UPDATE 1-Danone in talks to sell water assets to Suntory -Bloomberg
* Danone, Suntory officials decline comment on reportTOKYO, Oct 18 (Reuters) - France’s Danone SA is in
talks with Japanese beverage firm Suntory Holdings
about a sale of the French group’s water assets, Bloomberg News
reported on Tuesday.Danone is aiming to reach an agreement to sell the assets by
the end of the year, according to three sources cited by
Bloomberg. Suntory may only buy Danone’s water operations in
Asia, two of the sources said.Company officials at both Danone and Suntory declined to
comment on the report.Danone, the world’s No 2 bottled water producer, was in
early talks with unnamed parties on such a deal, a source
familiar with the matter told Reuters last November.Suntory, along with Japanese brewers Kirin Holdings
and Asahi Group Holdings , had previously been mentioned
as potential bidders for Danone’s water business, which includes
Evian and Badoit bottled waters.The report comes as a highly competitive and shrinking home
market has forced Japanese beverage firms to look abroad for
growth.Earlier this year, Suntory entered a soft drinks venture
with Indonesia’s GarudaFood and in 2009 bought soft drinks maker
Orangina.
MOVES-BofAML
RUSSELL INVESTMENTSThe investment management company appointed Crispin Lace and
Nick Spencer as directors of the consulting and advisory
services team. Previously, Lace worked with Mercer. Spencer
joins from GAM, where he headed the institutional business for
UK, Ireland and the Netherlands.BANK OF AMERICA MERRILL LYNCHBofA Merrill Lynch said Michel Sindelar will join the company
in January 2012 as head of CEEMEA Emerging Markets Equities.
Previously, he was managing director and head of Emerging
Markets Equity Product at Morgan Stanley.
Bank St Petersburg up on possible share sale-paper
Shares of Bank St Petersburg, where top-management owns a 56
percent stake with around 26 percent in free-float, also hit an
intraday high of 100 roubles per share on Thursday, a 15 percent
increase.Kommersant daily said on Friday that a rapid rise in its
share price may be linked to news of a possible change in its
shareholder structure. The daily earlier cited sources saying
that Bank Rossiya may become a shareholder in the larger rival.Indrek Neivelt, chairman with supervisory board at Bank St
Petersburg, declined to comment on the report about
negotiations.”There is not any official information. We are a public bank
and if there is any information we are obliged to disclose it,”
he told Reuters.Traders told Reuters that they had not heard any new details
about a possible deal between Bank St Petersburg and bank
Rossiya.”Someone is buying it (Bank St Petersburg). But we don’t
know any specific details,” said a trader with major Russian
investment bank.Maxim Gulevich, a trader with UBS, told Reuters that the
market could merely be speculating on old news of a possible
change in Bank St Petersburg’s shareholders structure.”There are no new stories, only that the old one … We did
not notice anything special (on the market yesterday),” he said.Bank St Petersburg shares were trading up 0.1 percent at
92.12 rouble per share at 0819 GMT, underperforming the broader
MICEX index which was up 0.8 percent.
Veolia to sell urban lighting unit Citelum-report
Veolia had no immediate comment.According to its website, Citelum had 2010 revenue of 276
million euros and and an operating income of 16.7 million.Veolia sold assets worth more than 1 billion euros in the
first half, part of a plan to sell at least 1.3 billion euros
this year.
($1 = 0.730 Euros)
Gunmen kidnap two Spanish aid workers from Kenyan camp
Kenyan police said they suspected Somalia’s al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab insurgents were behind the kidnapping and that security forces had chased the abductors toward the border between the two countries, which has been sealed off.No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.”Two female aid workers working for MSF were … kidnapped by suspected al Shabaab militants in Dadaab refugee camp,” North Eastern Province police commander Leo Nyongesa told Reuters.”We’ve mobilized all the officers and alerted those at the border to ensure that no vehicle exits the country to Somalia. The whole border area is now sealed,” he said.MSF said it had been unable to contact the two hostages and said it would not reveal their names until their families had been informed.”We strongly condemn this attack,” Jos Antonio Bastos, the president of MSF-Spain, said in a statement. “MSF is in contact with all the relevant authorities and is doing all it can to ensure the swift and safe return of our colleagues.”A spokesman at the Spanish Foreign Ministry confirmed the missing women were Spanish.Aid workers have been targeted for abductions on numerous occasions in Somalia, where kidnappings can be a lucrative business, but attacks in Kenya had been relatively rare until a recent spate of incidents.In 2009, three foreign aid workers working for the French charity Action Contre la Faim (ACF) were nabbed by Somali gunmen from the Kenyan border town of Mandera. Two Western nuns were kidnapped in 2008.SOFT TARGETSThursday’s incident took place within weeks of two separate incidents that saw Somali gunmen with close ties to pirates seize Western female tourists from beach resorts in northern Kenya.Analysts and diplomats in the region had warned that pirates were likely to turn to softer targets, such as tourists in Kenya, in response to much more robust defense of merchant vessels by private security guards.Security experts fear Islamist militants fighting to topple the Western-backed Somali government could increasingly conduct copycat attacks inside Kenya, the region’s biggest economy.A Kenyan driver working for the international relief group Care is still missing after he was grabbed at gunpoint in September from the Dadaab camp.A senior Kenyan military officer acknowledged the security forces did not know whether the abductors and their Spanish captives had crossed in Somalia.”We have four choppers flying in our airspace along the border between Dif and Liboi,” said the army officer who declined to be named.Dadaab, located about 100 km for the Somali border, was set up in 1991 to house Somalis fleeing violence in their country. It has since grown to become the world’s biggest refugee camp with more than 400,000 residents.MSF said a Kenyan driver was wounded in Thursday’s attack.The kidnapping will put further pressure on the Kenyan government to beef up defenses along its porous frontier and risks further hurting the tourism sector, one of the country’s top foreign currency earners.Britain has already issued a travel advisory warning against all but essential travel within 150 km of the Somali border, which includes the popular Lamu archipelago where a French woman and a British woman were seized in past weeks.
