by thetrader.se

FT.com
The cost of trad­ing US Trea­sury futures was set to rise on Mon­day as the CME Group adopted defen­sive mea­sures given the impasse in Wash­ing­ton over rais­ing the Fed­eral debt ceil­ing, the FT reports. CMEhttp://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2011/07/26/634126/cme-raises-requirements-on-trading-treasury-futures/

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, News Corp’s most pow­er­ful share­holder after the Mur­doch fam­ily with 7 per cent of the media conglomerate’s vot­ing shares, has rebuffed calls to change its dual-class share struc­ture or lead­er­ship in the wake of the phone-hacking affair. The long-standing friend of Rupert Mur­doch http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2011/07/26/634091/alwaleed-backs-murdochs-on-news-structure/

A deal on the debt ceil­ing looked fur­ther away than ever after Mon­day night speeches by Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Repub­li­can House speaker John Boehner. Mr Obama urged con­gres­sional lead­ers to reach a “fair com­pro­mise” over the next few days to avoid a US default http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2011/07/26/634046/no-title-locked-3/

Anshu Jain and Jür­gen Fitschen are set to take over the reins of Deutsche Bank as co-chief exec­u­tives next May, suc­ceed­ing Josef Ack­er­mann after his decade in charge of Germany’s biggest bank, reports the FT.http://ftalphaville.ft.com/thecut/2011/07/25/634011/deutsche-bank-announces-co-ceos/

Bank of Ire­land has been saved from pos­si­ble gov­ern­ment con­trol by a group of over­seas insti­tu­tional investors that has agreed to buy up to €1.12bn ($1.6bn) of the trou­bled lender’s shares. Wilbur Ross, the US bil­lion­aire, a large Cana­dian firm and a num­ber of US fund man­agers are thought to be among the investors that have com­mit­ted to buy a stake of up to 37.3 per cent in the bank. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/db7af348-b6bb-11e0-ae1f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1TBR7mQo3

Ger­man indus­trial groups are set to add to ris­ing cash piles when they report quar­terly results this week, pil­ing pres­sure on cor­po­rate boards to explain how they plan to make best use of their huge liq­uid resources.Siemens, the indus­trial con­glom­er­ate, and Volk­swa­gen, Europe’s biggest car­maker by sales, are among scores of com­pa­nies gen­er­at­ing large amounts of cash as a result of strong demand in emerg­ing mar­kets for German-engineered goods. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e6ddc964-b3ae-11e0-855b-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1TBR7mQo3

Ing is to sell its insur­ance oper­a­tions in Latin Amer­ica for €2.68bn ($3.85bn) to Colombia’s Grupo de Inver­siones Suramer­i­cana, the Dutch ban­cas­surer said on Mon­day. The deal moves ING closer to meet­ing Euro­pean Com­mis­sion demands that it split its bank­ing and insur­ance oper­a­tions as a con­di­tion for receiv­ing Dutch state aid dur­ing the finan­cial cri­sis. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d356ef94-b695-11e0-ae1f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1TBR7mQo3

Bank lend­ing to British busi­nesses con­tracted in June at a faster rate than the aver­age of the pre­vi­ous six months, accord­ing to the lat­est data, sound­ing a gloomy note ahead of second-quarter growth fig­ures on Tues­day. Econ­o­mists fore­cast that the econ­omy expanded by just 0.2 per cent in the three months through June, accord­ing to a poll by Thom­son Reuters, with expec­ta­tions rang­ing from 0.8 per cent growth to a con­trac­tion of 0.3 per cent com­pared with out­put in the first quar­ter. Even if the worst pre­dic­tions are wrong, it is likely that Britain’s econ­omy has broadly stag­nated since the end of Sep­tem­ber 2010, econ­o­mists noted. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e965c3c6-b69c-11e0-ae1f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1TBR7mQo3

WSJ.com
Asian stock mar­kets were mostly higher Tues­day amid grow­ing opti­mism over a pos­si­ble solu­tion to the U.S. debt ceil­ing debate, while robust results from Canon and Kao helped sup­port the Japan­ese mar­ket.  Japan’s Nikkei Stock Aver­age rose 0.1%, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 climbed 0.6%, South Korea’s Kospi Com­pos­ite added 0.4% and New Zealand’s NZX-50 fell 0.2%. Dow Jones Indus­trial Aver­age futures were down 16 points in screen trade. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903999904576468943067418936.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection

Chi­nese com­men­ta­tors and offi­cials in Asian nations with mas­sive stock­piles of U.S. gov­ern­ment bonds expressed con­fi­dence Wash­ing­ton would reach a debt deal while fret­ting that a fail­ure to do so could have dire con­se­quences for the global econ­omy. A U.S. default would trig­ger major mar­ket volatil­ity, raise inter­est rates, and could “kill off a still-weak eco­nomic recov­ery,” said Zhang Ming, deputy direc­tor of the research sec­tion for inter­na­tional finance within the Chi­nese Acad­emy of Social Sci­ence, in an essay. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904772304576467731364425182.html?mod=WSJAsia_hpp_LEFTTopStories

Finan­cial mar­kets on Mon­day began tak­ing seri­ously the prospect of a down­grade of the U.S.’s triple-A credit rat­ing, which it has held for nearly a cen­tury. The new wor­ries came as Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats moved even fur­ther apart, push­ing sep­a­rate plans for reduc­ing the nation’s deficit and rais­ing its bor­row­ing limit.  Pres­i­dent Barack Obama warned in a tele­vised prime-time speech that with no clear res­o­lu­tion in sight in Con­gress, the U.S. gov­ern­ment is on the brink of a default that could deeply dam­age the econ­omy. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903999904576468553582790160.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

South Korea said Tues­day it will raise elec­tric­ity charges by 4.9% on aver­age from Aug. 1 to help the nation’s elec­tric­ity provider, Korea Elec­tric Power Corp., finance its fuel costs, but the move will com­pli­cate the strug­gle to con­trol high infla­tion. Ana­lysts say fur­ther hikes in elec­tric­ity charges are likely in com­ing months to help state-run Korea Elec­tric Power, or Kepco, effecthttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903999904576469042850154786.html?mod=WSJASIA_hpp_LEFTTopWhatNews

U.S. Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Tim­o­thy Gei­th­ner on Mon­day told Greece’s finance min­is­ter that he “wel­comed the progress” from Greece in imple­ment­ing mea­sures for its eco­nomic over­haul, the Trea­sury Depart­ment said. In a meet­ing with Greek Finance Min­is­ter Evan­ge­los Venize­los, Mr. Gei­th­ner “under­scored the need for con­tin­ued and full imple­men­ta­tion of the pro­gram,” the Trea­sury said. “They also dis­cussed the agree­ment reached by Euro­pean lead­ers last week to rein­force the insti­tu­tions of the euro area.” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903999904576467201581028880.html?mod=WSJAsia_hpp_LEFTTopStories

Marketwatch.com
Gold futures advanced in elec­tronic trad­ing Tues­day, with the pre­cious metal ris­ing $2.90 to $1,615.10 an ounce, with U.S. law­mak­ers still unable to reach a deal on lift­ing the debt ceil­ing. Gold for August deliv­ery hit a fresh record high of $1,624.30 an ounce on Mon­day and a new set­tle­ment high of $1,612.20 an ounce, after U.S. debt talks stalled and Greece’s credit rat­ing was cut again. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gold-futures-build-on-gains-as-debt-talks-stall-2011–07-26?link=MW_home_latest_news

Bench­mark light sweet crude-oil futures edged higher in Nymex elec­tronic trad­ing on Tues­day, up 26 cents at $99.46 a bar­rel. The gains fol­lowed a speech by U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on the cur­rent debt stand­off in the U.S. Obama said that he’s con­fi­dent that law­mak­ers will reach an agree­ment on the debt ceil­ing by the Aug. 2 dead­line, a sit­u­a­tion which would likely sup­port demand for oil.http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-futures-edge-higher-in-nymex-electronic-trade-2011–07-26?link=MW_home_latest_news

Greece’s finance min­is­ter said Mon­day the recently agreed Euro­pean aid pack­age has given his debt-ridden coun­try new momen­tum to regain its finan­cial foot­ing, while he also brushed off a fresh credit-rating down­grade.  Evan­ge­los Venize­los, speak­ing at the Peter­son Insti­tute for Inter­na­tional Eco­nom­ics, said that his coun­try would push for­ward with a pri­va­ti­za­tion pro­gram as it aims for pos­i­tive eco­nomic growth and a pri­mary sur­plus in 2012. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/greek-finance-minister-brushes-off-downgrade-2011–07-25

