NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures slipped on Monday ahead of a busy day for corporate earnings as the U.S. dollar bounced from a 10-month low against a basket of currencies.

* All eyes were on earnings, including International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N), Citigroup Inc (C.N) and Apple Inc (AAPL.O).

* Investors will stay focused on financial shares on worries over the potential exposure of major banks to foreclosure losses. Concerns over the effects of a major probe into foreclosure practices dragged the sector lower last week.

* The U.S. dollar index (.DXY) rose 0.4 percent as investors trimmed bearish bets against the greenback on uncertainties over how much money the U.S. Federal Reserve will print in its latest effort to boost the economic recovery.

* S&P 500 futures dipped 5.1 points and were slightly below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 44 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures shed 4.25 points.

* European stocks, weighed early Monday by mining shares, turned positive, lifted by banks. Oil fell toward one-week lows as gains in the greenback prompted investors to halt their charge into commodities payday advance.

* The Fed is to release industrial production and capacity utilization data for September at 9:15 a.m. EDT, and the National Association of Home Builders issues its October housing market index at 10 a.m. EDT

* Economists in a Reuters survey expect a 0.2 percent rise in production and a reading of 74.8 percent for capacity utilization. In August, production was up 0.2 percent and capacity utilization was 74.7 percent. A reading of 14 is expected on the NAHB index, up from 13 in September.

* BHP Billiton (BHP.AX) and Rio Tinto (RIO.AX) ditched plans for a big iron-ore joint venture in what&&9;s seen as a victory for steelmakers, and could prompt both companies to step up competing expansion plans.

* Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Mazda Motor Corp (7261.T) look set to drift further apart as the U.S. carmaker plans to wind down its stake in the Japanese firm. That would make it easier for Mazda to make decisions, but it may need a new partner down the line.

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Futures dip ahead of busy earnings, bank shrs eyed

DETROIT (Reuters) – About 100 General Motors Co workers and retirees picketed outside the United Auto Workers union&&9;s headquarters on Saturday to protest plans to build a new small car with low-wage workers.

The protest came just days after some veteran UAW workers at the Orion plant near Detroit were told they would have to accept wages that are about half what they had been making and as GM rushes to complete preparations for a stock offering.

GM plans to employ just over 1,300 workers to build a new subcompact car for its Chevrolet brand and the Buick Verano compact at the now-shuttered Orion Township assembly plant when production begins in August.

Details of the concessions granted by the UAW&&9;s national leaders have angered many workers.

Rick Milkie, a nine-year Orion plant veteran, said the UAW&&9;s concession allowing GM to hire an increasing number of workers at wages of about &&6;14 per hour was an unacceptable concession by a union credited with helping to create an industrial middle class in the years after World War Two.

"Walter Reuther is rolling in his grave," said Milkie, who was marching outside UAW headquarters with a sign saying, "Call a Cop, I&&9;ve Been Robbed."

Reuther was the UAW&&9;s long-serving president during the union&&9;s heyday in the 1950s and 1960s.

The UAW has agreed to allow GM to run the Orion plant with 40 percent of its workers at that second-tier wage. That is about half of the nearly &&6;29 per hour that veteran UAW-represented GM workers now make. Over time, GM plans to staff the plant entirely with workers at the lower wage level, a local union official told Orion workers.

The lower wage represents an annual wage of around &&6;30,000, down from &&6;58,000 under the previous contract. That compares to U.S. median household income of about &&6;52,000 in 2009 payday advance lenders.

"The object at Orion was to become an all tier-two plant as long as it was (making) small cars," Mike Dunn, president of UAW Local 5960 said in a webcast. "That could take 20 years."

GM, which was restructured with &&6;50 billion of U.S. government funding, has said it needs the lower wages to build a subcompact car at a profit in the United States.

"The unique language in the Orion agreement is specific for that plant and for small cars," GM spokeswoman Kim Carpenter said in a statement. "We believe this collaboration with the UAW keeps good manufacturing jobs in America."

Dunn said the UAW local leadership supports the GM contract for Orion, calling it the best deal that could be won after almost a year of negotiations.

Without the concessions and &&6;770 million in state tax incentives, GM would have built the replacement for the Chevrolet Aveo subcompact in Korea or Mexico, Dunn said.

"They&&9;ve got to make this car with a profit," he said on the webcast. "Small cars were never built with a profit in the U.S."

But protesters outside UAW headquarters said the UAW needed to find a way to roll back the concessions. The next round of regular contract talks between GM and the UAW is set for 2011.

"Next year is too late," said Greg Clark, a GM worker who came up from Indiana to show support for Orion workers. "We&&9;ve got to go back to the drawing board."