UniCredit BA open to E. Europe divestments - paper
He reiterated that expansion plans for Hungary were on hold
after the country let borrowers repay foreign-currency loans at
below-market rates, forcing losses on banks there.Bank Austria continued to pursue growth opportunities in key
markets including Turkey, Russia and Poland, he said.Bank Austria was better positioned in the region than rival
Erste Group Bank , which said this week it could lose
up to 800 million euros ($1.1 billion) this year after big
writedowns.”We already wrote off 800 million euros in all for
Kazakhstan. We are less engaged in markets like Hungary or
Romania,” Papa said. “We did not force Swiss franc loans. We do
not have a secret formula. We are just very conservative.”He dismissed speculation the Italian banking group could
sell its central and eastern European arm, which is market
leader in the region.”This is nonsense. Perhaps this is wishful thinking from
rivals. Eastern Europe is a cornerstone, a growth motor for the
group. It would be completely irrational to sell something that
produces such good results.”
($1 = 0.733 euro)
Seoul shares slip amid caution; auto issues gain
* Retailers down after discouraging job dataBy Jungyoun ParkSEOUL, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Seoul shares slipped on Wednesday
after four consecutive sessions of gains and as investors
remained tuned to news from the euro zone and the United States.Sentiment was fragile following news of Slovakia blocking a
European bailout fund and the defeat of U.S. President Barack
Obama’s jobs bill by the U.S. Senate, analysts said.”The market is pretty much stalled at this level, and
not-so-welcoming news from Europe and the United States is not
helping sentiment,” said Y.S. Rhoo, a market analyst at Hyundai
Securities.The parliament of tiny Slovakia stalled the expansion of a
bailout fund to rescue the euro zone from its debt crisis on
Tuesday.The U.S. Senate defeated President Barack Obama’s
job-creation package on Tuesday in a sign that Washington is
likely too paralysed to take major steps to spur hiring before
the 2012 election.”Normally buying appetite returns at the low 1,700 point
level. Given the current macroeconomic situation, the market
will continue to fluctuate,” Rhoo added.Foreign investors were sellers of a net 30.1 billion
won($25.8 million) worth of stocks, and institutions offloaded a
net 37.1 billion won worth, poised to snap a four-session buying
streak.The Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) was
down 0.63 percent at 1,783.66 points as of 0128 GMT.Falls in technology issues weighed, with LG Electronics
, the world’s No.3 handset maker, shedding 2.8
percent and Samsung Electronics , the world’s No.1
memory chip maker, losing 1 percent.But automakers and auto parts manufacturers outperformed
amid expectations for the approval of a free trade agreement
with the United States.A U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday backed long-delayed trade
pacts with South Korea, Colombia and Panama, paving the way for
final approval.Hyundai Motor edged up 0.2 percent and Hyundai
Mobis advanced 0.6 percent.Shares in firms with interests in North Korea were buoyed
after South Korea said on Tuesday it would allow 120 firms to
restart building a joint industrial park in the
North.Apparel manufacturer Shinwon Corp , which has
production units in North Korea, climbed 1.7 percent.Retailers came under pressure after discouraging job data.South Korea created the smallest number of jobs in a year in
September, nudging the unemployment rate higher off a three-year
low and adding to signs of a slowdown in Asia’ fourth-largest
economy.Shares in Lotte Shopping Co Ltd , the country’s
top retailer in terms of market value, declined 2.3 percent and
Shinsegae Co Ltd , the country’s No.2, was down 2.1
percent.($1 = 1164.550 Korean Won)
Annie Leibovitz gets personal with inspiring Russia
Pictures of the births of the 62-year-old Leibovitz’s three daughters were hung in Moscow’s state Pushkin Museum next to her portraits of such famous personalities as Mick Jagger, Demi Moore and others for covers of Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair.”Russia is definitely at a crossroads now. Coming to Moscow, it feels very young and very moving,” Leibovitz told reporters as she guided them around her pieces.Dressed all in black with her blonde hair tousled, Leibovitz said Russian literature and ballet had inspired her work.”Russia is a great country for art and film and dance. It is where great art is born. I’m thinking of the Ballet Russes and everything that’s ever meant something to me,” she said.Called “Annie Leibovitz. A photographer’s life. 1990-2005,” the collection captures the emotional period when Leibovitz found herself caught between the burgeoning lives of her young daughters and the deaths of her lover Susan Sontag and father.But Leibovitz said she felt her exploration of deeply personal joy and tragedy spoke to the universal experience.”I really felt the personal work is everyone’s story, it’s not just my story,” she said.Leibovitz’s naked self-portrait taken when pregnant at age 51 drew surprise and praise from viewers in a country where most women give birth before age 30.”This photographer should be an example to all Russian women. She has a terrific career but also gave birth at an age when most women here wouldn’t do it,” Anna Payesova, a scientist at Moscow State University, told Reuters.Last month Leibovitz presented the exhibit at St Petersburg’s 18th century State Hermitage Museum.The exhibit will be open to the public from October 12 to January 15 2012.
