactors and offshore windfarms, for providing low carbon power, regardless of the price of electricity. To contact the reporter on this story: Kari Lundgren in London at klundgren2@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net .

GM Aims New Malibu at Retaking U.S. Sales as Chevy Goes Global

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/gm-aims-new-malibu-at-retaking-u-s-sales-as-chevy-goes-global.html

General Motors Co. (GM) redesigned its Chevrolet Malibu with better fuel economy and sportier looks as the automaker seeks to regain sales in the U.S. and improve the Chevy brand’s global reputation. The new model, which will be revealed on a global webcast and at the Shanghai auto show today, will feature styling cues from the Camaro sports car and should exceed 30 mpg in highway fuel economy when it goes on sale in January 2012, said Mark Moussa, GM’s chief engineer for mid-sized and full-sized cars. The car, which was engineered to use mostly the same parts globally, may sell in 100 markets with about 400,000 deliveries a year, said Michael Robinet , vice president of IHS Automotive. The car likely will be built in Hamtramck, Michigan; Kansas City , Kansas; and internationally in China , South Korea and Uzbekistan, Robinet said. “This will be GM’s first truly global mid-sized sedan,” said Robinet, who’s based in Northville, Michigan. “GM finally got the memo. They have figured out that they don’t need to reinvent the wheel all over the world.” GM pursued a similar strategy of global production with the Chevy Cruze compact, which went on sale in September. Bob Lutz, who retired as GM vice chairman a year ago, pushed the automaker to globalize engineering to save money on some parts and free up cash for features with more consumer appeal, Robinet said. GM told suppliers earlier this year that it would start producing the Malibu in January 2012 instead of April of that year. Chief Executive Officer Dan Akerson is pushing to speed the development of new models after the Detroit-based company’s 2009 bankruptcy forced cuts in its engineering and new-model budgets, resulting in a dearth of new vehicles. U.S. Market In the U.S., GM is aiming to deliver more than the almost 199,000 Malibu sedans Chevrolet sold in 2010, Russ Clark, director of the brand’s product marketing, said in an interview, without giving a specific target. The company also hasn’t provided a global sales target for the Malibu. The Malibu’s share of the U.S. mid-sized car segment fell to 7.1 percent in the first quarter from 9 percent a year ago, according to Autodata Corp. About 5 percent of people shopping for mid-sized cars online in February researched the Malibu, about one-third of the percentage from three years ago, according to Edmunds.com. Deliveries have dropped 1.2 percent this year, according to Autodata in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey. The Malibu will offer only a 190-horsepower, 4-cylinder engine and not a V-6 engine as in previous versions. The car will be competitively priced with the current Malibu, which starts at $22,735 including freight charges, Clark said, without giving a particular price. Fleet Sales Chevrolet aims to shrink the percentage of sales to fleet customers such as rental-car companies to about 15 percent to 20 percent of the model’s total deliveries from more than 20 percent of the current car’s sales volume, he said. The Malibu is a vital piece of Chevy’s attempt to build up the brand’s image, Clark said. “The mid-sized car market is the largest in the U.S. and the most competitive,” he said. “It’s the segment by which your brand gets judged.” The Malibu will face competition from quickly growing models such as Hyundai Motor Co. (005380) ’s Sonata, Kia Motors Corp. (000270) ’s Optima and Volkswagen AG (VOW) ’s Jetta, Edmunds CEO Jeremy Anwyl said. “They desperately need the new Malibu,” Anwyl said. “Chevy re-established credibility in the mid-size car market with the current Malibu. The car is just the victim of a long product cycle.” GM is spending almost $4,200 on sales incentives and discounts for each Malibu sale, according to Santa Monica , California-based Edmunds. The discounts are large enough that the Malibu has taken some buyers who entered showrooms intending to buy the Cruze, Anwyl said. “GM needs to be able to sell the car, not the deal,” Dave Sullivan, an analyst at AutoPacific Inc. in Troy, Michigan , said in an interview. “That’s the problem GM has had for so long. People are going to be attracted to this vehicle for its style, technology and powertrains. That’s a step in the right direction.” To contact the reporters on this story: David Welch at dwelch12@bloomberg.net ; Craig Trudell in New York at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jamie Butters at jbutters@bloomberg.net

Keppel Land First-Quarter Net Rises 46% on Residential Sales

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/keppel-land-first-quarter-net-rises-46-on-residential-sales-1-.html

Keppel Land Ltd. (KPLD) , the property developer partly owned by the world’s biggest builder of oil rigs, posted a 46 percent gain in first-quarter profit from a year earlier because of higher home sales. Net income for the three months ended on March 31 was S$92.1 million ($73.9 million) compared with S$63.3 million a year earlier, the Singapore-based company said in an e-mailed statement today. Revenue more than tripled to S$357.9 million from S$106.5 million a year earlier. Earnings from property trading increased 8.2 percent in the quarter to S$51.6 million as the developer sold residential projects in Singapore and Bangalore, Keppel Land said. To contact the reporter on this story: Kristine Aquino in Singapore at Kaquino1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Darren Boey at dboey@bloomberg.net .

Japanese Stocks Fall to One-Month Low After S&P Cuts U.S. Credit Outlook

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/japanese-stocks-decline-for-third-day-after-s-p-cuts-u-s-credit-outlook.html

Japanese stocks fell for a third day, sending the Topix to its lowest level in a month, after Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. long-term credit outlook to negative, fueling concern the global economic recovery will slow. Toyota Motor Corp. (7203) , the world’s biggest carmaker, slid 3.1 percent. Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, sank 4.3 percent after the utility said two of its reactors are still too radioactive to allow workers inside. TDK Corp. (6762) , the largest maker of magnetic heads for disk drives, tumbled 7.6 percent after brokerages said a possible buyout of one of its customers could hurt sales. The Nikkei 225 (NKY) Stock Average retreated 1.2 percent to 9,441.03. The Topix lost 1.1 percent to 827.56, falling to its lowest since March 17. “If we get down to a point where the U.S. has its debt downgraded, the deflatory effects will be felt globally,” said Melbourne-based Tim Schroeders of Pengana Capital Ltd., which manages about $1 billion. “A lot of credit is priced off U.S. denominated debt, and those effects will be felt.” The Topix has declined 9.6 percent since a magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami on March 11 devastated Japan’s northeast coast and disabled a Tokyo Electric atomic power station. In the same period the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 0.1 percent, while the Stoxx Europe 600 Index dropped 0.9 percent. U.S. Debt Outlook Stocks in the Topix are valued at 12.7 times estimated earnings on average, compared with 13.4 times for the S&P 500 and 10.9 times for the Stoxx 600. Markets from New York to Hong Kong and Tokyo retreated after S&P’s rating service yesterday said the U.S. government risks losing its AAA credit rating unless policy makers agree on a plan by 2013 to reduce budget deficits and the national debt. “We believe there is a material risk that U.S. policy makers might not reach an agreement on how to address medium-and long-term budgetary challenges by 2013,” New York-based S&P said in a report yesterday. “If an agreement is not reached and meaningful implementation does not begin by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer ‘AAA’ sovereigns.” Toyota sank 3.1 percent to 3,125 yen. Canon Inc. (7751) , the world’s biggest camera maker, slid 1.8 percent 3,555 yen. Fanuc Corp. (6954) , a manufacturer of factory robots which earns about 80 percent of revenue overseas, lost 1.8 percent to 12,890 yen. Yen Gains Exporters also declined after the yen rose against the dollar and euro for a fourth day, as investors flocked to safer assets on concern Europe’s debt crisis is worsening and after the downgrade to U.S. credit-rating outlook. Japan’s currency appreciated to as high as 82.19 against the dollar overnight, compared with 82.91 at the close of stock trading in Tokyo yesterday. Against the euro, the yen strengthened to 116.48 today from 119.16. Tokyo Electric retreated 4.3 percent to 447 yen after the utility said robots sent into two buildings at its damaged Fukushima plant detected radiation levels too toxic for humans. TDK tumbled 7.6 percent to 3,980 yen, its lowest since July 2009, on speculation a buyer of its drive heads, Samsung Electronics Co., will sell its hard-drive unit to a competitor that gets its parts from an internal supplier. The deal could reduce TDK’s annual sales by as much as 69 billion yen ($840 million), Credit Suisse Group AG said in a letter to clients. The planned sale of Samsung’s unit was reported by the Wall Street Journal on April 17. Isuzu Motors Ltd. (7202) , Japan’s largest maker of light trucks, gained 1.9 percent to 324 yen after Deutsche Bank AG initiated coverage of Isuzu with a “buy” rating and set the stock price estimate for 12 months at 450 yen. To contact the reporters for this story: Norie Kuboyama in Tokyo at nkuboyama@bloomberg.net ; Anna Kitanaka in Tokyo at akitanaka@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Gentle at ngentle2@bloomberg.net .

