Japan
Buyout funds and others are preparing to ramp up their investment in Japanese firms, with plans to commit 4.07 trillion yen (£17 billion) this year. The figure, which is believed to include an estimated 500 billion yen (£2.1 billion) from Britain's CVC Capital Partners, represents a 240 per cent rise from two years earlier.
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The Nikkei website says that investment funds could spend more than 20 trillion yen, given that buyout funds typically borrow three to five times their investment.
International investment funds surveyed by the Nikkei plan to spend an average Y240 billion on buyout deals, though none say they are considering a hostile takeover. Although the overseas funds accounted for less than 30 per cent of the funds in the survey, they have set aside about 60 per cent of the total amount earmarked by survey respondents.
Michael Smith, chairman of CVC, which invested in the management buyout of the Japan's restaurant chain Skylark, last year, tells the Nikkei that the Japanese market is one of the most attractive in the world.
Global trade
Angela Merkel, Germany's Chancellor, will this month launch a sweeping initiative for the harmonisation of US and European legislation to boost investment flows and trade between the world's largest economic blocs.
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The Financial Times says that initial talks will review financial market regulations, including delisting rules, which many US-listed European companies feel are too cumbersome, and intellectual property law. Frau Merkel is also seeking mutual recognition of technical standards for products such as cars.
Her ambition is to create a single transatlantic market for investors, with common rules and standards on issues such as intellectual property and financial regulation. The Chancellor says that achieving a "transatlantic economic partnership" central to Germany's presidency of the European Union, which began this week.
US taxes
President Bush sent a strong signal of his continued opposition to tax increases as Democrats prepare to take control of Congress.
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Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Mr Bush says that his deep tax cuts have kept the economy strong while shrinking projected deficits. "Now is not the time to raise taxes on the American people," he says.
The President writes for the first time that the budget he sends Congress next month would "balance the federal budget by 2012 while funding our priorities and making the tax cuts permanent".
The Journal notes that Mr Bush's comments reflect his administration's reliance on tax cuts as an economic elixir and a political weapon. During the 2006 congressional campaign the White House leaned heavily on tax cuts as an antidote for bad news.
Scams
Sophisticated VAT scams based in England's Midlands boosted Britain's reported fraud by 40 per cent last year to a record £1.37 billion, The Times reports.
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The tax swindles, known as "carousel" or "missing trader" fraud, sent the value of business fraud in the Midlands up 600 per cent to more than £600 million, according to a survey from the accountants BDO Stoy Hayward. Reported fraud in London and the South East was up from about £450 million in 2005 to £517 million last year.
According to the figures, the number of reported frauds in Britain rose by a third last year to 295 crimes, involving £1.37 billion. The accountants said the true cost of fraud last year was closer to £5 billion because research showed that only 15 per cent of businesses report frauds.
Computing
A British company will on Wednesday announce that it has secured $100 million to build the world's first plant for making semiconductors out of plastic rather than silicon. The technology could cut the price for electronic circuitry by up to 90 per cent and hasten the day when goods including cans of baked beans and items of clothing are made of "intelligent" materials, the Financial Times says.
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Plastic Logic, based in Cambridge, is to build the factory by the end of next year in Dresden, Germany, backed by funds from Oak Investment Partners and Tudor Investment Corporation, the US venture capital groups.
The plastic semiconductors are made using a process similar to ink-jet printing, which is widespread in the packaging industry for producing labels.
Investors in Plastic Logic, which was formed in 2000 and employs 90 people, include Intel, the world's largest microchip company, and BASF, the world's biggest chemicals group.
ITV
The commercial network is planning to launch a broadband television site at the end of March, vying to be the first terrestrial TV station to offer a parallel video-on-demand service free. Although it believes that viewers will not be willing to pay to watch much television online, The Times writes.
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The broadcaster is spending about £20 million on the project in which it will transmit ITV1 live and make available the last 30 days of television to watch online.
Separately, The Times reports that Channel 4 will today begin to deliver programming through Sony PlayStation Portable consoles connected to wireless "hot spots" in a move designed to target viewers on the move.
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Music Zone
The private equity backed entertainment retailer is just days away from collapsing into administration, according to The Daily Telegraph.
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The chain of 100 stores has filed a notice of "intention to go into administration" at Manchester Crown Court as the company's backer, Lloyds Development Capital, searches for a buyer to rescue the troubled business.
The newspaper says that the move is further evidence of a dire Christmas for entertainment retailers and comes amid growing concern about the strength of debt-laden private equity-backed businesses.
Separately, Little Chef, the roadside diner, looks close to avoiding collapse after two investors offered a rescue deal, according to The Times.
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Private equity
Buyout funds will be forced to introduce independent scrutiny into their management and provide more information to investors, the architect of corporate governance reforms in listed companies has predicted.
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Sir Derek Higgs, whose 2003 report led to a strengthening of the role of non-executive directors in publicly traded companies, says investors will increasingly want to see the same degree of independence in private equity.
Sir Derek says it is not helpful for private equity to be portrayed as a better way to do business, because there would be some "busts" in their investments that would raise questions about their governance. The risks were highlighted by last month's restructuring of Polestar, a heavily indebted printing group, that had led to losses of close to £700 million for equity and debt investors.
His comments came as The Australian Financial Review reports that the country's financial regulators are considering new rules to deal with challenges posed by the surge in private equity transactions, amid concerns about excessive debt, potential conflicts of interest and insider trading.
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Mining
Eugen David, a small-time farmer with a chipped tooth and muddy boots in Rosia Montant, Transylvania, is an unlikely man to attract the attention of movie stars and moguls. But he counts Vanessa Redgrave and George Soros among his backers in a land battle with a Canadian gold mining company, The New York Times reports.
The company, Gabriel Resources, owns the rights to mine the hills around the town and wants Mr David, 41, to leave his 50 acres of land so that the company can carve out what would be Europe's largest open-pit gold mine. Mr David says he isn't budging.
The newspaper says that, in the old days Mr David wouldn't have stood a chance fighting powerful and sophisticated adversaries like Gabriel Resources and its minority partner, the Romanian government. But in the internet age, an NGO, which has already given $35,000 to the cause, says it plans to spend as much as $240,000 next year fighting the project and helping Mr. David.
Gabriel Resources introduced a public relations fightback, but it made the mistake of inviting Redgrave to receive a lifetime achievement award at the Transylvanian International Film Festival it helped to sponsor. Redgrave's acceptance speech became a rallying cry against Gabriel Resources' project and the anti-Gabriel Resources' movement had its mascot.
Paul Larter
paul.larter@thetimes.co.uk
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