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"We certainly believe the report should be made public," said Jonathan Levine, a lawyer at the firm U.S. Girard Gibbs, pursuing the Bank on behalf of u.s. investors. "Given the magnitude of what happened and that RBS is now essentially a Government entity, there should be disclosure to the public."

Based in San Francisco, Girard Gibbs filed its collective redress before a court in Manhattan to pursue grievances of the investors who bought shares preferred RBS between March 2007 and January 2009. United States, a combination of collective redress is a cheaper way for large numbers of claimants to pursue a similar legal action.

"Failed to make the public report also raises the question of whether there is something to hide," Mr. Levine said the Sunday Telegraph. "" "" "The report may fail to find any conduct criminal, but to the extent where errors and the errors were made by the company and its leadership in the presentation information - whether by error or negligence - which could give rise to liability pursuant to the securities laws," he said.

The suit by Girard Gibbs is one of the combinations of collective redress at least two of us investors against the now State Bank. RBS has denied the allegations, but Mr. Levine is confident a N.y. judge will make a decision regarding takes place in the new year.

Separately, represents the United States Cherie Blair, pension fund the case their UK against RBS.

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Mutual funds may not look sexy, but for most people, they're the best way to achieve financial goals. That's because mutual funds are professionally managed and offer diversification, which you don't get when you buy individual stocks.

First, let's consider why professional management matters. When you buy a fund, the fund takes your money and pools it with others' money into one big pile. The fund manager's job is to decide which stocks to buy, sell, and hold--while you're busy at work and raising children. Each manager uses a methodology or discipline to select stocks or bonds. Every day, fund managers and their team of analysts examine the companies they own to see if they still fit their criteria for securities selection.

[See Make the Most Out of Mid-Life Financial Planning.]

Fund managers spend a lot of time visiting the companies in which they invest. Sure, they can read a research report about a company. By meeting company executives face-to-face, fund managers can get a much better sense of how the company operates and what advantages it has over competitors. Fund managers also visit with a company's competitors. Plus, managers do what's known as "channel checks," which means they visit the company's stores or customers. For example, if a fund manager owns shares of Best Buy (BBY), he'll visit a store to see how many customers are there and what people are buying.

The other advantage of owning a mutual fund over an individual stock is diversification, which you don't get if you invest small amounts of money in a few securities. For example, if you have $10,000 to invest, you can buy maybe 100 shares of five stocks. When you buy a mutual fund, it might own 50 to 100 stocks, so if one stock blows up, the entire fund won't go down in flames. The manager makes sure that the fund is not too heavily exposed to any one stock or sector.

That means fund managers have to do their own housekeeping. They analyze the weightings of companies the fund owns and watch as the stocks become more or less valuable. They will sell some shares of one holding if something else looks more attractive.

Most individual investors don't have the skills and time to monitor and examine each holding the way a professional fund manager does every day. Fund managers are trained to stick to their discipline and be decisive, and are not emotionally attached to your money. Professionals, whether they're in sports or management or investing, usually know the ropes much better than amateurs.

There's another advantage of mutual funds: Investors tend not to trade funds as often as stocks, which helps their returns over time.

Certainly, mutual funds don't have the pizzazz of the hot stocks of the moment. If you're looking for entertainment, go gambling in Las Vegas. But if you want to accumulate real money for your retirement and other goals, mutual funds are the safer bet.

[For tips on how to find the best mutual funds, see 5 Ways to Find the Best Mutual Funds.]

Adam Bold is the founder of The Mutual Fund Store, which provides fee-only investment advice with locations coast-to-coast. He's also host of The Mutual Fund Show, a call-in radio program broadcast across the country. Bold is author of the book The Bold Truth about Investing (April, 2009). Bold is Chief Investment Officer of The Mutual Fund Research Center, an SEC registered investment adviser which provides mutual fund and asset allocation recommendations and research to stores in The Mutual Fund Store system.

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Johnny Cameron, who was head of RBS's investment bank, has let it be known he does not object to the confidential report being released.

Sir Fred Goodwin, the vilified ex-chief executive of RBS, has already given his consent.

The FSA is suppressing the report, which did not uncover any management failures, on the grounds that the Financial Services and Markets Act of 2000 prohibits publication unless accompanied by enforcement action.

Chancellor George Osborne is reviewing the rules to see if changes can be made to ensure future reports are not withheld. Following Government intervention in 2008 RBS was bailed out with ￡45bn of taxpayer money and is now 83pc owned by the state.

The FSA has not released its document to RBS, politicians or the bank's shareholders, including UK Financial Investments – the body handling the taxpayer's stake.

Under the Act, disclosures can be made, subject to "obtaining consents" from related parties. The FSA would also need legal confirmation that the "consents" were official before publishing any part of the report.

Sources close to Mr Cameron, who was mildly censured earlier this year in a separate FSA investigation, said he had no objection to publication given that the FSA has already closed the book on his conduct.

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RBS has not demonstrated the FSA report and it is understood that Chief Executive Stephen Hester nor President Sir Philip Hampton saw it

Shareholders have expressed their dismay at the authority financial service (FSA) decision not to publish the report, which are exempt from any wrongdoing CSR executives.

"Decision of the FSA raises a number of serious issues." "If you compare this case with Equitable Life, it is clear that the amount of transparency given is radically different," said one of the ten main shareholders of RBS.

Angry shareholders came one day after Lord Oakeshott, Liberal Democrat spokesperson of the Treasury Board has tabled a parliamentary question requiring the FSA marks the report available to the Parliament.

UK, the organisation to occupy des participations de l'Etat, investments should discuss the report of a meeting of the Board of Directors next week, as concern grows on whitewash apparent.

RBS himself was also not shown the report and it is understood that Chief Executive Stephen Hester nor President Sir Philip Hampton saw it.

In a declaration of a page, the FSA stated that RBS failure was the result of "poor decisions", but added that he had not found any instances of "fraud or dishonest activity by senior RBS" or a failure of the part of the Commission corporate governance.

"In view of their findings, it seems seems be work immensely undistinguished." I do not understand how you might consider a bank which almost caused the collapse of the whole of the UK financial system and conclude that there is no major failure of the corporate governance, "said a sector banking source."

Johnny Cameron, the former head of commercial banks, investment of RBS remains the only member of the management received an official censorship.

The FSA is arguing that it is prevented from investigating its public CSR financial services and the Act of 2000 markets.

In article 348 of the Act on the "confidential information must not be disclosed", which supports the FSA applies to data collected by its researchers supported by PricewaterhouseCoopers staff for his report.

A sole shareholder said that he had contacted the FSA to request a copy of the report and had been postponed.

Investors have already rather than make a call to push the FSA to reverse its decision to informal discussions.

"It's amazing that they chose not to release this information that we have and taxpayers should be permanently. It is the taxpayers are the largest shareholder of RBS. "They have the right to know," said the investor.

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The broker raised its price target for the company from ￡20 to ￡25 and lifted its long-term earnings forecasts to around 10pc above consensus. Liberum Capital said the change in forecast was partly down to raised profit expectations for Johnson Matthey's precious metals activities.

Other winners included Imperial Tobacco, which rose 19p to ￡18.93 on a smaller-than-expected jump in Spanish tobacco taxes. Madrid said the tax rise would raise €780m (￡639m) a year – less than many had anticipated – under a package of reforms it hopes will calm investor concerns about its economy.

Away from the leaderboard, speculation continued to grow about the future of Kesa Electricals, owner of high street retailer Comet, following the release of a note from UBS.

Earlier this week, activist investor Knight Vinke raised its stake in the Kesa to 7pc, fuelling suggestions that a break-up of the chain could be imminent. Shares in the company rose 0.4 at 174p as UBS analysts Adam Cochrane and Andrew Hughes speculated that Knight Vinke "may try to instigate a one-off return of capital". This may come through a sale and leaseback of €300m of the company's French property, disposing of either Comet or one of its emerging businesses or increasing financial gearing at the company, they said.

However, the analysts had doubts over whether Knight Vinke's position was likely to be enduring. "The investment has attracted investor speculation and interest but we are unsure as to what long-term shareholder value can be created ahead of what the current management is already undertaking."

Among the laggards, shares in Man Group shed 9.6 to 279.1p as Numis Securities cuts its rating for the hedge fund manager to "reduce" from "hold" in an otherwise neutral review of UK asset managers.

Luxury retailer Burberry also fell out of fashion yesterday. The company found itself among the losers after a short rally – which saw the shares jump by over 10pc in two days – came to an end.

Shares in the company retreated 20p to ￡10.79 despite Seymour Pierce initiating coverage on the company with a "buy" rating. Kate Calvert, retail analyst at the broker, said the brand has been "reinforced as a modern, trend setting, 'must have' luxury brand".

"The business model continues to change as management tackles many of the distribution issues and moves to a retail-led business model. The full benefits of many of these actions are yet to come through profit wise."

The financial services sector was also subdued as insurers weighed on the market. Old Mutual fell 3.1 to 120.1p, Aviva slipped 5.8 to 379.5p while Standard Life closed down 2.2 at 206p.

Bucking the trend was St James's Place, the mid-cap wealth manager. It jumped 14.9 to 268p in a delayed response to a rebound in the wider insurance sector earlier this week.

