As reported a couple of weeks ago in the entrepreneur, BHP Billiton Ltd., the world's biggest mining company, is finally studying the next steps in its takeover approach for Rio Tinto Group, which continues to reject talks on the $137 billion (£68.5 billion) proposal. Rio Tinto Group is the world's third-largest mining company and asked U.K. regulators yesterday to force BHP Billiton Ltd. to formalize its position. BHP Billiton Ltd. wants to create a company that would be the biggest producer of energy coal, copper and aluminium.

BHP Billiton Ltd is under pressure to increase its offer. Perennial Investment Partners Ltd., Argo Investments Ltd. and Baker Steel Capital Managers LLP say the three-for-one stock offer is too low. BHP Billiton Ltd needs to come back with an offer of 3.9 shares for every Rio share to get Rio to engage. BHP Billiton Ltd’s CEO, Marius Klopper (pictured) said in a speech for presentation to investors, ``We continue to believe that our proposal is compelling and in the interests of both sets of shareholders,'' (source: Bloomberg) - BHP Billiton's offer rejected

Pat Shanahan, Boeing's man on the hot seat offered customers yesterday and Wall Street the makings of a credible plan to keep the troubled 787 Dreamliner on track to meet its revised schedule.

But investors will have to fly on the faith of Shanahan's commendable record of fixing some of Boeing's most intractable problem programs. While offering insight into how he is making operational changes since the program schedule was reset in October, Shanahan, vice-president and general manager of the 787 program, and Boeing Commercial Airplane CEO Scott Carson offered few new details on the issues that matter the most to the 787's fate: namely, how to get from zero to six airplanes a month by 2009 and how exactly to prod some struggling suppliers such as Vought Aircraft to step up to the daunting challenge. Other key questions relate to weight reduction, aircraft certification, and suppliers being able to adapt quickly to engineering changes. (source: Business Week) - BP fined for a record amount (Article on Dreamliner delays)

Competition Commission’s Business and Enterprise Secretary, John Hutton, is expected to publish within the next week the Competition Commission’s conclusions from its inquiry into the legitimacy of BSkyB’s shareholding in ITV.

Mr Hutton can reject any penalty on Sky proposed by the commission, but is bound to accept the regulator’s in-principle findings — as long as they are purely on competition grounds. Yesterday, the commission inquiry team met to consider the case and will now finalise its report in the hope of delivering it to Mr Hutton this week.

The regulator is expected to repeat its provisional conclusion that Sky’s 17.9% ITV stake is too high and in breach of competition law. Mr Hutton then has up to 30 days before he publishes the commission’s report. Sky is 39.1% owned by News Corporation. The level to which the commission wants Sky to sell down is not clear and Sky has said that it was willing to put a 3.9% holding into an independent trust. (source: Timesonline) - Heathrow voted worst airport (article on BSkyB ITV shares)

Lemsip & Dettol brands sold to Reckitt Benckiser

The owner of brands such as Lemsip and Dettol, Reckitt Benckiser, took its first steps into the US healthcare market yesterday by unveiling a £1.1 billion all-cash deal to buy Adams Respiratory Therapeutics, a Nasdaq-listed pharmaceutical company. Adams, markets two cough mixtures in the US, Mucinex and Delsym, which together generate annual sales of more than $322 million (£157 million).

Reckitt will pay $60 a share for the company, representing a 37% premium to Adams' closing price of $43.68 on Friday. It is the Anglo-Dutch group's second major acquisition in the over-the-counter pharmaceuticals sector in the past two years. Last year, the group bought Boots Healthcare International, which includes the Strepsils and Disprin cold remedy brands, for £1.93 billion.

Mr Becht, chief executive, said the deal would be immediately earnings enhancing, adding that the group expects to achieve "substantial" cost synergies from the acquisition, although there would be a one-off restructuring charge of $60 million. (source: The Independent)

Reuters is in discussion with The New York Times about supplying business news to the American newspaper, after reaching a similar agreement with its sister title the International Herald Tribune .

