Turning Japanese

TNK-BP, Russia’s third-biggest oil company, is owned 50 percent by BP and 50 percent by a group of Russian billionaires including banking magnate Mikhail Fridman known collectively as Alfa Access-Renova (AAR).

The divestment is in line with a plan by BP to sell up to 30 billion dollars (21.2 billion euros) of assets by the end of 2011 to help meet its financial obligations from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The Anglo-Australian companies, both among the world’s top three miners, said they were disappointed at the collapse of the 116 billion US dollar deal, which was set to save 10 billion US dollars in shared costs.

“The large synergies from combining our West Australian iron ore assets with Rio Tinto?s have caused us to persevere in seeking to obtain regulatory approvals,” said BHP chief executive Marius Kloppers.

Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager said that EU states — led by Italy, with one of the world’s highest public debt ratios, and France, which presents new budget plans to parliament on Monday — were turning away from imposing automatic fines on EU rule-breakers.

Polish minister Jacek Rostowski, echoing concerns in a raft of former communist EU states, also warned that the “only circumstances” under which fixed penalties would be acceptable would be for pension reform costs linked to bloc accession to be stripped out of EU calculations.

Officials tried to head off panic buying of petrol amid the rolling strikes and protests that saw hundreds of thousands take to the streets for the latest day of action against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s key reform on Saturday.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon vowed to take any “necessary decisions” to ensure the country’s fuel supplies flowed.

Announcing details of the sale at a press conference in Hong Kong, the Asian unit of US insurer AIG said it said it will initially offer 5.86 billion shares at between 18.38-19.68 Hong Kong dollars each, or up to 15 billion US dollars.

It said it could issue up to 8.08 billion shares if it exercised a greenshoe option, which would bring the total raised to around 20 billion US dollars and leave AIG with a stake of just 32.9 percent stake.

Yet higher commodity prices, which help to push up inflation, are also seen as a threat to the economic recovery.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which pumps 40 percent of world oil, chose last week to keep its official production target unchanged at a ministerial meeting in Vienna, home to the cartel’s headquarters.

China’s auto market overtook the United States in 2009 as the world’s largest and will remain so this year with up to 17 million vehicles expected to be sold.

The Chinese market potential remains huge in the world’s most populous nation as the percentage of people owning cars is still relatively low, analysts have said.

The oldest city in Ireland, Waterford boasts the highest level of unemployment in the country at 18.1 percent, compared to the national average of 13.7 percent.

The iconic Waterford Crystal factory’s heavy leaded cut glass put the city on the map, but it also dictated the fortunes of the southeastern port in the two centuries since it opened in 1783.

Bruederle was speaking on his way home from a visit to Tokyo where he had talks with Japanese trade and economy ministers Akihiro Ohata and Banri Kaieda.

He said they had raised the possibility of Japan running out of stocks of the commodities vital for the manufacture of electronic goods such as mobile telephones.

The People’s Bank of China hosted the conference in the country’s financial hub Shanghai, bringing together central bank chiefs and other officials from Asia, Africa, Europe, and North and South America, the IMF said.

The Shanghai conference follows IMF and World Bank annual meetings earlier this month, where finance officials discussed how to strengthen the recovery from the worst recession since World War II and the global financial system.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying told the World Policy Conference (WPC) in Marrakech: “We see eye to eye on the challenges,” and added that “we need to find a better way to cooperate, to find a partnership.”

The forum was also addressed by Ban, European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet, EU commissioner Joaquin Almunia, government ministers and business and social leaders.

In Cambodia, the dollar is far more prevalent than the riel, the local currency, while neighbouring communist-run Laos sees shoppers paying for goods in kip, dollars or even Thai baht.

In communist Vietnam, the local dong is popular enough, but dollars still account for 20 percent of all currency in circulation there. And in Myanmar (Burma) a volatile domestic currency has left locals distrustful of the kyat.

While the influx of foreign capital reflects investor confidence in a region that escaped the worst of the world economic crisis, it is making Asian goods more expensive on global markets and fanning fears of asset bubbles.

South Korea — where finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations meet on October 22-23 in preparation for a November summit — has warned that frictions over the currency upheaval are growing and could lead to trade protectionism.

