Japanese banks say hola, go local as they woo overseas borrowers

By Taiga Uranaka

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's banking titans are hiring Spanish-speaking bankers to win new business in Latin America and handing out loans to junk-grade borrowers in the United States as they probe deeper overseas to fight meager returns at home.

Lenders such as Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc (SMFG) have ramped up overseas lending since the euro zone debt crisis sent European rivals packing. The move abroad was given a new impetus this month after the central bank unveiled a stimulus plan that will plunge Japan into an ultra-low monetary environment, further eroding razor-thin loan margins and cutting returns on Japanese government bonds.

Banks including Mizuho Financial Group Inc are pushing ahead to identify new overseas borrowers, including corporates with little Japanese connections and natural resources developers seeking copious funding. Their ventures abroad, while still modest versus their domestic operations, point to their growing risk-tolerance in emerging markets, and it remains to be seen whether their efforts will pay off.

"We now arrange deals that are very different from what we used to do in the past, that is, those with very strong local flavor with no involvement of Japanese companies," said Takayuki Sakai, chief manager of project finance at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, a core unit of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc (MUFG) .

The bank is looking to increase local currency-denominated lending, such as those in the real, as opposed to the usual dollar-dominated loans, he said.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ has been beefing up its project finance business in Latin America, hiring specialist bankers who speak Spanish and Portuguese to gain better access to projects involving exclusively local parties.

Last summer, the bank hired Ralph Scholtz, BNP Paribas' Latin America project finance managing director, as its region's project finance team head, as well as a Portuguese-speaking banker from HSBC Holdings Plc .

The bank said Latin America is a promising market for project finance, highlighting plans in Mexico to build gas pipelines, and development of copper mines and auxiliary facilities such as power plants in Chile.

MUFG does not disclose dollar-based overseas loan data.

Domestic rivals SMFG and Mizuho's outstanding overseas loans totaled $277 billion as of December, a hefty 66 percent increase from March 2010.

NON-INVESTMENT GRADE

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp (SMBC), a core unit of SMFG, said a team of its U.S. bankers are targeting small and medium-sized local businesses, including those with credit ratings of BB or lower.

The bank declined to disclose interest margins for those non-investment grade borrowers. Industry sources say loans to BB-rated borrowers have spreads of 170-180 basis points over A-rated ones.

There is a limit to what banks can earn from loans to clients with a top-notch credit status, said Hideo Kawafune, senior vice president at SMBC's international banking unit.

"Our current loan portfolio is a bit weighted on high credit rating borrowers, and we would like to expand lending to customers in the BB+ to BB- class," Kawafune told Reuters.

The bank is increasing loans to U.S. municipalities after poaching a public finance team from a U.S. bank in 2008. Recent transactions include a $209 million loan to New York City Water Financing Authority.

Kawafune said loans to non-investment grade corporates and municipalities in the United States still represent a small portion, roughly 10 to 20 percent of the overall loans

But their growth is outpacing the rest of the bank's overseas lending, he said.

M&A FINANCING

Mizuho Corporate Bank, a unit of Mizuho Financial, said acquisition financing for non-Japanese companies is likely to drive its overseas loan growth this year.

The bank is working on financing for two multi-billion-dollar M&A deals involving corporate clients based in North America and Europe, Mizuho bankers said, without elaborating, citing bank-client confidentiality agreements.

Mizuho Corporate Bank said previously it is targeting big companies such as BP PLC , Prada SpA and IBM in the Americas, Europe, East Asia and Oceania.

Kazuya Nakagawa, senior vice president at Mizuho's international coordination division, said M&A finance is relatively profitable compared to loans to blue-chip companies.

M&A finance is attractive in that it provides short-term loans to borrowers, and so does not tie up the bank's capital for long.

It could also lead to additional businesses when the borrower switches to a more permanent mode of financing upon the completion of the acquisition, such as issuing bonds, according to Mizuho bankers.

(Reporting by Taiga Uranaka; Editing by Ryan Woo)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/japanese-banks-hola-local-woo-overseas-borrowers-213812213--sector.html

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We Know When The Boston Bomber Sleeps - Business Insider

It is a strange reality of our times that we have no idea what motivated?Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to attack the Boston Marathon, if indeed he was involved, but we do know when he sleeps:

?

That?s our visualization of tweets by @J_tsar, a Twitter account that?has been linked to?Dzhokhar, one of the alleged Boston bombers, who remains on the loose in the Boston area. The darker the pink, the more tweets. What it tells us, quite mundanely, is that Dzhokhar stays up late, often?smoking?weed, and sleeps past noon. Like so many other college students.