Irish Authorities ‘Seriously Misjudged’ Risks, Report Shows

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/irish-authorities-seriously-misjudged-risks-report-shows.html

Irish regulatory authorities “seriously misjudged” risks from the country’s property bubble and didn’t have sufficient oversight of bank lending, a government-appointed investigator said. “Risks went undetected or were at least seriously misjudged by the authorities whose actions and warnings were modest and insufficient,” Peter Nyberg , a former director general for financial markets at Finland ’s finance ministry, said in a report published today in Dublin. There was “unhindered expansion of the property bubble,” supported by “government policies and pronouncements.” Ireland may spend as much as 100 billion euros ($145 billion) to solve Europe ’s worst banking crisis, including 29 billion euros injected into Anglo Irish Bank Corp., which was nationalized in 2009 as loan losses soared. The country, forced into an international bailout in November, is struggling to convince investors its debt is sustainable after the collapse of a domestic real-estate bubble in 2007. “Banks appear to have emphasized loan sales skills above risk, credit skills,” said Nyberg, who was hired in July to lead an investigation into the crisis. The problems causing the crisis were the result “of domestic Irish decisions.” ‘Gullible’ The report also said that expansion by bank lending during the property boom wasn’t matched by a “corresponding necessary strengthening of governance.” The crisis pushed Ireland’s budget deficit to about 32 percent of gross domestic product last year, 10 times the European Union limit. Fitch Ratings said yesterday that Ireland’s solvency is “fragile” and forecast that national debt may rise to 116 percent of GDP in 2013 to 2014. “Ireland as a whole used up money from elsewhere and lived above its means,” Nyberg said at a press conference in Dublin. “Paying money back means it will have to live below its means” for some time. He also said it is “quite remarkable” that fiscal policy didn’t react to a “very heated property market ,” and that bondholders of banks were “among the gullible” during the banking boom. Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said yesterday that Anglo Irish senior bondholders may be treated differently than those at Allied Irish Banks Plc (ALBK) and Bank of Ireland Plc, which the government says won’t have losses imposed on them. ‘Thoughful’ Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said today the report “represents a thoughtful and multi-faceted analysis into the causes of the banking crisis.” It “bears careful and measured consideration by all concerned,” he said. Nyberg said bank auditors fulfilled their duties “to the letter but to a quite narrow framework” and that it would have been “useful” if they had held discussions with their clients “on emerging risks.” On Anglo Irish, Nyberg’s report said credit management structures “were in practice deficient.” It called credit management at Irish Nationwide Building Society “unusual in many respects” with policies applied “very flexibly.” Nyberg’s document follows two reports last year, one by Irish Central Bank Governor Patrick Honohan , who concluded macro-economic and budgetary policies “contributed significantly to economic overheating .” The second said that the country’s banking crisis “was in crucial ways home-made .” The central bank instructed the country’s four so-called viable lenders, Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish, Irish Life & Permanent Plc and EBS Building Society, on March 31 to raise 24 billion euros after a third round of stress tests. The government, which has already injected 46.3 billion euros into the banks over the past two years, will provide whatever capital they can’t generate by sharing losses with subordinated bondholders, asset sales or share sales. Ireland has also paid more than 30 billion euros in the past year for banks’ risky real-estate loans. “The crisis was created because of very widespread lack of prudence in Irish society,” Nyberg said. Ireland was part “of a more general trend” and there was the “same kind of happy- go-lucky” attitude elsewhere. To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Brennan in Dublin at jbrennan29@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net

Hip-Replacement Patients' Readmissions Rise With Shorter Stays, Study Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/hip-replacements-spur-quicker-hospital-discharges-while-more-return-trips.html

Patients undergoing hip-replacement surgery are being released earlier, while more make return trips to the hospital within 30 days of the procedure, an analysis of Medicare recipients found. The number of days patients who had total hip replacements stayed in the hospital fell 60 percent as more people were sent to nursing and rehabilitation facilities than in the past, according to research published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Deaths from the surgery also fell or remained stable from 1991 to 2008 even as sicker patients underwent the hip operations. About 280,000 total hip replacement surgeries are performed each year in the U.S., costing more than $12 billion, the authors wrote. Today’s study was one of the first to analyze how hip replacement outcomes have changed over time, lead author Peter Cram said. The results show the challenge of controlling Medicare spending, he said. “Length of stay has gotten shorter, but what’s happening is patients are going to rehabilitation, which is also expensive,” Cram, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, said in an April 15 telephone interview. “They’re being readmitted, which is also expensive. This shows the real challenges of controlling Medicare spending.” Surgery Revisions Total hip replacement involves cutting off the head of the thigh bone, replacing it with a metal shaft and inserting a plastic cup in the pelvis. The study also included patients who needed revisions to their original surgery, Cram said. From 25,000 to 50,000 of these repeat procedures are conducted each year, he said. The global market for hip implants is expected to grow to $5.45 billion this year, and increase of 3.2 percent from 2010, according to a Feb. 28 report by Joanne Wuensch, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets in New York. The DePuy Orthopaedics unit of New Brunswick , New Jersey- based Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) is the leading maker of hip implants. Biomet Inc. and Zimmer Holdings Inc. (ZMH) , both based in Warsaw, Indiana , Arlington, Tennessee-based Wright Medical Group Inc. (WMGI) , London-based Smith & Nephew Plc (SN/) , and Kalamazoo, Michigan-based Stryker Corp. (SYK) are among the makers of the implants. Researchers looked at data on 1.45 million Medicare recipients who had total hip replacements from 1991 to 2008 and about 348,000 who had revision hip replacement surgery. Medicare is the U.S. government’s health program for the elderly and disabled. Older Patients By 2008, the patients were older and more likely to be sicker, with conditions such as diabetes, congestive heart failure and obesity, the researchers found. The number of patients who had total hip replacements who were sent home after surgery fell to 48 percent in 2007-2008 from 68 percent in 1991-1992, while the percentage of patients sent to a skilled nursing home or rehabilitation center doubled, the authors found. About 8.5 percent of patients were readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge in 2007-2008, compared with 5.9 percent in 1991-1992. Cram said it’s unclear why readmission rates rose. “What that might suggest is we’re sending patients home more quickly, but more of them have to come back into the hospital for complications or something related to their surgery,” Cram said. The researchers are analyzing the data to try to determine why readmission rates increased, he said. DePuy Recall In August, DePuy announced a voluntary recall of its ASR XL Acetabular System and ASR Hip Resurfacing System after 93,000 had been implanted in patients worldwide, including 37,000 in the U.S. J&J said DePuy withdrew the hips for safety reasons, while denying in court papers that the devices are defective. The company is facing 1,000 lawsuits tied to the faulty artificial hips. Cram said researchers didn’t consider whether the recalls contributed to the higher readmission rates seen over the study or whether it led to more revision hip surgeries. “We really were looking broadly at an 18-year period,” he said today. “During that 18-year period, lots of things happen. There might be recalls, there could be infection outbreaks at individual hospitals, but we were really looking at things much more broadly. But that’s a really good area for future research.” Lorie Gawreluk, a DePuy spokeswoman, didn’t return an e- mail and telephone call seeking comment on the study. Extra Care Carlos Lavernia, president of the Rosemont, Illinois-based American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons , said patients are often readmitted to the hospital, not because of complications from their surgery but because they are sicker or because the doctors at the rehabilitation or nursing facility send them back to the hospital if something seems to be “off.” This is often true in “destination” practices or centers that send the patients to rehabilitation in far-away cities, he said. “Hip surgeons are doing such great jobs with patients. Patients are much sicker now, and our mortality rate , even though we’re dealing with much sicker patients, has remained very, very steady,” said Lavernia, an orthopedic surgeon in private practice in Miami, in an April 17 telephone interview. Lavernia was not an author on today’s paper. To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Ostrow in New York at nostrow1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net

Emerging-Nation Growth Can Be Our Gain, Stephen King Says in FT

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/emerging-nation-growth-can-be-our-gain-stephen-king-says-in-ft.html

Rising commodity prices, which reflect the shift of economic power from west to east, are a permanent feature of the global economy, said Stephen King , the chief economist at HSBC Holdings Plc. (HSBA) Writing in the Financial Times, he said China and India are still relatively poor countries; their rapid growth is associated with high levels of investment and demand for raw materials. Historically, European countries met this need through colonization and slavery, but China and India need other options, hence China’s negotiation of bilateral agreements with commodity-rich nations such as Iran, King said. Western countries need to forge stronger trade links with emerging ones, supplying products and services appropriate to aspirational citizens, rather than highly complex and expensive items, King said. If advanced countries do that, they can benefit from the success of the emerging world, he concluded. To contact the reporter on this story: Alan Purkiss in London on apurkiss@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Colin Keatinge at ckeatinge@bloomberg.net .