GM is counting on an initial public offering of stock in November to reduce the U.S. government&&9;s 61-percent ownership stake in the automaker.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

GM workers protest low-wage small-car plant

LONDON – America's ambassador to Britain says there's no evidence that violent dissident groups in Northern Ireland are getting money from U.S. sources.

Ambassador Louis Susman's remarks came amid concerns about increasing attacks from dissident groups opposed to the Irish Republican Army's backing for a Catholic-Protestant government under the 1998 peace accord.

The increase in attacks has prompted questions about funding. In the past, some Irish-Americans were accused of backing the IRA's campaign of violence, which it has formally abandoned payday loan lenders.

Susman said Thursday that U.S. officials have "absolutely no evidence" that there is any funding coming from America to such small dissident IRA groups.

Official: US not funding NIreland dissident groups

MOSCOW — The Russian nuclear industry has profited handsomely from building reactors in developing countries, including India, China and Iran. Now it is testing the prospect of becoming a major supplier to the European Union, too.

Shrugging off the legacy of Chernobyl, the Russian state nuclear company, Rosatom, is preparing a bid on its second new project in the European Union, at the Temelin station in the Czech Republic, potentially worth $8 billion. Rosatom is already building a smaller unit in Bulgaria.

And the Russians, already major suppliers of low-enriched uranium fuel to the European Union under a venture with Areva, the French nuclear group, are planning independently to enter the market of fuel for Western-designed plants. Rosatom now provides 100 percent of the fuel used in Switzerland, for example, and 30 percent of all reactor uranium used in France, the Continent’s biggest consumer.

But industry analysts say Rosatom’s Czech bid is a test: Can the strategies that propelled Rosatom to become the world’s largest builder of nuclear plants through sales in emerging markets also succeed in the power-hungry developed world?

“Russia is a serious player,” said Marina Alekseyenkova, an analyst at Renaissance Capital, an investment bank in Moscow. From now on, she said, “Russia will be a bidder on every tender, globally; Russia will go everywhere.”

That includes the United States. A subsidiary of Rosatom supplies about 45 percent of the nuclear fuel used by American utilities, created from diluted bomb material under a post-cold-war treaty to discourage proliferation. About 10 percent of all electricity in the United States is generated from this former Russian bomb material.

As a legacy of the cold war, Russia possesses about 40 percent of the world’s uranium enrichment capacity, much more than it needs to service its domestic reactors. Enrichment refers to raising the level of the isotope 235 from about 0.7 percent in natural uranium to 3 percent to 5 percent for civilian reactor fuel.

Rosatom says it intends to increase its share of the global fuel market to 25 percent by 2025, from 17 percent today. The strategy is to make money, but also to leverage the low fuel costs in Russia to win other business. This is done by bundling favorable deals on low-enriched uranium with other services, like reactor construction.

And Rosatom has been promoting another singular advantage, one that also shows the Russians’ peculiarly high comfort level with all things nuclear, even after Chernobyl: a willingness to take nuclear waste off the hands of clients, particularly if they buy Russian reactors.

Russian officials say that, despite the nuclear reactor explosion at Chernobyl in 1986, their industry never went into hibernation because of public disillusionment with nuclear power, as happened in the United States. The Russians made no great leaps in technology in recent decades, but also lost no ground.

“We never stopped building, even after Chernobyl,” said Sergei G. Novikov, the spokesman for Rosatom. “We moved very slowly but never stopped.”

Of the 60 reactors under construction worldwide, Rosatom is building 15 — 10 in Russia and 5 abroad — according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group in Washington on line pay day loans.

By comparison, Westinghouse, the largest American builder of nuclear power plants, has not completed a reactor as lead contractor in decades, even though it has built more power plants than any other company in the world, mostly in the 1960s and 1970s.

Outside specialists generally endorse the Russian plant designs, saying that they are now fully competitive with those of nuclear plant builders in the United States and Europe. Still, in a nod to the Chernobyl legacy, the subsidiary for overseas construction has said that it budgets for public relations activities in countries where it intends to work.

Rosatom, meanwhile, is striving to take advantage of its monopoly hold on the industry at home to aid in exports.

It is a vertically integrated company, with divisions mining uranium, enriching fuel, building reactors and even decommissioning old plants.

To better compete with Areva, the dominant nuclear company in Europe, Rosatom in 2009 formed a strategic alliance with Siemens of Germany, after Siemens sold a stake in Areva.

After signing a deal in China last month to build two sophisticated reactors that burn plutonium-based fuel, the chief executive of Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, a former prime minister, told reporters there that sales would triple by 2030, to $50 billion annually.

