In Europe, bank regulations haven't kept up with cross-border realities

PARIS: Major European banks have begun expanding across the Continent in recent years, amassing large pools of capital and customers. Yet bank regulation at the European Union level has hardly kept up.

Should one of the new European giants find itself on the verge of collapse or under threat, as has happened to some U.S. banks, it might be forced to scramble for help from a multitude of potential crisis managers, none with overarching authority.

"If, God forbid, we get to that point, the arrangements will prove inadequate," Richard Portes, professor of economics at the London Business School, said.



Nomura Rises After Buying Lehman in Asia, Europe

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Nomura Holdings Inc., Japan's biggest securities firm, rose in Tokyo after agreeing to pay less than a month's revenue for units of bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in Asia and Europe.

Nomura will pay a ``nominal'' amount for Lehman's investment banking and equities businesses in Europe, Nomura special adviser Sadeq Sayeed told reporters on a conference call yesterday. A day before, the company agreed to pay $225 million to take over Lehman's Asian-Pacific unit.



Mitsubishi UFJ Falls on Morgan Stanley Stake Purchase

Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., Japan's largest bank, fell in Tokyo trading after agreeing to acquire as much as 20 percent of Morgan Stanley for $8.4 billion.

Mitsubishi UFJ declined 1.2 percent to 887 yen at 10:20 a.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange as the bank stepped up its U.S. expansion. Markets were closed in Japan yesterday for a holiday.



JPMorgan Buys WaMu's Deposits as Thrift Is Seized

Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co., the third- biggest U.S. bank by assets, agreed to pay $1.9 billion for the deposits of Washington Mutual Inc. after the thrift was seized by regulators in the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.

The U.S. government closed Seattle-based Washington Mutual amid customer withdrawals of $16.7 billion since Sept. 15, the Office of Thrift Supervision said in a statement. WaMu had ``insufficient liquidity'' and was in an ``unsound'' condition, the OTS said.



HSBC Cuts 1,100 Jobs in Wholesale Banking Division

Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe's largest bank by market value, cut 1,100 jobs in its global banking and markets division as the deepening financial crisis threatens to extend a decline in profit.

The reductions in the division's back-office operations amount to about 4 percent of HSBC's wholesale banking workforce, Hong Kong-based spokesman Gareth Hewett said in a phone interview. Global banking and markets includes corporate and investment banking, and markets operations.

HSBC is adding to the about 120,000 financial jobs lost worldwide since the global credit crisis began just over a year ago, leading to more than $520 billion of writedowns and credit losses. The London-based bank last month posted its steepest profit decline since 2001 on subprime mortgage losses.



Putin, Hugo Chávez plug `multi-polar world'

NOVO-OGARYOVO, Russia -- Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday to make relations with Latin America a top foreign policy priority, a pledge backed by the first Russian naval deployment to the Caribbean since the Cold War.

Putin greeted Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, on his second trip to Russia in just over two months, with offers to discuss further arms sales to Venezuela and possibly helping it to develop nuclear energy.

Chávez's visit takes place as a Russian naval squadron sails to Venezuela, across the Caribbean from the United States, in a pointed response to what the Kremlin has cast as threatening U.S. encroachment near its own borders.



The accelerating race to get oil and natural gas from the Arctic

BRUSSELS: Rising energy prices have made the expensive work of discovering and pumping oil and natural gas from such an unforgiving environment as the Arctic more feasible. So has the drastic retreat of Arctic ice cover in recent years, which facilitates drilling and delivery by ship to distant markets.

The result is an accelerating race to exploit the Arctic's potentially huge hydrocarbon resources.
Oil executives say areas of the Arctic like the Barents Sea could provide a new way for them to increase their reserves and keep supplies flowing to important nearby markets.

"The potential size of the resource base could make it emerge as Europe's new leading oil and gas province," said Helge Lund, the chief executive of StatoilHydro, the leading Norwegian producer of oil and natural gas.



Russian Railways seeks stake in Deutsche Bahn

BERLIN: Russian Railways, one of the largest railroad companies in the world, said Wednesday that it would submit a bid to buy up to 5 percent of Deutsche Bahn when the German state-owned railroad network is partly privatized this year.

"We are thinking of trying to obtain, approximately, a 5 percent stake," Vladimir Yakunin, president of Russian Railways, said in an interview here after he held talks with Deutsche Bahn executives. "For us, integration is an essential part of our strategy. Obtaining a stake in Deutsche Bahn's international public offering would be a good investment."

Under the terms of Deutsche Bahn's privatization, the German government will remain the sole owner of the railroad infrastructure, including the track, the stations and the energy supply, while 24.9 percent of the passenger and freight business will be sold to private investors, with the government retaining the remainder.



***

And on a silly note:

Petroleum exec says governor should cancel Georgia-Alabama football game to save gas

In an op-ed piece on Wednesday in the AJC, Tex Pitfield, president and CEO of Saraguay Petroleum in Atlanta, said Gov. Sonny Perdue ignored a warning from Pitfield to invoke gasoline rationing well before Hurricane Ike struck the Texas coast and its refineries.

Pitfield had another suggestion today.

In a radio interview, the petroleum company chief said he’d advise Perdue to cancel Saturday’s game Georgia-Alabama, to prevent the burning of the precious gasoline required to move a hundred thousand and more people into Athens and out again.

The business executive, obviously not a Perdue fan, also takes a shot at the governor for leaving on a trade mission to Europe on Saturday. (Which means he’ll miss a tremendous game.)