Replica watches, Quality watches imitations

By Andrea Jaramillo

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) — Colombia’s peso bonds fell, pushing yields on benchmark securities near a three-month high, as speculation the central bank will raise interest rates this week sapped demand.

The yield on the nation’s 9.25 percent bonds due in May 2014 rose five basis points, or 0.05 percentage point Skirts, to 6.31 percent, according to the central bank. The yield rose to 6.33 percent on Feb. 13, the highest on a closing basis since Nov. 23. The bond’s price fell 0.128 centavo to 105.881 today.

Colombia’s central bank will raise its overnight lending rate a quarter percentage point to 5.25 percent on Feb. 24 Bandage Dresses, according to 11 of 19 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Eight analysts estimate the rate will remain unchanged at 5 percent.

“Yields in the short end of the curve will continue to see pressure this week ahead of the central bank’s meeting,” said Felipe Campos, head analyst at Alianza Valores brokerage in Bogota.

The yield on the peso bonds due May 2014 has risen 26 basis points since Banco de la Republica unexpectedly raised the key rate a quarter percentage point in its Jan. 30 meeting.

The Colombian peso gained after China’s central bank cut reserve requirements for lenders and on speculation European finance ministers will settle their remaining differences over a Greek bailout.

The peso climbed 0.1 percent to 1,773.60 per U.S. dollar, according to the stock exchange’s foreign-exchange electronic transactions system, known as SET-FX. With markets closed in the U.S., Colombia’s currency trades in the so-called next-day market, in which payment and delivery are made the following trading day.

Euro-area finance ministers are meeting in Brussels to seek agreement on a 130 billion-euro ($170 million) Greek bailout. Talks on Greece’s second aid package in two years will aim to reconcile demands made on Greek politicians, a debt swap among private creditors and the role of the European Central Bank.

–With assistance from Dominic Carey in Sao Paulo. Editors: Richard Richtmyer, Brendan Walsh

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrea Jaramillo in Bogota at ajaramillo1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net

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By Benjamin Purvis Replica Omega Watches

Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) — The dollar strengthened against most of its major counterparts as concern about the outcome of a meeting of European finance ministers on Greece spurred investor demand for haven assets.

The U.S. currency climbed 0.3 percent to $1.3206 per euro as of 8:25 a.m. in Tokyo.

To contact the reporter on this story: Benjamin Purvis in Sydney at bpurvis@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Garfield Reynolds at greynolds1@bloomberg.net

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By Chris Strohm

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) — Cybersecurity legislation in the U.S. Senate was designed to avoid unmanageable costs to industry and can be altered in coming weeks, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the nation’s largest business lobbying group.

Reid, a Nevada Democrat, responded in a letter to concerns raised by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that a planned cybersecurity bill may increase costs and place too many rules on companies. The measure may be introduced as early as next week.

“You are absolutely right that a regulatory framework creating bureaucratic redundancy, over-intrusive requirements, and unmanageable costs is counterproductive and contradictory to the spirit of public-private partnership that must drive our nation’s cybersecurity efforts,” Reid wrote to U.S. Chamber president Thomas Donohue yesterday.

U.S. lawmakers and regulators say legislation is needed to fight increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks by Chinese hackers, criminal groups and activists that jeopardize an estimated $398 billion in domestic research and threaten to disrupt power grids, banks and communications networks.

Reid has said he plans to bring the bill to the Senate floor as soon as possible. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee scheduled a Feb. 16 hearing on the legislation.

U.S. lawmakers should more thoroughly vet provisions in the measure that would give the Homeland Security Department power to regulate companies that own and operate U.S. networks, Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s executive vice president of government affairs, wrote in a Jan. 30 letter to Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.

‘Rushing Forward’

“Rushing forward with legislation that has not been fully vetted would be a major mistake,” Josten wrote. “Layering new regulations on critical infrastructure will harm public-private partnerships, cost industry substantial sums on compliance, and not necessarily improve economic and national security.”

In his letter, Reid said many of the issues raised by the Chamber were addressed in bill revisions. He said the legislation has been “carefully crafted and narrowly tailored,” and he pledged to hold a “fair and reasonable” amendment process when the bill comes to the Senate floor.

Tom Ridge, the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security and current leader of the Chamber’s national security task force, plans to testify on the group’s behalf at next week’s hearing, Matthew Eggers, the group’s director of national security and emergency preparedness, said today in an e-mail.

