news blog from Yoshie

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UPDATE 3-Mexican tycoon Slim sets sights on digital content

* DLA offers movies, series from U.S. entertainment housesBy Cyntia Barrera DiazMEXICO CITY, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim's America Movil, one of the world's biggest cell phone companies, is buying a digital media firm to bring movies, TV series and music to its growing base of smartphone, tablet and pay-television customers across Latin America.The purchase of Miami-based DLA Inc suggests a more aggressive move from America Movil into video-on-demand and streaming services in Latin America, where it dominates pay television services with more than 11 million subscribers."They have the distribution means, but lack the content," said Actinver analyst Martin Lara. "There is an explosion of content (use) through multiple platforms: cell phones, blackberries, iPads ... the content market is no longer limited to pay television."America Movil did not say how much it is paying Claxson Interactive Group for DLA and could not immediately elaborate on its brief statement to the stock exchange. The deal is pending approval from authorities but is expected to close in the last quarter of 2011.According to DLA's website, the company distributes movies and television series from top U.S. entertainment houses like Walt Disney Co , as well as music to televisions and smartphones alike.Claxson and DLA are owned by the Cisneros Group of Companies, pioneers in the television market in South America.America Movil's chief executive, Daniel Hajj, told Reuters recently he expected the company to expand its online video services in the region, adding Peru and Argentina to its existing offerings in Colombia and Brazil.With the DLA deal, America Movil would join a growing number of companies trying to lure in viewers with more attractive programming in a pay-as-you-go format.Netflix Inc recently launched its online video rental in more than 40 countries and Cuevana, a free service, is also very popular in the region. Last month, Maxcom Telecomunicaciones launched its live television and video rental service in Mexico.GROWING THE BIZAmerica Movil is the biggest cell phone company in Latin America, with 230 million customers. It is also the leading provider of pay television services, via cable or satellite, and expects to double its client base by 2013.Content was one of the pieces missing to round America Movil's offer. With DLA, the Mexican company could bring adult entertainment Playboy TV, music channel DMX or The Concert Channel to clients' screens in most of Latin America.DLA has three business branches: video-on-demand with a vast library of titles to watch and pause at will; a broadband service available via any device with Internet access; and pay-per-view, offering 18 channels with top Hollywood productions.It was not immediately clear if America Movil was offering this new service in Mexico, where earlier this year its sister company Telefonos de Mexico lost a battle to get a government permission to offer television services in the country.Shares in America Movil in Mexico were down 1.39 percent at 15.58 pesos while its New York-traded shares were down 2.3 percent at $23.30.

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WRAPUP 1-Chances of U.S. deficit panel success unclear

* Super committee urged to stay away from defense cuts* Farm subsidy cuts likely to be proposedBy Donna Smith and Richard CowanWASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Whether the special "super committee" of Congress will succeed in its mission to slash U.S. deficits is up in the air, a panel member said on Friday, as some lawmakers tried to fence off large budget items like defense.U.S. Representative Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic member of the special panel, said he was "absolutely convinced" the six Democrats and six Republicans would try hard to reach agreement on a plan by its Nov. 23 deadline. The panel has been asked to find at least $1.2 trillion in savings over 10 years."Whether we are able to overcome some of the obstacles by the end of the day is still unclear," Van Hollen said at an event sponsored by the National Journal.The panel of senators and U.S. House of Representatives members has been meeting, mostly behind closed doors, for more than a month in an effort to put together a deficit reduction package. They have said very little publicly about their deliberations or whether any progress has been made on the politically explosive issues of tax hikes and spending cuts for government healthcare and and retirement programs.During bitter debt limit negotiations that led to an August agreement creating the super committee, Republicans firmly refused to consider Democratic demands that tax increases be part of any package that included spending cuts for Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs for the elderly and poor.Some Republicans on the super committee now appear open to the idea of closing some corporate tax breaks to increase revenues and lower corporate income tax rates, according to lobbyists familiar with the discussions.Van Hollen declined to discuss the tax issues being considered by the super committee. But he said tax code reform is one way to raise revenues."One way to address the revenue piece of the puzzle is through tax reform," Van Hollen said. "You can apply that concept equally through the individual side and the corporate side."While the super committee is unlikely to have enough time to write an overhaul of the tax code, it could instruct the tax-writing committees of Congress to undertake such an effort next year.RARE AGREEMENT: DEFENSE CUTSThe panel is reviewing a large number of budget proposals from the regular committees of Congress.Most of the committees split along party lines in their suggestions with Democrats urging the super committee to avoid cuts in health and retirement benefits and Republicans urging an overhaul of those programs to put them on a more sustainable financial footing.Senate Finance Committee Republicans called for a series of tax cuts that they have long advocated and asked the super committee to cap the individual and corporate tax rates at 25 percent. The current top rates are 35 percent.Democrats meanwhile continued their push for more revenues to relieve pressure on domestic government programs that have shouldered the burden of two previous budget-cutting efforts.But in a rare show of agreement, Democrats and Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee urged the panel to reject further defense spending cuts. In separate letters to the super committee they argued that such a move would hurt military preparedness as well as the economy."If further cuts to the military are implemented ... these cuts would pose a serious threat to the nation's readiness to respond to current and future global security challenges, break the back of our armed forces while slowing our economic recovery, and do little to resolve our debt crisis," said committee Chairman Howard McKeon.Walling off the military from spending cuts would make the super committee's work an even tougher uphill climb.Failure by the super committee to reach agreement would trigger $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, starting in 2013, evenly divided between military and domestic programs.Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told McKeon's panel on Thursday that defense spending cuts beyond the $450 billion over the next decade that lawmakers have already approved would "devastate our national security."Meanwhile Senate and House agriculture committees, possibly hoping to head off even deeper cuts by the super committee, are expected to propose about $23 billion in farm subsidy reductions. The proposal would be tied to the creation of a new crop subsidy system, according to farm lobbyists..