The tie-ups are designed to augment both titles’ business coverage, in an attempt to fend off the competitive threat from The Wall Street Journal , which is due to be acquired by News Corporation this week.

From January, the International Herald Tribune will feature five or six pages of business coverage under the brand Business with Reuters and part of the newspaper’s website will be co-branded.

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, plans to broaden The Wall Street Journal’ s focus so that it better competes with The New York Times on its home turf, and to invest in its international editions to compete with the International Herald Tribune abroad. (source: Timesonline)

Alfred McAlpine to be sold

Alfred McAlpine is to be sold to Britain’s second biggest construction company, Carillion, for £572 million to create one of Britain’s biggest support services and construction companies. It is understood that Carillion will pay 558p per share for London-based McAlpine.The offer was down from its previously agreed 585p a share proposal. News of the deal sent McAlpine shares up 27p to 518p, while Carillion shares were down 22.25p to 341.25p at 9.15am.

The purchase, which creates a company with annual sales of about £4.7 billion, will give Carillion direct access to raw materials used in construction and generate annual savings of £30 million. The deal will also boost Carillion’s position in other support services, adding McAlpine's strength in financial services and retail to its existing focus on education, health, defence, transport infrastructure, telecommunications and insurance.

Carillion said it had already received favourable responses from McAlpine directors and investors representing 17.9% of the issued shares in the company. In August, McAlpine announced plans to split into two listed companies, effectively demerging support services from its construction activities, which it planned to complete during the spring of next year.

McAlpine had previously rejected two approaches from Carillion, one in October priced at 570p per share and the other in August at 560p. It rebuffed both proposals because it said it believed they materially undervalued the company. (source: Timesonline)

Drawing up this year’s list for businessman of the year has provoked a furious debate among The Sunday Times business staff, and there were verbal fisticuffs over the omission of, for example, Emilio Botin, chairman of Banco Santander, the fast-growing Spanish bank. This has been the year when the gift of perfect timing has separated the great from the merely good. Our finalists have demonstrated the knack of putting themselves, and their organisations, in the right place at the right time.

Botin got the best of the biggest financial-services deal of all time, when a consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland bought ABN Amro, the Dutch bank, for €71 billion (£51 billion). While Botin was a junior partner in the consortium, he managed to sell on ABN’s Italian assets for a tidy €2 billion profit.

Sergio Marchionne, leader of the remarkable turnaround at Fiat, was a contender, as was Katsuaki Watanabe, president of Toyota, which is on the brink of overtaking General M as the world’s No 1 carmaker.

John McAdam, chief executive of ICI, who was a finalist last year, only narrowly missed out again for doing a great job in selling the chemicals group to Dutch rival Akzo Nobel.

The Times now invite you to have your say. Please e-mail them at businessperson2007@sunday-times.co.uk and let them know what you think. Your opinions will help the judges choose from an impressive field.

Lloyd Blankfein, GOLDMAN SACHS
The Goldman Sachs chief executive grew up in a tough Brooklyn neighbourhood and won a scholarship to study law at Harvard. When he joined the famed investment bank, he wondered how he would ever survive. But survive he did, and prospered, reinventing himself and becoming one of the key architects of the bank’s own reinvention.

Goldman has moved from a firm that made money by giving advice on deals, to doing deals itself. And it called the credit crunch better than rivals, paring back sub-prime exposure early in the year and hedging most of what remained.

Clive Cowdery, RESOLUTION
This year saw the battle of the “zombie” funds – pools of life-insurance funds that have stopped to write new business, but live on to service current policy-holders.

The big winner was Clive Cowdery, founder and chairman of Resolution, one of the first and largest of the zombie players, who will walk away with £151m after selling the group to rival Pearl.