“Ridge will emphasize the need to pursue positive measures, like information-sharing Watches Replica, in place of measures that will lead to prescriptive regulations, which run counter to effective security for the business community,” Eggers said.

Ability to Intervene

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who leads the Senate Commerce Committee, are scheduled to testify at next week’s hearing.

“Without some ability to intervene — in a targeted and efficient way — to ensure a certain level of protection in this narrow set of key infrastructure Watches Replica, the government cannot adequately protect its citizens,” Reid wrote.

The bill would give the Homeland Security Department the authority to identify computer systems that may cause mass casualties or catastrophic economic damage when attacked, Leslie Phillips, spokeswoman for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in an e-mail today.

The agency would work with companies to set standards for network security, focusing on those that are least secure, she said. Companies would have to show that their networks are secure through self assessments or third-party audits, or face penalties.

“There is no question that the Senate has considered cybersecurity legislation as thoroughly and as conscientiously as any legislation in many years,” Reid said.

–Editors: Steve Walsh, Michael Shepard

To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Shepard at mshepard7@bloomberg.net nh

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By Marie Mawad

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) — Alcatel-Lucent, the latest technology company to announce plans to make money from its patents, may generate several hundred million euros this year alone from its trove of 29,000 rights, Chief Financial Officer Paul Tufano said in an interview today.

France’s largest telecommunications-equipment maker is offering access to its patents through a licensing syndicate. Asked whether the deal with RPX Corp. would generate a few hundred million euros, Tufano said: “More than that.”

After consuming about 3.5 billion euros ($4.6 billion) in cash over five years since the 2006 merger of Alcatel SA and Lucent Technologies, the Paris-based company is following rivals such as Ericsson AB to set up a licensing strategy as spending by phone operators on network gears slows. Alcatel-Lucent could generate 500 million euros to 1 billion euros in revenue in 2012 from the patents, according to four analysts.

“Licensing is a hot trend in the tech sector right now, but if these numbers turn out to be true Replica Watches, then maybe Alcatel should stop everything else and do only licensing,” said Thomas Langer of WestLB Equity Markets in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Simon Poulter, a spokesman for Alcatel-Lucent, declined to comment on the revenue projections.

Google Inc. bid $12.5 billion last year for Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. as part of a growing trend of technology companies buying patents to defend themselves again intellectual-property suits.

Voice Recognition

Eastman Kodak Co., the photography pioneer that filed for bankruptcy protection last month, is seeking to license its brand to other camera makers as it exits the market in the first half of 2012.

Alcatel does not plan to sell its patent portfolio, which includes voice-recognition and videoconferencing technology, Chief Executive Officer Ben Verwaayen said on a conference call. “By syndicating the patent portfolio, we found a creative way to extract value without weakening ownership.”

Asset disposal has been part of the CEO’s turnaround plan for the company. Verwaayen, who took over in 2008, has sold a stake in the aerospace manufacturer Thales. Alcatel-Lucent this month completed a $1.5 billion transaction to sell its Genesys call-center software unit to Permira Advisers LLP.

Alcatel-Lucent rose 12 percent to 1.69 euros as of 2:21 p.m. in Paris trading. The stock jumped as much as 22 percent earlier today, the most since October 2008, after the gear maker forecast higher profit margins and positive cash generation in 2012.

Last year marked the end of Verwaayen’s three-year strategy to return the company to a profit. Alcatel reported its first full-year net profit in six years, though it has pushed back to 2012 its goal of generating positive cash flow.

Alcatel Chairman Philippe Camus praised Verwaayen in a Nov. 18 statement, after the Wall Street Journal reported that the company’s board was facing investor pressure to replace the CEO.

–Editors: Kenneth Wong, Simon Thiel

To contact the reporter on this story: Marie Mawad in Paris at mmawad1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net

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By Theophilos Argitis

(Updates with comments from Oliver in third and sixth paragraphs.)

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) — Canadian Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver said he’s assuring Chinese officials that the nation is welcome to expand investments in Canada’s oil industry.

Canada doesn’t have sufficient capital to fully develop its oil reserves, Oliver said in an interview, adding the key factor in government approval will be whether investments are being made for “commercial” purposes.

“As their investments get larger, they are watching to see whether we continue to be welcoming. We’ve told them we are welcoming,” said Oliver, who is accompanying Prime Minister Stephen Harper on a four-day visit to China. “Our oil sands are the largest energy project in the entire world. We simply don’t have enough capital in Canada.”

