Business news for Mon, 17 Dec 2007 & with word united. 31 news.

Wheat prices surged above $10 a bushel for the first time ever Monday amid concerns that strong demand globally could result in a grain shortage in the United States next year - worsening food price inflation.

MINING giant Rio Tinto is set to spend $US300 million ($351.06 million) to develop the Eagle nickel mine in Michigan in the United States.

LONDON led the biggest drop in United Kingdom home values for at least five years this month as higher mortgage costs and the prospect of further declines in prices kept away buyers, a report by Rightmove Plc showed. The average UK asking price fell 3.2 percent to 232,396 pounds (US$473,437) from November, the largest decline since the survey of real-estate agents' listings began in 2002, Britain's most-used property Website said yesterday. London home costs dropped 6.8 percent, also the most recorded by Rightmove. "The market is tough out there," Miles Shipside, the company's commercial director, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. "We see a flat outlook for next year, with no price rises, as we work our way through this liquidity crisis." The Bank of England this month cut the benchmark interest rate for the first time in two years, citing the threat of an economic slowdown. Confidence among British real-estate agents has slumped as pricier mortgages

(AP) -- An investment group that failed to complete its purchase of the Sparrows Point steel mill near Baltimore said Monday it expects to make another bid. E2 Acquisition Corp. has been encouraged by the United Steelworkers and the court-appointed trustee overseeing the Sparrows Point ...

INTERNATIONAL buying of United States financial assets rose twice as much as expected in October as investors snapped up Treasury securities at the fastest pace in almost two years. Total holdings of equities, notes and bonds increased a net US$114 billion, after a revised increase of US$15.4 billion in September, the Treasury Department said yesterday. Including short-term securities such as Treasury bills and non-market trades such as stock swaps, foreigners bought a net US$97.8 billion, compared with selling of US$32.8 billion a month before. Purchases of US equities in October were the most in five months, helping offset net selling by China, the report showed.

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

ASIAN stocks fell the most in four months, led by Samsung Electronics Co and HSBC Holdings Plc, on concern accelerating inflation will limit interest-rate cuts, threatening global growth. Samsung declined the most in three weeks. HSBC and Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd paced losses in Hong Kong, where interest rates track those set by the Federal Reserve, after United States consumer prices rose the most since 2005. Centro Properties Group plummeted 76 percent in Sydney after the owner of US shopping malls said it was struggling to refinance debt. "Sentiment in the region is getting worse," said David Ng, who helps manage US$954 million at Hwang-DBS Asset Management Sdn in Kuala Lumpur. "First we had slowing US growth; now add on inflation fears. That makes for a bad combination." The MSCI Asia Pacific Index lost 2.9 percent to 152.28 as of 6:49pm in Tokyo, its sharpest decline since August 17, Bloomberg News said. The benchmark is set for its lowest annual gain

WHEAT rose above US$10 a bushel for the first time yesterday, leading other grains and oilseeds higher in a food price spiral that threatens global economic growth. Chicago wheat futures jumped as much as 30 US cents, or 3.1 percent, to US$10.09 as dry weather threatened crops in Argentina, renewing concern that the world's farmers may not be able to grow enough to meet rising demand for bread, pasta and livestock feed. Rice also advanced to a record, while soybeans reached the highest price in 34 years and corn reached a nine-month peak, said Bloomberg News. Rising prices of food and fuel are stoking inflation and making it more difficult for central bankers to lower interest rates. Kellogg Co, the largest United States cereal maker, General Mills Inc, Nissin Food Products Co and Kikkoman Corp are among companies that have raised prices. "We are seeing a broad-based increase in cost pressures," Brian Redican, senior economist at Macquarie Group Ltd, said from

BAIDU.COM has teamed up with Huawei Technologies and Intel to strengthen its servers and search technologies to expand its lead in the domestic market over rivals including Google, Nasdaq-listed Baidu said yesterday. Baidu announced it will build a joint lab with Huawei to explore "next-generation" online search and test 3G-related mobile phone services, just one month after Google launched mobile search services in China. "Baidu has to break the bottleneck of the server capacity as the demand for search surges in China," William Chang, Baidu's chief scientist, said. "Baidu has to triple its existing capacity to reach the global level of services." In the third quarter, China overtook the United States to become the world's largest search traffic, with 10 billion hits per month, Baidu said. Baidu has launched a series of new services, such as an Olympics channel, game channel, Baidu TV and online music streaming (partnered with Rock Music Group).

