Genetically modified beets may be grown on open space
Farmers ask to plant GMO beets on Boulder County land
By Laura Snider (Contact)
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
If you go
What: Boulder County study session on whether to allow genetically modified sugarbeets
When: 5:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Third floor of the County Courthouse, 1325 Pearl St., Boulder
More info: www.bouldercounty.org
BOULDER, Colo. — Boulder County staffers are recommending that farmers who lease agricultural land from the open space department be allowed to plant genetically modified sugarbeets.
Thursday, a joint study session of the county's Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee and Food and Agriculture Policy Council will review the staff report on sugarbeets before making its own recommendations to county commissioners later in the summer.
In December, a group of six farmers wrote a letter to the county asking for permission to plant Roundup Ready Sugarbeets, which have been engineered to resist the herbicide Roundup. The modified sugarbeets, which were originally approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2005, were planted en masse across the country last year.
This year, the agricultural industry estimates that 90 percent of all sugarbeets cultivated in the United States will be Roundup Ready.
The six Boulder County farmers argue that growing the modified sugarbeets will allow them to use less pesticides overall, increase their yields of beets per acre, and decrease their labor costs, since beets generally require multiple herbicide applications and hand-hoeing to control weeds.
"All the chemicals we used to put on to try and control the weeds -- it was terrible," said Paul Schlagel, one of the farmers who signed the request letter. "For the last 50 years, we've struggled with weed control, and it's not been successful."
Opponents of genetically modified food argue that crops like Roundup Ready beets will cross-pollinate with non-modified plants and that the effects of genetically engineered foods on humans and the environment is virtually unknown since long-term studies are not available.
In 2003, Boulder County commissioners voted to allow Roundup Ready corn on open space land with the condition that the farmers left a buffer around the modified crops. The idea was to control "pollen drift," which could contaminate non-modified corn crops.
During the first season, 170 acres of county land were planted with the modified corn. This year, 1,518 acres were cultivated with the Roundup Ready variety.
The six farmers would plant close to 1,000 acres of sugarbeets, which have been a historically important crop in Boulder County. Once called "white gold," sugarbeets provided the money in Longmont when gold and silver were still paying the bills in the mountainous part of the county. Today, more than half the sugar sold in the country comes from sugarbeets.
County staffers have recommended that the farmers be allowed to grow the modified sugarbeets with four conditions. The farmers would need to notify the county of where and when they are planted; survey the fields for any bolted plants to prevent pollen drift; rotate Roundup Ready crops so that the weeds in the area do not develop a resistance to the herbicide; and leave a 50-foot buffer from surface water.
--------------------------
「７５歳以上」人口１３２２万人、初の１０％超
政府は２９日の閣議で２００９年版「高齢社会白書」を決定した。
０８年１０月１日現在、７５歳以上の後期高齢者は前年比５２万人増の１３２２万人で、総人口に占める割合は１０・４％となった。後期高齢者の割合が１０％を超えたのは初めてだ。
後期高齢者は、１９９０年に５９７万人、００年には９００万人と増加を続けている。白書に掲載された国立社会保障・人口問題研究所の将来推計によると、後期高齢者は３５年に２２３５万人となり、総人口の２０・２％に。５５年には、２３８７万人で総人口の２６・５％となり、４人に１人が７５歳以上の高齢者になると予測している。
また、０８年の後期高齢者を含む６５歳以上の高齢者は、前年比７６万人増の２８２２万人で、総人口に占める割合（高齢化率）は前年比０・６ポイント増の２２・１％だった。高齢者数、高齢化率ともに過去最高を更新した。
白書では、内閣府の０８年の「高齢者の地域社会への参加に関する意識調査」も掲載。近所付き合いに関し、「親しく付き合っている」と答えた高齢者（６０歳以上）の割合は、５年前の調査と比べ９ポイント減の４３・０％に低下した。逆に「あいさつする程度」は１０・３ポイント増の５１・２％で、高齢者と地域とのつながりの希薄化が浮き彫りになった。
-------------------
「妻は家庭」２０代女性の４４％賛成、３０～４０代上回る
政府が２９日の閣議で決定した２００９年版男女共同参画白書によると、「夫は外で働き、妻は家庭を守るべきだ」との考えに、２０歳代の女性の４割以上が賛意を示し、３０、４０歳代より多いことが分かった。
非正規労働者の増加や、仕事と子育ての両立が依然難しいと感じられていることなど、「現在の就業構造が若い世代の女性の意識に影響を与えていることも要因」と指摘している。
これは、白書に掲載された２０～６０歳代の男女１万人に内閣府が２月に実施したインターネットによる意識調査の結果だ。「妻は家庭」との考えに、女性はすべての世代で反対が賛成を上回り、男性は全く逆の結果だった。
ただ、賛成した割合を年代別に見ると、女性では２０歳代が４４・３％で５０歳代（４７・７％）に次いで高く、３０歳代（４１・４％）、４０歳代（４４・２％）を上回った。
男性では、若い世代ほど「妻は家庭」に賛成する割合は低かった。
-----------------------
車所有で生活保護停止は違法…身体障害者夫婦の主張認める
自家用車の所有を理由に生活保護を停止したことは、憲法などに違反するとして、北九州市門司区の身体障害者の夫婦が同市を相手取り、処分取り消しや慰謝料など約２５２万円の支払いを求めた訴訟の判決が２９日、福岡地裁であった。
増田隆久裁判長は「自動車以外の手段で通院などを行うことは極めて困難で、所有を認めなかった処分は違法」として夫婦の主張を認め、市に処分取り消しと慰謝料６０万円の支払いを命じた。
訴えていたのは、峰川義勝さん（６８）と妻・久子さん（７７）。
訴状などによると、同市内で青果の露天商を営んでいた峰川さん夫婦は、ともに体調を崩して商売が続けられなくなり、２０００年１１月から生活保護を受けるようになった。
夫婦は仕事用に軽乗用車を所有していたが、管轄する門司福祉事務所は「所有は認められない」として、車を手放すよう口頭や文書で指示。夫婦が応じなかったため、０４年８月に保護停止処分を決め、約７か月間、生活保護費を支給しなかった。市はその後、生活困窮を理由に支給を再開した。
夫婦側は「体が不自由で、通院や買い物などに自動車が不可欠。市の処分は憲法や生活保護法の解釈を誤っている」と主張していた。
---------------------
力士死亡判決、師匠の主張を一蹴“死のけいこ主導”
2009年5月29日 19時45分
判決後、心境を語る斉藤俊さんの父正人さん＝２９日午前、名古屋地裁前で
写真
兄弟子に暴行の指示もしていなければ、ぶつかりげいこも制裁目的ではない。そんな元親方山本順一被告（５９）の主張はすべて否定された。大相撲時津風部屋の力士だった斉藤俊（たかし）さん＝当時（１７）＝がけいこ場で死亡した事件。２９日の判決で、名古屋地裁は「死に至るけいこ」について、元親方主導の暴行と認定した。「実刑」を言い渡す裁判長の声に、名門部屋の元親方は身じろぎもせず聞き入った。
「被告人を懲役６年に処する」。午前１０時すぎ、名古屋地裁１階の法廷。席を埋めた傍聴人が見守る中、裁判長の声が響いた。
山本順一被告は黒いスーツ姿で入廷。遺族に一礼して判決に臨んだ。言い渡しの瞬間は身動きせず、真っすぐ前を向いていた。力士時代から恵まれた体格と言われた、その大きな背中で傍聴人の視線を受け止めていた。
事件の発端は、斉藤俊さんが相撲を続けるのかどうか、あいまいな態度を見せたことだった。俊さんの時太山というしこ名に「大きな山のようになってほしい」と期待を込めた山本被告。被告人質問で「その態度にイライラした」と述べた。
ビール瓶で斉藤さんの額を殴ったことや、体力の限界を超えたぶつかりげいこを止めなかったことについて、「相撲を続け、強くなってほしかった」と釈明。両親から託された俊さんを育てるためだったと強調した。
しかし、地裁判決は「山本被告の指示で、制裁のためのけいこが行われた」と一蹴（いっしゅう）した。
時津風部屋は、「不世出の横綱」と呼ばれた双葉山が創設した名門。山本被告は中学時代に弟子入りし、厳しいけいこに耐えて相撲一筋に歩んできた。親方として集大成を迎えた時、その名門に汚名を残す結果となった。
◆斉藤俊さんの父「結局、真実語らず」
「懲役６年は重く、納得している。ただ親としては、懲役何十年でも納得できないというのが本心」。斉藤俊さんが亡くなって２年近く。父正人さん（５２）は判決の後、複雑な心境を語った。
今年２月に腰の手術を受け、今もリハビリ中。車いすで法廷に現れ、最前列の傍聴席に座った。実刑判決が言い渡された直後は「ホッとして涙が止まらなかった」。約７０分の公判中、顔をハンカチで何度もぬぐい、天を仰いだ。罪を認めなかった山本被告に対しては「結局、真実を語らなかった。刑を軽くしてもらいたいという気持ちしか見えなかった」と強い怒りを向けた。被告が控訴する方針だと報道陣から聞くと「まだ人を苦しめたいのか」と顔をしかめた。
------------------------
元時津風親方に懲役６年 力士死亡で暴行指示認める 名古屋地裁
2009年5月29日 夕刊
会見で判決について話す斉藤俊さんの父正人さん＝２９日午前、名古屋地裁前で（隈崎稔樹撮影）
写真
大相撲時津風部屋の力士だった斉藤俊（たかし）さん＝当時（１７）、しこ名・時太山（ときたいざん）＝がけいこ場で死亡した事件で、傷害致死罪に問われた元時津風親方、山本順一被告（５９）に名古屋地裁は２９日、「親方として絶大な支配力がある立場で暴行を率先しており、言語道断だ」として懲役６年（求刑懲役７年）を言い渡した。山本被告は収監され、被告側は即日控訴した。
判決理由で芦沢政治裁判長は、一連の暴行について「部屋から逃げ出したり、相撲を続けるかどうかあいまいな態度を取ったりする斉藤さんに憤慨し、制裁する意味があった」「正常なけいこの範囲を逸脱していた」と指摘した。死亡前夜の暴行をめぐっては、ビール瓶で斉藤さんの頭などを殴った山本被告が「おまえらも教えてやれ」などと言ったことを受けて兄弟子たちが暴行に及んだと認定。暴行後の斉藤さんを見た山本被告が「おまえらあんまりやってないな。顔とか全然はれてないじゃないか」などと発言していることから暴行を指示したことは明らかだと述べた。
亡くなる直前のぶつかりげいこについては「斉藤さんは相撲を続ける気がないと述べたのに、逆らえずに指示に従った」と批判し、斉藤さんの意思に基づかない暴行と認定。３０分という異例の長さや金属バットなどで殴打した違法性を認め、「強くなるため。通常のけいこの範囲だった」という山本被告の主張を退けた。
事件後の山本被告の言動についても「数々の口裏合わせなどを働き掛けるなど悪質。公判でも不合理な弁解をして十分な反省が見られない」と指弾した。
◆“角界の論理”否定
元親方に懲役６年を言い渡した今回の判決は、相撲界固有の体罰や師弟関係を背景にした暴力を断罪した。執行猶予付き判決が確定した兄弟子３人より重い刑事責任は、相撲部屋で絶対的存在だった元親方の指示や意向がなければ一連の暴行は成立しなかったとの判断を示している。
刑法には「法令または正当な業務による行為は罰しない」との規定がある。スポーツ、特に格闘技で人が死んでも違法性を問いにくい理由だが、本人の同意やルールに基づかない制裁行為は別だ。
大学の日本拳法部で新入部員を脳挫傷で死なせた上級生に、大阪地裁が１９９２年、傷害致死罪で実刑判決を出した例がある。退部を申し出た新入部員を十分な防具を着けさせずに殴ったとして「制裁」と認定し、「後輩への鍛錬」という被告側の主張を退けた。
元親方の裁判でも、被告側は「強くなるためで、通常のけいこの範囲」と主張したが、判決は「正常なけいこの範囲を逸脱した暴行」と判断した。
相撲界の一部に「限界を超えて力を出し切ることで力量が向上する」と元親方らの行為を擁護する意見もあるが、判決はこうした“角界の論理”を完全に否定したと言える。 （社会部・赤川肇）
【時津風部屋力士暴行死事件】 序ノ口力士だった斉藤俊さんが２００７年６月２５－２６日、愛知県犬山市の時津風部屋宿舎やけいこ場で、元親方の山本順一被告や兄弟子からビール瓶や金属バットなどで殴打を繰り返され、激しいぶつかりげいこの後、外傷性ショックで死亡した。名古屋地裁は昨年１２月、山本被告が暴行を指示したと認めた上で、兄弟子３人に懲役３年－２年６月、執行猶予５年を言い渡した。
------------------------
アイヌ民族、苦しい生活 世帯年収は道内平均の約６割
2009年5月30日9時55分
アイヌ民族で、自らの生活が「豊か」「少しゆとりがある」と感じているのは２割弱で、世帯年収も北海道内の平均の６割程度にとどまっていることが２９日、北海道大アイヌ・先住民研究センター（札幌市）と北海道アイヌ協会の共同の生活実態調査で明らかになった。
調査は、道内の２９０３世帯、５７０３人が回答。この日首相官邸で開かれた政府の「アイヌ政策のあり方に関する有識者懇談会」で報告された。アイヌ民族の生活実態は、北海道が継続的に調査しているが、今回は対象世帯が道調査の１０倍ほどの過去最大規模となった。
今回の調査で「生活ぶり」を聞いたところ、３３．５％が「苦しい」、４０．５％が「多少困る程度」と回答。「少しゆとりがある」「豊かである」は１７．３％だった。
世帯年収は２００万円以上３００万円未満が最も多く、平均３５５．８万円と道内の平均世帯年収の約６割という結果となった。
道によると、道内にアイヌ民族が少なくとも２万３７８２人住んでいる。アイヌ民族の生活調査は、北海道が７２年からほぼ７年おきに実施してきた。ただ、「積極的に協力してくれる人への調査も多く、実態をきちんと反映しているとは言い難い」（関係者）とも言われていた。
-----------------------
セレブ御用達の高級日本食レストランからクロマグロ消える 環境団体の抗議で (1/2ページ)
2009.5.30 18:08
このニュースのトピックス：欧州
【ロンドン＝木村正人】マグロの中で最も美味とされ高価で取引されているクロマグロが、乱獲による絶滅の危険性を理由に環境保護団体の抗議を受け、英国の日本食レストランから姿を消し始めた。
象徴的なターゲットになっているのは、日本人シェフ、松久信幸氏が米俳優ロバート・デ・ニーロ氏らと世界展開している高級日本食レストラン「ＮＯＢＵ（ノブ）」。
国際環境保護団体グリーンピース（本部・オランダ）の抗議で、ロンドンに展開する２店でクロマグロを使ったメニューに「クロマグロは環境上、種の生存を脅かされています。店員に別のものを頼んでください」との注意書きを載せた。店員は代替魚としてキハダマグロを勧めている。
ノブは世界１０カ国に１８店を出しているが、英国以外の店ではまだ注意書きは載せていない。
----------------------------
日台友好団体がＮＨＫに抗議デモ
2009.5.30 18:11
ＮＨＫスペシャル「ＪＡＰＡＮデビュー アジアの“一等国”」に出演した台湾人や日台友好団体から放送の内容が「一面的だ」と批判が相次いでいる問題で、草莽（そうもう）全国地方議員の会など１５団体は３０日、東京、大阪などのＮＨＫ施設周辺で抗議デモを行った。
ＮＨＫ放送センターがある東京・渋谷で行われたデモには約１１００人が参加。「放送内容を訂正せよ」などと訴えた。台湾人から寄せられた「言うべきことを言わず、好む所を選んで曲解した。人をばかにした、自尊心のない行為だ」などとのメッセージが流れると、通りすがりの家族連れも耳を傾けていた。
番組は日本の台湾統治を特集。先住民の写真に「人間動物園」の字幕をつけて“見せ物”にしたと紹介するなど、事実との相違が各方面から指摘されている。
この問題では、台湾日本人会と日本企業などで構成する台北市日本工商会が「日台交流に支障をきたすおそれがある」と、懸念を表明する意見書をＮＨＫに送っている。
----------------------------
ロシア大統領、北方領土で日本批判 「主権を疑問視」
2009年5月29日20時44分
【モスクワ＝副島英樹】ロシアのメドベージェフ大統領は２９日、クレムリンで行われた日本などの新任駐ロ大使の信任状奉呈式でのあいさつで、北方領土問題に言及し「（北方四島の）ロシアの主権を疑問視する日本の試みは交渉継続を促すことにはならない」と述べて批判した。
メドベージェフ大統領は四島への主権の疑問視は「一方的で、法的な枠を超えた、受け入れられないものだ」と指摘。「東京（日本）で適切に状況を判断し、正しい決定をするよう望む」と語った。
麻生首相がプーチン首相と会談した後の今月２０日、参院予算委員会で「北方四島ではロシアによる不法占拠が続いている」と発言したことを念頭に置いているとみられる。
信任状奉呈式には河野雅治大使ら１２カ国の大使が出席。大統領は各国それぞれについてコメントしたが、日本への批判は際立っていた。
------------------------
北方領土の人道支援は非常時に限定を サハリン州政府高官
2009.5.29 17:40
インタファクス通信は２９日、ロシア極東サハリン州政府のポノマリョフ国際対外経済地域間交流委員会副委員長が、日本からの北方四島への人道支援受け入れは「地震などの非常時に限るべきだ」と述べたと伝えた。
４月の州政府会議で同様の対応が四島の行政当局に勧告されたという。
ロシアが出入国カード提出を求めたため日本側がビザなし交流の枠組みによる引き渡しを１月に断念したままになっている医療関係の支援物資について、副委員長は「緊急時の支援ではない」とし、ロシアの査証（ビザ）を取得する形で引き渡されるべきだと述べた。
サハリン州政府と州議会は、人道支援は不要になったとの記事を機関紙に掲載するなど、四島への人道支援に対する強硬姿勢を強めている。（共同）
-------------------------
減反見直し、奨励金廃止 政府素案、小麦・大豆農家に補助
政府が検討中の農政改革で、焦点であるコメの生産調整（減反）見直しの素案が30日、明らかになった。検討の軸となる減反の緩和案では、自給率の低い小麦や大豆などを「戦略作物」として位置づけ、新たに補助する代わりに現在の転作奨励金を廃止。農家に不満が強かった現行の減反制度を改め、食料自給率の向上につながる農作物を作る農家への支援を拡充する。
政府がコメ政策の見直しに取り組む背景には、コメ農家の約3割が減反に協力していない現状がある。生産調整で維持するコメの価格ですべての農家が販売できてしまうことが不公平だと指摘されてきた。先進国で最低水準の食料自給率が向上すれば、「食の安全・安心」を求める消費者にとっても利点がある。
--------------------------
コメ価格急落 コシヒカリ、昨秋より20％安く
コメの価格が急ピッチで下がってきた。景気低迷を背景に小売り段階での値下げが激化していることが背景。売れ筋の新潟産コシヒカリの店頭価格が昨年秋に比べ20％下落するなど高価格帯の銘柄の下げが目立つ。外食など業務用の需要が振るわず、新米の出回りを控えて産地や卸業者が2008年産米を処分する動きもある。小麦製品の値上がりを受けた「コメ回帰」が注目された昨年とは様相が一変した。
低価格米を求める小売業者や外食業者からの値下げ圧力が強まっている。量販店の店頭では新潟産一般コシヒカリで５キロ1980円前後の特売が常態化。前年同月に比べても10％安い。複数の産地や銘柄を混合したブレンド米は５キロ1700円前後で販売されている。(30日 16:00)
--------------------------
国立マンガセンターに女性漫画家激怒「最低のギャグ」
「緊急経済対策とは思えない」
歳出総額が過去最大の１３兆９２５６億円となる２００９年度補正予算が２９日夕、成立した。バラマキ批判も飛び交うが、その象徴となっているのが麻生太郎首相の肝いりで１１７億円もの建設費が計上された「国立メディア芸術総合センター」（仮称）だ。民主党の鳩山由紀夫代表も先の党首討論で「総理がアニメ好きなのは分かるが、そんなにお金を使う必要があるのか」と批判したが、女性漫画家も夕刊フジの取材に激怒した。
「漫画家も読者も日々の生活が苦しい中、ハコモノと天下りが残るなんて最低のギャグです」
こう語るのは、女性漫画家の牧村しのぶさん。１９８６年、角川書店「ＡＳＵＫＡ」漫画大賞に入賞してデビュー。現在、「家庭ミステリー」（ぶんか社）や、「別冊家庭サスペンス」（黒田出版興文社）でレギュラーを持つ。
同センターは、アニメや漫画、映画などの作品を展示する新設美術館で、建設候補地は東京・お台場。文化庁の有識者検討会がまとめた構想では、延べ床面積約１万平方メートルの４－５階建てとなる見通しで、１１年度の完成を目指している。
これだけ多額の予算が付いたのは、最新の週刊コミック誌を秘書に買いに行かせるほどの「漫画好き」として知られる首相の影響が大きいとされる。
牧村さんは先月末、同センターの建設構想が発表された際、「税金の使い方が完全に間違っている！」と、激しい怒りを感じたという。
「長引く不況で、漫画家は原稿料を引き下げられ、仕事が急激になくなっている。無理な徹夜仕事で体を壊したり、自殺した人もいる。一方、読者の手紙を読むと、経済的に苦しくて新刊が買えず、中古の漫画を買っている人も多い。首相や政府はこうした現状を知って、１１７億円も税金をかけてセンターを建設しようというのか」
そのうえで、牧村さんはこう注文を付ける。
「漫画なら国会図書館で無料で読めるし、映画なら最近は宅配レンタルもある。わざわざ交通費をかけて、お台場まで漫画や映画を見に行く人がどれだけいるのか。とても、緊急経済対策とは思えない。まさに、ハコモノ行政で、役人たちが天下り対策で出してきた案ではないか。あれだけ多額の税金を使うなら、国民が漫画を楽しめる生活を取り戻してほしい」
首相はこうした声をどう聞くのか？
ZAKZAK 2009/05/30
--------------------------
牛肉：輸出入、月齢条件を撤廃 ＯＩＥ総会が決議採択
【パリ共同】牛海綿状脳症（ＢＳＥ）の監視基準などを策定する国際獣疫事務局（ＯＩＥ）は２９日、パリで開会中の総会で、ＢＳＥに関連し輸出入できる牛肉の条件から「３０カ月未満の骨なし牛肉」という月齢条件を撤廃、「全月齢の骨なし牛肉」とする内容を盛り込んだ決議を採択した。
日本はこれまで月齢２０カ月以下の米国産牛肉に限って輸入を許可し、条件撤廃には反対していた。今回の決議採択により、月齢で輸出入を制限する根拠が薄れることになった。日本に市場開放を求める米国がさらに圧力を強めるのは必至だ。
ＯＩＥ科学委員会のバラ事務局長は２７日の記者会見で「ＢＳＥの（国別）ステータス評価にかかわらず、厳格な衛生条件を満たして処理された牛肉に危険はないと判断している」と述べていた。
-----------------------------
Foreign investors eye Angola
AFP Louise Redvers
In the lobby bar of one of Luanda's few decent hotels, suited businessmen sit in deep leather armchairs waiting for a meeting in the oil-rich country which could change their fortunes.
"Angola is one of the last great emerging market opportunities," one European man told AFP between sips of whisky.
"I don't care about the logistical problems as long as the solutions and rewards are there -- I'm in this for the long term to make money."
Thanks to high oil prices and a peacetime construction frenzy, Angola has enjoyed annual double-digit growth since a 27-year civil war ended in 2002 to become one of the world's fastest growing economies.
Growth is set to slow this year, but interest from international investors has not abated with a recent flurry of high profile trade delegations, all hoping to get a piece of the action.
The government's response to falling commodity prices, which threaten public spending aimed at Angola's poor majority, is diversification into areas such as agriculture and manufacturing.
Until now, Angola's main foreign players have been Brazilian and Portuguese firms, and Chinese companies helped along by close ties and credit lines believed to exceed five billion dollars.
But along with visits from the United States, France and South Korea in the past month, there have also been business forums in Rome and Cairo and state visits by President Jose Eduardo dos Santos to Germany and Portugal.
Last week a trade agreement was signed with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.
Among the recent American delegation was Delta Air Lines which hopes to launch the first direct scheduled flight from the United States to Luanda in September.
"There's no question, Angola is a very strong market and there is a lot of potential," the airline's government affairs advisor Scott Yohe told AFP.
"The amount of time it takes to get to Angola from the US, via Europe or via South Africa, has an impact on trade and the new flight will definitely be a catalyst for investment."
Dubai-based Emirates starts flying three times a week from Luanda to Dubai in August.
"Angola is a country which is really moving," explained Nigel Page, senior vice president of Emirates in Americas and Africa.
"We predict that there will be a lot of business exchanges between Luanda and Dubai and this route will channel more companies into Angola from the east."
There is already plenty of Asian investment in Angola, particularly from China which holds a number of key construction contracts, including four 2010 Africa Cup of Nations football stadiums.
China's interest in Angola has aroused concern in the west, especially as a number of the loans have been oil backed, but Alex Vines, of the London-based think tank Chatham House, believes the Sino-Angolan relationship may be waning.
"From a geo-strategic point of view, Angola wants to woo lots of different investment, not just from China," he told AFP.
"And that's why we've seen Dos Santos making these high profile visits to Europe and these other trade trips being invited to Angola."
Despite predicting a three-percent contraction in 2009, World Bank economist Ricardo Gazel said: "Angola's economy is still in a much better position than most and medium and long term, the prospects are very good.
"There is a lot of investment interest, particularly in the non-petroleum sector which is good for diversifying the economy and for the economy as a whole."
For businesses hoping to break into the Angolan market however, it's not easy and good contacts go a long way.
The World Bank's Doing Business Report ranks Angola as one of the hardest places to set up a company with 68 days needed to start a business, although this has halved since 2008.
But, big on capital if low on know-how, Angola has been spreading the word about investment opportunities and it seems the world is listening.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - Tokyo - new air route between Russia and Japan - inaugurated
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk - Tokyo - new air route between Russia and Japan - inaugurated
28.05.2009, 07.37
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, May 28 (Itar-Tass) - A new air route has been inaugurated between Russia and Japan. Flights from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Tokyo and back will be made by TU-204 and A-330 airliners of the Vladivostok-Avia Company (VAC). The first flight was made on May 26, the VAC press service announced on Thursday.
Airliners from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk will land at Tokyo's Narita airport. Flights are to be made twice a week. The duration of the flight is two hours.
The VAC also carries out the transportation of people from Russia's Far East to the Japanese cities of Niigata and Narita, China's Beijing and Harbin, and South Korea's Seoul.
-----------------------
Russian fighter jets worse than those of USA and Europe?
28.05.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/107643-russian_fighters-0
The failure of the deal to sell Russian IL-78 fuel tankers to India once again raised the issue of the competitive ability decrease of Russian arms and military technique on the world market. Russia’s "Оboronka" (the defense industry) is facing yet harder problems in handling export contracts and servicing clients of earlier transactions. “It is impossible to improve the situation”, our expert concludes.
According to Russian and foreign media sources, India refused to buy Russian Il-78 fuel tanker aircraft. Indian officials motivated this decision with the non-conformity of planes to the customer’s requisitions. The spare parts supply and the after-sales service were also mentioned.
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia alternated its approach to the handling of the defense business. Nowadays we are facing problems with spare parts, the support of manufacturers and the delays conditioned by the centralized structure of their defense corporations”, Fali Homi Major, the Commander-in-Chief of Indian Air Force told RIA Novosti. Instead of Russian planes India is likely to buy Airbus A330 MRTT manufactured by the European company EADS.
This is not the first juicy scandal connected with Russia’s defense exports. “The most well-known case is the scandal with Algeria when they refused to take the already procured MiG aircraft and sent them back to us. There are plenty of scandals with India in relation to various types of arms. It concerns naval weapons in the first place”, said Mr. Alexander Khramchihin of the Institute of Political and Defense Analysis in an interview to Bigness.ru.
Recollecting the year 2007 with the outbreak of scandal with 15 MiG-29CMT fighters shipped to Algeria . It appeared that the jet fighters, which were sold as brand new, contained “second-hand” parts. According to some information, the units from the planes with several hundreds of flight hours were used when assembling those aircraft.
One can recollect habitual claims from India which is one of our key partners in the field of defense cooperation. We remind the endless complaints with The Gorshkov aircraft carrier which was designed for India. The budget for its refurbishment was mounting endlessly which enormously irritated our client. Perplexity was also connected with the problems in the modernization of the ship.
Technical problems haunted Russia in the transfer of frigates, which India ordered from Russia . Air defense missile systems stubbornly failed to hit air targets. In many scandal situations (e.g. in the case of airplanes returned by Algeria) some observers incriminate the international backroom deal.
However, politically motivated relations with India could only take place in times of the Cold War, but definitely not today. “Earlier India oriented itself to Russia during the Cold War, and there were truly political factors there”, says A.Khramchihin.
“Today India can buy weapons from whoever it wants to. The market also became more abundant than before. In his words everything in this sphere is explained by the quality including India’s denial. This is the signal to us that we produce low-quality weapons”, he affirms.
Formerly, competitive advantage of the Soviet military technique was in its low price (sometimes even dumping), its simplicity and reliability. However, the Russian military hardware, still being simple, started losing its former reliability. Nevertheless, the prices on it were growing against all odds.
The answer is in the high inflation rise of the defense sphere surpassing the average price growth in the industry as well as the degradation of the military-industrial complex. Whereas the amount of the state defense contracts and foreign contracts is growing, the national defense industry still fails to regain its capability to tackle the large-scale production of military equipment.
“Old factories which produced hardware in sufficient quantities and quality in the course of many years are not coping with the assignment of today”, said Mr. Ruslan Pukhov, of the Center of Strategy and Technology Analysis told Bigness.ru.
The staff deficit still persists – “money is there but people are not”. ”The situation is impossible to amend”, grumbles A.Kramchihin.
If the situation does not change (according to military experts it will be next to impossible to reverse it) Russia will be losing its share in the market of arms and military equipment. These tendencies have already started to take shape. Thus. according to studies of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Bonn International Converse Center (BICC) Russia is reducing its share on the world arms market.
The turnover on the world arms market in 2004-2008 has increased by 21 percent as compared to previous five-year period (1999-2003). At that time the increase in sales of Russian arms was only 14 percent. The figures testify that our share in the arms market started to curtail.
Sergey Malinin
--------------------
Russian fighter jets worse than those of USA and Europe?
28.05.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/107643-russian_fighters-0
The failure of the deal to sell Russian IL-78 fuel tankers to India once again raised the issue of the competitive ability decrease of Russian arms and military technique on the world market. Russia’s "Оboronka" (the defense industry) is facing yet harder problems in handling export contracts and servicing clients of earlier transactions. “It is impossible to improve the situation”, our expert concludes.
According to Russian and foreign media sources, India refused to buy Russian Il-78 fuel tanker aircraft. Indian officials motivated this decision with the non-conformity of planes to the customer’s requisitions. The spare parts supply and the after-sales service were also mentioned.
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia alternated its approach to the handling of the defense business. Nowadays we are facing problems with spare parts, the support of manufacturers and the delays conditioned by the centralized structure of their defense corporations”, Fali Homi Major, the Commander-in-Chief of Indian Air Force told RIA Novosti. Instead of Russian planes India is likely to buy Airbus A330 MRTT manufactured by the European company EADS.