Less than four years ago, Cowdery had the vision to set up Resolution with £500,000 of his own money. The firm pulled off a number of deals, then merged with Britannic and embarked on a frenzy of ever-bigger transactions, becoming a FTSE 100 company worth £5 billion.

This year he proved a pragmatic dealmaker. Having agreed a merger with Friends Provident, he flushed out Standard Life and then Pearl, netting another £200m for shareholders.

Clara Furse, LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE
This will be the first Christmas in three years that Clara Furse, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, has not spent in the heat of a takeover battle.

She has made a name for herself in the City for saying no. Over the past two years, she has seen off approaches ranging from Australia’s Macquarie and Germany’s Deutsche Börse to America’s Nasdaq.

But that in itself does not make her a candidate. What does is her nimble-footedness in ensuring that despite the multiple takeover distractions, the LSE has enhanced its reputation as a global centre for equity fundraising.

With the acquisition of Italy’s Borsa Italiana, Furse has retaken the initiative and if she does want to pursue further tie-ups with other exchanges, it will now be of her own volition.

Chris Hohn, TCI
When Chris Hohn, who heads the TCI fund, blocked Deutsche Börse’s bid for the London Stock Exchange last year, he was dubbed a “locust” by the German establishment. But even his admirers were stunned by his target this year: ABN Amro, the pillar of the Dutch establishment.
In February, Hohn dropped a letter to ABN’s chairman dissecting the bank’s failings, lambasting its “terrible” shareholder return and demanding the bank break itself up or sell itself. While the Dutch establishment spluttered, the letter kick-started the biggest financial-services takeover battle of all time.

Steve Jobs, APPLE
The Apple boss won three years ago, and he is back in the running again, despite some opposition. “You can’t put Jobs in,” moaned one member of the business team. “The iPhone isn’t the iPod.”

There are a lot of customers who would beg to differ.

Jobs makes the final 10 because the iPhone, a device that incorporates a mobile phone, music player, web browser and personal organiser, represents the fifth major industry (personal computing, desktop publishing, film animation, and music retailing were the four before mobile phones) he has shaken up in a remarkable business career.

This fact is pointed out in this month’s Fortune magazine, which makes Jobs No 1 in its annual list of the most powerful business people in the world.

Finian O’Sullivan, BURREN ENERGY
Burren Energy began 12 years ago in O’Sullivan’s garage in Hampshire. Ten days ago it agreed a £1.7 billion takeover by Eni, the Italian oil group, with the possibility of a higher counter-offer from KNOC, South Korea’s national oil company still to come.

This rapid accumulation of wealth was based on O’Sulli-van’s willingness to go where others would not – resource-rich but uncomfortable places like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Turkmenistan.

John Paulson, PAULSON & CO
The sub-prime crisis brought financial hardship and woe to most major financial institutions, but success and a fabulous pay-day to hedge-fund managers like John Paulson, who runs Paulson & Co from offices in Madison Avenue, Manhattan.

Last year Paulson told investors he thought the American sub-prime mortgage market was going to crash, and raised $2 billion for two funds that would bet that way. By the end of September, the two funds were worth $8 billion.

It is estimated that his firm’s reward for such confidence will eventually be between $2 billion and $4 billion, making him the highest paid hedge-fund manager in history.

Ratan Tata, TATA
The head of one of India’s largest and oldest business empires had a breakthough year in his bid to go global. He paid $6.7 billion to win control of Corus, the Anglo-Dutch steel group that contains the rump of British Steel.

The deal made Tata Steel an international force, and demonstrated to the world that Ratan Tata was prepared to be aggressive in his move offshore.

Next on the radar are Jaguar and Land Rover, the British car marques, for which Tata Motor is the leading bidder.

Willie Walsh, BRITISH AIRWAYS
The chief executive of British Airways has a lower profile than his predecessor, the charismatic Sir Rod Eddington, but has tackled the difficult issues that have dogged the airline for years.