NMTP, Acron, Polymetal, Integra Group: Russian Equity Preview

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/nmtp-acron-polymetal-integra-group-russian-equity-preview.html

The following companies may be active in Russian trading. Stock symbols are in parentheses and share prices are from the previous close. The 30-stock Micex Index added 2.4 percent to 1,755.63 in Moscow. OAO Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Trade Port (NMTP RX): The southern Black Sea port, or NMTP as it is known, will file its financial results for 2010 at 10 a.m. Moscow time. NMTP rose 0.7 percent to 3.4539 rubles. OAO Acron (AKRN RX): Russia ’s third-largest producer of nitrogen-based fertilizers plans to disclose production results for the first quarter today. The company added 2.3 percent to 1,246.80 rubles. Polymetal (PMTL RX): The Russian gold and silver producer reports first-quarter production results at 10 a.m. Moscow time today. The company fell 0.3 percent to 576 rubles. Integra Group (INTE LI): The Russian provider of oil field services reports 2010 financial results at 10 a.m. Moscow time. The company gained 2.1 percent to $3.24 in London. To contact the reporter on this story: Marina Sysoyeva in Moscow msysoyeva@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter at ccarpenter2@bloomberg.net

Alzheimer’s Guidelines Encourage Research Into Early Stages

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/new-alzheimer-s-guidelines-encourage-research-into-early-stages.html

Doctors should screen for Alzheimer’s as soon as mild cognitive symptoms occur and encourage genetic testing for patients, according to the first new guidelines for the disease in almost three decades. While early diagnosis won’t help patients fight off Alzheimer’s, it can help them prepare for when dementia worsens and decisions become difficult. Encouraging patients to enroll in trials that offer gene tests and brain scans may add knowledge about roots of the disease, according to guidelines published today in the journal Alzheimer’s and Dementia. The new guidance reflects advances since 1984, including the discovery of 10 genes tied to Alzheimer’s, cerebrospinal fluid tests to help differentiate from other forms of dementia and better scanning techniques. They place Alzheimer’s along a degenerative spectrum with dementia as the final stage. “We’ve been an advocate for early diagnosis for many years,” said William Thies, chief scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association , an advocacy group, in a conference call with reporters. “It allows people to anticipate what will happen and plan their lives to minimize the impact of what’s coming for them.” The guidelines are the work of the Chicago-based Alzheimer’s Association , the National Institute on Aging and the National Institutes of Health. They solidify those proposed in July at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s disease. Brain Scans, Spinal Fluid Brain scans and spinal-fluid tests allow doctors to detect beta amyloid. Companies such as General Electric Co. (GE) , based in Fairfield, Connecticut , and Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly & Co. (LLY) are developing dyes for brain scans that attach to amyloid protein, a signature marker of the disease. Because biomarkers aren’t standardized, they aren’t ready for regular use in the doctor’s office, said Marilyn Albert , director of the division of cognitive neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, and an author of disease guidelines on mild cognitive impairment. Getting more patients tested will improve research knowledge and expand databases on Alzheimer’s biomarkers, which may lead to better care and treatment. Use of the new guidelines also will help better characterizing early stages, said Reisa Sperling , director of the center for Alzheimer’s research and treatment at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Questions still remain about these biological measures, such as whether the accumulation of beta amyloid is the first stage of Alzheimer’s, Sperling said. Important to Patients Getting diagnosed early is important for getting on medication early, said Terry Christiansen, 77, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2005. He is treated with Forest Laboratories Inc. (FRX) ’s Namenda and Novartis AG’s Exelon patch. Christiansen, of Rochester, New York, participates in research and sits on his local Alzheimer’s Association board and is the first patient to serve, he said. “Every year I get a blood test, an MRI, an oral evaluation and a lumbar puncture,” Christiansen said in a telephone interview. “What I like most is that I always get a report back on the progression of the disease.” He and his wife, Patty, said they try to live normal lives. They’ve informed their family and have received support from Patty’s sister and husband-in-law and their children, they said. They’ve made burial arrangements, and Patty has begun taking over chores Terry used to handle, such as paying the bills. Terry was diagnosed after he mentioned to his primary care physician that he was a bit more forgetful than usual, and his doctor referred him to the Alzheimer’s Association. Gathering Data About 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s disease , according to the Alzheimer’s Association. By 2050, that number is expected to increase to as many as 16 million. By encouraging doctors and patients to seek a diagnosis earlier, rather than later, doctors also can begin to gather data to determine how often patients progress from a potential precursor state called mild cognitive impairment, Sperling said. It would also enable researchers to create better clinical trials in people that scientists know will likely progress to full-blown Alzheimer’s, she said. In the meantime, the psychological testing done by most doctors for Alzheimer’s disease remains the same, said Guy McKhann, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins medical school. “That hasn’t really changed much from a practical point of view,” McKhann said. To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Lopatto in New York at elopatto@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reg Gale at rgale5@bloomberg.net .

CTW Writes to National Express on Governance Concerns, FT Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/ctw-writes-to-national-express-on-governance-concerns-ft-says.html

CTW Investment Group, a union- backed alliance of investment funds, has written to National Express Group Plc (NEX) Chairman John Devaney to say it is concerned about the company’s approach to identifying and nominating new non-executive directors, the Financial Times reported, citing the letter. While CTW doesn’t support Elliott Advisors in its dispute with National Express , it is “deeply concerned about the ability of the board’s nominating committee to independently and thoughtfully execute its responsibilities in the best interest of the company and its shareholders,” the FT reported. “There is no lack of procedural coherence as claimed,” National Express said, the FT reported. To contact the reporter on this story: Blanche Gatt in London at bgatt@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Colin Keatinge at ckeatinge@bloomberg.net .

Congo's Inflation Rate Rose to 12.82% as of April 17, Central Bank Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/congo-s-inflation-rate-rose-to-12-82-as-of-april-17-central-bank-says.html

Inflation in the Democratic Republic of Congo accelerated to 12.82 percent as of April 17, from 12.23 percent a week earlier, the country’s central bank said on its website today. The monthly increase in prices was 1.03 percent, the bank said. To contact the reporter on this story: Michael J. Kavanagh in Kinshasa at mkavanagh9@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Heather Langan at hlangan@bloomberg.net

Germany's DAX Index Advances; BMW, Daimler Shares Lead Gains in Automakers

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/dax-index-rebounds-from-biggest-drop-in-a-month-bmw-daimler-lead-gainers.html