Harper led a delegation of more than 40 business executives and five ministers to deepen energy links with the Asian country and reduce Canada’s reliance on the U.S. after President Barack Obama rejected TransCanada Corp.’s $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline to ship Canadian oil to the Gulf Coast. Canada Replica Watches, which sits on the world’s third-largest oil reserves, sends 99 percent of its oil exports to the U.S.

While all major foreign investments in Canada require government approval, there is additional scrutiny for acquisitions by foreign state-owned companies. Oliver said Chinese officials raised foreign ownership issues in Canada during the trip.

“What’s important is that they act as good corporate citizens, they act on a commercial basis, and they have been,” said Oliver, who spoke to Bloomberg on a flight from Guangzhou to Chongqing, the last stop of Harper’s tour.

Investment ties between China and Canada have been meager to date. Canadian direct investment in China was C$4.8 billion ($4.8 billion) in 2010, less than 1 percent of Canada’s total, while the C$14.1 billion in Chinese investment in Canada represents about 2.5 percent of the total, Statistics Canada data show.

–Editors: Alex Devine, Jonas Bergman

To contact the reporter on this story: Theophilos Argitis in China at targitis@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dick Schumacher at dschumacher@bloomberg.net

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By Nandini Sukumar

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) — Borsa Italiana SpA, owned by London Stock Exchange Group Plc, will probably introduce charges to discourage traders from sending excessive orders, as European regulators grapple with high-frequency trading.

The Italian stock exchange, based in Milan, will outline the new tariffs this month as it attempts to deter companies from sending large numbers of orders that fail to result in trades, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Regulators worldwide are studying high-frequency trading and its impact on markets. Computerized trading isn’t spurring broad increases in market volatility even though it sometimes creates “instability” that may lead to crashes, a U.K. government study said in September.

The role of high-frequency firms in periods of market swings has come under scrutiny since the May 6, 2010 Herve leger, crash that briefly erased $862 billion from the value of U.S. shares. Traders and other professional investors were said to have withdrawn bids as the selloff worsened, according to a Sept. 30 report from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Regulators and exchanges later installed curbs to limit the disruption to markets.

High-frequency trading relies on the rapid and automated placement of orders, many of which are immediately updated or canceled, as part of strategies such as market making and statistical arbitrage and tactics based on momentum. Hedge funds, brokerages and trading firms use these techniques as part of investment strategies or to execute orders quickly as prices and available bids and offers change.

Algorithms, or strategies that execute bigger orders by breaking them into smaller pieces and sending them to different exchanges, also typically use high-frequency techniques. Mutual, pension and hedge funds employ algorithms built by brokers or vendors to automate their trading instead of manually placing orders in markets or turning to humans to buy or sell blocks.

Tom Gilbert, a spokesman for LSE, declined to comment today. Borsa Italiana’s plans were earlier reported by the Financial Times.

–Editors: Will Hadfield, Srinivasan Sivabalan

To contact the reporters on this story: Nandini Sukumar in London at nsukumar@bloomberg.net or NandiniSukumar on Twitter

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Rummer at arummer@bloomberg.net

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Elderly adults who regularly drink green tea may stay more agile and independent than their peers over time, according to a Japanese study that covered thousands of people.

Green tea contains antioxidant chemicals that may help ward off the cell damage that can lead to disease. Researchers have been studying green tea’s effect on everything from cholesterol to the risk of certain cancers, with mixed results so far.

For the new study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers decided to examine the question of whether green tea drinkers have a lower risk of frailty and disability as they grow older.

Yasutake Tomata of the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine and his colleagues followed nearly 14,000 adults aged 65 or older for three years.

They found those who drank the most green tea were the least likely to develop "functional disability," or problems with daily activities or basic needs, such as dressing or bathing.

Specifically, almost 13% of adults who drank less than a cup of green tea per day became functionally disabled, compared with just over 7% of people who drank at least five cups a day.

"Green tea consumption is significantly associated with a lower risk of incident functional disability, even after adjustment for possible confounding factors," Tomata and his colleagues wrote.

The study did not prove that green tea alone kept people spry as they grew older.

Green-tea lovers generally had healthier diets, including more fish Replica Watches, vegetables and fruit, as well as more education, lower smoking rates, fewer heart attacks and strokes, and greater mental sharpness.

They also tended to be more socially active and have more friends and family to rely on.

But even with those factors accounted for, green tea itself was tied to a lower disability risk, the researchers said.

