Greek FM plans to forge coalition govt: sources

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Athens: Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has struck a deal to stand down and let Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos form a coalition government aiming to win parliamentary approval for Greece's latest bailout, sources close to the deal told Reuters on Friday.
They said Venizelos had won the backing of leaders of some smaller parties to support the coalition, which would also aim to avert an immediate Greek bankruptcy, before calling early elections in a few months.
They stressed that the deal was conditional on Papandreou confirming he would stand down when he speaks in parliament on Friday before a confidence vote in his socialist government.

"There is some concern that Papandreou may change his mind at the last minute and all eyes are on his speech in parliament," one source said, requesting anonymity.


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The new government would probably exclude the main opposition New Democracy party, the sources said.
Venizelos, a member of the ruling PASOK socialist party, would be prime minister of the new coalition government and it was not clear whether other parties would be given portfolios.
Forming the coalition would avoid the immediate need for snap elections, which would almost certainly lead to a Greek default on its debts, and gives Athens time to show it can meet its obligations and satisfy international lenders.
Papandreou provoked uproar at home and abroad on Monday when he announced a referendum on the 130 billion euro bailout, agreed by euro zone leaders only last week.
Under heavy domestic and international pressure, he backed down on a vote which could well have rejected the deal, cutting off Greece's last financial lifeline and potentially sinking euro zone leaders' attempts to stop the debt crisis spreading to the bloc's bigger economies such as Italy and Spain.
The government officially announced earlier on Friday that the referendum would not go ahead.
The conservative New Democracy party had proposed a national unity government with the sole aim of forcing the bailout through parliament before early elections.

PM asks G-20 to send strong message to stop tax evasion

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Cannes: Warning that tax evasion and illicit flows have become a "serious" problem, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday asked the G-20 to send a strong message to curb such activities.
With the issue of black money stashed abroad by Indians being used to target his government by the Opposition, Singh said the world's 20 leading economies currently meeting here for their sixth summit should take the lead in agreeing to automatic exchange of tax related information with each other without any discrimination for tax evasion or fraud.
"The G-20 should send a strong message to curb such activity (tax evasion and illicit flows)," the Prime Minister said during his intervention at the Summit in this French coastal resort.

Associated Press

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"G-20 countries should take the lead in agreeing to automatic exchange of tax related information with each other, irrespective of artificial distinctions such as past or present, for tax evasion or tax fraud in the spirit of our London Summit that 'the era of bank secrecy is over'."
Leaders of the G-20 nations at their 2009 London Summit declared that "the era of banking secrecy is over" and called for the immediate publication of a list of countries that fell short of international standards and threatened to take action against "non-co-operative jurisdictions, including tax havens".
Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia said several G-20 leaders have endorsed India's call to G-20 to clamp down on tax havens.
He said there has been a considerable progress on this issue compared to five years back and that there is much more access to information now on tax frauds.
India's concerns on the tax haven issue are likely to be reflected in the communique of the G-20 Summit on Friday.
The issue has been on the agenda of G-20 for the last two years and India expects strong statements from the grouping on it during the ongoing summit being attended by world leaders like US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Ahluwalia told reporters.
Indian tax enforcement agencies are probing details of black money stashed abroad by several Indians, including politicians and businessmen, on the basis of information received about secret accounts with a multi-national bank in Geneva.
The probe includes searches on some of the individuals figuring in the secret accounts said to be running into some hundreds and involving money to the tune of around Rs 3,000 crore, according to official sources.
They said the accounts were mainly traced to HSBC bank in Geneva but declined to disclose whether information about them was passed on to India by France.

Greek fears leave market undeterred, but for how long?

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|Indian market displayed some measure of resilience—the Nifty recovered from a weak start to close flat at 5,258. The Sensex ended marginally in the red. This despite fears that the carefully crafted EU debt would fall apart continued to cast a shadow on global markets.

Today’s resilience is good news for the bulls, says Sudarshan Sukhani of technicaltrends.com. "After having seen almost 400-point rally it was only natural and fair that we will see the market going through a correction," he said adding, "We saw a 150-points fall, which sounds fair and now it seems to be suggesting that the dip is over. If that is so then this is a very good time to buy on dips—buying in the Nifty, in blue-chip stocks and look forward for another rally. You need a stop loss that is 5,200 for the time being. But beyond that, you let the market do its own thing. I think we are in an upmove and we should see better levels."


|In an exclusive conversation on CNBC-TV18, Amit Dalal of Tata Investment Corporation also spoke about how he reads the market going forward. Below is the edited transcript of the interview.