The biggest of these was the company’s hefty pension deficit, which has (hopefully) been dealt with through a funding deal laboriously hammered out with trustees and unions.

Walsh has also confronted some of the company’s old-fash-ioned working practices in the run-up to a move next year to a new base at Heathrow.

BA now has a fair chance of meeting its long-held goal of a 10% profit margin, and Walsh is even looking at growth, with a big new aircraft order, expansion at London City airport anda plan to launch transatlantic services from the Continent.

Wendelin Wiedeking, PORSCHE
This year Wiedeking, Porsche’s maverick boss, will earn about €70m, making him probably the best-paid industrial executive in the world.

His remuneration has sparked political controversy in Germany, but you can’t deny he is being rewarded for success. Not only has Porsche brilliantly widened its niche sportscar market, with sales growing from 12,000 a year 15 years ago to 100,000 now, but it has increased earnings by taking a large hedge bet on the weakening dollar.

What’s more, as a result of a power play executed against the backdrop of manoeuvring between two of Germany’s most famous industrial families, the Porsches and the Piechs, Porsche is now poised to take majority ownership of Volkswagen, a much larger car company and possibly the only one with a realistic chance of challenging Toyota’s dominance.

PREVIOUS WINNERS
2006 Lakshmi Mittal, chief executive of Arcelor Mittal
2005 Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google
2004 Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple
2003 Sir Ken Morrison, chairman of Wm Morrison
2002 Eliot Spitzer, New York attorney-general

News Corporation on taking over Dow Jones

With a week to go before the News Corporation, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, takes control of Dow Jones & Company, there are already management changes under way at the top of Dow Jones. Richard F. Zannino, Dow Jones’s chief executive, will leave the company after staying for a time to help with the transition, to be succeeded by Les Hilton, executive chairman of News International. News International includes News Corporation’s British newspapers: The Times of London, The Sunday Times, The News of the World and The Sun.

Executives at both companies say there will be a broader sweep of the upper echelon at Dow Jones in the next few weeks, both to eliminate duplication and to make way for Mr. Murdoch’s people. Mr. Zannino’s departure was announced by the company yesterday, a week ahead of the shareholder vote that is expected to seal the deal. He will stay on through a transition period.

Mr. Zannino said the choice to leave was his; others at Dow Jones were divided as to whether that was so, while some said the decision was mutual. Mr. Murdoch has a history of putting his loyalists atop newly acquired operations. Mr. Zannino is also in line for a financial windfall when he leaves, under a change-of-control provision Dow Jones adopted last summer. His exit package is worth more than $26 million (£13 million), including $3.4 million (£1.7 million) in severance pay and nearly $7 million (£3.5 million) in shares, according to estimates from James F. Reda & Associates, a consulting firm.

Mr. Zannino, 49, who became chief executive almost two years ago, is widely credited with making Dow Jones run more efficiently, and he led a shift toward electronic media and away from ink and paper. Under him, Dow Jones bought MarketWatch.com and the half of the Factiva archive service that it did not already own, and sold several small newspapers. News Corp is acquiring Dow Jones for about $5 billion (£2.5 billion) in a deal that is expected to close next week.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Zannino said his legacy would be “getting us all to think like a media company rather than a newspaper company; viewing The Wall Street Journal as a franchise, as opposed to a newspaper.” (source: The New York Times) - New Bid for Northern Rock by Olivant

News Corporation has confirmed that James Murdoch, the chief executive of BSkyB, has been appointed as its new chairman and chief executive for Europe and Asia. Mr Murdoch will step down from his role as chief executive at BSkyB but will become non-executive chairman and succeed his father, Rupert Murdoch, who has stepped down as a director of the broadcasting group.

He will report to Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corporation.
James Murdoch will be replaced by Jeremy Darroch, who is the chief financial officer of BSkyB. Sky is 39.1% owned by News Corporation. Commenting on the appointment, Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, said: "James is a talented and proven executive with a rare blend of international perspective and deep, hands-on experience in improving operational results. This is the right time to align our operations in Europe and Asia under new, structured group leadership."