This is not the first juicy scandal connected with Russia’s defense exports. “The most well-known case is the scandal with Algeria when they refused to take the already procured MiG aircraft and sent them back to us. There are plenty of scandals with India in relation to various types of arms. It concerns naval weapons in the first place”, said Mr. Alexander Khramchihin of the Institute of Political and Defense Analysis in an interview to Bigness.ru.
Recollecting the year 2007 with the outbreak of scandal with 15 MiG-29CMT fighters shipped to Algeria . It appeared that the jet fighters, which were sold as brand new, contained “second-hand” parts. According to some information, the units from the planes with several hundreds of flight hours were used when assembling those aircraft.
One can recollect habitual claims from India which is one of our key partners in the field of defense cooperation. We remind the endless complaints with The Gorshkov aircraft carrier which was designed for India. The budget for its refurbishment was mounting endlessly which enormously irritated our client. Perplexity was also connected with the problems in the modernization of the ship.
Technical problems haunted Russia in the transfer of frigates, which India ordered from Russia . Air defense missile systems stubbornly failed to hit air targets. In many scandal situations (e.g. in the case of airplanes returned by Algeria) some observers incriminate the international backroom deal.
However, politically motivated relations with India could only take place in times of the Cold War, but definitely not today. “Earlier India oriented itself to Russia during the Cold War, and there were truly political factors there”, says A.Khramchihin.
“Today India can buy weapons from whoever it wants to. The market also became more abundant than before. In his words everything in this sphere is explained by the quality including India’s denial. This is the signal to us that we produce low-quality weapons”, he affirms.
Formerly, competitive advantage of the Soviet military technique was in its low price (sometimes even dumping), its simplicity and reliability. However, the Russian military hardware, still being simple, started losing its former reliability. Nevertheless, the prices on it were growing against all odds.
The answer is in the high inflation rise of the defense sphere surpassing the average price growth in the industry as well as the degradation of the military-industrial complex. Whereas the amount of the state defense contracts and foreign contracts is growing, the national defense industry still fails to regain its capability to tackle the large-scale production of military equipment.
“Old factories which produced hardware in sufficient quantities and quality in the course of many years are not coping with the assignment of today”, said Mr. Ruslan Pukhov, of the Center of Strategy and Technology Analysis told Bigness.ru.
The staff deficit still persists – “money is there but people are not”. ”The situation is impossible to amend”, grumbles A.Kramchihin.
If the situation does not change (according to military experts it will be next to impossible to reverse it) Russia will be losing its share in the market of arms and military equipment. These tendencies have already started to take shape. Thus. according to studies of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Bonn International Converse Center (BICC) Russia is reducing its share on the world arms market.
The turnover on the world arms market in 2004-2008 has increased by 21 percent as compared to previous five-year period (1999-2003). At that time the increase in sales of Russian arms was only 14 percent. The figures testify that our share in the arms market started to curtail.
Sergey Malinin
-------------------------
Scientists predict men’s extinction again
26.05.2009 Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/107624-men_extinction -0
An Australian scientist told the RCSI’s Annual Outreach Lecture that the Y chromosome, which determines gender, is dying out, and men could go with it.
Prof Jennifer Graves warned the genetic make-up of the chromosome has declined significantly over the years, remarking the Y chromosome has lost all but 45 of the 1,400 genes that were on it 300 million years ago.
While the outlook is not great for the future of men, other species have survived the decline of the gender-defining Y chromosome and SRY gene.
“The good news is that certain rodent species have no Y chromosome and no SRY gene, yet there are still plenty of healthy males... some other gene must have taken over the job, and we’d like to know what that gene is.
“We already know that there are several candidate genes out there that could take over from SRY. However, which one takes over is sheer chance, imn.ie reports.
"It’s even possible that two or more different sex-determination systems based on different genes could arise two different populations,” Prof Graves said.
Pravda.Ru previously published a number of articles about male extinction.
“According to Sergey Shnurov, a frontman of the popular Russian punk group Leningrad, a real man “got balls, a stubbly chin, and he smells of tobacco and hangover. Too true, the criteria are unlikely to fit a guy with carefully manicured fingernails and conspicuously gelled haircut, the one who walks past the shop windows leaving a trail of Givenchy perfume. The guy looks like a metrosexual.
I am not talking about those who opt to get laid while traveling by metro. The term “metrosexual” is a combination of two words, metropolis (Gk – a chief city) and sexual. Not unlike any other noticeable phenomenon, metrosexuality is often accompanied by myths and speculations.
“It the good old 19th century, nobody thought a dandy could be gay.”
Click here to read the full text of the article.
In another article Pravda.Ru reported about the extinction of Russian men in some regions of Russia.
Russian Ministry for Health Care reported the statistics concerning death rate among able-bodied men in Russia. As it turned out, Russian men of this age category die 4 times oftener than women of the same age category. As for other age categories, the death rate among men is also higher than among women. The average life expectancy of Russian men makes up 58-59 years today, which is 14-15 years less than the life expectancy of Russian women or men from developed countries.
Researchers from the Moscow State University state that life expectancy in Russia at the end of the 19th – at the beginning of the 20th centuries was 15-20 years less than life expectancy in Europe. We should give the Soviet power credit for its efforts as a result of which infant mortality and mortality caused by infections reduced before WWII. The positive effect was favorable for men particularly. Indeed, although the number of newborn boys is higher than the number of newborn girls everywhere in the world, but infant mortality among boys is always higher.
Male losses caused by the Great Patriotic War have not been yet calculated precisely. By the mid-1960th, the life expectancy in the Soviet Union reached approximately the same level that in the West (Soviet men lived for 64.5 years on average and European and North American men lived for 66 years). But later the death rate among Soviet able-bodied men considerably increased because of heart diseases, cancer and other injuries.
Demographers explain the problem with the poor level of Soviet medicine and ignorance of Soviet men concerning their health. On the other hand, the Soviet Union was one of the first countries that started total clinical examination of workers, students and school pupils for the sake of successful prophylaxis. Later, the system was successfully applied in the West.
-------------------------
Belarus refuses to accept Russian $0.5 bln loan in rubles
18:0628/05/2009
MINSK, May 28 (RIA Novosti) - Belarus has turned down a new loan tranche from Russia worth $500 million, insisting that it be denominated in dollars rather than Russian rubles, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Thursday.
"We offered Belarus $500 million, as a new tranche of the Russian loan, in Russian rubles, not in U.S. dollars. Belarus refused," Kudrin said, adding that Russia was still continuing talks with its ex-Soviet neighbor on the terms of the loan tranche.
Belarus received the first $1 billion of a $2 billion loan from Russia in November 2008. In March 2009, the ex-Soviet republic received another $500 million.
Kudrin said that Belarus was currently experiencing problems with its gold and foreign exchange reserves.
"Today the exchange rate of the Belarusian ruble is being maintained at a set level. For this purpose, Belarus is spending its gold and foreign exchange reserves. In the first quarter, Belarus spent over $2 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves to keep the exchange rate stable. This is more than one third of the country's gold and foreign currency reserves," Kudrin said.
Kudrin said if Belarus spent as much in the next quarter then it would run out of foreign currency by the third quarter of 2009.
---------------------
Nissan to open car factory in Petersburg on June 2
16:2928/05/2009
MOSCOW, May 28 (RIA Novosti) - Nissan will officially open a car factory in St. Petersburg on June 2, the Japanese car giant said on Thursday.
"The official opening ceremony is planned for June 2. Nissan's plant was built in a new industrial zone in the northwestern part of St. Petersburg," Nissan said in a statement.
Investment in the Nissan factory is estimated at $200 million. The new facility will employ 750 people and have the capacity to manufacture 50,000 cars per year.
The Nissan Teana will be the first model to be produced at the St. Petersburg plant.
Nissan earlier said that the availability of a qualified workforce, a suitable location, a favorable business climate and support from the city's authorities were the factors behind the company's choice of St. Petersburg.
-----------------------
Russia, Cuba agree to renew joint nuclear research
Eduard Pesov
17:4627/05/2009
MOSCOW, May 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and Cuba have agreed to renew their cooperation in nuclear research with Cuba's Nuclear Energy Agency, head of Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko said on Wednesday.
The announcement came during an awards ceremony in Moscow where Cuban scientific aide Fidel Angel Castro Diaz-Balart, Fidel Castro's son, received the Russian Kurchatov Award for his work in the nuclear sphere.
"On behalf of the entire nuclear division, I present the highest award...the Kurchatov Award, to Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart. Today, we will renew our cooperation at [Cuba's] nuclear research center that will allow us to develop a number of directions in modern science," Kiriyenko said.
Russian-Cuban nuclear cooperation was halted in 1992 after the construction of an atomic plant in Cuba was frozen.
Diaz-Balart, 59, is a member of Cuba's Academy of Sciences and studied theoretical physics in the Soviet Union. He has published numerous scientific papers in Cuba, Spain and Russia.
In the 1980s, he headed Cuba's nuclear agency at the time that the Soviet Union and Cuba started the construction of a nuclear plant. The agency now works in a number of areas in nuclear physics, including biotechnology and the development of nanotechnology.
-------------------------
Moldova’s rulers turn up heat on business
By Thomas Escritt
Published: May 28 2009 23:04 | Last updated: May 28 2009 23:10
For most Moldovans, last month’s political crisis is over. The ruling Communist party has been working to consolidate its election victory and the opposition demonstrators, who made headlines by storming the presidential palace and parliament, are now mostly quiet.
But for Gabriel Stati the crisis is anything but finished. The 33-year-old son of one of Moldova’s richest businessmen is languishing in jail seven weeks after his arrest at the height of the protests.
Prosecutors accuse Mr Stati of fomenting a coup and backing the violent demonstrations that caused considerable damage to public buildings and to Moldova’s international reputation.
But Anatol Stati, Gabriel’s father, claims his son was arrested as part of a campaign by Vladimir Voronin, Moldova’s veteran president, to “poach by using criminal methods the Stati family assets”.
The arrest of the flamboyant Mr Stati, who has a taste for expensive cars and restaurants, highlights the business battles that are deeply entwined with politics in Moldova. Most of the 4.4m inhabitants of Europe’s poorest country live from farming, labouring or working abroad. But a handful of entrepreneurs have made big fortunes through domestic monopolies, property deals and sometimes through trade between Chisinau and the breakaway territory of Trans Dnestr.
Political connections can be crucial, not least for putting pressure on rivals. Ion Sturza, a former prime minister who is now a business executive, believes people around Mr Voronin may be attacking the older Mr Stati through his son because they want his business. “Kids are the weakest point for parents – to attack our son is to attack everything,” he says.
Mr Voronin, who soon has to stand down as president after serving two terms, has this month attempted to ensure his successor is a political ally.
Anatol Stati’s main asset is Ascom, an oil services company with oil extraction rights in central Asia, Iraq and Sudan. He moved the business out of Moldova a year ago, blaming the political environment. Shortly afterwards he departed for neighbouring Romania and has not returned to Moldova. He said in a statement at the time: “Lately, Ascom . . . has been subject to increasingly strong pressure with the aim to destabilise its activity in the Republic of Moldova.”
But Gabriel Stati rejected his father’s pleas to join him abroad. He lived life to the full in Chisinau and attracting attention from gossip columnists, with his Hummer and Rolls-Royce and penchant for fancy restaurants and bars. A close associate of Anatol Stati says: “I asked his father, a serious businessman, why he let his son behave like a playboy and he just said: ‘I can’t control him. He’s just young and silly.’ ”
A letter allegedly sent on October 6 last year by Vladimir Voronin to Nursultan Nazabeyev, the Kazakh president, which was leaked to Moldovan opposition newspapers in March, suggests Mr Voronin was targeting Anatol Stati.
In the letter, whose authenticity has not been denied by either government, Mr Voronin allegedly urges his Kazakh counterpart to pay “serious attention” to Anatol Stati, whom he accuses of using income from Kazakh assets to carry out “blood-tainted business” in Sudan, causing “severe damage” to Moldova’s reputation. “He runs and finances propagandistic campaigns and in non-transparent ways funds political parties oppositional to the current government,” Mr Voronin allegedly writes.
Although most of Anatol Stati’s lucrative oil interests were outside Moldova and beyond the reach of state authorities, Mr Stati was concerned that his son’s presence in the country remained an Achilles’ heel, according to an associate of Mr Stati. Shortly before the elections in April, the younger Stati made himself even more prominent when he plunged into politics and urged Moldovans to vote for the opposition parties.
Just after the election on April 5, Gabriel Stati fled to the Ukrainian port of Odessa, where he was detained on a Moldovan arrest warrant. According to Vladislav Gribincea, his lawyer, a request for political asylum in Ukraine was not assessed, and within a week Mr Stati and a companion were driven to the border and handed to the Moldovan authorities.
Today, he languishes in Chisinau’s prison number 13. Mr Gribincea said: “The charges were politically motivated and manifestly unfounded. . . Mr Stati did not commit this crime and the context of his arrest is the hostile relations between the president of Moldova and Mr Stati’s father.”
Mr Voronin’s office declined to comment, but the interior minister denied Mr Stati’s arrest was politically motivated. A justice ministry spokeswoman said the charges against Anatol Stati related to his alleged organisation of the events of April 7 – the post-election protests – and were not politically motivated.
Valeriu Prohnitchi, a consultant at Expert Group, a Chisinau think-tank, believes that a tide of state-mandated investigations into private businesses amounts to a pattern.
“There are signs of increasing pressure on businesses,” he said. “It is not just about the Stati family and Ascom.” He points to Rompetrol, the Romanian-owned petrol retailer, which was recently fined $2m for company law violations. Mr Sturza, the former prime minister, who runs its operations in Moldova, says: “We have five groups of investigators in the building from morning to evening”.
Vladimir Filat, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat party that was runner-up in the elections, claims state authorities used the courts to gain control of a conference centre he owned until last year. “We were accused of irregularities in the privatisation 10 years ago and we lost the business through a court ruling, not even being invited to the final phase of the trial,” Mr Filat said. An appeal is pending to the European Court of Human Rights.
Three weeks ago, Anatol Cislaru, part-owner of Carmez, a meat processing business, was thrown in prison for alleged securities law violations, a claim that has given rise to scepticism. “This is a pure dispute between shareholders. Supposedly he bought too aggressively, but securities law in Moldova is non-existent,” Mr Sturza says.
Whatever Gabriel Stati’s fate, his father’s company faces an uncertain future. Ascom’s Kazakh subsidiary has some $430m (€308m, £269m) in debts due to bondholders, and has been badly hit by falling oil prices. But for the moment, Anatol Stati’s most pressing problem is trying to extract his son from jail.
--------------------------
Credit Suisse begins London property sale
By Daniel Thomas
Published: May 29 2009 00:03 | Last updated: May 29 2009 00:16
Credit Suisse has begun a sale of its London property estate that could raise as much as £500m (€572m) as part of a strategy to focus on core banking operations.
The investment bank this week instructed CB Richard Ellis to begin marketing the smaller of its two buildings in Canary Wharf, with indications that its landmark tower at Cabot Square is also likely to be brought to the market before the end of the year.
In total, the sales of the two buildings – 20 Columbus Courtyard and 1 Cabot Square – could raise more than £500m, depending on the terms set by the bank on the length of its occupancy and rent.
The move comes as other banks and companies look to sell off non-core assets, with property advisers forecasting that several billion pounds of sale and leaseback deals will be completed in the next few months.
HSBC, which occupies a neighbouring building on Canary Wharf, is conducting the largest transaction, with just weeks to go before the bank is expected to pick a buyer for its $2bn global headquarters portfolio.
The sales by the banks come in spite of the slump in the property sector, which has left some advisers questioning the timing of the offerings given a drop of almost half since the peak in 2007.
The move by Credit Suisse to sell the real estate was part of a longstanding strategy to focus on core banking operations, people close to the bank said. They said the bank was under no pressure to sell if it did not find sufficient value.
Credit Suisse has a tier one capital ratio – a measure of a bank’s financial strength – of more than 14 per cent, towards the higher end of the banking sector.
Credit Suisse would not comment directly on the sale process, but added: “Credit Suisse regularly reviews its global property portfolio in order to ensure we are maximising the efficient use of capital and resources. A sale and leaseback of our Canary Wharf buildings in London is one option that we review on a regular basis.”
HSBC, meanwhile, is in talks to sell three of its office buildings in London, New York and Paris in a deal that is expected to raise about $2bn. Potential buyers are said to include a number of wealthy families, who are interested in the fixed income from the rents on offer, as well as sovereign wealth funds and other institutional buyers.
-----------------------
Qatar to buy $4.1bn in real estate from banks
By Robin Wigglesworth in Abu Dhabi
Published: May 29 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 29 2009 03:00
Qatar has offered to buy real estate investments worth up to $4.1bn from local banks, as the government steps up efforts to support the domestic financial sector against the fallout from the credit crunch.
Though Qatar's property sector is healthier than in many other Gulf countries, the market has weakened this year, and analysts expect non-performing loans to rise, weighing on banks' earnings.
The operation aims to "support the real estate sector . . . and allow banks to continue to play their vital role" in the country's development, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, Qatari prime minister said yesterday. Qatar's abundant wealth - it is the world's largest supplier of liquefied natural gas - has allowed it to actively support its banks and wider economy during the financial crisis.
Qatar is expected to report one of the world's highest economic growth rates this year and next, thanks to a near doubling of gas exports and continued government spending.
The small kingdom was one of the first Gulf countries to intervene to prop up its banking system.
The Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund, bought 5 per cent stakes in all local banks last year and is expected to take another 5 per cent this year.
In March, the government said it would buy the local equity portfolios of banks, worth an estimated $6bn, to prevent mark-to-market investment losses from hitting banks.
Since then, the Doha Securities Market has surged 41 per cent, paring its year to date loss to 4.3 per cent.
Qatar's $78,000 gross domestic product per capita is the highest in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund, and the kingdom had, on average, reported a 15 per cent real economic growth rate for the past five years, Moody's said in a recent report.
Qatar's banking sector is the fourth largest by assets of the six Gulf Co-operation Council countries, with total assets of $110bn as of the end of March, according to Shuaa Capital, a Dubai-based investment bank.
---------------------------
Kazakh Banker Goes on Lam as Defaults Hurt Investors (Update1)
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Laura Cochrane and Emma O’Brien
May 28 (Bloomberg) -- From his secret hideaway, BTA Bank’s former Chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov says Kazakhstan’s government caused the default of the nation’s largest lender. Kazakh prosecutors want him for allegedly embezzling the bank’s money.
The biggest losers in the dispute may be investors who poured into the former Soviet state as crude oil rose to a record and the economy grew 10 percent annually for eight years. Now, with petroleum prices down and the recession starving banks of credit, Kazakhstan’s image as a beacon of rising capitalism is being shattered by three banking defaults in six weeks.
“Once you lose the confidence of investors, people don’t trust you anymore,” said Harald Oberkirch, a travel-company operator on the Spanish island of Majorca, who bought $300,000 worth of BTA’s bonds as part of a more than $1 million investment in Kazakh bank debt. “Bankruptcy is near.”
Ablyazov, 46, fled in February before the government issued an arrest warrant, alleging he stole from the bank and laundered the money through loans to fictitious companies. Bloomberg spoke to him on a call organized by his London-based public-relations firm, Hudson Sandler Financial & Corporate Communications. He wouldn’t say where he was.
“All stakeholders in BTA, including international lenders, shareholders, customers and employees, have been victims of the Kazakhstan government’s criminal recklessness,” Ablyazov said. “The tragedy is that these huge losses could and should have been avoided. All the foreign markets are closed to Kazakh companies and will remain closed to them for up to five years.”
BTA Takeover
President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s government initiated a takeover of BTA in February, using cash from the state’s National Wellbeing Fund Samruk-Kazyna to buy a 75.1 percent stake. That sparked charges and counter-charges between the administration and the bankers who were pushed out. Nikolai Galikhin, deputy head of Nazarbayev’s press office, declined to comment on Ablyazov’s allegations.
The crisis in Kazakhstan is a legacy of banks that piled on debt as the economy soared and couldn’t repay when credit dried up. Gross domestic product shrank 2.2 percent in the first quarter. Foreign investors are drawing back capital as their favorable terms with lenders evaporate, said Kieran Curtis, who helps manage $800 million in emerging-market debt at Aviva Investors Ltd. in London, including Kazakh bonds.
Ratings Report
Kazakh banks must repay almost 40 percent of their $41 billion in debt in the next 12 months, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Moody’s Investors Service said last week that it may cut the ratings of five Kazakh financial companies on concern the government won’t help stave off default. The benchmark stock index dropped 57 percent in the past year.
BTA bondholders have been waiting more than a month for details of a debt restructuring. In addition, Almaty-based Alliance Bank, Kazakhstan’s fourth-largest lender, and Astana Finance, owned in part by the government, have stopped making creditor payments.
“Kazakhstan was the great hope for pro-Western investments,” said Lauren Goodrich, a senior Eurasian analyst at Stratfor, a global intelligence company in Austin, Texas. “Now those aspirations are being picked off one by one, and the country is looking less and less like a great hope. It’s completely changing.”
Investment in Kazakhstan increased 25 percent last year, to $10.7 billion, the fifth-biggest gain among 21 developing nations tracked by New York-based CEIC Data Co. Only South Africa, Hungary, Russia and India grew faster.
Oil Play
“The appeal was simple,” said Aivaras Abromavicius, a Moscow-based portfolio manager for East Capital Asset Management, who plans to hold on to the firm’s one percent stake in BTA. “With oil at $100 and rising, it was very clear that anyone involved in the production of that commodity would benefit massively.”
And they did. Almaty-based BTA sold $350 million of U.S. dollar-denominated 10-year bonds at 4.59 percentage points over Treasuries in January 2005 compared with 3.17 percentage points for high-yield or emerging-market debt at the time, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. indexes. The company’s credit rating was lifted three times from 2000 to 2006 by Standard & Poor’s to as high as BB, two levels below investment grade. The KASE Index rose 26-fold from its creation in 2000 to the end of 2007.
Kazakhstan also benefited because its investment regulations were considered “head and shoulders” above those of regimes in other developing economies, said Ian McCall, who helps manage $800 million of emerging-market debt at Argo Capital Management Ltd. in London.
Accounting Rules
Most Kazakh banks have reported results since 2003 that conform to rules devised by the London-based International Accounting Standards Board, according to Deloitte & Touche LLP. Russia introduced such rules for commercial lenders in 2004 and has delayed a full transition to the standard until 2011, Deloitte said.
While regulations were catching up to Western standards, the country’s banks were also embracing a “culture of cheap credit,” said Chris Weafer, chief strategist in Moscow at UralSib Financial Corp., Russia’s third-biggest private bank.
“They promoted the place aggressively, they adopted these European standards and they tried to get rid of the Soviet baggage,” he said. “People were looking at Kazakhstan too superficially.”
A nation of more than 15 million people wedged between China and Russia, Kazakhstan has been ruled since Soviet days by pro-Russian Nazarbayev, 68. His Nur Otan party won 88 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections in August 2007, when not a single opposition candidate garnered a seat.
‘Pervasive Corruption’
The U.S. State Department’s report on human rights for Kazakhstan in March 2008 criticized the regime for “severe limits on citizens’ rights to change their government,” as well as “pervasive corruption.”
The Kazakh government added BTA’s former chief executive officer, Roman Solodchenko, to its wanted list in March, and prosecutors said they identified 32 suspects in the case. Ablyazov said the charges against him were fabricated.
Ainagul Shakirova, an Astana-based spokeswoman for Prime Minister Karim Masimov, declined to comment. Azamat Kenzhe, a spokesman for the Agency for Financial Supervision, wasn’t available for comment.
Ablyazov has faced government charges before. He was sent to prison in 2002 on allegations that he enriched himself as energy minister. He was pardoned 10 months later by Nazarbayev after allegedly being beaten and abused in prison, London-based Amnesty International said in a report.
Riding the Wave
Nazarbayev’s government originally sold BTA to Ablyazov for $72 million in March 1998. The banker reclaimed the helm in 2005, two years after his jail term ended. He built up the business by riding the wave of foreign money that was attracted to Kazakhstan after the discovery of the Kashagan oil field in 2000, the biggest new field found in 30 years.
Assets grew to about $25 billion in 2008, according to Kazakhstan’s financial regulator, from $7.5 billion in 2005, when BTA was known as Bank TuranAlem. It raised more than $10 billion in foreign debt from 2003 to 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
BTA became a “victim of its own P.R.,” UralSib’s Weafer said. “The problem is that Kazakhstan is still an emerging market and developing markets still have bad practices underneath the visible reforms.”
Shareholder Suits
The bank reported a loss of 261.5 billion tenge ($1.7 billion) in the first quarter. New CEO Anvar Saidenov told bondholders on a conference call April 28 that it had uncovered speculative derivatives transactions that may have overstated assets on the balance sheet.
BTA shareholders KT Asia Investment Group BV, based in Amsterdam, and Vienna-based GEM Equity Management AG filed complaints against the government with arbitration bodies of the United Nations and World Bank, alleging the state takeover violated international investment treaties and seeking $3 billion in compensation.
Marek Randma, portfolio manager at Helsinki-based Evli Fund Management Ltd., whose Evli New Republics Fund has 644 shares in BTA, says the firm holds its stake because “Kazakhstan’s main investment case -- its abundant resources -- is still intact.”
The country controls an estimated 3.2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, according to BP Plc.
Kazakhstan’s eight-stock KASE Index added 34 percent in the past month, the fifth best-performing global benchmark. S&P took the country’s credit rating off “negative” on May 8, removing the threat of a cut to a non-investment grade ranking.
Government Investment
Nazarbayev’s government has put about $5 billion into the banking system, said Kairat Kelimbetov, head of Samruk-Kazyna. The fund will await BTA’s debt-restructuring due in June before deciding whether to inject more into the lender, he said.
“Banks have clearly over-borrowed in the boom times,” Grigori Marchenko, National Bank of Kazakhstan governor, said in an interview in London. “Investors were fully aware about some problems that the Kazakh banking sector was facing, but they still pumped a record amount of money in Kazakhstan.”
Kazakhstan is seeking funds from South Korea, Abu Dhabi and Russia to stabilize its banking and energy industries, according to Samruk-Kazyna. The fund is in talks to sell part of its BTA stake to Moscow-based OAO Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, Kelimbetov said. Sherbank wants the fund to remain a shareholder in BTA, he said in Astana today.
BTA’s downfall is rippling through the economy.
Anargul Birzhanova, an assistant hotel manager in the capital of Astana, has held off opening a savings account because it is “very frightening to deposit money now.”
“In my neighborhood in the Astana suburbs, I haven’t heard recently about anyone who was able to get a bank loan,” said Birzhanova, 23. “We feel the panic.”
----------------------
Russia Diamond Monopoly Seeks to Avoid Market Flood (Update1)
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Maria Kolesnikova and Ellen Pinchuk
May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Russia will avoid flooding the world diamond market, as it did in the 1990s, with the stocks it has been building up since demand slumped last year, the nation’s monopoly producer ZAO Alrosa said.
“The situation is completely different and the mentality changed a lot,” Chief Executive Officer Sergei Vybornov said in an interview. “Nobody wants to destroy the market.”
More than a decade ago, Russia began offloading rough, or uncut, diamonds as its need for hard currency became acute, leading to a rift with distributor De Beers. This time, the state and Alrosa will coordinate to avoid a repetition of events that “crushed the market for a very long time,” Vybornov said.
Polished gem values have fallen by an average 31 percent since peaking in August, according to PolishedPrices.com, as the global economic slowdown prompts consumers to curb spending on luxury goods. Gem Diamonds Ltd., the operator of the Letseng mine in Lesotho, said this month that first-quarter diamond prices collapsed 52 percent from a year earlier.
State-owned Alrosa suspended sales to the market last year, instead shipping gems to government depository Gokhran, Vybornov said on May 26. As a result, the company pared output by about 4 percent, he said, in contrast with De Beers’s 91 percent cut in the first quarter. This year, in a sign of improving conditions, it plans to offer about two-thirds of production to the state.
Other producers are also anticipating a rebound.
Resuming Sales
De Beers, the world’s biggest diamond producer, has resumed operations at a joint venture in Botswana that produces a fifth of global supply after suspending output in February. Gem Diamonds CEO Clifford Elphick said prices rose by “low single- digit percentages” at recent sales, while Petra Diamonds Ltd. chief Johan Dippenaar said declines had stopped.
Alrosa is resuming sales of rough diamonds to the market this month, Vybornov said, with as much as $1 billion going to 15 companies in Antwerp by the end of the year.
That may spur a turnaround in the Belgian city, which handles most of the world’s diamonds, after imports tumbled 45 percent in the first four months. Exports also fell 30 percent, according to the Antwerp World Diamond Centre trade group.
“Prices and sales appear to be stabilizing as consumers realize that the sky has not fallen in,” Avi Paz, president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, said in an e-mailed statement from Antwerp yesterday. More than 1,500 international diamond companies have their headquarters in the city in an area called the Diamond Square Mile, which has four diamond bourses.
Seeking Influence
Alrosa may gain influence over the diamond market as a result of Russia’s increased holdings of gems, and buy mining companies that aren’t able to survive independently, including some that may be listed in London and Toronto, Vybornov said.
“It would be a good time for sure to look at possible mergers and acquisitions, but we need first to get a clear vision for the sales,” he said.
“We will have these stocks, huge stocks, after the crisis,” he added. “We will play a definitely much more important role than before.”
-------------------------
ECB’s 500-Euro Note Lures Cocaine Smugglers to Europe, DEA Says
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Steve Scherer
May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Cocaine traffickers are targeting Europe because prices are higher, the currency is stronger and it’s easier to ship profits home using 500-euro ($693) bills, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
“There’s a big push on the part of Central and South American crime groups to increase trafficking to Europe, where they get a higher price per kilo,” Russell Benson, the DEA’s regional director for Europe and Africa, said in an interview in Rome. “The European Central Bank’s printing of the 500-euro note is an issue. It’s an attractive point for drug traffickers.”
A million dollars in $100 bills weighs about 22 pounds (10 kilograms), while $1 million in 500-euro bills at the current exchange rate of about $1.38 per euro weighs about 3.5 pounds, Benson said. The price of a kilo of cocaine in Europe can be more than double that of the more saturated U.S. market, he said. While a kilo of cocaine may cost $20,000 in California, it goes for as much as 35,000 euros ($48,543) in Europe.
The global cocaine market generates $320 billion in revenue annually, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimates. Italian anti-organized crime group Libera said in January the market may be more than triple the size of the UN figure. Cocaine is shipped to Europe, where Benson says demand is increasing, from Central and South America by organized-crime groups that operate similarly to the Sicilian Mafia.
Colombia
The purchasers then ship the cash back, often the same way the drugs were transported. The purple 500-euro notes with drawings of 20th-century architecture are increasingly surfacing on the streets of Colombia, the world’s biggest cocaine- producing country, Benson said.
“The 500-euro bill is the same size as bills that existed before the euro,” ECB Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said in Rome on April 3, dismissing criticism that it favored crime.
The Frankfurt-based ECB said the size of its banknotes was reviewed in 2005. It will be evaluated again “in the next few years,” though the “denominational structure of the euro banknotes will remain unchanged,” ECB spokesman Niels Buenemann said in an e-mail.
Six of the 16 nations that share the euro have always used large-denomination bills, Buenemann said. By issuing the bills, the ECB is “satisfying demand for these denominations.” Making more smaller notes to replace bigger ones would “lead to higher production and processing costs,” he said.
