The company, to be called HSBC Middle East Securities, will offer UAE domestic market brokerage services to both institutional and retail investors. The company is expected to begin trading for institutions by the end of 2007, and to offer retail brokerage services in 2008. Emirates Securities and Commodities Authority (ESCA), the regulator for the UAE's securities markets, recently granted HSBC authorisation to establish the brokerage company. The authorisation is subject to the various legal and infrastructural requirements meeting the approval of ESCA, as well ADSM and DFM. With this approval, HSBC is poised to become the first global bank on the UAE's exchanges. HSBC already buys and sells UAE shares on behalf of Western institutions through third party brokers. In addition, HSBC is a sub-custodian on both ADSM and DFM, and this service will continue to be provided by the bank's specialist sub-custody operation.

Xstrata on receiving end of $80bn takeover deal

Vale, the giant Brazilian miner, is days away from unveiling an agreed takeover bid for Swiss-based rival Xstrata worth over $80bn. A deal could be announced as soon as this week, but some banking sources have cautioned that turmoil in the credit markets means the Brazilians might need more time to secure the necessary financing.

The takeover would be the biggest that Xstrata's chief executive, Mick Davis, has pulled off. But it would be the first time that he has been at the receiving end of a deal.

Refco ex-VP pleads guilty

A former senior executive at Refco Inc. became the first company official to plead guilty to defrauding investors in the failed trading giant on Wednesday, one day after a Mayer Brown lawyer was indicted on criminal charges.

Santo Maggio, former executive vice president, admitted in a New York federal court that he "participated with others to hide the true financial health of Refco." He worked at Refco from the late 1990s to October 2005, when the futures and commodities broker collapsed after disclosing that an entity partially owned by former Chief Executive Phillip Bennett owed the company about $430 million.

The debt stemmed from client losses that had piled up since the mid-1990s, according to federal prosecutors. Mayer Brown partner Joseph Collins, who represented Refco for more than a decade, helped hide the debt for several years, prosecutors charge in his indictment.

Hillary's school for scandal

Who can blame Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign for exploiting its delicious "Gotcha!" moment? When you can show reporters side-by-side videos of Sen. Barack Obama delivering, almost word-for-word, a speech passage originated in 2006 by his friend Deval Patrick, now governor of Massachusetts -- well, you'd be crazy not to call him on it, right?

As if to say to voters: We haven't had much luck insinuating that Obama should be sullied by his association with Tony Rezko, the indicted Chicago businessman. And we haven't had much luck dismissing Obama as just another black candidate whose appeal, like that of Rev. Jesse Jackson before him, is largely limited to African-Americans. So let's dirty him up as a phony. A speech thief.

Hence the snarky dig from senior Clinton adviser Howard Wolfson in Tuesday's Washington Post: "The point we're making overall is that Sen.

We are looking for voluntary translators from Arabic into English.

Research continued anyway amidst lies that risks were minimal and a promised future lay ahead. All that mattered were huge potential profits and geopolitical gain so let the good times roll and the chips fall where they may.

One project was to map the rice genome. It launched a 17 year effort to spread GMO rice around the world with Rockefeller Foundation money behind it. It spent millions funding 46 worldwide science labs. It also financed the training of hundreds of graduate students and developed an "elite fraternity" of top scientific researchers at Foundation-backed research institutes. It was a diabolical scheme aiming big - to control the staple food for 2.4 billion people and in the process destroy the biological diversity of over 140,000 developed varieties that can withstand droughts, pests and grow in every imaginable climate.

What is an amenity value?

Q A previous extension means we have no side access on our house. Our neighbour is open to the idea of selling a strip of their land that would give us a link between our front and back gardens. However, we don't know where to start in offering a fair price on a negotiation. We've heard mention of an independently derived "amenity value" that would take account of the fact the land offers more to our property than it does to theirs. Any tips?DL

However, judging by the street I live on, having side access to a property certainly adds value.

Do Markets Make News or Does News Make Markets?

Last week I went out of town to the Cambridge House Resource Investment Conference in Phoenix, Arizona. They had about 1,500 attendees, which is about half of the number they get in Toronto and Vancouver. There were about half of the booths there too. The tone of the conference was decidedly negative when it came to the US stock market and even to metals stocks too.

Most investors I talked too were nervously holding their mining stocks. I listened to the two main speakers panels on the first day of the conference and just about all of them appeared to expect some additional selling in gold stocks to take place. The moderator of the panel asked all of the speakers if they still thought mining stocks were worth owning with the stock market in a bear market. One person responded by saying that he buys mining stocks that he expects will make good discoveries that will eventually cause their stock price to go up.

Indiana Editorial Roundup

This latest expansion of gambling must not be allowed.

To say that bars illegally allowed gambling in the past should not be an argument for now legally allowing them to operate these games.

And gambling remains a moral issue, which is why it is so tightly controlled. Allowing anyone to operate a gambling den, with no recourse, would have serious repercussions for society.

Indiana would get an estimated $5 million to $25 million a year from the taverns as part of House Bill 1153, the legislation authorizing bars to offer pull tabs and other low-stakes games of chance. That's not justification for gambling to be spread to bars.

The bill passed the House but must be stopped in the Senate.

The Swamp: Your inside source for Campaign '08.

Govt To Investigate PPP For Waterview Connection

It makes sense for the public sector and private sector to work together from an early stage and use their collective knowledge. The mix of representatives on the Steering Group and the expertise they can contribute will help ensure that any PPP process meets the needs of both the public and private sectors."

The Steering Group is expected to deliver a business case that assesses whether procuring the Waterview Connection as a PPP is viable and could deliver value for money. It will also develop a benchmark Public Sector Comparator, against which the PPP business case will be assessed.

The Steering Group's findings will be reported to the Ministers of Finance and Transport in June 2008. The report will be considered along with other factors and input before Cabinet decides on the preferred means of progressing the Waterview Connection.