Although government estimates of the turnout at the rallies suggested the movement might be losing steam, unions warned that strikes are spreading to more businesses and that a new nationwide protest would be held Tuesday.

Tension has been building since record demonstrations earlier this week with strikes in refineries cutting off fuel supplies to Paris airports and with high school students joining older workers to condemn pension reform moves.

The deal’s long-expected demise marks the second failed attempt in three years by BHP CEO Marius Kloppers to buy into Rio’s superior iron ore assets and strengthens the hand of steel mills, which had feared the pair would gain too much pricing control.

Monday’s announcement also leaves BHP focusing squarely on a $39 billion hostile bid for fertilizer group Potash Corp (POT.TO), no longer distracted by the complex $116 billion marriage of the two miners’ mammoth Australian iron ore operations.

China’s map for a new phase of growth driven by spending by hundreds of millions of workers and farmers was issued at the end of a Party Central Committee meeting, which settled on the nation’s next five-year development plan starting in 2011.

Over that time, the Chinese economy is forecast to grow by about 50 percent to $7.5 trillion, powering past Japan and moving closer to the biggest economy by far, the United States.

These Group of 20 officials, meeting in South Korea beginning on Friday, face even greater pressure to deliver something substantive after the United States delayed a hotly anticipated report on whether China (or any other country) was manipulating its currency to gain a trade advantage.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who will chair a G20 leaders summit in Seoul next month, said his biggest concern was that “conflicts of interest between countries could develop into trade protectionism.”

The strong interest from traditional funds and high-profile Chinese investors in the sale of the unit of American International Group Inc (AIG.N) comes amid a flood of Asian IPOs that have cemented the region’s dominance in initial public offerings this year.

AIA’s books will now close on Tuesday, U.S. time, as the underwriters and executives wrap up meetings with institutional investors in Chicago, Boston and New York, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

In an interview with Italian daily La Stampa on Sunday, Trichet said the governing council as a whole did not agree with Weber’s remark last week that the ECB’s government bond-buying program had not worked and should be scrapped.

“No! This is not the position of the Governing Council, with an overwhelming majority,” he said, according to an English transcript of the interview published on the ECB’s website.

Bank shares fell sharply on Friday on very high volume, continuing a slide from the previous day. Although recovering some of their losses, Bank of America (BAC.N) shares hit their lowest in more than a year, while the KBW bank index .BKX> fell 2.4 percent.

Shares of Bank of America, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, fell 9 percent during the week. More than 595.9 million of its shares traded on Friday, the most since April 2009 and over four times the 50-day moving average.

With nearly one in ten in the U.S. labor force unable to find work and already very low inflation threatening to drop further, the U.S. central bank is expected to offer the economy more support at its next policy meeting on November 2-3.

Most analysts expect the Fed will embark on a fresh round of Treasury purchases, over and above the $1.7 trillion in longer-term assets it has already bought.

Analysts expect fourth-quarter earnings to showcase Apple’s powerful one-two punch of the iPhone and the iPad, although some still question whether, with a plethora of rival products set to hit store shelves, Wall Street can justify Apple’s stratospheric valuation.

The shares of the second largest corporation in the S&P 500 jumped more than 4 percent on Friday as anticipation mounted ahead of Monday’s report.

The Treasury Department said on Friday the deficit came to 8.94 percent of gross domestic product for the year ended September 30, versus 10 percent in fiscal 2009.

The government called the deficit-to-GDP improvement the biggest since fiscal 1987.

The flamboyant poster boy of the subprime mortgage market’s boom and bust struck a last-minute deal with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission before his trial on civil fraud charges was to start next week.

The most prominent executive charged by regulators with wrongdoing linked to the housing market collapse, Mozilo on Friday became the recipient of the highest fine ever dished out to an executive of a public corporation.

Lehman’s record-breaking bankruptcy has produced a staggering $1 billion in fees — doled out to legions of lawyers, advisers and bankers over the past two years.

The financial firm has been paying out, on average, more than $40 million a month, and based on that rate, it passed the $1 billion mark last month. September’s details will be in the monthly operating report due in mid-October.

Credit card bank stocks declined on Friday, with shares of Capital One Financial Corp (COF.N) posting the worst decline among banks. Shares of other major U.S. banks also fell on Friday as investor expressed concern over a growing mortgage foreclosure crisis.