The company says it hopes to continue winning business by bundling construction contracts with deals for fuel or joint ventures to transfer technology to the customer country. It is expected to use this strategy for the Czech bid.

Under legislation that might have been more difficult to push through a freer political system, Russia allows the importation of spent nuclear fuel from reactors elsewhere.

Supported by Vladimir V. Putin, the president at that time, it is integral to the policies for global expansion of Russian nuclear sales, because waste disposal can be a major sticking point to approval of new nuclear power plants in other countries.

“I don’t know other suppliers that can provide similar services,” Ms. Alekseyenkova, the industry analyst in Moscow, said of Rosatom’s service of importing waste.

Storing spent fuel is profitable today, and possessing it could become even more so as plutonium-based fuels become more widely used, Mr. Novikov, the Rosatom spokesman, said. In Russia, as in France, the industry is looking at spent fuel not as a long-term headache but as the raw material for a future business making mixed-oxide fuel.

Only Areva, the French nuclear group, offers a similar array of services over the entire nuclear fuel cycle, nuclear industry analysts said. Other manufacturers have to team up to offer an integrated fuel and reactor package.

For the Czech bid, Atomstroyexport, a subsidiary of Rosatom for reactor construction outside Russia, has joined the Czech industrial giant Skoda to bid against Westinghouse and Areva of France, for two new reactors at the Temelin plant. The CEZ Group, a Czech utility that is 70 percent owned by the government, is expected to pick a winner in early 2012.

I.H.T. Special Report: Energy: Russia Is Seeking to Build Europe’s Nuclear Plants

WASHINGTON – Offering voters a reason to keep Democrats in power on Capitol Hill, President Barack Obama says Republicans would cut education spending and put the country's economic future at risk if they had their way.

A quality education is paramount, Obama said. He suggested that federal spending on education is one area where he would not compromise.

"What I'm not prepared to do is shortchange our children's education," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Obama has spent much of the past two weeks contrasting a GOP proposal to cut spending, presumably including on education, with the billions of dollars he's investing to improve learning from kindergarten through college. That includes money for public schools, community colleges and to help make it cheaper and easier for families to afford higher education for their children.

This week, Obama announced a new public-private sector partnership to help match community college graduates and businesses with jobs to fill. The White House also held its first-ever summit on the state of community colleges.

In his weekly message, Obama acknowledged that the country faces tight fiscal times, but he said a good education is too important to the country's future prosperity to do it on the cheap.

"At a time when most of the new jobs being created will require some kind of higher education, when countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, giving our kids the best education is an economic imperative," he said low fee pay day loans.

Republicans devoted their weekly address to what the party says are Obama's broken promises on jobs, the economy and health care.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., touched on the high unemployment rate, holding at 9.6 percent, and criticized Democratic leaders for sending lawmakers home for the Nov. 2 congressional elections without voting on a series of expiring Bush-era tax cuts.

Obama wants to keep those tax cuts for families and individuals with incomes below $250,000 and impose higher tax rates on everyone else, including the wealthiest Americans. Republicans want to extend all the Bush tax cuts.

"The Obama tax hikes are yet another job killing burden that the American people and American employers cannot afford. Raising taxes on anyone in the middle of a recession is the worst thing we can do," Barrasso said, although the recession technically has ended.

"Our problem is not that we are taxed too little," Barrasso said. "The problem is that Washington spends too much."

___

Online:

Obama address: http://www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: http://www.youtube.com/gopweeklyaddress

Obama: GOP plans to 'shortchange' education

Filed at 7:55 a.m. ET

PARIS (Reuters) - Sanofi-Aventis dismissed a claim by bid target Genzyme that it dangled a higher price for the U.S. biotech company, as a transatlantic takeover fight descended into an ill-tempered stand-off on Friday.

Genzyme said on Thursday that Sanofi's chief executive floated the possibility of paying as much as $80 per share at a meeting in September before going hostile with a bid worth $69 per Genzyme share, or a total $18.5 billion.

The French drugmaker disputed this account of events on Friday, with chief spokesman Jean-Marc Podvin saying: "We offered no price range and Genzyme continued to refuse to engage with us on discussions on valuations."

A banker familiar with the deal said: "This is the game. This is normal in negotiations. It is a game of nerves at this point."

Analysts said the row highlighted expectations Sanofi may have to raise its offer -- Genzyme shares rose to a year-high of $73.05 in after-hours U.S. trading.

Sanofi shares were down 0.2 percent at 48.88 euros by 1130 GMT, with the European drugs sector off 0.1 percent.

Sanofi wants to add Genzyme, the world's largest maker of drugs for rare genetic diseases, to its portfolio to help drive earnings growth through a "cliff" of patent expiries on established blockbuster drugs.