German stocks rose, rebounding from the biggest drop in a month, as carmakers gained and a report showed European services and manufacturing growth unexpectedly accelerated in April. Daimler AG (DAI) , the world’s second-biggest maker of luxury cars, advanced 0.9 percent after saying its Mercedes-Benz unit plans to double Chinese sales by 2015. SAP AG (SAP) climbed as Morgan Stanley recommended the stock. The benchmark DAX Index (DAX) rose 0.2 percent to 7,039.31 at the 5:30 p.m. close in Frankfurt. The measure retreated 2.1 percent yesterday as Standard & Poor’s revised its outlook for the long- term sovereign credit rating of the U.S. to negative from stable and concern mounted that Greece will need to restructure its debt. The broader HDAX Index (HDAX) also gained 0.2 percent today. “You can buy large-cap quality names at a reasonable price at the moment,” Hans van de Weg, who manages about 270 million euros ($386 million) for ING NV, said at a press conference in Frankfurt today. “People have gradually started to move to equities. At the moment, I don’t have big positions in peripheral Europe .” A composite index based on a survey of euro-area purchasing managers in services and manufacturing rose to 57.8 this month from 57.6 in March, London-based Markit Economics said today. Economists had projected a drop to 57, the median of 13 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey showed. A reading above 50 indicates expansion. Greek Bonds Greece sold 1.625 billion euros of 13-week Treasury bills today. Greece’s two-year bond yield exceeded 20 percent for a second day, even as officials denied the nation was preparing a restructuring. Daimler added 0.9 percent to 49.08 euros. Mercedes-Benz plans to double China sales to 300,000 vehicles by 2015, Klaus Maier, president and chief executive officer of the division’s business in China, said at the Shanghai Auto Show. Auto shares had the best performance among 19 industry groups in the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 Index today, rising 1.7 percent. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) surged 2.8 percent to 58.79 euros, while Volkswagen AG (VOW) , Europe’s largest carmaker, climbed 1.5 percent to 113 euros. “We have a positive sentiment for German carmakers today,” said Heinz-Gerd Sonnenschein, an equity strategist at Deutsche Postbank AG in Bonn. “China is one of the most important markets for carmakers. However, I expect a calm earnings season and I expect the economy to grow at a more limited pace.” MAN Gains MAN SE added 1.5 percent to 88.87 euros. Europe’s third- biggest truckmaker will start producing trucks in China this year with partner Sinotruk Hong Kong Ltd. as it vies with Daimler and Volvo AB. Leoni AG surged 6.4 percent to 32.99 euros, the largest advance in more than seven months. Germany ’s biggest maker of electrical cables for cars raised its full-year forecast for earnings before interest and taxes to about 210 million euros. SAP, the world’s largest maker of business-management software, gained 1.1 percent to 44.27 euros. Morgan Stanley raised the shares to “overweight” from “equal weight,” saying “the acceleration SAP saw in its core business in the fourth quarter of 2010 is sustainable.” Wacker Chemie AG (WCH) surged 2.2 percent to 159.10 euros, ending the longest falling streak since August, as Credit Suisse raised its recommendation on the chemicals maker to “outperform” from “neutral.” Deutsche Wohnen AG (DWNI) climbed 2.6 percent to 10.33 euros as BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research upgraded shares of the residential landlord to “neutral” from “underperform.” Vossloh AG (VOS) dropped 1.2 percent to 94.06 euros as Commerzbank AG cut its recommendation on the railroad-equipment maker to “hold” from “add.” To contact the reporter on this story: Julie Cruz in Frankfurt at jcruz6@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Rummer at arummer@bloomberg.net

Tesco CEO Plans New Ranges to Address ‘Below Par’ U.K. Profit

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/tesco-s-new-ceo-clarke-hatches-plan-to-address-below-par-u-k-earnings.html

Tesco Plc (TSCO) ’s new Chief Executive Officer Philip Clarke plans to introduce extra food ranges and broaden its offering of non-food goods to address last year’s “below par” profit at the largest U.K. supermarket chain. The retailer’s domestic business has “lost a bit of momentum,” Clarke said today on a conference call. U.K. profit growth last year was “below plan,” according to the CEO, who took over from Terry Leahy in March. Tesco today reported full-year earnings that missed analysts’ estimates and said the domestic market is likely to remain “challenging” after sales slid in the fourth quarter. About 70 percent of profit growth last year came from operations in Asia and Europe , according to Tesco, whose domestic market share has hovered around 30 percent for more than five years. “The picture in the U.K. market is looking increasingly bleak,” Richard Hunter , head of U.K. Equities at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, said by e-mail. Tesco fell 4.45 pence, or 1.1 percent, to 395.55 pence at 11:41 a.m. in London trading. The stock has fallen 6.9 percent this year, compared with rival J Sainsbury Plc’s 10 percent decline and a 2 percent fall at Carrefour SA. Tesco, based in Cheshunt, England , will extend its online offer of general merchandise, electronic goods and clothing by almost four times to 100,000 products and plans more “sharpness” in its communication with shoppers, Clarke said. Expansion Plans “The new CEO is clearly aiming to drive further growth, both through innovation and the release of capital for further expansion,” said Hargreaves Lansdown’s Hunter. Tesco, which has more than 5,000 stores in 14 countries, plans to sell and lease back as much as 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) of property including assets in U.S. and China annually to help fund expansion. About 11 million square feet (1.02 million square meters) of new space will be added this year, Finance Director Laurie McIlwee said on the call, of which about 8.4 million square feet will be outside the U.K. U.K. same-store sales declined 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter, excluding gasoline and value-added tax, Tesco said. Non-food revenue “faltered” since November, particularly sales of higher-priced non-essential items. “It was not an easy consumer environment through last year and current conditions are clearly still challenging,” as households tackle higher fuel costs, rising inflation and public sector cuts, Clarke said on a conference call with analysts. ‘Work to Do’ “We’ve got some work to do,” the CEO said. “The issues are not structural, it’s really all about the detail.” So-called trading profit rose 7.8 percent to 3.68 billion pounds in the year ended Feb. 26, Tesco said today. The average estimate of 15 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was 3.74 billion pounds. Tesco defines trading profit as earnings before tax, property gains and one-time costs. Earnings on that basis rose 3.8 percent to 2.5 billion pounds in the U.K. “The headline numbers are slightly disappointing, particularly in the U.K., where Tesco’s non-food offer clearly needs some work,” Philip Dorgan, an analyst at Panmure Gordon in London, said by e-mail. He has a “buy” rating on the stock. The trading loss at the U.S. Fresh & Easy chain widened to 186 million pounds in the year from 165 million pounds a year earlier as the unit bought two suppliers. Trading profit in Asia climbed 30 percent to 570 million pounds, boosted by sales in Thailand and South Korea. China, where the retailer is opening five-storey shopping malls, failed to make a profit in the second half, weighed down by “slower consumer demand growth” and fewer store openings than planned. Total revenue for the year rose 7.1 percent to 60.9 billion pounds, excluding value-added taxes. Tesco plans to pay a total dividend for the year of 14.46 pence a share, an 11 percent increase on the previous year. Net income for the year rose to 2.66 billion pounds, or 32.94 pence a share, from 2.33 billion pounds, or 29.19 pence, a year earlier, the retailer said. To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Shannon in London at sshannon4@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Celeste Perri at cperri@bloomberg.net .

Lockheed, Austal’s Littoral Ships to Cost At Least $37 Billion

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/lockheed-austal-s-littoral-ships-to-cost-at-least-37-billion.html

The U.S. Navy program to develop and build 55 vessels for close-to-shore operations will cost at least $37.4 billion -- not including equipment required for a full range of missions, according to new Pentagon figures. Development of the Littoral Combat Ship is estimated at $3.5 billion and construction of the fleet at $33.7 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the estimate disclosed April 15 in an annual Selected Acquisition Report to Congress. Another $236 million is included for construction of facilities to support the ships. Prior to the April 15 report and summary , the Navy published only a development cost estimate. Pentagon officials April 8 approved moving the program into the engineering and manufacturing phase -- an act that requires a formal estimate of the procurement costs. Two teams led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) and Austal Ltd. (ASB) are designing and building respective LCS versions. The first two vessels have been commissioned into the Navy. Six others are under contract. The 37-page report estimates the ships will cost about $535 million apiece in fiscal 2010 dollars. It estimates future-year costs of as much as $636 million in inflation-adjusted dollars. Those estimates are for ship construction only and don’t include money for as many as 64 so-called mission modules -- interchangeable systems on each vessel for mine-hunting, anti- submarine missions and surface warfare against small boats, according to the report obtained by Bloomberg News. Total Cost Unknown “More than nine years after the program was first announced and six years after the start of the sea frame procurement, there is still no official Pentagon estimate for the total cost of the LCS program,” said Ronald O’Rourke, a naval analyst with the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. “I’m not sure how many other Defense Department weapon procurement programs of comparable size have proceeded for that long into the procurement phase without an official estimate of total cost,” he said in an e-mail. The mission modules are being developed as a separate program, and there isn’t yet a procurement cost estimate, the report to Congress said. The $37.4 billion figure likely will elevate the LCS’s profile as the White House and Congress look for ways to reduce the federal deficit. The White House last week directed the Pentagon to begin a “comprehensive review” to find $400 billion in spending cuts as part of President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce the debt. Biggest Programs One area for review is the $14 billion average expenditure the Navy plans to spend annually on shipbuilding, including the LCS program. Another area is Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet. The U.S. Government Accountability Office in a report said the F-35 is anticipated to require “unprecedented demands for funding,” averaging about $11 billion a year. The LCS vessels are expected to last about 25 years and cost about $36.6 million a year apiece to operate or support, That’s about $50 billion over the program’s life, when calculated in 2010 dollars, or $87 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the report. Lockheed, based in Bethesda, Maryland, and Marinette Marine Corp. of Marinette, Wisconsin, are working together on one model, while the other is being developed by the Mobile, Alabama-based U.S. subsidiary of Australia’s Austal and General Dynamics Corp. (GD) General Dynamics is providing combat systems designed at its Pittsfield, Massachusetts, facility for the Austal vessel. To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net