The number of 500-euro bills in circulation has risen 30 percent since 2006 through the first quarter of this year, compared with a 14 percent increase in the number of 50-euro bills. Of the 747 billion euros in circulation, 36 percent is in the form of 500-euro bills.
Europe’s biggest bill is turning up more and more in busts, Benson said, pointing to a 2005 raid by the DEA and Spanish police in Barcelona, Spain. Police recovered 5.5 million euros in bulk currency ready to be shipped to Mexico -- much of it in 500-euro notes.
------------------------
生産、持ち直す兆し ４月鉱工業生産5.2％プラス
経済産業省が29日発表した4月の鉱工業生産指数（速報値、2005年＝100）は前月比5.2％上昇の74.3と、1953年3月以来、約56年ぶりの上昇率を記録した。輸出の底入れに加え、在庫調整が進んだことなどが理由。一方、総務省が同日発表した4月の完全失業率（季節調整値）は5.0％と、前月よりも0.2ポイント上昇。有効求人倍率（同）も0.46倍と前月を0.06ポイント下回って過去最低に並んだ。生産が持ち直しに向かう一方、雇用情勢の悪化は続いている。
鉱工業生産指数は2カ月連続の上昇。生産水準は依然低いものの、5、6月もプラス予想になっており、製造業の生産活動は上向き始めている。経産省は鉱工業生産の基調判断について「持ち直しの動きがみられる」として、前月の「停滞」から変更。上方修正は07年8月以来になる。(14:20)
-----------------------
4月の有効求人倍率、過去最低水準に 完全失業率は5％台に
生産に持ち直しの動きがみえる一方で、実体経済悪化の影響が雇用に及んできた。4月の完全失業率（季節調整値）が悪化したことに加え、厚生労働省が29 日発表した4月の有効求人倍率（同）も1999年6月に記録した過去最低水準に並んだ。失業者が増える一方で、企業の雇用吸収力が弱まり、雇用情勢の悪循環が強まっている。
失業率は15歳以上の働く意欲がある人のうちで全く職に就いていない人の割合。5％台に乗せたのは2003年11月以来、5年5カ月ぶりになる。完全失業者数は前年同月比71万人増の346万人。増加幅は過去最大だった。(14:20)
------------------------
信金・信組の区分撤廃 金融庁検討、競争通じ再編促す
金融庁は信用金庫と信用組合の業務規制上の垣根を撤廃する方向で検討に入る。中小・零細企業などに顧客を限定しているそれぞれの枠組みを一本化したうえで、新しい金融サービスを提供できるよう規制を緩和する案が軸となる見通しだ。業態を超えた競争を通じ、経営体力の弱い信金・信組の淘汰・再編を促す。規模の拡大などで経営改善が進めば、地域経済への資金供給の円滑化を後押しすることになりそうだ。
金融審議会（首相の諮問機関）が29日に示す、信金・信組の将来展望をまとめた報告書の素案に盛り込む。素案は信金・信組の経営環境について「他業態との競争も激しくなる可能性があり、長期的にみて信金と信組が個別業態として成立し得ない」と指摘。そのうえで「別の制度として維持する意義・必要性は必ずしも強くない」とし、業務形態を抜本的に見直す必要性を示す。(07:40)
------------------------
鋼材価格、家電向けも1.5万円下げ パナソニック、新日鉄と大筋合意
新日本製鉄が家電大手と進めていた2009年度の鋼材価格交渉は、08年度より1トンあたり1万5000円前後（十数％）の値下げで決着する見通しとなった。パナソニックと28日までに大筋合意したもよう。既にトヨタ自動車とも1万5000円の値下げで合意しており、自動車に続いて電機業界でも調達コストが下がる。
家電用鋼材についてはほかの電機大手とも同水準で決まる見通し。日本鉄鋼連盟の鋼材受注統計などによると、08年度の家電用鋼材の国内出荷は約240万トン。減産幅にもよるが、これらから推計すると家電業界の国内鋼材調達コストは300億円程度減るとみられる。今回の合意は国内向けで、輸出用については交渉を続ける。(07:00)
------------------------
自動車金型のオギハラ、タイ企業の傘下に
自動車用プレス金型大手のオギハラ（群馬県太田市、渡辺弘明社長）が、タイの自動車部品大手タイサミットの傘下に入ったことが28日までに分かった。複数の関係者によると3月に約10億円の第三者割当増資を実施し、タイサミットが84％超の株式を取得したもようだ。渡辺社長は続投するが実質的な経営権はタイサミットに移った。
オギハラは自動車の販売不振に伴う受注減による財務の悪化で今年2月、中国での合弁事業相手のタイサミットと資本・業務提携。タイサミットは大和証券ＳＭＢＣプリンシパル・インベストメンツが保有していたオギハラの株式約46％のうち36％を取得し、筆頭株主となっていた。(07:00)
----------------------
米ヒルトン、２泊以上で半額に アジア・太平洋の46ホテルで
国際ホテルチェーン大手の米ヒルトン・ホテルズは、6月から2泊以上利用すると宿泊料金を半額にする。日本や豪州などを含むアジア・太平洋地域の46ホテルが対象。夏休みのレジャー客を取り込む。これまで高級ホテルは価格競争を避けていたが、世界的な不況でビジネス客が激減しているため今後、価格競争が激化しそうだ。
自社のウェブサイトのほか、一休や楽天などを通じて予約を受け付ける。予約期間は7月末までだが、利用期間は8月まで。例えばヒルトン東京（東京・新宿）を利用する場合、1人当たりの料金が約1万7000円から。2泊しても合計金額は1泊と同じ1万7000円。3泊する場合は2万5500円となる。ただしキャンセル料は全額負担となる。(07:00)
--------------------------
4月の自動車輸出64.7％減、最大の減少率に
日本自動車工業会が29日発表した4月の国内自動車メーカーの輸出台数は20万6456台となり、前年同月に比べ64.7％減少した。前年実績を下回るのは7カ月連続で、減少幅は3月の64.3％を上回り過去最大を更新した。欧米やアジアなど有力な市場への輸出が大幅に落ち込んだ。
生産台数も48万5405台となり、同47.1％減となった。7カ月連続で前年実績を割り込んだ。燃費性能の高い環境対応車向けの「エコカー減税」などの政策の影響は「限定的だった」としている。(16:00)
-----------------------
損賠提訴：元選手「総監督から暴行」 赤星選手結成の球団
プロ野球阪神タイガースの赤星憲広外野手（３３）が中心になって結成した硬式少年野球チームの元選手（１６）が「暴行を受けたり、高校野球の強豪校への入学内定を断られて精神的苦痛を受けた」として、チームの総監督の男性（４２）や赤星選手らを相手に、約３２０万円の損害賠償請求の訴えを大阪地裁に起こしていたことが分かった。
赤星選手が理事長を務めているＮＰＯ法人「レッドスターベースボールクラブ」（事務局・兵庫県芦屋市）。元選手は昨年１０月に提訴し、赤星選手には監督責任を求めている。
訴状などによると、元選手側は、総監督が０７年６月、ＪＲ新大阪駅に到着した新幹線の車内で、中学３年生だった元選手の顔を手などで殴ったうえ、みやげ物の食料品を投げつける騒動を起こしたと主張している。
さらに同年９月、総監督から「入学の内定取り消し」を告げられたが、「総監督が勝手に高校の入学を断った」と訴えている。
総監督側は答弁書などで暴行を一部認めたが、「教育指導の一環」と反論。「内定取り消し」については「成績が足りず条件を満たさなかった」としている。
赤星選手は阪神タイガース広報を通じて「すべて総監督に任せています」としている。
-----------------------
男子バレー：ＮＥＣ今月末で休部へ…同社発表 女子は存続
バレーボール・プレミアリーグ男子のＮＥＣが今月末で休部することになった。同社が２９日発表した。女子は存続する。
チームの一括譲渡を検討したが、移籍先が見つからず断念した。今後、移籍を希望する選手にはあっせんを行う。
同社は世界同時不況で業績が大幅に落ち込み、約２万人の人員削減方針などとともに、スポーツ事業の見直しを進めていた。
-------------------------------
天台座主、初の高野山入り…空海・最澄の確執から１２００年
天台宗（総本山・比叡山延暦寺、大津市）の半田孝淳・天台座主が、６月１５日に高野山真言宗総本山の金剛峯寺（和歌山県高野町、松長有慶座主）で営まれる「宗祖降誕会(ごうたんえ)」に参列する。
天台座主が高野山へ赴いた公式記録はなく、平安時代の両宗開宗以来初めて。ともに「相互理解を深めるきっかけに」と期待している。
半田、松長両座主はトップ就任後、法要などで同席する機会が増え、昨年夏頃から、「一度高野山へお参りしたい」「季節の良い頃にぜひ」などと話が進展した。高野山側が開祖・空海の誕生日を祝う年間最大の法要への参列を打診した。
空海と、天台宗の開祖・最澄はともに唐で仏教を学んで親密に交流。最澄は空海から密教を学んだが、晩年は教えの違いや経典の貸し借りなどを巡って対立したとされる。
２００５年１０月に天台開宗１２００年の法要が延暦寺であった際、当時の資延敏雄・金剛峯寺座主が法要に参加したが、天台座主が高野山へ行くのは、比叡山の公式記録「天台座主記」などにも記述がないという。
金剛峯寺によると、半田座主は宗祖降誕会の法要に参列後に空海の御廟を参拝し、松長座主と会談する。
天台宗務庁は「世間で言われる確執は、現代はなく、交流を深める契機になれば」とし、高野山真言宗宗務所も「手を携えて、『救い』など共通の課題に取り組む礎に」と歓迎している。
-------------------------
消費者庁法が成立
2009.5.29 14:02
このニュースのトピックス：国会
参院本会議で消費者庁設置関連法が可決、成立し、笑顔で一礼する野田消費者相＝２９日午後参院本会議で消費者庁設置関連法が可決、成立し、笑顔で一礼する野田消費者相＝２９日午後
消費者行政を一元化する消費者庁設置関連法は２９日午後の参院本会議で全会一致で可決、成立した。福田政権からの懸案だった消費者庁は今秋にも発足する。政府は近く内閣府に設立準備室を設置する方針だ。
消費者庁の新設により、内閣府や公正取引委員会などの消費者関連の業務が集約されるほか、これまで規制法がなかった「すき間事案」といわれる消費者事故に対して、首相が企業に改善勧告や命令を出せるようになる。
消費者庁設置構想は、悪質商法や食品偽装問題を受けて福田康夫前首相が提唱した。政府は昨年９月の臨時国会に関連法案を提出したが継続扱いになり、今年３月にようやく審議入りした。与野党は今年４月、消費者委員会の権限を強化することなどで合意。共同修正した上で、衆院本会議で全会一致で可決された。
---------------------------
15:37 GMT, Thursday, 28 May 2009 16:37 UK
Trouble for French fashion house
Christian Lacroix
French fashion house Christian Lacroix SNC has launched insolvency proceedings, it has announced.
The 22-year-old brand - known for its colourful gowns - told the Paris commercial court that it could not pay its creditors.
It blamed the global financial crisis which has hit the luxury goods market.
The company, which employs 125 people, said it was seeking protection from creditors in order to allow it to continue operations.
The brand was founded by French designer Christian Lacroix, and was bought from Paris-based luxury goods group LVMH by The Falic Group, based in the US, in 2005.
-----------------------------
Brazil to open up vast offshore fields
By Carola Hoyos in London and Jonathan Wheatley in Sao,Paulo
Published: May 29 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 29 2009 03:00
International oil companies will be invited to bid for concessions in Brazil's enormous "pre-salt" oil fields as early as next year, Edson Lobão, mines and energy minister, has told the Financial Times.
Brazil stopped selling concessions in the offshore pre-salt area, which oil industry executives say will rival the North Sea in size and importance, soon after their discovery in 2007.
The government has since been working on new regulations for the area, which presents enormous operational challenges but where the chances of finding large quantities of high quality crude are much greater than in other Brazilian oil fields.
The new reserves promise to turn Brazil into an important oil exporting nation and further hightlight the differences between Petrobras, Brazil's publicly traded but government-controlled oil company of growing international status, and the declining fortunes of its regional rivals Pdvsa of Venezuela and Pemex of Mexico.
Mr Lobão said Petrobras could not on its own cope with the huge task of developing the reserves, trapped under several kilometres of seawater, rock and a layer of hard-to-penetrate salt off the country's coast.
"We will certainly be holding auctions next year. This means the oil companies can begin to prepare their treasury reserves," he said.
Oil industry analysts were surprised by his statement. "It would rest on the assumption that Brasília will be able to promulgate a new regulatory framework in the near term, but there are so many stakeholders vested in the development of these fields that the legislative debate may be more arduous than expected," said -RoseAnne Franco, lead analyst for Latin America at PFC Energy in the US.
Brazil sold several concessions in the pre-salt fields before their potential became clear and has promised not to change those contracts. Analysts say Petrobras, with partners that include ExxonMobil of the US, BG of the UK, Galp of Portugal, Repsol of Spain and Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, will be kept busy for many years exploiting those concessions.
Many observers expected the government to be in no hurry to bring in new laws, which will be controversial and seem unlikely to pass through Brazil's congress in the near future, especially as 2010 is an election year.
Mr Lobão said he favoured restrictive terms for new companies entering the pre-salt fields and the creation of a new oil company entirely under government control to oversee them. Nevertheless, he said he was aware of the dangers of alienating international oil companies, noting the bitter experience of Venezuela and Mexico.
After more than 50 years of dominance, Mexico and Venezuela are in danger of losing their positions as the continent's most -important oil exporters.
As governments from China to Washington as well as international oil companies line up to help Brazil develop its vast fields, they are shunning Mexico and its restrictive financial terms and are being put off Venezuela after years of bruising contract renegotiations.
Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's populist president, has seized fields owned by international oil groups and recently sent the military to take over the projects of oil service contractors he can no longer afford to pay.
He has damaged Pdvsa, the country's once well-regarded national oil company. This has had a profound effect on Venezuela's ability to produce oil. Output has dropped from 3.4m barrels a day just before Mr Chávez came to power in 1999 to 2.4m today.
Mexico is arguably in an even worse position. For decades Mexico has used Pemex as the nation's piggy bank, forcing it into deep debt but barring it from using foreign oil companies to help invest in its fields. As a result Pemex has been unable to halt the steep natural decline of Cantarell, the ageing field that at its peak produced more than 2m barrels of oil a day but no longer manages even half that.
In spite of recent political reforms, Mexico faces the prospect of becoming a net oil importer within a decade.
In contrast, Brazil in the past 10 years has doubled its daily oil production to 2.3m barrels and is beginning to export. Mr Lobão says the country will join Opec once exports ramp up.
----------------------
Argentina pressed to ban crop chemical after health concerns
By Jude Webber in Buenos Aires and Hal Weitzman in,Chicago
Published: May 29 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 29 2009 03:00
Argentina's government is coming under pressure to ban the chemical used in the world's best-selling herbicide, which has helped turn the country into an important world food exporter in the past decade, after new research found that it might be harmful to human health.
A group of environmental lawyers has petitioned the Supreme Court to impose a six-month ban on the sale and use of glyphosate, which is the basis for many herbicides, including the US agribusiness giant Monsanto's Roundup product.
A ban, if approved, would mean "we couldn't do agriculture in Argentina", said Guillermo Cal, executive director of CASAFE, Argentina's association of fertiliser companies.
Argentina has become a world food-exporting powerhouse, largely through the use of genetically modified seeds that have been engineered to resist glyphosate. That has allowed soya farmers to boost yields dramatically by sowing directly without clearing the land, and then spraying the herbicide to kill weeds without affecting the new crop.
The country is the world's top exporter of soya oil and ranks second in exports of corn, third in soyabeans and seventh in wheat. Glyphosate is its most widely used herbicide and farmers spend some $450m on it a year and use 150m litres annually on their crops, Mr Cal says.
Any ban on the use of glyphosate could have dire fiscal consequences: the already cash-strapped Argentine government relies heavily on tariffs levied on agricultural exports. It is expected to rake in some $5bn this year, although that is about half the previous year's level after a longrunning conflict with farmers, a bitter drought and lower prices have slashed production of the country's main cash crop, soya.
"We know we're taking on a Goliath," said Mariano Aguilar, executive director of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, which in April filed suit before the Supreme Court seeking a nationwide ban on the sale and use of glyphosate, pending an investigation by a commission of experts set up in January by the government. No one was available to comment at the Agriculture Secretariat and the court has yet to rule.
Mr Aguilar's action followed an investigation by Andrés Carrasco, a scientist at Conicet, a government-funded research institute. According to Mr Carrasco's research, even tiny quantities of glyphosate could cause embryonic malformations in frogs and thus, by extrapolation, may have implications for humans.
"I suspect the toxicity classification of glyphosate is too low . . . in some cases this can be a powerful poison," Mr Carrasco told the Financial Times in an interview. He says residents near soya-producing areas began reporting problems from 2002, a couple of years after the first big harvests using genetically modified seeds, which were approved for use in Argentina in 1996.
Research by other Argentine scientists and evidence from local campaigners has indicated a high incidence of birth defects and cancers in people living near crop-spraying areas. One study conducted by a doctor, Rodolfo Páramo, in the northern farming province of Santa Fé reported 12 malformations per 250 births, well above the normal rate.
Mr Carrasco said his research used pure glyphosate as well as herbicide containing some 500g per litre of glyphosate - about the standard concentration in many fertilisers on the market - which he then diluted 5,000 times.
Monsanto says its Roundup preparations contain between 360g and 540g per litre, and 680g to 720g per kilo in the case of solids. It notes, however, that it has only a third of the Argentine market, since glyphosate has been off-patent for several years and other producers offer generic products with varying concentrations of the chemical.
Hugh Grant, chief executive, told the FT: "I'm not too worried about the study. I think the science is shaky."
The company maintains the chemical is safe to humans and has been used without harmful side-effects for decades.
Mr Carrasco said four people from CASAFE were sent to try to search his laboratory and he had been "seriously told off" by Lino Barrañao, Argentina's science and technology minister. "There are very many millions of dollars at stake, but the only thing I couldn't do was shut up when I found this out," he said.
Mr Carrasco acknowledged there were "too many econ-omic interests at stake" to ban glyphosate outright. But, he said, officials could start ring-fencing the problem by enforcing effective controls where crops are sprayed.
28.05.2009, 07.37
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, May 28 (Itar-Tass) - A new air route has been inaugurated between Russia and Japan. Flights from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk to Tokyo and back will be made by TU-204 and A-330 airliners of the Vladivostok-Avia Company (VAC). The first flight was made on May 26, the VAC press service announced on Thursday.
Airliners from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk will land at Tokyo's Narita airport. Flights are to be made twice a week. The duration of the flight is two hours.
The VAC also carries out the transportation of people from Russia's Far East to the Japanese cities of Niigata and Narita, China's Beijing and Harbin, and South Korea's Seoul.
-----------------------
Russian fighter jets worse than those of USA and Europe?
28.05.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/107643-russian_fighters-0
The failure of the deal to sell Russian IL-78 fuel tankers to India once again raised the issue of the competitive ability decrease of Russian arms and military technique on the world market. Russia’s "Оboronka" (the defense industry) is facing yet harder problems in handling export contracts and servicing clients of earlier transactions. “It is impossible to improve the situation”, our expert concludes.
According to Russian and foreign media sources, India refused to buy Russian Il-78 fuel tanker aircraft. Indian officials motivated this decision with the non-conformity of planes to the customer’s requisitions. The spare parts supply and the after-sales service were also mentioned.
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia alternated its approach to the handling of the defense business. Nowadays we are facing problems with spare parts, the support of manufacturers and the delays conditioned by the centralized structure of their defense corporations”, Fali Homi Major, the Commander-in-Chief of Indian Air Force told RIA Novosti. Instead of Russian planes India is likely to buy Airbus A330 MRTT manufactured by the European company EADS.
This is not the first juicy scandal connected with Russia’s defense exports. “The most well-known case is the scandal with Algeria when they refused to take the already procured MiG aircraft and sent them back to us. There are plenty of scandals with India in relation to various types of arms. It concerns naval weapons in the first place”, said Mr. Alexander Khramchihin of the Institute of Political and Defense Analysis in an interview to Bigness.ru.
Recollecting the year 2007 with the outbreak of scandal with 15 MiG-29CMT fighters shipped to Algeria . It appeared that the jet fighters, which were sold as brand new, contained “second-hand” parts. According to some information, the units from the planes with several hundreds of flight hours were used when assembling those aircraft.
One can recollect habitual claims from India which is one of our key partners in the field of defense cooperation. We remind the endless complaints with The Gorshkov aircraft carrier which was designed for India. The budget for its refurbishment was mounting endlessly which enormously irritated our client. Perplexity was also connected with the problems in the modernization of the ship.
Technical problems haunted Russia in the transfer of frigates, which India ordered from Russia . Air defense missile systems stubbornly failed to hit air targets. In many scandal situations (e.g. in the case of airplanes returned by Algeria) some observers incriminate the international backroom deal.
However, politically motivated relations with India could only take place in times of the Cold War, but definitely not today. “Earlier India oriented itself to Russia during the Cold War, and there were truly political factors there”, says A.Khramchihin.
“Today India can buy weapons from whoever it wants to. The market also became more abundant than before. In his words everything in this sphere is explained by the quality including India’s denial. This is the signal to us that we produce low-quality weapons”, he affirms.
Formerly, competitive advantage of the Soviet military technique was in its low price (sometimes even dumping), its simplicity and reliability. However, the Russian military hardware, still being simple, started losing its former reliability. Nevertheless, the prices on it were growing against all odds.
The answer is in the high inflation rise of the defense sphere surpassing the average price growth in the industry as well as the degradation of the military-industrial complex. Whereas the amount of the state defense contracts and foreign contracts is growing, the national defense industry still fails to regain its capability to tackle the large-scale production of military equipment.
“Old factories which produced hardware in sufficient quantities and quality in the course of many years are not coping with the assignment of today”, said Mr. Ruslan Pukhov, of the Center of Strategy and Technology Analysis told Bigness.ru.
The staff deficit still persists – “money is there but people are not”. ”The situation is impossible to amend”, grumbles A.Kramchihin.
If the situation does not change (according to military experts it will be next to impossible to reverse it) Russia will be losing its share in the market of arms and military equipment. These tendencies have already started to take shape. Thus. according to studies of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Bonn International Converse Center (BICC) Russia is reducing its share on the world arms market.
The turnover on the world arms market in 2004-2008 has increased by 21 percent as compared to previous five-year period (1999-2003). At that time the increase in sales of Russian arms was only 14 percent. The figures testify that our share in the arms market started to curtail.
Sergey Malinin
--------------------
Russian fighter jets worse than those of USA and Europe?
28.05.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/economics/107643-russian_fighters-0
The failure of the deal to sell Russian IL-78 fuel tankers to India once again raised the issue of the competitive ability decrease of Russian arms and military technique on the world market. Russia’s "Оboronka" (the defense industry) is facing yet harder problems in handling export contracts and servicing clients of earlier transactions. “It is impossible to improve the situation”, our expert concludes.
According to Russian and foreign media sources, India refused to buy Russian Il-78 fuel tanker aircraft. Indian officials motivated this decision with the non-conformity of planes to the customer’s requisitions. The spare parts supply and the after-sales service were also mentioned.
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia alternated its approach to the handling of the defense business. Nowadays we are facing problems with spare parts, the support of manufacturers and the delays conditioned by the centralized structure of their defense corporations”, Fali Homi Major, the Commander-in-Chief of Indian Air Force told RIA Novosti. Instead of Russian planes India is likely to buy Airbus A330 MRTT manufactured by the European company EADS.
This is not the first juicy scandal connected with Russia’s defense exports. “The most well-known case is the scandal with Algeria when they refused to take the already procured MiG aircraft and sent them back to us. There are plenty of scandals with India in relation to various types of arms. It concerns naval weapons in the first place”, said Mr. Alexander Khramchihin of the Institute of Political and Defense Analysis in an interview to Bigness.ru.
Recollecting the year 2007 with the outbreak of scandal with 15 MiG-29CMT fighters shipped to Algeria . It appeared that the jet fighters, which were sold as brand new, contained “second-hand” parts. According to some information, the units from the planes with several hundreds of flight hours were used when assembling those aircraft.
One can recollect habitual claims from India which is one of our key partners in the field of defense cooperation. We remind the endless complaints with The Gorshkov aircraft carrier which was designed for India. The budget for its refurbishment was mounting endlessly which enormously irritated our client. Perplexity was also connected with the problems in the modernization of the ship.
Technical problems haunted Russia in the transfer of frigates, which India ordered from Russia . Air defense missile systems stubbornly failed to hit air targets. In many scandal situations (e.g. in the case of airplanes returned by Algeria) some observers incriminate the international backroom deal.
However, politically motivated relations with India could only take place in times of the Cold War, but definitely not today. “Earlier India oriented itself to Russia during the Cold War, and there were truly political factors there”, says A.Khramchihin.
“Today India can buy weapons from whoever it wants to. The market also became more abundant than before. In his words everything in this sphere is explained by the quality including India’s denial. This is the signal to us that we produce low-quality weapons”, he affirms.
Formerly, competitive advantage of the Soviet military technique was in its low price (sometimes even dumping), its simplicity and reliability. However, the Russian military hardware, still being simple, started losing its former reliability. Nevertheless, the prices on it were growing against all odds.
The answer is in the high inflation rise of the defense sphere surpassing the average price growth in the industry as well as the degradation of the military-industrial complex. Whereas the amount of the state defense contracts and foreign contracts is growing, the national defense industry still fails to regain its capability to tackle the large-scale production of military equipment.
“Old factories which produced hardware in sufficient quantities and quality in the course of many years are not coping with the assignment of today”, said Mr. Ruslan Pukhov, of the Center of Strategy and Technology Analysis told Bigness.ru.
The staff deficit still persists – “money is there but people are not”. ”The situation is impossible to amend”, grumbles A.Kramchihin.
If the situation does not change (according to military experts it will be next to impossible to reverse it) Russia will be losing its share in the market of arms and military equipment. These tendencies have already started to take shape. Thus. according to studies of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and Bonn International Converse Center (BICC) Russia is reducing its share on the world arms market.
The turnover on the world arms market in 2004-2008 has increased by 21 percent as compared to previous five-year period (1999-2003). At that time the increase in sales of Russian arms was only 14 percent. The figures testify that our share in the arms market started to curtail.
Sergey Malinin
-------------------------
Scientists predict men’s extinction again
26.05.2009 Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/107624-men_extinction -0
An Australian scientist told the RCSI’s Annual Outreach Lecture that the Y chromosome, which determines gender, is dying out, and men could go with it.
Prof Jennifer Graves warned the genetic make-up of the chromosome has declined significantly over the years, remarking the Y chromosome has lost all but 45 of the 1,400 genes that were on it 300 million years ago.
While the outlook is not great for the future of men, other species have survived the decline of the gender-defining Y chromosome and SRY gene.
“The good news is that certain rodent species have no Y chromosome and no SRY gene, yet there are still plenty of healthy males... some other gene must have taken over the job, and we’d like to know what that gene is.
“We already know that there are several candidate genes out there that could take over from SRY. However, which one takes over is sheer chance, imn.ie reports.
"It’s even possible that two or more different sex-determination systems based on different genes could arise two different populations,” Prof Graves said.
Pravda.Ru previously published a number of articles about male extinction.
“According to Sergey Shnurov, a frontman of the popular Russian punk group Leningrad, a real man “got balls, a stubbly chin, and he smells of tobacco and hangover. Too true, the criteria are unlikely to fit a guy with carefully manicured fingernails and conspicuously gelled haircut, the one who walks past the shop windows leaving a trail of Givenchy perfume. The guy looks like a metrosexual.
I am not talking about those who opt to get laid while traveling by metro. The term “metrosexual” is a combination of two words, metropolis (Gk – a chief city) and sexual. Not unlike any other noticeable phenomenon, metrosexuality is often accompanied by myths and speculations.
“It the good old 19th century, nobody thought a dandy could be gay.”
Click here to read the full text of the article.
In another article Pravda.Ru reported about the extinction of Russian men in some regions of Russia.
Russian Ministry for Health Care reported the statistics concerning death rate among able-bodied men in Russia. As it turned out, Russian men of this age category die 4 times oftener than women of the same age category. As for other age categories, the death rate among men is also higher than among women. The average life expectancy of Russian men makes up 58-59 years today, which is 14-15 years less than the life expectancy of Russian women or men from developed countries.
Researchers from the Moscow State University state that life expectancy in Russia at the end of the 19th – at the beginning of the 20th centuries was 15-20 years less than life expectancy in Europe. We should give the Soviet power credit for its efforts as a result of which infant mortality and mortality caused by infections reduced before WWII. The positive effect was favorable for men particularly. Indeed, although the number of newborn boys is higher than the number of newborn girls everywhere in the world, but infant mortality among boys is always higher.
Male losses caused by the Great Patriotic War have not been yet calculated precisely. By the mid-1960th, the life expectancy in the Soviet Union reached approximately the same level that in the West (Soviet men lived for 64.5 years on average and European and North American men lived for 66 years). But later the death rate among Soviet able-bodied men considerably increased because of heart diseases, cancer and other injuries.
Demographers explain the problem with the poor level of Soviet medicine and ignorance of Soviet men concerning their health. On the other hand, the Soviet Union was one of the first countries that started total clinical examination of workers, students and school pupils for the sake of successful prophylaxis. Later, the system was successfully applied in the West.
-------------------------
Belarus refuses to accept Russian $0.5 bln loan in rubles
18:0628/05/2009
MINSK, May 28 (RIA Novosti) - Belarus has turned down a new loan tranche from Russia worth $500 million, insisting that it be denominated in dollars rather than Russian rubles, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Thursday.
"We offered Belarus $500 million, as a new tranche of the Russian loan, in Russian rubles, not in U.S. dollars. Belarus refused," Kudrin said, adding that Russia was still continuing talks with its ex-Soviet neighbor on the terms of the loan tranche.
Belarus received the first $1 billion of a $2 billion loan from Russia in November 2008. In March 2009, the ex-Soviet republic received another $500 million.
Kudrin said that Belarus was currently experiencing problems with its gold and foreign exchange reserves.
"Today the exchange rate of the Belarusian ruble is being maintained at a set level. For this purpose, Belarus is spending its gold and foreign exchange reserves. In the first quarter, Belarus spent over $2 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves to keep the exchange rate stable. This is more than one third of the country's gold and foreign currency reserves," Kudrin said.
Kudrin said if Belarus spent as much in the next quarter then it would run out of foreign currency by the third quarter of 2009.
---------------------
Nissan to open car factory in Petersburg on June 2
16:2928/05/2009
MOSCOW, May 28 (RIA Novosti) - Nissan will officially open a car factory in St. Petersburg on June 2, the Japanese car giant said on Thursday.
"The official opening ceremony is planned for June 2. Nissan's plant was built in a new industrial zone in the northwestern part of St. Petersburg," Nissan said in a statement.
Investment in the Nissan factory is estimated at $200 million. The new facility will employ 750 people and have the capacity to manufacture 50,000 cars per year.
The Nissan Teana will be the first model to be produced at the St. Petersburg plant.
Nissan earlier said that the availability of a qualified workforce, a suitable location, a favorable business climate and support from the city's authorities were the factors behind the company's choice of St. Petersburg.
-----------------------
Russia, Cuba agree to renew joint nuclear research
Eduard Pesov
17:4627/05/2009
MOSCOW, May 27 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and Cuba have agreed to renew their cooperation in nuclear research with Cuba's Nuclear Energy Agency, head of Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko said on Wednesday.