Since news of Sanofi's interest in the U.S. company emerged, the rhetoric between Genzyme chief executive Henri Termeer and his Sanofi counterpart Chris Viehbacher has ratcheted up.

Termeer, a founder of Genzyme and deeply invested in both his company and its legacy, appears ready for a long fight.

Viehbacher, who cut his teeth on a number of smaller deals both at Sanofi Aventis and as head of North American operations at GlaxoSmithKline, also seems prepared to shape his legacy and leadership around an ability to get the deal done on his terms.

The exchanges between the two CEOs could have an impact on how quickly the bid battle is resolved, with a continued hostile campaign likely to last well into 2011, analysts said.

The latest twist centers on what happened when the two met in the United States on September 20.

According to a Genzyme securities filing, Viehbacher told Termeer the two should discuss a deal price range of $69-$80. Viehbacher, according to Genzyme, said the price range was "manageable" but doubted he could reach the higher end based on his current understanding of the U.S. company's business.

Two weeks after the meeting, Sanofi took its $69 per share offer directly to Genzyme shareholders.

Sanofi denied putting any kind of offer on the table.

"We strongly disagree with Genzyme's characterization of the September 20 meeting," Podvin said cash advance no faxing. "At that meeting we made a variety of efforts to move the process forwards, including discussing the merits of our $69 per share offer and we tried to understand if media reports about Genzyme's price expectations were accurate."

A Reuters poll in August found the average price forecast by analysts was $77.90 a share.

BOOST TO EARNINGS

Many analysts believe an all-cash deal -- funded by plentiful cheap loans -- would enhance Sanofi earnings comfortably even at the mid-$70s level.

"I think the offer will be raised but I am not sure that it will go as high as $80," said analyst Jean-Jacques Le Fur at Oddo Securities in Paris.

"According to my calculations, to create value the offer should not go above $75. Sanofi is in a position of strength because it is probably alone in the race and the board and management of Sanofi don't seem to want to go too high."

For Genzyme, however, such a deal would see it selling out below a peak above $83 reached in 2008 before the company ran into manufacturing problems that hit the stock.

Viehbacher has said Genzyme may be worth more than $69 a share but the U.S. company would need to justify a higher price with more information on its potential recovery from the manufacturing crisis and the sales potential from an experimental multiple sclerosis drug, Campath.

A source familiar with the discussions said Sanofi could sit back and wait while its offer ticks toward a December 10 expiry date, hoping Genzyme or its shareholders lose their nerve.

If Genzyme's share price started to fall to $69 or below, Sanofi's offer could begin to look good and shareholders might force management to the table.

Genzyme might push its bankers to find an elusive second bidder if Sanofi holds at $69. But prospective white knights have been thin on the ground.

Reiterating its rejection of Sanofi's bid, Genzyme said on Thursday it would evaluate alternatives for its assets, including reaching out to other companies to prove it is worth more to investors than Sanofi's offer.

The source familiar with the negotiations said the deal might not be struck until Termeer resigned or was removed by his board. "This could end up in a proxy fight again for Genzyme."

(Additional reporting by Nina Sovich in Paris and Ben Hirschler in London; Writing by Tim Hepher; Editing by Greg Mahlich and Dan Lalor)

Tensions Rise In Sanofi - Genzyme Bid War

DUBAI — On a sultry June evening in 2007, more than 100 people camped out at the offices of Emaar, a prestigious Dubai property developer, to ensure that they would land a coveted spot in a gleaming new skyscraper scheduled for opening this year near the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.

Today, the property, designed by the New York architect Frank Williams, who died this year, is, like a number of others around Dubai, little more than a rotting foundation. Its value has plunged by more than 40 percent since 2008, after the collapse of Dubai’s real estate boom.

“It’s really a disaster, the situation in Dubai,” said Silvia Turrin, a real estate agent who bought into the property, 29 Boulevard, and has been unable to get her money out. “It’s not like in Western countries — it’s very difficult to exit here if there’s a problem. And we’ll never get our money back, but now we’re stuck dealing with this hole.”

Dubai lured people to a gold rush in sought-after properties at the height of its real estate boom — including business and political leaders from Afghanistan who invested the deposits from Kabul Bank, one of the country’s largest. The near-collapse of the bank in September was largely a result.

At the time, few asked if there was a legal framework for resolving potential disputes. Now, with the glitter gone, interviews with investors, legal experts and real estate analysts here show that many who bought in are finding it hard to get out.