Q: Do you think this is another round of turbulence for global markets?

A: The Greek Prime Minister’s announcements of a referendum vote shocked everyone. I hope that they find some solution by Friday. Normally situations like these, before they turn for worse, get corrected by some wisdom prevailing somewhere. But if that were not to happen then Monday onwards we have to deal with a new type of volatility in the global markets.

Q: We understand that that referendum is possibly going to come through by December. Till then how would you possibly approach the markets and would it just be volatility, which will be the name of the game for global equities as well as for us?

A: I would say if the referendum is voted for on Friday mid-night, then you are going to have tremendous volatility till December. But I am quite hopeful that that may not happen because events that are catastrophic in nature do not take place so easily and things would correct themselves. But if they go for a referendum, I think you have tremendous risk to equity markets worldwide.

Q: What have you made of all of the public sector banks’ numbers? Today also we got a surprise in the form of Allahabad Bank. From the entire lot, which one is your favourite now after seeing the performance?

A: The biggest concern that any bank brings on the investors’ table is the change in its gross non-performing asset (NPA) and which sector has really brought about that change. Allahabad Bank came out looking much favourable because there was no year-on-year change. Though I believe there was a quarter-on-quarter change in the value of the gross NPA.

As far as the public sector banks on the whole are concerned, Bank of Baroda is a bank which has little more cautious, discriminatory ability with its loan portfolio and therefore I would feel more comfortable over there.

I am still a propagator of private sector banks rather than public sector banks.

Q: What have you made from the entire auto sales for October?

A: Definitely two-wheelers have become the stars and the rural demand or the tier-III demand of cities has captured portfolio interest of all buyers. Where Bajaj Auto and Hero MotoCorp are concerned, I feel Bajaj Auto has a very good export story built into its books and therefore it is definitely a more preferred stock.

It performed exceedingly well in the last one-and-a-half-year. It’s up 120% from where it was in December 2009. And the upmove is going to continue because the rural demand and the demand coming from government fiscal expenditure is taking place in favour of the farmers or in favour of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) beneficiaries will continue to see that there will be increased demand for two-wheelers rather than four-wheelers and four-wheelers are suffering. That is quite clear because of the high interest rates and the high petrol prices and that’s not going to go for until a while—for another 6 months at least.

Greek tragedy hits world, but Sensex climbs

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|Mumbai: The 50-share NSE Nifty rose 0.5 per cent after a recovery in Asian markets on Wednesday. Oil & gas, FMCG, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group stock, select technology and financial stocks led the support. The BSE Sensex gained 86 points at 17,567 and the NSE Nifty jumped 26 points to 5,283.65.

Despite market's poor performance in the past two days, Portfolio Manager on Wednesday, G-20 meet at Cannes on November 3 and 4.

Reliance Industries and ONGC rallied 1.5 per cent each. SAIL gained 1.6 per cent ahead of quarterly numbers. ITC, TCS, HDFC Bank, SBI, NTPC, HDFC and ICICI Bank moved up 0.3-1 per cent.

Reliance Communications was the biggest gainer, rising 3.5 per cent as there were reports that RIL may tie up with the company for telecom services.

However, PNB crashed 3.5 per cent post reports that the bank may restructure loans of power companies.

Bharti Airtel, Coal India, Tata Motors, Tata Steel and Axis Bank fell over 0.6 per cent. Hero Motocorp slipped 1.7 per cent.

On the global front, Asian markets recovered further. Shanghai, Hang Seng, Kospi and Taiwan were down between 0.3 per cent and 0.7 per cent. Only Nikkei lost 2 per cent. In the morning trade, these markets were down 1-2 per cent on sharp fall in US and European markets on Tuesday.

At 10:26 hours IST Sensex recovers; RIL, HDFC Bank, Infy, SBI lend support

Indian equities recovered almost all the early losses led by support from heavyweights Reliance Industries, TCS, SBI, ONGC and Infosys. It seems that the market has priced in all negatives and is eyeing the decision of a meeting between France & Germany and Greek PM Papandreou before the G-20 meet starts tomorrow. The meeting was after the Greece's abrupt call for a referendum on EU bailout deal, which have spooked global markets since Tuesday.

Asian markets too pared some losses; Shanghai, Hang Seng and Kospi fell 1 per cent each. Taiwan was down 0.7 per cent and Nikkei lost 1.7 per cent while Straits Times gained 0.5 per cent.