Iron Mountain to Return Cash, May Sell Digital Assets

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/iron-mountain-may-become-reit-to-avoid-elliott-proxy-contest-2-.html

(Corrects story that ran April 19 to show Iron Mountain is considering selling only parts of its digital business.) Iron Mountain Inc. (IRM) , the world’s largest document storage company, said it will return cash to shareholders and may sell parts of its digital unit after pressure from hedge fund investor Elliott Management Corp. Iron Mountain also agreed to consider converting to a real estate investment trust, a move that Elliott encouraged, Iron Mountain said in a statement today. One of Elliott’s nominees will join the Iron Mountain board, staving off a proxy fight in which the fund manager run by Paul Singer had sought four seats. The New York-based hedge fund, which owns less than 5 percent of Iron Mountain, called for a review of the storage company’s strategy, operations and capital in a statement March 10, saying the company’s stock could more than double to $77 a share if it converted to a REIT and implemented its other proposals. “Investors should be pleasantly surprised that the return of capital is quite significant,” said Andrew Wittmann, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee , who is neutral on the stock. “The 12-month plan is pretty aggressive, so they’re going to have to start pretty soon.” The document-storage company plans to return about $1.2 billion to shareholders during the next 12 months through stock repurchases and dividends and distribute about $2.2 billion through 2013, according to the statement. Iron Mountain took most of Elliott’s suggestions, Wittmann said. Digital Business Iron Mountain, based in Boston , provides business storage and maintains documents including records, electronic files, medical data and e-mail. Iron Mountain’s effort to expand its international and digital businesses hasn’t been profitable enough, Elliott said in March. Iron Mountain rose $1, or 3 percent, to $34.90 as of 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. It has risen 33 percent since March 9, the day before Elliott called for a strategic review of the company. “We strongly support the board of directors’ plan to increase stockholder value with the actions announced today,” Ken Charles Feinberg, co-portfolio manager at New York-based Davis Selected Advisers LLP, Iron Mountain’s largest investor as of March with a 21 percent share, said in the statement. ‘Strategic Alternatives’ Iron Mountain’s management “concluded that the company could not continue investing in technology development and meet its return requirements and that exploring strategic alternatives for the digital business was in the best interest of Iron Mountain’s stockholders,” according to the document- storage company’s statement. Options include a potential sale of the company’s digital archiving and online backup services. Less than two weeks after Elliott’s proposal, Iron Mountain adopted a so-called poison-pill provision, meant to keep investors from gaining control of the company. The shareholder- rights plan was a reaction to “extraordinary trading activity” in the company’s securities, said Stephen Golden, vice president of investor relations at Iron Mountain. Last week, Iron Mountain Chairman Richard Reese took on the chief executive officer role after Bob Brennan stepped down as president and CEO. As part of its pact with Elliott, Iron Mountain today agreed to nominate Allan Loren, one of Elliott’s candidates, to its board of directors at the 2011 annual meeting, scheduled for June 10. Elliott agreed to withdraw its other nominees for the board at the event, Iron Mountain said. Constantin R. Boden, a board member for more than 20 years, is retiring, according to the statement. The company will work in tandem with Elliott and Davis Selected Advisers to fill the position with an independent candidate, Iron Mountain said. Iron Mountain’s board plans to form a committee, chaired by Reese, to evaluate ways to maximize value through alternative financing, capital and tax strategies and will make the analysis of a REIT conversion “first priority,” the company said. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley (MS) are serving as financial advisers for Iron Mountain, and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP and Sullivan & Worcester LLP are serving as legal advisers. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP is the legal adviser to Elliott. To contact the reporter responsible for this story: Danielle Kucera at dkucera6@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at tgiles5@bloomberg.net

SINGAPORE DAYBOOK: Mapletree Logistics, Straits Asia, Chasen

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/singapore-daybook-mapletree-logistics-straits-asia-chasen.html

Mapletree Logistics Trust, the industrial landlord partly owned by Temasek Holdings Pte, said it bought the Iljuk Gyeonggi Center in South Korea for 22 billion won. WHAT TO WATCH: *Chasen Holdings Ltd. said it won an order worth S$2.13m ($1.7m) for an engineering project in Malaysia. *Keppel Land Ltd. said first-quarter profit rose 46 percent to S$92.1m and revenue more than tripled to S$357.9m *Mapletree Logistics Trust said it bought the Iljuk Gyeonggi Centre in South Korea for 22b won. *Nobel Design Holdings Ltd. said it formed a joint-venture with 2E Capital Pte and Lian Huat Group Pte to redevelop a site that it agreed to buy for S$74m on April 18. *Straits Asia Resources Ltd. said 1Q net income more than tripled to $41.4m as sales rose 39% to $213.7m. *Transit-Mixed Concrete reported a 36% decline in FY net income to S$2.33m on the back of a 10% decline in sales to S$16.7m MARKETS: S&P 500 up 0.6% to 1,312.62 Stoxx Europe 600 up 0.5% to 274.42 MSCI Asia Pacific down 1% to 134.27 Straits Times Index down 0.6% to 3,125.37 BTV: *7:10 a.m.: BlackRock Vice Chairman Robert Doll *7:20 a.m.: Second Curve Capital CEO/Founder Tom Brown *7:40 a.m.: HK Secretary for Financial Services KC Chan *8:40 a.m.: Samsung Securities Head Internet Research Paul Wuh *9:10 a.m.: Advanced Research Japan MD Koji Endo *1 p.m.: Japan Economy Minister Kaoru Yosano (pre-recorded) *1:15 p.m.: Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd (pre- recorded) To contact the reporter on this story: Jan Dahinten at jdahinten@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jan Dahinten at jdahinten@bloomberg.net

Spanish Billionaire Banuelos Seeking to Merge Brazilian Agriculture Units

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/ecodiesel-vanguarda-may-merge-to-form-brazil-s-biggest-agribusiness-group.html

Spanish billionaire Enrique Banuelos is seeking to merge his Brasil Ecodiesel Industria & Comercio de Biocombustiveis & Oleos Vegetais SA with Vanguarda do Brasil SA to create a biodiesel and crop producer with a combined value of 2.16 billion reais ($1.4 billion). Ecodiesel’s board is likely to make a decision on the proposed merger within 60 days, the Sao Paulo-based company said today in a regulatory filing. Vanguarda is valued at 1.2 billion reais and Ecodiesel at about 964.9 million, according to the statement. The Ecodiesel valuation is about 6 percent higher than yesterday’s closing price in Sao Paulo trading. Banuelos’s Veremonte Participacoes SA indirectly owns a controlling stake in both Ecodiesel, a biodiesel producer, and a 50 percent stake in Vanguarda, a soybeans, cotton and corn producer in Brazil. Brazilian farmer Otaviano Pivetta, who is Vanguarda’s controlling shareholder, plans to take a 32 percent stake in the resulting company, according to the statement. Banuelos amassed a fortune during the Spanish housing boom after shares in his Astroc Mediterraneo SA construction company surged. Vanguarda plants 230,000 hectares (568,300 acres) of soybeans, corn and cotton in Brazil. Brasil Ecodiesel shares rose 3.6 percent, or 3 centavos, at 87 centavos at 10:27 a.m. in Sao Paulo trading. 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 .