Barrie Cornes, insurance analyst at Panmure said: "The last few days have seen the insurers bounce as fears over Irish debt eased after confirmation that exposures are relatively small and manageable. At St James's Place the shares missed the rally earlier in the week but bounced having been relatively left behind." Director share dealing, lack of Irish debt exposure and a general recovery in the mid-cap market also helped.

The FTSE 250 closed up 5.37 at 11082.17, helped by a late dash by online grocer Ocado to the top secondliner's leaderboard. The company, which has been criticised since its controversial 180p-a-share flotation in July, saw its shares close up 16.6 – or 11pc – to 170p on suggestions that US investors were buying into the business.

3pm: US unemployment rises

The benchmark FTSE 100 index fell during afternoon trading after an unexpected rise in US unemployment.

The blue-chip index fell by 0.2pc to to 5,756.77 as data revealed that 39,000 jobs were created in the world's largest economy last month - significantly less than economists had predicted.

The news led a retreat in US shares with the Dow Jones sliding 30.99 points to 1,217.8 during early trading.

12pm: Markets await US data

Mining shares topped the leaderboard at midday as attention shifted away from Eurozone debt.

Fresnillo rose 3.45pc to ￡15.58, while Kazakhmys was up 1.48pc to ￡15.09 and Antofagasta advanced 1.42pc to ￡14.33 as metal prices rose across the sector, which was also buoyed by Walter Energy's $3bn (￡1.91bn) takeover of Western Coal.

Gerard Lane, equity analyst at Shore Capital was bullish on the sector's prospects in the lead up to Christmas:

“Given the rise in metal prices of late we suggest that the mining sector’s earnings are likely to continue to be revised higher and given its low valuation we remain positive on the sector.”

Elsewhere, shares in Man Group shed 2.8pc as Numis Securities cuts its rating for the hedge fund manager to "reduce" from "hold" in an otherwise fairly neutral review of British asset managers.

Numis said it has "marked to market its forecasts for all companies under coverage to a consistent date as of 30/11/10 to reflect movements in performance, markets and foreign exchange since we last published on each of the individual companies."

For Man Group, the broker pointed out that its main AHL fund had returned a fall of 5.1pc since its chief executive said it was performing well in a QE2 (quantitative easing) market, meaning it has a negative mark to market as a consequence.

Burberry was also among the largest fallers despite Seymour Pierce initiating coverage on the company with a "Buy" rating.

In her recommendation, Kate Calvert, retail analyst, said: “The brand has been reinforced as a modern, trend setting, ‘must have’ luxury brand. The business model continues to change as management tackles many of the legacy distribution channel issues (historic license and wholesale agreements) and moves to a retail-led business model. The full benefits of many of these actions are yet to come through profit wise.”

Despite this, shares in the company were down 1.82pc to ￡10.79 by midday as the company reversed recent gains – which had seen shares in the company jump more than 10pc in just two days.

9am: Footsie flat in early trading

After the biggest two-day rally for the FTSE 100 since May, investors held their breath as they awaited US employment figures.

Financial shares took the biggest knock. Old Mutual fell 2pc to 121p and Man Group shed 2.5pc to 281p.

In Paris the CAC 40 slipped 0.8 percent to 3,744.24 points while the Frankfurt DAX dropped 0.14 percent to 6,947.31.

Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average hit a fresh six-month high intraday high at one point, before edging up just under 0.1pc to 10,172.89.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index gained 0.1pc to 23,479.92.

Oil prices hovered near $88 a barrel, with losses tempered by hopes that demand for crude will improve. In currencies, the dollar was down against the yen but up against the euro.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its biggest two-day rally since July, closing up nearly 1pc to 11,362.41as US home sales and retail purchases topped estimates.

Friday's Market report:

US roadshow delivers new Ocado investors

Thursday's market report:

FTSE today: market report - as it happened Dec 2, 2010

GKN in fast lane as FTSE driven up 2.2pc

Tools: Shares and Markets: News, charts, data

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street mostly shrugged off a weaker-than-expected payrolls report on Friday, leaving stocks little changed as the data didn't alter investors' view the economic recovery is on track.

U.S. employment barely grew in November and the jobless rate unexpectedly jumped to a seven-month high of 9.8 percent, the government said.

But recent data, including retail sales and other labor reports, have raised optimism the recovery is accelerating after hitting a soft patch in the summer.

Separately Friday, a report showed the U.S. services sector grew for an 11th straight month in November, but the government said new U.S. factories orders dropped.

"The marketplace understands we never have a recovery that is uneventful, without bumps," said Art Hogan, chief market analyst at Jefferies & Co in Boston.

"The pattern of jobs creation has improved. It's moving in the right direction."

He said the technology sector may be in focus because if the economy is creating fewer jobs "corporations are buying more technology to remain productive."

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) dipped 7.15 points, or 0.06 percent, to 11,355.26. The Standard & Poor's 500 (.SPX) dropped 2.53 points, or 0.21 percent, to 1,219.00. The Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) shed 0.61 points, or 0.02 percent, to 2,578.74.

The S&P 500 faced strong technical resistance at about 1,228, near a recent high of more than two years and also the 61.8 percent Fibonacci retracement of the index's slide from October 2007 to March 2009, a key technical indicator.

Support for the benchmark kicks in at 1,200, which was recently a stubborn resistance point, and near 1,195, its 14-day moving average.

Further limiting the decline in stocks, the euro rose 1 percent against the U.S. dollar. A stronger euro has recently translated into a boost for U.S. and global equities.

"The focus today is more on what is related to the weaker dollar, like basic materials," Jefferies' Hogan said.

The S&P materials index (.GSPM), up 0.3 percent, was the only top S&P sector in the black.

China will switch to a prudent monetary policy from a moderately loose stance, the Communist Party's top leaders decided Friday, possibly paving the way for more interest rate increases and lending controls.

In company news, U.S.-based mining group Walter Energy Inc (WLT.N) agreed to buy Canada's Western Coal Corp (WTN.TO)(WTN.L) for about $3.25 billion to create the world's leading metallurgical coal producer. Walter fell 0.7 percent to $104.82.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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Traders cited a short squeeze is GKN which helped to lift the engineer, but there were also signs that the American heartening because market is continuing its recovery - sales in November were up 17pc on the previous year.

GKN has previously named North America as a "key target market" and the company told analysts in August that it hoped to increase its share of the market from 33pc to 45pc in 2014.

Analysts at Jefferies described the because sales data as a positive for GKN and should – at the very least – provide a "feeling fillip". Sense certainly did seem to be on GKN's side yesterday as the shares climbed 15 to 210 p.

Sage surged up 18 to 289p. Having beaten full-year profit expectations on Wednesday, the accountancy software company benefited from positive broker sentiment. Numis upped its stance on Sage to "add" from "hold", p. encouraging growth in the UK and continental Europe.

Amongst the latter-liners, Marston's gained 6.3 to 106 7q after the pubs and brewing group posted profit before tax of ￡ 52 5 m, up from ￡ 21 4 m last time.

Ralph Findlay, chief executive, said: "We have adapted well to market conditions and trends." "We are benefiting from our focused, differentiated strategy as demonstrated by our robust results in 2010 and a strong start to the new financial year."

Analysts at Killik kept their "buy" rating, saying:

"In managed pubs, the success of the group's food offer and new-build strategy continued to drive growth." Like-for-like sales during the year were 1.7% ahead of last year, with food up 2.5% and wet (i.e. beer) up 1.4%. Recent trading (in the eight weeks to 27 November) has seen an acceleration in growth to + 3.0%. "Encouragingly, it looks as if this has been achieved without the need for additional promotion, with operating margins up by one percentage point on the year, largely as a result of tight cost control, lower utility costs and the disposal of 17 lower margin leasehold sites operational."

3. 15 pm: Rachel rollercoaster continues at Desire Petroleum

Ever-volatile Desire Petroleum was in demand as the explore said it had made an oil discovery in the Falkland Islands.

Desire said that preliminary tests at its closely watched Rachel North well indicated it is an oil find sending soaring up to 132 75p 26.75 - gold 25pc - Desire.

Analysts at Evolution Securities said:

"Desire has this morning announced that the Rachel North well has intersected 57 m of net oil pay which is excellent news." Wireline logging is ongoing but initial indications are that the thickest section has good porosity which bodes well for any future flow test and therefore commerciality of the field. "We upgrade to Add and a target price of 180p."

Desire's surge came as the wider market raced ahead. The FTSE 100 gained around 98 points to 5740.67 as the European Central Bank delayed the withdrawl of its stimulus measures.

Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president, said the central bank will delay its withdrawal of emergency liquidity measures to combat "acute" market tensions. Trichet said the ECB will keep offering banks unlimited loans through the first quarter. The bank will also continue to buy government bonds.

Driving up the leaderboard GKN, which was manufacturing car and change shares. Traders were p. US as sales, which rose 17pc in November from a year earlier.

11. 15 am: TUI Travel leads charge

TUI Travel was enjoying a day in the sun, jumping 14.4 to 228 8 p to top the leaderboard large-cap.

Investors piled into the travel company after its full-year results came in at the top end of market forecasts.

Analysts at Numis kept their "add" rating, saying:

"The statement reads well and TUI reports that it has seen a" sustained improvement in demand since July. "" However, the macro environment remains uncertain. We would highlight two key issues. Position at Corsair agreement has been reached with employees for a turnaround plan. and, secondly, for Summer TUI expects to have minimum cost inflation whilst Thomas Cook said yesterday that it expected 2% cost inflation. "This puts in TUI a strong competitive position."

