Business news for Thu, 29 Nov 2007 & with words billion+group. 22 news.

NEW YORK (AP) -- E-Trade Financial Corp., which flirted with collapse amid the growing mortgage crisis, said Thursday it is getting a $2.55 billion cash infusion from Citadel Investment Group in a bid to revive the battered discount brokerage....

CHINA Pacific Insurance (Group) Co will issue no more than one billion yuan-backed A shares in Shanghai, the insurer said yesterday on the Website of the China Securities Regulatory Commission. It will also seek a listing in Hong Kong by issuing no more than 900 million H shares after the completion of the A shares sale. The pricing of the H shares will not be lower than the A shares, the pre-disclosure statement said.

PING An Insurance (Group) Co said yesterday it paid 1.81 billion euros (US$2.7 billion) to become the single biggest shareholder of Fortis, marking the biggest overseas investment by a Chinese insurer. Shenzhen-based Ping An bought a 4.2-percent stake, or 95.01 million shares, in Fortis, Belgium's biggest financial company, on the Euronext Brussels and Euronext Amsterdam stock exchanges on Tuesday, the insurer said in a statement yesterday. The two companies also signed a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday, which enables Ping An to appoint a non-executive director to Fortis. Fortis invited Ping An's President Louis Cheung to join the board. It is pending approval at a shareholders meeting in April, 2008. The two partners may also seek cooperation in other business areas, Ping An said in a statement on its Website. "The deal is a milestone in China's insurance sector," said Ping An Chairman Peter Ma in the statement. "The deal helps us to better use the

NEW YORK - Discount broker E-Trade Financial Corp. disclosed Thursday it is getting a $2.5 billion capital infusion from a group led by Citadel Investment Group and said Mitchell H.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - E*Trade Financial Corp is getting a $2.55 billion cash infusion from investors led by Citadel Investment Group, which is also buying the mortgage-related securities portfolio that has been the source of most of the discount brokerage's recent woes.

PING An Insurance (Group) Co said today it paid 1.81 billion euros (US$2.7 billion) to become the second biggest shareholder of Fortis, marking the biggest overseas investment by a Chinese insurer. Shenzhen-based Ping An bought a 4.2 percent stake, or 95.01 million shares, in Fortis, Belgium's biggest financial company, on the Euronext Brussels and Euronext Amsterdam stock exchanges as of Tuesday, the insurer said in a statement today. The two companies also signed a memorandum of understanding on Wednesday, which enables Ping An to appoint a non-executive director to Fortis. The purchase is in line with Ping An's global assets investments plan. Ping An is seeking to diversify by assembling a one-stop financial supermarket that will get two-thirds of its revenue from banking, securities and asset management. Ping An's shares ended at 109.98 yuan today in Shanghai, a gain of 7.45 percent. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 4.16 percent to 5,003.33 today.

(Reuters) -- Online brokerage E*Trade Financial Corp., which has been pounded by credit woes in the mortgage business, said on Thursday that it was getting a $2.55 billion cash infusion from investors led by Citadel Investment Group. E*Trade shares, which lost about 80 percent of their value ...

China strengthened its hand on the international business stage today after its second-largest insurer, Ping An, paid €1.8 billion (£1.3bn) to become the largest shareholder in Fortis, the Belgo-Dutch group that has become one of Europe's most powerful players in financial services.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Online brokerage E*Trade Financial Corp (ETFC.O), which has been pounded by credit woes in the mortgage business, said on Thursday that it was getting a $2.55 billion cash infusion from investors led by Citadel Investment Group.

Discount broker E-Trade Financial said Thursday that it is getting a $2.5 billion capital infusion from a group led by Citadel ...

E*Trade Financial Corp. said Thursday it received a $2.5 billion investment from hedge-fund firm Citadel Investment Group.

TD Bank Financial Group has reported fourth-quarter net income of $1.09 billion, up 44 per cent from $762 million in the year-ago period.

In a deal announced Thursday, Ping An Insurance Group, the second-biggest insurer after China Life Insurance, became the top shareholder in Fortis. The purchase follows Ping An's recent $154 million purchase of 9 percent of Value Partners, a Hong Kong fund manager.

E-Trade Financial Corp. said Thursday Mitchell H. Caplan has stepped down as chief executive as the troubled discount brokerage announced a $2.5 billion cash infusion from affiliates of Citadel Investment Group.

The chairman of Sallie Mae, the big student lender locked in a dispute with an investor group over a buyout deal, is assuming the additional role of executive chairman with an approved $3 million annual pay package, the company said Wednesday. Albert Lord was slated to leave the company, formally called SLM, if a $25 billion [...]

BHP Billiton, the world’s largest mining company, should increase its $132 billion proposal to win over shareholders of rival Rio Tinto Group or drop the takeover bid, RBC Capital Markets said. “BHP has one place to go — to be successful it must increase the offer,” RBC said in a report dated Nov. 28 and written [...]

One suitor has been chosen, but others are forcing their way into the church AT FIRST it proceeded at a glacial pace, but the sale of Northern Rock has now picked up unseemly haste. On November 25th Richard Branson's Virgin Group was chosen as preferred bidder for the stricken bank, which is kept alive only by public money. The Sunday decision caught many by surprise, not least rival bidders who were either due to present their bids to the bank and the government in coming days, or had done so that weekend and had no inkling that things would move so fast. Such haste at this late stage is unlikely to serve the interest of taxpayers, who have lent over GBP20 billion ($41 billion) to the mortgage lender since it came cap in hand to the Bank of England in September. That was the time for urgent action, and Alistair Darling, the chancellor of the exchequer, could have moved far faster to sort out the mess. ...

There is no Spanish or Italian solution to the problems of Iberia and Alitalia FOR all the brave talk of liberalisation, the airline business has yet to escape the bane of economic nationalism. American airlines will still be out of bounds to foreign ownership when the new "open skies" agreement with Europe comes into force next April. And within the European Union, although such obstacles officially do not exist, the reality is rather different. This week a EURO3.4 billion ($5 billion) consortium bid for Iberia, the Spanish "flag carrier" by British Airways (BA), Texas Pacific Group and three Spanish private-equity firms crumbled in the face of political resistance. Caja Madrid, a savings bank controlled by Madrid's regional government, raised its stake in Iberia to 23.3%. The move was designed to force BA, which owns 10%, to exercise pre-emption rights and raise its own stake, or back off. Having promised not to spend BA's cash on the bid, Willie Walsh, its chief executive, had no option but to retreat. ...

As defaults soar, America seeks to modify mortgages en masse THE statistics are chilling. As many as 2m adjustable-rate subprime mortgages, worth $350 billion, are due to reset to higher interest rates in America over the next 18 months. Resets on Alt-A (or near-prime) loans will continue to climb until late 2010. House prices are tumbling (see article). What can be done to avoid a bloodbath of defaults? Enter the Gubernator. Galvanised by the fact that a quarter of all resets will come in his state, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's governor, has struck an innovative deal with four big loan servicers. This will see the companies extend by several years the period for which thousands of borrowers can stay at the initial "teaser" rate. Crucially, the four have agreed to "fast-track" their procedures to make it easier to include whole swathes of struggling but not hopeless borrowers. ...

E*Trade Financial, the troubled Internet bank and brokerage, said Thursday it secured a $2.55 billion cash infusion from a group led by hedge-fund firm Citadel Investment Group. Funds managed by BlackRock will also contribute to the infusion, which E*Trade said will shore up its balance sheet and help restore customers’ confidence after it took big [...]