The announcement came during an awards ceremony in Moscow where Cuban scientific aide Fidel Angel Castro Diaz-Balart, Fidel Castro's son, received the Russian Kurchatov Award for his work in the nuclear sphere.
"On behalf of the entire nuclear division, I present the highest award...the Kurchatov Award, to Fidel Castro Diaz-Balart. Today, we will renew our cooperation at [Cuba's] nuclear research center that will allow us to develop a number of directions in modern science," Kiriyenko said.
Russian-Cuban nuclear cooperation was halted in 1992 after the construction of an atomic plant in Cuba was frozen.
Diaz-Balart, 59, is a member of Cuba's Academy of Sciences and studied theoretical physics in the Soviet Union. He has published numerous scientific papers in Cuba, Spain and Russia.
In the 1980s, he headed Cuba's nuclear agency at the time that the Soviet Union and Cuba started the construction of a nuclear plant. The agency now works in a number of areas in nuclear physics, including biotechnology and the development of nanotechnology.
-------------------------
Moldova’s rulers turn up heat on business
By Thomas Escritt
Published: May 28 2009 23:04 | Last updated: May 28 2009 23:10
For most Moldovans, last month’s political crisis is over. The ruling Communist party has been working to consolidate its election victory and the opposition demonstrators, who made headlines by storming the presidential palace and parliament, are now mostly quiet.
But for Gabriel Stati the crisis is anything but finished. The 33-year-old son of one of Moldova’s richest businessmen is languishing in jail seven weeks after his arrest at the height of the protests.
Prosecutors accuse Mr Stati of fomenting a coup and backing the violent demonstrations that caused considerable damage to public buildings and to Moldova’s international reputation.
But Anatol Stati, Gabriel’s father, claims his son was arrested as part of a campaign by Vladimir Voronin, Moldova’s veteran president, to “poach by using criminal methods the Stati family assets”.
The arrest of the flamboyant Mr Stati, who has a taste for expensive cars and restaurants, highlights the business battles that are deeply entwined with politics in Moldova. Most of the 4.4m inhabitants of Europe’s poorest country live from farming, labouring or working abroad. But a handful of entrepreneurs have made big fortunes through domestic monopolies, property deals and sometimes through trade between Chisinau and the breakaway territory of Trans Dnestr.
Political connections can be crucial, not least for putting pressure on rivals. Ion Sturza, a former prime minister who is now a business executive, believes people around Mr Voronin may be attacking the older Mr Stati through his son because they want his business. “Kids are the weakest point for parents – to attack our son is to attack everything,” he says.
Mr Voronin, who soon has to stand down as president after serving two terms, has this month attempted to ensure his successor is a political ally.
Anatol Stati’s main asset is Ascom, an oil services company with oil extraction rights in central Asia, Iraq and Sudan. He moved the business out of Moldova a year ago, blaming the political environment. Shortly afterwards he departed for neighbouring Romania and has not returned to Moldova. He said in a statement at the time: “Lately, Ascom . . . has been subject to increasingly strong pressure with the aim to destabilise its activity in the Republic of Moldova.”
But Gabriel Stati rejected his father’s pleas to join him abroad. He lived life to the full in Chisinau and attracting attention from gossip columnists, with his Hummer and Rolls-Royce and penchant for fancy restaurants and bars. A close associate of Anatol Stati says: “I asked his father, a serious businessman, why he let his son behave like a playboy and he just said: ‘I can’t control him. He’s just young and silly.’ ”
A letter allegedly sent on October 6 last year by Vladimir Voronin to Nursultan Nazabeyev, the Kazakh president, which was leaked to Moldovan opposition newspapers in March, suggests Mr Voronin was targeting Anatol Stati.
In the letter, whose authenticity has not been denied by either government, Mr Voronin allegedly urges his Kazakh counterpart to pay “serious attention” to Anatol Stati, whom he accuses of using income from Kazakh assets to carry out “blood-tainted business” in Sudan, causing “severe damage” to Moldova’s reputation. “He runs and finances propagandistic campaigns and in non-transparent ways funds political parties oppositional to the current government,” Mr Voronin allegedly writes.
Although most of Anatol Stati’s lucrative oil interests were outside Moldova and beyond the reach of state authorities, Mr Stati was concerned that his son’s presence in the country remained an Achilles’ heel, according to an associate of Mr Stati. Shortly before the elections in April, the younger Stati made himself even more prominent when he plunged into politics and urged Moldovans to vote for the opposition parties.
Just after the election on April 5, Gabriel Stati fled to the Ukrainian port of Odessa, where he was detained on a Moldovan arrest warrant. According to Vladislav Gribincea, his lawyer, a request for political asylum in Ukraine was not assessed, and within a week Mr Stati and a companion were driven to the border and handed to the Moldovan authorities.
Today, he languishes in Chisinau’s prison number 13. Mr Gribincea said: “The charges were politically motivated and manifestly unfounded. . . Mr Stati did not commit this crime and the context of his arrest is the hostile relations between the president of Moldova and Mr Stati’s father.”
Mr Voronin’s office declined to comment, but the interior minister denied Mr Stati’s arrest was politically motivated. A justice ministry spokeswoman said the charges against Anatol Stati related to his alleged organisation of the events of April 7 – the post-election protests – and were not politically motivated.
Valeriu Prohnitchi, a consultant at Expert Group, a Chisinau think-tank, believes that a tide of state-mandated investigations into private businesses amounts to a pattern.
“There are signs of increasing pressure on businesses,” he said. “It is not just about the Stati family and Ascom.” He points to Rompetrol, the Romanian-owned petrol retailer, which was recently fined $2m for company law violations. Mr Sturza, the former prime minister, who runs its operations in Moldova, says: “We have five groups of investigators in the building from morning to evening”.
Vladimir Filat, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat party that was runner-up in the elections, claims state authorities used the courts to gain control of a conference centre he owned until last year. “We were accused of irregularities in the privatisation 10 years ago and we lost the business through a court ruling, not even being invited to the final phase of the trial,” Mr Filat said. An appeal is pending to the European Court of Human Rights.
Three weeks ago, Anatol Cislaru, part-owner of Carmez, a meat processing business, was thrown in prison for alleged securities law violations, a claim that has given rise to scepticism. “This is a pure dispute between shareholders. Supposedly he bought too aggressively, but securities law in Moldova is non-existent,” Mr Sturza says.
Whatever Gabriel Stati’s fate, his father’s company faces an uncertain future. Ascom’s Kazakh subsidiary has some $430m (€308m, £269m) in debts due to bondholders, and has been badly hit by falling oil prices. But for the moment, Anatol Stati’s most pressing problem is trying to extract his son from jail.
--------------------------
Credit Suisse begins London property sale
By Daniel Thomas
Published: May 29 2009 00:03 | Last updated: May 29 2009 00:16
Credit Suisse has begun a sale of its London property estate that could raise as much as £500m (€572m) as part of a strategy to focus on core banking operations.
The investment bank this week instructed CB Richard Ellis to begin marketing the smaller of its two buildings in Canary Wharf, with indications that its landmark tower at Cabot Square is also likely to be brought to the market before the end of the year.
In total, the sales of the two buildings – 20 Columbus Courtyard and 1 Cabot Square – could raise more than £500m, depending on the terms set by the bank on the length of its occupancy and rent.
The move comes as other banks and companies look to sell off non-core assets, with property advisers forecasting that several billion pounds of sale and leaseback deals will be completed in the next few months.
HSBC, which occupies a neighbouring building on Canary Wharf, is conducting the largest transaction, with just weeks to go before the bank is expected to pick a buyer for its $2bn global headquarters portfolio.
The sales by the banks come in spite of the slump in the property sector, which has left some advisers questioning the timing of the offerings given a drop of almost half since the peak in 2007.
The move by Credit Suisse to sell the real estate was part of a longstanding strategy to focus on core banking operations, people close to the bank said. They said the bank was under no pressure to sell if it did not find sufficient value.
Credit Suisse has a tier one capital ratio – a measure of a bank’s financial strength – of more than 14 per cent, towards the higher end of the banking sector.
Credit Suisse would not comment directly on the sale process, but added: “Credit Suisse regularly reviews its global property portfolio in order to ensure we are maximising the efficient use of capital and resources. A sale and leaseback of our Canary Wharf buildings in London is one option that we review on a regular basis.”
HSBC, meanwhile, is in talks to sell three of its office buildings in London, New York and Paris in a deal that is expected to raise about $2bn. Potential buyers are said to include a number of wealthy families, who are interested in the fixed income from the rents on offer, as well as sovereign wealth funds and other institutional buyers.
-----------------------
Qatar to buy $4.1bn in real estate from banks
By Robin Wigglesworth in Abu Dhabi
Published: May 29 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 29 2009 03:00
Qatar has offered to buy real estate investments worth up to $4.1bn from local banks, as the government steps up efforts to support the domestic financial sector against the fallout from the credit crunch.
Though Qatar's property sector is healthier than in many other Gulf countries, the market has weakened this year, and analysts expect non-performing loans to rise, weighing on banks' earnings.
The operation aims to "support the real estate sector . . . and allow banks to continue to play their vital role" in the country's development, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, Qatari prime minister said yesterday. Qatar's abundant wealth - it is the world's largest supplier of liquefied natural gas - has allowed it to actively support its banks and wider economy during the financial crisis.
Qatar is expected to report one of the world's highest economic growth rates this year and next, thanks to a near doubling of gas exports and continued government spending.
The small kingdom was one of the first Gulf countries to intervene to prop up its banking system.
The Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund, bought 5 per cent stakes in all local banks last year and is expected to take another 5 per cent this year.
In March, the government said it would buy the local equity portfolios of banks, worth an estimated $6bn, to prevent mark-to-market investment losses from hitting banks.
Since then, the Doha Securities Market has surged 41 per cent, paring its year to date loss to 4.3 per cent.
Qatar's $78,000 gross domestic product per capita is the highest in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund, and the kingdom had, on average, reported a 15 per cent real economic growth rate for the past five years, Moody's said in a recent report.
Qatar's banking sector is the fourth largest by assets of the six Gulf Co-operation Council countries, with total assets of $110bn as of the end of March, according to Shuaa Capital, a Dubai-based investment bank.
---------------------------
Kazakh Banker Goes on Lam as Defaults Hurt Investors (Update1)
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Laura Cochrane and Emma O’Brien
May 28 (Bloomberg) -- From his secret hideaway, BTA Bank’s former Chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov says Kazakhstan’s government caused the default of the nation’s largest lender. Kazakh prosecutors want him for allegedly embezzling the bank’s money.
The biggest losers in the dispute may be investors who poured into the former Soviet state as crude oil rose to a record and the economy grew 10 percent annually for eight years. Now, with petroleum prices down and the recession starving banks of credit, Kazakhstan’s image as a beacon of rising capitalism is being shattered by three banking defaults in six weeks.
“Once you lose the confidence of investors, people don’t trust you anymore,” said Harald Oberkirch, a travel-company operator on the Spanish island of Majorca, who bought $300,000 worth of BTA’s bonds as part of a more than $1 million investment in Kazakh bank debt. “Bankruptcy is near.”
Ablyazov, 46, fled in February before the government issued an arrest warrant, alleging he stole from the bank and laundered the money through loans to fictitious companies. Bloomberg spoke to him on a call organized by his London-based public-relations firm, Hudson Sandler Financial & Corporate Communications. He wouldn’t say where he was.
“All stakeholders in BTA, including international lenders, shareholders, customers and employees, have been victims of the Kazakhstan government’s criminal recklessness,” Ablyazov said. “The tragedy is that these huge losses could and should have been avoided. All the foreign markets are closed to Kazakh companies and will remain closed to them for up to five years.”
BTA Takeover
President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s government initiated a takeover of BTA in February, using cash from the state’s National Wellbeing Fund Samruk-Kazyna to buy a 75.1 percent stake. That sparked charges and counter-charges between the administration and the bankers who were pushed out. Nikolai Galikhin, deputy head of Nazarbayev’s press office, declined to comment on Ablyazov’s allegations.
The crisis in Kazakhstan is a legacy of banks that piled on debt as the economy soared and couldn’t repay when credit dried up. Gross domestic product shrank 2.2 percent in the first quarter. Foreign investors are drawing back capital as their favorable terms with lenders evaporate, said Kieran Curtis, who helps manage $800 million in emerging-market debt at Aviva Investors Ltd. in London, including Kazakh bonds.
Ratings Report
Kazakh banks must repay almost 40 percent of their $41 billion in debt in the next 12 months, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Moody’s Investors Service said last week that it may cut the ratings of five Kazakh financial companies on concern the government won’t help stave off default. The benchmark stock index dropped 57 percent in the past year.
BTA bondholders have been waiting more than a month for details of a debt restructuring. In addition, Almaty-based Alliance Bank, Kazakhstan’s fourth-largest lender, and Astana Finance, owned in part by the government, have stopped making creditor payments.
“Kazakhstan was the great hope for pro-Western investments,” said Lauren Goodrich, a senior Eurasian analyst at Stratfor, a global intelligence company in Austin, Texas. “Now those aspirations are being picked off one by one, and the country is looking less and less like a great hope. It’s completely changing.”
Investment in Kazakhstan increased 25 percent last year, to $10.7 billion, the fifth-biggest gain among 21 developing nations tracked by New York-based CEIC Data Co. Only South Africa, Hungary, Russia and India grew faster.
Oil Play
“The appeal was simple,” said Aivaras Abromavicius, a Moscow-based portfolio manager for East Capital Asset Management, who plans to hold on to the firm’s one percent stake in BTA. “With oil at $100 and rising, it was very clear that anyone involved in the production of that commodity would benefit massively.”
And they did. Almaty-based BTA sold $350 million of U.S. dollar-denominated 10-year bonds at 4.59 percentage points over Treasuries in January 2005 compared with 3.17 percentage points for high-yield or emerging-market debt at the time, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. indexes. The company’s credit rating was lifted three times from 2000 to 2006 by Standard & Poor’s to as high as BB, two levels below investment grade. The KASE Index rose 26-fold from its creation in 2000 to the end of 2007.
Kazakhstan also benefited because its investment regulations were considered “head and shoulders” above those of regimes in other developing economies, said Ian McCall, who helps manage $800 million of emerging-market debt at Argo Capital Management Ltd. in London.
Accounting Rules
Most Kazakh banks have reported results since 2003 that conform to rules devised by the London-based International Accounting Standards Board, according to Deloitte & Touche LLP. Russia introduced such rules for commercial lenders in 2004 and has delayed a full transition to the standard until 2011, Deloitte said.
While regulations were catching up to Western standards, the country’s banks were also embracing a “culture of cheap credit,” said Chris Weafer, chief strategist in Moscow at UralSib Financial Corp., Russia’s third-biggest private bank.
“They promoted the place aggressively, they adopted these European standards and they tried to get rid of the Soviet baggage,” he said. “People were looking at Kazakhstan too superficially.”
A nation of more than 15 million people wedged between China and Russia, Kazakhstan has been ruled since Soviet days by pro-Russian Nazarbayev, 68. His Nur Otan party won 88 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections in August 2007, when not a single opposition candidate garnered a seat.
‘Pervasive Corruption’
The U.S. State Department’s report on human rights for Kazakhstan in March 2008 criticized the regime for “severe limits on citizens’ rights to change their government,” as well as “pervasive corruption.”
The Kazakh government added BTA’s former chief executive officer, Roman Solodchenko, to its wanted list in March, and prosecutors said they identified 32 suspects in the case. Ablyazov said the charges against him were fabricated.
Ainagul Shakirova, an Astana-based spokeswoman for Prime Minister Karim Masimov, declined to comment. Azamat Kenzhe, a spokesman for the Agency for Financial Supervision, wasn’t available for comment.
Ablyazov has faced government charges before. He was sent to prison in 2002 on allegations that he enriched himself as energy minister. He was pardoned 10 months later by Nazarbayev after allegedly being beaten and abused in prison, London-based Amnesty International said in a report.
Riding the Wave
Nazarbayev’s government originally sold BTA to Ablyazov for $72 million in March 1998. The banker reclaimed the helm in 2005, two years after his jail term ended. He built up the business by riding the wave of foreign money that was attracted to Kazakhstan after the discovery of the Kashagan oil field in 2000, the biggest new field found in 30 years.
Assets grew to about $25 billion in 2008, according to Kazakhstan’s financial regulator, from $7.5 billion in 2005, when BTA was known as Bank TuranAlem. It raised more than $10 billion in foreign debt from 2003 to 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
BTA became a “victim of its own P.R.,” UralSib’s Weafer said. “The problem is that Kazakhstan is still an emerging market and developing markets still have bad practices underneath the visible reforms.”
Shareholder Suits
The bank reported a loss of 261.5 billion tenge ($1.7 billion) in the first quarter. New CEO Anvar Saidenov told bondholders on a conference call April 28 that it had uncovered speculative derivatives transactions that may have overstated assets on the balance sheet.
BTA shareholders KT Asia Investment Group BV, based in Amsterdam, and Vienna-based GEM Equity Management AG filed complaints against the government with arbitration bodies of the United Nations and World Bank, alleging the state takeover violated international investment treaties and seeking $3 billion in compensation.
Marek Randma, portfolio manager at Helsinki-based Evli Fund Management Ltd., whose Evli New Republics Fund has 644 shares in BTA, says the firm holds its stake because “Kazakhstan’s main investment case -- its abundant resources -- is still intact.”
The country controls an estimated 3.2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, according to BP Plc.
Kazakhstan’s eight-stock KASE Index added 34 percent in the past month, the fifth best-performing global benchmark. S&P took the country’s credit rating off “negative” on May 8, removing the threat of a cut to a non-investment grade ranking.
Government Investment
Nazarbayev’s government has put about $5 billion into the banking system, said Kairat Kelimbetov, head of Samruk-Kazyna. The fund will await BTA’s debt-restructuring due in June before deciding whether to inject more into the lender, he said.
“Banks have clearly over-borrowed in the boom times,” Grigori Marchenko, National Bank of Kazakhstan governor, said in an interview in London. “Investors were fully aware about some problems that the Kazakh banking sector was facing, but they still pumped a record amount of money in Kazakhstan.”
Kazakhstan is seeking funds from South Korea, Abu Dhabi and Russia to stabilize its banking and energy industries, according to Samruk-Kazyna. The fund is in talks to sell part of its BTA stake to Moscow-based OAO Sberbank, Russia’s biggest lender, Kelimbetov said. Sherbank wants the fund to remain a shareholder in BTA, he said in Astana today.
BTA’s downfall is rippling through the economy.
Anargul Birzhanova, an assistant hotel manager in the capital of Astana, has held off opening a savings account because it is “very frightening to deposit money now.”
“In my neighborhood in the Astana suburbs, I haven’t heard recently about anyone who was able to get a bank loan,” said Birzhanova, 23. “We feel the panic.”
----------------------
Russia Diamond Monopoly Seeks to Avoid Market Flood (Update1)
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Maria Kolesnikova and Ellen Pinchuk
May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Russia will avoid flooding the world diamond market, as it did in the 1990s, with the stocks it has been building up since demand slumped last year, the nation’s monopoly producer ZAO Alrosa said.
“The situation is completely different and the mentality changed a lot,” Chief Executive Officer Sergei Vybornov said in an interview. “Nobody wants to destroy the market.”
More than a decade ago, Russia began offloading rough, or uncut, diamonds as its need for hard currency became acute, leading to a rift with distributor De Beers. This time, the state and Alrosa will coordinate to avoid a repetition of events that “crushed the market for a very long time,” Vybornov said.
Polished gem values have fallen by an average 31 percent since peaking in August, according to PolishedPrices.com, as the global economic slowdown prompts consumers to curb spending on luxury goods. Gem Diamonds Ltd., the operator of the Letseng mine in Lesotho, said this month that first-quarter diamond prices collapsed 52 percent from a year earlier.
State-owned Alrosa suspended sales to the market last year, instead shipping gems to government depository Gokhran, Vybornov said on May 26. As a result, the company pared output by about 4 percent, he said, in contrast with De Beers’s 91 percent cut in the first quarter. This year, in a sign of improving conditions, it plans to offer about two-thirds of production to the state.
Other producers are also anticipating a rebound.
Resuming Sales
De Beers, the world’s biggest diamond producer, has resumed operations at a joint venture in Botswana that produces a fifth of global supply after suspending output in February. Gem Diamonds CEO Clifford Elphick said prices rose by “low single- digit percentages” at recent sales, while Petra Diamonds Ltd. chief Johan Dippenaar said declines had stopped.
Alrosa is resuming sales of rough diamonds to the market this month, Vybornov said, with as much as $1 billion going to 15 companies in Antwerp by the end of the year.
That may spur a turnaround in the Belgian city, which handles most of the world’s diamonds, after imports tumbled 45 percent in the first four months. Exports also fell 30 percent, according to the Antwerp World Diamond Centre trade group.
“Prices and sales appear to be stabilizing as consumers realize that the sky has not fallen in,” Avi Paz, president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, said in an e-mailed statement from Antwerp yesterday. More than 1,500 international diamond companies have their headquarters in the city in an area called the Diamond Square Mile, which has four diamond bourses.
Seeking Influence
Alrosa may gain influence over the diamond market as a result of Russia’s increased holdings of gems, and buy mining companies that aren’t able to survive independently, including some that may be listed in London and Toronto, Vybornov said.
“It would be a good time for sure to look at possible mergers and acquisitions, but we need first to get a clear vision for the sales,” he said.
“We will have these stocks, huge stocks, after the crisis,” he added. “We will play a definitely much more important role than before.”
-------------------------
ECB’s 500-Euro Note Lures Cocaine Smugglers to Europe, DEA Says
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Steve Scherer
May 28 (Bloomberg) -- Cocaine traffickers are targeting Europe because prices are higher, the currency is stronger and it’s easier to ship profits home using 500-euro ($693) bills, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
“There’s a big push on the part of Central and South American crime groups to increase trafficking to Europe, where they get a higher price per kilo,” Russell Benson, the DEA’s regional director for Europe and Africa, said in an interview in Rome. “The European Central Bank’s printing of the 500-euro note is an issue. It’s an attractive point for drug traffickers.”
A million dollars in $100 bills weighs about 22 pounds (10 kilograms), while $1 million in 500-euro bills at the current exchange rate of about $1.38 per euro weighs about 3.5 pounds, Benson said. The price of a kilo of cocaine in Europe can be more than double that of the more saturated U.S. market, he said. While a kilo of cocaine may cost $20,000 in California, it goes for as much as 35,000 euros ($48,543) in Europe.
The global cocaine market generates $320 billion in revenue annually, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime estimates. Italian anti-organized crime group Libera said in January the market may be more than triple the size of the UN figure. Cocaine is shipped to Europe, where Benson says demand is increasing, from Central and South America by organized-crime groups that operate similarly to the Sicilian Mafia.
Colombia
The purchasers then ship the cash back, often the same way the drugs were transported. The purple 500-euro notes with drawings of 20th-century architecture are increasingly surfacing on the streets of Colombia, the world’s biggest cocaine- producing country, Benson said.
“The 500-euro bill is the same size as bills that existed before the euro,” ECB Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi said in Rome on April 3, dismissing criticism that it favored crime.
The Frankfurt-based ECB said the size of its banknotes was reviewed in 2005. It will be evaluated again “in the next few years,” though the “denominational structure of the euro banknotes will remain unchanged,” ECB spokesman Niels Buenemann said in an e-mail.
Six of the 16 nations that share the euro have always used large-denomination bills, Buenemann said. By issuing the bills, the ECB is “satisfying demand for these denominations.” Making more smaller notes to replace bigger ones would “lead to higher production and processing costs,” he said.
The number of 500-euro bills in circulation has risen 30 percent since 2006 through the first quarter of this year, compared with a 14 percent increase in the number of 50-euro bills. Of the 747 billion euros in circulation, 36 percent is in the form of 500-euro bills.
Europe’s biggest bill is turning up more and more in busts, Benson said, pointing to a 2005 raid by the DEA and Spanish police in Barcelona, Spain. Police recovered 5.5 million euros in bulk currency ready to be shipped to Mexico -- much of it in 500-euro notes.
------------------------
生産、持ち直す兆し ４月鉱工業生産5.2％プラス
経済産業省が29日発表した4月の鉱工業生産指数（速報値、2005年＝100）は前月比5.2％上昇の74.3と、1953年3月以来、約56年ぶりの上昇率を記録した。輸出の底入れに加え、在庫調整が進んだことなどが理由。一方、総務省が同日発表した4月の完全失業率（季節調整値）は5.0％と、前月よりも0.2ポイント上昇。有効求人倍率（同）も0.46倍と前月を0.06ポイント下回って過去最低に並んだ。生産が持ち直しに向かう一方、雇用情勢の悪化は続いている。
鉱工業生産指数は2カ月連続の上昇。生産水準は依然低いものの、5、6月もプラス予想になっており、製造業の生産活動は上向き始めている。経産省は鉱工業生産の基調判断について「持ち直しの動きがみられる」として、前月の「停滞」から変更。上方修正は07年8月以来になる。(14:20)
-----------------------
4月の有効求人倍率、過去最低水準に 完全失業率は5％台に
生産に持ち直しの動きがみえる一方で、実体経済悪化の影響が雇用に及んできた。4月の完全失業率（季節調整値）が悪化したことに加え、厚生労働省が29 日発表した4月の有効求人倍率（同）も1999年6月に記録した過去最低水準に並んだ。失業者が増える一方で、企業の雇用吸収力が弱まり、雇用情勢の悪循環が強まっている。
失業率は15歳以上の働く意欲がある人のうちで全く職に就いていない人の割合。5％台に乗せたのは2003年11月以来、5年5カ月ぶりになる。完全失業者数は前年同月比71万人増の346万人。増加幅は過去最大だった。(14:20)
------------------------
信金・信組の区分撤廃 金融庁検討、競争通じ再編促す
金融庁は信用金庫と信用組合の業務規制上の垣根を撤廃する方向で検討に入る。中小・零細企業などに顧客を限定しているそれぞれの枠組みを一本化したうえで、新しい金融サービスを提供できるよう規制を緩和する案が軸となる見通しだ。業態を超えた競争を通じ、経営体力の弱い信金・信組の淘汰・再編を促す。規模の拡大などで経営改善が進めば、地域経済への資金供給の円滑化を後押しすることになりそうだ。
金融審議会（首相の諮問機関）が29日に示す、信金・信組の将来展望をまとめた報告書の素案に盛り込む。素案は信金・信組の経営環境について「他業態との競争も激しくなる可能性があり、長期的にみて信金と信組が個別業態として成立し得ない」と指摘。そのうえで「別の制度として維持する意義・必要性は必ずしも強くない」とし、業務形態を抜本的に見直す必要性を示す。(07:40)
------------------------
鋼材価格、家電向けも1.5万円下げ パナソニック、新日鉄と大筋合意
新日本製鉄が家電大手と進めていた2009年度の鋼材価格交渉は、08年度より1トンあたり1万5000円前後（十数％）の値下げで決着する見通しとなった。パナソニックと28日までに大筋合意したもよう。既にトヨタ自動車とも1万5000円の値下げで合意しており、自動車に続いて電機業界でも調達コストが下がる。
家電用鋼材についてはほかの電機大手とも同水準で決まる見通し。日本鉄鋼連盟の鋼材受注統計などによると、08年度の家電用鋼材の国内出荷は約240万トン。減産幅にもよるが、これらから推計すると家電業界の国内鋼材調達コストは300億円程度減るとみられる。今回の合意は国内向けで、輸出用については交渉を続ける。(07:00)
------------------------
自動車金型のオギハラ、タイ企業の傘下に
自動車用プレス金型大手のオギハラ（群馬県太田市、渡辺弘明社長）が、タイの自動車部品大手タイサミットの傘下に入ったことが28日までに分かった。複数の関係者によると3月に約10億円の第三者割当増資を実施し、タイサミットが84％超の株式を取得したもようだ。渡辺社長は続投するが実質的な経営権はタイサミットに移った。
オギハラは自動車の販売不振に伴う受注減による財務の悪化で今年2月、中国での合弁事業相手のタイサミットと資本・業務提携。タイサミットは大和証券ＳＭＢＣプリンシパル・インベストメンツが保有していたオギハラの株式約46％のうち36％を取得し、筆頭株主となっていた。(07:00)
----------------------
米ヒルトン、２泊以上で半額に アジア・太平洋の46ホテルで
国際ホテルチェーン大手の米ヒルトン・ホテルズは、6月から2泊以上利用すると宿泊料金を半額にする。日本や豪州などを含むアジア・太平洋地域の46ホテルが対象。夏休みのレジャー客を取り込む。これまで高級ホテルは価格競争を避けていたが、世界的な不況でビジネス客が激減しているため今後、価格競争が激化しそうだ。
自社のウェブサイトのほか、一休や楽天などを通じて予約を受け付ける。予約期間は7月末までだが、利用期間は8月まで。例えばヒルトン東京（東京・新宿）を利用する場合、1人当たりの料金が約1万7000円から。2泊しても合計金額は1泊と同じ1万7000円。3泊する場合は2万5500円となる。ただしキャンセル料は全額負担となる。(07:00)
--------------------------
4月の自動車輸出64.7％減、最大の減少率に
日本自動車工業会が29日発表した4月の国内自動車メーカーの輸出台数は20万6456台となり、前年同月に比べ64.7％減少した。前年実績を下回るのは7カ月連続で、減少幅は3月の64.3％を上回り過去最大を更新した。欧米やアジアなど有力な市場への輸出が大幅に落ち込んだ。
生産台数も48万5405台となり、同47.1％減となった。7カ月連続で前年実績を割り込んだ。燃費性能の高い環境対応車向けの「エコカー減税」などの政策の影響は「限定的だった」としている。(16:00)
-----------------------
損賠提訴：元選手「総監督から暴行」 赤星選手結成の球団
プロ野球阪神タイガースの赤星憲広外野手（３３）が中心になって結成した硬式少年野球チームの元選手（１６）が「暴行を受けたり、高校野球の強豪校への入学内定を断られて精神的苦痛を受けた」として、チームの総監督の男性（４２）や赤星選手らを相手に、約３２０万円の損害賠償請求の訴えを大阪地裁に起こしていたことが分かった。
赤星選手が理事長を務めているＮＰＯ法人「レッドスターベースボールクラブ」（事務局・兵庫県芦屋市）。元選手は昨年１０月に提訴し、赤星選手には監督責任を求めている。
訴状などによると、元選手側は、総監督が０７年６月、ＪＲ新大阪駅に到着した新幹線の車内で、中学３年生だった元選手の顔を手などで殴ったうえ、みやげ物の食料品を投げつける騒動を起こしたと主張している。
さらに同年９月、総監督から「入学の内定取り消し」を告げられたが、「総監督が勝手に高校の入学を断った」と訴えている。
総監督側は答弁書などで暴行を一部認めたが、「教育指導の一環」と反論。「内定取り消し」については「成績が足りず条件を満たさなかった」としている。
赤星選手は阪神タイガース広報を通じて「すべて総監督に任せています」としている。
-----------------------
男子バレー：ＮＥＣ今月末で休部へ…同社発表 女子は存続
バレーボール・プレミアリーグ男子のＮＥＣが今月末で休部することになった。同社が２９日発表した。女子は存続する。
チームの一括譲渡を検討したが、移籍先が見つからず断念した。今後、移籍を希望する選手にはあっせんを行う。
同社は世界同時不況で業績が大幅に落ち込み、約２万人の人員削減方針などとともに、スポーツ事業の見直しを進めていた。
-------------------------------
天台座主、初の高野山入り…空海・最澄の確執から１２００年
天台宗（総本山・比叡山延暦寺、大津市）の半田孝淳・天台座主が、６月１５日に高野山真言宗総本山の金剛峯寺（和歌山県高野町、松長有慶座主）で営まれる「宗祖降誕会(ごうたんえ)」に参列する。
天台座主が高野山へ赴いた公式記録はなく、平安時代の両宗開宗以来初めて。ともに「相互理解を深めるきっかけに」と期待している。
半田、松長両座主はトップ就任後、法要などで同席する機会が増え、昨年夏頃から、「一度高野山へお参りしたい」「季節の良い頃にぜひ」などと話が進展した。高野山側が開祖・空海の誕生日を祝う年間最大の法要への参列を打診した。
空海と、天台宗の開祖・最澄はともに唐で仏教を学んで親密に交流。最澄は空海から密教を学んだが、晩年は教えの違いや経典の貸し借りなどを巡って対立したとされる。
２００５年１０月に天台開宗１２００年の法要が延暦寺であった際、当時の資延敏雄・金剛峯寺座主が法要に参加したが、天台座主が高野山へ行くのは、比叡山の公式記録「天台座主記」などにも記述がないという。
金剛峯寺によると、半田座主は宗祖降誕会の法要に参列後に空海の御廟を参拝し、松長座主と会談する。
天台宗務庁は「世間で言われる確執は、現代はなく、交流を深める契機になれば」とし、高野山真言宗宗務所も「手を携えて、『救い』など共通の課題に取り組む礎に」と歓迎している。
-------------------------
消費者庁法が成立
2009.5.29 14:02
このニュースのトピックス：国会
参院本会議で消費者庁設置関連法が可決、成立し、笑顔で一礼する野田消費者相＝２９日午後参院本会議で消費者庁設置関連法が可決、成立し、笑顔で一礼する野田消費者相＝２９日午後
消費者行政を一元化する消費者庁設置関連法は２９日午後の参院本会議で全会一致で可決、成立した。福田政権からの懸案だった消費者庁は今秋にも発足する。政府は近く内閣府に設立準備室を設置する方針だ。
消費者庁の新設により、内閣府や公正取引委員会などの消費者関連の業務が集約されるほか、これまで規制法がなかった「すき間事案」といわれる消費者事故に対して、首相が企業に改善勧告や命令を出せるようになる。
消費者庁設置構想は、悪質商法や食品偽装問題を受けて福田康夫前首相が提唱した。政府は昨年９月の臨時国会に関連法案を提出したが継続扱いになり、今年３月にようやく審議入りした。与野党は今年４月、消費者委員会の権限を強化することなどで合意。共同修正した上で、衆院本会議で全会一致で可決された。
---------------------------
15:37 GMT, Thursday, 28 May 2009 16:37 UK
Trouble for French fashion house
Christian Lacroix
French fashion house Christian Lacroix SNC has launched insolvency proceedings, it has announced.
