Freeport, Peru miners to hold strike talks Thursday
LIMA Oct 18 (Reuters) - Talks between the Cerro Verde mine
and union leader were scheduled for Thursday in what would be a
final bid to end a 20-day-old pay strike, a regional government
official in Peru said on Tuesday.The mine, controlled by Freeport-McMoRan (FCX.N), produces
2 percent of the world’s copper. Production has not been
“materially impacted” because it is operating with staff who
volunteered to work under strike conditions, Cerro Verde said.Union members said last week they had given up on dialogue
because the mine was not respecting the strike, but said on
Tuesday they would attend the meeting. Workers want an 11
percent raise while the company has offered 3 percent.”A call has been made for the company to join Cerro Verde
workers on Thursday morning and make a last effort to resolve
the conflict,” said Wilmer Mixcan, head of labor relations for
the regional government in Arequipa, near the mine.The government, which declared the strike legal for the
first time in Cerro Verde’s 40-year history, has said the
company must pay a fine for replacing striking workers.Workers took that as a sign the new leftist government of
President Ollanta Humala was taking a more sympathetic view
toward organized labor, but want the government to go a step
farther and define a wage deal.Fifteen workers started a hunger strike on Monday to
pressure authorities to step in and settle the dispute.Analysts have said Cerro Verde could see an impact on
fourth quarter output as the mine has been operating with 600
personnel since the strike started on Sept. 29 instead of its
normal 2,000 workers.Cerro Verde produced 312,336 tonnes of copper in 2010. It
is the third largest copper producer in Peru, the world’s No. 2
copper producer.
Analysis: BlackBerry outage could accelerate shift to iPhone
But this week, Stuart ordered an iPhone from Apple Inc, ending his 7-year relationship with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion.His move highlights how even security-conscious banks and IT managers, who have been among RIM’s most loyal customers, are starting to defect, lured by improvements in rivals that challenge the BlackBerry’s much-vaunted safety features.”RIM has always been at the top of their game when it comes to device management. Apple has caught up,” Stuart said.The BlackBerry has been losing ground in the business market to the iPhone and, to a lesser extent, devices running Google Inc’s Android software, as companies gradually allowed their employees to choose their own mobile devices.This week’s massive BlackBerry network outage, which spanned four continents, is likely to speed up RIM’s decline, analysts said.Many banks already allow employees to choose their devices and the BlackBerry outage is likely to push more in that direction, according to Julie McNelly, an analyst with Aite Group, who advises financial institutions on data security.”The barn door is already open. Most of the horses are already gone,” she said. “This could potentially accelerate the process.”The BlackBerry used to own the corporate market because companies believed RIM was best at protecting enterprise data and prevent the theft of corporate secrets.The outage highlights RIM’s Achilles heel: the fact that all BlackBerry messages are routed through its own data centers means information is more secure, but it also creates a single point of potential failure.Messages sent through phones from Apple and other vendors do not travel through any central network, so they do not have that same weakness.While that has meant rival phones were less secure in the past, many security experts say the iPhone has caught up to the BlackBerry, thanks to improvements in Apple’s latest iOS software. And for Android phones, a proliferation of third party security software have also helped.”In most ways, iOS is at least as secure as BlackBerry, namely in malware prevention, exploit prevention, etc.,” said Charlie Miller, principal research consultant with Accuvant and a highly regarded expert on mobile security.He said the BlackBerry is still superior in data encryption and manageability, but added that “reliability obviously is a problem recently for Blackberry.”CONSUMERIZATIONApple is a big winner when workers get to pick their own phones, a trend known as the consumerization of IT. The iPhone 4S hit store shelves on Friday and thousands of people lined up around the world to get it.Companies can save money when they let employees buy their own phones and pay their own monthly bills. All IT managers have to do is install software that makes it possible for employees to securely access corporate networks.At Credit Suisse, which only started this year to open its network to Apple and Android devices, about one-third of its 25,000 BlackBerry users have already switched phones.That has saved the European bank millions of dollars, according to Stephen Hilton, Credit Suisse’s global head of technology infrastructure services.”We are seeing very rapid adoption of this ‘consumer technology’ platform,” Hilton said. “I suspect this (outage) would be another reason why people may reconsider.”An Aite Group poll of 402 wealth managers conducted before the outage found that 45 percent would choose an iPhone or iPad, compared to 14 percent for a BlackBerry.A survey released this week by Enterprise Management Associates, sponsored by Intel Corp’s McAfee Inc, found that 44 percent of iPhone users were “completely satisfied” with their device, compared with 34 percent for Android smartphones and 16 percent for BlackBerries.”It’s a tough situation to be in,” Forrester Research analyst Christian Kane said of RIM. “Nobody is going to necessarily stop supporting a device over an outage. But it doesn’t do any favors for RIM,” said Kane, who helps big companies decide how quickly they should open up their mobile networks.It’s a mark of the inroads that rivals have made into the corporate market when this week’s BlackBerry outage was shrugged off by many on Wall Street.One finding of an informal Reuters survey of more than 25 financial firms was that a lot of people simply were not bothered by the service interruption, compared to the panic that ensued when the BlackBerry went down in April 2007 and again in February 2008.Wells Fargo said some people saw intermittent disruption to some services; at least two regional banks and one investment bank also said problems were irregular at best and limited to only some employees.One Wall Street banker said he would not have even noticed had his firm’s IT department not said something.”We allow and support a broad range of mobile devices, and expect we will continue to do so. These devices have been stable for a long time, and while we are not happy about the recent outage, we have no immediate plans to discontinue use of the product,” a spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase & Co said in an e-mail.It is hard to estimate BlackBerry’s corporate market share as RIM does not give out much information. But its share of the global smartphone market fell to 11.7 percent in the second quarter from 13.0 percent in the first quarter, according to estimates from Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney.In contrast, Android’s share rose to 43.4 percent from 36.4 percent, and Apple’s rose to 18.2 percent from 16.9 percent.(This story corrects the name of Enterprise Management Associates in theseventh paragraph after the subheadline “Consumerization”.)
