KILL THE COMPETITION
Welcome to today's round-up of business news from The Times: what we're saying, what they're saying, from Michael Beh
Wednesday, October 7, 0730 GMT
Top stories
The Times: Tesco, the supermarket chain, claimed it was growing faster than its rivals and renamed its personal finance division Tesco Bank.
The Daily Telegraph: Car sales rose by 11 per cent last month, potentially driving the UK economy back into growth for the third quarter of 2009.
New York Times: The dollar slid as investors migrated to share and commodity markets pushing gold prices to a record high.
Comment
Carl Mortished in The Times: The European Commission is missing the point - it is not carbon that is leaking, but investment in heavy industry.
Damian Reece in The Daily Telegraph: The boss of British Airways was always going to have a showdown with unions to establish who really runs the airline.
David Prosser in The Independent: The scene is set. China - and others - want to wrest power from the US and soon they'll have the economic clout to do it.
Upside
The Times: UK house prices continued to rise last month but economists have forecast flat growth for the rest of this year and into next.
New York Times: The International Energy Agency cut by 5 per cent its greenhouse gas emissions estimate for 2020 because of slower economic growth.
The Times: Greenberg Traurig, the large US law firm, plans to build a London office of more than 200 lawyers within three years.
Downside
The Times: British Airways announced plans to push through staff cuts on long-haul flights without union agreement.
The Times: A group of 300 homeowners has permission to sue Barclays and Bank of Scotland over their shared-appreciation mortgages that they claim are unfair.
The Times: HSBC would delay a dividend rise if new capital rules were applied too heavily or too quickly, said Stuart Gulliver, the bank's head of investment banking.
Mergers and shakers
Wall Street Journal: Bank of America named Gregory Curl and Brian Moynihan as internal candidates for chief executive, but the search for an outsider continues.
Financial Times: Citigroup, the financial services firm, plans to sell Phibro, its controversial commodities unit, for hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Independent: BSkyB, the broadcaster, secured a surprise advertising deal with the broadcasting group that owns the Discovery Channel, ending their legal dispute.
Around Asia
Wall Street Journal: Japan's big lenders and brokers may need more funds in the next six months as regulators push for tighter capital requirements.
Bloomberg: Australia, the first G20 nation to raise interest rates since the height of the financial crisis, signaled further increases in coming months.
Wall Street Journal: Mongolia signed a long-awaited investment agreement for the $4 billion (£2.5 billion) Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine.
Look ahead
The Times: Digital radios should become standard in new cars from 2014 after vehicle makers agreed to adopt the technology.
The Daily Telegraph: The recent global stock market rally will be sharply corrected later this year, a trio of respected economic commentators predicts.
Reuters: The US National Retail Federation expects US holiday retail sales to fall 1 per cent this year, on top of last year's 3.4 per cent decline.
MARKETS
FTSE 100 5,137.98 up 2.3% (Tuesday close)
Dow 9,731.25 up 1.4% (close)
S&P 500 1,054.72 up 1.4% (close)
Nasdaq 2,103.57 up 1.7% (close)
Nikkei 9,778.25 up 0.9% (latest)
Hang Seng 21,141.13 up 1.6% (latest)
Currencies
Sterling $1.5902/1.0818 euros (latest)
Euro $1.4699 (latest)
Commodities
Brent crude $69.16 up 60 cents (latest)
West Texas crude $71.47 up 59 cents (latest)
Gold $1040.10 up 40 cents (latest)
New York
Reuters: US stocks rose amid signs the global economy was recovering. The economic optimism spurred gains in energy and other commodities. Energy giant Exxon Mobil rose 1.6 per cent. Aluminium company Alcoa rose 3.5 per cent on optimism of good results. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold rose 3.4 per cent on higher gold prices. United Technologies, the world's largest maker of elevators and air conditioners, rose 1.8 per cent. After the bell, Yum Brands, the parent of Taco Bell and other fast-food chains, rose 3.9 per cent on better-than-expected results. On the Nasdaq, Microsoft rose 1.9 per cent after introducing new mobile phone software to compete with Apple's iPhone. Apple shares rose 2.1 per cent.
Asia
Bloomberg: Asian stocks rose in morning trade, led by mining companies as commodities rose and the dollar fell. BHP Billiton, the world's biggest miner, rose 2.2 per cent and rival Rio Tinto rose 3.8 per cent. Newcrest Mining, Australia's largest gold producer, rose 6.6 per cent on record gold prices. Inpex, Japan's largest oil explorer, rose 2.1 per cent on higher oil prices.
Hitachi, a nuclear reactor maker, rose 7.7 per cent in Tokyo on an analyst's upgrade. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 1 per cent to 116.79 in early trade.
Michael Beh
michaelwbeh@gmail.com
London
Tullow Oil surged to a record high amid reports that Exxon Mobil has agreed to buy a stake in Ghana's Jubilee field - a deal that would put the first concrete valuation on one of the FTSE 100 company's blockbuster African assets.
Private equity-backed Kosmos Energy put its 31 per cent stake in Jubilee up for sale earlier this year, with any sale expected to value the field at around $4 billion. However, shares in Kosmos's partners - Tullow Oil and Houston-based Anadarko Petroleum - leapt yesterday amid hopes the sale price, so far undisclosed, would imply higher valuations for the field than the stock market had ascribed. Tullow closed 94p better at £12.09.
But the session as a whole was dominated by natural resources stocks, fuelled by a rise in crude to $71 a barrel on increased world oil demand forecasts from the US Energy Information Administration, stronger base metals prices and an advance in spot gold prices to a record $1,043 an ounce. Fresnillo, the Mexican silver miner, put on 74p at 824p, with India's Vedanta Resources ahead 174p at £20.87 and Kazakhmys, the copper miner, 91p dearer at £10.94.
Among gold plays, Randgold Resources rose 337p at £45.28, with Petropavlovsk, formerly Peter Hambro Mining, up 143p to £10.30. The latter also drew support from an investor visit to its mines in the Russian Far East, talk of a long-awaited iron ore offtake agreement for its Aricom subsidiary with a Chinese steel producer, and a fund management joint venture with Russia's Leader, which manages Gazprom's pension fund. The FTSE 100 closed 113.65 points higher at 5,137.98.
Nick Hasell
nick.hasell@thetimes.co.uk