Less than 12 hours ago, we had never heard of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Now we know that he?did not like haircuts?but?did like?Game of Thrones. We know?he was a wrestler?and that he won a?$2,500 scholarship?while at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. We know he liked?fast cars, ate?lots?of?waffles,?and probably used an iPhone from?AT&T?(but?it broke?in December).

Nor had we heard of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar?s brother who was killed in a gunfight overnight. But now we know his taste in?YouTube videos, his?fondness for Borat, the sort of books he may have once?have wanted to buy on Amazon,?and that he worked out at the Wai Kru Mixed Martial Arts Center.

We know the brothers Tsarnaev lived at?Apartment 3, 410 Norfolk Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts,?and we know what the?house looks like.

We know all this not because the FBI told us or because journalists went out and spoke to people?though there is?a lot that the media has revealed?in the same 12-hour-period?but because it can all be pieced together with some decent Googling. If you read Russian and know how to use Yandex and V Kontake, there is?more public information yet.

Where it was once only reporters and the police who dug up information about people of interest, a whole nation is at it today. And for all the myriad concerns about privacy settings, cookies, data protection,?automated surveillance,?and Facebook, we reveal immense amounts of information about ourselves publicly, unthinkingly, and sometimes involuntarily.

Of course, we?don?t really know whether we know the things about the Tsarnaev brothers that we think we do. It is entirely possible that the Amazon wishlist belongs to another person with an interest in document forgery, criminal empires, and Chechen grammar, who used the handle ?Tamerlan? because he admired?the founder of the Timurid dynasty. Already two Twitter accounts registered in Dzhokhar?s name?have turned out to be fakes, though the one we analyzed shows all signs of being genuine.

But those caveats are almost beside the point. We don?t know what we think we know because these digital details don?t connect the dots; they merely draw the dots. They offer trivia but not insight.

We know when?Dzhokhar sleeps but not what he dreams about.

* ?* ?*

Note about the Twitter data:?We examined the @j_tsar?account this afternoon and downloaded all 1,056 of its tweets.?That dataset is available here.??Data analysis by Ritchie King and David Yanofsky

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/we-know-when-the-boston-bomber-sleeps-2013-4

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Is it legal to exclude out-of-state employees from our annual outing ...

Q. We?ve traditionally sponsored a springtime cruise for our Pennsylvania employees?mainly executives and directors. However, it will cost too much to invite our newest employees, who work in three neighboring states. Can we sponsor different events for staff in each geographical area?

A. Yes. The only issue here is whether employees in other states will feel resentful if they perceive that Pennsylvania employees are being treated better. This is an employee morale issue more than a legal one, unless the employees in other states fall into different protected classes than Pennsylvania employees and could argue that the cruisers are being favored because of their race, gender, etc.

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The cost of a botched operation? ?6.99 on Steam thanks to Surgeon Simulator

Clumsy wannabe sawbones: warm up your hammers and hatchets, because Surgeon Simulator has arrived on Steam. The infamous game challenges players to save patients' lives with an array of coarse tools and an apparent case of the DTs, and was prototyped in a mere 48 hours during the Global Game Jam back in January. After being greenlit by Steam, it'll be up for grabs later today at £6.99 (about $11) with extra features like a "fiendishly difficult ambulance mode" that brings extra quarts of gore, along with new operations like a kidney or brain transplant and a new soundtrack and visuals. There's a lineup of desperate patients -- they'd have to be -- waiting at the source link and the video after the break.

Filed under: Gaming

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Source: Bossa Studios

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/19/surgeon-simulator-on-steam/

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Quake jolts China's Sichuan, killing 41

In this photo provided by China's official Xinhua News Agency, a giant rock blocks the road, about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from the county seat of Lushan in Ya'an city, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Saturday, April 20, 2013. A powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province Saturday near where a devastating quake struck five years ago. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Hai Mingwei) NO SALES

In this photo provided by China's official Xinhua News Agency, a giant rock blocks the road, about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from the county seat of Lushan in Ya'an city, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Saturday, April 20, 2013. A powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province Saturday near where a devastating quake struck five years ago. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Hai Mingwei) NO SALES

In this photo provided by China's official Xinhua News Agency, people gather on a street to avoid aftershocks of an earthquake, in Shifang, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Saturday, April 20, 2013. At least two people were killed Saturday when a powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province near the same area where a devastating quake struck five years ago, with state media warning the casualty toll could climb sharply. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhang Xiaoli) NO SALES

In this photo provided by China's official Xinhua News Agency, students gather outside their school buildings to avoid aftershocks of an earhtquake, in Dazhou, southwest China's Sichuan Province, Saturday, April 20, 2013. People were killed Saturday when a powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province near the same area where a devastating quake struck five years ago, with state media warning the casualty toll could climb sharply. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Deng Liangkui) NO SALES

BEIJING (AP) ? A powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province Saturday near where a devastating quake struck five years ago, leaving at least 41 dead and more than 600 injured and prompting state media to warn the casualty toll could climb sharply.