Credit card delinquencies, which indicate that consumers are late paying their bills, are an early sign of future losses, or charge-offs.

The largest U.S. conglomerate’s 5.1 percent decline in sales overshadowed better-than-expected profit and sent GE shares down 5.5 percent on Friday in their steepest slide since July as some investors took it as another sign that the economic recovery is faltering.

The better-than-expected profit reflected lower corporate expenses and a stronger performance at the company’s GE Capital unit, which saw losses on loans decline and recorded more tax benefits than analysts had expected in the quarter.

Now as AOL Inc (AOL.N), the shrunken successor to the onetime dialup behemoth, struggles to turn around its business as a standalone company, it is being cited as the protagonist in another transaction that has tech bankers buzzing: a private equity-aided takeover of much larger portal Yahoo Inc. (YHOO.O).

But there is a key difference. AOL negotiated the all-stock deal with Time Warner from a position of strength. Any Yahoo takeover would be done from a position of weakness. Some bankers and analysts are even calling it a desperation move.

Airlines, meanwhile, were told to drastically cut back their flights into France on Tuesday, when the next national street protests are planned, and severe disruptions to air travel, public transport, schools and other facilities are expected.

Strikers have blockaded a dozen French refineries and numerous oil depots in the last week as part of the widespread protests over Sarkozy’s pension reforms, which the French Senate will debate on Wednesday.

“This is now the moment of truth for EU member states, whether they are genuinely for reinforced economic governance or not,” Olli Rehn, EU monetary affairs commissioner, said on arrival at the two-day meeting.

Finance ministers considered two differing proposals spelling out penalties for overspending governments, after ballooning debt and deficit levels in countries like Greece, Ireland and Spain shook the foundations of the 16-nation eurozone this year.

Cablevision viewers have already missed playoff baseball and Sunday’s New York Giants game. “House,” the medical drama that’s among Fox’s highest-rated shows, airs Monday night at 8 p.m. EDT.

Negotiators failed to reach an agreement over rates Sunday, more than a day after their deal expired amid negotiations for a new one. Fox pulled its channels and programming while the two sides discuss how much Cablevision will pay to carry them.

Like a growing number of pet owners, Tucker opted for a third choice thanks to medical advances and shifting attitudes about animal care. She bought a wheeled cart specially fitted for Tobi’s hind legs, restoring mobility to her paralyzed pooch.

“I would never have my dog put down,” Tucker said. “Our option was the wheels, and we’re going strong ever since.”

Gene Epstein, 71, is promoting a $250,000 effort called Hire Just One, with plans to make $1,000 donations to charity in the name of businesses that hire an unemployed person and keep the worker on the payroll for at least six months.

Epstein, who amassed a personal fortune through car sales and real estate investments, has set aside his money for the first 250 hires – and thinks thousands more jobs could be created if others took on his idea, too.

Yet final U.S. government approval for the massive project, once assumed to be on a fast track, is now delayed indefinitely, with little official explanation. The company had hoped to begin laying pipe by the end of the year, but those prospects have dimmed.

Some experts conclude the negative publicity surrounding oil-related disasters, particularly the offshore BP leak that polluted the Gulf Coast for months, has made the Keystone XL pipeline a victim of guilt by association.

When he announced plans in 2006 for “Trump on the Ocean” at Jones Beach, designed by legendary urban planner Robert Moses, the real estate tycoon envisioned a facility with sweeping views of the Atlantic and beachfront dining for as many as 1,400.

What he didn’t anticipate was persistent civic opposition, or skeins of bureaucratic red tape.

A scissors manufacturer, he remembers this city at the height of its steel-making glory, when Sheffield’s furnaces and factories produced ships and tools and cutlery for the dinner tables of the world.

The huge steelworks are mostly gone now, like so much British industry over the past few decades, the victim of international competition, changing technology and governments with other priorities.

Bob Wood, spokesman for the airplane maker’s union, said 55 percent of the members rejected the contract. The union had recommended accepting the contract to protect two-thirds of the workers’ jobs.

The contract required a simple majority for approval. There was no strike vote.

But now thousands of foreclosures around the country may be invalid because of bank paperwork problems. Should you worry?

