Japan to keep its share of production of Boeing's new 777X aircraft

Credit: Reuters/Jim Young

Boeing Co (BA.N) has lined up Japanese companies, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (7011.T) and Kawasaki Heavy Industries (7012.T), to build one-fifth of its latest plane, the 777X, retaining Japan as its key Asian partner in commercial jetliners, two sources with knowledge of the plans said.
This would give the Japanese companies a share of the work on the new plane that is on par with the 21 percent of the 777 aircraft they have been making for two decades.
But because Boeing plans eventually to build more planes per month, there should be a greater volume of work for the Japanese suppliers, one of the sources said. Boeing's current production rate for the 777 is 8.3 a month.

Strong euro is a powerful deflationary factor: ECB's Noyer

Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer attends a news conference at Bercy Finance Ministry in

Credit: Reuters/Charles Platiau

The euro's current strength is a powerful deflationary factor and low inflation is likely to persist in the euro zone for some time, European Central Bank policymaker Christian Noyer said on Monday.

Spare capacity and deleveraging by companies and governments have created a low inflation environment that is likely to persist for an extended period, Noyer, who is also governor of the Bank of France, said in an annual letter to the French president.

Russia-West tensions weigh on stocks, buoy oil prices

 

Credit: Reuters/Eddie Keogh

(Reuters) - World stocks steadied above 10-day lows on Monday, with investors holding back from making aggressive bets as tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine showed no sign of easing.

MSCI's world equity index .MIWD00000PUS was flat after falling 0.7 percent on Friday.
Markets, especially in Asia, had earlier been hit by signals that Chinese authorities are unlikely to support the economy with more stimulus, but European stocks drew support from merger moves and upbeat results in the pharmaceutical sector.

Pfizer preparing £60bn bid for AstraZeneca

World's biggest drug group considering a cash and shares offer at a 'significant premium' to AstraZeneca's share price

 

Pfizer has confirmed details of a multi-billion pound takeover approach for UK company AstraZeneca. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/PA

Pfizer has set the stage for a battle to buy Britain's AstraZeneca after the US drugs giant said it was willing to pay almost £60bn to secure the biggest foreign takeover of a UK company.
The news sent AstraZeneca's shares soaring by 15%, to £46.91, adding almost £8bn to the company's market value.

Japan Pensions Hedge Funds

Japan Pensions Looking to Triple Allocations to Hedge Funds

Japan pension funds are increasingly looking to invest with hedge funds, according to Credit Suisse.  Japanese corporate pension funds hold roughly $760 billion and are reportedly looking to triple their allocations to hedge funds.  Over the next couple years, Japan's pension funds may boost their allocations to hedge funds to more than 10% compared to the typical 2-3% held in alternative investments. 

Typically, 2 to 5 percent of pension fund assets are in alternative investments including hedge funds, private equity and real estate, and this may grow to about 10 to 15 percent over the next two years, said Benjamin Happ, Hong Kong-based Asia-Pacific head of capital services in Credit Suisse’s prime services division.

“What’s interesting to us right now is how important the institutional investors in Japan are for hedge funds,” said Happ in an interview in Tokyo, where the bank held a conference for Japanese institutions and global hedge-fund managers. “The investor-base in Japan today is the largest and most important group of hedge funds investors in all of Asia and we prioritize it accordingly.”

Credit Suisse, Switzerland’s second-largest bank, has been running a capital introduction business in Japan for over seven years where they help hedge funds set up offices and introduce them to potential investors.  Source

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BSkyB Hedge Funds

Hedge Funds Burned by News Corp. BSkyB Bid Collapse

Hedge funds are reportedly losing big off news of the abandoned bid by News Corporation to purchase BSkyB.  Many hedge funds seem to have taken heavy losses because they viewed the company as such a prime target for an acquisition and now that the bid has fallen through they have taken the hit. 

Hedge funds have suffered one of their worst setbacks in years, losing tens of millions of pounds by betting that Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation was on the verge of taking full control of BSkyB.

Short-term speculators expected to make a killing by investing in a company viewed as a prime bid target, but instead have seen shares in the satellite television company plunge.

One trader said: "It's a bloodbath out there. The hedgies have dumped their holdings and some of them will be nursing big losses."

With News Corp bowing to political pressure by abandoning its plan to take full control of BSkyB, more selling is possible in the days ahead. Brokers estimate another 100m BSkyB shares are in the hands of "arbs", funds that specialise in opportunities presented by mergers and acquisitions.  Source

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SEC Fletcher Fund

SEC, Pensions to Investigate Fletcher Asset Management

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened up an inquiry into another New York hedge fund. The SEC is looking into Alphonse Fletcher Jr.'s Fletcher Asset Management. The investigation comes as three Louisiana pension funds launched their own inquiries into the Fletcher fund after the hedge fund denied requests to withdraw money earlier this year.

News of the S.E.C. inquiry comes as three Louisiana public pension systems publicly raised questions about a Fletcher fund. The three pension systems said on Tuesday that they were hiring a team of experts to closely examine the Fletcher fund’s financial records after it was unable to meet their requests to withdraw money from the fund earlier this year.

Mr. Fletcher, 45, already drew headlines in February when he sued the Dakota apartment building on the West Side of Manhattan, accusing it and several of its board members of racial discrimination for denying his application to buy an apartment adjacent to his.

The Dakota is fighting the lawsuit and said that it rejected Mr. Fletcher’s application because it had serious concerns about his financial resources and suggested that his investment firm “may be seriously troubled.” Source

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Tags: SEC Fletcher Fund, SEC Fletcher Fund investigation, Pensions Fletcher Fund, SEC Fletcher Asset Management, Hedge Fund SEC