FT : Merkel faces growing dilemma over Greece

Merkel faces growing dilemma over Greece

German chancellor Angela Merkel asaid organisers of anti-Islamisation protests were 'often full of prejudice, and even hate'
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative coalition partner on Monday warned the German government against meddling in the Greek elections, as debate intensified in Berlin about how to respond to the prospect of a new populist government in Athens.
Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavaria-based CSU, said on Monday that while it was right to attach conditions to aid for crisis-hit Greece “we should not behave as a schoolmaster in the Greek election campaign”.

Mr Seehofer’s intervention highlights the dilemma facing Ms Merkel as Greeks prepare to go to the polls this month in an election that could bring to power the hard-left Syriza party. Syriza is seeking a relaxation of austerity and a lightening of Greece’s debt load that would put the country at odds with its international creditors.
The chancellor wants Greece to remain in the eurozone, but does not want to grant debt relief or other concessions sought by Greeks for fear of burdening German taxpayers with the costs.
Der Spiegel magazine this weekend sparked a renewed debate in Germany with a report that the government was no longer committed to keeping Greece in the eurozone at any cost. According to the report, Berlin now calculated that the eurozone’s progress since the last crisis in 2012 in creating new bailout funds and crisis-prevention tools would allow Germany and its partners to abandon Greece, if a new government in Athens made unacceptable demands.
Steffen Seibert, Ms Merkel’s spokesman, on Monday became the latest government official to insist that there had been “no change” in German policy.
Strengthening the eurozone — with all its members, including Greece — remained government policy, he said. In an apparent acknowledgment of the concerns raised by Mr Seehofer, he added that eurozone policies were “not a bilateral matter for Germany and Greece to decide but an issue at the EU level”.
Earlier, Sigmar Gabriel, the deputy chancellor, became the most senior minister to speak on the issue saying in a newspaper interview: “The aim of the whole government, the EU and the government in Athens itself is to keep Greece in the eurozone . . . There were and are no contrary plans.”
Such declarations have not stopped other political leaders from warning Greece against leaving the euro or presenting its creditors with demands for a big debt cut.
Detlef Seif, parliamentary deputy spokesman on EU policy for Ms Merkel’s CDU-CSU bloc, told the FT: “The agreements [between Greece and its creditors] must be kept. European nations have helped Greece on the condition that they will get their money back.”
Michael Fuchs, the CDU’s parliamentary deputy leader, argued that the threat of a Greek exit no longer held the same danger for the rest of the eurozone because of the strengthening of the bloc’s financial institutions in recent years.
“I assume that what Greece had three or four years ago — namely the potential to blackmail us — is no longer present,” he told Bavarian radio.
Summing up the debate, Tagespiegel, the centre-left Berlin newspaper, said: “The spectre of a Grexit has, since the announcement of the [Greek] election, retreated. Or at least it has lost its horror. The government no longer denies that it can live with a Grexit scenario.”
German public opinion has been sharply critical of Greece throughout the crisis, one factor that has limited Ms Merkel’s room for manoeuvre in terms of easing conditions attached to the bailout or otherwise granting Athens relief.
Bild, the country’s largest selling tabloid, which often sets the tone of the popular debate, took a scolding tone on Monday as it compared Greece to a wayward footballer.
“What happens to a footballer who breaks the rules and does a crude foul?” it asked. “He leaves the pitch. He is sent off as a punishment. No question.
“What happens with a country that does not keep the rules or implements agreements only reluctantly? It receives broad support and billions of aid — as we have seen so far in the case of Greece.”
Should Syriza win and revoke Greece’s EU agreements, the German government will show Athens “the red card” and “hustle” it out of the euro, Bildt said.
One sign of support for Greece came from the opposition Green party. It called for solidarity with Athens and condemned talk of a possible Grexit. “I think this is an irresponsible discussion,” Simone Peter, the party chair, told German television. “We have here a mutually-supportive group. We must work on stabilising it.”.

>>> Gagfah/Deutsche Annington see BKartA Phase I running to late

Gagfah/Deutsche Annington see BKartA Phase I running to late January

Deutsche Annington’s [ETR:ANN] takeover bid for Gagfah SA [FRA:GFJ] is expected to see the Bundeskartellamt (BKartA) Phase I merger review run into late January, according to two sources close to the situation.

The deal had been notified to BKartA, the German competition watchdog, on 1 December. The original Phase I deadline ran for one month to 2 January (to bypass the 1 January holiday), a BKartA spokesperson told this news service. But BKartA had asked in December for more information on the deal, the first source said.

Given this request and the potential for delays over the festive season, the parties and BKartA decided it was not in their collective interest to “run against a formal deadline that would require [BKartA] to enter into Phase II,” the first source added.