TUI's rise helped the FTSE 100 gain around 35 points to 5677.44. Speculation that the European Central Bank may announce further measures to stem the region's sovereign debt crisis also lifted feeling.

Analysts at Royal Bank of Scotland said:

"Thursday's ECB meeting could send the first signal that the central bank is on course to step up its purchase program: we continue to look for EEUR100bn of purchases by the beginning of next year, including Spanish securities."

They added:

"With financial contagion gathering pace across countries and sectors, we reiterate our view that there is an urgent need for the ECB to intervene in the market, so as to send a powerful message to global investors that the central bank stands ready to provide an unlimited line of defence for the euro area."

Goal GlaxoSmithKline missed out on the rally. Britain's biggest drug maker shed 9.5 to ￡ 12.21.5 after advisors to the US Food and Drug Administration recommended against wider use of Glaxo's prostate drug Avodar.

9 am: FTSE climbs after Asian stocks rise sharply

Frankfurt's DAX 30 0 42pc to reach 6,895.77 and gained in Paris the CAC 40 pink 0 71pc 3,695.57 to.

Miner Rio Tinto was one of the biggest early risers, up 5pc 2 to 4, 312p after a jump in metal prices.

Rolls Royce, which has endured a month-long scrutiny after one of its Qantas A380 superjumbo engines suffered a blow-out over Indonesia, fell 1. 610p after it emerged Qantas would file a compensation claim to 29pc against them.

Asian stock markets rose sharply on Thursday after improved economic indicators powered big gains on Wall Street that followed - on in Asia.

The overall share rally continued overnight as Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average surged 1. 8pc 10,168.52, hitting its highest level in intraday to more than five months at one point.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was up 0. 9pc 23,458.74 and the Shanghai Composite index advanced to 1. 6pc to 2,868.49.

On Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 2pc to 11,255.78 in its biggest gain since September 1 after positive employment figures and growing speculation that the European Central Bank could step up its purchases of government debt boosted confidence.

Wednesday's market report:

FTSE today: market report - as it happened Dec 1, 2010

Betfair sinks below float price as FTSE 100 conscientisation

Tools: Shares and markets: News, charts, data

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WASHINGTON – Securities and Exchange Commission attorneys wanted to bring a case swiftly against Bank of America for allegedly misleading shareholders when it acquired Merrill Lynch, and as a result omitted significant violations from their initial charges, according to an agency watchdog report released Tuesday.

The report by the office of SEC Inspector General David Kotz also found that the agency sought a relatively small penalty against Bank of America, $33 million, after investigators initially "relied substantially on case precedent" to arrive at the figure.

A federal judge threw out that settlement amount and the deal was revised early this year to include a $150 million penalty.

Kotz's report, however, found that the SEC staff operated "ably" under tight deadlines to investigate and bring the case against the biggest U.S. bank.

"The evidence did not show that SEC staff failed to diligently and zealously investigate potential securities-law violations," the report says.

SEC enforcement attorneys felt pressure to bring the case quickly because it was a high-profile issue, the IG's investigation found.

The SEC accused Bank of America of failing to disclose to shareholders before they voted on the Merrill deal that it had authorized Merrill to pay up to $5.8 billion in bonuses to its employees in 2008 even though the investment bank lost $27.6 billion that year. But because of the rush, the report says, the agency failed to also initially charge Bank of America for failing to disclose Merrill's huge losses in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Bank of America, which is based in Charlotte, N.C., was among the hardest-hit banks during the credit crisis. The $45 billion in bailout funds it received included $20 billion for Merrill, putting it among the largest recipients of government aid. It repaid the money last year.

Among the report's recommendations is that the SEC review the level of cooperation among law enforcement agencies on investigations and determine where it could be improved. The report said SEC attorneys expressed the view that the office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, which also conducted an investigation of Bank of America, failed to cooperate fully with the SEC and refused to share some information.

"We value the report's insights and look forward to addressing its recommendations," SEC spokesman John Nester said.

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Proving the only winners yesterday were Barclays gaining 3.15 to 262.95p and HSBC putting on 0.3 to 651.4p.

Even the drug makers were feeling under par, with Shire falling 45p to ￡15.22. GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca shed 36p to ￡12.24? and 50p to ￡30.23 respectively.

Shire's slide came as analysts at Jefferies cut their rating to “hold” from “buy”.

Although Shire is on course for strong earnings-per-share growth, which analysts said made Shire one of the most attractive global pharmaceutical stocks, the broker thought this growth spurt was already priced in.

They also highlighted risks that could curtail ongoing performance for Shire, which has recently gained market share thanks to production problems at its American rival Genzyme.

Analysts pointed out that Shire’s manufacturing capacity is constrained until its new production facility in Lexington comes online, adding that there is uncertainty over when this new site will be approved by the regulatory authorities.

Amongst other risks faced by Shire, according to Jefferies, is a Food and Drug Administration review of cardiac safety in relation to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drugs, due in the first quarter of next year. However, the broker added that it expected the outcome to be “relatively benign for Shire”.

In terms of opportunities for the company, analysts pointed to the chance to break into the attention deficit market in Europe - an opportunity which they said was “largely untapped by Shire”.

Elsewhere, Aim-listed broadband satellite operator, Avanti Communications, hurtled up 72p to 725p after announcing the launch of its HYLAS 1 satellite. Analysts at Daniel Stewart said the launch “effectively launches Avanti itself as a satellite- based communications provider rather than a start-up”.

3.15pm: Weak start on Wall Street sends FTSE 100 further into red

Europe's debt crisis infected sentiment on the other side of the Atlantic too, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing around 136 points to 10959.06.

Hewlett Packard and McDonald's were amongst the biggest fallers in the US, while Amazon ticked up after the National Retail Federation reported a 6.4pc rise in retail sales over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

But news of ringing tills failed to rouse the markets on either side of the Atlantic. With Wall Street on the slide, the FTSE 100 continued on its downward trajectory, shedding around 90 points to 5578.16.

2.30pm: HSBC amongst few stocks on the ascendant

HSBC climbed up a brief leaderboard, gaining 4.9 to 656p as the wider market fell back. The FTSE 100 slipped further into negative territory, shedding around 69 points to 5599.74.

HSBC's rise came despite a downgrade from Ian Gordon, an analyst at Exane BNP Paribas, who cut the bank to "underperform" from "neutral".

Mr Gordon described HSBC as a "safe port in the storm", but asked "perhaps time to edge back out to sea?"

He said that as HSBC had outperformed the other banks during the recent sector pull-back, there were now more “enticing entry levels” offered by Lloyds, Barclays, Deutshce Bank, the French banks “and even RBS”.

Topping the leaderboard, however, was TUI Travel. The holiday operator, which is due to unveil full-year results this week, said it was selling its Thomson Al Fresco business to Homair Vacances. At September 30 last year, the net book value of the assets was ￡10.3m.

Elsewere, Costain slid 11.25 to 198.75p after the construction company said it was in talks with contractors over the financing of an energy-from-waste facility in London after one of them filed for insolvency.

Analysts at Panmure Gordon said:

"The insolvency of the Swiss operator AE&E Inova is unhelpful for the completion, and payment to Costain, of the Belvedere waste to energy plant. Further clarification of the situation is needed before we do anything to our numbers. UK energy policy remains high on the infrastructure agenda; we hope that a sensible solution is found to ensure ongoing sector activity."

12 noon: Resolution caught in the bears' clutches

Resolution was amongst the laggards thanks to a bearish note from JP Morgan Cazenove. The broker started coverage of Clive Cowdery’s insurance buy-out vehicle with an “underweight” rating and a 254p target price.

“While we acknowledge that the poor share price performance of Resolution since launch in 2008 (down 41%) has left the shares undervalued, we think that there are much better stories elsewhere in the sector,” said analysts.

Last year the company bought Friends Provident and in June, Resolution clinched a deal to buy AXA’s UK life insurance businesss.

“We see some industrial logic for the AXA / Friends Provident combination but still think the combined group is one of the least attractive of the listed names from both a cash flow and operating perspective. We see the AXA asset as having the inherited estate (i.e. capital) but less attractive earnings capacity ex this,” said the broker.

Resolution shed 5.7 to 219.4p while the FTSE 100 pared back some of its losses, falling around 15 points to 5653.8.

However, the banks gained some ground in the wake of the Irish bail-out with HSBC putting on 13.3 to 664.4p and Royal Bank of Scotland rising 0.49 to 39.18p.

The FTSE 250 also lost around 15 points to 10793.95. Bucking the trend was Punch Taverns on speculation it could hand over almost 6,000 pubs in an attempt to reduce its ￡3.1bn debt pile.

Analysts at Liberum Capital, who have a "hold" on Punch, said:

"This suggests that new CEO Dyson may withdraw support to the entire tenantedbusiness and hand the pubs over to bondholders.

"This would mean retaining the PLC cash (c40p per share) and diverting it to improve managed pub business (Spirit). This could be worth >40p per share, albeit this is a very subjective valuation."

Punch gained 3.5 to 62.6p.

11.10am: FTSE falls back on debt contagion worries

Having made early gains, the FTSE 100 headed south as the morning wore on. The blue-chips shed around 24 points to 5644.11 as debt contagion worries persisted.