U.S. Treasuries Decline, Pushing 10-Year Yield Higher to 3.4% in New York

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/u-s-treasuries-decline-pushing-10-year-yield-higher-to-3-4-in-new-york.html

U.S. Treasuries fell, pushing the yield on the 10-year security two basis points higher to 3.4 percent, as of 12:35 p.m. in London. Two-year yields also rose two basis points, to 0.68 percent. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark McCord at mmccord2@bloomberg.net

Germany to Regain World’s Second-Biggest Exporter Spot, Ifo Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/germany-to-regain-world-s-second-biggest-exporter-spot-ifo-says.html

Germany will regain its place as the world’s second-biggest goods exporter in 2011 after being overtaken by the U.S. last year due to exchange-rate movements, the Ifo economic institute said. “Since the beginning of the year, the dollar has clearly depreciated vis-a-vis the euro,” Steffen Elstner, an economist at the Munich-based institute, said in an e-mailed statement today. “If it remains at this level, Germany, on the basis of our export forecast, should overtake the U.S. again.” The euro has gained 7 percent against the dollar this year, while the global recovery is boosting demand for goods from Europe ’s largest economy. German factory orders and exports rose more than economists forecast in February, indicating economic growth gathered pace in the first quarter. Chinese goods exports amounted to $1.58 trillion last year, Ifo said, followed by the U.S. at $1.28 trillion and Germany at $1.27 trillion. Calculated in real prices, German goods exports increased 15 percent in 2010, exceeding the U.S.’s 14.7 percent gain, according to the report. To contact the reporter on this story: Christian Vits in Frankfurt at cvits@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Craig Stirling at cstirling1@bloomberg.net

U.S. Drafts Environmental Assessment for Offshore Oil Lease

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/u-s-completes-environmental-assessment-for-western-gulf-leases.html

The U.S. completed a draft environmental assessment for an oil and gas lease sale as soon as this year in the western Gulf of Mexico , the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement said. The analysis includes information collected after BP Plc (BP/) ’s oil spill last year, the agency said today in an e-mail. It will be updated to reflect comments gathered at hearings in May, according to the agency. The sale of leases off the Texas and Louisiana coasts is tentatively scheduled for late 2011, the regulator said. “We’re glad to see this positive step forward,” said Erik Milito, the American Petroleum Institute’s director of upstream and industry operations. “We hope it will allow Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to proceed with plans for a lease sale later in 2011.” The institute, the industry’s largest trade group, had expressed concerns that the environmental reviews after the BP’s record offshore spill might push the lease sales into 2012 or later. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management also issued a permit for Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) to drill in the Alaminos Canyon of the Gulf. The well will be the 11th in deep water since exploration resumed after the BP disaster, the agency said today on its website. The permit was approved yesterday. To contact the reporter on this story: Katarzyna Klimasinska in Washington at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Larry Liebert at lliebert@bloomberg.net

Vedanta Buys 10.4% Stake in Cairn India From Petronas as It Seeks Majority

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/vedanta-s-unit-said-to-buy-11-of-cairn-india-from-petronas.html

Vedanta Resources Plc (VED) , struggling to take over Cairn India Ltd. (CAIR) because of approval delays, bought 10.4 percent in the explorer from Petroliam Nasional Bhd. while offering to buy stake from minority investors at a higher price. Unit Sesa Goa Ltd. (SESA) bought 200 million Cairn India shares, amounting to a 10.4 percent stake, from Petronas International Corp Ltd. at 331 rupees ($7.44) apiece, Vedanta said in a release today. Petroliam Nasional, Malaysia ’s state oil and gas producer also known as Petronas, said it sold its entire 14.9 percent holding in Cairn India for $2.1 billion, without identifying the buyers. Vedanta’s purchase advances its $9.6 billion bid for the operator of India’s largest onshore oil field, first announced in August. The company was forced to delay its open offer to minority Cairn India investors and had to extend its deadline to complete the transaction to May 20 from April 15 after India’s cabinet asked a panel of ministers to study the proposal. “Today’s deal done through the stock exchange means Petronas will probably not have to pay any taxes on the sale as it has held Cairn India shares for more than a year,” said Jagdish Meghnani, an analyst at Mumbai-based Alchemy Share & Stock Brokers. “It makes more sense to sell outside the open offer, even at a lower price.” Sesa Goa started its open offer on April 11, at 355 rupees apiece, as part of the plan by its London-listed parent mining company to take over Cairn India. The offer ends on April 30. Vedanta’s acquisition of shares from Petronas is in addition to the open offer and may result in the miner holding 51 percent to 70.4 percent in Cairn India, according to the release. Vedanta said Aug. 16 it is seeking to buy 51 percent to 60 percent of Cairn India for as much as $9.6 billion. Block Deals Vedanta climbed as much as 2.3 percent to 2,285 pence in London and traded at 2,278 pence at 1:55 p.m. local time. Cairn India gained 2.4 percent to 344.10 rupees at the close in Mumbai, the most since April 4. The stock has climbed 3.4 percent this year compared with a 6.8 percent decline in the benchmark Sensitive Index. Sesa Goa rose 0.7 percent. Cairn India had 283.4 million shares change hands in bulk deals today, according to the website of the Bombay Stock Exchange. Apart from Sesa Goa’s acquisition of 200 million shares, Merrill Lynch Capital Markets Espana SA bought 39.5 million shares at 331.47 rupees each and Broad Peak Mauritius Pvt. purchased 12 million shares at 331 rupees apiece. Vedanta, controlled by billionaire Chairman Anil Agarwal , has no previous experience in producing oil and gas and has proposed a two-part deal involving the open offer for as much as a 20 percent stake in Cairn India and the purchase of shares from parent Cairn Energy Plc. (CNE) Assured Stake Cairn Energy will sell 40 percent to 51 percent of its holding to Vedanta, depending on the result of the open offer by Sesa Goa. While Sesa Goa’s offer to buy Cairn India shares is at 355 rupees apiece, Vedanta proposes to pay Cairn Energy 405 rupees a share, including a non-compete fee of 50 rupees. “Besides the tax, a market transaction between Vedanta and Petronas also makes sense because Vedanta is now assured of an 11 percent stake in Cairn India,” said Jagannadham Thunuguntla , the New Delhi-based chief strategist at SMC Global Securities Ltd. “If done through an open offer, they may have to return the shares if the government doesn’t approve the bigger deal. The open offer was happening because of that deal.” Crude’s 41 percent gain since August has made Cairn India more attractive for Vedanta. Cairn India produces about 125,000 barrels a day of oil from the Mangala field in the Rajasthan block, the nation’s biggest deposit on land. Royalty Dispute State-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corp., Cairn India’s 30 percent partner in Rajasthan, wants to reduce its liability to pay royalties on all of the block’s output. The ministerial panel will study the transaction and the dispute over royalty payments, Oil Minister S. Jaipal Reddy said April 7. Bank of America Corp. (BAC) helped sell the shares held by Petronas, according to two people familiar with the transaction, declining to be identified before an official announcement. Bank of America spokeswoman Mona Kwatra declined to comment. Azman Ibrahim, a spokesman for Petronas, said he wasn’t immediately able to comment. Bank of America is ranked sixth in managing domestic share sales by Indian companies this year, with SBI Capital Markets Ltd. ranked first, followed by HSBC Bank Plc, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Indian companies have raised 83 billion rupees in local share sales in 2011, a fifth of the amount in the same period last year, according to the data. Portfolio Review Petronas acquired 10 percent in Cairn India at 176.48 rupees a share before the explorer’s December 2006 initial public offering. The Malaysian company bought an additional stake at 224.30 rupees each in a preferential allotment in March 2008 and paid about $240 million for a further 2.3 percent stake in October 2009, taking its total to 14.9 percent. Shamsul Azhar Abbas ordered a review of Petronas’ global investment portfolio after taking over as chief executive officer in February 2010. This is so the group can invest more funds to replenish the country’s oil and gas reserves, Shamsul said in an e-mailed interview on Nov. 8. To contact the reporters on this story: Ruth David in Mumbai at rdavid9@bloomberg.net ; Rakteem Katakey in New Delhi at rkatakey@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Amit Prakash at aprakash1@bloomberg.net

Turkey Stocks Rebound From Biggest Drop in Six Weeks, Bonds Gain

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/turkey-stocks-rebound-from-biggest-drop-in-six-weeks-bonds-gain.html