The BKartA spokesperson declined to comment on the Gagfah/Deutsche Annington case. It is possible for the regulator to cancel an initial notification and start a new case in order to give time to investigate the transaction without triggering a Phase II investigation, he added.

This scenario is the track the case has taken and explains why the offer document published on 18 December only references a planned filing with BKartA on 2 January 2015, despite the deal having been initially notified on 1 December 2014, the first source said. The additional information the regulator had requested was filed on 2 January, both sources said. This would bring the official deadline to 2 February, as the BKartA standard Phase I lasts a month.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) BKartA will file its “merger list” update on the cases it is reviewing at approximately 10:00 CET (09:00 GMT), the spokesperson added. This will flag the status of the Gagfah filing, he said.

BKartA had asked for more detail on the companies’ housing portfolios in smaller cities, including Dresden and Kiel, as well as further information on their presence in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, the first source said.

In Dresden, Gagfah has 36,900 rental units and Annington 900 units, according to a Deutsche Annington investor presentation, compared with the city’s population of around 531,000. Gagfah has around 15% of the rental market in Dresden, a person familiar with the situation said. A 40% combined market share generally raises eyebrows in merger review.

Gagfah has 15,100 rental units in Berlin versus Annington’s 15,700 units. The capital had some 2m households in 2013, according to the Federal Statistics Office. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Annington has 95,000 units to Gagfah’s 16,000, totalling 111,000 units in a region with a population of 17.57m.

Both sources said they were confident the deal would be approved in Phase I, though perhaps not before the offer period closes on 21 January. Two local independent lawyers told this news service last month that they expected the deal to secure Phase I clearance.

Deutsche Annington and Gagfah declined to comment.

>>> US Close Dow -1,86% S&P -1,82% Nasdaq -1,57% Russell-1,44%

Closing Market Summary: Greece-Related Fears Rattle Global Markets

The stock market began the first full week of 2015 on a cautious note. The S&P 500 lost 1.8% while the Russell 2000 (-1.3%) outperformed.

Stocks began sliding at the sound of the opening bell amid weakness in Europe that was brought on by renewed fears of a potential Greek exit from the eurozone. With the January 25 Greek snap elections fast approaching, voices out of Germany have tried to calm investors, but those calls have fallen on deaf ears so far. Over the weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that a Greek exit from the eurozone would be manageable, but the comments did not stop the euro from falling below the 1.1900 level against the dollar immediately after the foreign exchange market opened on Sunday evening. The single currency was able to rebound into the 1.1940 area by Monday afternoon, but markets across Europe ended the day broadly lower.

Interestingly, the dollar rallied against the euro, but surrendered almost 100 pips to the yen (119.60), suggesting a sense of caution was present among foreign exchange traders. Treasuries also benefitted from safe-haven demand that sent the benchmark 10-yr yield lower by seven basis points to 2.04%.

As for stocks, there is no denying that today's selling produced notable losses for many influential sectors, but it is worth pointing out that the retreat unfolded over the course of the session and did not have a panicky feel of investors running for the exits. That being said, the return of global macroeconomic concerns was enough for participants to reduce their risk exposure, leaving the S&P 500 up 2.4% from its mid-December low.

All ten sectors finished in the red with energy (-4.0%) spending the entire session at the bottom of the leaderboard. The growth-sensitive group endured aggressive selling in crude oil that caused the commodity to dip below the $50.00/bbl level for the first time since April 2009. The energy component settled lower by 5.3% at $50.03/bbl and continued inching down in electronic trade.

Broadly speaking, the continued crash in oil prices has not been viewed as a positive due to the magnitude of the move. Instead, the market's consciousness is allowing for the possibility that there could be some latent financial, or economic, risk in the plummeting price of oil and the commensurate slippage in copper prices, which have fallen roughly 53% and 16%, respectively, from their highs last summer.

Like energy, four other cyclical sectors ended the day behind the broader market while technology (-1.8%) settled in-line with the S&P 500. Even transport stocks that would be expected to rally on cheaper oil struggled to keep pace. The Dow Jones Transportation Average lost 2.7% to narrow its gain from the December low to 1.3%.

Elsewhere, the four countercyclical sectors finished ahead of the broader market, but they could not stay out of the red. The health care sector (-0.6%) did make an intraday appearance in positive territory, but could not build on that short-lived gain. Gilead Sciences (GILD 96.78, +1.88) spiked 2.0% after an intraday report revealed that CVS Health (CVS 94.16, -0.94) will give preferred status to a pair of Gilead's drugs. Shares of GILD contributed to the outperformance of the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF (IBB 305.85, -0.49), which shed 0.2%.

Among other movers of note, Morgan Stanley (MS 37.49, -1.22) fell 3.2% after announcing that one of its employees has been terminated after stealing partial account information of about 10 percent of clients of the Wealth Management department. The broader financial sector lost 2.1%.

