Forex Investment

JAKARTA: Indonesia will take a local unit of Newmont Mining to an international arbitration court after the firm failed to meet a deadline of Monday to sell shares in a local unit. This could lead to termination of its mining contract, the Energy and Mines Ministry said.

In response, Newmont, based in Colorado, said it would file a lawsuit against the government in an arbitration court.

Under its contract of work, Newmont Nusa Tenggara, which operates the Batu Hijau copper and gold mine in eastern Indonesia, must sell 51 percent of its shares to local investors.

It already sold a 20 percent stake to a local company, Pukuafu Indah, and has agreed to sell 31 percent gradually by 2010, although the government had threatened to annul the firms contract if it did not sell the shares quickly enough.

The Energy Ministry said that if the arbitration court ruled in favor of Indonesias default notice to Newmont, it would be possible for the government to ask the court to terminate the firms mining contract.

The government had given Newmont until March 3 to wrap up the sale of 10 percent of its shares, which were offered in the past two years to local governments.

The company has so far only sold 2 percent to the Sumbawa regency on Jan. 28.

The energy minister, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, said the government would have the attorney general represent Indonesia in court.

Newmont said it regretted the governments decision to go to arbitration, given the progress in the divestiture process.

“This move has triggered a requirement for Newmont Nusa Tenggara and its foreign shareholders to also file arbitration to ensure all rights are preserved and to confirm that the company is not in breach of the contract,” Russell Ball, Newmonts chief finance officer, said in a statement.

Despite the arbitration filing, the company would continue the divestiture process, Ball said.

Newmont is scheduled to offer 7 percent of its shares to local investors each year from 2008 to 2010.

Ball said the firm would continue talks with the government after it was reported this week that Bumi Resources had agreed last year with three local governments in Indonesia to buy 31 percent of Newmonts local unit.

Bumi, a local coal firm controlled by the family of Indonesias chief welfare minister, Aburizal Bakrie, has since said it had no interest in the stake.

Indonesia has some of the worlds largest deposits of copper, tin, nickel and gold, and it has benefited from surging commodity prices.

But analysts say the lack of legal certainty and continuous disputes with Indonesias government have contributed to a slowdown in investment in the countrys mining sector.

(06-20) 13:20 PDT NEW YORK, (AP) —

A common spamming technique of sending unwanted e-mail pitches as image attachments rather than text is on the decline, as spammers continue adapting their methods for sneaking past e-mail filters.

This week, security company McAfee Inc. revised its top 10 predictions for the year to account for the reversal. Another company, IronPort Systems Inc., said image spam now accounts for about 20 percent of all spam, down from 33 percent two months ago.

“It’s been two years since image spam has burst onto the scene. Anti-spam technologies are starting to react to that,” said David Mayer, a product manager at IronPort. “We’ve seen other techniques and technologies rise up to make up” for the decline.

He said spammers are now placing those images on free photo-sharing sites ? the ones people use to send vacation photos to friends and family ? and embedding links to those images in their junk messages. These are difficult for spam filters to block because the same sites are used for legitimate photos as well.

And on Wednesday, IronPort said it saw the first spam attack using PDF attachments, showing spammers’ increased sophistication and willingness to diversify their portfolio.

Images are popular among spammers because filters have no easy way of knowing whether a graphical file contains an innocent photograph of a friend’s birthday party or embedded text pitching Viagra or a company’s stock.

Filters initially applied a mathematical formula to known spam images, generating a unique signature that software can use to flag junk. But then spammers circulated tools to automatically vary images ever so slightly ? a change in color here, a slightly larger border there ? changing the signature and helping spam escape detection.

But filters have now gotten better at scanning the contents of the attachments, leading spammers to link instead to images elsewhere. Within weeks, Mayer said, use of that technique rose from almost nothing to about 5 percent of all spam.

Major U.S. stock indexes squandered earlier gains, reversing to the downside in the final hour of trading on Wednesday as investors reaffirmed their feeling that the Federal Reserve’s plan to take more creative steps to ease the liquidity crisis is still insufficient in addressing the problem. Through coordinated action with a handful of other central banks, the Federal Reserve will employ at least $64 billion in auctions and foreign exchange swaps to grease the wheels of the global financial system.

On Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average was the embodiment of the whipsaw action we’ve come to expect from equity markets in recent months. The U.S. benchmark index gave back a 271 point increase from earlier in the session and was trading 95.36 points, or 0.71%, lower at 13,337.41. The broader S&P 500 index was off 5.89 points, or 0.40%, to 1,471.76. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index slid 8.34 points, or 0.31%, to $2,644.01.