The quake ? measured by China's seismological bureau at magnitude-7 and the U.S. Geological Survey at 6.6 ? struck the steep hills of Lushan county shortly after 8 a.m. toppling buildings, many of them older brick structures. Tiles fell from roofs, and pictures dropped from walls, sending people into the streets in their underwear and wrapped in blankets.

"Generally the quake felt much stronger than that from five years ago. Many decorations at home got smashed," said Zhao Zheng, a resident of Ya'an city, near the quake. He was reached by direct message on his Twitter-like microblog resident and said he was awakened by the earthquake.

The People's Daily newspaper said 41 people had been killed, including at least 28 in the epicenter of Lushan. Xu Mengjia, Communist Party secretary for Ya'an, which administers Lushan, told China Central Television that at least 32 people had been killed and more than 600 injured.

The quake's shallow depth, less than 13 kilometers (8 miles), likely magnified the impact. The official Xinhua News Agency said that the quake rattled buildings in the provincial capital of Chengdu 115 kilometers (70 miles), to the east. It caused the shutdown of the city's airport for about an hour before reopening, state media said.

Lushan, where the quake struck, is home to 1.5 million people where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that eventually rise to the Tibetan plateau. Known for its mountains, the area is near a well-known preserve for pandas.

Social media users who said they were in Lushan county posted photos of collapsed buildings and reported that water and electricity had been cut off.

A man who answered the phone at the Ya'an city government said telecommunications were cut and that medical and rescue teams are on the way to the area. Xinhua said more than 2,000 soldiers were being mobilized and sent to the disaster area.

"I felt the strong quake this morning in my office. All drawers of the desk opened and some stuff on the table fell on the floor," said the man, who refused to give his name, as is usual with low-ranking Chinese government officials.

The area lies near the same Longmenshan fault where the devastating 7.9-magnitude quake struck May 12, 2008, leaving more than 90,000 people dead or missing and presumed dead.

"It was just like May 12," said Liu Xi, a writer in Ya'an, who was jolted awake by Saturday's quake. "All the home decorations fell at once, and the old house cracked."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-04-20-China-Earthquake/id-47a707b2c5ce4a89bf077a2d305ea53a

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Northern California Innocence Project Wins Release for Innocent Man

Exonerated man George Souliotes and his legal team (from left): Orrick Attorney Shannon Leong, NCIP Legal Director Linda Starr, Souliotes, Orrick Attorney Jimmy McBirney and former Orrick Attorney Megan Crane. Courtesy of Santa Clara Univ.

The Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) at Santa Clara Univ. School of Law and Orrick, Herrington, & Sutcliffe, LLP announced that on April 12, 2013, a California federal district court judge overturned the wrongful conviction of George Souliotes for arson and triple murder. Souliotes, 72, has served 16 years of his sentence of three life terms without parole.

In granting his release, District Judge Anthony Ishii found Souliotes had received ineffective assistance of counsel at trial. That finding came a year after his attorneys persuaded the judge of Souliotes? ?actual innocence,? successfully arguing his conviction was based on faulty fire science and that no reasonable juror today would convict him.

The judge ordered his release unless the State of California not only notifies the court that it intends to retry Souliotes, but also takes concrete and substantial steps to do so within 30 days. The order does not specify when he is to be released, but his attorneys expect it to be within 30 days.

?After more than 10 years of fighting for Souliotes? freedom we are gratified that the court has found him innocent and ordered his release,? said Linda Starr, NCIP?s legal director. ?Mr. Souliotes? conviction was a tragedy, and we now know it was based on faulty fire science that has since been discredited. We hope the California Attorney General will honor the judge?s ruling and not take any further action that might needlessly delay Mr. Souliotes? long overdue return home.?

Background
On January 15, 1997, a rental property owned by Souliotes in Modesto, Calif., burned to the ground in the middle of the night and three tenants died in the fire.

The prosecution?s case against Souliotes was based almost entirely on two forensic pieces of evidence that new developments in fire science have since discredited: First, investigators based their arson determination on certain indicators that were long believed to be evidence of arson ? but developments in modern fire science have shown these indicators are just as consistent with accidental fires or any fire where the temperature reaches "flashover" conditions.