Reserve Bank of Aus­tralia Gov. Glenn Stevens hit out Tues­day over the way Europe and the U.S. have so far dealt with their sovereign-debt issues. Stevens said “in both the U.S. and Euro­pean cases, the process of allow­ing things to go right to the brink of a very dis­rup­tive event before an agree­ment is reached on the way for­ward has been a source of great uncer­tainty and anx­i­ety around the world … [and] that anx­i­ety has extended to Aus­tralia.” http://www.marketwatch.com/story/australia-slams-us-europe-debt-delays-2011–07-25

Bloomberg.com
Japan’s gov­ern­ment aims to com­plete earth­quake recon­struc­tion in the next 10 years to help the nation recover from March’s record tem­blor.  Finance Min­is­ter Yoshi­hiko Noda said at a press con­fer­ence in Tokyo today that most of the rebuild­ing will be com­pleted in five years. The gov­ern­ment plans to spend 19 tril­lion yen ($243 bil­lion) over that period, accord­ing to a draft gov­ern­ment pro­posal obtained by Bloomberg News. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011–07-26/japan-aims-to-complete-reconstruction-efforts-within-10-years.html

Reserve Bank of Aus­tralia Gov­er­nor Glenn Stevens said the nation’s sub­dued house­hold spend­ing will likely rebound “at some point” as con­sumers gain con­fi­dence in the sus­tain­abil­ity of mining-led growth. “As a bet­ter sense of the degree of per­sis­tence is gained, peo­ple will prob­a­bly be more con­fi­dent to spend than per­haps they are just now,” he said today in Syd­ney. “It is entirely pos­si­ble that, were some of the cur­rent raft of uncer­tain­ties to lessen, the mood could lift notice­ably, so I don’t think we need to be totally gloomy.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011–07-26/rba-s-stevens-sees-end-to-gloomy-consumer-on-australian-trade-led-growth.html

“The Fed­eral Reserve and the Trea­sury can work together to gen­er­ate enough cash prob­a­bly for the next two or three months to avoid any kind of auto­matic default on the Trea­sury debt,” Sil­via, who is based in Char­lotte, North Car­olina, said in an inter­view on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop” with Betty Liu. “There’s a way of get­ting around this issue for at least another month or two.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011–07-25/u-s-can-avoid-default-at-least-until-september-silvia-says.html

Bank of Korea Deputy Gov­er­nor Kim Jae Chun said eco­nomic growth will pick up in the sec­ond half and exports are “pretty strong,” leav­ing room to con­cen­trate on quelling infla­tion.  “A pos­si­ble eco­nomic slow­down is not in our list of pol­icy con­cerns,” Kim, 57, said in an inter­view in his office in Seoul yes­ter­day. “The econ­omy will pace up in the sec­ond half on a year-on-year basis.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011–07-26/bank-of-korea-s-deputy-kim-sees-rebound-even-as-debt-crisis-clouds-outlook.html

House Speaker John Boehner said he made a “sin­cere effort” to work with Pres­i­dent Barack Obama on a plan to raise the debt limit, and he said the pres­i­dent cre­ated the “cri­sis atmos­phere” sur­round­ing the issue. “The pres­i­dent has often said we need a ‘bal­anced’ approach — which in Wash­ing­ton means: we spend more, and you pay more,” Boehner said in response to Obama’s tele­vised speech tonight. “The sad truth is that the pres­i­dent wanted a blank check six months ago, and he wants a blank check today. This is just not going to hap­pen.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011–07-26/boehner-says-he-made-sincere-effort-to-work-with-obama-on-debt.html

The Gov­ern­ment of Sin­ga­pore Invest­ment Corp., the city’s sov­er­eign wealth fund, said the invest­ment envi­ron­ment remains “chal­leng­ing” as infla­tion risks increase and the recov­ery of devel­oped nations fal­ter. GIC, man­ager of more than $100 bil­lion of Singapore’s reserves, said in its annual report today that it boosted invest­ments in emerg­ing economies to tap their poten­tially higher returns, and cut back in Europe and the U.S.http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011–07-25/economic-climate-still-challenging-gic.html