Despite the construction delay, Emaar is still holding the down payments of as much as 80 percent required to secure an apartment, Ms. Turrin and other property holders said. And Dubai’s opaque property laws have made it virtually impossible for those who bought in to walk away, even as interest accumulates on their construction loans.

In a statement, Emaar acknowledged that 29 Boulevard was still “under construction” but said that it upheld transparency standards and had “taken several proactive measures to address the concerns of investors on developments that are in the pipeline.”

It said those measures included the option of purchasing other completed properties. Investors, however, say the properties being offered are in some cases smaller, less attractive, and more highly priced than those they agreed to buy.

Emaar is not the only developer with similar problems. Scores of other buildings around Dubai are well past their delivery date, or have yet to be started. Apartment buyers who made down payments for property construction are unable to find out what is happening with their funds, these people said. Bank loans held on undelivered property often cannot be forfeited, and borrowers have had to pay higher interest rates even as banks have refused to let them walk away from the mortgage.

“The rules of the game are definitely opaque here,” said an investor who has bought several properties in Dubai and who insisted on anonymity because of talks with developers and regulators. “In the United States, I would know my legal position much more clearly and could take actions if necessary.”

Most developers have also thwarted the formation of owners’ associations that could take control of their building’s finances and ensure the transparent management of condo fees, which many owners say are used by developers to take in yet more money.

Dubai has compressed decades’ worth of real estate development into the last 15 years. But the legal framework for resolving property disputes, and the nature of the contracts themselves, are still as incomplete as many of the buildings around town, analysts said payday loans online.

“Dubai has evolved rapidly in just a short time,” said Graham Coutts, the head of Middle East management services at Jones Lang LaSalle. “The legal system is evolving with it.”

Still, concerns about resolving disputes here are mounting, even as developers struggle to find foreign and domestic investors for what has now become one of the largest property overhangs in the world.

Commercial real estate vacancies in particular are still rising.

Although about 70 percent of empty lots from three years ago have been filled, the construction of new real estate since then has far outstripped the purchases, more than doubling the amount of vacant space available, said Timothy Trask, the director of corporate ratings at Standard & Poors in Dubai.

Dubai is not the first place where soaring ambitions have outpaced reality. Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong all suffered from overbuilding within relatively short time frames. But these places were able to curb their real estate overhangs by drastically reducing construction until demand picked up.

Building is continuing in Dubai, however, even though potential corporate tenants are showing little interest in developments like the Dubai Silicon Oasis or the Jumeirah Lake Towers, an 85-building development that looks like a Las Vegas-version of lower Manhattan planted on the fringes of the desert. Jones Lang LaSalle recently proposed that some buildings should simply be sealed for the next five years, until buyers return.

Even if investors eventually respond to slumping prices, they would still have to be wary of contracts and vigilant about how legal disputes in Dubai are resolved, said Ludmila Yamalova, a managing partner at the law firm HPL Plewka & Coll, who handles lawsuits for individual and commercial property investors.

She recently sued Damac Properties, one of Dubai’s biggest builders, on behalf of a German investor who claims that from 2006 onward he invested nearly $10 million in five off-plan properties that were not delivered on time. The investor, Lothar Hardt, has also claimed that the developer mismanaged escrow accounts related to the properties and that he lost money by signing contracts with retailers who planned to set up shop in the buildings.

Ms. Yamalova is now trying to bring suit in a court run by the Dubai International Financial Center, a government body set up to attract investors, which operates largely on British-based law and is independent of the opaque Dubai court system, where cases are conducted in Arabic and plaintiffs must go through local Emirati representatives.

Dubai’s real estate regulators have issued a flurry of rules since 2008 to clarify the situation and to comfort potential investors. But new rules sometimes contradict others issued just months earlier, often in ways that leave developers with the advantage and property buyers in a legal limbo, making many wary of ever investing in Dubai again, Ms. Yamalova said.

Mr. Coutts, the Jones Lang LaSalle executive, said that because Dubai grew so fast, the government was learning on the job. In more mature markets, “you had 200 years to develop a legal framework,” he said. “It’s now becoming clearer what kind of a legal framework is needed to regulate development here.”

Canceling Dubai Property Deals Nearly Impossible

Filed at 2:55 a.m. ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Tesco, the world's third-biggest retailer, believes the global economy is recovering strongly and growth in emerging markets will help to prevent developed economies from falling back into recession.

The group, which beat forecasts with a 14 percent rise in first-half underlying profit, also said on Tuesday it expected its loss-making U.S. business Fresh & Easy to break even in 2012-13.

"My starting point is the global economy, which is in a pretty robust recovery," Chief Executive Terry Leahy told Reuters in a telephone interview.

