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Oil Rebounds After Falling Below $93
Wednesday February 13, 6:43 am ET
By Toby Anderson, AP Business Writer
Oil Prices Rebound Slightly After Falling Below $93 on Supply Outlook


LONDON (AP) -- Oil prices rebounded slightly Wednesday after earlier falling below $93.
Light, sweet crude for March delivery rose 11 cents to $92.89 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange by late morning in Europe. The contract fell 81 cents to settle at $92.78 a barrel Tuesday.




Oil had fallen as traders overlooked Venezuela's halt of crude sales to Exxon Mobil and instead focused on forecasts for rising U.S. supplies and falling global demand.

The state-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, said Tuesday it had halted crude sales to Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest oil company, in response to its court bid to freeze billions of dollars in Venezuelan assets.

Exxon Mobil is challenging the nationalization of its Venezuelan oil ventures in a dispute that has seen President Hugo Chavez threaten to cut off all supply to the United States.

Venezuela is currently the United States' fourth largest oil supplier.

Analysts said the impact of PDVSA's move on the crude market is primarily psychological and unlikely to significantly reduce supplies.

Energy Information Administration data say that Exxon Mobil imported 2.7 million barrels

China may replace India in pipeline deal: Iran

New Delhi, Feb 13: A senior Iranian official has said that China is keen to join the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline and if New Delhi does not take a decision soon.

He further said that then Beijing may replace New Delhi in the deal.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mohammad Ali Hosseini, who is on a visit to New Delhi said in an unambiguous statement that there is limited time left for India to take a decision on the gas pipeline, according to reports.

"Expedite the decision-making process to finalise the gas deal. We don’t have a lot of time," Hosseini said.

Asked how long Iran was ready to wait for India to take a decision on the gas pipeline, Hosseini was quoted as saying: "There is a hope to expedite the process by all three countries...China is also applying pressure and wants to join the project."

Mukesh Ambani to head India-Russia CEOs` forum

New Delhi, Feb 13: Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani will co-chair the India-Russia CEOs` Council, which was established on Wednesday to strengthen bilateral business cooperation in the areas of oil, energy, power, transport, telecom and high technology.

This was announced by Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath at the conclusion of the 2nd meeting of India-Russia Forum on Trade and Investment, coinciding with the visit of Russian Prime Minister Victor A Zubkov.

Ten CEOs each from India and Russia will be on the Council, which will work towards converting about USD 8 billion worth of projects under discussion and explore new areas for trade and investment.

With the setting up of the business council, "the level of economic engagement between the two countries should increase," Nath said, while addressing a joint press conference with Russian Minister for Economic Development and Trade Elvira S Nabiullina.

Nabiulliana said, "CEOs` Council will be useful to increase the trade manifold between the two countries."

The two BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries had agreed on Tuesday to boost the bilateral trade to USD 10 billion by 2010.

Sarkozy seeks inclusion of India, four others in G8

Rio De Janeiro, Feb 13: France`s President Nicolas Sarkozy has said the G8, comprising seven wealthiest countries in the world plus Russia, should be converted into G13, to include Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.

Sarkozy said this at a meeting with Brazil`s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in French Guiana Tuesday.

`The G8 must become something more than that. In the end, even if we do not want to think about anybody else, we must consider there is China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

`The emerging countries have an influence on the world`s economy, as well as the eight countries that currently form the G8,` Sarkozy said in a statement released by Brazil`s state news agency Agencia Brasil.

The French leader reiterated his country`s support for Brazil`s application to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

`It is inconceivable to imagine that one can speak of the world`s main issues without consulting a single African country, a single country of South America, as if those two continents did not exist,` he said.

President Lula said Brazil and France shared a similar view on the need for the democratisation of international bodies, such as the UN and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

`It is necessary to think as in the 21st century, and not in the 20th century pattern. We are convinced that an institution like the IMF must think about development rather than tax adjustment,` said the Brazilian leader.

The two presidents gathered Tuesday to discuss cooperation projects, involving the border between Brazil and French Guiana, an overseas territory of France.

The two countries plan to build a bridge in the region, connecting the municipality of Oiapoque, in the north of Brazil, to Saint Georges d`Oyapock in French Guiana, where the meeting took place.

The project is aimed at battling illegal activities `including unauthorised gold mining` and at boosting development in the area, covered with Amazon rainforest vegetation.

