Newcrest, Australia’s largest gold producer, to Replace CEO, Chairman After A$6.2 Billion Asset Writedowns triggered a regulatory probe

Newcrest to Replace CEO, Chairman After Asset Writedowns

Newcrest Mining Ltd. (NCM), Australia’s largest gold producer, named Sandeep Biswas as chief executive officer in a boardroom clean out after a A$6.2 billion ($5.9 billion) writedown triggered a regulatory probe. Biswas, formerly CEO of Rio Tinto Group’s Pacific Aluminium unit, will replace Greg Robinson in the second half of 2014. Don Mercer, chairman since October 2006, will be replaced in December by Peter Hay, the Melbourne-based company said today in a statement. Read more of this post

Bank Indonesia Regulates Currency Hedging for Stable Rupiah

Bank Indonesia Regulates Currency Hedging for Stable Rupiah

Bank Indonesia said it will regulate currency hedging by individuals and companies, including state-owned firms, to help stabilize Asia’s most-volatile currency. The central bank will require Indonesians and corporations to present documents to show underlying economic activity, such as international trade, foreign debt and investments, to conduct hedging transactions with lenders, it said in a statement posted on its website today. The amount and duration of the hedges will be limited by the underlying activity, it said. Read more of this post

Wal-Mart breaks up with Indian partner Bharti Enterprises

Wal-Mart breaks up with Indian partner Bharti Enterprises

By Charles Riley  @CRrileyCNN October 9, 2013: 2:41 AM ET

HONG KONG (CNNMoney)

Wal-Mart has reached an agreement to terminate its joint venture with Indian conglomerate Bharti Enterprises, the final blow to a collaborative effort that never quite gave Wal-Mart the toehold it desired on the subcontinent.

Arkansas-based Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) will acquire Bharti’s stake in the venture. Both companies say they will now strike out on their own and pursue independent retail operations. Although the partnership was announced to much fanfare in 2007, it had been on the rocks for some time, a casualty of India’s shifting policy landscape and evolving rules concerning foreign direct investment. Read more of this post

Sun Pharmaceutical Billionaire Seeking Deals as Rivals Founder: Corporate India

Sun Billionaire Seeking Deals as Rivals Founder: Corporate India

Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Asia’s largest generic drugmaker by market value, is seeking to acquire makers of injectable to oral liquid medicines to help it exceed industry growth estimates. The Indian manufacturer of antibiotics to cancer drugs may also buy producers of branded ophthalmology products, said billionaire Managing Director Dilip Shanghvi in an interview. The company this year sought to acquire Swedish drugmaker Meda AB, according to two people familiar with the matter. Sun, which evaluates three to four acquisition targets every month, isn’t close to announcing any deal, Shanghvi said. Read more of this post

Singh’s Easy Loans to Voters Lift Honda to TVS: Corporate India

Singh’s Easy Loans to Voters Lift Honda to TVS: Corporate India

India’s plan to pump cash into state-owned banks is brightening the prospects of two-wheeler makers as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh woos voters with cheaper loans in the world’s second-biggest market. The government on Oct. 3 said it will bolster risk buffers of its lenders to encourage lower financing costs for consumer durables. That sent the S&P BSE India Auto Index to an eight-month high with Bajaj Auto Ltd. (BJAUT), TVS Motor Co. (TVSL) and Hero MotoCorp Ltd. (HMCL), the nation’s largest, rallying on the move to revive vehicle demand after sales growth slumped to a four-year low. Read more of this post

India’s Cow-Belt King Is Put Out to Pasture

India’s Cow-Belt King Is Put Out to Pasture

Last week, the law finally caught up with the five-term member of India’s parliament Lalu Prasad Yadav, for decades one of the most colorful political figures. The son of a humble milkman, he rose to great power by throwing himself into the vicious caste wars of his region. In the process, Yadav, 65, brought millions of previously marginalized people into the mainstream of Indian politics, even as he established his own cult of power and brazenly bent every rule. Yadav is a one-man case study in Indian democracy at its most emancipatory — and its most exasperating. Read more of this post

