Business news for Mon, 17 Dec 2007 & with word outside. 13 news.

THE Chinese mainland will let its commercial banks invest in UK stocks and funds in the first expansion of the country's international investment program outside Hong Kong. The nation reached an agreement with the UK financial regulator for investments by the banks under the qualified domestic institutional investor, or QDII, program, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said on its Website yesterday. The government is loosening restrictions on overseas investment to counter inflows from a record trade surplus that have driven up local stock and property prices, Bloomberg News said. The mainland will "soon" come to a similar agreement with the United States authorities, the regulator said. "Expanding the number of markets that QDII funds can invest in helps raise banks' investment and risk management capacities, and also helps investors diversify their risk," the statement said, without providing further details. The release didn't say when QDII funds

The Homeland Security Dept.'s overreliance on outside contractors and insufficient management of them could leave the U.S. vulnerable

The Mexican government said this week it has taken legal steps to solidify its claim and help start oil exploration in a section of the Gulf of Mexico outside standard territorial limits.

South American trade bloc Mercosur yesterday signed a free-trade pact with Israel, its first with a country outside Latin America. The deal followed two years of talks. ...

This is the first free trade agreement between Mercosur, which includes Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, and a country outside of Latin America.

[Telecom] Mark Fewell, senior director of business development at Boosted, says the space is intended to provide a venue "for the artists whom we work with to display their work in a good, cool location. Second, it is a venue to display new products we are coming out with under the Boosted label. Primarily, it's about getting people to see what we are doing. It's our way of extending, in a credible and authentic way, into areas outside wireless."

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- American Financial Group Inc., the Cincinnati insurer, said on Monday that it would pay $75 million for 67% of Marketform Group Ltd., a Lloyd's insurer. After the deal, Marketform's managers and staff would hold the rest of the company, which focuses on property-casualty and medical-malpractice insurance outside the U.S. American Financial expects the deal to add 3 cents a share of earnings and $150 million of gross written premiums in 2008. It sees the earnings contribution growing to 9 cents a share over the next four years. And it affirmed that for 2008, it expects to earn $3.75 to $3.95 a share from operations. A survey of analysts by Thomson Financial produced a consensus estimate of $3.74 for 2008. Subject to conditions including regulatory clearances, AFG hopes to close the deal ealry next year.

TEL AVIV (MarketWatch) -- LDK Solar Co., the Xinyu City, China, producer of multicrystalline solar wafers, the raw material for solar cells, said that the audit committee's outside directors found no material errors in the company's report of its inventory of silicon feedstock at Aug. 31. A former staffer, Charley Situ, had said that the company incorrectly reported this inventory. Situ's "allegations of an inventory discrepancy were incorrect because he had not taken into account all locations in which the company stored its silicon feedstock," the company said in a statement on Monday. "The investigation further concluded that the company is using each of its various types of silicon feedstock" to produce solar wafers, "and that a provision for obsolete or excess silicon feedstock is not required." The inquiry was conducted by the audit committee's independent counsel, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP; a Big Four accounting and consulting firm other than LDK's external auditors, and outside experts, the company said.

Afghanistan's bleak north-south divide THE confrontation probably marked the end the current fighting season. As some 5,000 NATO and Afghan soldiers last week massed around Musa Qala, a town in southern Afghanistan's troubled Helmand province, its Taliban defenders held on for four days before their resistance melted. The local fighters then slipped away into nearby hills, making the unconvincing claim that their retreat was out of concern for the safety of the civilian population. The recapture of a town that was previously controlled by Western troops is welcome, but it represents a limited triumph for the outsiders as winter freezes much of the country quiet. The year has seen neither the Taliban nor outside troops gain telling advantage. NATO has won all the battles and has managed to preserve the support of most Afghans: if opinion polls can be believed Afghans still support an international military presence in their country (one published by the BBC this month suggested that 71% of Afghans want American forces to stay). Yet overall levels of Taliban violence continue to rise across southern and eastern Afghanistan. Worse, they have spread significantly into the border areas of Pakistan. ...

Ribbit, a Mountain View startup officially launching today, is trying to bridge the telephone world and the Web by opening up its core technology to outside developers. The startup aims to give developers an easy way to integrate telephone tools into a...

The actor's 'I Am Legend' breaks the December-opening box-office record with $76.5 million. Last week, Will Smith put his hands and feet into cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre to promote his new movie, "I Am Legend." This weekend, box-office results across the country cemented Smith's status as one of Hollywood's biggest draws.

MGM MIRAGE becomes the latest gaming giant to try and lure the Chinese gambler on Tuesday, when the company opens its first casino resort outside the United States in the tiny enclave of Macau.

More executives below the level of chief executive are serving on other public-company boards, as many CEOs curb outside commitments and as investors demand more expertise in the boardroom.