Second, forensic tests revealed a chemical compound known as a medium petroleum distillate, or "MPD," was found at the fire scene and on Souliotes' shoes. MPDs are a chemical compound that exist in some ignitable liquids such as lighter fluid, but are also now known to exist in many household products and consumer goods, including the solvents in glues and adhesives used in floor coverings and footwear. The prosecution had repeatedly argued to the jury that the ?shoes tell the tale? in implicating Souliotes.

Souliotes was tried twice before being convicted of arson and triple murder in 2000. His first trial resulted in a hung jury after his defense counsel provided a vigorous defense and called expert witnesses to rebut the prosecution. At his second trial, however, Souliotes? defense counsel failed to present a case, called no expert witnesses to rebut the prosecution and called none of the other fact witnesses who established Souliotes? complete lack of motive at the first trial.

In earlier proceedings, the California Attorney General conceded that all of these purported arson indicators were equally consistent with an accidental fire, and that there was no scientific evidence the fire was caused by arson. The Attorney General also conceded that the MPDs found on Souliotes' shoes are chemically distinguishable from those found at the fire scene, and thus provide no link between Souliotes and the fire. These facts persuaded Judge Ishii that Souliotes had satisfied the ?actual innocence? standard and was entitled to proceed with his ineffective assistance of counsel claims, which were otherwise barred by procedural restrictions.

?It has been an incredibly long road, but we are very happy to be nearing the end of it,? said Jimmy McBirney, Souliotes? attorney from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. ?Mr. Souliotes has always maintained his innocence, and the evidence has now proven it. There is absolutely no basis for a retrial, and we look forward to seeing him set free.?

This is the third innocent person NCIP has exonerated in 2013, and its 17th victory since its creation in 2001.

Source: Santa Clara Univ.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ForensicMagazine/~3/K9nUanE3FJw/northern-california-innocence-project-wins-release-innocent-man

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Random walks on DNA: bacterial enzyme has evolved an energy-efficient method to move long distances along DNA

Apr. 19, 2013 ? Scientists have revealed how a bacterial enzyme has evolved an energy-efficient method to move long distances along DNA. The findings, published in Science, present further insight into the coupling of chemical and mechanical energy by a class of enzymes called helicases, a widely-distributed group of proteins, which in human cells are implicated in some cancers.

The new helicase mechanism discovered in this study, led by researchers from the University of Bristol and the Technische Universit?t Dresden in Germany, may help resolve some of the unexplained roles for helicases in human biology, and in turn help researchers to develop future technological or medical applications.

A commonly held view of DNA helicases is that they move along DNA and "unzip" the double helix to produce single strands of DNA for repair or copying. This process requires mechanical work, so enzyme movement must be coupled to consumption of the chemical fuel ATP. These enzymes are thus often considered as molecular motors.

In the new work, Ralf Seidel and his team at the Technische Universit?t Dresden developed a microscope that can stretch single DNA molecules whilst at the same time observe the movement of single fluorescently-labelled helicases. In parallel, the Bristol researchers in the DNA-Protein Interactions Unit used millisecond-resolution fluorescence spectroscopy to reveal dynamic changes in protein conformation and the kinetics of ATP consumption.

The team studied a helicase found in bacteria that moves along viral (bacteriophage) DNA. The work demonstrated that, surprisingly, the enzyme only consumed ATP at the start of the reaction in order to change conformation. Thereafter long-range movement along the DNA was driven by thermal motion; in other words by collisions with the surrounding water molecules. This produces a characteristic one-dimensional "random walk" (see picture), where the protein is just as likely to move backwards as forwards.

Mark Szczelkun, Professor of Biochemistry from the University's School of Biochemistry and one of the senior authors of the study, said: "This enzyme uses the energy from ATP to force a change in protein conformation rather than to unwind DNA. The movement on DNA thereafter doesn't require an energy input from ATP. Although movement is random, it occurs very rapidly and the enzyme can cover long distances on DNA faster than many ATP-driven motors. This can be thought of as a more energy-efficient way to move along DNA and we suggest that this mechanism may be used in other genetic processes, such as DNA repair."

The work in Bristol has been funded by the Wellcome Trust through a programme grant to Professor Mark Szczelkun from the School of Biochemistry.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Bristol.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. F. W. Schwarz, J. Toth, K. van Aelst, G. Cui, S. Clausing, M. D. Szczelkun, R. Seidel. The Helicase-Like Domains of Type III Restriction Enzymes Trigger Long-Range Diffusion Along DNA. Science, 2013; 340 (6130): 353 DOI: 10.1126/science.1231122

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/nsYtTkU5VrQ/130419105200.htm

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