Ben Critchley, a sales trader at IG Index, said: "It’s no secret why investors are still nervous - the worry is that Ireland won’t mark the end of the eurozone crisis and with the economies of Portugal and Spain looking less than robust markets are worried that we could be talking about potential bailouts once again in the not too distant future."

9.30: Irish bail-out gives blue-chips a lift

Royal Bank of Scotland, which is exposed to Irish debt, rose 3.6pc. Barclays, Lloyds, Standard Chartered, HSBC also gained.

The FTSE 100 was up 46 points - or 0.8pc - at 5715 in early trading.

Shares in software firm Autonomy dropped 0.8pc, after falling as much as 9pc last Wednesday when it said talks on a deal it is pursuing had given rise to an additional opportunity, which may cause a delay in its timetable.

Asian markets were mixed in light trading on Monday as they waited to see the impact of a bailout for Ireland and amid caution ahead of a slew of economic data from the US this week

Oil prices rose above $84 a barrel as investors looked to this week's key jobs report for evidence that the US economy is imporoving. Manufacturing, vehicle and retail sales figures for November will also be released, along with factory orders for October.

In currencies, the dollar was up against the yen and the euro.

Tokyo's Nikkei added 0.8pc to 10,125, buoyed by a stronger dollar. South Korea's Kospi fell 0.3pc to 1,895.52 and Australia's S&P/ASX200 gained 0.4pc, to 4,618.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng was almost flat - up just 0.06pc at 22,890 - as were exchange in mainland China.

Also helping ease market tensions was news over the weekend that the European Union had agreed to €85bn in bailout loans for Ireland to help it weather its banking crisis.

The rescue deal means two of the eurozone's 16 nations have now come to depend on foreign help and underscores Europe's struggle to contain its spreading debt crisis.

The fear is that with Greece and now Ireland shored up, speculative traders will target the bloc's other weak fiscal links, particularly Portugal. Underlying all those concerns is that the contagion would spread to Spain, a major economy whose implosion would have serious repercussions for the euro.

Worries about an escalation between the Koreas weighed on some stocks. Joint military exercises involving a nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier and a South Korean destroyer continued on Monday, nearly a week after a deadly attack on a South Korean island sent tensions soaring in the region.

Britain's FTSE 100 index is seen rising as much as 0.4pc - or 20 points - on Monday. It closed down 30 points at 5668.70 on Friday.

In New York on Friday, the Dow Jones fell 95.28, or 0.9pc, to 11,092. The S&P 500 index was down 8.95, or 0.8pc, to 1,189.40. The Nasdaq composite index fell 8.56, or 0.3pc, to 2,534.56. Overall, stocks ended the week mixed. The Dow ended 112 points lower, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 10. However, the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index gained 17 points for the week.

Monday's Market Report:

Malaise grips markets as FTSE 100 loses 2pc

Friday's Market Report:

Cold front ahead for retail sector, analyst warns, as FTSE 100 slides

Tools: Shares and Markets: News, charts, data

View the original article here

A report has suggested that more costly banking may be part of the solution, small business issues report when you try to access to finance.

Said document work commissioned by finance finance Venture vendor invoice and supported by the bis, KPMG and the Colombia-British Business Angels Association (BBAA) reliability have become more important to improve small business confidence and stimulate the demande.Il prices was also reported that small businesses failing to invest because of a reluctance to take on new debt.

Peter Ewan, Director General of finance Venture, said player competition between the banks to reduce the price in advance of the financial crisis had led to a "production-line" approach to banking small businesses which has "affected quality of service.

"I hope price increases, allowing financial institutions give a better service to their customers," said he.

"As expenses have been hunted down it is much harder for financial institutions to understand their customers, because they have fewer persons to the faire.Ils must be more effective because prices have fallen."

Many companies are currently too afraid of approaching their bank for the capital expansion or extension found in cases where the information that they provide results in changes to existing facilities, contributor the requested report.

Jamie Young, Director of Feist Hedgethorne, a provider of part-time, finance directors stated: "I have clients who have relatively small bank overdrafts to ￡ 30 000 to 40 000 ￡ and small amounts of growth", he explains."They were concerned by addressing the Bank for an increase in their overdraft facility where this discovered gets reduced.

Venture finance accounting investigation found that said 60pc reliability rather than price was now key driver when companies evaluated the quality of their relationships with lenders.

Mr. Ewen said business owners "have started to say,"a relationship is more important than the fee or discount rate. "

Mr. Young was added: "the great thing is if funding is going to be there for the future or [if it]"will be shot.""

? Would you be willing to pay more for a more reliable relationship with your Bank? have your opinion on our forum, hosted on LinkedIn

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反序列化操作 "Translate" 的响应消息的正文时出现错误。读取 XML 数据时，超出最大字符串内容长度配额 (8192).通过更改在创建 XML 读取器时所使用的 XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas 对象的 MaxStringContentLength 属性，可增加此配额。 第 1 行，位置为 9647。

He downgraded his stance on Kingfisher, JJB Sports, HMV and Topps Tiles to "sell" from "hold".Kingfisher fell 4.9 to 6 while JJB Sports lost 0.3 to 6 p 244 p HMV shed 0.5 to 46.25 and Topps Tiles put on 1.5 to 60 p.

At the end of a volatile day, the FTSE 100 recovered earlier heavy losses to close down hereby points to 5668.7.The FTSE 250 shed 25.61 points to 10809.43.

With feeling proving shaky banks and miners found themselves on the red side of the index.

Antofagasta and Vedanta Resources lost to 52p ￡ 13.25 and 68p to ￡ 20.75 respectively.However, taking the biggest tumble was Royal Bank of Scotland falling 2.17 to 38 69p. The state-backed bank was closely followed by Lloyds Banking Group, which lost 2.85 to 61 85p.

4. 15 pm: Capital Shopping Centres again wearing yellow jersey

The FTSE 100 pared back its losses towards the closed, shedding around 31 points to 5667.51

"Going into the last half hour of trading blue chips have been under pressure for much of the day in London and while the index is still down it has recovered strongly off the morning lows." "Once again concerns about just how far the European debt crisis is going to spread this time around are making for charge trade and it is the banks which are amongst some of the biggest losers today," said David Jones, chief market strategist at IG index.

Capital Shopping Centres again topping the leaderboard.Having surged on Thursday on bid interest from Simon Property, the property investor was in demand again, putting it another 18.6 to 399 6 p.

Panmure Gordon moved their stance on SCC to "hold" from "sell".

"Until the EGM is held on 20th December we expect the situation to remain very lively and believe the shares are therefore likely to be subject to active trading, particularly by short-term speculators." "In the long run, if the business stays publicly quoted, the future looks improved with ownership of The Trafford Centre and a strengthened balance sheet," said the broker.

One of Thursday's losers, Betfair, found itself under more pressure.After Investec initiated on the online betting business with a "sell" rating, followed by UBS followed. Analysts at the latter said that liberalization of international betting markets provided "a significant growth opportunity", but should be set against the risk of higher betting tax and of being pushed out of existing markets.

Betfair lost 66p to ￡ 14.05.

12noon: Weir rises we nod from Morgan Stanley

Weir was amongst a bunch of blue-chip winners thin as Morgan Stanley initiated on the engineering group with an "overweight" rating and ￡ 20.00 price target. Weir, which makes pumps and valves, gained 20p to ￡ 17.27.

Analysts said Weir was a "high quality business with exposure to long-term growth markets such as Minerals and Oil & Gas".

But the wider market was in the doldrums during morning trading as mounting debt contagion fears sent investors running for cover.The FTSE 100 was off around 93 points to 5604.93 and the FTSE 250 was down 72 points to 10762.61.

Adding to the market's woes were escalating tensions between North and South Korea and continuing concerns around interest rates in China.

The latter hit the mining stocks, with Antofagasta shedding 59pp to ￡ 13.18 and Vedanta Resources losing 93p to ￡ 20.50.

Banks were again on the decline with Lloyds Banking Group the sharpest faller.It dropped to 61 62p 3.08.

But BT continued to top a brief leaderboard after the telecoms giant sold a 5 5pc stake in Indian IT services group, Tech Mahindra.

"It looks like it's up on the back of the India deal, even though the stake sale is only worth about 60 million pounds at current market prices," said Will Draper, an analyst at Execution Noble.

BT was also boosted by Exane BNP Paribas raising its target price for the company by 20pc to 265p.

9 am: eurozone debt worries keep FTSE under pressure

The FTSE 100 was down 34 points at 5663.89 at 9 am, with worries over the global recovery due to the escalating eurozone debt crisis and Korean tensions weighing on miners and banks.

BT was the biggest riser in the blue chip index - up 3 65pc - after it said India's Mahindra & Mahindra had agreed to buy up to 5 5pc of Tech Mahindra from BT over time at a market price related.BT owns about 30pc of Tech Mahindra.

While recently Joseph Ocado gained around 2pc at the open following reports of interest from Morrisons.

Asian stock markets fell on Friday after North Korea said that any "confrontation escalated" will lead to war and the escalating eurozone debt crisis kept buyers on the sidelines.

South Korea's Kospi fell 1. 3pc, Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 0. 1pc and Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 0. 1pc.Markets in Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and New Zealand also fell, although Australia's S & P/ASX 200 edged up 0 1pc.

"Most Asian countries are still hesitating about the situation in Korea, and the markets are hesitant about what might happen," said Lee Kok Joo, head of research at Phillip Securities in Singapore.