The 22-year-old brand - known for its colourful gowns - told the Paris commercial court that it could not pay its creditors.
It blamed the global financial crisis which has hit the luxury goods market.
The company, which employs 125 people, said it was seeking protection from creditors in order to allow it to continue operations.
The brand was founded by French designer Christian Lacroix, and was bought from Paris-based luxury goods group LVMH by The Falic Group, based in the US, in 2005.
-----------------------------
Brazil to open up vast offshore fields
By Carola Hoyos in London and Jonathan Wheatley in Sao,Paulo
Published: May 29 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 29 2009 03:00
International oil companies will be invited to bid for concessions in Brazil's enormous "pre-salt" oil fields as early as next year, Edson Lobão, mines and energy minister, has told the Financial Times.
Brazil stopped selling concessions in the offshore pre-salt area, which oil industry executives say will rival the North Sea in size and importance, soon after their discovery in 2007.
The government has since been working on new regulations for the area, which presents enormous operational challenges but where the chances of finding large quantities of high quality crude are much greater than in other Brazilian oil fields.
The new reserves promise to turn Brazil into an important oil exporting nation and further hightlight the differences between Petrobras, Brazil's publicly traded but government-controlled oil company of growing international status, and the declining fortunes of its regional rivals Pdvsa of Venezuela and Pemex of Mexico.
Mr Lobão said Petrobras could not on its own cope with the huge task of developing the reserves, trapped under several kilometres of seawater, rock and a layer of hard-to-penetrate salt off the country's coast.
"We will certainly be holding auctions next year. This means the oil companies can begin to prepare their treasury reserves," he said.
Oil industry analysts were surprised by his statement. "It would rest on the assumption that Brasília will be able to promulgate a new regulatory framework in the near term, but there are so many stakeholders vested in the development of these fields that the legislative debate may be more arduous than expected," said -RoseAnne Franco, lead analyst for Latin America at PFC Energy in the US.
Brazil sold several concessions in the pre-salt fields before their potential became clear and has promised not to change those contracts. Analysts say Petrobras, with partners that include ExxonMobil of the US, BG of the UK, Galp of Portugal, Repsol of Spain and Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, will be kept busy for many years exploiting those concessions.
Many observers expected the government to be in no hurry to bring in new laws, which will be controversial and seem unlikely to pass through Brazil's congress in the near future, especially as 2010 is an election year.
Mr Lobão said he favoured restrictive terms for new companies entering the pre-salt fields and the creation of a new oil company entirely under government control to oversee them. Nevertheless, he said he was aware of the dangers of alienating international oil companies, noting the bitter experience of Venezuela and Mexico.
After more than 50 years of dominance, Mexico and Venezuela are in danger of losing their positions as the continent's most -important oil exporters.
As governments from China to Washington as well as international oil companies line up to help Brazil develop its vast fields, they are shunning Mexico and its restrictive financial terms and are being put off Venezuela after years of bruising contract renegotiations.
Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's populist president, has seized fields owned by international oil groups and recently sent the military to take over the projects of oil service contractors he can no longer afford to pay.
He has damaged Pdvsa, the country's once well-regarded national oil company. This has had a profound effect on Venezuela's ability to produce oil. Output has dropped from 3.4m barrels a day just before Mr Chávez came to power in 1999 to 2.4m today.
Mexico is arguably in an even worse position. For decades Mexico has used Pemex as the nation's piggy bank, forcing it into deep debt but barring it from using foreign oil companies to help invest in its fields. As a result Pemex has been unable to halt the steep natural decline of Cantarell, the ageing field that at its peak produced more than 2m barrels of oil a day but no longer manages even half that.
In spite of recent political reforms, Mexico faces the prospect of becoming a net oil importer within a decade.
In contrast, Brazil in the past 10 years has doubled its daily oil production to 2.3m barrels and is beginning to export. Mr Lobão says the country will join Opec once exports ramp up.
----------------------
Argentina pressed to ban crop chemical after health concerns
By Jude Webber in Buenos Aires and Hal Weitzman in,Chicago
Published: May 29 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 29 2009 03:00
Argentina's government is coming under pressure to ban the chemical used in the world's best-selling herbicide, which has helped turn the country into an important world food exporter in the past decade, after new research found that it might be harmful to human health.
A group of environmental lawyers has petitioned the Supreme Court to impose a six-month ban on the sale and use of glyphosate, which is the basis for many herbicides, including the US agribusiness giant Monsanto's Roundup product.
A ban, if approved, would mean "we couldn't do agriculture in Argentina", said Guillermo Cal, executive director of CASAFE, Argentina's association of fertiliser companies.
Argentina has become a world food-exporting powerhouse, largely through the use of genetically modified seeds that have been engineered to resist glyphosate. That has allowed soya farmers to boost yields dramatically by sowing directly without clearing the land, and then spraying the herbicide to kill weeds without affecting the new crop.
The country is the world's top exporter of soya oil and ranks second in exports of corn, third in soyabeans and seventh in wheat. Glyphosate is its most widely used herbicide and farmers spend some $450m on it a year and use 150m litres annually on their crops, Mr Cal says.
Any ban on the use of glyphosate could have dire fiscal consequences: the already cash-strapped Argentine government relies heavily on tariffs levied on agricultural exports. It is expected to rake in some $5bn this year, although that is about half the previous year's level after a longrunning conflict with farmers, a bitter drought and lower prices have slashed production of the country's main cash crop, soya.
"We know we're taking on a Goliath," said Mariano Aguilar, executive director of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, which in April filed suit before the Supreme Court seeking a nationwide ban on the sale and use of glyphosate, pending an investigation by a commission of experts set up in January by the government. No one was available to comment at the Agriculture Secretariat and the court has yet to rule.
Mr Aguilar's action followed an investigation by Andrés Carrasco, a scientist at Conicet, a government-funded research institute. According to Mr Carrasco's research, even tiny quantities of glyphosate could cause embryonic malformations in frogs and thus, by extrapolation, may have implications for humans.
"I suspect the toxicity classification of glyphosate is too low . . . in some cases this can be a powerful poison," Mr Carrasco told the Financial Times in an interview. He says residents near soya-producing areas began reporting problems from 2002, a couple of years after the first big harvests using genetically modified seeds, which were approved for use in Argentina in 1996.
Research by other Argentine scientists and evidence from local campaigners has indicated a high incidence of birth defects and cancers in people living near crop-spraying areas. One study conducted by a doctor, Rodolfo Páramo, in the northern farming province of Santa Fé reported 12 malformations per 250 births, well above the normal rate.
Mr Carrasco said his research used pure glyphosate as well as herbicide containing some 500g per litre of glyphosate - about the standard concentration in many fertilisers on the market - which he then diluted 5,000 times.
Monsanto says its Roundup preparations contain between 360g and 540g per litre, and 680g to 720g per kilo in the case of solids. It notes, however, that it has only a third of the Argentine market, since glyphosate has been off-patent for several years and other producers offer generic products with varying concentrations of the chemical.
Hugh Grant, chief executive, told the FT: "I'm not too worried about the study. I think the science is shaky."
The company maintains the chemical is safe to humans and has been used without harmful side-effects for decades.
Mr Carrasco said four people from CASAFE were sent to try to search his laboratory and he had been "seriously told off" by Lino Barrañao, Argentina's science and technology minister. "There are very many millions of dollars at stake, but the only thing I couldn't do was shut up when I found this out," he said.
Mr Carrasco acknowledged there were "too many econ-omic interests at stake" to ban glyphosate outright. But, he said, officials could start ring-fencing the problem by enforcing effective controls where crops are sprayed.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
フランス：核実験被ばく者補償法案承認 １３億円を予算化
フランス：核実験被ばく者補償法案承認 １３億円を予算化
フランス政府は２７日の閣議で、１９６０年から９６年まで現アルジェリア領のサハラ砂漠と南太平洋のフランス領ポリネシアで実施した、核実験による被ばく者救済を目的とした核実験被害者補償法案を承認した。当面の対象は数百人となる見通し。
フランスはこれまで、核実験被害に対する国家の責任を認めてこなかったが、サルコジ政権発足以降、国家賠償へと大きく方針転換した。初年度は１０００万ユーロ（約１３億円）を予算化し、補償に充てる。今後、対象を拡大していくにあたっては、被ばく者側に因果関係の立証責任を求めない。補償金を支払わない場合は、国側が「核実験との因果関係は見当たらない」との反証責任を負うとしている。
サハラ砂漠とポリネシアで核実験に従事していた将兵、民間人や実験の影響を受けたとみられる住民は計１５万人に上るとみられ、被ばく者側は直接補償だけでなく、じん肺被害者のために設立された前例がある基金の創設を要求している。（共同）
-------------------------
UK economic picture boosts sterling
By Neil Dennis
Published: May 27 2009 10:35 | Last updated: May 27 2009 22:29
Sterling rose above $1.60 against the US currency for the first time in nearly seven months on Wednesday after Britain’s service sector companies revealed improving sentiment while mortgage approvals crept higher.
The CBI quarterly service sector survey showed that, while most companies believed the UK was still deep in recession, the rate of contraction was thought to be slowing markedly.
Mortgage approvals in the UK ticked higher, continuing the gradual improvement from November’s record low.
The pound was also buoyed after risk appetite was improved by rising consumer confidence in the US, which contributed to a strong performance in Asian equity markets.
Jane Foley, of Forex.com, said sterling was benefiting from the UK economy having put much of the bad news behind it. “The pound carries a lot of bad news in its price, suggesting limited scope for further negative shocks. Arguably, both the dollar and the euro face greater degrees of uncertainty.”
Late in New York, the pound rose 0.6 per cent against the dollar to $1.6018, passing the $1.60 level for the first time in nearly seven months. Sterling climbed 1.1 per cent versus the euro to £0.8682 and 0.7 per cent against the yen to Y152.42.
Meanwhile, the dollar built on the small gains made in the previous session as investors appeared to be taking a cautious approach given recent speculation about bad loans in the European banking system.
The dollar climbed 0.6 per cent against the euro to $1.3901, 0.2 per cent versus the yen to Y95.18 and 1.3 per cent to $0.6162 against the New Zealand dollar.
Indeed, worries over the European banking system were heightened after the Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, said it was raising foreign currency to boost its $22bn currency reserves.
The Swedish National Debt Office is to lend the equivalent of SKr100bn to the Riksbank, mainly in euros and dollars.
Some of the funds will come from foreign currency accumulated through recent bond issues and the earlier use of swap lines. But the debt office will be forced to borrow the remainder, some of which will be funded by selling the krona.
Over the past year, Sweden’s currency reserves fell by $6bn as the Riksbank monetised reserves to provide currency liquidity to domestic banks.
The krona’s fall was given added impetus as Stefan Ingves, governor of the Riksbank, said the country needed to build up its reserves in case the global financial crisis worsened. “We still need to be prepared for the eventuality that the financial crisis may be both severe and prolonged.”
The Swedish krona fell 1.1 per cent to SKr10.6730 against the euro and 1.6 per cent to SKr7.6638 against the dollar.
-------------------------
View of the Day: Carry trade to fade
By Valentin Marinov
Published: May 27 2009 16:05 | Last updated: May 27 2009 16:05
Carry trades – where low-yielding currencies are sold to fund purchases of higher-yielding, riskier assets – may have seen a surge in demand recently, but this is unlikely to continue beyond the summer, says Valentin Marinov, foreign exchange strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort.
He says the renewed demand for carry has been fuelled by growing expectations that the global economy may soon be bottoming out. “Our G10 carry index has risen more than 10 per cent from its lows at the end of January,” he says.
But Mr Marinov warns that this demand is likely to run out of steam in the coming months.
He believes it would require signs of genuine economic recovery for the market rally to continue on a sustainable basis – and feels it is too early for such signs to materialise.
Furthermore, Mr Marinov expects a surge in corporate defaults over the summer to trigger a renewed spike in risk aversion and send the prices of risky assets tumbling again.
“All this is bad news for carry trades and we expect that they – temporarily – lose their upward impetus.
“In addition, our strategists expect commodities to give back some of their recent gains as sentiment turns sour again in the summer months. This should reduce the demand for carry investment currencies like the Australian and New Zealand dollars and further weigh on overall carry trade performance.”
-------------------------
Egg yields to onion as shape of society
By Brian Groom
Published: May 28 2009 00:02 | Last updated: May 28 2009 00:02
Pyramid, egg, diamond, or onion? Efforts to visualise the changing shape of postwar British society have produced a mind-boggling array of images.
In the immediate years after the second world war, says the TUC’s report, society resembled a pyramid, with a small and privileged group at the top, a larger but still small and comfortable middle, and a large majority at the bottom.
By the end of the 1970s, with the decline of the manual working class and rising affluence, Britain had moved closer to a diamond shape (which some also called an egg) – with a small groups of rich and poor and a fatter middle.
Since then there have been two shifts: the rise of a small group of super-rich and a greater concentration of the population in the bottom half of the income distribution range.
The result, says the TUC, is that Britain is now an onion-shaped society – with a few at the top, a bulge of people below the middle and fewer at the bottom. To sow further confusion, it says this is more like the postwar pyramid than the 1970s diamond.
The TUC’s “middle income Britain” is known to statisticians as the third quintile, a group of 11m who straddle the median level between higher and lower income groups.
Today’s sinking middle is less well placed than its equivalent in earlier generations, the report says, a trend it ascribes to structural changes, especially a decline in relative wages in the middle of the earnings ladder and an absolute decline in the number of jobs paying middling wage levels.
Another factor has been a fall in the share of national output taken by wages, as opposed to profits.
It also says there has been a strengthening of the “cycle of privilege”, whereby families who already have wealth and better-paid jobs reinforce their position. Thus middle income Britain faces even tougher barriers to social and income advancement than in the past.
These structural changes, the report argues, have been accentuated by policy decisions, including the move from a progressive to a regressive tax system from the mid-1980s – so the middle now shoulders a higher relative proportion of the cost of redistributing income than in the past – and what it calls “the canonisation of the rich by post-1979 governments”.
------------------------
Saudi family group feels the pain
By Andrew England and Abeer Allam
Published: May 27 2009 22:49 | Last updated: May 27 2009 23:40
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Company is one of the oldest and most respected family-owned conglomerates in Saudi Arabia. It was a group that could borrow on reputation alone, with a son of its founder on Forbes’ world rich list.
Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia
Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia. Questions are being asked about the exposure banks in the oil-rich state may have with family owned companies hit by the downturn
But since one of its wholly owned subsidiaries, The International Banking Corporation (TIBC), defaulted on financial obligations to other banks this month it has sent jitters across the market.
The Algosaibi group has not responded to several requests for comment. But the fact that one of its subsidiaries defaulted has raised broader questions about the state of the oil-rich Gulf’s secretive family-run businesses as they grapple with the downturn. The concern is that some may have over-extended during the boom years, which saw Gulf states accumulate huge petrodollar reserves and fuelled rapid expansion, and are beginning to pay the price.
“For foreign counterparties the fact that there has been no public communication [from the Algosaibi group] has raised some questions about transparency, corporate governance and the disclosure of family owned companies in the Gulf,” said Emmanuel Volland at Standard & Poor’s.
The focus on Algosaibi began this month when Bahrain-based TIBC was downgraded by rating agencies after it defaulted.
At the end of 2008, TIBC had short- and medium-term debt of $2.2bn (€1.58bn, £1.38bn) – most of it short- term inter-bank borrowing, according to rating agencies.
Standard & Poor’s said TIBC, which had total assets of $3.8bn, had funds to make payments – including a portfolio of more than $400m in Saudi shares. But the ratings agency has been told that it did not do so because of “a high likelihood” that Algosaibi would implement a group-wide debt restructuring.
Capital Intelligence, which also downgraded TIBC, said it understood from TIBC’s management that Algosaibi group had recently been “experiencing liquidity problems exacerbated by the global financial turmoil”.
“This rendered the Algosaibi group unable to service its debt culminating in the implementation of a group-wide [including TIBC] debt restructuring,” Capital Intelligence said.
This led to a chain reaction, analysts say, with concerned lenders – both local and international – seeking reassurances about their outstanding obligations. The Algosaibi group’s obligations to Saudi banks is estimated to be more than $2.5bn, while it owes international banks several hundred million dollars, an analyst with knowledge of the group says.
“There is a state of flux, this is one of the most respected family businesses in Saudi Arabia and they are trying to remain credible,” said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB Bank. “They have taken decisions that were too risky and have been hit by the global financial crisis and they are paying the price for it.”
Algosaibi’s website lists SABB Bank among its financial services investments.
Analysts say Saudi banks are in talks with the family group and discussing the possibility of restructuring some of the debt.
Questions are being raised about the exposure banks may have to the company, including leading Saudi banks and institutions in Bahrain, which has a large financial hub that has traditionally served Saudi Arabia.
Experts say some other family companies in the Gulf are struggling and are in talks with their banks over their obligations. Private equity groups, meanwhile, say they are beginning to see opportunities with family businesses that are looking to divest from subsidiaries as they seek to raise cash or refocus on their core businesses.
Many family owned businesses have grown across an increasingly broad range of sectors. Algosaibi, which began trading in the 1940s, lists financial services, manufacturing, real estate, trading, shipping services, travel related services, agriculture and media and exhibitions among its main investments.
Bankers say much depends on how a family business has been run and how power has been delegated – often companies have problems in the second and third generations.
“It boils down to corporate governance, and who is the patriarch and has he devolved too much responsibility to the next people down who have never experienced a downturn,” a regional banker says.
“The problem is 75 years of reputation enabled these groups to borrow as much as they wanted during credit free times and of course anybody who borrowed to the limit of their reputation will be struggling now.”
But while the boom was seen as a chance for some of the governance issues to be addressed, the downturn is causing some companies to retreat into their shells.
“If this crisis has shown us one thing it is that the worse it gets the less transparent many of these Gulf private sector companies become – and that is the key issue,” says Philipp Lotter at Moody’s.
-------------------------
Ukraine May Post Current-Account Surplus, Central Banker Says
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Daryna Krasnolutska
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Ukraine will probably post a “small” current-account surplus this year for the first time since 2004 as the recession cuts demand for imports, central bank Deputy Governor Oleksandr Savchenko said.
“The current-account surplus will be below 1 percent of gross domestic product,” Savchenko said today in an interview in Kiev. “The reason is that imports are shrinking faster than exports.”
An economic contraction and a plunging hryvnia have damped demand for imported goods such as cars and equipment. The economy, which has expanded each year since 2000, probably contracted as much as 23 percent in the first quarter, President Viktor Yushchenko said on May 25.
The current-account deficit narrowed to $594 million in the first four months of the year, compared with $5.6 billion in the same period a year ago, the central bank said on May 25.
The eastern European nation secured a $16.4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund in November to finance its current-account deficit, which widened to 7.1 percent of GDP last year, the biggest in at least a decade.
Ukraine’s currency lost more than 37 percent against the dollar last year as turmoil in global credit markets deterred investment in emerging markets. The hryvnia has clawed back 4.82 percent of that so far in 2009 as the central bank introduced new rules on the interbank currency market, changed reserve requirements for banks and implemented so-called “targeted auctions” for individuals and small business.
“I see a slight strengthening of the hryvnia until the end of the year,” Savchenko said. “If the currency is devalued too much, it’s also bad for exporters as they relax and then they aren’t competitive.”
Savchenko also said that “there is no problem for the government and big state-owned companies to repay their debts,” while the central bank is urging companies to restructure their loans.
--------------------------
Mafia Cash Increases Grip on Sinking Italy Defying Berlusconi
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Steve Scherer and Vernon Silver
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- In the southern Italian port city of Palermo, home to bustling outdoor markets and Arab-influenced architecture, prosecutor Roberto Scarpinato has hunted Mafia money for two decades.
Now, as the rest of the world tightens its belt in the global recession, he’s tracking how the mob is profiting by lending and investing what’s become a scarce commodity these days: a growing hoard of cash.
Scarpinato points to the 2.7 billion euros ($3.8 billion) of assets he’s seized on the island of Sicily, where Palermo is located, since the start of 2008. In one haul, he confiscated 12 businesses, 220 buildings, 33 plots of land and a 25-meter (82- foot) yacht from grocery-chain owner Giuseppe Grigoli.
Known as Sicily’s king of supermarkets, Grigoli, 59, is on trial in Marsala for running the food stores and other enterprises at the behest of the Sicilian Mafia. He denies the criminal charge of being a member of an organized crime group.
Unlike overleveraged companies burned in the credit crisis, the Mafia and its cash-based, debt-free business model are breezing through economic hard times. With young, savvy leaders at the helm, organized crime is poised to expand as legitimate companies founder.
“There’s a risk that Mafia organizations can profit from the current crisis by buying control of struggling businesses, infiltrating all regions of the country,” Italian President Giorgio Napolitano cautioned in May.
Grocery Connection
Not even billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who’s won praise for his response to Italy’s deadly April earthquake and has vowed to keep the Mafia out of reconstruction contracts, has been able to control the mob and its riches. This year, Berlusconi’s government has proposed legislation to make it easier to seize assets from organized crime.
Grigoli’s grocery operation and its alleged links to the Mafia and money laundering represent just a slice of the estimated 130 billion euros in annual revenue the mob handles. Some of the money is making the rounds via easy-to-transport 500-euro bills as far away as South America.
Italy’s three main organized-crime groups had combined net income of 70 billion euros last year, producing a 54 percent profit margin, according to Rome-based research institute Eurispes. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company, had a profit of about half that at $45.2 billion.
Bodyguards, Pistols
“There’s a credit crisis that’s putting many businesses in a difficult position,” says Scarpinato, 57, whose dark suit sets him apart from his jeans-wearing bodyguards who tote pistols under their black-and-blue windbreakers. “The banks have tightened the purse strings, and many companies risk going bankrupt. Then there’s the Mafia world, which has vast amounts of cash.”
Prosecutors opened a window on how the Mafia was positioning itself for financial expansion in 2006, when police captured Bernardo Provenzano, the Sicilian Mafia’s boss of bosses. Credit markets worldwide began to freeze in late 2007. By then, Provenzano had helped a new generation of mobsters secure a foothold in the legitimate economy through mainly cash- based operations such as food distribution.
Today, as weakened banks get government stress tests, corporations slash jobs and families struggle to recover amid the economic rout, Italian organized crime is enjoying the fruits of its liquidity.
‘Ramping Up’
“The Mafia is ramping up its investing,” says Antonino Di Matteo, a fellow Mafia prosecutor whose bodyguard stands watch outside his office door in the Sicilian capital’s fascist-era courthouse. “The Mafia’s financial managers are trying to invest now, while the time is right, so that they can launder their fortunes once and for all.”
Italy’s cash-depleted banks may be helping the Mafia become even stronger, says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations’ Vienna-based Office on Drugs and Crime.
The country’s four biggest lenders -- UniCredit SpA, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA and Banco Popolare SC -- are planning to raise more than 9 billion euros to weather the financial crisis by selling convertible bonds to the government.
On May 6, the Bank of Italy, which regulates lenders, cautioned that banks have lowered their guard against money laundering. The central bank plans a new set of anti-laundering rules to classify, monitor and collect data on clients.
In one of Scarpinato’s investigations, UniCredit Suisse Bank, a UniCredit unit based across the border in Lugano, Switzerland, was the apparent destination for 450,000 euros he eventually seized from another Sicilian grocery store owner. UniCredit spokesman Marcello Berni says the bank declines to comment on matters involving individual clients.
Fake Bonds
On May 22, Palermo prosecutors busted an alleged Sicilian Mafia ring that had tried and failed to use fake Venezuelan bonds as collateral to borrow $2.2 billion from HSBC Holdings Plc, Bank of America Corp. and unnamed British banks. The two banks declined to comment.
Italy’s three main organized crime groups divvy up a big chunk of southern Italy. The Sicilian Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, is the most tightly knit. It’s the inspiration for the American version of the mob, says Salvatore Lupo, a history professor at the University of Palermo.
The Campania region’s Camorra is centered in Naples. It’s made up of independent Mafia families who control neighborhoods or towns. Roberto Saviano’s 2007 book “Gomorrah” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and the movie a year later have brought the Camorra into the public eye.
‘I Sell Money’
Investigators consider the third group, the Calabria region’s ‘Ndrangheta, to be Europe’s biggest cocaine traffickers. Its name comes from a word for a network of ‘ndrine, or clans.
Italy’s black market lenders have already stepped in to provide financial services.
“I sell money,” alleged loan shark Vincenzo Senese told a businessman who was trying to raise funds for a startup venture, according to the transcript of a phone call included as evidence from Senese’s Rome arrest warrant on charges related to drug trafficking.
High-interest lending to consumers and businesses posted the biggest gains among illicit commercial activities in Italy last year. Such loan-sharking jumped 17 percent to 35 billion euros, according to SOS Impresa, a Rome-based business group that fights extortion.
People shut out from legitimate lenders paid as much as 730 percent annual interest, outstripping the high of 440 percent SOS Impresa documented in 2007, according to evidence from criminal cases compiled by the organization.
Loan Shark
One desperate borrower is Maurizio Vara. On a sunny morning in March, he’s avoiding eavesdroppers in the back corner of an outdoor cafe in Mondello, a beach town outside Palermo. As a tabby cat naps on a table beneath a nearby magnolia tree, the 40-year-old hotelier and construction contractor explains that banks aren’t lending to entrepreneurs in the economic downturn.
Like countless Italian businesspeople, he turned to a loan shark as his business faltered.
“I haven’t been able to get credit from banks,” says Vara, who has wraparound Fila sunglasses perched atop his balding head. His loan shark sent thugs to collect the 45,000 euros he owes.
“I want to pay,” says Vara, who says he doesn’t have the cash. “I’ve lost my future.”
Unlike traditional lenders, the mob has no qualms about resorting to violence, says Alberto Caperna, a Rome prosecutor who’s pursued usury cases for 20 years.
Broken Teeth
“A bank can’t break all of your teeth if you don’t pay,” he says as he chain-smokes Merit cigarettes in his modern office near the Vatican.
As strong and feared as the Mafia is now, it’s angling for greater riches and influence once the economy rebounds, Scarpinato says. Italian organized crime groups invested 26 billion euros in industries including tourism, restaurants, car dealerships and fashion last year, according to SOS Impresa.
Senese’s son Michele used his cash to muscle in on an auto dealer in Genzano di Roma, south of the capital, according to the arrest warrant in a pending case in Rome. The owner needed capital. He also wanted Senese’s thugs to pressure another dealer to pay off a debt, according to the allegations.
While the Mafia and its hardball tactics are fixtures in popular culture, mobsters’ modern business model has emerged only in the past few years.
New Generation
In the late 1990s, younger family members with formal educations began taking the reins from older Mafiosi, says Pietro Grasso, Italy’s chief anti-Mafia prosecutor. Provenzano, 76, who was captured in a two-room shepherd’s shack, never finished second grade. By contrast, Giuseppe Guttadauro, a convicted mobster and head of a Palermo crime family, is a surgeon.
Guttadauro, 60, is part of a generation that includes his brother’s brother-in-law, Matteo Messina Denaro, a rising star who’d reported to Provenzano.
Under the old business strategy, the ‘Ndrangheta made its money in the 1970s by collecting ransoms for kidnappings. It grabbed the spotlight with its suspected involvement in the 1973 abduction of oil billionaire J. Paul Getty’s grandson John Paul Getty III.
It has since transformed into a multinational cocaine- trafficking syndicate with members posted in South America. Those overseas representatives buy cocaine wholesale and then organize shipments to Europe to other Mafiosi in Spain, Holland and Italy, Grasso says.
Cocaine
Steered by its younger leaders, Italian organized crime has taken over most of the European portion of the global $320 billion cocaine trade for 2009, says Russell Benson, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief for Europe and Africa. He says investigations show that the ‘Ndrangheta then invests its cash as far away as Canada and Australia.
“There’s a tsunami of cocaine coming to Europe,” Benson says, sitting at a mahogany table in a room with 6-meter-high ceilings at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, where he’s based. “They’re out to make a profit and invest that profit in businesses throughout the world.”
The new Mafia bosses are poised to put some of their money into financial markets. They’ll probably behave much like any investor who looks for good deals in stocks and bonds, says Ivanhoe Lo Bello, chairman of Banco di Sicilia, a Palermo-based unit of UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank.
Mafia members invest anonymously by handing their cash to frontmen -- sometimes known as gatekeepers -- who place the money in accounts held in the names of corporations or other people untraceable to the Mafiosi, Italian investigations show.
Mob Investors
“Mobsters care about their money, and they try to invest wisely,” says Lo Bello, who was born and raised near Syracuse in Sicily. “They are invested in international financial markets, more or less anonymously, or in their own territory through people who are known in their sectors as legitimate businesspeople.”