Bureau Report

India to grow more than 8%, decoupling is misleading: IMF

Mumbai, Feb 11: Praising India for its macroeconomic policy and structural reforms, the International Monetary Fund on Monday said the country will grow at more than 8 per cent (this year), which was "wonderful" considering there was forecast of a global growth slowdown.

"India's economic growth is due to good policy of the government and reserve bank. Country is benefiting from sound macroeconomic policy and structural reforms of the last 5-10 years," IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said delivering a lecture at the Reserve Bank here.

Kahn said that effects of global financial crisis were serious and IMF has reduced the forecast for global growth to 4.1 per cent from 4.9 per cent.

He, however, said that emerging market economies like India and china cannot remain immune from global crisis, which has complex linkages.

"Decoupling is a misleading idea...the linkages between developed and emerging market economies are now much more complex than before," he said.

Earlier, advanced and emerging countries only had trade links, but today they have financial links.

As the financial markets face turmoil, it will reduce domestic demand in advanced economies and create more spillovers into emerging markets.

"There are large capital flows because of the wide interest rate differential which pose policy challenges in managing liquidity," Kahn said, adding that there were signs of emerging markets being affected by financial turmoil.

Kahn said that for emerging market economies (EMEs) the need to act is not urgent, but they should be prepared to respond through monetary and fiscal policy stimulus.

"Emerging market economies have to learn from the risk management and regulatory failure from advanced economies," he said.

He pointed out that EMEs like India should use the opportunity to review if some part or some instrument is not as transparent as it should have been.

Highlighting that a global solution should be offered to a global problem, the IMF Managing Director said there should be coordinated response from central bankers to the crisis.

"The countries should be prepared to offer a timely, temporary and targeted fiscal stimulus," he said.

He also said there should be convergence in tools of the regulators to attain the common goal of stable global conditions.

"There should be multilateral discussions and dialogues between the players," he said, adding that IMF could be a platform being a multilateral agency.

He said that the financial crisis, though originated in the us, was a result of multiple factors including long period of low interest rates, weakening of financial institutions, supervisory standards and excessive risk taking.

The downside risk is emanating from worsening of the US housing crisis, deterioration in other credit markets and possible counterparty failure in credit default swap market.

"US slowdown will be both significant and will last for some time," he said.

Bureau Report

S Lanka has highest infln in southeast Asia

Colombo, Feb 10: The inflation rate in Sri Lanka has been reaching dizzying heights lately. It was 21.6 percent on an average in 2007. In November it touched an all-time high of 26.2 percent.

Sri Lanka also has the highest rate of inflation in South and Southeast Asia, points out Harsha de Silva, chief economist of LIRNE Asia, a regional development economics think tank.

`At the end of the last quarter, inflation in Indonesia was seven percent; in Thailand 2.6 percent; in Malaysia two percent; in Singapore 2.9 percent; in the Philippines three percent; in India six percent; and in Bangladesh it was 11.2 percent,` he pointed out in a recent article on Sri Lanka`s monetary policies.

`We are the champions, champions of bad policies driving people to misery,` he said mockingly.

The government blames it all on the high cost of oil imports. But economists like de Silva say that if rising oil prices were the reason, then other countries in South and Southeast Asia importing oil should also register high inflation. In reality, however, barring Bangladesh, all of them have registered low rates of inflation.

Clearly, these countries have curbed inflation by appropriate policies and Sri Lanka has not, the economists argue.

De Silva says that huge amounts of unproductive expenditure by the government, and the printing of huge amounts of money by the Central Bank (the country`s apex bank) to cover budget deficits have been the root causes of the high inflation.

`Between May and September 2007, the Central Bank printed Sri Lankan Rs.49 billion (the equivalent of USD457 million) throwing financial discipline to the winds,` he said.

The IMF`s country report on Sri Lanka for 2007 had said that a `pause in monetary tightening during July-August had contributed to the acceleration in inflation`.

A recent analysis by top-level economists of HSBC had said that inflation in Sri Lanka was largely a fiscally caused monetary phenomenon because the large fiscal requirements of the government were met by the Central Bank printing money.

While the Central Bank has denied that it has been pumping too much money into the market Deputy Minister of Finance Bandula Gunawardene admitted to the BBC in October last year that the government had resorted to printing money to cover budget deficits and that this had resulted in `excessive` inflation.

In December 2007, Gunawardene said that the government had `no option` but to continue printing money to meet the deficit.

