Macau Sands casino up for sale: report

Macau Sands casino up for sale: report

1 hour 15 mins ago
AFP

Las Vegas Sands is considering selling one of its Macau casinos, a report said Monday, as revenues plummet in the world's biggest gaming market.

It plans to put the Sands Macao up for about 1.3 billion US dollars after failing to sell its luxury shopping centres in the southern Chinese territory, the South China Morning Post said without naming sources.

The report said Las Vegas Sands was considering selling the building and continuing to run the 229,000 square foot (21,274 square metres) casino while paying the new landlord rent based on performance.

Talks kicked off last week, the daily said, as the company could not find a buyer for the shopping centres attached to the Venetian and Four Seasons resorts because the one billion dollar asking price was considered too high.

"It was kind of, 'OK then, if you don't want the malls, do you want the Sands?'" an unnamed source was quoted as saying. It said the source confirmed the company's gaming licence was not up for sale.

A spokesman for the US-based company declined to comment on a potential sale of the Sands Macao, the territory's first foreign-owned casino, the paper said.

The Sands Macao opened in 2004 and the company made back its initial 285 billion dollar investment in 12 months, the newspaper said, as gamers poured into the city.

However, Las Vegas Sands was in November forced to fire up to 11,000 mainly construction staff as it halted work at a new 3.3 billion US dollar, 6,400-room resort close to the Venetian.

The firm blamed a freezing of the global credit markets for the delay.

Macau has become a gambling paradise, with massive casinos springing up over the past few years, helping the city overtake the Las Vegas Strip in terms of revenue.

But income has been battered as gamblers tighten their belts amid the global slowdown, while visa restrictions placed by Beijing on Chinese visitors have also hit revenues.

Macau's casinos suffered a dismal second half of 2008, although the first three months of this year saw income rise for the first time in three quarters.

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World Bank, IMF: Crisis becoming 'human calamity'

4 hours 47 mins ago
AFP Veronica Smith

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The IMF and World Bank have warned that the global economic crisis is turning into a "human calamity" and called on members to speed up pledged aid and give even more to help the most vulnerable.

At the end of spring meetings in Washington, the two Bretton Woods institutions on Sunday told their 185 member countries that the worst global slump in generations had already driven more than 50 million people into extreme poverty.

"The global economy has deteriorated dramatically ... Developing countries face especially serious consequences as the financial and economic crisis turns into a human and development calamity," the International Monetary Fund and World Bank joint development committee said in a statement.

"We must alleviate its impact on developing countries and facilitate their contribution to global recovery," the World Bank's policy steering committee said.

Pledges of aid by countries, including by the Group of 20 countries at a London summit earlier this month, should be delivered, it said.

"We urged all donors to accelerate delivery of commitments to increase aid, and for us all to consider going beyond existing commitments," the committee said.

How to help the developing world cope with the worst global slump since the 1930s Great Depression was top of the agenda for the bank's steering committee meeting that wrapped up the sibling institutions' two-day gatherings.

"No one knows how long this crisis will last," World Bank president Robert Zoellick told a news conference.

Although the bank's finances are "in a strong position to help our partner countries," he said, the crisis was putting the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty by 2015 increasingly at risk.

The World Bank Saturday launched a 55-billion-dollar infrastructure investment program designed specifically to help developing countries weather the global slump.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the committee that Washington was "on track" to meet a pledge to double development aid to Sub-Saharan Africa by next year and would increase other help "to vulnerable populations ... so that we can give people the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty."

No new pledges of aid were announced for the World Bank or for the IMF at the meetings, which followed up on the G20 commitment of more than 1.1 trillion dollars to multilateral institutions, mostly to the IMF, at a London summit on April 2.

The IMF's policy steering committee endorsed Saturday a massive expansion of the fund's lending resources to combat the recession and boost lifelines to poor countries.

The IMF recently forecast the global economy would contract 1.3 percent this year before growth of 1.9 percent in 2010.

IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn said Saturday it was time to talk exit strategies from the crisis after all members had agreed on the fiscal stimulus measures taken and "on the absolute necessity of cleansing the financial system."

The International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC) said a key achievement of the meeting was "ensuring the doubling of the Fund?s loanable resources."

Strauss-Kahn said the IMFC also discussed the sale of IMF bonds to member states to raise extra funds, a move allowed by fund rules but never exercised.

The sale of bonds is linked to the issue of IMF quotas and approved but as yet not enacted reforms to give developing countries more voice in the institution, traditionally dominated by the United States and other major advanced economies.

"The Bank and IMF said all the right things, but the true test is whether their rich country shareholders will turn words into action," said Marita Hutjes, senior policy advisor at anti-poverty group Oxfam International.

"Contributions to the bank and the IMF for the poorest countries are needed now. Bureaucratic delay and lack of political will on this will cost lives," Hutjes warned.

At the closing news conference, Zoellick and Mexican Finance Minister Agustin Carstens announced that the World Bank would speed more than 205 million dollars to Mexico to support the government's efforts to fight the spread of a new swine flu virus that has killed at least 20 people.

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Kuwaiti investment firm posts first ever loss

11 hours 19 mins ago
AFP

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Global Investment House, a leading Kuwaiti investment firm, said on Sunday it made its first ever loss last year due to the global financial crisis. Skip related content
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The 257.4 million dinars (881 million dollars) loss compares with a profit of 312 million dollars in 2007, Global said in a statement.