CNBC.com
Can a bailout fund whose back­ers include some of the coun­tries it may be called upon to bail out really suc­ceed? That’s the ques­tion being asked by skep­ti­cal investors about the Euro­pean Finan­cial Sta­bil­ity Facil­ity— the res­cue fund of 440 bil­lion euros, or $632 bil­lion, that is being given new, ampli­fied pow­ers to help the euro zone end the sov­er­eign debt cri­sis. http://www.cnbc.com/id/43880026

NYTimes.com
But in fact, Indian exports of goods are now nearly dou­ble exports of ser­vices, grow­ing 37.5 per­cent, to $245.9 bil­lion, in the 12 months that ended in March. Lead­ing the way are high-value prod­ucts like indus­trial machin­ery, auto­mo­biles and car parts, and refined petro­leum prod­ucts. Indian exports are fol­low­ing a dif­fer­ent path from that taken by other Asian coun­tries like Japan, Korea and China. Those coun­tries started by export­ing prod­ucts like gar­ments and toys made by large num­bers of low-paid, low-skilled work­ers, before mov­ing to more sophis­ti­cated prod­ucts like cars and indus­trial machin­ery.http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/business/media/manufactured-goods-lead-surge-in-indian-exports.html?_r=1&ref=global

Foxbusiness.com
The United States can’t default on its debt oblig­a­tions, House Speaker John Boehner said Mon­day night, min­utes after Pres­i­dent Barack Obama urged lead­ers in Con­gress to com­pro­mise and send him a bill to cut the deficit and raise the debt ceil­ing. Boehner called for “sig­nif­i­cant” spend­ing cuts and said the House will pass a bill this week that cuts spend­ing by $1.2 tril­lion over 10 years and raises the debt limit.http://www.foxbusiness.com/2011/07/25/boehner-says-us-cant-default-on-debt/#ixzz1TBWuNXDD

BBC.co.uk
South Korea’s ambi­tions to enter the Indian energy mar­ket have received a big boost as the two coun­tries signed a civil nuclear deal. The agree­ment will allow South Korea to export its nuclear energy tech­nol­ogy to India.  The deal comes at a time when India has been strug­gling to keep up its energy sup­ply to meet the increased demand in wake of its rapid expan­sion. South Korea is the ninth coun­try to sign a nuclear deal with India. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14287086

UK growth fig­ures pub­lished on Tues­day are expected to show that the UK econ­omy slowed between April and June. They may even show it con­tracted, some ana­lysts fore­cast, after growth of 0.5% in the first quar­ter. A weak fig­ure from the Office for National Sta­tis­tics will put pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment to boost growth. But Chan­cel­lor George Osborne has said that it is impor­tant for the gov­ern­ment to stick to its eco­nomic plan “in a world of very great uncer­tainty”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14275637

Telegraph.co.uk
Weak growth is putting Britain’s pre­cious AAA sov­er­eign credit rat­ing at risk, experts have warned ahead of Tuesday’s lack­lus­tre GDP fig­ures. The econ­omy stalled in the six months to March and data this morn­ing are expected to show slug­gish growth of just 0.2pc for the quar­ter to June, half the level pre­dicted by the Office for Bud­get Respon­si­bil­ity (OBR). Zero growth in the three months to June or a slow third quar­ter could cost the UK its gold-plated rat­ing, econ­o­mists now fear. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8660752/Weak-UK-growth-puts-AAA-rating-at-risk-experts-warn.html

Independent.co.uk
The Greek bailout has increased, rather than decreased, the dan­ger that Europe’s debt cri­sis could spread to Spain and Italy, Moody’s warned yes­ter­day as it sig­nif­i­cantly cut Greece’s credit rat­ing and said a default appeared inevitable. Although the credit rat­ings agency stopped short of nam­ing Spain and Italy, Moody’s was refer­ring to them when it said that for some “non-Aaa sov­er­eigns with high debt bur­dens or large bud­get deficits… the neg­a­tives will far out­weigh the pos­i­tives and weigh on rat­ings in the future”. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/greek-bailout-could-worsen-eu-debt-crisis-warns-moodys-2326054.html