Liberia’s Johnson-Sirleaf leads on early vote count
That put the newly-named Nobel Peace laureate well ahead of closest rival Winston Tubman on 26.5 percent, but short of the overall majority she would need to avoid a second-round run-off against the former top U.N. diplomat early next month.National Election Commission chairman James Fromayah told a news conference the tally was based on 195,178 valid ballots counted so far in Sunday’s election, for which 1.8 million Liberians were registered to vote.Former rebel leader Prince Johnson, now a senator in rural Nimba county, scored 19.5 percent, a result which if repeated in the final score could make him a kingmaker for either Johnson-Sirleaf or Tubman.”If there is a run-off, I will get to my constituencies to ask them which way to go. Based on what they will tell me, I will then make a decision, but for now, I cannot say anything. We represent a huge group of people,” Prince Johnson told Reuters earlier on Thursday.Fromayah said there had been no formal complaints from any candidate so far, but added that Tubman had made what he called an unsubstantiated complaint through unofficial channels of some ballot boxes being broken into.The vote is seen as a test of Liberia’s progress since the 1989-2003 civil war killed nearly a quarter of a million people and left infrastructure in ruins. If smooth, the election could pave the way to billions of dollars in investment in Liberia’s mining, energy and agriculture sectors.”We are all waiting for the results, and from my perspective, I think they will be accepted,” said Amadou Kante, a resident of the Sinkor neighborhood in the capital Monrovia.VOTING PEACEFULVoting on Tuesday passed off peacefully in Monrovia. Observer groups said they had received no reports of trouble elsewhere in the country of four million people, but have expressed concern that the results could be a flashpoint.”The mission is of the view that there were no major irregularities and incidents of violence. It estimated that on the whole, the elections of October 11, 2011 were conducted under acceptable conditions of freedom of voters and transparency of the process,” said Attahiru Jega, head of the observer mission from West African bloc ECOWAS.Election watchdog the Carter Center said on Thursday that voting in the election was “peaceful, orderly and remarkably transparent” and urged Liberians to be patient ahead of official results.”Until the NEC (National Election Commission) issues preliminary results, political parties and candidates should refrain from any public statements that might undermine the process,” it said.Johnson-Sirleaf got a pre-poll boost with her award of the Nobel Peace Prize last Friday, but rivals have said Liberians will judge her on her success in fighting poverty in a country with an average annual income of $300 a head.A dispute over the results of the 2005 election, which brought Johnson-Sirleaf to power as Africa’s first freely elected female head of state, triggered several days of rioting.
REFILE-LVMH, HNA, Middle East fund to bid for India DLF’s Amanresorts-sources
DLF declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.DLF has asked for six final bids in a process managed by
Goldman Sachs and Citigroup , which is expected to
be completed in a month’s time and could fetch at least $400
million.
REFILE-LVMH, HNA, Middle East fund to bid for India DLF’s Amanresorts-sources
DLF declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.DLF has asked for six final bids in a process managed by
Goldman Sachs and Citigroup , which is expected to
be completed in a month’s time and could fetch at least $400
million.
UPDATE 1-MetLife considers selling mortgage business
MetLife has also said it might sell its depository business
and de-register as a bank holding company.MetLife Home Loans will continue to make traditional
mortgages while the insurer decides whether to sell the
business. The company said it will continue to service its
mortgage clients.MetLife Home Loans, a division of MetLife Bank, began
making traditional mortgages and reverse mortgages in 2008.
UPDATE 1-MetLife considers selling mortgage business
MetLife has also said it might sell its depository business
and de-register as a bank holding company.MetLife Home Loans will continue to make traditional
mortgages while the insurer decides whether to sell the
business. The company said it will continue to service its
mortgage clients.MetLife Home Loans, a division of MetLife Bank, began
making traditional mortgages and reverse mortgages in 2008.
Indian shares provisionally end up 2.6 pct
The 50-share NSE index provisionally rose 2.59
percent to 5,103.2 points.