Equity indexes retreated amid questions about why the Fed waited until Wednesday to announce the plan, S&P MarketScope said. A senior Fed official said the plan was the result of weeks of work coordinated with other central banks, which wanted the announcement made when all banks were open. The official said the announcement had nothing to do with the negative reaction to the rate cuts on Tuesday, CNBC Business News reported. Selling into earlier strength of financial stocks also contributed to the pullback from the highs.

But some market observors refuse to accept that explanation and that has the market heading into year-end with questions about the Fed and uncertainty about the economy, causing many portfolio managers to close their books for the year, S&P MarketScope said.

Investors dumped stocks Tuesday afternoon after the Fed seemed not to be taking the credit crisis seriously enough with 25 basis-point cuts in the federal funds and discount rates. About a half hour before the start of Wednesday’s trading, the Fed announced some innovative actions designed to ease the liquidity crunch.

The Fed said it will set up a temporary Term Auction Facility that will allow the Fed to auction term funds to depository banks against the wide range of collateral that can be used to secure loans at the discount window. All depository banks judged to be sound financially by their local Reserve Bank and that are eligible to borrow under the primary credit discount window program will be permitted to participate in these auctions.

The Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s policy arm, has also authorized setting up temporary foreign exchange swap lines, initially for a total $24 billion, with the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada and the Swiss National Bank that will enable European banks to go through European central banks to satisfy their dollar reserve needs rather than having to get them directly from U.S. Reserve banks. The swap lines have been approved for a period of up to six months.

The Fed’s first auction for $20 billion will take place on Dec. 17, with a second auction of up to $20 billion slated for Dec. 20. The funds from those auctions will mature on Jan. 17 and Jan. 31, 2008, respectively. Two additional auctions have been scheduled for January.

The moves are intended to provide more liquidity to tight financial markets and are specifically targeting the Libor rate, on which most U.S. homeowner adjustable-rate mortgages due to reset are based and which continues to rise. The hope is that the auctions will attract bidders among the banks who hesitated to take advantage of the discount window, as this takes the stigma out of such discounted term loans, CNBC said.

On Tuesday, the market’s disappointment focused on the central bank’s failure to close the gap between the Fed funds rate and the discount rate, providing no incentive for banks to seek relief at the discount window.

Although the nominal rate of the one-month London interbank offered rate, or Libor, remains lower than it was in early September, the problem is that Fed isn’t getting a one-for-one shift lower in Libor for each of its easing moves, said T.J.

January 11, 2008 — Kellwood shareholder Sun Capital Partners said the seller of Phat Farm and Sag Harbor clothing should halt a tender offer for as much as $60 million of its bonds.

Kellwood, which rejected two buyout offers from Sun Capital last year, is favoring bondholders at the expense of stock investors through the offer, Boca Raton, Fla.-based Sun Capital told the company in a letter yesterday.

On Wednesday, Kellwood offered to buy 7.875 percent notes maturing in 2009 using some of the proceeds from the sale of its Smart Shirts business. Sun Capital holds about 9.9 percent of St. Louis-based Kellwood’s shares.

Kellwood’s revolving credit facility can pay for expansion plans at a cheaper rate than the debt it’s repurchasing, the company said in a regulatory filing in response to the Sun Capital letter.

Kellwood rose 62 cents, or 3.9 percent, to $16.47 in New York Stock Exchange trading.

PFAFFIKON, Switzerland, June 26 (UPI) — Switzerland-based Oerlikon Solar has announced it has developed a transparent conductive oxide process.

Oerlikon is a leading global supplier of thin film production equipment.

The fully developed transparent conductive oxide 1,200 coating are light-transmitting layers acting as electrodes and light traps that are key components in thin film silicon modules. Oerlikon Solar is the only company to offer the combination of the TCO process step with its own production technology for solar modules of thin film silicon.

During the TCO process, the optical absorption of the TCO layer must be low and the light-trapping potential as high as possible. Ultimately, these factors determine the performance of the solar modules and directly reduce the cost per watt peak.

The new plant from Oerlikon Solar is based on a low-pressure chemical vapor deposition process, using low-cost, environmentally friendly zinc oxide instead of the commonly used fluoride doped tin oxide.

“This customer activity further solidifies our leadership position over our competitors in the marketplace,” said Uwe Kruger, chief executive officer of Oerlikon. “By introducing this unique TCO technology, we become the first-to-market and advance the performance of thin film silicon modules together with our customers.”

The first solar factory of this new generation has been built in Erfurt, Germany. Production is expected to start in August.