People who drank at least five cups a day were one-third less likely to develop disabilities than those who had less than a cup per day. Those people who averaged three or four cups a day had a 25% lower risk.

Although it’s not clear how green tea might offer a buffer against disability, Tomata’s team did note that one recent study found green tea extracts seem to boost leg muscle strength in older women.

While green tea and its extracts are considered safe in small amounts, they do contain caffeine and small amounts of vitamin K, which means it could interfere with drugs that prevent blood clotting.

By Sarah Shannon

Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) — Tesco Plc Chairman Richard Broadbent spent about 100,000 pounds ($153 Replica Watches,400) buying shares in the U.K.’s largest supermarket company as the stock slid the most in at least 24 years.

Broadbent acquired 30,149 shares at 329.98 pence yesterday, according to a filing on the Regulatory News Service. The purchase came about a week after Tesco said U.K. Chief Operating Officer Bob Robbins sold 50,000 shares at 404.51 pence.

Tesco fell 16 percent in London trading yesterday after the retailer canceled predictions for 10 percent earnings growth in the 2013 financial year and Christmas sales missed estimates.

The stock fell 1.6 percent to 318.35 pence as of 1:58 p.m., the lowest price since March 30, 2009.

–Editors: Paul Jarvis, Tom Lavell.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Shannon in London at sshannon4@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sara Marley at smarley1@bloomberg.net

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By Piotr Bujnicki

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) — Poland’s WIG20 Index gained for a third day, adding 24.85, or 1.1 percent, to 2,232.72 at 11:30 a.m. in Warsaw.

The following are among the most active stocks on the Warsaw Stock Exchange today. Stock symbols follow company names.

PKN Orlen SA (PKN PW), Poland’s biggest oil company, rose for a third day, climbing 3.1 percent to 36.9 zloty, and Grupa Lotos SA (LTS PW), the second-largest refiner, gained 3.7 percent to 23.35 zloty. Oil traded near the highest level in three days on speculation supplies from Iran will be disrupted.

Bank Pekao SA (PEO PW), majority-owned by Italy’s UniCredit SpA, rose 1.2 percent to 145.2 zloty as UBS AG raised its price estimate to 152 zloty per share.

Stalprodukt SA (STP PW), the Polish steel-product maker, slumped 4.7 percent to 260.1 zloty, falling from a one-month high. ING Groep NV recommended selling the stock in new coverage with a price estimate of 223 zloty.

–Editors: Alex Nicholson Replica Watches, Gavin Serkin

To contact the reporter on this story: Piotr Bujnicki in Warsaw pbujnicki@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gavin Serkin at gserkin@bloomberg.net

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By Linda Sandler

(Updates with total reserve in second paragraph.)

Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sided with the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. brokerage in a $3 billion dispute over assets with Barclays Plc, saying a judge ruled correctly that the U.K.’s claim to securities in customer reserve accounts was conditional.

If the SEC prevails, Barclays may lose its claim to as much as $1.3 billion reserved for customers Replica watches, according to an SEC court filing yesterday.

Michael O’Looney, a Barclays spokesman, declined to comment on the SEC filing.

Barclays and Lehman Brothers Inc. both appealed U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck’s ruling that told Barclays to return $2 billion in margin assets to the bankrupt brokerage, and said it had “only a conditional right” to $769 million in the customer reserve account. Brokerage trustee James Giddens is fighting Peck’s order to give the bank at least $1.1 billion, and possibly the $769 million, if it leaves enough in the reserve account to satisfy remaining customer claims.

As much as $1.3 billion in reserve assets can’t go to Barclays if customers suffer as a result, and Giddens has said he needs the assets to satisfy claims, the SEC said in the filing. In addition to the $769 million, a second pool of funds, $507 million in margin for customer transactions at the Options Clearing Corp., raises similar issues, the SEC said.

SEC Notice

SEC staff members told both parties in 2008 when Barclays bought Lehman’s North American business that they might violate a customer protection rule if Barclays took the assets, according to the filing.

The dueling between London-based Barclays and trustee Giddens follows a bankruptcy court trial held in 2010 before Peck in Manhattan. Both sides are due to file court papers today in their appeals.

The district court case is Giddens v. Barclays Capital Inc., 11-cv-06052 Replica Watches, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

–Editors: Charles Carter, Andrew Dunn

To contact the reporter on this story: Linda Sandler in New York at lsandler@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Pickering at jpickering@bloomberg.net.

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