Southern India Protests Leave 21 Million People Without Power

Southern India Protests Leave 21 Million People Without Power

Almost 21 million people were left without electricity for the third consecutive day in Andhra Pradesh as protests against a plan to split the southern Indian state spread, halting power plants and impeding distribution. No electricity has been supplied since Oct. 6 to the districts of Prakasam, Nellore, Cuddapah, Ananthapur, Krishna and Guntur, a top official in the state government’s electricity department said. Almost 3,600 megawatts of generation capacity, or 20 percent of the state’s total, remain shut as 60,000 workers stayed away from work, he said, requesting anonymity as he isn’t an authorized spokesman. Read more of this post

Land-hungry Hong Kong looks underground, as developers eye parks

Land-hungry Hong Kong looks underground, as developers eye parks

5:15pm EDT

By Yimou Lee and Alexandra Hoegberg

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Wild boar and water buffalo are not an image most people associate with one of the world’s great global financial centres. Yet in Hong Kong, where more than 7 million people are packed into just 30 percent of the territory, the green belts, country parks, woodlands and wetlands that take up the rest of the land provide ample space for such animals to roam. Read more of this post

Marlboro Man Dons Lab Coat to Find Next Big Tobacco Hit

Marlboro Man Dons Lab Coat to Find Next Big Tobacco Hit

Not all cigarette butts are trash.

At a Philip Morris International Inc. (PM) lab on a Swiss lake, researcher Bertrand Bonvin insists the butts of the Marlboro maker’s next-generation tobacco products be burned after testing, lest the proprietary technology in them sneak out. Despite the growing popularity of e-cigarettes, Bonvin and his peers at the biggest tobacco companies are still looking for their holy grail — a product that will hook nicotine-craving smokers like conventional cigarettes, without the health downfalls. Such an item could reignite stocks in the $760 billion industry, which have stagnated over the past 12 months amid falling sales and increased restrictions on smoking. Read more of this post

Commodity Prices Wrong as Often as 27% of the Time for Traders

Commodity Prices Wrong as Often as 27% of the Time for Traders

Commodities traders who buy and sell as much as $5.67 trillion of raw materials a year say the benchmark prices for everything from oil to iron ore to gasoline are wrong as often as 27 percent of the time. In a Bloomberg News survey conducted during the past eight weeks, 85 traders and analysts said they have little confidence in the assessed prices of crude, metals and iron ore. Regulators, including European Union Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, may examine commodities markets, having already increased investigations of manipulation of benchmarks for interest rates, derivatives, foreign exchange and oil. Read more of this post

Cargill’s expected cocoa coup rattles confectioners, dealers

Cargill’s expected cocoa coup rattles confectioners, dealers

5:52pm EDT

By Marcy Nicholson

NEW YORK (Reuters) – This past summer, European authorities took just six weeks to approve Barry Callebaut’s $950 million purchase of Petra Foods’ (PEFO.SI: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) cocoa business, a deal that created the world’s largest cocoa company with a quarter of the $10 billion market. The European Commission decided the deal did not require deeper look partly because two other firms provided stiff enough competition in the niche industry. Read more of this post

Taiwan Warns That China Could Mount Successful Invasion by 2020

Taiwan Warns That China Could Mount Successful Invasion by 2020

China may be able to successfully invade Taiwan by 2020 as it develops technology to prevent allies such as the U.S. from coming to the island’s aid, the Taiwanese defense ministry said. A military modernization campaign has seen China’s People’s Liberation Army enhance its ability to make long-range precision strikes and develop so-called area-denial technology, the ministry said in its 2013 National Defense Report. Read more of this post

Spain’s indebted cities target dog-lovers, fortune-tellers for cash

Spain’s indebted cities target dog-lovers, fortune-tellers for cash

12:52pm EDT

By Clare Kane

MADRID (Reuters) – Beggars, dog-lovers and fortune-tellers who venture onto Madrid’s busy streets may soon find themselves out of pocket as authorities in the city and elsewhere seek creative solutions to their financial problems. The Madrid council laid out plans this week to levy fines of 750 euros ($1,000) for public activities including soliciting for money outside shopping centers, feeding or washing dogs, reading tarot cards and performing acrobatics with a bike. Read more of this post