Meanwhile, the 30-share BSE Sensex gained 17 points at 17,498 and the 50-share NSE Nifty rose 5.65 points to 5263.60.

Reliance Industries and HDFC Bank gained 0.6 per cent each. M&M and Bajaj Auto rallied 1 per cent each. Infosys, SBI and TCS were up between 0.2 per cent and 0.4 per cent.

However, ICICI Bank and L&T continued to see selling pressure for the second consecutive session on Wednesday, losing 0.6 per cent each.

Hero Motocorp and Tata Motors slipped 1.5-2 per cent post monthly sales numbers. Metal stocks were under pressure; Tata Steel, JSPL, Hindalco and Sterlite fell 0.5-1.5 per cent.

Bharti Airtel, HDFC, BHEL, NTPC, ITC and HUL were marginally lower.

The market breadth was in favour of declines; about 561 shares gained while 684 shares slipped on National Stock Exchange.

US markets

US stocks slid during the opening trade on Tuesday. The US markets finished near lows in volatile trading and the CBOE volatility index surged more than 15 per cent to end near 35.

Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 2.48 per cent or 297.05 points at 11657.96. Nasdaq Composite shed 2.89 per cent or 77.45 points at 2606.96. Standard & Poor's 500 fell 2.79 per cent or 35.02 points at 1218.28.

Asian markets

At 7:43 am (IST), Asian markets were trading weak. China's Shanghai Composite shed 1.32 per cent or 32.49 points at 2,437.53. Hong Kong's Hang Seng slipped 1.56 per cent or 302.58 points at 19,067.38.

Japan's Nikkei fell 1.88 per cent or 166.12 points at 8,669.40. Singapore's Straits Times was down 0.89 per cent or 24.80 points at 2,764.55.



|Europe markets

European shares tumbled as anxiety over the Euro zone debt crisis intensified.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou told his cabinet that the vote on the bailout plan would go ahead and that he is confident that the government will win a vote of confidence which is coming up this Friday.

But it will have to pass through Euro zone's heavyweights. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel have summoned Papandreou to Cannes for emergency talks ahead of the G20 summit this weekend.

Fitch Ratings states that the Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's decision to put the latest European Union bailout deal for the country to a public referendum has increased the risk of a forced and disorderly sovereign default, and even the risk of a Greek exit from the Euro.

Apple mulling end of life for Mac Pro line, report says

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Apple's line of high-end desktop towers could be more endangered than originally thought, with a new report claiming that the company is considering shelving what is currently its most expensive product.
Citing anonymous sources, AppleInsider says that a sharp decline in sales of the workstations, which begin at $2,499 in the U.S., have led executives to reconsider whether it's worth continuing to invest in the product line.
"People familiar with the matter said management as far back as May of 2011 were in limbo over whether to pour any additional resources into the product line," the report says.
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the report, saying the company does not comment on rumors and speculation.


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Apple does not break down its sales numbers by device, and only lists them by product category, with the most recent fiscal quarter pulling in sales of 4.89 million Macs. Yet most of those in this most recent quarter, as well as in the past few years, have been the company's portables. During its fourth quarter earnings call, the company noted that sales were "fueled by the very strong growth of the MacBook Air, as well as the continued strong performance of the MacBook Pro." All told, those two portables accounted for 74 percent of the Mac sales for the quarter, with desktop sales being led not by the Mac Pro, but by Apple's iMac instead.
Apple last updated its Mac Pro line on July 27, 2010 (that's 1 year, 3 months and 4 days ago if you're counting), bumping up the processing power to 12 cores and moving to speedier graphics cards. The exterior design has remained relatively unchanged since before the company made its move to Intel processors. A report from MacRumors last week suggested that the next update to the hardware might not come until the first quarter of 2012, given recent delays to Intel's Sandy Bridge E processor line.
If Apple were to shelve its Mac Pro line it would further bring into question Apple's involvement in the professional market, something that has been under a microscope over the past few years. Most recently, that shift can be seen with the company's transition from Final Cut Pro 7 to Final Cut Pro X, a jump that left a number of video professionals dissatisfied after Apple omitted key workflow features. Apple countered, saying that the new version of the software represents a complete rethink of that particular software line, the likes of the jump from Mac OS 9 to OS X. A similar effort has been rumored to be in the works for Apple's audio software Logic, which has gone the longest without a major release among Apple's line of pro software.
On the hardware side, pros have also taken aim at Apple for moving to glossy screens on its notebooks by default, as well as making the batteries on those units unable to be swapped in favor of delivering longer battery life.
In either case, there's no arguing the fact that desktop sales just weren't what they used to be compared to when Apple introduced the original design of the Mac Pro (then the Power Mac G5) in mid-2003. While Mac hardware sales have grown considerably overall, notebooks have been the belle of the ball since they surpassed the company's sales of desktop computers in 2004. Those same notebook units now face cannibalization from Apple's iPad, which itself blew past Mac sales last year.