SINGAPORE'S exports unexpectedly dropped for the first time in six months in November as shipments by electronics companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers slumped. Non-oil domestic exports sank 3.4 percent from a year earlier following a revised 6.5 percent gain in October, the government's trade promotion agency said. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 12 economists was for a 4.5-percent increase. Singapore's electronic shipments have declined each month since February as a global inventory glut caused prices for memory chips and microprocessors to fall. "We don't see a lot of impetus for an early recovery in electronics, especially given the uncertainty over the outlook for the global economy," said Ho Woei Chen, an analyst at United Overseas Bank Ltd in Singapore. "The volatility in exports and production in the pharmaceutical sector remains." Exports dropped a seasonally adjusted six percent last month from October, when they fell a

CENTRO Properties Group, the owner of 700 shopping malls in the United States, slumped 76 percent in Sydney trading and said it was struggling to refinance debt because of the collapse in the US subprime housing market. Melbourne-based Centro suspended dividends and said in a statement that it may have to sell assets, after lenders gave it until February 15 to renegotiate maturing debt. Traditional sources of funding are "shut for business," Chairman Brian Healey said. The share slump wiped A$4.98 billion (US$4.3 billion) from the market value of Centro and Centro Retail Group, the listed real estate investment trust it manages. A sale of assets threatens to undo Chief Executive Officer Andrew Scott's US$9 billion expansion into the US. "Centro are no longer in charge of their own destiny," said Callum Bramah, a Sydney-based analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd, in a report. "We believe Centro will be required to sell assets at a loss simply to use the cash

THE United States' refusal to comply with a World Trade Organization decision on online gambling is threatening to undermine the entire set of rules binding the international trade system. The WTO is to decide soon on a demand from the tropical nation of Antigua and Barbuda for US$3.4 billion in annual compensation from the US, whose law banning Americans from betting on Internet gaming sites was first ruled illegal by the WTO in 2004. The implications of the case go far beyond Antigua, a nation of 69,000. That's because, instead of rewriting its gambling laws, the US rewrote its trade rules to remove the issue from the WTO's jurisdiction. The prospect that other nations may take a similar tack if cases don't go their way has spooked the international trade community. "This is by far the most significant WTO case ever," says Naotaka Matsukata, a policy adviser in Washington with Alston + Bird LLP and a former US trade official. Meanwhile, Antigua, which has

The United States Postal Service was expecting to handle more than three million cards and letters Monday at its Baltimore Processing and Distribution Center, twice the amount of an average day.

The United States said yesterday it has agreed to maintain concessions for companies from the...

(AP) -- A seven-week-long strike of International Truck & Engine Corp. ended Sunday after 3,700 members of the United Auto Workers voted to approve a new contract, officials said. The new labor agreement takes effect immediately and runs until Oct. 1, 2010, the company said in a release. Workers ...

Wheat prices surged above $10 a bushel for the first time ever Monday amid concerns that strong demand globally could result in a grain shortage in the United States next year — worsening food price inflation.

Centro Properties, an Australian company that is one of the largest owners of shopping malls in the United States, announced Monday that it was having trouble refinancing loans and might have to sell assets.

GENEVA - The United States will provide the European Union with new trade concessions in mail services and warehousing as part of a compensation deal over Washington's refusal to lift restrictions on Internet gambling, the European Union said Monday.

By Dan Amerman. "If the United States government was an individual or corporation, and we looked at the obligations it has entered into for the decades ahead – it would be bankrupt."

GENEVA (AP) -- The World Trade Organization has opened an investigation into whether the United States is violating international commerce rules that limit subsidies to American farmers, officials said Monday, three days after the U.S. Senate approved a new $286 billion farm bill....