In Europe, a debt crisis that seemed just weeks ago is now escalating containable, with some experts saying it was only a matter of time before Portugal and Spain - like Ireland and Greece - would be forced to ask for help.

The continent's problems have sent the euro lower against the dollar.

Asian markets were trading without cues from the US, where financial markets were closed Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Britain's FTSE 100 index is seen falling on Friday, retreating after gains in the previous two sessions, amid concerns about Europe's crisis with mining stocks likely to pressured by weaker metals prices and debt persist.

The UK blue chip index looks set to shed 21 to 29 points, or as much as 0 5pc, according to financial bookmakers, after it ended up 41.83 points, gold 0 7pc at 5,698.93 on Thursday, in thin volumes.

Friday's Markeet Report:

Cold front ahead for retail sector, analyst warns, as FTSE 100 slides

Thursday's market report:

Coffee and Shopping Capital wake up FTSE 100

FTSE today: market report - as it happened Nov 25, 2010

Wednesday's market report:

Autonomy falls on deal disappointment but FTSE rises

FTSE today: market report - as it happened Nov 24, 2010

Tuesday's market report:

Korean nflict hit already nervous FTSE 100

Monday's market report:

Invensys in decline while Irish woes weigh on FTSE 100

FTSE today: market report - as it happened Nov 22, 2010

Tools: Shares and markets: News, charts, data

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Since the financial crisis took a huge toll on their portfolios, investors en masse have taken refuge in bonds. From the beginning of 2009 through the end of this past September, they pulled a total of $38 billion out of stock funds, according to the Investment Company Institute. Meanwhile, they poured $618 billion into bond funds. "Investors' tolerance for risk seems to be lower than it has been for quite a while," says Brian Reid, chief economist for ICI. Little wonder. After years of climbing at an average yearly clip of more than 18 percent, the S&P 500 index is in the red for the past decade.

But with yields low and prices high, it's time to rethink bonds as your safe bet, experts say. The Federal Reserve has kept the target range for the federal funds rate between zero and 0.25 percent since December 2008 in hopes that low rates will help jump-start the economy. A rate hike isn't expected to come until the second half of 2011 at the earliest. But "rates are going to have to go up at some point," says Brian Gendreau, market strategist with Financial Network. When that happens, the price of the bonds will go down. Even people invested in supersafe treasuries will find themselves losing money unless they own individual bonds and hold them to maturity.

[See the 10 Best Large-Cap Growth Funds for the Long Term.]

No one can time the Fed's decision, but one move you might make in preparation is to shift part of your bond portfolio into dividend-paying stocks. While stocks are inherently riskier than bonds, these shares are generally less volatile than other types of stocks and in many cases offer income-hungry investors attractive yields relative to bonds. They tend to do well in a rising rate environment, which is usually a sign that the economy is picking up. When the economic picture improves, companies generally raise their dividend payouts slowly over time, says Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor's. "Overall, you're looking at a positive scenario." The number of companies raising their dividend was up 57 percent during the third quarter over the same period last year, according to S&P.

[See top-rated funds by category ranked by U.S. News Score.]

Two funds with a strict dividend mandate and good performance records are Vanguard Dividend Growth (symbol VGIDX) and Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG). The former focuses on strong, steadily growing companies with a long history of boosting dividend payouts year after year. The latter is an exchange-traded fund tracking an index of companies that have increased their annual dividends for at least the past 10 years. It holds about 140 stocks of well-established companies in various sectors such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Chevron. Year-to-date, the funds are up 7 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, back in your bond portfolio, it's best not to reach for higher yield by buying treasuries with longer maturities. Those securities may look most appealing now, but they'll be hit harder when rates move upward. It's important to be diversified among a range of fixed-income assets and maturities, says John Diehl, senior vice president in the retirement division of The Hartford. Two bond fund favorites of Alice Lowenstein, director of managed portfolios at investment research firm Litman/Gregory, are PIMCO Total Return (PTTAX) as a core holding and Loomis Sayles Bond (LSBDX) as a supporting player.

[See 7 Great Dividend Funds.]

PIMCO's manager Bill Gross generally sticks to offerings in the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index (the most commonly cited bond index), though he will occasionally invest in other sectors like high-yield bonds or emerging-markets debt. Loomis Sayles Bond is a multisector bond fund that, at the end of September, had no exposure to U.S. government debt. The funds are up an average annual 7 percent and 10 percent, respectively, over the last 10 years. Tom Lydon, editor of ETFTrends.com, suggests the iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (LQD), which covers the medium-term investment-grade corporate bond universe. It has returned 10 percent so far this year.

High-yield bond funds may merit a look, too. The junk-bond default rate is down dramatically from 13 percent at the end of 2009, according to Moody's Investors Service. Moody's expects it to sink below 2 percent by mid-2011 as companies regain their footing.

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Many people believe that they can reach their investment goals by simply buying mutual funds. After all, investing in a group of funds that hold different kinds of stocks, bonds, and commodities is supposed to provide diversification, which can give some protection when the markets are down and better returns when prices rise. That's not necessarily true. All funds aren't created equal; some are better than others. Investors have to pay attention to all of the funds in their portfolio regularly, because even good funds can go bad.

It's not easy to distinguish the good funds from the bad ones. The main things to consider are the fund manager and performance. You've heard the disclaimer that's on every investment product: "Past performance does not guarantee future results." Don't listen to that. In my view, past performance--that is, the fund manager's past performance--is the most important factor when deciding to buy a fund. Reviewing a fund manager's performance over different time periods gives an idea how that fund behaves in various market environments.

[See How and When to Start Saving For Retirement.]

It's a lot like baseball. The New York Yankees, which has many of the top players in the league, won the World Series in 2009. This year, the team won enough to make it to the American League Championship Series, but didn't beat the Texas Rangers to advance to the World Series. Similarly, if a fund manager can navigate the trends in the market over different time periods and holds the right securities, there's a good shot that it will be a superior performer. Check a fund's performance over one-, three-, five- and 10-year time frames. If a fund manager has been in the top 20 percent of all funds in those periods, she or he is a consistent winner.

However, some star fund managers can't keep up with changing markets. For example, Bill Miller at Legg Mason Capital Management Value fund (LMVTX) has struggled after beating the S&P 500 index for 15 years from 1991 to 2005. There's no reason to hang on to a fund that has lost its luster. You're not married to that fund manager. There are plenty of other funds that may provide better returns.

To avoid hanging on to losing funds too long, check the funds you own every quarter. You should sell a fund if the reasons you bought it have changed, such as the manager has left, or you have simply found a better fund.

[See 7 Money Tips for Twentysomethings.]

Some people won't sell a fund because they don't want to pay taxes. That's not a reason to stick with a fund. Let's say you invested $10,000 in a large-cap value fund in April, and the market struggles over the next several months, so by November your investment hasn't budged. The fund company's website says it expects a 15 percent capital gains distribution (usually paid in December). If you don't sell the fund before the "shareholder-of-record" date for distributions, you'll receive a 1099 form from the fund company obligating you to pay taxes on that $1,500 distribution, even though you didn't enjoy any gains. You're better off selling the fund at a loss before the record date of distribution in early December to avoid the tax hit. Then, move the investment to another fund that won't have a large distribution. (If you need more help with tax-efficient investing strategies, ask a financial adviser or accountant.)

Another reason some investors put off dumping a fund is that some funds have back-end loads (deferred sales charges). If your fund has risen 5 percent while another fund with similar risk has gone up 10 percent, you're losing the opportunity to make more money. If you do have an underperformer, it can make good sense to sell it and pay the back-end load so that you can move on to better funds. When you forget your funds, you risk missing better investments and the potential for more money.

Adam Bold is the founder of The Mutual Fund Store, which provides fee-only investment advice with locations coast-to-coast. He's also host of The Mutual Fund Show, a call-in radio program broadcast across the country. Bold is author of the book The Bold Truth about Investing (April, 2009). He is Chief Investment Officer of The Mutual Fund Research Center, an SEC registered investment adviser which provides mutual fund and asset allocation recommendations and research to stores in The Mutual Fund Store system.

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By Rosalba O'Brien and Matthew Scuffham Rosalba O'brien And Matthew Scuffham – Mon?Nov?22, 7:51?am?ET

LONDON (Reuters) – As a CEO, David Bramhill could handle the online attacks on his looks and his character. "You get used to the personal stuff that goes up: 'Fat bastard,' etc.," says the burly one-time boxer and oil industry veteran. "I don't like it but I suppose being in the position I'm in, OK, they can take pot shots at me."

But when the messages on internet bulletin boards became a concerted campaign of criticism against his oil and gas exploration company, Bramhill snapped. "When it comes to dishonesty, and not running the company the way it should be run, and spreading untrue rumors -- this is where we've got major, major issues," a disillusioned Bramhill told Reuters in early September.

Bramhill's experience is part of a bigger story of insults and untruths involving a clutch of firms listed on AIM, London's junior stock market. According to the companies, they are victims of a kind of financial cyber-bullying in which discussions among investors on internet bulletin boards have turned abusive. Executives of the targeted companies, typically small and often in commodities, suspect an organized hand may be directing those behind the comments -- and then cashing in on the reaction.

The incidents expose a lack of effective regulation of investment chat boards as well as the huge impact anonymous posters can have on smaller companies and people's lives. Soon after Bramhill spoke to Reuters, the 59-year old, who also received physical threats from people posting on investment message boards, announced his retirement.

