Mozambique to ask Japan for $300 mln port funding
“We are now going to start negotiations for investment with
the Japanese government, and if we succeed, the rehabilitation
could start within one year,” he said.Some of the funding could also come from Japan’s private
sector, he said.Repairing the port, which was damaged by a cyclone in 2001,
would return it to its original capacity of 400,000 containers a
year, or roughly double its current capacity, Nala said.Mozambique is pushing to build more infrastructure to
support the rapid rise in coal production in its Tete province.The southern African country is seen as a new supply source
for coking coal, and has attracted global miners such as Vale
, and steel makers such as Nippon Steel Corp .Nippon Steel, the world’s No.4 steel maker, has said it
expects to start producing coking coal in Mozambique in 2014,
with development of the site expected to begin in the first half
of 2012.
Olympus under pressure to disclose details on deals
British former CEO Michael Woodford has told media he believes he was ousted for probing what he said were excessive payments made in relation to the buyouts of Britain’s Gyrus and three small domestic firms.The Japanese firm reiterated in an investor conference call late on Monday that Woodford was dropped because of a clash in management styles and said the company may take legal action against him for disclosing confidential information in media reports following his firing.But analysts and investors remain dissatisfied after Woodford showed media a letter dated October 11 to chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, which describes what Woodford calls “a catalog of calamitous errors and exceptionally poor judgment.”The letter details Woodford’s concerns about $680 million in payments to financial advisers in the acquisition of Gyrus, or around 36 percent of the transaction price, and $600 million in goodwill impairment after acquisitions in Japan.In it, he also calls on Kikukawa to resign.SHARES OFF LOWSHisashi Mori, executive vice president at Olympus, told analysts on Tuesday, that the amount paid in relation to Gyrus, which included cash and options, was less than half the amount Woodford stated, although he conceded that the fee was high.”We do not think the market’s confidence can be restored based on what we heard during the conference call,” said analyst Motoya Kohtani of Nomura in a note to clients.”With a former president playing the unusual role of whistle blower, the level of disclosure by Olympus thus far is unlikely to alleviate market concerns,” he added.”We think management should disclose the advisory fees paid for the Gyrus acquisition, broken down into preferred dividend stock, options and cash.”Olympus shares fell to a fresh 2-1/2-year-low of 1,455 yen early on Tuesday, before paring losses to trade down about 4 percent in early afternoon. The stock lost 37 percent of its value, worth $3.2 billion, in the prior two days, following Woodford’s dismissal and his comments to the media.Downgrades on its target prices by brokerages, including Macquarie, continued after the investor call on Monday.Woodford told the Financial Times he had taken documents on the acquisition of Gyrus to Britain’s Serious Fraud Office on Monday and said he welcomed further investigation of the case.Japan’s Financial Services Agency said it was aware of media reports on Olympus, but declined to comment on whether it was considering taking action.
CORRECTED-BRIEF-Spanish Peaks Holdings II llc files for chapter 7 liquidation
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UK auditor may probe WSJ Europe circulation
ELP sponsored 12,000 daily copies of the WSJ — about 16
percent of its total circulation, the Guardian said. Such
sponsorship deals are controversial, but not unusual.The WSJ Europe’s publisher Andrew Langhoff quit on Tuesday,
and parent company Dow Jones, a unit of Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corp , said the reason was ethical issues raised by the
paper’s commercial relationship with ELP.The Journal said the Guardian article was “replete with
untruths and malign interpretations”.The Guardian has led an investigative campaign into
phone-hacking practices at another Murdoch newspaper, Britain’s
News of the World, which was shut down earlier this year as a
result.ABC UK said it had examined the scheme when it was first set
up in 2009 and again when it audited the July-December 2010
circulation figures, and found it to be in order.”More recently we have re-examined the scheme based on some
new evidence available. There now appears to be
additional new information which may give grounds for further
investigation,” ABC UK’s Chief Executive Jerry Wright, who is
also president of the International Federation of ABCs, said in
an emailed statement.The organisation added that such investigations were
confidential until complete, and their results only published in
cases where complaints were upheld.ELP issued a statement denying it had been involved in any
scheme to artifically boost the Journal’s circulation, or that
it had been promised any editorial coverage.”ELP is not pleased that our name appears in this context
which seems to be driven by internal dynamics in WSJE and the
current investigative climate around News Corp organizations,”
the company said.A spokesman for ABC in the United States said there was no
additional audit or investigation planned of the circulation
practices of the Journal’s U.S. edition.News Corp acquired the Journal, a trophy purchase for
Murdoch, as part of Dow Jones in 2007.