The decision to move Mr Murdoch, who will become chairman of News Corporation’s European and Asian businesses, clearly positions the 34-year-old as the most likely successor to his father's leading roles at News Corporation, the media group that also owns the MySpace website and the Fox film studio.

James Murdoch, who was previously a member of News Corp's board between 2000 and 2003, said today: "I am excited to be rejoining News Corporation in this new role leading News Corporation's businesses across Europe and Asia, and I am delighted to continue working with the exceptional team at Sky in my new role as Non-Executive Chairman and as a Director." (source: Timesonline) - BSkyB buys Amstrad

RAB Capital, one of Northern Rock's largest shareholders, has confirmed it is backing Olivant's rescue bid for the stricken bank. Luqman Arnold's Olivant Advisors today said it has received non-binding letters of commitment from five institutional Northern Rock shareholders, who own 23% of the stricken bank, casting doubt on the future of Virgin Money's rescue offer. RAB, holder of 6.6% of Northern Rock, has confirmed it is supporting the former Abbey National chief executive's bid.

SRM Global, the largest shareholder in Northern Rock with over 9%, was unavailable to comment on whether it was backing Olivant's bid as Olivant has unveiled its proposal on the deadline for submitting bids to acquire the troubled mortgage lender which yesterday admitted for the first time that it has borrowed £25 billion worth of emergency funding from the Bank of England.

It also emerged last night that JC Flowers, which had been a serious contender to rescue Northern Rock, has pulled out of the race because it was unable to structure a deal that could both the Government and shareholders happy.

Olivant's proposal includes raising funds of up to £650 million through a rights issue. In contrast, Olivant said today it would issue the shares "at or around" the prevailing market price. Shares in Northern Rock hovered around the £1 mark again today after falling 1.46% to 101.5p. Richard Branson's Virgin Money, which is Northern Rock's preferred bidder, is also proposing raising £650 million through a rights issue but at a heavily discounted 25p.

Olivant said Northern Rock's total £25 billion in debt would be repaid to the Bank of England by the end of 2009 "through active operational management, accelerated through external market financing". The investment group said £10 billion to £15 billion of the £25 billion debt would be repaid after completion of the rights issue.

Olivant also confirmed it would retain the Northern Rock brand and that Mr Arnold be parachuted in to become Northern Rock’s executive chairman, with Kirk Stephenson, Olivant’s chief operating officer, taking up a role as a non-executive director at the bank. Virgin has indicated that they will change the Northern Rock name to Virgin. (source: Timesonline) - New Bid for Northern Rock by Olivant, Northern Rock offers below value, Final bids for Northern Rock today, New player in Northern Rock bid, Virgin pushes forward in takeover, BAA must halve queueing times to avoid fines, SAB Miller to buy Royal Grolsch, BHP Billiton's offer rejected

Alitalia SpA in sight for Air France-KLM

Alitalia SpA is said to be in sight for the world’s biggest airline, Air France-KLM Group, as it will try and revive the unprofitable carrier that the Italian government is trying to sell. Air France is one of three candidates to buy Alitalia, the Paris-based company said in a statement today. Deutsche Lufthansa AG of Germany and Italy's Air One may also present offers before today's deadline. Rome-based Alitalia will select a partner for exclusive talks by the end of the month.

Alitalia hasn't reported an operating profit in nine years and is losing more than 1 million euros ($1.5 million) a day. ``No one is going to pay a premium for Alitalia,'' said Gianmaria Bergantino, head of asset management at Bank Insinger de Beaufort NV in Rome, who owns Alitalia convertible bonds. ``Whoever buys it is buying it for its airport slots.'' He spoke before the announcement was made.