The company he led, Nighthawk Energy, invested $30 million in its U.S.-based projects over the last financial year and was earlier this month rated a 'buy' by Goldman Sachs. Frustrated with a lack of action by Britain's market regulator, which says such cases are difficult to police and a low priority, Nighthawk, fellow AIM-listed oil explorer Nostra Terra and several other small companies have considered legal action against message board-posters, who typically use multiple aliases to disguise their identity. In rulings that have emboldened the companies, Britain's High Court granted orders to both Nighthawk and Nostra Terra this year giving them the right to order message boards to disclose the identities of those behind the disparaging remarks.

The issue is not unique to Britain. Companies in the United States have also complained about message board users, though there the right to free speech provides significant protection for posters. Not so in Canada, where last March small cap resources firm Farallon Mining Ltd won damages of $425,000 against a user of online site Stockhouse. It was the biggest defamation payout ever awarded against a single person in Canada.

"The bulletin board becomes the tail wagging the bloody company," Bramhill says. "There was one particular theme of dishonesty in the company, of projects not being correct. We're aware of all this stuff. It's all a load of baloney and you try not to look at it but people send you it and ask, 'What are you going to do about it?'"

Another executive told Reuters that his company has found one individual posting defamatory comments using 22 different aliases. "We believe there is a network behind it that's trading and manipulating and they're using him as the front," says the executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the company is pursuing the investigation. "We want to get the bigger fish - otherwise we would have taken him down already."

LATE-NIGHT LIBEL

Investor message boards appeared in the very early days of the web and boomed among private investors working as "day traders" during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. The boards Nighthawk and Nostra Terra have focused on in their legal challenges are ADVFN, or Advanced Financial Network, and iii, or Interactive Investor. ADVFN is Europe's biggest financial markets website with two million registered users and as many as 12,000 posts a day. iii claims 1.6 million users, and clocked up around 180,000 posts from over 9,000 contributors over the last month.

Neither board requires participants to reveal their real identity as they post, and it's not difficult for a single user to create multiple aliases. ADVFN users can opt for what the site calls the "more refined environment" of premium boards at a cost of 5 pounds ($7.97) per month, or enter the fray of the much more popular free boards, which require a simple registration. Posts on message boards vary from the short and bitter ("I'm out", to flag a stock sale) to mini-essays dissecting the minutiae of company statements. As with most internet forums, the grammar is dubious, insults are bandied freely and the messages are loaded with abbreviations and euphemisms that can be indecipherable to outsiders.

Because of their potential volatility, small companies in risky industries like oil exploration are a favorite topic. On the iii forum in October, for instance, Falklands oil explorer Desire Petroleum was one of the most talked about stocks. One evening posters speculated on the company's drilling campaign, on which it was about due to report, through the night. "There were very strong bad vibes yesterday and I sold my last remaining DES," said 'Pro_S2009' at 4 in the morning. His or her inclination proved far sighted. At 7 am Desire announced that a well was a 'duster' -- had no oil -- kicking off hundreds of accusatory messages, conspiracy theories and recommendations. "Stick your buy orders in very low," said one. "The city insiders know the deal," said another. Many were unpublishable.

The big audiences the sites attract have delivered good returns for a few. Cambridge graduate Tomas Carruthers founded iii in 1995 and floated it in 2000, when, like many internet stocks, its market value rocketed even though it made a loss. Sold to an Australian company for around 50 million pounds in 2001, it was eventually bought back by Carruthers and partners in 2004. ADVFN, which itself is listed on AIM, last year made a small profit on revenues of 8 million pounds. The company is founded and run by internet entrepreneur Clem Chambers, a self-styled market commentator and author of financial thrillers such as "The Twain Maxim", a story of a shady mining promoter and a broker missing in the Congolese jungle, and financial investment articles and books such as the upcoming "101 ways to pick stock market winners with ADVFN".

ADVFN declined to be interviewed for this article and did not answer questions sent in an email. A spokeswoman said: "Our bulletin boards are not part of our strategic outreach at the moment, as such we don't have any material on these topics."

At iii, Chief Technology Officer Tim Huckle said: "We operate and encourage a 'neighborhood watch' process on the boards, where the site users themselves police postings by highlighting those that are offensive or questionable." Since August 2010, Huckle said, iii has required new users to ring a contact center that takes "the necessary steps to identify the user as far as possible".

"We also have previously surveyed our user base about the use of (credit-checking) services to check identities through bank cards, whilst still remaining anonymous to other users. We are continuing to explore these and other ways in which we can check identities," he added.

Alastair Fairbrother, a spokesman for the London Stock Exchange, said the bourse took the regulation of the junior market seriously and that AIM was designed to be a "fully functioning" market. "We're very comfortable with the level of regulation and the model and it's not something we'd be looking to change," he said.

VIRTUAL COLLEAGUES

Working from her dining room in a garden apartment in the smart London suburb of Hampstead, Susan Marmor, a full-time retail investor since 2005 and regular poster on ADVFN, uses the boards alongside her own charts to decide which stocks to trade each morning. She thinks she can do a pretty good job of picking winning stocks. "In 2008 I just about broke even but every other year's been stonking really," she says.

If Marmor's home is her office, and she's her own boss, her colleagues are the virtual contacts on the boards. Posting from breakfast until bedtime, Marmor and other home-based investors spend their day online discussing share prices, tick charts and company performance. "The bulletin boards fulfill the need to talk about what I do," says Marmor, sitting at her dining-table and frowning as her PC monitor, swiveled to face her, beeps to indicate her stocks are headed in the wrong direction. "The biggest problem we have, all of us traders, is that our friends and family don't want to talk about it. They glaze over with the sheer boredom of it. They're not interested in talking about some gold miner in Tajikistan."

Sometimes, though, it's difficult even for an experienced trader like Marmor to sort the good information on the boards from the bad, and she questions whether the websites do all they can to protect honest traders from those with less scruples. "The problem is that on ADVFN it takes someone literally 10 minutes to set up another persona," Marmor says. "They just don't care. They just want to get as many people on there as possible. They like confrontation because confrontation brings people in. I know of one person who has been kicked off but every time he's kicked off he comes back as someone else. It's too easy to recreate yourself and be multiple personalities.

"You do feel sorry for those people who get sucked in to a story, or a ramp, or the pump-and-dump which goes on all the time."

PUMP AND DUMP

Manipulation such as 'ramping' or 'pumping and dumping' -- talking a share up to encourage buying and then selling off at a profit -- is as old as markets themselves. While it used to happen in the alleyways and pubs of capital cities like London and Paris, now it's easier to get a story going online -- despite the fact that it's as illegal on an internet message board as in the real world.

In Britain, this type of market abuse falls under the jurisdiction of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the main financial regulator whose future has been uncertain since the Conservative party, the senior partner in Britain's coalition government, vowed to abolish it in the run-up to the May election. FSA spokesman Christopher Hamilton says bulletin board market abuse is a low priority. The FSA cannot monitor the entire internet, he says, and relies on complaints from people who feel they have been at the sharp end of manipulation.

"You have to accept that there are various scales of market abuse," says Hamilton. "Misinformation on the boards is at the bottom end and there is a priority of resources. (A prosecution) can take months, years. The focus is on deterrents."

Those deterrents include civil prosecution, which could lead to a fine or a ban. But the FSA has so far levied just one fine for direct bulletin board market abuse -- in 2005, when a man who owned shares in a small company, Trafficmaster, read the minutes of a management meeting in his friend's kitchen and posted details on ADVFN.

In response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by Reuters, the FSA said it had not launched any investigations into possible market abuse on investor internet bulletin boards over the last three years. It also said it could not say how many of the market abuse complaints or requests for investigations that it has received since the start of 2008 related to bulletin boards.

"Whilst there have been no formal investigations launched into bulletin boards, the FSA does routinely look at them and other internet sites during the course of our work on market abuse," the watchdog said in an email sent to Reuters.

Internet-based market manipulation is very difficult to prosecute, the FSA's Hamilton says. Hundreds of factors can affect a share at any time and making a direct link with online chatter is tough. Posters can also easily hide behind online aliases.

Rumors regularly circulate that company executives themselves even post comments. U.S. regulators investigated Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey for anonymous comments posted on a Yahoo forum from 1999 to 2006, in which he championed his company and disparaged a rival. Mackey conceded he had written the posts, but said he was simply defending his company against Whole Foods Market bashers. Ultimately, regulators decided to take no action.

SHORT SHRIFT

Two things about London's AIM market make it even easier to prime the message boards for a profit: it has much weaker company disclosure requirements than Britain's main stock exchange, and it allows individual investors to 'short' stocks -- sell shares they don't yet own at the current price in the hope of buying them more cheaply later to complete the trade, and profit from the decline in price. Shorting is infamously open to abuse: a trader who sells short can spread negative rumors about a company to try to force the shares lower.

Nighthawk may have been a victim of this. It floated on AIM in 2007 with a market value of just under 40 million pounds, raising 10 million pounds through a placing of shares at 25 pence each. Investors were lured not only by flagship projects in Colorado and Kansas but also by Bramhill's reputation as the operator behind successful resource companies such as Pan Andean, Oil Quest, Cambridge Mineral Resources and Hereward Ventures, where he had roles as director, managing director and CEO. Peaking at 116 pence in 2008, the stock became one of the most actively traded on AIM.