Recently, the government revised the cost of living index, saying the existing one was outdated. By the new index, inflation for 2007 was 20.8 percent and not 21.6 percent, the government contended.

While economists agree that the old index was outdated in many ways, they point out that the new index is unrealistic and is meant to ignore some important items of expenditure.

Giving an example, de Silva said that the new index excluded expenditure on alcohol and tobacco, on which an average Sri Lankan household spent 2.2 percent of its income. This was almost as much as it spent on education, which was 2.3 percent, he pointed out.

The proportion of income spent on alcohol and tobacco would keep going up because their prices would keep going up. And yet, these expenditures would not figure in the government`s calculation of inflation, the economist pointed out.

Bureau Report

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ALSO READ
*****! acquires Maven...February 12, 2008
MS to press ***** bid...February 12, 2008Associated Press
Barcelona (Spain), February 13, 2008
First Published: 11:57 IST(13/2/2008)
Last Updated: 12:09 IST(13/2/2008)


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***** Inc announced a new mobile phone service that integrates e-mail, instant messaging and social networks.

Called oneConnect, the service is expected to launch this spring, Marco Boerries, executive vice president for Connected Life at *****, on Tuesday said at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona. Its open architecture means users and other companies can eventually add many other applications to it.

"The key driving force in opening up the platform is putting content into the device. No company can create these ecosystems alone. We have to be open," Boerries said.

Boerries also announced cell phone carrier T-Mobile will offer ***** Inc's Internet search service to its European customers in late March, shifting away from Google.

T-Mobile will offer ***** Mail and ***** Messenger, as well as *****'s oneSearch, which provides news, financial information, photos, Web pages and other services.

The announcements was made in Barcelona as ***** copes with Microsoft Corporation's unsolicited bid for ***** and as ***** completed an acquisition of its own, buying online video service Maven Networks Inc for $160 million. ***** on Monday rejected Microsoft's offer, originally valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 a share.

On oneConnect, social networks will be integrated into contact lists, which in turn can be used to link into various ways of keeping in touch with friends, or keeping tabs on them, allowing users access to a wide range of services from ***** Messenger to Google Talk to

Microsoft-*****: On To Round II
By Joseph Weisenthal - Tue 12 Feb 2008 07:15 AM PST

Yesterday’s volleys between Microsoft and ***** (NSDQ: YHOO), though dramatic, pretty much played out as expected. ***** scoffed at Microsoft for lowballing its offer and Microsoft professed to be dismayed at *****’s response. Now that the perfunctory opening statements have been read, the two sides can get to the hard part. We already discussed some of the options Microsoft has at its disposal, including raising the bid, going hostile and taking the case to big ***** shareholders. All of this is still on the table. The New York Post is reporting that Microsoft has hired a proxy solicitation firm to prepare for a more hostile effort, although even if Microsoft intends to sit down and discuss things with *****, it makes sense for them to keep applying this pressure. Meanwhile, notes MarketWatch, *****’s un-staggered board election, makes the company more vulnerable to pressure. As for what happens next, Wall St. analysts have been updating their predictions:

-- Mark Mahaney, Citigroup: Most likely scenario: Microsoft and ***** sit down and hammer out a deal at a new price. The fact that no other bidders have emerged and *****’s board has come up with few other credible alternatives doesn’t give it much fight for other than a higher bid from Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT). Much less likely scenarios: a white knight emerges (unlikely, because none have), ***** unveils a new strategic initiatives, such as a deal with Google (NSDQ: GOOG) (unlikely to satisfy shareholders), and regulators block the deal (which could happen along with the first possibility).

-- Marianne Wolk, Susquehanna: Wolk’s thinking is pretty similar to Mahaney’s, as she assigns a 75 percent probability to a deal happening, and a low likelihood of any meaningful alternative: “At $44.6 bln, Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of *****! is significant. We find very few companies positioned to bid against Microsoft for a deal of this size – in terms of financial resources or strategic need.” Wolk also explains that ***** does have a poison pill at its disposal, which it adopted in 2001, but it sounds rather weak in this particular situation. If an acquirer picks up 15 percent of the company, then existing shareholders will be given the right to buy more shares, creating dilution. But considering the premium Microsoft is offering to *****’s prior market price, it’s hard to imagine shareholders rushing out to buy shares in order to stymie the offer.