During Provenzano’s arrest, police discovered more than 200 letters, known as pizzini, which helped shed light on the Mafia’s tactics. The correspondence written to him and a few of his own letters were carefully organized next to an electric typewriter in Provenzano’s hide-out.
Through the notes, Provenzano mediated disputes, distributed cash and communicated with the outside world during his four decades on the run. He didn’t trust telephones or computers, which can be tapped and traced.
‘The Godfather’
Until Provenzano was captured, the Sicilian Mafia had been controlled by his Corleone clan, based in the town south of Palermo that gives the fictional family of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” its name. His arrest marked the end of the Corleone crime family’s grip on Cosa Nostra. More important for the new generation of mobsters, it opened the gates for expansion.
Under Provenzano’s rule, younger Mafiosi with global ambitions were on the verge of starting a war over who would control legitimate local businesses, including food markets, the notes show. Among the junior bosses was Messina Denaro -- today one of Italy’s 30 most-wanted fugitives and the highest-ranking Sicilian Mafia boss at large.
Messina Denaro, 47, has been on the run since 1993, when he was sought for participating in bombings that killed 10 people in Florence, Milan and Rome. The blasts targeted Italian cultural sites, including Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, the home of Sandro Botticelli’s painting “The Birth of Venus.” The attacks were an attempt to force the state to ease its use of solitary confinement for mobsters imprisoned in Italy.
‘Diabolik’
A year earlier, Palermo prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were assassinated in separate bombings.
During his time in hiding, Messina Denaro has strengthened his hold on Mafia business and enhanced his legend as a fashion- plate villain, Scarpinato says.
Unlike Provenzano, who wore jeans and wool sweaters while living as a fugitive, Messina Denaro is known for his Giorgio Armani and Versace suits. His nickname, “Diabolik,” comes from a character in an Italian comic book series, a thief who’s embedded machine guns in the hood of his black Jaguar sports car -- something that Mafia turncoats say Messina Denaro told them he admired.
Provenzano went by the less-glamorous nicknames of “Tractor” for his ability to roll over enemies and “The Accountant” for his skill in dividing up money.
Messina Denaro and other bosses pioneered the financial structure that’s benefiting the mob in today’s recession, trial documents of cases in Sicily based on Provenzano’s pizzini show.
‘A Clean Face’
Food stores were an entry point to that network. The Mafia controlled the distributor from which a market bought its merchandise. The distributor, in turn, handpicked the growers and suppliers. Mobsters, who made their cash from the drug trade, loan-sharking and extortion, pumped the money through the stores and onward through the network.
Shopping centers and supermarkets are attractive investments for all of Italy’s crime syndicates, investigations in Calabria, Campania and Sicily show, Grasso says. With a hand on the whole chain of commerce, the mob could set prices to regulate the market and position itself to prosper during hard times.
Messina Denaro, whose letters to Provenzano were among the pizzini found, laid out the food-store-based business plan.
“You have to find a clean face, someone who has never been in trouble with the law,” he wrote. He mentioned Grigoli, the market owner who’s on trial, referring to him as his paesano, or townsman. Grigoli had a license to run stores under the Despar brand of Amsterdam-based Spar International, which calls itself the world’s largest retail food store chain.
Muscling In
“As soon as you have found this person, I’ll tell my paesano” -- meaning Grigoli -- “to buy the outlet in your town and kick out the current owner,” Messina Denaro wrote in a message dated May 25, 2004.
Grigoli denies being part of Cosa Nostra. He says he was a victim of extortion, according to Paolo Tosoni, one of his lawyers. In Sicily, it’s inevitable for the Mafia to try muscling in on businesses. That’s what happened to Grigoli, Tosoni says.
“He doesn’t deny having been in contact with some lower- level criminal figures,” Tosoni says. “He didn’t benefit from this relationship. On the contrary, he did nothing but pay.”
Police Bug
The Mafia’s ability to mix illicit and legal funds from cash-based businesses has multiplied its power, Scarpinato says. Another of his cases involved a chain called Sisa SpA. The Sicilian Mafia used Sisa stores to invest and launder criminal money, according to the asset seizure request Scarpinato filed in November against the estate of Paolo Sgroi, the late owner of some of the chain’s stores.
Scarpinato won court approval to seize 250 million euros from the estate as part of his recent 2.7 billion euro haul. The evidence he’s uncovered indicates that millions more have already made it into the global financial system.
Scarpinato got a break on April 29, 2006, when Sgroi and his wife, Monica, were driving to the Palermo airport in their Mercedes-Benz car. A police bug picked up their conversation as they concocted an alibi for the 450,000 euros they’d stashed in their luggage. If caught while boarding their flight to Milan, they’d tell the police they were smuggling the cash to evade taxes, Sgroi said.
His wife agreed, rehearsing the scene: “‘Where are you going?’” she said, playing an airport official. “To the Virgin Islands or Caymans,” she answered as herself.
Smuggler
Tax evasion would have been a minor offense compared with what Italian prosecutors say the couple was really up to. Sgroi’s bag contained the profits of organized crime, including some that probably belonged to a Sicilian Mafia fugitive convicted in Italy and Switzerland of money laundering and drug trafficking, according to the asset seizure request.
Sgroi and his wife landed in Milan with the money, rented a Renault Megane at Linate airport and drove to find a Polish man who’d agreed to ferry the cash across the border to Lugano. Paolo Sgroi and the Pole met in front of a bar on Viale Beatrice d’Este, near Bocconi University.
The man, carrying an apparently empty black briefcase, walked up to Sgroi, according to an account of police surveillance in the seizure request. Sgroi called his wife, who met them at the front door of their Milan apartment. The pair handed over a white plastic bag of cash.
When police pulled over the smuggler’s car heading toward the Swiss border, he was traveling with his wife and their 8- year-old son as decoys. The 450,000 euros was in the white bag in the trunk.
Swiss Bank
The planned destination for the cash was UniCredit Suisse Bank, the Polish man said, according to court documents. Sgroi told investigators the money drop was to evade taxes and that it was his money, not the Mafia’s. The UniCredit bank account Sgroi was aiming for already had 1.7 million euros in it, Scarpinato found.
Prosecutors who seized Sgroi’s estate allege he aided Cosa Nostra and attempted to launder money for the group. Cosa Nostra probably controlled part of his supermarket chain as a shadow investor, the seizure document says. Neither UniCredit nor its employees were charged with any crime.
Sgroi’s estate denies the charges, says Ernesto D’Angelo, a Palermo lawyer representing Sgroi’s family. The supermarkets were his, as was the money he was trying to take to Switzerland to avoid taxes, the lawyer says.
500-Euro Bills
“All of his assets were obtained legally, including what was found abroad,” D’Angelo says of Sgroi. He says Sgroi had been forced to pay extortion money to the mob. “We hope the court recognizes the fact that he was a victim,” D’Angelo says.
The contents of Sgroi’s money bag show how cash plays a role in the Mafia’s new business model. Half the money was in 500-euro bills, a denomination that was first circulated in 2002 with the introduction of the common European currency.
Today, the purple note with its depiction of 20th-century architecture is a symbol of the Italian mob’s increasing reach, the DEA’s Benson says. The bills, worth about $690 each, are hard to spend in shops in Europe. Yet they’re easy to transport. A million dollars in $100 bills weighs about 22 pounds (10 kilograms), while $1 million in 500-euro bills weighs about 3.5 pounds, Benson says.
Those bills are turning up in drug busts in Colombia and Mexico, giving Mafia hunters like Scarpinato another means of tracking the mob’s cash flow.
Scarpinato says this new evidence shows that Italy’s crime syndicates pose a growing threat to the global economy, particularly in its weakened state. He says he worries that once the recession ends, the Mafia will have sunk its hooks into scores of new markets and businesses, magnifying its financial clout.
“The Mafia isn’t part of the past, it’s part of the future,” the prosecutor says. “Organized crime has evolved. It has become the criminal protagonist of the third millennium.”
--------------------------
Cargill, Bunge Win Most Export Aid Since 1992 as Credit Slows
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Alan Bjerga
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Cargill Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. are benefiting from the most government support for farm exports since 1992 as the U.S. steps up loan guarantees for foreign buyers unable to get credit.
About $4.35 billion was allocated to countries from Jamaica to Turkey through April 6 in the year that started Oct. 1 under the Export Credit Guarantee Program to underwrite loans that foreign banks grant for the purchase of corn, wheat and other U.S. farm products, government records show. That’s 40 percent more than in all of fiscal 2008 and almost triple 2007’s total.
The U.S. is supporting exports after the Department of Agriculture predicted farm shipments will drop 17 percent in the current fiscal year because of falling commodity prices. Profit declined 68 percent at Cargill and 98 percent at ADM in the most recent quarter, as the recession curbed demand for everything from fertilizer to livestock feed. Bunge reported its second straight loss last month.
The export-guarantee program is “the perfect tool for tight credit,” said Erick Erickson, an economist in Washington for the U.S. Grains Council, a trade group. It “allows the U.S. to satisfy some import needs that would otherwise go to other countries.”
The government loan guarantees, in existence since 1981, are helping finance U.S. agricultural exports in the face of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Banks and businesses worldwide have lost $1.47 trillion in writedowns and credit losses in the past 22 months stemming from the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market.
Weaker Economies, Prices
The economy of South Korea, the program’s largest customer, rose 0.1 percent in the first three months of 2009 after declining 5.1 percent in the final quarter of last year, according to government data. Russia’s government is revising its current forecast for a 2.2 percent decline in gross domestic product this year as its economic crisis worsens.
Slowing demand helped send U.S. wheat, corn and soybean prices down at least 28 percent from records reached last year. U.S. farm exports, which reached a record $115.5 billion in the year ended Sept. 30, will fall to $95.5 billion this year, according to USDA projections.
The loan-guarantee initiative “facilitates exports, creating and maintaining jobs for exporters, agribusiness in general, and the transportation sector” and helps U.S. banks provide credit to overseas counterparts, said Mark Rowse, director of credit programs for the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.
Cargill
As of April 13, about $2.8 billion of the $4.35 billion allotment had been used for specific sales, according to government records obtained by Bloomberg under the Freedom of Information Act. Cargill, the largest privately held U.S. company, had benefited from $546.1 million in loan guarantees, 67 percent more than in 2007 and on pace to surpass its 2008 total.
The loan program has kept food flowing to developing nations at a time when banks are pulling back on financing trade, Lisa Clemens, a spokeswoman for Minnetonka, Minnesota- based Cargill said in an e-mail.
White Plains, New York-based Bunge has had its exports backed by $293.2 million in loan guarantees, more than nine times last year’s total, government records show. The company announced a quarterly loss of $195 million on April 23. Bunge has plunged 47 percent in the past year in New York trading.
While the program will cover only about 5 percent of this year’s expected shipments, they are useful to help keep importers buying U.S. products, said Deb Seidel, a Bunge spokeswoman.
“It provides importing countries the credit they need to purchase food,” Seidel said.
Archer Daniels
Archer Daniels, the world’s largest grain processor, was helped by $390.5 million in credits as of mid-April, behind the pace of more than $1 billion in guarantees last year. The total already is 16 percent above the company’s total for 2007, the records show. Decatur, Illinois-based ADM has dropped 37 percent in the past year in New York trading.
The loan-guarantee program, also known as GSM-102, was to help buyers of U.S. goods obtain financing that may not be available otherwise. Participating countries receive credit allocations, and then the USDA finds foreign banks that are acceptable risks and underwrites loans extended by U.S. banks or exporters.
The program is used more during times of slower global economic growth and tighter credit, such as during the early 1990s recession or the Asian financial crisis later that decade.
The loan guarantees maintain and expand markets during a slowing economy, with low default risk, said Erickson of the grains council.
South Korea
South Korea this fiscal year has purchased 2.09 million tons of corn and 88,470 tons of soybean meal using the guarantees, according to the U.S. Grains Council. In 2008, the third-largest importer of U.S. corn bought 8.42 million tons, according to USDA statistics.
Korea has switched sales from Brazil to the U.S. twice in the past six months to take advantage of the credits, resulting in $9.3 million of sales to Glencore Grain LLC and $25.5 million for Peter Cremer North America LP, said Byong Ryol Min, the Korea director for U.S. Grains.
Nations close to exhausting their credits as of April 6 include Russia, which had used $321.6 million of its $400 million allocation, and Mexico, which has gone through $99.9 million of its $125 million limit.
WTO Objection
U.S. competitors, including Brazil, have objected to the program. In 2004, the World Trade Organization ruled that the U.S. was providing improper trade assistance with its 1 percent cap on loan-origination fees that lowered the borrowing costs.
While the cap has been removed, Brazil still is concerned about the subsidies, according to Reinhold Stephanes, the country’s agriculture minister.
“Anything that harms our exporters and producers are to be questioned,” Stephanes said in an interview.
The Grains Council’s Erickson said he wants Congress to raise the program’s authorization to more than the $5.5 billion allowed under the 2008 farm bill.
“We believe that if Congress raised the cap it would be used, and it would be used well,” Erickson said.
-------------------------
長期金利上昇、半年ぶり水準に 10年物国債一時1.500％
28日の債券市場で、長期金利の指標である新発10年物国債の利回りが一時、1.500％となり、約半年ぶりの水準まで上がった。米国で長期金利が大幅に上昇したことが主因で、前日比では0.030％の上昇（債券価格は下落）となっている。
---------------------------
小学校に１人１台ＰＣ、英語教育も インテルと内田洋行が実験
インテルと内田洋行は都内の小学校でノートパソコンを使った授業の実証実験を9月に始める。インテルが教育用に開発したパソコンを4―6年生に1台ずつ提供し、国語、算数、英語の授業に使ってもらう。約2年間にわたって学習効果などを検証し、教育用パソコンやソフトの開発に役立てる。
両社はすでに千葉県で同様の実験をしているが、今回は小学校高学年の英語を必修にする新学習指導要領の導入を見越し、英語の学習にも使えるようにした。マイクとイヤホンが一体となったヘッドセットを使い、ネイティブスピーカーをまねて、その発音に近づけていく練習ができるという。
専用のペンを使えば画面に直接書き込む形で入力できるため、漢字の書き取り練習などもできる。無線ＬＡＮ（構内情報通信網）にも対応しており、教師側の端末で児童それぞれの進み具合などをチェックするといった使い方が可能だ。
-------------------------
私大、運用で評価損 慶応535億円・上智110億円・早稲田28億円
有力私立大学の間で資産運用の評価損が膨らんでいる。慶応義塾大学は3月末時点で評価損が535億円、上智大学も110億円程度にのぼる。少子化による収入の先細りを補おうと株式運用などに乗り出す大学が増えているが、昨年秋以降の金融危機で運用環境が一変。リスク管理の難しさが浮き彫りになった。
慶応大学は1500億円程度の資金を運用。年3―4％の利回りを目標に約8割を株式や投資信託に振り向けてきたが、積極運用が裏目に出た。金融商品の減損損失が膨らみ、2008年度決算は269億円の支出超過（赤字）になった。早稲田大学の3月末の評価損は外国債券中心に28億円。(07:00)
-------------------------
慶応義塾２６９億円の赤字、金融危機で「含み損」拡大
学校法人「慶応義塾」（東京都港区）は、２００８年度決算で経営状態を示す消費収支が２６９億円の支出超過になったと、ホームページで公表した。
慶応義塾は、昨秋以降の世界的な金融危機の影響で保有する有価証券の時価評価が大幅に下落したことが原因だとしている。
慶応義塾によると、今年３月末現在の株式などの有価証券の評価損と時価と簿価の差額にあたる「含み損」の合計は５３５億円で、このうち金融派生商品（デリバティブ）による損失は３６億円。評価の下落が著しかった１６９億円については、監査法人の指導に従って評価損として計上。含み損は０７年度末の２２５億円の１・６倍にあたる３６５億円だった。
-------------------------
●更新日 ０５／２８●
フジ関係者、ブログに工作カキコでキム･ヨナ擁護？
浅田真央を貶めたとしてネット上で多大な批判を受けたフジテレビ関係者が、またもや反感を買う行動に及んだようだ。
騒動が発生したのは、「コレクシオン」というブログの2009年5月19日の更新「キム・ヨナをキャスティングするフジテレビの不思議」のコメント欄だった。キム・ヨナに批判的な論調に対して、共感する書き込みが続いていた。
26日、「アラサー」と名乗る人物がそこに書き込んだ。「みなさん、ホントに知ったかぶりをしますね。。。同じ意見が集まったからといって、それが正しいとは100%言い切れませんね？同じ意見が集まって満足してるのは当事者だけですね」。
翌日も、この人物の書き込みが続く。「アマチュア選手１人をつかまえて、これだけ多くの人々、いわゆるスケートファンの出入りするブログのほとんどが、ヨナ選手に「一億総説教ジジイ&ババア」化してるような印象がどうしても受けてしまいますね」という。そして、次のように疑問を提起した。
「よくこの場でご意見が一致されてる方々は、口をそろえて「くだらないマスコミ」とおっしゃいます。では、その”くだらない”とは、何を尺度におっしゃっているのしょうか？ (中略) このように、常にヨナ選手を持ち上げてる日本のバカなＴＶ局・・・という定義を構築しています。果たして本当にそうなんでしょうか？私が恐ろしいと感じるのは、ネット上などで、ある一人の「こうかもしれない・・」という意見に、多数の賛同者が現われた場合、気がつくと「かもしれない・・・」が、いつの間にか「そうに違いない！」そして最後には「絶対間違いない！」と変化してしまうことです」。
すると、IPを調べたところ、当該の書き込みはフジテレビからなされていたことを確認したと、管理人が暴露。「正直・・・驚きましたよ、というか恐ろしいことですね。こんな個人ブログにマスメディアに従事されている方が書き込みをされるなんて。騒動の「火消し」をしているのが当事者である「フジテレビ」の方だったなんて」と記している。
冒頭で触れたように、フジは浅田真央をゲストに呼んだ番組で、彼女が転倒した姿のパネルをスタジオに用意していたという動画がYouTubeにアップされ、話題になった。この件は、陰湿な虐めであると人々に受け止められた。
キム・ヨナ批判を陰湿と論じるフジ関係者は、浅田の件をどのように考えるのか、ぜひ聞いてみたいものだ。
探偵T
http://www.tanteifile.com/newswatch/2009/05/28_01/index.html
--------------------------
フジテレビ関係者が勤務中に批判書き込みか！ ブログ管理人「恐ろしいこと」
以前、朝日新聞社スタッフが社内から『2ちゃんねる』に意味不明の書き込みをして営業妨害を指摘される騒動があった。今回も、社内からの書き込みによる騒動である。
一般ブロガーが執筆しているブログ『コレクシオン』。そこに韓国のフィギュアスケート選手キム・ヨナさんに対する批判記事を書いたところ、フジテレビの社内から記事の内容に対しての反対意見が書き込みされたことが判明したのだ。ブログの管理人はこのことについて、「あなたは “フジテレビ” の方なんですね」「騒動の “火消し” をしているのが当事者である “フジテレビ” の方だったなんて」と怒りのコメントをしている。
ブログの管理人はなぜ、「騒動の火消しをしている」という言葉を使ったのか？ それは、管理人がフジテレビの番組『グータンヌーボ』にキム・ヨナさんが出演することに対して批判する記事を書いたところ、フジテレビの社内から管理人の意見を否定する書き込みがあったからである（フジテレビ社内からの書き込みのハンドルネームはアラサー）。
管理人は、キム・ヨナさんが今までしてきたとされる日本に対するひどい発言や行動に対して不快感を感じていたことから、キム・ヨナさんや番組にゲストとして招いたフジテレビを否定する記事を書いたようだ。その記事を読んだフジテレビ関係者が反応し、自分の意見としてフジテレビ社内から書き込みしたことになる。つまりカンタンにまとめれば、「日本で嫌われているキム・ヨナを出すなんてフジテレビはおかしいのでは？」という一般人による意見に対して、フジテレビ社内から「おかしくはない」という反対意見が書き込まれたということである。
誰もが自分の意見を持っており、それを表現することは何も悪いことではない。ここで問題なのは、「フジテレビ批判の話題に対して、フジテレビ社内から匿名で反対意見が書き込みされたこと」である。この件に対し、管理人は以下のようにコメントしている。
「2009.05.27 16:32の書き込みのアラサーさん あなたは “フジテレビ” の方なんですね。申し訳ありませんがもしもの荒らし対策のため、IPドメインSEARCHを使ってチェックさせていただいたのです。正直・・・驚きましたよ、というか恐ろしいことですね。こんな個人ブログにマスメディアに従事されている方が書き込みをされるなんて。騒動の「火消し」をしているのが当事者である “フジテレビ” の方だったなんて。あなたのご意見というか “フジテレビ” のご意見は、もうここでお答えする必要はない様に思います。このブログに “フジテレビ” からの書き込みがあったことは、書き込まれた当事者であられるの “フジテレビ” さんにご報告させていただきます」（ブログより引用して要約）。
また、管理人は新たに「正直私は怖かったです。このようなことは不気味にさえも感じました。一個人のブログに、フジテレビのような巨大メディアからの書き込み、それもマスコミ、つまりフジテレビ自身を擁護するものであったことが。もう一度フジテレビは見つめる必要があるのではないでしょうか？ 報道機関のあるべき姿勢を！ それができなければ 結局 “くだらないマスコミ” でしかありません」（ブログより引用して要約）ともコメントしており、悲しみや怒りが混じった感情をあらわにしている。
重ねて言うが問題点は「フジテレビ批判の話題に対して、フジテレビ社内から匿名で反対意見が書き込みされたこと」だ。誰もが持論を持っており、それを表現することは悪いことではない。しかし、誤解を生まないためにも、社内から書き込みするという行動はひかえるべきだったのではないだろうか？ フジテレビ批判に対してフジテレビ関係者がフジテレビ社内から正体を隠して意見を述べたのでは、たとえそれが正論だとしてもそうは見られない。
フジテレビの意見ならば少なくともフジテレビの名を出して書き込みをする、個人ならば誤解を与えぬよう自宅などから書き込みをする必要があったのではないだろうか（このニュースの詳細記事はこちら）。
-------------------------
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Listen to the Article - Powered by
BEIRUT: Lebanon and Syria re-opened a border crossing Wednesday at the Qmar Bridge in Al-Bqayaa area along the northern borders between the two states.
The crossing was closed by the Syrian authorities in the 1970s. The bridge constitutes the third border crossing in northern Lebanon, in addition to the crossings of Arida and Abboudiyeh.
The opening ceremony was attended by North Lebanon Governor Nassif Qalosh, the Governor of the Syrian city of Homs Mohammad Ghazal and the head of Syrian-Lebanese Higher Council Nasri Khoury. The three officials said the step would improve cooperation between Lebanon and Syria in different sectors. - The Daily Star
-------------------------
Kurdish exports resume despite Iraq impasse
By Andrew England, Carola Hoyos and Roula Khalaf
Published: May 28 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 28 2009 03:00
For the past two years, foreign oil companies working in Kurdistan have had their hands tied. They have not been able to export their oil and have limited their development in the region. That could be set to change this weekend.
Kurdish oil is expected to start flowing through a pipeline that runs from Iraq through Kurdistan to Turkey and on to wider export markets.
Iraq's oil ministry said yesterday it would start exports from fields in the country's largely autonomous Kurdistan region on Sunday at an initial rate of 10,000 barrels per day.
"The initial amount that will be exported from Tawke and Taq Taq (fields) is 10,000 barrels per day, with a hope to reach 50,000 bpd," deputy oil minister Karim Louaibi, who is in charge of extraction, told Reuters. He gave no further details.
Without access to the pipeline, most of Kurdistan's oil has had to be left untapped, while the Kurdish and Iraqi oil ministries have remained locked in a bitter row about who should control the revenues it could raise. At its heart, the dispute centres around who controls how reserves are developed.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq has tried and failed to create a legal framework to manage its vast oil resources - the world's third largest.
In the past two years the divisions between Kurdistan and Baghdad have become entrenched. Unwilling to wait for a national resolution, the Kurdish Regional Government in 2007 passed its own hydrocarbons law and has parcelled out its oil fields to dozens of small foreign oil companies in a move that Baghdad considers illegal.
A deep personal feud between the Iraq and Kurdish oil ministries ensued and left foreign oil companies operating in Kurdistan and Iraq in a legal vacuum.
Now, Kurdish oil is about to start flowing in larger quantities than ever before. But the breakthrough cannot be described as a thaw between Kurdistan and Baghdad and many legal and political wrangles remain.
Kurdistan announced earlier this month that it would begin exporting its oil through the Iraqi pipeline, without consulting Bagdad.
"We never asked for an agreement," said Ashti Hawrami, KRG oil minister. "We have a right. We do not need permission or a nod of approval."
Foreign oil companies operating in Kurdistan had already built a pipeline linking their oil deposits to the main Iraqi national pipeline but have not so far been able to use it.
If all goes according to plan, the oil pumped at the start of June from fields developed by DNO, a Norwegian company, and Addax, of Switzerland, will flow into the Iraq-Turkey pipeline and be sold on the open market. The revenue will be controlled by Baghdad's finance ministry.
DNO and Addax are not the only players that will be affected by how this story pans out. Analysts believe oil exports from the Kurdistan region could quickly jump to 100,000 bpd, rising to 1m b/d as the region is developed.
If exports from Kurdistan grind to a halt, it would mean serious loss of revenue for Iraq and increase the risk of a shortage in world oil supplies just as the global economy begins its recovery.
However, it remains unclear what Baghdad will do with the extra revenue from Kurdistan's oil - about $5m a day - and who will pay the foreign oil companies.
Hussein Shahrestani, Iraq's oil minister, said Baghdad would not be responsible for paying foreign oil companies operating in Kurdistan. He said the companies would have to be paid from the share of revenues that the KRG received, as allocated in the national budget.
"The KRG cannot have its cake and eat it at the same time," he told the FT.
Mr Hawrami insists DNO and Addax will get paid, but cannot say when or for how long he could afford to tap the KRG's budget if an agreement for additional oil revenue with the Iraqi finance ministry remained elusive.
"We have given them [the companies] assurances that they will get paid. How we get the money is up to sensible people," he said.
Ivar Branvold, DNO's chief operating officer, said that the company had not received "any particular instructions" on revenue from the field. But the company appeared to be willing to go ahead with exports anyway.
----------------------
Saudi family groups feel the pain
By Andrew England in Abu Dhabi and Abeer Allam in Riyadh
Published: May 28 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 28 2009 03:00
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Company is one of the oldest and most respected family-owned conglomerates in Saudi Arabia. It was a group that could borrow on reputation alone, with a son of its founder on Forbes' world rich list.
But since one of its wholly owned subsidiaries, The International Banking Corporation (TIBC), defaulted on financial obligations to other banks this month it has sent jitters across the market.
The Algosaibi group has not responded to several requests for comment. But the fact that one of its subsidiaries defaulted has raised broader questions about the state of the oil-rich Gulf's secretive family-run businesses as they grapple with the downturn. The concern is that some may have overextended during the boom years, which saw Gulf states accumulate huge petrodollar reserves and fuelled rapid expansion, and are beginning to pay the price.
"For foreign counterparties the fact that there has been no public communication [from the Algosaibi group] has raised some questions about transparency, corporate governance and the disclosure of family owned companies in the Gulf," said Emmanuel Volland at Standard & Poor's.
The focus on Algosaibi began this month when Bahrain-based TIBC was downgraded by rating agencies after it defaulted.
At the end of 2008, TIBC had short- and medium-term debt of $2.2bn (€1.58bn, £1.38bn) - most of it short- term inter-bank borrowing, according to rating agencies.
Standard & Poor's said TIBC, which had total assets of $3.8bn, had funds to make payments - including a portfolio of more than $400m in Saudi shares. But the ratings agency has been told that it did not do so because of "a high likelihood" that Algosaibi would implement a group-wide debt restructuring.
Capital Intelligence, which also downgraded TIBC, said it understood from TIBC's management that Algosaibi group had recently been "experiencing liquidity problems exacerbated by the global financial turmoil".
"This rendered the Algosaibi group unable to service its debt culminating in the implementation of a group-wide [including TIBC] debt restructuring," Capital Intelligence said.
This led to a chain reaction, analysts say, with concerned lenders - both local and international - seeking reassurances about their outstanding obligations. The Algosaibi group's obligations to Saudi banks is estimated to be more than $2.5bn, while it owes international banks several hundred million dollars, an analyst with knowledge of the group says.
"There is a state of flux, this is one of the most respected family businesses in Saudi Arabia and they are trying to remain credible," said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB Bank. "They have taken decisions that were too risky and have been hit by the global financial crisis and they are paying the price for it."
Algosaibi's website lists SABB Bank among its financial services investments.
Analysts say Saudi banks are in talks with the family group and discussing the possibility of restructuring some of the debt.
Questions are being raised about the exposure banks may have to the company, including leading Saudi banks and institutions in Bahrain, which has a large financial hub that has traditionally served Saudi Arabia.
Experts say some other family companies in the Gulf are struggling and are in talks with their banks over their obligations. Private equity groups, meanwhile, say they are beginning to see opportunities with family businesses that are looking to divest from subsidiaries as they seek to raise cash or refocus on their core businesses.
Many family owned businesses have grown across an increasingly broad range of sectors. Algosaibi, which began trading in the 1940s, lists financial services, manufacturing, real estate, trading, shipping services, travel related services, agriculture and media and exhibitions among its main investments.
Bankers say much depends on how a family business has been run and how power has been delegated - often companies have problems in the second and third generations.
"It boils down to corporate governance, and who is the patriarch and has he devolved too much responsibility to the next people down who have never experienced a downturn," a regional banker says.
"The problem is 75 years of reputation enabled these groups to borrow as much as they wanted during credit free times and of course anybody who borrowed to the limit of their reputation will be struggling now."
But while the boom was seen as a chance for some of the governance issues to be addressed, the downturn is causing some companies to retreat into their shells.
"If this crisis has shown us one thing it is that the worse it gets the less transparent many of these Gulf private sector companies become - and that is the key issue," says Philipp Lotter at Moody's.
--------------------------
Abu Dhabi tycoon who brokered Man City deal set to buy Pompey
By Michael Kavanagh, Pan Kwan Yuk and Simeon Kerr
Published: May 28 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 28 2009 03:00
Portsmouth is poised to become the latest English football club to have a wealthy Arab owner, it emerged last night.
Sulaiman al-Fahim, an Abu Dhabi-based businessman who stars in an Arab version of The Apprentice television show, struck a provisional deal to buy the club for an undisclosed sum from its Franco-Russian owner, Alexandre Gaydamak, after talks with Peter Storrie, the club's executive chairman, in Rome on Tuesday night.
If concluded, the deal, subject to due diligence, will end months of speculation that Mr Gaydamak was looking to offload "Pompey" after spending more than £30m to acquire control from previous owner Milan Mandaric in 2006.
Mr Fahim also brokered the purchase of Manchester City from Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's former prime minister, for Abu Dhabi's royal family in a £200m deal last September, which also saw the club sign Brazilian star Robinho from Real Madrid in a record-breaking £32.5m transfer fee.
But the club, controlled by Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan and now chaired by Khaldoon al- Mubarak, parted ways with Mr Fahim as the deal to purchase Man City closed.
This left Mr Fahim free to pursue a purchase of Portsmouth, holders of the FA Cup, who disappointed fans by selling top players during the transfer window after the departure of manager Harry Redknapp.