Then the financial crisis hit. "It wiped a lot of people out," Bramhill recalls. "Then things started accelerating on these boards ... serious abuse and threats and untruths about the company."

By the summer of 2009 the volume and negativity of the postings had intensified. The main message board dedicated to Nighthawk on ADVFN, which has seen about 100,000 posts since it was set up in March 2007, counted around 7,000 posts in June 2009 alone. Posters claimed Nighthawk had failed to find oil at its wells in Kansas and was set to have assets seized by U.S. authorities because of unpaid bills -- neither of which were true. At first, the Nighthawk share price showed signs of recovery, before slumping to 31 pence in mid-July, 2009. The stock price has continued to decline, and Bramhill announced his departure on September 29 2010. One post on ADVFN said: "Guess that what some folks wanted, right? Probably sick of all the abuse..."

Bramhill has not been the only target. Nostra Terra's Chief Executive Matt Lofgran, one of AIM's youngest chief executives at 34 years of age, recalls a similar experience. "At one point they insinuated I was a drunk driver," says Lofgran, who states categorically that he has never had a conviction for drunk driving. "It's not really what you want for a CEO of your company."

Tom Kelly, chief executive of fellow oil explorer Empyrean Energy, says he too is monitoring the situation after a series of what he calls "damaging remarks" on the boards. "AIM enables investors to short," says Kelly. "You can't do that with junior stocks in places like Australia. It's something for regulators to be aware of -- if they see the need to regulate that would be welcome. I'm all for free markets and information but we must have some protection for small investors."

SPLIT PERSONALITIES

Steve Davies is just one such small investor. A regular user of the boards since he developed a passion for investing in small cap companies after retiring, Davies lives in Cyprus and says he generally enjoys taking part in the daily banter on the boards and learns things on them he wouldn't read elsewhere.

But he also knows a takedown when he sees one, and he watched in horror as the attack on Nighthawk unfolded. "The allegations that were being made by four of five posters or one person with multiple IDs were extremely well written, they drove the price down massively," Davies says. "Whoever was making those postings knew they were complete falsehoods, but they were making very sophisticated, backed up statements.

"We know this because the price absolutely bottomed, and then obviously that person started buying in big time, and they went straight back up again the next day -- and they made a complete killing and never posted on the board again. We never heard from them."

Nostra Terra CEO Lofgran said the most aggressive poster about his company had over 20 different aliases. "He'd sit there and have conversations with himself so there would be the appearance of a whole horde of people all up in arms. It's a mob. Let's go lynch these people!" he says.

That may all be true, some regular board users point out, but companies also blame the boards to cover up their own shortcomings. One-time Nighthawk investor John Douce, a retired civil engineer, sympathizes with Bramhill but is skeptical about suggestions the boards were to blame for the company's share price collapse. "David Bramhill has suffered personal abuse, stalkers, anonymous letters to his house, false reports to the police and all of those sort of things. That should be dealt with by ordinary laws," says Douce, who spends several hours a day glued to his computer screen. "But the share price decline leads one to believe all is not well on planet Nighthawk."

Sitting perched over his computer in his semi-detached home in east London, Douce concedes that the tone of the messages helped inform his decision to sell his Nighthawk shares. "It caught fire. I realized the way it was going. It just got angrier and angrier, more aggressive, and I thought 'I'm out'.

"Companies may well say that their price has been affected (by negative postings) but I don't really think that has been the prime cause of the company being undervalued. It may have been that has drawn attention to an overvalue, and I think that happened with Nighthawk."

Douce reckons all companies -- not just Nighthawk -- can avoid becoming targets by being more transparent with shareholders. "Companies must be willing to be more open in terms of answering genuine questions," he says. "Instead of just saying everything is wonderful, they should perhaps issue more information, not just the bare minimum."

Bramhill's successor as Nighthawk chief executive, Tim Heely, denied the share price decline represented fundamental problems with the company. "I appreciate that view, it's quite an entertaining view but it is incorrect," he told Reuters. "Our strategy ... is to turn this company around from an operational sense and drive the share price forward from that."

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Given the reluctance or inability of the regulator to intervene, companies in Britain have begun to turn to the courts to seek redress against abusive posters. Britain has some of the strongest defamation laws in the world, with the burden of proof on the defendant. "The first thing we check is where the website is registered. If it's in the U.S. we can't do anything," says Michael Coyle, Director of UK internet law specialists, Lawdit, referring to freedom of speech protection. In the UK, on the other hand, "defamation can be used very powerfully. Solicitors take cases on a no-win, no-fee basis."

To bring such a case, though, companies need the identity of the person posting, and only a fraction of commentators use their real names. Because websites protect the identities of their subscribers -- many cite data protection laws and their own privacy policies -- knowing who to go after has been difficult. That's why Nighthawk and Nostra Terra used the courts to force ADVFN and iii to hand over details they hold on record about users. The tactic -- applying for a so-called Norwich Pharmacal order, named for a 1973 judgment which found that the Norwich Pharmacal Company was entitled to be told the identity of those whose illegal activity was hurting its business -- is now being considered by an organization representing hotels and guesthouses, for potentially defamatory reviews online.

Just getting the order can cost thousands, if not tens of thousands of pounds, says Paul Chamberlain, solicitor with media lawyers Davenport Lyons. Even then it might yield only an email address, which will require another order to force the email provider to release records. "You're incurring significant costs to get involved in litigation even before incurring the significant costs of litigation," Chamberlain points out.

Despite those hurdles, Nostra Terra's Lofgran says he remains as determined as ever to face his tormentors down. But a spokesman for Nighthawk Energy said the company had decided not to pursue legal action against posters following Bramhill's decision to retire. In September, Bramhill had railed against the injustice of the attacks. "I'm a relatively rich guy and my reaction was to say: 'To hell with this...' Why should I be subjected to it? Somebody said 'I'm going to come down and put a shotgun to your mouth' and yet they allow this... It is shocking."

Davies, the Cyprus-based investor, believes self-regulation is the best way forward. "I think it's the responsibility of the people who use the board to report to the company that this has happened so the company can take action," Davies says. "I can't see how the board can monitor every single post."

In Hampstead, Marmor says people should do their own research, be careful, and stay wary of the boards. Then she looks at her monitor and smiles: "Finally! I get a ping to the upside!"

(Edited by Sara Ledwith and Simon Robinson)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Leanne Chase took her money out of stocks in early June 2008 before the collapse of Lehman Brothers sparked a near-panic. She said she and her husband had the same feeling they had during the dot-com bubble: The market had become just "weird."

Though the couple had been in and out of the market before, Chase, a 42-year-old part-time consultant and self-described conservative investor, said she has no intention of getting back in again.

"It makes me nuts when I get out early and there's more money to be made, or I get out late when I could have made more if I'd gotten out early," she said. "The stock market's not an investment, it's gambling."

The faith -- and money -- individual investors once held in the stock market has severely eroded. Two painful major stock market crashes over the last decade combined with the advent of arcane, complicated trading practices has created widespread suspicion of Wall Street, which many people now regard as no better than a roulette table.

The last crash wiped out all of the gains made during the 2000s after the dot-com wipeout. The worry now is that a Lost Decade will create a Lost Generation of investors who avoid the market in a way not seen since the Great Depression.

If that happens, smaller investors could end up safe -- and sorry. Experts fear people will be unprepared for retirement as a result of their exit from equities. By shunning stocks they may also be helping to create precisely the kind of stock market that ordinary investors rightly detest: one driven by day traders with low volume and prone to sudden reversals in direction.

What's clear is that whatever love affair many Americans may have had with stocks is over, at least for the moment.

By the end of 2008, $234 billion fled equity mutual funds as the stock market spiraled, according to data from the Investment Company Institute (ICI). The last quarter of 2008 was characterized by late-day market drops as a run of client redemptions forced mutual funds to sell their holdings in order to raise cash.

Last year, investors continued to leave even as the market stabilized. At the time, the worst seemed over, with just $9 billion coming out of equities overall and money starting to flow back into international stock funds again.

But losses intensified again in 2010. ICI estimates $19 billion has left mutual funds for the year so far as of the end of August. In September, equity funds recorded their fifth consecutive month of outflows. That sort of thing tends to happen only after a major event: there was a seven-month run of outflows in 2008, smack in the middle of the financial crisis, and an eight-month streak starting October 1987 after Black Monday. This time around, the flash crash may be to blame.

For the most part, investors are eschewing stocks for the perceived safety of bonds and other fixed income assets, trading the possibility of high returns for stability. Bond funds took in an unprecedented $376 billion in 2009 and another estimated $216 billion in 2010 as of the end of August.

WALK ON BY

Although 90 percent of the stock market is owned by 20 percent of the top income earners, according to Citigroup, the perception of public capital markets as the place where capitalism became a democracy has been a cornerstone of America's promise.

Now, as in the wake of the Great Depression, a generation of investors may have become alienated from the stock market.

Sol Malkiel, a costume jewelry wholesaler from Boston, lost what little money he had in the crash of 1929, an experience that was to instill in him a life-long aversion to stocks. Nearly half a century later his son, an economist at Princeton, would publish a book that would rank him as one of the great 20th-century proponents of stock market investing and make him an intellectual light to a generation of America's small investors.