When asked whether he thought developed markets like Britain might fall back into recession, Leahy said: "I don't think it will. If you look at the customer psychology and the pulling power of the developing markets, I think they will pull Europe and the United States into a stable and established recovery."

Tesco, with over 4,800 stores in 14 countries, said profit before tax and one-off items rose to 1.79 billion pounds in the 26 weeks to August 28, helped by growth in Asia, productivity gains, property deals and lower interest costs.

"A tad ahead of expectations," said Arden Partners analyst Nick Bubb, who has an "add" rating on Tesco's shares.

However, trading profit met forecasts with a 9 percent increase and sales growth in Britain, where Tesco makes about two thirds of sales and profits, remained sluggish low interest rate personal loans.

Tesco, world No. 3 behind France's Carrefour and U.S. leader Wal-Mart, said group sales rose 7 percent, excluding VAT sales tax, to 29.8 billion pounds, just below analysts average forecast of 30.1 billion in a Reuters poll.

Second-quarter sales at stores open over a year rose 0.4 percent, excluding fuel and changes in VAT, up from 0.1 percent in the first quarter and in line with analysts' mean forecast.

J Sainsbury, the country's No.3 grocer, is expected to report stronger growth in its fiscal second quarter on Wednesday, helped by more affluent shoppers.

Tesco shares have lagged the STOXX 600 European retail index by 7 percent this year amid concerns about returns on international investments, particularly in the United States.

One trader said the shares were set to open 0.8 percent higher after closing at 430 pence on Monday, which valued the business at about 34.4 billion pounds.

(Editing by Hans Peters)

Tesco Sees Robust Global Recovery

To the Editor:

“Can We Build in a Brighter Shade of Green?” (Sept. 26) offered a very realistic discussion of the issues of green home construction. We encountered some of these challenges in 2007-9, as we built our 1,900-square-foot, passive solar home on a remote site in Montana. We were able to use American manufacturers for all of our materials, including our 190 square feet of triple glazed, coated, south-facing windows with the right solar heat gain properties.

If we are to have more truly energy-efficient houses, we need more architects, builders and others to embrace the principles and techniques. And it takes determined owners, like those in the article, to drive a project through a seemingly more complicated and higher-cost path to completion.

Bill and Julie Madden

Gig Harbor, Wash., Sept. 27

To the Editor:

As a building contractor in New England, I was suitably impressed by your description of the latest in green home-building technology totally free credit score. But then I got to the price tag of the home that was featured in the article: perhaps more than $550,000 for a 2,000-square-foot house.

I live in a 160-year-old, drafty wood-frame house that costs roughly $1,000 to heat each winter. Not counting inflation, I will be spending $50,000 over the next 50 years to stay warm, assuming that I live that long.

But as for paying more than a half-million dollars today for that kind of savings, how many Americans can afford to be so green?

And, when it comes to energy, what is the carbon footprint to manufacture all the components of this green house and transport them to the site? Jay Harris

Exeter, N.H., Sept. 26

Letters: Greener Construction

Filed at 6:10 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Borders Group Inc said shareholders approved issuing warrants to Chief Executive Bennett LeBow that could give him a stake of as much as 35 percent in the No. 2 U.S. bookstore chain.

LeBow bought 11.1 million shares, or a 15.5 percent stake in Borders in May, leaping past William Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management to become its largest shareholder, in exchange for a $25 million cash infusion.

Pershing Square got 2.7 million warrants with an exercise price of 65 cents after LeBow's investment, and will get another 8.6 million if LeBow exercises his warrants.

If both parties exercise all their warrants, LeBow's stake in Borders would be 35 percent, and Pershing Square's 31 freecreditscore.1 percent.

LeBow's warrants to buy 35.1 million shares have a strike price of $2.25.

Shares were up 6 cents in afterhours trading after closing at $1.19 on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Borders shares have fallen 64 percent since hitting a yearly high of $3.34 on October 12.

(Reporting by Phil Wahba. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

Borders Approves Warrants For CEO LeBow

Filed at 4:53 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Tuesday as latecomers jumped onto the September bandwagon, buying up sectors that have outperformed during the month.

The S&P 500 has risen 9.4 percent so far in September, historically the worst month for stocks.

"When a month takes you by surprise like this, you tend to be underexposed to stocks and overexposed in cash and bonds. And as the quarter comes to an end, people are rushing to at least have ownership of the stocks that have performed well and have a good outlook. That's causing the aggressiveness in the market," said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co in San Francisco.

Sectors associated with improving economic growth have outperformed during this rally, and those stocks once again led Tuesday's advance. The Philadelphia semiconductor index rose 1.7 percent for the day and was up 13.8 percent for the month. The small-cap Russell 2000 gained 1.1 percent. Among the S&P 500's sectors, the consumer discretionary index was up 0.8 percent.