Smh.com.au
The release of quar­terly infla­tion data tomor­row is likely to fire up the debate about just how expen­sive, or cheap, life has become. Despite the rise in con­sumer prices expected to come in at 3.4 per cent for the June quar­ter, after trav­el­ling at 3.3 per cent in the March quar­ter, many Aus­tralians remain uncon­vinced that price increases at those lev­els reflect their own expe­ri­ence. http://www.smh.com.au/business/inflation-perceptions-go-bananas-20110726-1hxwq.html#ixzz1TBa9ANrE

Cs.com.cn
There are 113 listed com­pa­nies pub­lished the semi-year reports by date of July 26, among which 85 listed com­pa­nies declared their net profit ris­ing, cov­er­ing 75.22 per­cent, said Wind, a mar­ket researcher based in Shang­hai today. The 85 com­pa­nies announced aver­age profit ris­ing 223.83 per­cent while another 28 listed com­pa­nies reported los­ing or profit declin­ing. http://www.cs.com.cn/english/ei/201107/t20110726_2980300.html

The sur­plus of Chi­nese banks’ for­eign exchange from bank-to-client trans­ac­tions reached 273.7 bil­lion U.S. dol­lars in the first half of 2011, the State Admin­is­tra­tion of For­eign Exchange (SAFE) said in an online state­ment yes­ter­day. Dur­ing the period, insti­tu­tional and indi­vid­ual clients sold 788.2 bil­lion U.S. dol­lars in for­eign exchange to banks while pur­chas­ing 514.4 bil­lion U.S. dol­lars, the.
More for­eign cur­ren­cies were sold than bought through Chi­nese banks over the May-to-June period as the yuan con­tin­ued to appre­ci­ate, result­ing in 43 bil­lion U.S. dol­lars of for­eign exchange sur­plus in June com­pared with 51.9 bil­lion U.S. dol­lars in May, the state­ment said. http://www.cs.com.cn/english/ei/201107/t20110726_2980297.html

Xinuhanet.com
China’s reg­is­tered urban unem­ploy­ment rate was 4.1 per­cent at the end of June, with 9.08 mil­lion peo­ple reg­is­tered as unem­ployed, the Min­istry of Human Resources and Social Secu­rity said on Mon­day. The unem­ploy­ment rate was unchanged from that at the end of first quar­ter, spokesman Yin Chengji said at a press con­fer­ence. The coun­try cre­ated 6.55 mil­lion job oppor­tu­ni­ties in the first six months of the year and helped 2.9 mil­lion laid-off work­ers get re-employed, Yin said. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011–07/25/c_131008006.htm

U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama warned Mon­day night that fail­ure to com­pro­mise and raise the debt ceil­ing would severely harm the world’s largest econ­omy as Wash­ing­ton is run­ning out of time to avert an unprece­dented default by Aug.2. “If we stay on the cur­rent path, our grow­ing debt could cost us jobs and do seri­ous dam­age to the econ­omy,” Obama said in a tele­vised speech to the nation. He said “both par­ties have respon­si­bil­i­ties to solve the prob­lem,” how­ever, there are still two approaches. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/business/2011–07/26/c_131009592.htm

Singapore’s con­sumer price index (CPI) in June rose 5.2 per­cent year on year, up from 4.5 per­cent in May, the Depart­ment of Sta­tis­tics said on Mon­day. The upward cost pres­sures were mainly attrib­ut­able to sec­tors of trans­port, hous­ing and food. The cost of trans­port rose by 10.4 per­cent, largely due to higher prices of cars and petrol. In par­tic­u­lar, the increase in car prices in June par­tially reflected the lower base effect as car prices dropped in June last year, the depart­ment said. The rise in accom­mo­da­tion costs and http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/business/2011–07/25/c_131008320.htm

Thehindu.com
Sin­ga­pore plans to act as a facil­i­ta­tor to bring in China’s sav­ings into the Indian econ­omy and other South Asian coun­tries. Sim­i­larly, it has evinced inter­est in pro­mot­ing the con­cept and prac­tices of real estate invest­ment trust (REIT) in India. These were some of the imme­di­ate spin-off ideas that emerged dur­ing the South Asian Dias­pora Con­ven­tion (SADC), which was held here late last week. Host­ing the first-ever global event under the SADC ban­ner, Gopinath Pil­lai, Chair­man of the Singapore-based Insti­tute of South Asian Stud­ies (ISAS), said the con­fer­ence was designed as a con­flu­ence of schol­ars, busi­ness­men, thinkers and the doers. http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/article2293501.ece

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