Today's slide caused participants to increase their hedges, evidenced by a 13.0% spike in the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX 20.10, +2.24).

Participation was just ahead of average as 823 million shares changed hands at the NYSE floor.

Tomorrow, Factory Orders for November (consensus -0.4%) and the ISM Services Index for December (consensus 58.5) will both be released at 10:00 ET.
  • Dow Jones Industrial Average -1.8% YTD 
  • Nasdaq Composite -1.8% YTD 
  • S&P 500 -1.9% YTD 
  • Russell 2000 -1.9% YTD

The Économist : Where Islamic State gets its money

IT WILL not be easy to defeat the brutal jihadists of Islamic State (IS), as the American-led coalition against the group aims to do. IS is one of the best-financed terrorist organisations in the world, except for state-backed ones. There is no credible estimate of the secretive group’s net worth, but in October 2014 an American official described it as amassing wealth at “a pretty massive clip”. It pays fighters around $400 a month, which is more than Syrian rebel groups or the Iraqi government offer. It appears to have no trouble purchasing weaponry, either on the black market or from corrupt officials or militias. And it runs services (even if not always successfully) across the areas it controls, paying schoolteachers and providing for the poor and widowed. So where does it get all its cash from?
Without this wealth, IS, the latest evolution of al-Qaeda in Iraq, could not have expanded so rapidly. It only announced itself in its current form in March 2013 when it expanded into Syria from Iraq (subsequently parting ways with al-Qaeda). It has since has fought to take over swathes of land in the two countries. By June 2013 it had taken control of Raqqa, a city in Syria, and in June 2014 it took over Mosul, Iraq’s second city. By then in control of an area that is home to 6m-8m people, it declared a caliphate at the end of that month. Fighters have flocked to join the group. By September 2014 it was estimated to have 30,000 men (and some women, in a female police force), including 15,000 foreign fighters.

Unlike other terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq, IS largely funds itself rather than relying on rich supporters (despite various versions of a conspiracy theory in the region that America, Iran or Israel bankrolls the group). Although IS receives donations, especially from Gulf-based financiers, they are a relatively insignificant contributor to its coffers. Instead the bulk of its money comes from oil revenues from fields under its control in western Iraq and eastern Syria. American officials estimated that it was making $2m a day from oil before air strikes started (locals reckon it was more) but in December an official said the strikes, some of which have been against oil facilities in Syria, meant the group's oil revenues had “significantly” dropped. Controlling so much land also helps IS make money from extortion and taxing people in the areas it controls. Like other jihadist groups, it has learned that kidnapping can be profitable. IS earned at least $20m last year from ransoms paid for hostages, including several French and Spanish journalists.
The group cannot be defeated without cutting off its funds. That is why the coalition says it aims to attack the sources of its revenue as well as stopping the group from advancing militarily. America and its allies have carried out air strikes on IS-controlled oil refineries in Syria. America and Britain, which have a strict policy against paying ransoms for hostages, are pressuring European countries to stop paying up (something they deny doing). Several countries have applied sanctions against IS leaders as well as those known to raise funds for the group. But officials are keen to emphasise it will be a long fight. For now, IS still seems to be able to pay for everything it needs.

>>> MS : Morgan Stanley Discloses that an employee misappropriated Wealth Manag

MS Morgan Stanley Discloses that an employee misappropriated Wealth Management data for around 900 clients (up to 10% of unit's clients) 

Morgan Stanley today began advising certain Wealth Management clients that an employee had stolen partial client data. The Wealth Management employee has been terminated, and law enforcement and regulatory authorities have been advised of the incident.

While there is no evidence of any economic loss to any client, it has been determined that certain account information of approximately 900 clients, including account names and numbers, was briefly posted on the Internet. Morgan Stanley detected this exposure and the information was promptly removed.

Overall, partial account information of up to 10 percent of all Wealth Management clients was stolen. The data stolen does not include account passwords or social security numbers. The Firm is taking the precaution of notifying all potentially affected clients and instituting enhanced security procedures including fraud monitoring on these accounts.

>>> *HAVAS, UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP FORM GLOBAL MUSIC DATA ALLIANCE

--> one of the first news of Alliance/ deal between Havas & Vivendi...more news, tied up to come maybe...it will be interesting story to watch in 2015...I would rather be long Bollore & Havas rather than vivendi...


Maybe time to have a look to Bollore here, stock has been under pressure because of havas deal...deal should close int he next few weeks, offer is closing mid jan, deal will close by end of Jan if no extension, worth will mid Feb...but no more pressure ont he stock after mid Jan.

Start to buy now to play the end of the deal and teh new vivendi/havas story...