The price of the company's shares, which have been suspended from trading since March 31, had slumped 67 percent so far this year after plummetting 79 percent in 2008.

Its market capitalisation stands at just 288 million dollars, down from 4.1 billion dollars at the end of 2007.

"2008 was a year of unprecedented global market turbulence. Global has not been immune to this and we unfortunately reported our first ever loss in 2008," said Maha Al-Ghunaim, chairperson and managing director of Global.

"This has been caused, in a large part, by unrealized losses on our investments and as a result we are renewing our focus on fee generated income, which has always been profitable," she added.

In December, Global said it defaulted on the majority of its debts and appointed HSBC Bank as financial adviser to renegotiate the existing credit facilities' terms with the lending bank group.

The company has continued to meet all its debt service payments as they fall due, it added.

The firm has reduced costs by more than 20 percent through decreasing its workforce by 10 percent, scaling back salaries and cancelling all 2008 related bonus payments, it said.

Global has been one of Kuwait's fastest expanding investment firms in the past few years, taking substantial loans in the process.

The company ratings have been downgraded by some international rating agencies, and others placed it on their watch lists for a possible downgrade.

Investment companies in Kuwait have been facing difficulties repaying their debt with the tightening of credit opportunities due to the global financial crisis.

The 99 companies under the supervision of the central bank of Kuwait have a total debt of around 18 billion dollars, including eight billion dollars owed to foreign lenders.

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救急搬送拒否で重篤、消防組合に１億４千万円支払い命令

　奈良県警橿原署の駐車場から救急搬送されずに意識不明に陥った同県大淀町内の男性（４４）とその両親が、重篤になったのは中和広域消防組合が搬送義務を怠ったのが理由として、治療費や慰謝料など計約２億５０００万円の損害賠償を求めた訴訟の判決が２７日、奈良地裁であった。

　坂倉充信裁判長（一谷好文裁判長代読）は「すぐに救急搬送していれば、重篤にならなかった可能性が高い」と、同組合に計約１億４０００万円の支払いを命じた。

　判決によると、男性は２００６年１１月１５日未明、同署駐車場で顔から血を流し、酔った状態で同署員に保護された。

　通報で駆けつけた中和広域消防組合の救急隊員は、意識障害などの症状から医療機関に搬送すべきだったのに、家族らに対し「搬送先がない」などと説明して拒否した。男性は脳挫傷などで、現在も意識が戻っていない。

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Swiss seek tax treaty trade-off

By Haig Simonian in Zurich and Krishna Guha in Washington

Published: April 27 2009 03:00 | Last updated: April 27 2009 03:00

Swiss and US officials will meet in Bern tomorrow for their first talks on a new tax treaty after Switzerland asked the Obama administration to drop a legal case involving the Swiss bank UBS in exchange for the accord.

The talks were announced earlier this month.

Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, this weekend met with Hans-Rudolf Merz, Swiss finance minister and head of state this year under the country's rotating presidency.

Mr Merz told Mr Geithner that an aggressive investigation by US tax authorities into accounts at UBS could make it very difficult to secure approval for a new tax treaty in the Swiss parliament and possibly in a referendum.

US officials told the Financial Times that Mr Geithner did not dismiss the Swiss argument out of hand. "The secretary listened to the Swiss concerns regarding the UBS case and indicated that he understood the importance of appropriately resolving the matter," one official said.

The US response to the Swiss approach suggests it might be possible for the two sides to strike a deal. It said "both President [Barack] Obama and Secretary Geithner have made very clear their commitment to tackling tax shelters and other efforts to abuse US tax laws".

Mr Merz, also head of state this year under Switzerland's rotating presidency, used the meeting to tell Mr Geithner that a new treaty could take until the end of the year to finalise.

The US administration has been in the forefront of an international clampdown on tax evasion, focused on countries, such as Switzerland, with strict bank secrecy laws.

Separately, the US Internal Revenue Service has probed allegations that UBS, the world's biggest wealth manager, helped rich Americans evade tax.

UBS in February agreed to a $780m settlement with the IRS to drop criminal charges that a small number of its private bankers at a now-closed offshore banking unit exploited loopholes in US legislation to help rich clients hide assets. The bank was forced by Swiss bank regulators to provide the names of 255 US clients who most blatantly used sham companies to evade tax.

However, in a separate civil case, the IRS is demanding UBS provide information about an alleged 52,000 accounts held by Americans.

The action is being resisted by the bank and Swiss government, on the grounds that - unlike in the initial case involving the 255 customers - no specific evidence has been brought forward to warrant any secrecy barriers being lowered.

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ＧＭ、６工場閉鎖・休止へ　８０００人を新たに削減
2009.4.27 22:28
新たなリストラ策を発表するＧＭのヘンダーソンＣＥＯ（ＡＰ）新たなリストラ策を発表するＧＭのヘンダーソンＣＥＯ（ＡＰ）

　経営危機に陥っている米自動車最大手ゼネラル・モーターズ（ＧＭ）が２７日、追加リストラ策を発表し、新たに６工場を閉鎖・休止し、新たに７０００－８０００人の人員削減や主要ブランド「ポンティアック」の段階的廃止を実施すると明らかにした。

　政府による資金支援額は計１５４億ドル（１兆４９００億円）に上っており、ＧＭは一段の経費削減を急ぐ方針。

　ＧＭは債務削減などをめぐる債権者らとの交渉が難航。政府が定めた期限の６月１日までに合意できないと、政府支援が打ち切られ、破産法の申請に追い込まれる。（共同）