Air France-KLM has sent a non-binding expression of interest, it said today's statement. The company already owns about 2% of Alitalia, which was initially slated to join the 2004 merger between the French and Dutch airlines. The Italian carrier was excluded because of mounting losses. (source: Bloomsberg)

Despite trying for months to find a new non-executive chairman for Sports Direct is still looking for this corporate vacancy that is proving impossible to fill. The role would hand the lucky candidate a competitive salary and a once-in-a-life-time opportunity to etch their name in the City’s memory for years to come. Senior headhunters said yesterday that the task could prove extremely difficult, given the challenge of working alongside Mike Ashley, the tycoon who founded the business with one shop in 1982.

Rivals also point to another looming problem – the state of its Sports World and Lillywhites stores. John David Group said on Tuesday that it believed shoppers were getting “tired” of the discount approach taken by Sports Direct, which has made its name on the back of a “pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap” strategy.

Shares in Sports Direct have plunged since listing in March at 300p in a float that handed Mr Ashley a £929 million windfall. A profit warning last month pushed the stock to a new low of only 93.25p. Yesterday they closed at 100p. Despite his vast experience as a retailer, Mr Ashley has admitted that he was “very green” when he floated the business and that he found being in charge of a public company “challenging”.

Analysts believe that Mr Ashley could soon buy the business back. He has a near 68% stake and Sports Direct will ask investors for the right to buy back more shares at an extraordinary general meeting in two weeks. (source: Timesonline)

PepsiCo is set to deal a blow to Apple’s dominance of online music and the music labels’ best efforts to fight piracy. Pepsi is preparing a year-long marketing campaign in the United States in which up to a billion digital music tracks will be given away. Based on the prices charged by Apple, the largest online music retailer, the offer could be worth up to $1 billion (£490 million).

Crucially, the drinks group is believed to be teaming up with Amazon.com, the online retailer vying with Apple’s iTunes music store, to distribute the giveaway tracks. It is also thought that the music will be distributed free of the digital rights management (DRM) technology that limits where legitimately downloaded tracks can be played.

There is speculation that PepsiCo’s huge distribution of DRM-free music could compel other labels, such as Warner Music and Sony BMG, to use the format. This year Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, said that he would drop DRM “in a heartbeat”, but claimed to have had his hands tied by the labels.

Pepsi’s promotion – the latest shot in its long battle with Coca-Cola – is to start in February, in concert with the Super Bowl, one of the biggest advertising magnets in the world. It echoes a giveaway in 2003, in which Apple and Pepsi offered 100 million free tracks Amazon’s music ambitions need a boost. Since it began its download service in September, it has captured an estimated 3% of the market. By contrast, Apple accounts for about 80% and in July said that it had sold more than three billion songs.

PepsiCo is planning to place tokens on five billion drink containers. Consumers will have to collect five tokens to qualify for free tracks. In theory, the campaign could flood the market with $1 billion of free music (Apple charges 99% per DRM-free track), but redemption rates on these types of offers are usually low, at about 2%.

Despite Apple’s success, online music sales still account for only a tenth of the total market and are not yet growing at a rate to compensate for the decline in revenues from CDs – sales of which have fallen by about a fifth in America this year. (source: Timesonline)

New Bid for Northern Rock by Olivant

The former Abbey chief executive consortium (Olivant) led by Luqman Arnold, is expected to table a revised bid for Northern Rock by the end of tomorrow. It is understood that Olivant is to be in talks with both Northern Rock and potential funding banks as it hammers out the final details of its offer. This comes after revised bids from JC Flowers and Cerberus, the American private equity firms, despite Virgin Group winning preferred-bidder status in the auction of the troubled Newcastle-based bank.

The bank was forced to seek emergency funding from the Bank of England after it failed to raise cash in the wholesale markets as a result of the credit crunch. Meanwhile, staff at Northern Rock have been handed a £200 Christmas bonus and are also understood to have received a 2% one-off sum and 4% salary increase.