“Anyone who’s purchased a foreclosed property in the last three years should really be concerned,” says George Babcock, a Providence, R.I., attorney who represents homeowners who have been foreclosed on.

Now 59, Robledo is among a handful of Latinos who have built their own wineries on modest acreage and are catering in part to Hispanic wine drinkers interested in quality and a connection to their heritage.

“I would work my regular shift and then pester the vineyard manager with questions until I knew everything he knew,” Robledo said in Spanish.

That’s a new question raised by lawyers familiar with nonprofit tax law and by at least one group that advocates for public financing of elections.

At issue is whether contributors to politically active tax-exempt nonprofit organizations – many of them donating in six- and seven-figures – have to pay the 35 percent gift tax on their donations. It is a murky area of the law and the Internal Revenue Service has not offered any instruction.

Nine months after the schoolteacher’s concrete home collapsed in front of his wife and 4-year-old son, the family and three in-laws are stuck under a plastic tarp that pours down water when it rains. All he wants is to move up, to a working man’s apartment in the tree-lined suburb of Petionville. But every place he can even consider costs double or triple the $43 a month he used to pay in rent, even though he and everyone he knows has less money than ever.

Haiti’s brittle housing supply was shattered by the Jan. 12 earthquake, which destroyed an estimated 110,000 homes and apartment buildings. Since then demand has soared, as the more than 1.5 million people who lost their homes compete for new ones at the bottom end of the market, and a rising tide of foreigners from the U.N. and aid groups flood in from the top.

Despite donations and the promise of book and movie deals, most of the 33 Chilean miners trapped more than two months have returned to lives of struggle in improvised homes, often in gang-ridden neighborhoods lacking basic services. Some worry it won’t get better.

“Three months from now, what will I be doing? Selling candy on the beach? Wondering what the government has done for us? Nothing,” said Edison Pena. “I’m very afraid and I would like for things to change.”

Washington is spending $8 billion in federal stimulus money to establish high-speed rail corridors nationwide. But in populated areas of New England where city streets and railroad tracks intersect and trains must negotiate curves, hills and tunnels, travel at speeds as high as 150 mph are out of the question.

In rural New England, cattle crossings halt high-speed trains, said John Zicconi, spokesman for the Vermont Agency of Transportation.

The Social Security Administration said Friday inflation has been too low since the last increase in 2009 to warrant a raise for 2011. The announcement marks only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. This year was the first.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to schedule a vote after the Nov. 2 election on a bill to provide one-time $250 payments to Social Security recipients. Obama endorsed the payment, which would be similar to one included in his economic recovery package last year.

Cleveland Ship LLC sent letters this week through its Cleveland Shipbuilding Division to Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Bob McDonnell of Virginia

Northrop Grumman Corp. announced plans on July 13 to shutter the Avondale shipyard near New Orleans in early 2013 and consolidate its Gulf Coast military shipbuilding at Pascagoula, Miss. About 4,600 people now work at Avondale.

Bernanke agreed with those who see the problem being more tied to a weak economy, and less so to workers lacking the necessary skills for jobs that are available. That assessment is a big reason why the Fed is widely expected to take more steps soon to stimulate economic growth.

The “bulk of the increase in unemployment is attributable to the sharp contraction in economy activity … rather than to structural factors,” Bernanke said during a speech in Boston on Friday.

The industrial and financial giant said Friday that sales of industrial equipment – everything from wind turbines to jet engines to locomotives – lagged in the third quarter. Revenue of $35.9 billion was about $1.7 billion shy of Wall Street estimates and investors drove the stock down 5 percent.

GE has been de-emphasizing its finance unit, GE Capital, which accounted for more than half of GE’s profit in 2006 during a boom in financial services, but recorded billions in write-offs when the economy went into recession. Instead, it’s focusing on making products ranging from wind and natural gas turbines to sonogram machines to energy-efficient appliances.

“Retailers remain guarded with inventory and several are betting on a late holiday season this year,” CEO Bob Eckert said Friday in a call with analysts. “Yes, there will be a Christmas. That said, I suspect it will play out later than we’re accustomed to.”

Eckert made the comments as Mattel said its third-quarter net income rose 23 percent, helped by strong sales gains for dolls including Barbie and Disney Princesses and a tax benefit.