Massive hack hit 760 companies

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A massive cyberattack that led to a vulnerability in RSA's SecurID tags earlier this year also victimized Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many other big-named companies, according to a new analysis released this week.
A list of 760 organizations that were attacked was presented to Congress recently and published by security analyst Brian Krebs on his blog Monday.
The list is the first glimpse into the pervasiveness of the attack that brought RSA to its knees. Those in the security industry have long suspected that RSA was not the hack's only victim, but no other companies have been willing to talk publicly about whether they had also been compromised.
The names mentioned on Krebs' list include about a fifth of the Fortune 100, as well as many other massive corporations.



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Tech giants like Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), IBM (IBM, Fortune 500), Intel (INTC, Fortune 500), Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500), Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500), Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), Facebook, and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) are also included, as well as government agencies like the European Space Agency, the IRS, and the General Services Administration. Government security contractor Northrop Grumman (NOC, Fortune 500) was on the list, as was MIT.
The list of affected companies was obtained from a breached "command and control" server, the name for a machine that hackers use to direct the fleets of compromised PCs that they have gained control over. Krebs said he wasn't at liberty to reveal how that server was discovered or who analyzed the data.
The names came to light after researchers traced back the corporate networks that were communicating with the server that attacked RSA. The first victims started "phoning home" as early as November 2010, Krebs said.
But there's a big caveat: As Krebs was quick to note, many Internet service providers were on the list, most likely because their subscribers were attacked using their network, not because the companies themselves were compromised. That means that companies like Comcast (CMCSA, Fortune 500), Windstream (WIN), Verizon (VZ, Fortune 500), AT&T (T, Fortune 500) and Sprint (S, Fortune 500) may be off the hook.

The cost of cybercrime

But Google and Amazon, which host Domain Name System services to help people surf the Web, may also have made the list because of activity on their networks, not within their corporate walls. And some companies -- especially security technology vendors like McAfee -- could be named because they discovered the attack and intentionally compromised their own systems in an attempt to reverse-engineer the malware used in the hack.
One last footnote: It's not clear how deeply the hackers were able to penetrate each compromised business' systems. RSA got hammered -- the attackers used the breach to plant malware that let them gain access to RSA's systems -- but other companies may have fended off the intrusion without any damage.
Microsoft, one of the few companies we contacted that was willing to talk on the record about the attack, said it has "not seen any evidence supporting the claim." Wells Fargo also said it has "seen no evidence of attacks on our systems" associated with this exploit. Several other companies gave similar statements but asked not to be named in this story.
Still, experts say the revelation of the massive number of companies involved in the attack shouldn't be taken lightly.
On his blog, Krebs noted that if this could happen to one of the largest and most integral security firms, organizations that aren't focused on security had little hope of fending it off, let alone discovering it.
"If my blog post does anything, it's to get people to pay attention to it," Krebs told CNNMoney.
The sheer number of corporations mentioned in the list proves that no one is safe from attack.
"The only companies that haven't been compromised in some way, shape, or form are either insanely small, lucky or secure," said Dave Jevans, chairman of Ironkey, maker of a security-focused Web browser.
Hacks are almost a form of currency in the cybercrime economy. Hackers launch cyberattacks on as many victims as they can in order to sell their access to interested third parties.
For instance, a hack of MIT's network may not be valuable to anyone right now. But if the university were to do something to rattle, say, Anonymous in a year or two, hacktivists could go on underground channels and attempt to buy access to MIT's compromised systems.
That's why these hacks are called "advanced persistent threats." They often carry on for years without anyone knowing.
RSA came forward in March and admitted that it had been hacked, even though it likely didn't have to: regulations about public disclosure vary from state to state, and tend only to force companies to disclose hacks when customer data is revealed.
Companies don't like admitting that they've been compromised, but the fact that no other company spoke up about this attack is not necessarily indicative of secrecy.
"I'm sure 90% of these companies are just finding out they've been hacked along with the rest of us," Jevans said. "They don't even know they've been penetrated."
It's not uncommon for companies to be unaware of attacks.