Boosting energy and commodity shares, spot gold prices surged to a fresh record at $1,310.10 an ounce.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained 46.10 points, or 0.43 percent, to end at 10,858.14. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 5.54 points, or 0.49 percent, to 1,147.70. The Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 9.82 points, or 0.41 percent, to 2,379.59.

With only two days left in September, the Dow is up 8.4 percent for the month.

Walgreen Co, the biggest U.S. drugstore chain, reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings, helped by strong prescription drug sales. Its shares jumped 11.4 percent to $33.81.

Continuing the spurt of recent M&A activity, Endo Pharmaceuticals Holdings Inc will buy private generics maker Qualitest Pharmaceuticals for about $1.2 billion, marking its second deal in as many months easy payday loans. Endo shares advanced 8.1 percent to $33.10.

TOO FAR, TOO FAST FOR TECH?

Shares of Apple Inc slid as much as 5.6 percent on rumors its No. 2 executive was departing for Hewlett-Packard Co, but the stock recovered as analysts dismissed the speculation.

Representatives from Apple and Hewlett-Packard declined to comment.

Apple shares shed 1.5 percent to $286.86.

HP shares closed up 0.9 percent at $41.63 amid speculation that the IT giant may announce a replacement for its former CEO at a financial analysts' meeting currently being held in Palo Alto, California.

With the Nasdaq up 12.6 percent for the month, some analysts noted that the technology sector may be overbought on a short-term basis.

The sector broke out of its summer trading range last week, and was back above its 150-day moving average, outperforming both the wider market and defensive areas, Concept Capital said in a research note.

Wall Street had opened lower after data showed U.S. consumer confidence fell in September to its lowest level since February, but investors quickly brushed off the bad news.

"Consumer confidence numbers are a reflection of news that we already know. It's now all about how companies will be performing next quarter," Pado said.

Continuing a recent trend, volume was light. Only 7.63 billion shares traded on the NYSE, Amex and Nasdaq, compared with the previous year's daily average of 9.65 billion shares.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a ratio of about 7 to 3. On the Nasdaq, two stocks rose for every one that fell.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Jan Paschal)

Latecomers Run to Join Wall St's September Rally

A few years before Apple introduced the iPhone, research engineers at Nokia prepared a prototype of an Internet-ready, touch-screen handset with a large display, which they thought could give the company a powerful advantage in the fast-growing smartphone market.

The prototype was demonstrated to business customers at Nokia’s headquarters in Finland as an example of what was in the company’s pipeline, according to a former employee who made the 2004 presentation in Espoo.

But management worried that the product could be a costly flop, said the former employee, Ari Hakkarainen, a manager responsible for marketing on the development team for the Nokia Series 60, then the company’s premium line of smartphones. Nokia did not pursue development, he said.

“It was very early days, and no one really knew anything about the touch screen’s potential,” Mr. Hakkarainen explained. “And it was an expensive device to produce, so there was more risk involved for Nokia. So management did the usual. They killed it.”

As Nokia’s new chief executive, Stephen Elop, takes over this month, he faces a formidable task: to regain the company’s lost ground in the smartphone segment of the global phone market, especially in the United States, while maintaining its worldwide dominance as the largest maker of mobile phones.

His biggest obstacle, according to Mr. Hakkarainen, as well as two other former employees and industry analysts, may well be Nokia’s stifling bureaucratic culture. In interviews, Mr. Hakkarainen and the other former employees depicted an organization so swollen by its early success that it grew complacent, slow and removed from consumer desires. As a result, they said, Nokia lost the lead in several crucial areas by failing to fast-track its designs for touch screens, software applications and 3-D interfaces.

In 2004, one said, the company rejected an early design for a Nokia online applications store — an innovation that Apple, Nokia and other handset makers adopted three years later. Nokia also did not improve its Symbian operating system, needed to support a more sophisticated smartphone. And though it introduced the industry’s first touch-screen devices in 2003 — the 6108 and 3108 phones, which worked with a stylus — it did not perfect the technology to fingertip precision before Apple did.

Nokia still lacks a convincing response to the iPhone. Last week it announced that software errors would delay shipments of its long-awaited N8 touch-screen phone.

A Nokia spokeswoman, Arja Suominen, declined to address any specific criticisms by the three former employees, playing down their roles. They were, she said, “managers with individual roles or leaders of small teams.”

She also said that Mr. Elop, 46, a Canadian who had run Microsoft’s business software division, and the first non-Finnish chief executive, would not give interviews yet. He began work on Sept. 21, and is spending his first weeks meeting with Nokia employees, suppliers, phone operators and software developers.