It is understood that the deal will be struck through Mr Fahim's new investment vehicle Al Fahim Asia Associates and structured by specialist international private equity and asset management firm Falcon Group. But his ultimate intention - of whether to hold or sell on the club - remains unclear.
The sale price also remains unknown. But in its annual review of football finance last year, Deloitte estimated Premier League clubs have typically been sold at an enterprise value of 1.5 to two times annual revenue.
On this multiple range, Portsmouth, with turnover of £70.5m for the year to May 2008, would be worth between £105.7m and £141m. But the credit crunch has depressed valuations of Premier League teams. Portsmouth's debts, of £57m last May, would also weigh on its equity value.
The sale agreement came as fellow Premier League club Sunderland confirmed its majority shareholder Ellis Short was taking 100 per cent control.
Mr Short is co-founder of Texas-based US fund management company Lone Star.
------------------------
Haier acquires stake in Fisher & Paykel
By Kathrin Hille in Beijing
Published: May 28 2009 02:04 | Last updated: May 28 2009 02:04
Haier, the Chinese electrical appliances maker, has agreed to take a 20 per cent stake in Fisher & Paykel Appliances of New Zealand for between NZ$80m and NZ$82m (US$49m and US$51m), the two companies said on Wednesday.
Through the deal, Haier takes a cautious further step towards global expansion. The company, which has a history of growth by aggressive acquisitions in its home market, has not repeated that performance abroad.
In 2005 Haier was outbid by Whirlpool for a stake in Maytag, the US appliances maker. Earlier this year Haier said it had given up bidding for General Electric’s home appliances unit because it did not consider itself fit for integrating and running a business in a foreign market yet.
Haier’s tie-up with F&P, which has a focus on high-end niche products, allows the Chinese group to expand into higher-priced products in export markets. Haier’s overseas markets have so far been concentrated on the mass market.
For loss-making F&P, the deal is the cornerstone of a recapitalisation package which also includes NZ$575m in new credit lines.
Haier will take two seats on F&P’s board following the investment. The companies said they would also co-operate in product development, sourcing, manufacturing and marketing.
Under the alliance, the companies gain exclusive distribution rights for each other’s products in their respective home markets. They also agreed to use each others’ factories to make the partner’s branded products.
Haier was advised by Morgan Stanley.
-------------------
'White van man' suffers decline in social status
By Brian Groom, Business and Employment Editor
Published: May 28 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 28 2009 03:00
Britain's middle earners have lost ground to the -better-off and the rich, seen their relative status in society decline and been let down by politicians, the Trades Union Congress argues in a report today.
Thirty years after Margaret Thatcher first targeted voters in middle England, and 12 years since New Labour made its winning appeal to "middle Britain", the TUC draws a sharp contrast between the fortunes of that group and those of people on comfortable professional incomes.
This richer group has increasingly been seen, by commentators and politicians alike, as "middle Britain".
The result is that successive governments have failed to deliver what true middle-earners want - a dissonance that helps to explain outrage about the MPs' expenses scandal, says the TUC.
The findings may make alarming reading for Labour. The high command is aware it cannot win the next general election without the support of this group of voters - normally termed C1s and C2s by psephologists.
The TUC defines "middle income Britain" as the fifth of the population straddling median income, the level that divides the population in two. Median household income was £377 a week, just under £20,000 a year, in 2007.
Median earners have seen their income rise by less than the average, or mean, income over the past 30 years, the TUC says. The mean is calculated by dividing total incomes by the number of people in the UK.
Since 1979 the income of median earners has risen by 60 per cent, while much bigger increases for the better-off have pushed up mean earnings by 78 per cent, according to the report.
While median income fell behind more sharply under the Conservatives as society became more unequal, the TUC says the gap has grown under Labour. Mean net household income in 2007 stood at £463 a week, 23 per cent higher than the median.
"Middle income Britons" who have jobs are concentrated in white-collar and skilled manual roles, including dispatch clerks, retail managers, information technology workers and teaching assistants.
Their experience of life is likely to be marked by econ-omic insecurity - rather like members of the struggling middle class in the US who have been dubbed "the anxious middle" by economists.
Compared with those just above them on the income scale, median earners are less likely to have had a university education, to enjoy a final salary pension scheme, to hold shares or to have significant savings. They are more likely to have experienced unemployment.
They are frustrated, says a YouGov survey for the report. While they have aspirations for more fulfilling work and better living standards, they feel keenly their inability to fulfil society's rising expectations. Four in 10 people on median incomes believe their job has a lower status than their father's.
Stewart Lansley, the report's author, said one of the big failings of the past 30 years was that the middle income Britain of the 1970s and 1980s had not been transformed into the well-to-do middle Britain of politicians' recent imagination.
"Maybe because of this, middle income Britain holds noticeably different values than those above them in the income hierarchy. They are more pro-state and strongly support government action to tackle in-equality," he said.
The report calls for targets to reduce income and wealth inequalities, a government "Inequality Commission" and an end to the "public school near-monopoly" on top jobs.
Sheila Lawlor, director of Politeia, the conservative think-tank, said she accepted some people were under pressure but the answer lay in a smaller role for the state.
Julian Baggini, author of Welcome to Everytown: a Journey into the English Mind , said he was reluctant to blame politicians for median earners' frustrations.
"I think the deeper failure is that everyone has got complicit in this illusion of rising, limitless aspiration and there are broader social changes as well," he said.
フランス政府は２７日の閣議で、１９６０年から９６年まで現アルジェリア領のサハラ砂漠と南太平洋のフランス領ポリネシアで実施した、核実験による被ばく者救済を目的とした核実験被害者補償法案を承認した。当面の対象は数百人となる見通し。
フランスはこれまで、核実験被害に対する国家の責任を認めてこなかったが、サルコジ政権発足以降、国家賠償へと大きく方針転換した。初年度は１０００万ユーロ（約１３億円）を予算化し、補償に充てる。今後、対象を拡大していくにあたっては、被ばく者側に因果関係の立証責任を求めない。補償金を支払わない場合は、国側が「核実験との因果関係は見当たらない」との反証責任を負うとしている。
サハラ砂漠とポリネシアで核実験に従事していた将兵、民間人や実験の影響を受けたとみられる住民は計１５万人に上るとみられ、被ばく者側は直接補償だけでなく、じん肺被害者のために設立された前例がある基金の創設を要求している。（共同）
-------------------------
UK economic picture boosts sterling
By Neil Dennis
Published: May 27 2009 10:35 | Last updated: May 27 2009 22:29
Sterling rose above $1.60 against the US currency for the first time in nearly seven months on Wednesday after Britain’s service sector companies revealed improving sentiment while mortgage approvals crept higher.
The CBI quarterly service sector survey showed that, while most companies believed the UK was still deep in recession, the rate of contraction was thought to be slowing markedly.
Mortgage approvals in the UK ticked higher, continuing the gradual improvement from November’s record low.
The pound was also buoyed after risk appetite was improved by rising consumer confidence in the US, which contributed to a strong performance in Asian equity markets.
Jane Foley, of Forex.com, said sterling was benefiting from the UK economy having put much of the bad news behind it. “The pound carries a lot of bad news in its price, suggesting limited scope for further negative shocks. Arguably, both the dollar and the euro face greater degrees of uncertainty.”
Late in New York, the pound rose 0.6 per cent against the dollar to $1.6018, passing the $1.60 level for the first time in nearly seven months. Sterling climbed 1.1 per cent versus the euro to £0.8682 and 0.7 per cent against the yen to Y152.42.
Meanwhile, the dollar built on the small gains made in the previous session as investors appeared to be taking a cautious approach given recent speculation about bad loans in the European banking system.
The dollar climbed 0.6 per cent against the euro to $1.3901, 0.2 per cent versus the yen to Y95.18 and 1.3 per cent to $0.6162 against the New Zealand dollar.
Indeed, worries over the European banking system were heightened after the Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank, said it was raising foreign currency to boost its $22bn currency reserves.
The Swedish National Debt Office is to lend the equivalent of SKr100bn to the Riksbank, mainly in euros and dollars.
Some of the funds will come from foreign currency accumulated through recent bond issues and the earlier use of swap lines. But the debt office will be forced to borrow the remainder, some of which will be funded by selling the krona.
Over the past year, Sweden’s currency reserves fell by $6bn as the Riksbank monetised reserves to provide currency liquidity to domestic banks.
The krona’s fall was given added impetus as Stefan Ingves, governor of the Riksbank, said the country needed to build up its reserves in case the global financial crisis worsened. “We still need to be prepared for the eventuality that the financial crisis may be both severe and prolonged.”
The Swedish krona fell 1.1 per cent to SKr10.6730 against the euro and 1.6 per cent to SKr7.6638 against the dollar.
-------------------------
View of the Day: Carry trade to fade
By Valentin Marinov
Published: May 27 2009 16:05 | Last updated: May 27 2009 16:05
Carry trades – where low-yielding currencies are sold to fund purchases of higher-yielding, riskier assets – may have seen a surge in demand recently, but this is unlikely to continue beyond the summer, says Valentin Marinov, foreign exchange strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort.
He says the renewed demand for carry has been fuelled by growing expectations that the global economy may soon be bottoming out. “Our G10 carry index has risen more than 10 per cent from its lows at the end of January,” he says.
But Mr Marinov warns that this demand is likely to run out of steam in the coming months.
He believes it would require signs of genuine economic recovery for the market rally to continue on a sustainable basis – and feels it is too early for such signs to materialise.
Furthermore, Mr Marinov expects a surge in corporate defaults over the summer to trigger a renewed spike in risk aversion and send the prices of risky assets tumbling again.
“All this is bad news for carry trades and we expect that they – temporarily – lose their upward impetus.
“In addition, our strategists expect commodities to give back some of their recent gains as sentiment turns sour again in the summer months. This should reduce the demand for carry investment currencies like the Australian and New Zealand dollars and further weigh on overall carry trade performance.”
-------------------------
Egg yields to onion as shape of society
By Brian Groom
Published: May 28 2009 00:02 | Last updated: May 28 2009 00:02
Pyramid, egg, diamond, or onion? Efforts to visualise the changing shape of postwar British society have produced a mind-boggling array of images.
In the immediate years after the second world war, says the TUC’s report, society resembled a pyramid, with a small and privileged group at the top, a larger but still small and comfortable middle, and a large majority at the bottom.
By the end of the 1970s, with the decline of the manual working class and rising affluence, Britain had moved closer to a diamond shape (which some also called an egg) – with a small groups of rich and poor and a fatter middle.
Since then there have been two shifts: the rise of a small group of super-rich and a greater concentration of the population in the bottom half of the income distribution range.
The result, says the TUC, is that Britain is now an onion-shaped society – with a few at the top, a bulge of people below the middle and fewer at the bottom. To sow further confusion, it says this is more like the postwar pyramid than the 1970s diamond.
The TUC’s “middle income Britain” is known to statisticians as the third quintile, a group of 11m who straddle the median level between higher and lower income groups.
Today’s sinking middle is less well placed than its equivalent in earlier generations, the report says, a trend it ascribes to structural changes, especially a decline in relative wages in the middle of the earnings ladder and an absolute decline in the number of jobs paying middling wage levels.
Another factor has been a fall in the share of national output taken by wages, as opposed to profits.
It also says there has been a strengthening of the “cycle of privilege”, whereby families who already have wealth and better-paid jobs reinforce their position. Thus middle income Britain faces even tougher barriers to social and income advancement than in the past.
These structural changes, the report argues, have been accentuated by policy decisions, including the move from a progressive to a regressive tax system from the mid-1980s – so the middle now shoulders a higher relative proportion of the cost of redistributing income than in the past – and what it calls “the canonisation of the rich by post-1979 governments”.
------------------------
Saudi family group feels the pain
By Andrew England and Abeer Allam
Published: May 27 2009 22:49 | Last updated: May 27 2009 23:40
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Company is one of the oldest and most respected family-owned conglomerates in Saudi Arabia. It was a group that could borrow on reputation alone, with a son of its founder on Forbes’ world rich list.
Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia
Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia. Questions are being asked about the exposure banks in the oil-rich state may have with family owned companies hit by the downturn
But since one of its wholly owned subsidiaries, The International Banking Corporation (TIBC), defaulted on financial obligations to other banks this month it has sent jitters across the market.
The Algosaibi group has not responded to several requests for comment. But the fact that one of its subsidiaries defaulted has raised broader questions about the state of the oil-rich Gulf’s secretive family-run businesses as they grapple with the downturn. The concern is that some may have over-extended during the boom years, which saw Gulf states accumulate huge petrodollar reserves and fuelled rapid expansion, and are beginning to pay the price.
“For foreign counterparties the fact that there has been no public communication [from the Algosaibi group] has raised some questions about transparency, corporate governance and the disclosure of family owned companies in the Gulf,” said Emmanuel Volland at Standard & Poor’s.
The focus on Algosaibi began this month when Bahrain-based TIBC was downgraded by rating agencies after it defaulted.
At the end of 2008, TIBC had short- and medium-term debt of $2.2bn (€1.58bn, £1.38bn) – most of it short- term inter-bank borrowing, according to rating agencies.
Standard & Poor’s said TIBC, which had total assets of $3.8bn, had funds to make payments – including a portfolio of more than $400m in Saudi shares. But the ratings agency has been told that it did not do so because of “a high likelihood” that Algosaibi would implement a group-wide debt restructuring.
Capital Intelligence, which also downgraded TIBC, said it understood from TIBC’s management that Algosaibi group had recently been “experiencing liquidity problems exacerbated by the global financial turmoil”.
“This rendered the Algosaibi group unable to service its debt culminating in the implementation of a group-wide [including TIBC] debt restructuring,” Capital Intelligence said.
This led to a chain reaction, analysts say, with concerned lenders – both local and international – seeking reassurances about their outstanding obligations. The Algosaibi group’s obligations to Saudi banks is estimated to be more than $2.5bn, while it owes international banks several hundred million dollars, an analyst with knowledge of the group says.
“There is a state of flux, this is one of the most respected family businesses in Saudi Arabia and they are trying to remain credible,” said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB Bank. “They have taken decisions that were too risky and have been hit by the global financial crisis and they are paying the price for it.”
Algosaibi’s website lists SABB Bank among its financial services investments.
Analysts say Saudi banks are in talks with the family group and discussing the possibility of restructuring some of the debt.
Questions are being raised about the exposure banks may have to the company, including leading Saudi banks and institutions in Bahrain, which has a large financial hub that has traditionally served Saudi Arabia.
Experts say some other family companies in the Gulf are struggling and are in talks with their banks over their obligations. Private equity groups, meanwhile, say they are beginning to see opportunities with family businesses that are looking to divest from subsidiaries as they seek to raise cash or refocus on their core businesses.
Many family owned businesses have grown across an increasingly broad range of sectors. Algosaibi, which began trading in the 1940s, lists financial services, manufacturing, real estate, trading, shipping services, travel related services, agriculture and media and exhibitions among its main investments.
Bankers say much depends on how a family business has been run and how power has been delegated – often companies have problems in the second and third generations.
“It boils down to corporate governance, and who is the patriarch and has he devolved too much responsibility to the next people down who have never experienced a downturn,” a regional banker says.
“The problem is 75 years of reputation enabled these groups to borrow as much as they wanted during credit free times and of course anybody who borrowed to the limit of their reputation will be struggling now.”
But while the boom was seen as a chance for some of the governance issues to be addressed, the downturn is causing some companies to retreat into their shells.
“If this crisis has shown us one thing it is that the worse it gets the less transparent many of these Gulf private sector companies become – and that is the key issue,” says Philipp Lotter at Moody’s.
-------------------------
Ukraine May Post Current-Account Surplus, Central Banker Says
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Daryna Krasnolutska
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Ukraine will probably post a “small” current-account surplus this year for the first time since 2004 as the recession cuts demand for imports, central bank Deputy Governor Oleksandr Savchenko said.
“The current-account surplus will be below 1 percent of gross domestic product,” Savchenko said today in an interview in Kiev. “The reason is that imports are shrinking faster than exports.”
An economic contraction and a plunging hryvnia have damped demand for imported goods such as cars and equipment. The economy, which has expanded each year since 2000, probably contracted as much as 23 percent in the first quarter, President Viktor Yushchenko said on May 25.
The current-account deficit narrowed to $594 million in the first four months of the year, compared with $5.6 billion in the same period a year ago, the central bank said on May 25.
The eastern European nation secured a $16.4 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund in November to finance its current-account deficit, which widened to 7.1 percent of GDP last year, the biggest in at least a decade.
Ukraine’s currency lost more than 37 percent against the dollar last year as turmoil in global credit markets deterred investment in emerging markets. The hryvnia has clawed back 4.82 percent of that so far in 2009 as the central bank introduced new rules on the interbank currency market, changed reserve requirements for banks and implemented so-called “targeted auctions” for individuals and small business.
“I see a slight strengthening of the hryvnia until the end of the year,” Savchenko said. “If the currency is devalued too much, it’s also bad for exporters as they relax and then they aren’t competitive.”
Savchenko also said that “there is no problem for the government and big state-owned companies to repay their debts,” while the central bank is urging companies to restructure their loans.
--------------------------
Mafia Cash Increases Grip on Sinking Italy Defying Berlusconi
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Steve Scherer and Vernon Silver
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- In the southern Italian port city of Palermo, home to bustling outdoor markets and Arab-influenced architecture, prosecutor Roberto Scarpinato has hunted Mafia money for two decades.
Now, as the rest of the world tightens its belt in the global recession, he’s tracking how the mob is profiting by lending and investing what’s become a scarce commodity these days: a growing hoard of cash.
Scarpinato points to the 2.7 billion euros ($3.8 billion) of assets he’s seized on the island of Sicily, where Palermo is located, since the start of 2008. In one haul, he confiscated 12 businesses, 220 buildings, 33 plots of land and a 25-meter (82- foot) yacht from grocery-chain owner Giuseppe Grigoli.
Known as Sicily’s king of supermarkets, Grigoli, 59, is on trial in Marsala for running the food stores and other enterprises at the behest of the Sicilian Mafia. He denies the criminal charge of being a member of an organized crime group.
Unlike overleveraged companies burned in the credit crisis, the Mafia and its cash-based, debt-free business model are breezing through economic hard times. With young, savvy leaders at the helm, organized crime is poised to expand as legitimate companies founder.
“There’s a risk that Mafia organizations can profit from the current crisis by buying control of struggling businesses, infiltrating all regions of the country,” Italian President Giorgio Napolitano cautioned in May.
Grocery Connection
Not even billionaire Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who’s won praise for his response to Italy’s deadly April earthquake and has vowed to keep the Mafia out of reconstruction contracts, has been able to control the mob and its riches. This year, Berlusconi’s government has proposed legislation to make it easier to seize assets from organized crime.
Grigoli’s grocery operation and its alleged links to the Mafia and money laundering represent just a slice of the estimated 130 billion euros in annual revenue the mob handles. Some of the money is making the rounds via easy-to-transport 500-euro bills as far away as South America.
Italy’s three main organized-crime groups had combined net income of 70 billion euros last year, producing a 54 percent profit margin, according to Rome-based research institute Eurispes. Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company, had a profit of about half that at $45.2 billion.
Bodyguards, Pistols
“There’s a credit crisis that’s putting many businesses in a difficult position,” says Scarpinato, 57, whose dark suit sets him apart from his jeans-wearing bodyguards who tote pistols under their black-and-blue windbreakers. “The banks have tightened the purse strings, and many companies risk going bankrupt. Then there’s the Mafia world, which has vast amounts of cash.”
Prosecutors opened a window on how the Mafia was positioning itself for financial expansion in 2006, when police captured Bernardo Provenzano, the Sicilian Mafia’s boss of bosses. Credit markets worldwide began to freeze in late 2007. By then, Provenzano had helped a new generation of mobsters secure a foothold in the legitimate economy through mainly cash- based operations such as food distribution.
Today, as weakened banks get government stress tests, corporations slash jobs and families struggle to recover amid the economic rout, Italian organized crime is enjoying the fruits of its liquidity.
‘Ramping Up’
“The Mafia is ramping up its investing,” says Antonino Di Matteo, a fellow Mafia prosecutor whose bodyguard stands watch outside his office door in the Sicilian capital’s fascist-era courthouse. “The Mafia’s financial managers are trying to invest now, while the time is right, so that they can launder their fortunes once and for all.”
Italy’s cash-depleted banks may be helping the Mafia become even stronger, says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations’ Vienna-based Office on Drugs and Crime.
The country’s four biggest lenders -- UniCredit SpA, Intesa Sanpaolo SpA, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA and Banco Popolare SC -- are planning to raise more than 9 billion euros to weather the financial crisis by selling convertible bonds to the government.
On May 6, the Bank of Italy, which regulates lenders, cautioned that banks have lowered their guard against money laundering. The central bank plans a new set of anti-laundering rules to classify, monitor and collect data on clients.
In one of Scarpinato’s investigations, UniCredit Suisse Bank, a UniCredit unit based across the border in Lugano, Switzerland, was the apparent destination for 450,000 euros he eventually seized from another Sicilian grocery store owner. UniCredit spokesman Marcello Berni says the bank declines to comment on matters involving individual clients.
Fake Bonds
On May 22, Palermo prosecutors busted an alleged Sicilian Mafia ring that had tried and failed to use fake Venezuelan bonds as collateral to borrow $2.2 billion from HSBC Holdings Plc, Bank of America Corp. and unnamed British banks. The two banks declined to comment.
Italy’s three main organized crime groups divvy up a big chunk of southern Italy. The Sicilian Mafia, or Cosa Nostra, is the most tightly knit. It’s the inspiration for the American version of the mob, says Salvatore Lupo, a history professor at the University of Palermo.
The Campania region’s Camorra is centered in Naples. It’s made up of independent Mafia families who control neighborhoods or towns. Roberto Saviano’s 2007 book “Gomorrah” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and the movie a year later have brought the Camorra into the public eye.
‘I Sell Money’
Investigators consider the third group, the Calabria region’s ‘Ndrangheta, to be Europe’s biggest cocaine traffickers. Its name comes from a word for a network of ‘ndrine, or clans.
Italy’s black market lenders have already stepped in to provide financial services.
“I sell money,” alleged loan shark Vincenzo Senese told a businessman who was trying to raise funds for a startup venture, according to the transcript of a phone call included as evidence from Senese’s Rome arrest warrant on charges related to drug trafficking.
High-interest lending to consumers and businesses posted the biggest gains among illicit commercial activities in Italy last year. Such loan-sharking jumped 17 percent to 35 billion euros, according to SOS Impresa, a Rome-based business group that fights extortion.
People shut out from legitimate lenders paid as much as 730 percent annual interest, outstripping the high of 440 percent SOS Impresa documented in 2007, according to evidence from criminal cases compiled by the organization.
Loan Shark
One desperate borrower is Maurizio Vara. On a sunny morning in March, he’s avoiding eavesdroppers in the back corner of an outdoor cafe in Mondello, a beach town outside Palermo. As a tabby cat naps on a table beneath a nearby magnolia tree, the 40-year-old hotelier and construction contractor explains that banks aren’t lending to entrepreneurs in the economic downturn.
Like countless Italian businesspeople, he turned to a loan shark as his business faltered.
“I haven’t been able to get credit from banks,” says Vara, who has wraparound Fila sunglasses perched atop his balding head. His loan shark sent thugs to collect the 45,000 euros he owes.
“I want to pay,” says Vara, who says he doesn’t have the cash. “I’ve lost my future.”
Unlike traditional lenders, the mob has no qualms about resorting to violence, says Alberto Caperna, a Rome prosecutor who’s pursued usury cases for 20 years.
Broken Teeth
“A bank can’t break all of your teeth if you don’t pay,” he says as he chain-smokes Merit cigarettes in his modern office near the Vatican.
As strong and feared as the Mafia is now, it’s angling for greater riches and influence once the economy rebounds, Scarpinato says. Italian organized crime groups invested 26 billion euros in industries including tourism, restaurants, car dealerships and fashion last year, according to SOS Impresa.
Senese’s son Michele used his cash to muscle in on an auto dealer in Genzano di Roma, south of the capital, according to the arrest warrant in a pending case in Rome. The owner needed capital. He also wanted Senese’s thugs to pressure another dealer to pay off a debt, according to the allegations.
While the Mafia and its hardball tactics are fixtures in popular culture, mobsters’ modern business model has emerged only in the past few years.
New Generation
In the late 1990s, younger family members with formal educations began taking the reins from older Mafiosi, says Pietro Grasso, Italy’s chief anti-Mafia prosecutor. Provenzano, 76, who was captured in a two-room shepherd’s shack, never finished second grade. By contrast, Giuseppe Guttadauro, a convicted mobster and head of a Palermo crime family, is a surgeon.
Guttadauro, 60, is part of a generation that includes his brother’s brother-in-law, Matteo Messina Denaro, a rising star who’d reported to Provenzano.
Under the old business strategy, the ‘Ndrangheta made its money in the 1970s by collecting ransoms for kidnappings. It grabbed the spotlight with its suspected involvement in the 1973 abduction of oil billionaire J. Paul Getty’s grandson John Paul Getty III.
It has since transformed into a multinational cocaine- trafficking syndicate with members posted in South America. Those overseas representatives buy cocaine wholesale and then organize shipments to Europe to other Mafiosi in Spain, Holland and Italy, Grasso says.
Cocaine
Steered by its younger leaders, Italian organized crime has taken over most of the European portion of the global $320 billion cocaine trade for 2009, says Russell Benson, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief for Europe and Africa. He says investigations show that the ‘Ndrangheta then invests its cash as far away as Canada and Australia.
“There’s a tsunami of cocaine coming to Europe,” Benson says, sitting at a mahogany table in a room with 6-meter-high ceilings at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, where he’s based. “They’re out to make a profit and invest that profit in businesses throughout the world.”
The new Mafia bosses are poised to put some of their money into financial markets. They’ll probably behave much like any investor who looks for good deals in stocks and bonds, says Ivanhoe Lo Bello, chairman of Banco di Sicilia, a Palermo-based unit of UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank.
Mafia members invest anonymously by handing their cash to frontmen -- sometimes known as gatekeepers -- who place the money in accounts held in the names of corporations or other people untraceable to the Mafiosi, Italian investigations show.
Mob Investors
“Mobsters care about their money, and they try to invest wisely,” says Lo Bello, who was born and raised near Syracuse in Sicily. “They are invested in international financial markets, more or less anonymously, or in their own territory through people who are known in their sectors as legitimate businesspeople.”
During Provenzano’s arrest, police discovered more than 200 letters, known as pizzini, which helped shed light on the Mafia’s tactics. The correspondence written to him and a few of his own letters were carefully organized next to an electric typewriter in Provenzano’s hide-out.
Through the notes, Provenzano mediated disputes, distributed cash and communicated with the outside world during his four decades on the run. He didn’t trust telephones or computers, which can be tapped and traced.
‘The Godfather’
Until Provenzano was captured, the Sicilian Mafia had been controlled by his Corleone clan, based in the town south of Palermo that gives the fictional family of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” its name. His arrest marked the end of the Corleone crime family’s grip on Cosa Nostra. More important for the new generation of mobsters, it opened the gates for expansion.
Under Provenzano’s rule, younger Mafiosi with global ambitions were on the verge of starting a war over who would control legitimate local businesses, including food markets, the notes show. Among the junior bosses was Messina Denaro -- today one of Italy’s 30 most-wanted fugitives and the highest-ranking Sicilian Mafia boss at large.
Messina Denaro, 47, has been on the run since 1993, when he was sought for participating in bombings that killed 10 people in Florence, Milan and Rome. The blasts targeted Italian cultural sites, including Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, the home of Sandro Botticelli’s painting “The Birth of Venus.” The attacks were an attempt to force the state to ease its use of solitary confinement for mobsters imprisoned in Italy.
‘Diabolik’
A year earlier, Palermo prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were assassinated in separate bombings.
During his time in hiding, Messina Denaro has strengthened his hold on Mafia business and enhanced his legend as a fashion- plate villain, Scarpinato says.
Unlike Provenzano, who wore jeans and wool sweaters while living as a fugitive, Messina Denaro is known for his Giorgio Armani and Versace suits. His nickname, “Diabolik,” comes from a character in an Italian comic book series, a thief who’s embedded machine guns in the hood of his black Jaguar sports car -- something that Mafia turncoats say Messina Denaro told them he admired.
Provenzano went by the less-glamorous nicknames of “Tractor” for his ability to roll over enemies and “The Accountant” for his skill in dividing up money.
Messina Denaro and other bosses pioneered the financial structure that’s benefiting the mob in today’s recession, trial documents of cases in Sicily based on Provenzano’s pizzini show.
‘A Clean Face’
Food stores were an entry point to that network. The Mafia controlled the distributor from which a market bought its merchandise. The distributor, in turn, handpicked the growers and suppliers. Mobsters, who made their cash from the drug trade, loan-sharking and extortion, pumped the money through the stores and onward through the network.
Shopping centers and supermarkets are attractive investments for all of Italy’s crime syndicates, investigations in Calabria, Campania and Sicily show, Grasso says. With a hand on the whole chain of commerce, the mob could set prices to regulate the market and position itself to prosper during hard times.
Messina Denaro, whose letters to Provenzano were among the pizzini found, laid out the food-store-based business plan.
“You have to find a clean face, someone who has never been in trouble with the law,” he wrote. He mentioned Grigoli, the market owner who’s on trial, referring to him as his paesano, or townsman. Grigoli had a license to run stores under the Despar brand of Amsterdam-based Spar International, which calls itself the world’s largest retail food store chain.
Muscling In
“As soon as you have found this person, I’ll tell my paesano” -- meaning Grigoli -- “to buy the outlet in your town and kick out the current owner,” Messina Denaro wrote in a message dated May 25, 2004.
Grigoli denies being part of Cosa Nostra. He says he was a victim of extortion, according to Paolo Tosoni, one of his lawyers. In Sicily, it’s inevitable for the Mafia to try muscling in on businesses. That’s what happened to Grigoli, Tosoni says.
“He doesn’t deny having been in contact with some lower- level criminal figures,” Tosoni says. “He didn’t benefit from this relationship. On the contrary, he did nothing but pay.”
Police Bug
The Mafia’s ability to mix illicit and legal funds from cash-based businesses has multiplied its power, Scarpinato says. Another of his cases involved a chain called Sisa SpA. The Sicilian Mafia used Sisa stores to invest and launder criminal money, according to the asset seizure request Scarpinato filed in November against the estate of Paolo Sgroi, the late owner of some of the chain’s stores.
Scarpinato won court approval to seize 250 million euros from the estate as part of his recent 2.7 billion euro haul. The evidence he’s uncovered indicates that millions more have already made it into the global financial system.
Scarpinato got a break on April 29, 2006, when Sgroi and his wife, Monica, were driving to the Palermo airport in their Mercedes-Benz car. A police bug picked up their conversation as they concocted an alibi for the 450,000 euros they’d stashed in their luggage. If caught while boarding their flight to Milan, they’d tell the police they were smuggling the cash to evade taxes, Sgroi said.
His wife agreed, rehearsing the scene: “‘Where are you going?’” she said, playing an airport official. “To the Virgin Islands or Caymans,” she answered as herself.
Smuggler
Tax evasion would have been a minor offense compared with what Italian prosecutors say the couple was really up to. Sgroi’s bag contained the profits of organized crime, including some that probably belonged to a Sicilian Mafia fugitive convicted in Italy and Switzerland of money laundering and drug trafficking, according to the asset seizure request.
Sgroi and his wife landed in Milan with the money, rented a Renault Megane at Linate airport and drove to find a Polish man who’d agreed to ferry the cash across the border to Lugano. Paolo Sgroi and the Pole met in front of a bar on Viale Beatrice d’Este, near Bocconi University.