If every bull market has its intellectual doyens, Burton Malkiel -- author of the 1973 book, "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" -- was certainly one of them during the stock market's dizzying run over nearly two decades starting in 1982. The book, due for its 10th edition later this year, has sold over 1.5 million copies, according to its publisher.

An ironic and sometimes caustic look at the often weird and occasionally wonderful world of Wall Street, "A Random Walk" held that an individual investor could beat the pros over the long run by simply picking a broad-based stock market index.

Malkiel, sitting in his office in Princeton, is convinced that abandoning the market in times of uncertainty is exactly the opposite of what investors should do. He is worried by the possibility that a swath of people will never buy stocks again, much like his father after the crash of 1929.

"My father didn't have much money, but he lost whatever he had in the crash and never wanted to be in the stock market again. It was a terrible mistake and anyone who bought any stocks in the 1930s and 1940s did extremely well," said Malkiel. "We might very well have created another generation of people who don't want to touch it. It was wrong in the '30s and I think it's wrong today."

Others point to the aging of America's largest population cohort as the chief culprit.

Brian Reid, chief economist at ICI, started noticing the shift toward more conservative investments in 2006 as a generation of baby boomers began to leave the workforce. After two decades of buying stocks to save for retirement, boomers have been shifting their holdings toward fixed-income assets to ensure a steady stream of money they can live off.

The shift was also part of the fallout from the first crash of the decade, the bursting of the Internet bubble. The recent housing and financial crisis spooked investors even more, and they have been walking away from mutual funds ever since.

It is all a far cry from the 1990s, when investors piled money into mutual funds month after month for an entire decade. "Certainly there was an attitude in the '90s that the stock market could never go down, just like there was an attitude in this decade that housing prices could never go down," said Reid. "We've learned those two perceptions were incorrect."

LINGERING IN LIMBO

Financial advisers and portfolio managers frequently speak of a "paralyzed" investor: one that wants to invest money, but is terrified of making the wrong decision. Whereas in the 1990s, investors were convinced they couldn't do wrong, the last decade has made the retail investor much more cautious.

"They've been burned for 11 years and they are just done," said Steve Stahler, financial planner and president of The Stahler Group Inc in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Advisers also note the deep distrust many feel toward Wall Street, manifested in the deep backlash against the government bailouts of financial institutions in 2008. A changing market landscape, including a move toward high frequency trading and this year's abrupt "flash crash" -- when the Dow Jones industrial average dropped some 700 points in a matter of minutes -- has added to the complexity the average investor faces.

Whatever the cause, nervous investors are sitting on cash that is making next to nothing from historically low interest rates. And all that dead money may result in too-small nest eggs for many Americans.

Investment advisor Bob Mecca, of Robert A. Mecca & Associates in Chicago, says that the overwhelming concern of people who have about five years until retirement is protecting their initial investment. This partly explains why investors are content to park their money in bonds rather than seek out aggressive gains in stocks.

"The days are gone when older people are searching for the last dime," said Mecca. "They're looking for return of principal rather than return on principal."

Advisers fret that for those with a longer time horizon until retirement, conservative investing may not be the best decision. Lower savings and investments that are returning less than in the past may prove to be the wrong combination.

This is exactly the scenario people like Malkiel worry about. "Many investors have thrown up their hands and said, 'I'm not going to touch the stock market,' and I think they're hurting themselves by doing so," said Malkiel. "I'm more worried that people haven't saved enough and they haven't taken enough risk."

STOCKS ON SALE

The trillion dollar question for the market is: Does the flight of retail investors matter?

As stocks began to stabilize in 2009, analysts predicted that the floods of retail money returning to the market would fuel a rally. That didn't happen, but the market rose anyway. As measured by the broad S&P 500, stocks are up about 77 percent from the crisis low hit in early 2008. But the index remains down about 23 percent from October 2007's record high close.

Whether less retail money hinders the actual performance of the market rather than just sentiment is debatable. In theory, an influx of investors looking to hold stocks for the long run should drive up prices and smooth out volatility.

Analysts say the absconding retail investor is also helping to shape the type of market we are seeing: one that is less driven by fundamentals than by traders looking to profit by getting in and out relatively quickly. The end result is a market with low volume and high underlying uncertainty that is easily shaken by news and rumors.

There is a self-fulfilling component to all this. "With retail investors less and less in the game it does come down to a series of more esoteric trading strategies for most of the market," said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at the ConvergEx Group in New York, pointing to the upswing in high frequency trading as an example.

Price to earnings ratios, a measure of a stock's value, remain depressed today. S&P 500 companies are now trading at about 12.3 times estimated 2011 earnings, according to Thomson Reuters data. Since 1960 the price to earnings ratio has been about 16.4, according to Bespoke Investment Group, which suggests that stocks today are a relative steal.

"We have had two essentially 50 percent declines in the equity market over the last decade and that has profound impacts on psychology and how people think about equities," said David Giroux, portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price. "And over time that probably puts some downward pressure on equity multiples."

BLINDED BY THE FLASH

For retired Colonel Roger Potyk, the flash crash was the last straw. In 2008, Potyk and his wife lost $75,000 on the Lehman Brothers bond they held when the bank collapsed. Even so, the couple held onto their other investments, including stock mutual funds. With the market bounce in 2009 and Potyk returning to work part-time, they were able to recover some of their losses.

But after seeing the Dow sputter in May's unprecedented flash crash, the Potyks pulled their money out of stocks and put it into fixed-income assets.

"It was just a little much for us after being sensitive about the other loss," said Potyk. "We said we'll take whatever we can and be happy, and know when we get up in the morning, it won't have gone up 10 percent, but it hasn't gone down 10 percent, either."

The Potyks were not the only ones shaken by the crash. Weekly data from ICI estimates money came out of mutual funds for 22 consecutive weeks following the flash crash, ending only in mid-October.

Experts say the flash crash is likely just another reason for investors getting out of stocks rather than the only factor. Advisers say clients don't bring up the crash very often, but the data suggests it hasn't been unnoticed.

"I really do think it's primarily driven on sentiment and consumer confidence," said Colas. "I don't think the flash crash was the only driver, but it's hard to ignore that correlation and it begins to look like causation."

Investors who do want to hold stocks have been flocking to stable, blue chip companies that pay dividends and increasingly popular electronically traded funds (ETFs).

Hesitant retail investors are likely to inflict pain on parts of the brokerage industry. Online brokerages like Charles Schwabb are relatively insulated by a core of active traders. But brokers that deal exclusively with buy-side institutions such as mutual funds are having a tough time as retail investors eschew stocks.

Analysts say retail investors will come back once the uncertainty surrounding the economy begins to clear, but even the optimists among them fear that they will not return with the same vigor they once had.

An improvement in the labor market may be the most important catalyst. As long as investors are worried about losing their jobs, saving money and paying down debt will be the priority before saving for retirement.

Dario Caloss, who got out of his mutual funds in 2007, is waiting for the uncertainty to pass before he returns to the market. He had initially planned to get back into the market when the Dow recovered to 8,000, which happened sustainably in May 2009. He admits he's been sitting on the sidelines longer than he planned as he waits for the economy to stabilize.

"This downturn was really about people we were in a position to trust that didn't really do their due diligence. That's kind of shocking," said Caloss. "It's hard to get back in with a lot of faith."

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Jim Impoco and Claudia Parsons)

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DETROIT – SAIC Motor Corp., China's largest automaker and a joint-venture partner with General Motors, is preparing to buy about $500 million worth of stock in the Detroit automaker, according to a newspaper website.

The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that SAIC is one of several foreign investors who could buy GM shares worth more than $1 billion as part of an initial public stock offering scheduled for Nov. 18. GM and SAIC wouldn't comment on the report when contacted by The Associated Press.

The U.S. government, which now owns 61 percent of GM but is looking to reduce its stake to around 40 percent in the IPO, has said the company would seek foreign investment as well as investment from the U.S.

Foreign investment in U.S. automakers and other companies is common.

Investment from sovereign wealth funds is considered good for a company because the funds tend to hold stakes for a long time, providing stability, the newspaper said. But it's also a touchy issue for the Obama administration, especially if some individual investors in the U.S. are unable to buy shares in the IPO.

U.S. taxpayers gave GM $50 billion to get it through bankruptcy protection last year. The automaker has repaid or plans to repay $9.5 billion, and the government hopes to get the remaining $40 billion back through the IPO and several follow-up sales.

A final decision by SAIC could come in the next few days, according to the newspaper, which cited people familiar with the situation that it did not identify.

GM and its investment advisers plan to release the stock's final price on Wednesday. The actual sale will take place on Thursday. The U.S. government and GM's other owners are selling 365 million shares of common stock. The IPO target price is between $26 and $29 per share. In addition, GM is selling 60 million preferred shares for about $50 each. The preferred shares will pay a dividend of 5.5 to 6 percent per year, a person briefed on the matter told The Associated Press Friday.

The first GM and SAIC joint-venture Buick factory opened in Shanghai in 1998. In December, the two companies announced plans for a venture to sell vehicles in India. In that deal, SAIC committed $350 million to the India venture, and GM agreed to turn over 1 percent of Shanghai GM, their main joint venture, giving SAIC a controlling 51 percent of the company.

SAIC and GM also have a highly successful joint venture in southern China, SAIC-GM-Wuling, whose minivans have been top sellers thanks to government policies encouraging sales of small, energy efficient vehicles.

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