-- Jeff Lindsay, Bernstein: Despite the letters both companies put out yesterday, the overall tone suggests a desire to talk, rather than to embrace outright hostility. Thus negotiations are likely to occur, or may already be occurring between the two parties. Likely outcome: an offer somewhere in the mid-$30s. He believes Microsoft purposely left itself some upside wiggle room when putting in its first offer and that at a price of $35 per share, Microsoft can still justify the acquisition financially. At $40, however, Microsoft would have a more challenging case to make that it was still getting a good return.

-- Jordan Rohan, RBC: Again, more expectations of a negotiated deal somewhere in the mid-$30s. *****’s board is doing its job by pushing for more: ”*****’s board has spent the past week trying to cobble together a competing bidder to buy the company. When no “white knight” bidder emerged, the company did the next most logical thing, which is to position itself to pry a higher price from MSFT.”

Bottom line: The general consensus is that the two sides will negotiate a deal that splits the difference between Microsoft’s offer and *****’s desire to get somewhere around $40 per share. If ***** were to batten the hatches, Microsoft could go hostile, but seeing as ***** has little to gain by eliminating the one serious offer for it, Microsoft probably won’t have to—of course, it will go through the motions, just in case it comes to that. The Deal Professor Steven M. Davidoff spelled it out in a message to *****’s board: there’s only so much that the various investment banks and law firms that ***** has hired can really do to help the company: “… your options are limited. Throwing yourself on the mercy of Microsoft not to go hostile appears to be another loser of a strategy. And while you can find some tie-up or other maneuvers to stall Microsoft or make any acquisition more expensive for them, it doesn’t look good.”

Raj Thackeray arrested, taken to court









Country's interest first for us: Bal Thackeray
Maharshtra geared up for aftermath: Patil
Vilasrao rules out law and order problems
Azmi seeks action against Raj


Forums
Is Mumbai succumbing to mores of divisive politics?






NDTV Correspondent
Wednesday, February 13, 2008 (Mumbai)
After days of suspense, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray has been arrested by the Mumbai Police on Wednesday.

He was arrested from his central Mumbai residence and was taken in a police van to Vikhroli court in the suburbs, where he will be produced.

A case against him was registered in Vikhroli police station after he had made inflammatory remarks against North Indians that led to incidents of violence.

Samajwadi Party leader Abu Asim Azmi, was also arrested from his residence in South Mumbai on charges of, inciting violence and promoting enmity between groups. But an hour after his arrest he was granted bail.

Azmi was produced before Mumbai's Bhoiwada Court and was released on bail against a surety of Rs 10,000.

Security had been beefed up at Vikhroli court in suburban Mumbai. Raj Thackeray's lawyers have asked for an appointment for they will argue for bail.

Eight MNS workers have also been arrested in Vikhroli. The State Secretary of Raj Thackeray's party, Vasant Geete, was also taken into custody in Nagpur.

Following the arrest Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said, ''Police have taken correct step in arresting Raj Thackeray.''

Adding to Deshmukh's statement, Deputy Chief Minister R R Patil said that Raj Thackeray's arrest is an implication that Maharashtra government will not let anyone take law into his own hands.

Meanwhile, police made around 1800 preventive detentions in various parts of the state to prevent any untoward incident in the aftermath of the arrests of Thackeray and Azmi, Director General of police P S Pasricha said. (With PTI inputs)

Big B "very hurt" over Raj`s charge: Amar Singh

New Delhi, Feb 13: Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan is "very hurt" over the attacks on him by MNS chief Raj Thackeray, the actor`s close friend and Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh said on Wednesday.

Singh said that he could, on behalf of Bachchan, state that the actor would leave Mumbai if it was proved that he has not done more for Maharashtra than for UP.

"He is sentimentally very hurt. He is a very matured and dignified person and he is very hurt, particularly on these charges," Singh said in an interview to a private new channel.

"Let Mr Thackeray come out with a list, what all he (Bachchan) has done for UP and what all he has done for Maharashtra. If he has not done much more for Maharashtra, where he is residing, then on his behalf I am saying, he will leave Mumbai," he said.

He was responding to a query on the criticism of Bachchan by Thackeray that while living in Mumbai he is championing the cause of UP.

"You see this point is absolutely, absolutely wrong. He picks up this line `Chora Ganga Kinare Wala` (from the film `Don`)", he said adding that if he picks up this line he could also pick up Anthony from Bandra (`Amar, Akbar, Anthony`).

Bureau Report