Turkey’s main stock index rebounded from the biggest drop in six weeks and bonds strengthened as global investor sentiment improved on better-than-expected earnings in Europe and the U.S. The ISE National 100 Index (XU100) climbed the most since April 4, gaining 134.49, or 1.7 percent, to 67,742.07 at the 5:30 p.m. close in Istanbul. The measure slumped 2.7 percent yesterday. A rally in bonds pushed yields on two-year benchmark debt down 11 basis points, or 0.11 percentage point, to 8.58 percent, the lowest level in more than a month, the RBS Istanbul benchmark bond index showed. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index, a broad gauge of western European equities, and Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in New York advanced after earnings from companies including LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, Johnson & Johnson and Burberry Group Plc beat analysts’ estimates. Global markets tumbled yesterday after Standard & Poor’s revised its long-term sovereign credit outlook for the U.S. to negative from stable. Turk Telekomunikasyon AS (TTKOM) , Turkey’s largest phone company by sales, climbed 0.8 percent to 8.04 liras after the company said first-quarter profit increased to 608.8 million liras, beating the average estimate of 10 analysts in a Bloomberg survey. The stock has a 3.3 percent weighting in the ISE 100. To contact the reporter on this story: Selcuk Gokoluk in Istanbul at sgokoluk@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gavin Serkin at gserkin@bloomberg.net

UBS AG Asia-Pacific Prime Services Head David Gray Leaves

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/ubs-ag-asia-pacific-prime-services-head-david-gray-leaves.html

David Gray , UBS AG (UBSN) ’s Asia-Pacific head of prime services for hedge funds, has left the largest Swiss bank by market value after 17 years. Chris Cockerill , a Hong Kong-based spokesman for UBS, confirmed Gray’s departure via e-mail. His replacement will be announced “in due course,” he added, declining to give further details. Gray is leaving the bank at a time when Asian hedge fund assets are recovering from the trough in the global financial crisis and competition for business among prime brokers has intensified. Asia-focused hedge funds drew more than $500 million of new capital in the fourth quarter, narrowing the gap with industry assets of $111.38 billion at the end of 2007 to 25 percent, according to Chicago-based data provider Hedge Fund Research Inc. Banks including Barclays Plc and Citigroup Inc. have been expanding their prime services teams in the region. Prime brokerage provides services such as trade settlements, stock lending, consulting to hedge funds and introduce them to potential investors. UBS was ranked by trade journal AsiaHedge in May last year as the third-largest prime broker in Asia-Pacific behind Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley in terms of the 189 number of mandates it received. It was in fifth place by the estimated $14.8 billion of hedge funds it controlled, lower than Deutsche Bank AG and Credit Suisse Group AG in addition to the U.S. banks. UBS promoted Gray as Asia-Pacific head of prime brokerage in March 2007, according to a statement posted on the bank’s website. He joined UBS in 1994, and took responsibility for building up the bank’s Australia prime brokerage business in 2001, it said. To contact the reporter on this story: Bei Hu in Hong Kong at bhu5@bloomberg.net Netty Ismail in Singapore nismail3@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Linus Chua at lchua@bloomberg.net

Treasuries Fluctuate as Stocks Advance After U.S. Housing Starts Increase

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/treasury-10-year-notes-fall-as-european-stock-markets-u-s-futures-rally.html

Treasuries fluctuated as stocks extended an advance after a government report showed an increase in U.S. housing starts. Ten-year note yields were at almost the lowest level in three weeks as Europe ’s debt crisis outweighed a cut yesterday in the U.S. credit-rating outlook by Standard & Poor’s. “The market is choppy in a thin environment,” said Thomas Roth , senior Treasury trader in New York at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. Ten-year yields were little changed at 3.37 percent at 10:35 a.m. in New York, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices. They fell yesterday to as low as 3.36 percent, the least since March 24. The 3.625 percent security due in February 2021 rose 2/32, or 63 cents per $1,000 face amount, to 102 1/8. Two- year notes yielded 0.66 percent. The yields are down from 3.80 percent a year ago and below the average of 5.21 percent over the last two decades even with the U.S. projected to post a deficit in excess of $1 trillion for a third consecutive year. The gain in housing starts failed to make up for ground lost the prior month. They rose 7.2 percent, Commerce Department data showed, compared with an 8.6 percent gain forecast in a Bloomberg News survey and an 18.5 percent drop in February. Work began on 549,000 houses at an annual pace, the data showed, compared with a 520,000 estimate in a Bloomberg survey. The MSCI World (MXWO) Index advanced 0.5 percent. Still ‘Attractive’ Treasuries rose earlier as Japanese Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda said at a press conference in Tokyo that the debt remains “attractive” even after the S&P lowered the U.S. rating outlook. The rating company put the U.S. government on notice yesterday that it risks losing its AAA ranking unless lawmakers agree on a plan by 2013 to meet medium- and long-term budget challenges. Greek bond yields reached euro-era records amid growing speculation the country will need to restructure its debt as financing costs mount. Greece ’s two-year note yield reached 20.64 percent. The Federal Reserve is buying $5 billion to $7 billion today of Treasuries due from October 2013 to March 2015 as part of its program to purchase $600 billion of U.S. debt through June to spur economic growth. The extra yield investors demand to hold 30-year bonds instead of two-year notes slipped to 3.79 percentage points, from 3.80 percentage points yesterday. It closed at a record 4.02 percentage points on Feb. 1. Inflation Expectations The difference in yields between 10-year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities and comparable U.S. notes, a measure of trader expectations for inflation over the life of the debt, narrowed for a third day, decreasing to 2.60 percentage points. The gap, called the break-even rate, reached 2.67 percentage points on April 11, the widest since March 2008. The average for the five years before the financial crisis began in 2008 was 2.42 percentage points. A gauge of inflation expectations that the Federal Reserve uses to help determine monetary policy, the five-year, five-year forward break-even rate, was at 3.13 percentage points, compared with 3.28 percentage points on Dec. 15, a 10-month high. The average for the past five years is 2.78 percentage points. To contact the reporters on this story: Susanne Walker in New York at swalker33@bloomberg.net ; Lukanyo Mnyanda in Edinburgh at lmnyanda@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Robert Burgess at bburgess@bloomberg.net

Scottish Soccer Champion Rangers Consider Rival Plan to Whyte Takeover

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/scottish-soccer-champion-rangers-consider-rival-plan-to-whyte-takeover.html

Rangers Football Club Plc (RFC) will review a rival approach for the record 53-time Scottish soccer champion after directors said businessman Craig Whyte’s takeover proposal doesn’t include enough funding to rebuild the team. The alternative plan would include the raising of 25 million pounds ($41 million) in new capital, the Glasgow club said in a statement. Whyte, 39, has been in talks to buy the Scottish Premier League champion for several months. He agreed to clear a 20 million-pound debt with Lloyds Banking Group Plc (LLOY) and was close to an agreement to buy majority owner David Murray’s stake of about 85 percent. Rangers, once one of the biggest-spending teams in the U.K., have been forced to sell players in an effort to cut losses after Lloyds refused to continue extending credit to the club and Murray said he wanted to sell. “The board has had an approach from one of its directors who wishes the board to consider an alternative funding option,” Rangers Chairman Alastair Johnston said in the statement. “This would involve a fresh issue of new capital to raise 25 million pounds to be invested directly into the club.” Though Whyte has been in talks with the club’s bankers and Murray since November, he’s only recently met with its board to outline his proposals, Rangers said. “It is only in the last few days that we have started to receive the draft agreements outlining the transaction, although we are still awaiting a detailed working capital statement demonstrating that there is sufficient funding in place to meet the pressing needs of the club,” Johnston said. ‘Disappointed’ The Rangers chairman said the board was “disappointed” the documents didn’t reflect the level of investment they had been told Whyte would be committed to. After repaying Lloyds there would only be a “relatively modest” amount of money available meet “an urgent requirement to replenish and upgrade the playing squad.” “The board believes that it has a responsibility to examine this proposal whilst continuing its review of the Craig Whyte transaction,” Johnston said. Rangers and cross-town rival Celtic dominate Scottish soccer. No other team has won the league since Aberdeen in 1985. Rangers leads Celtic by a point but has played a game more. It has six matches remaining. Murray acquired Rangers for 6 million pounds in 1988 and it was under his ownership that the team won nine titles in a row between 1989 and 1997 to match a record set by Celtic in 1974. To contact the reporter on this story: Tariq Panja in London at Tpanja@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Elser at celser@bloomberg.net

Wealthy Parents Keep Silent on Riches for Kids' Own Good, BofA Survey Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/wealthy-parents-keep-mum-on-money-for-kids-own-good-bofa-says.html

