Asian stocks
>> asian stocks gained on the slide in oil prices and the u.s. rallied. investors are more confident that global economic and profit growth will be sustained. to get a preview of next week’s markets in the asia-pacific region, this report from our tokyo bureau.
>> china’s industrial production and import figures may provide evidencegating restrictions are losing their bite. factory output probably rose and imports of raw materials probably increased in october. the central bank raised its benchmark rate by just over a quarter of 1% on october 29 in an effort to control inflation and stop the economy overheating. figures expected tuesday or wednesday. japan’s economy may be stalling as exports slow. gross domestic product figures out friday may show the economy grew at an annual pace of 2.1% in the third quarter, half the average pace of the previous five quarters. earnings season continues in japan. mitsubishi motors may say monday losses widened in the first half. japan’s only unprofitable automaker recalled more than 200,000 cars in japan this year after admitting covering up defects. domestic sales have fallen every month this year. rising competition in japan’s telecommunications sector may mean lower first-half profits for nippon telegraph and telephone. japan’s largest telco has seen profit decline at docomo phone unit. softbank gives first-half earnings figures wednesday. japan’s second largest provider of high-speed internet services probably had a smaller loss in the first half. it signed up more users to the yahoo broadband service. those are business highlights in the coming week in asia. back to you.
>> turning to next week’s likely market movers in europe, mark barton filed this from the london.
>> 12 of the companies in the dow jones stoxx 50 release results. munich re may report the smallest quarterly profit since the last chief executive took over in january because of an estimated $500 million euros of damage claims for hurricanes in the u.s. the world’s third biggest insurer probably earned 271 million euros in the third quarter compared to last year’s 42 million euro figure. british airways unveiled fiscal second-quarter profit, and may say net income rose 31% after the courier cut jobs and reduced costs. chief executive officer has cut over 13,000 jobs or more than 1/5 of the work force since 2001 to cut costs and counter competition from carriers including ryanair and richard branson’s virgin atlantic airways. tobacco releasing annual results in assessment. the maker of lambert cigarettes said profit in the current fiscal year is in line with management expectations. imperial and european competitors aim to make up the lowest cigarette consumption in the region by buying businesses and combining manufacturing and distribution to cut costs. the company boosted first-half profit by 3.8%. turning to the economy, u.k. producer price data is released. economists expect input prices to rise 2% in the month of october. while the cost of goods leaving factories will probably gain .4% in september. output prices rose at the fastest annual pace in more than eight years after the price of metals and oil jumped. manufacturers such as glass maker pelkington may say that rising raw material costs may crimp earnings. in london for bloomberg news, i’m mark barton.
>> sotheby’s sold $194 million worth of impressionist art as the fall new york art auction season continues. the total is the highest for impressionist art in 14 years. three works sold for more than $20 million each. six artists broke records, among them, paul gauguin, as well as sculptures, including henry moore’s three-piece reclining figure. even so, many of the high profile works fell short. a cardinski sketch fell short. and boogie-woogie had the same estimate but sold lower than expected.
>> the pictures find their prices. when it’s an open market and you saw something was hotly wanted, we had incredibly deep fields of bidding. besides sculpture, we saw tremendous results for late picasso and the comment that impressionism is out of fashion doesn’t really prove true.
>> and it’s not just at sotheby’s. earlier in the week, christie’s sold $128 million worth of impressionism and modern art, its highestital nefour years. the nba season picked off this week as shaquille o’neal arrived in miami. he’s raking in revenue for the heat. mike buteau has more in this week’s “money & sports.”
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Listen Market briefing --- Bob (fast)
Interview: William Donaldson
>> welcome back to “world financial report.” i’m bob bowden. recapping the day on wall street, we saw a rally in stocks with the dow up .7%, s&p 500 up .4% and the nasdaq up .75% finishing at 2038. warren buffett’s berkshire hathaway said profit fell a third straight quarter after hurricanes hammered insurance units. third-quarter net income fell 37% to $1.14 billion or $739 a share. excluding investment gains, net income would have been $402 a share. profit declined in the first and second quarters because of a drop in investment income. storm losses may stabilize prices for reinsurance policy, bolstering future profit. leaders of the securities industry are wrapping up their annual meeting in boca raton, florida. greg miles caught up with securities and exchange commissioner william donaldson and asked him about the reports he may be stepping down.
>> i serve at the pleasure of the president. i also serve at the pleasure of myself, if you will, in terms of feeling that we’re getting some things done. i think we are getting some things done so i guess my answer is, stay tuned.
>> to clarify, have you talked with the bush administration about this?
>> no, i haven’t.
>> so you would expect to stay
>> i don’t want to go further than what i said.
>> fine. let’s talk about the past two years. there have been scandals on wall street with mutual funds, hedge funds and brokers. from your point of view, are the major scandals over?
>> well, you know, it’s hard to answer that question. on the one hand, some of the backlog, if you will, of open investigations has come off some from where it was. that’s an encouraging sign. on the other hand, we are continue ali―continually surprised by things that pop up. my hope is that the worst is behind us but i can’t guarantee it.
>> let’s talk about hedge funds. you’re going to rentalster them, inspect them. is that enough to avoid major abuses in that area? what else remains to be done?
>> let me make clear what we’ve done. the hedge fund industry is heading toward a trillion dollars and we have had no authority or oversight on the industry up until now. what the new rule does is register the hedge funds under the investment advisers act, not the funds, but the managers of the funds. that’s the simple first step, if you will, to find out how many hedge funds there are, who is running them, to have some authority on their books and records, to make sure that they’re pricing securities correctly. what we’re not interested in doing and do not have the authority to do is to regulate what they invest in. if we register the funds under the investment company act, we would have that right but we don’t want to do that. so the first step is to find out what’s anything on in the industry.
>> let’s go to the new york mercantile exchange. a big issue over the past year, eliot spitzer sueing dick grasso to get much of the $140 million back. how important is it for the nyse to get this issue behind it?
>> i think that in effect, the new york stock exchange is moving ahead. i think they’re moving ahead in a number of areas and implementing a new governance structure and bringing new people into the stock exchange so clearly the issue of the past and in particular, the issue you’re referring to, is, i think , i hope to be resolved sooner rather than later.
>> considering smaller investment advisers in order to focus on ruggating hedge funds. is this an indication that the s.e.c. budget has to be bigger?
>> no, no. first of all, we haven’t decided whether we’re going to make that drop. we’ve talked about giving authority for smaller hedge funds to state regulators. but a more important thing is that we need to to devise and we’re in the process of doing that now, a new regime, if you will, for oversight. we call it risk appraisal, if you will. we have a risk management office. we have risk mapping. all of this means that we’re attempting to concentrate our resources, if you will, in areas where we identify risks rather than just generally across the board.
>> that was s.e.c. chairman william donaldson speaking with bloomberg’s greg miles. b.t. group, largest phone company in the united kingdom, will buy infonet services. people familiar with the situation say b.t. is making a move to add a data network spanning more countries. the deal could be announced as early as monday and would need to be approved by a 12-member panel of u.s. government agencies including the pentagon and homeland security departments. verizon is adding to wireless holdings, paying $3 billion to acquire new airwave licenses for its mobile phone unit coming from nextwave, helping verizon wireless offer more services. the move is part of the company’s plan to be the biggest u.s. mobile phone provider. it had been until cingular bought at&t wireless. when we return, six artists set records at sotheby’s auction but there were a number of failures.