Shares in Northern Rock closed down 6p at 103p yesterday. (source: Timesonline)

News Corporation, parent company of The Times, bought the leading American religious website Beliefnet yesterday for an undisclosed amount in an effort to tap the faith market in a country where 88% of the population say that they pray regularly.

Beliefnet, formed eight years ago, attracts 3.1 million monthly users. It was sold by its founder Steve Waldman, who wanted to find a big media company willing to provide investment that the standalone business could not afford.

News Corp is perhaps best-known for its newspapers, with titles such as The Sun and the New York Post, and mass entertainment through the 20th Century Fox film studio. However, the media group also owns a handful of faith-based businesses, including Zondervan, the largest Christian publisher in the United States, and Fox Faith, which makes faith-based films.

Appealing to a Christian audience is big business in the United States, where films such as Walt Disney’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe are marketed, at least partly, at a Christian audience. Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of Christ earned $611 million (£295 million) worldwide despite an uncompromising narrative, of which $370 million (£135 million) was taken in the United States.

The website will be absorbed into News Corp’s Fox Entertainment Group, owner of the Hollywood film studio, rather than its Fox Interactive Media division, which is the group that includes MySpace, the social networking website. (source: Timesonline)

Founder of the five-year old Nectar card programme, Sir Keith Mills, set himself up for a £161m payday yesterday after agreeing to sell the customer loyalty company he started. Aeroplan, operator of Air Canada's frequent-flier programme, agreed to pay £350 million ($700 million) in cash for Loyalty Management Group, in which Sir Keith holds a 46% stake. Most of the company's management, including the chief executive Alex Moorhead, will stay at LMG, though Sir Keith will step down as chairman.

Warburg Pincus, the private equity firm that granted £25 million ($50 million) in start-up funding for the business five years ago, will pocket about £117 million for its one-third stake, with the remainder going to certain top managers who held the balance of the private company's shares.

Nectar runs loyalty programmes with partners including J Sainsbury, BP, Barclaycard, and Debenhams. (source: The Independent)

Ambramovich to acquire 40% of Highland Gold

Russia’s richest main, Mr Roman Abramovich, will acquire a 40% interest in Highland Gold Mining Ltd for $400 million (£200 million) by subscribing to a new share issue in Russia's fourth-largest gold miner. Highland Gold, which produced 3.2% of Russia's gold last year, has seen its London-listed stock plummet to a record low this year after falling short of production targets and the disposal of a mine where 25 people died in a fire in 2006.

The financial and political clout of the billionaire helping Highland Gold Mining Ltd to fulfill expansion plans and acquire more assets in Russia has helped Highland's stock rose on Tuesday to its highest in over seven months. Gold prices hit a 28-year high last month as oil rose toward the $100 (£50) milestone and the dollar sank to record lows against the Euro. Russia has gold reserves second only to South Africa's, but ranks only sixth in terms of output. (The Guardian)

The world’s biggest Finland-based mobile handset maker, Nokia, is set to go head-to-head with iTunes to offer free music downloads to buyers of its new music phones. Nokia has announced a deal with Universal Music to provide the label's releases, and aims to ship more than 180 million music-enabled phones in 2008.

The company's intention to expand into music will be of concern to Apple, which dominates the digital music market with its iTunes online download store. Nokia’s executive vice-president and general manager for multimedia, Mr Anssi Vanjoki said: "Even if you listened to music 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you would still only scratch the surface of the music that we're making available," The company added that it was in discussions with a number of other record labels regarding the use of their material.

Meanwhile, at its annual investor day Nokia forecast that the overall market for mobile phone sales would grow by around 10 per cent next year. Last week the world's number two mobile maker, Samsung Electronics, estimated market growth of 12%. Nokia added that it expects margins of 20% from its phones and services business over the next couple of years and aims to increase market share.

Shares in Nokia fell around 4% on the margins announcement, with investors expecting a more positive forecast from its key business. (source: Timesonline)