The man, carrying an apparently empty black briefcase, walked up to Sgroi, according to an account of police surveillance in the seizure request. Sgroi called his wife, who met them at the front door of their Milan apartment. The pair handed over a white plastic bag of cash.
When police pulled over the smuggler’s car heading toward the Swiss border, he was traveling with his wife and their 8- year-old son as decoys. The 450,000 euros was in the white bag in the trunk.
Swiss Bank
The planned destination for the cash was UniCredit Suisse Bank, the Polish man said, according to court documents. Sgroi told investigators the money drop was to evade taxes and that it was his money, not the Mafia’s. The UniCredit bank account Sgroi was aiming for already had 1.7 million euros in it, Scarpinato found.
Prosecutors who seized Sgroi’s estate allege he aided Cosa Nostra and attempted to launder money for the group. Cosa Nostra probably controlled part of his supermarket chain as a shadow investor, the seizure document says. Neither UniCredit nor its employees were charged with any crime.
Sgroi’s estate denies the charges, says Ernesto D’Angelo, a Palermo lawyer representing Sgroi’s family. The supermarkets were his, as was the money he was trying to take to Switzerland to avoid taxes, the lawyer says.
500-Euro Bills
“All of his assets were obtained legally, including what was found abroad,” D’Angelo says of Sgroi. He says Sgroi had been forced to pay extortion money to the mob. “We hope the court recognizes the fact that he was a victim,” D’Angelo says.
The contents of Sgroi’s money bag show how cash plays a role in the Mafia’s new business model. Half the money was in 500-euro bills, a denomination that was first circulated in 2002 with the introduction of the common European currency.
Today, the purple note with its depiction of 20th-century architecture is a symbol of the Italian mob’s increasing reach, the DEA’s Benson says. The bills, worth about $690 each, are hard to spend in shops in Europe. Yet they’re easy to transport. A million dollars in $100 bills weighs about 22 pounds (10 kilograms), while $1 million in 500-euro bills weighs about 3.5 pounds, Benson says.
Those bills are turning up in drug busts in Colombia and Mexico, giving Mafia hunters like Scarpinato another means of tracking the mob’s cash flow.
Scarpinato says this new evidence shows that Italy’s crime syndicates pose a growing threat to the global economy, particularly in its weakened state. He says he worries that once the recession ends, the Mafia will have sunk its hooks into scores of new markets and businesses, magnifying its financial clout.
“The Mafia isn’t part of the past, it’s part of the future,” the prosecutor says. “Organized crime has evolved. It has become the criminal protagonist of the third millennium.”
--------------------------
Cargill, Bunge Win Most Export Aid Since 1992 as Credit Slows
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Alan Bjerga
May 27 (Bloomberg) -- Cargill Inc., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Bunge Ltd. are benefiting from the most government support for farm exports since 1992 as the U.S. steps up loan guarantees for foreign buyers unable to get credit.
About $4.35 billion was allocated to countries from Jamaica to Turkey through April 6 in the year that started Oct. 1 under the Export Credit Guarantee Program to underwrite loans that foreign banks grant for the purchase of corn, wheat and other U.S. farm products, government records show. That’s 40 percent more than in all of fiscal 2008 and almost triple 2007’s total.
The U.S. is supporting exports after the Department of Agriculture predicted farm shipments will drop 17 percent in the current fiscal year because of falling commodity prices. Profit declined 68 percent at Cargill and 98 percent at ADM in the most recent quarter, as the recession curbed demand for everything from fertilizer to livestock feed. Bunge reported its second straight loss last month.
The export-guarantee program is “the perfect tool for tight credit,” said Erick Erickson, an economist in Washington for the U.S. Grains Council, a trade group. It “allows the U.S. to satisfy some import needs that would otherwise go to other countries.”
The government loan guarantees, in existence since 1981, are helping finance U.S. agricultural exports in the face of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Banks and businesses worldwide have lost $1.47 trillion in writedowns and credit losses in the past 22 months stemming from the collapse of the subprime-mortgage market.
Weaker Economies, Prices
The economy of South Korea, the program’s largest customer, rose 0.1 percent in the first three months of 2009 after declining 5.1 percent in the final quarter of last year, according to government data. Russia’s government is revising its current forecast for a 2.2 percent decline in gross domestic product this year as its economic crisis worsens.
Slowing demand helped send U.S. wheat, corn and soybean prices down at least 28 percent from records reached last year. U.S. farm exports, which reached a record $115.5 billion in the year ended Sept. 30, will fall to $95.5 billion this year, according to USDA projections.
The loan-guarantee initiative “facilitates exports, creating and maintaining jobs for exporters, agribusiness in general, and the transportation sector” and helps U.S. banks provide credit to overseas counterparts, said Mark Rowse, director of credit programs for the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.
Cargill
As of April 13, about $2.8 billion of the $4.35 billion allotment had been used for specific sales, according to government records obtained by Bloomberg under the Freedom of Information Act. Cargill, the largest privately held U.S. company, had benefited from $546.1 million in loan guarantees, 67 percent more than in 2007 and on pace to surpass its 2008 total.
The loan program has kept food flowing to developing nations at a time when banks are pulling back on financing trade, Lisa Clemens, a spokeswoman for Minnetonka, Minnesota- based Cargill said in an e-mail.
White Plains, New York-based Bunge has had its exports backed by $293.2 million in loan guarantees, more than nine times last year’s total, government records show. The company announced a quarterly loss of $195 million on April 23. Bunge has plunged 47 percent in the past year in New York trading.
While the program will cover only about 5 percent of this year’s expected shipments, they are useful to help keep importers buying U.S. products, said Deb Seidel, a Bunge spokeswoman.
“It provides importing countries the credit they need to purchase food,” Seidel said.
Archer Daniels
Archer Daniels, the world’s largest grain processor, was helped by $390.5 million in credits as of mid-April, behind the pace of more than $1 billion in guarantees last year. The total already is 16 percent above the company’s total for 2007, the records show. Decatur, Illinois-based ADM has dropped 37 percent in the past year in New York trading.
The loan-guarantee program, also known as GSM-102, was to help buyers of U.S. goods obtain financing that may not be available otherwise. Participating countries receive credit allocations, and then the USDA finds foreign banks that are acceptable risks and underwrites loans extended by U.S. banks or exporters.
The program is used more during times of slower global economic growth and tighter credit, such as during the early 1990s recession or the Asian financial crisis later that decade.
The loan guarantees maintain and expand markets during a slowing economy, with low default risk, said Erickson of the grains council.
South Korea
South Korea this fiscal year has purchased 2.09 million tons of corn and 88,470 tons of soybean meal using the guarantees, according to the U.S. Grains Council. In 2008, the third-largest importer of U.S. corn bought 8.42 million tons, according to USDA statistics.
Korea has switched sales from Brazil to the U.S. twice in the past six months to take advantage of the credits, resulting in $9.3 million of sales to Glencore Grain LLC and $25.5 million for Peter Cremer North America LP, said Byong Ryol Min, the Korea director for U.S. Grains.
Nations close to exhausting their credits as of April 6 include Russia, which had used $321.6 million of its $400 million allocation, and Mexico, which has gone through $99.9 million of its $125 million limit.
WTO Objection
U.S. competitors, including Brazil, have objected to the program. In 2004, the World Trade Organization ruled that the U.S. was providing improper trade assistance with its 1 percent cap on loan-origination fees that lowered the borrowing costs.
While the cap has been removed, Brazil still is concerned about the subsidies, according to Reinhold Stephanes, the country’s agriculture minister.
“Anything that harms our exporters and producers are to be questioned,” Stephanes said in an interview.
The Grains Council’s Erickson said he wants Congress to raise the program’s authorization to more than the $5.5 billion allowed under the 2008 farm bill.
“We believe that if Congress raised the cap it would be used, and it would be used well,” Erickson said.
-------------------------
長期金利上昇、半年ぶり水準に 10年物国債一時1.500％
28日の債券市場で、長期金利の指標である新発10年物国債の利回りが一時、1.500％となり、約半年ぶりの水準まで上がった。米国で長期金利が大幅に上昇したことが主因で、前日比では0.030％の上昇（債券価格は下落）となっている。
---------------------------
小学校に１人１台ＰＣ、英語教育も インテルと内田洋行が実験
インテルと内田洋行は都内の小学校でノートパソコンを使った授業の実証実験を9月に始める。インテルが教育用に開発したパソコンを4―6年生に1台ずつ提供し、国語、算数、英語の授業に使ってもらう。約2年間にわたって学習効果などを検証し、教育用パソコンやソフトの開発に役立てる。
両社はすでに千葉県で同様の実験をしているが、今回は小学校高学年の英語を必修にする新学習指導要領の導入を見越し、英語の学習にも使えるようにした。マイクとイヤホンが一体となったヘッドセットを使い、ネイティブスピーカーをまねて、その発音に近づけていく練習ができるという。
専用のペンを使えば画面に直接書き込む形で入力できるため、漢字の書き取り練習などもできる。無線ＬＡＮ（構内情報通信網）にも対応しており、教師側の端末で児童それぞれの進み具合などをチェックするといった使い方が可能だ。
-------------------------
私大、運用で評価損 慶応535億円・上智110億円・早稲田28億円
有力私立大学の間で資産運用の評価損が膨らんでいる。慶応義塾大学は3月末時点で評価損が535億円、上智大学も110億円程度にのぼる。少子化による収入の先細りを補おうと株式運用などに乗り出す大学が増えているが、昨年秋以降の金融危機で運用環境が一変。リスク管理の難しさが浮き彫りになった。
慶応大学は1500億円程度の資金を運用。年3―4％の利回りを目標に約8割を株式や投資信託に振り向けてきたが、積極運用が裏目に出た。金融商品の減損損失が膨らみ、2008年度決算は269億円の支出超過（赤字）になった。早稲田大学の3月末の評価損は外国債券中心に28億円。(07:00)
-------------------------
慶応義塾２６９億円の赤字、金融危機で「含み損」拡大
学校法人「慶応義塾」（東京都港区）は、２００８年度決算で経営状態を示す消費収支が２６９億円の支出超過になったと、ホームページで公表した。
慶応義塾は、昨秋以降の世界的な金融危機の影響で保有する有価証券の時価評価が大幅に下落したことが原因だとしている。
慶応義塾によると、今年３月末現在の株式などの有価証券の評価損と時価と簿価の差額にあたる「含み損」の合計は５３５億円で、このうち金融派生商品（デリバティブ）による損失は３６億円。評価の下落が著しかった１６９億円については、監査法人の指導に従って評価損として計上。含み損は０７年度末の２２５億円の１・６倍にあたる３６５億円だった。
-------------------------
●更新日 ０５／２８●
フジ関係者、ブログに工作カキコでキム･ヨナ擁護？
浅田真央を貶めたとしてネット上で多大な批判を受けたフジテレビ関係者が、またもや反感を買う行動に及んだようだ。
騒動が発生したのは、「コレクシオン」というブログの2009年5月19日の更新「キム・ヨナをキャスティングするフジテレビの不思議」のコメント欄だった。キム・ヨナに批判的な論調に対して、共感する書き込みが続いていた。
26日、「アラサー」と名乗る人物がそこに書き込んだ。「みなさん、ホントに知ったかぶりをしますね。。。同じ意見が集まったからといって、それが正しいとは100%言い切れませんね？同じ意見が集まって満足してるのは当事者だけですね」。
翌日も、この人物の書き込みが続く。「アマチュア選手１人をつかまえて、これだけ多くの人々、いわゆるスケートファンの出入りするブログのほとんどが、ヨナ選手に「一億総説教ジジイ&ババア」化してるような印象がどうしても受けてしまいますね」という。そして、次のように疑問を提起した。
「よくこの場でご意見が一致されてる方々は、口をそろえて「くだらないマスコミ」とおっしゃいます。では、その”くだらない”とは、何を尺度におっしゃっているのしょうか？ (中略) このように、常にヨナ選手を持ち上げてる日本のバカなＴＶ局・・・という定義を構築しています。果たして本当にそうなんでしょうか？私が恐ろしいと感じるのは、ネット上などで、ある一人の「こうかもしれない・・」という意見に、多数の賛同者が現われた場合、気がつくと「かもしれない・・・」が、いつの間にか「そうに違いない！」そして最後には「絶対間違いない！」と変化してしまうことです」。
すると、IPを調べたところ、当該の書き込みはフジテレビからなされていたことを確認したと、管理人が暴露。「正直・・・驚きましたよ、というか恐ろしいことですね。こんな個人ブログにマスメディアに従事されている方が書き込みをされるなんて。騒動の「火消し」をしているのが当事者である「フジテレビ」の方だったなんて」と記している。
冒頭で触れたように、フジは浅田真央をゲストに呼んだ番組で、彼女が転倒した姿のパネルをスタジオに用意していたという動画がYouTubeにアップされ、話題になった。この件は、陰湿な虐めであると人々に受け止められた。
キム・ヨナ批判を陰湿と論じるフジ関係者は、浅田の件をどのように考えるのか、ぜひ聞いてみたいものだ。
探偵T
http://www.tanteifile.com/newswatch/2009/05/28_01/index.html
--------------------------
フジテレビ関係者が勤務中に批判書き込みか！ ブログ管理人「恐ろしいこと」
以前、朝日新聞社スタッフが社内から『2ちゃんねる』に意味不明の書き込みをして営業妨害を指摘される騒動があった。今回も、社内からの書き込みによる騒動である。
一般ブロガーが執筆しているブログ『コレクシオン』。そこに韓国のフィギュアスケート選手キム・ヨナさんに対する批判記事を書いたところ、フジテレビの社内から記事の内容に対しての反対意見が書き込みされたことが判明したのだ。ブログの管理人はこのことについて、「あなたは “フジテレビ” の方なんですね」「騒動の “火消し” をしているのが当事者である “フジテレビ” の方だったなんて」と怒りのコメントをしている。
ブログの管理人はなぜ、「騒動の火消しをしている」という言葉を使ったのか？ それは、管理人がフジテレビの番組『グータンヌーボ』にキム・ヨナさんが出演することに対して批判する記事を書いたところ、フジテレビの社内から管理人の意見を否定する書き込みがあったからである（フジテレビ社内からの書き込みのハンドルネームはアラサー）。
管理人は、キム・ヨナさんが今までしてきたとされる日本に対するひどい発言や行動に対して不快感を感じていたことから、キム・ヨナさんや番組にゲストとして招いたフジテレビを否定する記事を書いたようだ。その記事を読んだフジテレビ関係者が反応し、自分の意見としてフジテレビ社内から書き込みしたことになる。つまりカンタンにまとめれば、「日本で嫌われているキム・ヨナを出すなんてフジテレビはおかしいのでは？」という一般人による意見に対して、フジテレビ社内から「おかしくはない」という反対意見が書き込まれたということである。
誰もが自分の意見を持っており、それを表現することは何も悪いことではない。ここで問題なのは、「フジテレビ批判の話題に対して、フジテレビ社内から匿名で反対意見が書き込みされたこと」である。この件に対し、管理人は以下のようにコメントしている。
「2009.05.27 16:32の書き込みのアラサーさん あなたは “フジテレビ” の方なんですね。申し訳ありませんがもしもの荒らし対策のため、IPドメインSEARCHを使ってチェックさせていただいたのです。正直・・・驚きましたよ、というか恐ろしいことですね。こんな個人ブログにマスメディアに従事されている方が書き込みをされるなんて。騒動の「火消し」をしているのが当事者である “フジテレビ” の方だったなんて。あなたのご意見というか “フジテレビ” のご意見は、もうここでお答えする必要はない様に思います。このブログに “フジテレビ” からの書き込みがあったことは、書き込まれた当事者であられるの “フジテレビ” さんにご報告させていただきます」（ブログより引用して要約）。
また、管理人は新たに「正直私は怖かったです。このようなことは不気味にさえも感じました。一個人のブログに、フジテレビのような巨大メディアからの書き込み、それもマスコミ、つまりフジテレビ自身を擁護するものであったことが。もう一度フジテレビは見つめる必要があるのではないでしょうか？ 報道機関のあるべき姿勢を！ それができなければ 結局 “くだらないマスコミ” でしかありません」（ブログより引用して要約）ともコメントしており、悲しみや怒りが混じった感情をあらわにしている。
重ねて言うが問題点は「フジテレビ批判の話題に対して、フジテレビ社内から匿名で反対意見が書き込みされたこと」だ。誰もが持論を持っており、それを表現することは悪いことではない。しかし、誤解を生まないためにも、社内から書き込みするという行動はひかえるべきだったのではないだろうか？ フジテレビ批判に対してフジテレビ関係者がフジテレビ社内から正体を隠して意見を述べたのでは、たとえそれが正論だとしてもそうは見られない。
フジテレビの意見ならば少なくともフジテレビの名を出して書き込みをする、個人ならば誤解を与えぬよう自宅などから書き込みをする必要があったのではないだろうか（このニュースの詳細記事はこちら）。
-------------------------
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Listen to the Article - Powered by
BEIRUT: Lebanon and Syria re-opened a border crossing Wednesday at the Qmar Bridge in Al-Bqayaa area along the northern borders between the two states.
The crossing was closed by the Syrian authorities in the 1970s. The bridge constitutes the third border crossing in northern Lebanon, in addition to the crossings of Arida and Abboudiyeh.
The opening ceremony was attended by North Lebanon Governor Nassif Qalosh, the Governor of the Syrian city of Homs Mohammad Ghazal and the head of Syrian-Lebanese Higher Council Nasri Khoury. The three officials said the step would improve cooperation between Lebanon and Syria in different sectors. - The Daily Star
-------------------------
Kurdish exports resume despite Iraq impasse
By Andrew England, Carola Hoyos and Roula Khalaf
Published: May 28 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 28 2009 03:00
For the past two years, foreign oil companies working in Kurdistan have had their hands tied. They have not been able to export their oil and have limited their development in the region. That could be set to change this weekend.
Kurdish oil is expected to start flowing through a pipeline that runs from Iraq through Kurdistan to Turkey and on to wider export markets.
Iraq's oil ministry said yesterday it would start exports from fields in the country's largely autonomous Kurdistan region on Sunday at an initial rate of 10,000 barrels per day.
"The initial amount that will be exported from Tawke and Taq Taq (fields) is 10,000 barrels per day, with a hope to reach 50,000 bpd," deputy oil minister Karim Louaibi, who is in charge of extraction, told Reuters. He gave no further details.
Without access to the pipeline, most of Kurdistan's oil has had to be left untapped, while the Kurdish and Iraqi oil ministries have remained locked in a bitter row about who should control the revenues it could raise. At its heart, the dispute centres around who controls how reserves are developed.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraq has tried and failed to create a legal framework to manage its vast oil resources - the world's third largest.
In the past two years the divisions between Kurdistan and Baghdad have become entrenched. Unwilling to wait for a national resolution, the Kurdish Regional Government in 2007 passed its own hydrocarbons law and has parcelled out its oil fields to dozens of small foreign oil companies in a move that Baghdad considers illegal.
A deep personal feud between the Iraq and Kurdish oil ministries ensued and left foreign oil companies operating in Kurdistan and Iraq in a legal vacuum.
Now, Kurdish oil is about to start flowing in larger quantities than ever before. But the breakthrough cannot be described as a thaw between Kurdistan and Baghdad and many legal and political wrangles remain.
Kurdistan announced earlier this month that it would begin exporting its oil through the Iraqi pipeline, without consulting Bagdad.
"We never asked for an agreement," said Ashti Hawrami, KRG oil minister. "We have a right. We do not need permission or a nod of approval."
Foreign oil companies operating in Kurdistan had already built a pipeline linking their oil deposits to the main Iraqi national pipeline but have not so far been able to use it.
If all goes according to plan, the oil pumped at the start of June from fields developed by DNO, a Norwegian company, and Addax, of Switzerland, will flow into the Iraq-Turkey pipeline and be sold on the open market. The revenue will be controlled by Baghdad's finance ministry.
DNO and Addax are not the only players that will be affected by how this story pans out. Analysts believe oil exports from the Kurdistan region could quickly jump to 100,000 bpd, rising to 1m b/d as the region is developed.
If exports from Kurdistan grind to a halt, it would mean serious loss of revenue for Iraq and increase the risk of a shortage in world oil supplies just as the global economy begins its recovery.
However, it remains unclear what Baghdad will do with the extra revenue from Kurdistan's oil - about $5m a day - and who will pay the foreign oil companies.
Hussein Shahrestani, Iraq's oil minister, said Baghdad would not be responsible for paying foreign oil companies operating in Kurdistan. He said the companies would have to be paid from the share of revenues that the KRG received, as allocated in the national budget.
"The KRG cannot have its cake and eat it at the same time," he told the FT.
Mr Hawrami insists DNO and Addax will get paid, but cannot say when or for how long he could afford to tap the KRG's budget if an agreement for additional oil revenue with the Iraqi finance ministry remained elusive.
"We have given them [the companies] assurances that they will get paid. How we get the money is up to sensible people," he said.
Ivar Branvold, DNO's chief operating officer, said that the company had not received "any particular instructions" on revenue from the field. But the company appeared to be willing to go ahead with exports anyway.
----------------------
Saudi family groups feel the pain
By Andrew England in Abu Dhabi and Abeer Allam in Riyadh
Published: May 28 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 28 2009 03:00
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Brothers Company is one of the oldest and most respected family-owned conglomerates in Saudi Arabia. It was a group that could borrow on reputation alone, with a son of its founder on Forbes' world rich list.
But since one of its wholly owned subsidiaries, The International Banking Corporation (TIBC), defaulted on financial obligations to other banks this month it has sent jitters across the market.
The Algosaibi group has not responded to several requests for comment. But the fact that one of its subsidiaries defaulted has raised broader questions about the state of the oil-rich Gulf's secretive family-run businesses as they grapple with the downturn. The concern is that some may have overextended during the boom years, which saw Gulf states accumulate huge petrodollar reserves and fuelled rapid expansion, and are beginning to pay the price.
"For foreign counterparties the fact that there has been no public communication [from the Algosaibi group] has raised some questions about transparency, corporate governance and the disclosure of family owned companies in the Gulf," said Emmanuel Volland at Standard & Poor's.
The focus on Algosaibi began this month when Bahrain-based TIBC was downgraded by rating agencies after it defaulted.
At the end of 2008, TIBC had short- and medium-term debt of $2.2bn (€1.58bn, £1.38bn) - most of it short- term inter-bank borrowing, according to rating agencies.
Standard & Poor's said TIBC, which had total assets of $3.8bn, had funds to make payments - including a portfolio of more than $400m in Saudi shares. But the ratings agency has been told that it did not do so because of "a high likelihood" that Algosaibi would implement a group-wide debt restructuring.
Capital Intelligence, which also downgraded TIBC, said it understood from TIBC's management that Algosaibi group had recently been "experiencing liquidity problems exacerbated by the global financial turmoil".
"This rendered the Algosaibi group unable to service its debt culminating in the implementation of a group-wide [including TIBC] debt restructuring," Capital Intelligence said.
This led to a chain reaction, analysts say, with concerned lenders - both local and international - seeking reassurances about their outstanding obligations. The Algosaibi group's obligations to Saudi banks is estimated to be more than $2.5bn, while it owes international banks several hundred million dollars, an analyst with knowledge of the group says.
"There is a state of flux, this is one of the most respected family businesses in Saudi Arabia and they are trying to remain credible," said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB Bank. "They have taken decisions that were too risky and have been hit by the global financial crisis and they are paying the price for it."
Algosaibi's website lists SABB Bank among its financial services investments.
Analysts say Saudi banks are in talks with the family group and discussing the possibility of restructuring some of the debt.
Questions are being raised about the exposure banks may have to the company, including leading Saudi banks and institutions in Bahrain, which has a large financial hub that has traditionally served Saudi Arabia.
Experts say some other family companies in the Gulf are struggling and are in talks with their banks over their obligations. Private equity groups, meanwhile, say they are beginning to see opportunities with family businesses that are looking to divest from subsidiaries as they seek to raise cash or refocus on their core businesses.
Many family owned businesses have grown across an increasingly broad range of sectors. Algosaibi, which began trading in the 1940s, lists financial services, manufacturing, real estate, trading, shipping services, travel related services, agriculture and media and exhibitions among its main investments.
Bankers say much depends on how a family business has been run and how power has been delegated - often companies have problems in the second and third generations.
"It boils down to corporate governance, and who is the patriarch and has he devolved too much responsibility to the next people down who have never experienced a downturn," a regional banker says.
"The problem is 75 years of reputation enabled these groups to borrow as much as they wanted during credit free times and of course anybody who borrowed to the limit of their reputation will be struggling now."
But while the boom was seen as a chance for some of the governance issues to be addressed, the downturn is causing some companies to retreat into their shells.
"If this crisis has shown us one thing it is that the worse it gets the less transparent many of these Gulf private sector companies become - and that is the key issue," says Philipp Lotter at Moody's.
--------------------------
Abu Dhabi tycoon who brokered Man City deal set to buy Pompey
By Michael Kavanagh, Pan Kwan Yuk and Simeon Kerr
Published: May 28 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 28 2009 03:00
Portsmouth is poised to become the latest English football club to have a wealthy Arab owner, it emerged last night.
Sulaiman al-Fahim, an Abu Dhabi-based businessman who stars in an Arab version of The Apprentice television show, struck a provisional deal to buy the club for an undisclosed sum from its Franco-Russian owner, Alexandre Gaydamak, after talks with Peter Storrie, the club's executive chairman, in Rome on Tuesday night.
If concluded, the deal, subject to due diligence, will end months of speculation that Mr Gaydamak was looking to offload "Pompey" after spending more than £30m to acquire control from previous owner Milan Mandaric in 2006.
Mr Fahim also brokered the purchase of Manchester City from Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's former prime minister, for Abu Dhabi's royal family in a £200m deal last September, which also saw the club sign Brazilian star Robinho from Real Madrid in a record-breaking £32.5m transfer fee.
But the club, controlled by Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan and now chaired by Khaldoon al- Mubarak, parted ways with Mr Fahim as the deal to purchase Man City closed.
This left Mr Fahim free to pursue a purchase of Portsmouth, holders of the FA Cup, who disappointed fans by selling top players during the transfer window after the departure of manager Harry Redknapp.
It is understood that the deal will be struck through Mr Fahim's new investment vehicle Al Fahim Asia Associates and structured by specialist international private equity and asset management firm Falcon Group. But his ultimate intention - of whether to hold or sell on the club - remains unclear.
The sale price also remains unknown. But in its annual review of football finance last year, Deloitte estimated Premier League clubs have typically been sold at an enterprise value of 1.5 to two times annual revenue.
On this multiple range, Portsmouth, with turnover of £70.5m for the year to May 2008, would be worth between £105.7m and £141m. But the credit crunch has depressed valuations of Premier League teams. Portsmouth's debts, of £57m last May, would also weigh on its equity value.
The sale agreement came as fellow Premier League club Sunderland confirmed its majority shareholder Ellis Short was taking 100 per cent control.
Mr Short is co-founder of Texas-based US fund management company Lone Star.
------------------------
Haier acquires stake in Fisher & Paykel
By Kathrin Hille in Beijing
Published: May 28 2009 02:04 | Last updated: May 28 2009 02:04
Haier, the Chinese electrical appliances maker, has agreed to take a 20 per cent stake in Fisher & Paykel Appliances of New Zealand for between NZ$80m and NZ$82m (US$49m and US$51m), the two companies said on Wednesday.
Through the deal, Haier takes a cautious further step towards global expansion. The company, which has a history of growth by aggressive acquisitions in its home market, has not repeated that performance abroad.
In 2005 Haier was outbid by Whirlpool for a stake in Maytag, the US appliances maker. Earlier this year Haier said it had given up bidding for General Electric’s home appliances unit because it did not consider itself fit for integrating and running a business in a foreign market yet.
Haier’s tie-up with F&P, which has a focus on high-end niche products, allows the Chinese group to expand into higher-priced products in export markets. Haier’s overseas markets have so far been concentrated on the mass market.
For loss-making F&P, the deal is the cornerstone of a recapitalisation package which also includes NZ$575m in new credit lines.
Haier will take two seats on F&P’s board following the investment. The companies said they would also co-operate in product development, sourcing, manufacturing and marketing.
Under the alliance, the companies gain exclusive distribution rights for each other’s products in their respective home markets. They also agreed to use each others’ factories to make the partner’s branded products.
Haier was advised by Morgan Stanley.
-------------------
'White van man' suffers decline in social status
By Brian Groom, Business and Employment Editor
Published: May 28 2009 03:00 | Last updated: May 28 2009 03:00
Britain's middle earners have lost ground to the -better-off and the rich, seen their relative status in society decline and been let down by politicians, the Trades Union Congress argues in a report today.
Thirty years after Margaret Thatcher first targeted voters in middle England, and 12 years since New Labour made its winning appeal to "middle Britain", the TUC draws a sharp contrast between the fortunes of that group and those of people on comfortable professional incomes.
This richer group has increasingly been seen, by commentators and politicians alike, as "middle Britain".
The result is that successive governments have failed to deliver what true middle-earners want - a dissonance that helps to explain outrage about the MPs' expenses scandal, says the TUC.
The findings may make alarming reading for Labour. The high command is aware it cannot win the next general election without the support of this group of voters - normally termed C1s and C2s by psephologists.
The TUC defines "middle income Britain" as the fifth of the population straddling median income, the level that divides the population in two. Median household income was £377 a week, just under £20,000 a year, in 2007.
Median earners have seen their income rise by less than the average, or mean, income over the past 30 years, the TUC says. The mean is calculated by dividing total incomes by the number of people in the UK.
Since 1979 the income of median earners has risen by 60 per cent, while much bigger increases for the better-off have pushed up mean earnings by 78 per cent, according to the report.
While median income fell behind more sharply under the Conservatives as society became more unequal, the TUC says the gap has grown under Labour. Mean net household income in 2007 stood at £463 a week, 23 per cent higher than the median.
"Middle income Britons" who have jobs are concentrated in white-collar and skilled manual roles, including dispatch clerks, retail managers, information technology workers and teaching assistants.
Their experience of life is likely to be marked by econ-omic insecurity - rather like members of the struggling middle class in the US who have been dubbed "the anxious middle" by economists.
Compared with those just above them on the income scale, median earners are less likely to have had a university education, to enjoy a final salary pension scheme, to hold shares or to have significant savings. They are more likely to have experienced unemployment.
They are frustrated, says a YouGov survey for the report. While they have aspirations for more fulfilling work and better living standards, they feel keenly their inability to fulfil society's rising expectations. Four in 10 people on median incomes believe their job has a lower status than their father's.
Stewart Lansley, the report's author, said one of the big failings of the past 30 years was that the middle income Britain of the 1970s and 1980s had not been transformed into the well-to-do middle Britain of politicians' recent imagination.
"Maybe because of this, middle income Britain holds noticeably different values than those above them in the income hierarchy. They are more pro-state and strongly support government action to tackle in-equality," he said.
The report calls for targets to reduce income and wealth inequalities, a government "Inequality Commission" and an end to the "public school near-monopoly" on top jobs.
Sheila Lawlor, director of Politeia, the conservative think-tank, said she accepted some people were under pressure but the answer lay in a smaller role for the state.
Julian Baggini, author of Welcome to Everytown: a Journey into the English Mind , said he was reluctant to blame politicians for median earners' frustrations.
"I think the deeper failure is that everyone has got complicit in this illusion of rising, limitless aspiration and there are broader social changes as well," he said.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)