Fewer than half of wealthy Americans say that leaving an inheritance is important, according to a survey by U.S. Trust. “I think it’s reflective of the mindset of a lot of the baby-boomer generation,” said Keith Banks, president of U.S. Trust, the New York-based private wealth management unit of Bank of America Corp. (BAC) , the largest U.S. lender by assets. “I think they expect to live a lot longer and I think their first concern is, ‘Am I enjoying the hard-earned wealth I created?’” Of the 457 individuals surveyed, each of whom said they had $3 million or more in investable assets, about 49 percent said that passing assets on to heirs is very important to them. That may help explain why about half of respondents said they’ve never spelled out how they’d like their estates to be divided among heirs, said spokeswoman Lauren Sambrotto for Charlotte , North Carolina-based Bank of America. U.S. Trust clients generally have at least $3 million in investable assets. About 67 percent of those surveyed haven’t told their children the full extent of their net worth, and 15 percent told their children nothing about their family’s wealth. The average age of those surveyed was 61. “There’s a concern that if the kids are fully cognizant it may start to influence how hard they work at their own careers,” said Banks. About 78 percent of those surveyed said their children won’t be mature enough to handle their inheritances until they are at least 30 years old, and 45 percent said their children won’t be mature enough until they are 35 or older. Estate Taxes Estates of individuals with $5 million or less and couples with $10 million or less are exempt from federal estate taxes, which have a top rate of 35 percent. That amount will fall to $1 million for individuals in 2013 and the top rate will rise to 55 percent, unless Congress acts. Warren Buffett , chairman and chief executive officer of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) and the third richest person in the world according to Forbes magazine, has said he supports a meaningful estate tax. Buffett has pledged to give away more than 99 percent of his wealth, estimated at $50 billion by Forbes in March in its annual ranking of world billionaires, to charity. U.S. Trust hired Rhinebeck, New York-based Phoenix Marketing International to survey the individuals online in January and February. Protecting Children The last time U.S. Trust conducted a survey on attitudes about personal wealth and estate planning was in 2007, almost a year before the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos. About 43 percent of respondents then said they owed it to their children to leave a significant inheritance, and the average age at which participants said their children assumed responsibility for their own money was 27. “If you knew you had a tremendous amount of wealth behind you, would you be as ambitious, would you be as self-reliant, knowing that?” said Doug Ketterer, head of New York-based Morgan Stanley (MS) ’s U.S. private wealth management unit, where clients have $20 million or more in assets. “In their own way they’re protecting their children to make sure they can live the life they hope they would live.” To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Ody in New York eody@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rick Levinson at rlevinson2@bloomberg.net .

French Hydropower Reservoir Levels Gained Last Week, RTE Says

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Hydroelectric reserves in France rose last week, boosting the supply of water for power generation in Europe ’s second-biggest power market. Water reservoirs for electricity production rose 1 percentage point to 44 percent full at the start of this week, according to data on the website of Reseau de Transport d’Electricite, a unit of Electricite de France SA. Reserves are 10 percentage points below the same week last year and 7 points lower than in 2009. France gets about 20 percent of its power capacity from running water through turbines. Utilities can retain water for use when demand and prices are higher. RTE compiles data from generators EDF, GDF Suez (GSZ) SA and Societe Nationale d’Electricite & de Thermique. The three companies produce more than 90 percent of French electricity. To contact the reporter on this story: Lars Paulsson in London at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net

German Bank Chief Sees Helaba, NordLB Passing Stress Test

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Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen and Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale will probably pass a new round of European stress tests this year after their owners find a way to meet capital requirements that are tougher than under German rules, the head of Germany’s state-owned bank association said. “My hope is that Helaba and NordLB will pass the test,” Christian Brand, head of the Association of German Public Sector Banks, said at a press club event in Frankfurt late yesterday. “The owners have an interest in finding a solution.” The two state-owned German lenders risk falling below the threshold of a 5 percent core Tier 1 capital ratio set by the European Banking Authority if funds received from savings banks and state governments aren’t recognized. The non-voting capital, which is permitted by German bank supervisors, will only be counted if it was provided as aid during the financial crisis, according to measures laid out by the EBA this month. Helaba and NordLB have said they are looking at how to convert the so-called silent participations into core capital that will meet the criteria. They are among banks rushing to strengthen the quality of their capital after the EBA on April 8 said it will apply a tougher measure to 90 lenders across Europe. Today is the deadline for German lenders to submit data to the financial regulator Bafin and Deutsche Bundesbank. Last year’s tests, which allowed national regulators to use their own capital definitions, weren’t deemed strict enough by bank analysts. Lenders in the 27-nation region were shown to need 3.5 billion euros ($5 billion) of additional capital, about a 10th of the lowest analyst estimate. ‘Certain Affront’ Brand criticized the EBA’s decision not to count the silent participations of German state-owned lenders, also known as Landesbanken. While capital provided to Helaba and NordLB won’t be counted, aid to the country’s second-largest commercial lender, Commerzbank AG (CBK) , provided by Germany’s Soffin bank-rescue fund will be recognized under the EBA’s criteria. “Treating banks with different legal forms differentially is discriminatory,” said Brand. Under German rules, silent participations are recognized as core capital until 2018. “I don’t think it’s fair to change the parameters,” said Brand. “I would have to understand this as a certain affront against Germany and German banks.” Brand also said German banks could absorb a possible restructuring of Greek debt. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world,” he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Cullen in Frankfurt at acullen8@bloomberg.net ; To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tim Quinson at tquinson@bloomberg.net

Ambassadors International Wins Approval to Conduct Auction

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Ambassadors International Inc. (AMIE) , operator of Windstar Cruises, won court approval to hold a bankruptcy auction to see if there are better bids than lender Whippoorwill Associates Inc.’s offer of about $40 million. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross in Wilmington, Delaware, granted approval today of the sale procedures that will govern the company’s May 16 auction, saying they are “sufficient and appropriate.” All competing bids at the auction must be submitted by May 13, and a hearing when Gross will consider approving the sale is scheduled for May 18. The Seattle-based company has an agreement to sell almost all of its assets to Whippoorwill for about $40 million in debt and the assumption of Windstar liabilities, according to a statement. White Plains , New York-based Whippoorwill is Ambassadors’ secured lender and largest shareholder, with about 22 percent of the company’s equity. Ambassadors originally wanted a May 2 auction, according to court papers. The unsecured creditors committee objected to the timeline, arguing that the sale was being rushed and should be delayed at least 30 days and possibly as much as 75 days. “This is not only a record-breaking pace, but it is compounded by the fact” that the proposed buyer is a lender and an equity owner, John K. Sherwood, a lawyer for the creditors, said at an April 15 hearing. He said creditors need more time to properly investigate Whippoorwill’s security interest in the debt it proposes to offer as payment at the auction. “We’re not looking for forever, just balance,” Sherwood added. ‘Derail the Process’ There have been at least nine cases in the Delaware district where the sale was approved in under 40 days from the bankruptcy filing, Kristopher Hansen, a lawyer representing Ambassadors, told Gross at the April 15 hearing. “You have to derail the process” to get any value when no one else is offering to buy the company, Hansen said. “I don’t believe the company could survive” a delay of about 60 to 75 days because it would erode confidence in the market and “no one would trust Windstar to deliver,” Hans Birkholz, chief executive officer of Ambassadors and Windstar, said under questioning from Hansen. Birkholz said that by the middle of May the company could run out of cash, so “a one month delay would be equally bad.” Ambassadors has “established to the court’s satisfaction and by the preponderance of the evidence” that there are exigent circumstances for an expeditious sale, Gross said at today’s hearing. Ambassadors operates Windstar’s three-ship luxury yacht fleet, which shuttles patrons to “the hidden harbors and secluded coves of the world’s most sought-after destinations,” according to a company statement. The ships carry 148 to 312 passengers each to 50 nations in Europe , the Caribbean and the Americas. The company listed $87.3 million in debt and $86.4 million in assets as of Dec. 1, 2010, in Chapter 11 documents. The case is In re Ambassadors International Inc., 11-11002, U.S. Bankruptcy Court , District of Delaware (Wilmington). To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Bathon in Wilmington, Delaware, at mbathon@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Pickering at jpickering@bloomberg.net .

German 10-Year Government Bonds Reverse Gains; Yield Rises to 3.27 Percent

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-19/german-10-year-government-bonds-reverse-gains-yield-rises-to-3-27-percent.html

German 10-year government bonds declined, pushing the yield up two basis points to 3.27 percent as of 8:06 a.m. in London , after reaching 3.23 percent, the lowest since March 24. To contact the reporter on this story: Emma Charlton in London at echarlton1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Matthew Brown at mbrown42@bloomberg.net