Santiago Office Glut Looms as Tallest Tower to Open: Real Estate

Santiago Office Glut Looms as Tallest Tower to Open: Real Estate

Billionaire Horst Paulmann began developing South America’s tallest tower in 2006, when economic expansion fueled by copper demand pushed Santiago office rents to a six-year high. He’s completing it as vacancies soar. The retail magnate’s 62-floor Torre Gran Santiago in the city’s financial hub is part of a record amount of office space about to flood the market. Santiago developers, in an effort to fill the new buildings, are sweetening terms for tenants with such perks as six months of free rent, double the norm, or by helping pay for improvements that usually are the responsibility of occupants, according to brokerage CBRE Group Inc. (CBG) Read more of this post

Recession Looms If Treasury Uses Tools to Prevent a Debt Default

The U.S. Treasury has the means to avoid a debt default even if Congress fails to raise the government’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit. The bad news is that it can’t prevent a recession. Economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., IHS Inc. (IHS) and BNP Paribas SA said they expect the Treasury to husband the tax money it collects to make sure it can meet interest and principal payments on the nation’s debt. Other obligations, from salaries of government workers to payments to defense contractors, would face the ax. The result: $175 billion less in government spending during November alone, said Goldman’s Alec Phillips in Washington. Read more of this post

In hot IPO market, exchange traded funds look beyond first day

In hot IPO market, exchange traded funds look beyond first day

4:34pm EDT

By Ashley Lau

NEW YORK (Reuters) – While active mutual fund managers get in line early for hot initial public offerings (IPOs), their counterparts at exchange-traded funds often sit on the sidelines and wait days, if not months, before joining the action. That is because most index-tracking ETFs need to wait for an IPO stock to be added to an underlying benchmark before the fund can add the company. That delay can cost some ETFs money because many IPOs get a first-day pop in price. Read more of this post

IMF Sees Business-Loan Losses of EU250 Billion in EU Banks

IMF Sees Business-Loan Losses of EU250 Billion in EU Banks

Banks in Spain, Italy and Portugal face about 250 billion euros ($338 billion) in potential losses on their business loans over the next two years, the International Monetary Fund said. About one-fifth of combined corporate loans is at risk of default in the three economies, which are forecast to contract this year, according to the fund’s Global Financial Stability Report released today. The Spanish banking system is the only one with enough reserves to cover the losses, it said. Read more of this post

Swedish Bidding Wars Fuel Record Debt Politicians Accept

Swedish Bidding Wars Fuel Record Debt Politicians Accept

Jenny Segerstedt learned about the downside of Sweden’s soaring real-estate market the hard way. The 39-year-old teacher, who needed to move this year after a divorce, lost out on one property after a bidding war sent the price to 2.2 million kronor ($342,000), 70 percent above the starting bid. She eventually found a 63-square meter (678 square-foot) apartment in a 1950s building in the western Stockholm suburb of Vaellingby for 1.7 million kronor. Read more of this post

Icelanders Run Out of Cash to Repay Foreign Debts: Nordic Credit

Icelanders Run Out of Cash to Repay Foreign Debts: Nordic Credit

Iceland’s private sector is running out of cash to repay its foreign currency debt, according to the nation’s central bank. Non-krona debt owed by entities besides the Treasury and the central bank due through 2018 totals about 700 billion kronur ($5.8 billion), the bank said yesterday. The projected current account surpluses over the next five years aren’t estimated to reach even half of that and will equal a shortfall of about 20 percent of gross domestic product. Read more of this post

UniCredit sees lenders reworking their business models on 1980s lines as regulatory demands for higher capital levels force retrenchment

Mustier Sees Banks Heading Back to 80s Amid Rising Capital Needs

UniCredit SpA (UCG)’s Jean Pierre Mustier, a 26-year veteran of European investment banking, sees lenders reworking their business models on 1980s lines as regulatory demands for higher capital levels force retrenchment. “Capital requirements will probably keep increasing, specifically for markets,” said Mustier, who runs the corporate- and investment-banking unit of Italy’s biggest lender by assets. “This will push banks to simplify further their activities, going back to a business model from the 1980s focusing mostly on lending, transaction banking and some intermediation.” Read more of this post