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UPDATE 1-Northrop pulls out of Farnborough air show

By Andrea Shalal-EsaWASHINGTON, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Northrop Grumman Corp on Thursday pulled out of the 2012 international air show in Farnborough, England, a dramatic move underscoring the company's drive to cut costs as it prepares for leaner times in the global defense market.Northrop has participated in the air shows -- which alternate between Paris and Farnborough -- each year since it merged with Grumman in 1994, said spokesman Randy Belote.Belote said the company had already been reducing its footprint at the international air shows in recent years, but pulling out completely would save millions of dollars.He said it did not diminish the company's commitment to Britain or other international customers.Virginia-based defense consultant Loren Thompson said it would be the first time in decades that the company -- one of the five largest U.S. defense contractors -- was not present at the big international showcase of commercial and military aircraft."This is just the latest indication of how determined Chairman Wes Bush is to cut costs," Thompson told Reuters. "They're going to break the model in terms of what is expected in terms of industry leaders."Bush has realigned the company around four business areas focused on cybersecurity, logistics, communications and intelligence, and unmanned systems, and recently spun off the company's shipbuilding business.Belote said Northrop was reevaluating its participation in other international air shows as well, but was only prepared to announce its decision about Farnborough at this point.

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Europe highlights urgency for new U.S. swaps rules

* Investors embrace clearing in boon for CME, LCH, ICE* CFTC inundated with thousands of industry lettersBy Jonathan Spicer and Ann SaphirCHICAGO, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Europe's debt problems are increasing anxiety about the vulnerability of global markets because too many new U.S. derivatives rules intended to prevent a repeat of the 2008 crisis have yet to be defined.Investors have responded in recent months by embracing the clearing of swaps, essentially beating regulators to the punch, to protect themselves in volatile markets.Clearing allows investors to avoid the credit risk of trading with banks that appear newly vulnerable amid Europe's debt crisis. In 2008-2009 banks' worries about the health of their trading partners resulted in a widespread freezing of credit, which nearly sank the global economy.Executives at a futures industry conference here urged regulators to speedily adopt rules for trading and clearing in the over-the-counter swaps market. The longer we wait, they said, the more dangerous it becomes."If we were the five senior staff on the Titanic, I'd like to think we wouldn't be standing back, looking at the safety boats and thinking about whether we can design them better," CME Group Inc chief executive Craig Donohue said at the Futures Industry Association."We'd be thinking about how to get people on the boats and get them to safety, and maybe we can improve on that in the future," he said.It has been three years since a U.S. financial crisis sent the global economy into a tailspin, and more than a year since lawmakers passed a bill designed to prevent a new crisis from taking down the financial system in similar fashion. Regulators are scrambling to finish writing the rules.Now, with Europe's debt crisis showing some of the same signs as the United States' meltdown, investors have rushed into clearing credit and interest rate swaps, a boon in volatile markets for companies like CME and Europe's LCH.Clearnet.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which must make final about 50 new rules under the Dodd-Frank law, has struggled to keep up with the rule-making process, having finished only about a dozen of the rules.Several key rules, including capital and margin requirements, will be pushed into the first quarter of 2012, putting the agency well behind a July 2011 deadline Congress had set.Regulators have benefited from public meetings that provided input for the rules-writing, said CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler. "But the American public needs us to move forward and get the job done and finish these rules," he told reporters."The crisis emanating from Europe reminds us that the public is still unprotected."'FISH OR CUT BAIT'Investor appetite for CME's cleared swaps soared last month, with trading in credit default and interest rate swaps rising to $42 billion in September, from less than $1 billion about a month earlier.CME's futures business has also benefited, as swaps users seek safer alternatives to their bilateral dealings with banks. Asset managers are increasingly shifting their trades to CME, doubling their use of CME's short-term interest rate futures in the past year for instance, and trading in currency futures rose to records in September as investors sought safety through clearing."The trend is there," said Jeffrey Sprecher, chief executive of IntercontinentalExchange Inc , which began clearing CDS in early 2009 and saw an 11 percent jump in credit-related revenues from the second to the third quarter of this year."It's obviously a very complicated global environment right now for global exchange risk, and you are seeing a migration towards futures more than the OTC market."Despite delays by the CFTC and other agencies in defining the Dodd-Frank rules, the expectation that they will eventually come into force has allowed investors to begin clearing products they never had before.In a global market of some $480 trillion in clearable interest rate swaps, an estimated $180 trillion has yet to be cleared.Yet some, including Donohue and Sprecher, cautioned in interviews that it was important the CFTC takes the time to sift through the thousands of comment letters and get the rules right. "I think it's well intentioned," Sprecher said.There is also the real threat of lawsuits from the industry once the rules -- from limits on excessive speculation to real-time reporting of trades to end-user exemptions -- are formally adopted.But based on interviews with several traders and industry executives, the euro zone crisis is giving a new urgency to the need to define how exactly regulators want to safeguard the market."Let's fish or cut bait," said Chris Hehmeyer, chief executive of Chicago-based proprietary trading firm HTG Capital Partners. "It's time for them to go ahead and get the definitions out there so that we can get on with it."

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Danish DUC Sept oil output down 1.6 pct from Aug

DUC exports of natural gas rose to 390 million cubic metres from 360 million in August and was down from 540 million in the same month a year ago, Maersk said.DUC is responsible for most of the petroleum output from Denmark's North Sea oil and gas fields. Denmark is the third-biggest producer in western Europe after Norway and Britain.Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk owns 39 percent of DUC. Royal Dutch Shell Group (RDSa.L) has 46 percent and Chevron a 15 percent stake in the partnership.#