“I am sure there are things we could have done better and innovations we missed,” Ms. Suominen added. “But that happens to all companies. We have been very successful with some other innovations.”

She cited Nokia’s large patent portfolio and its 770 Internet Tablet, a compact, flat-screen device without a phone, released in 2005. It worked with a pen stylus and was made for Internet browsing but is no longer sold.

Henry Tirri, who leads Nokia’s long-term research unit, mentioned the development of Chinese character recognition, a social networking service for India and software that makes panoramic photos from a series of images. None have been matched by rivals, he said. But none have been game changers, as the iPhone was.

Mr. Tirri, whose unit has about 600 employees at 12 sites worldwide, said the company was trying to change its culture. “We have made a real effort to transform and open the research channels” since 2004, he said.

As of June, Nokia controlled 40.3 percent of the worldwide market for mobile phones, down from 40.7 percent a year earlier, according to Strategy Analytics, a research firm. That global share has remained relatively constant over the last decade.

But in the United States, its share has slipped from 35 percent in March 2002 to 8.1 percent in April, according to comScore, a provider of digital market intelligence based in Reston, Va guaranteed approval cash loans. It has offset the decline in the United States, with growth in China, Asia and elsewhere.

The decline in the United States is mostly because of the rise of the smartphone competitors, like Apple, Research in Motion and Samsung. And the biggest profits are attributable to the most advanced devices.

Apple delivers consistently higher profit margins than Nokia.

Still, Nokia is on track this year to sell more than 70 million smartphones worldwide; Apple sold 33 million iPhones in the year through June 26.

“Nokia in a sense is a victim of its own success,” said Jyrki Ali-Yrkko, an economist at the private Research Institute of the Finnish Economy. “It stayed with its playbook too long and didn’t change with the times. Now it’s time to make changes.”

Founded in 1865 as a paper mill, Nokia is a source of national pride in Finland. With a work force of 129,000, it is by far the country’s largest private employer, accounting for 1.6 percent of the gross domestic product and more than 10 percent of exports.

In the last five years, Nokia has built a more international research staff, but most board members are Finnish and Nokia’s character remains so.

Critics have often blamed Nokia’s Symbian operating system for the company’s failure to pull ahead in smartphones, saying it is so clunky that developers have not been willing to write applications for it.

Kai Nyman, Nokia’s former chief architect for enterprise domain strategy, a unit responsible for Internet services, said his team’s job was to improve the operating system for smartphones.

He knew about the Internet-ready, touch-screen prototype, he said, although he never saw it and was not at the 2004 demonstration. But he suggested that management had been reluctant to proceed because of concerns over the performance of the operating system, and that the company was too cautious.

“There were plenty of years to make Symbian better,” said Mr. Nyman, who was at Nokia from 1983 to 2009, and took early retirement. “We could have rewritten the whole code several times over. We had the resources and the people. But we didn’t do it.”

Juhani Risku, a manager who worked on user interface designs for Symbian from 2001 to 2009, said his team had offered 500 proposals to improve Symbian but could not get even one through.

“It was management by committee,” Mr. Risku said, comparing the company’s design approval processes to a “Soviet-style” bureaucracy. Ideas fell victim to fighting among managers with competing agendas, he said, or were rejected as too costly, risky or insignificant for a global market leader. Mr. Risku said he had left in frustration at its culture; he now designs environmentally sound buildings.

Mr. Risku also said that in 2002, he proposed a 3-D user interface for Symbian handsets, which at the time would have been unique to Nokia. He said his plan had been rejected because the software would have added $2.05 in production costs to each handset.

Samsung and LG introduced the first phones with a 3-D user interface in 2009. Nokia sold the N-95 handset with 3-D graphics in 2006 and has said it might offer a full 3-D interface for this year’s holiday season.

Mr. Hakkarainen, the manager on a smartphone development team, said that in 2004, his team developed the early design for a Nokia online applications store.

“We demonstrated it within Nokia and said this is what we needed,” said Mr. Hakkarainen, who worked at Nokia from 1999 through 2007. “We tried to convince middle and upper management. But there was no way.”

He also described a highly bureaucratic corporate culture, in which proposals were screened by interlocking management committees with authority to block ideas under consensual rules for decision making.

Proposals were often rejected because their payoffs were seen as too small, he said. But “successful innovations often begin small and become very big.”

He said he had left the company to write. “Behind the Screen,” his chronicle of the company’s successes, was published in 2009.

Nokia’s Bureaucracy Stifled Innovation, Ex-Managers Say

Filed at 6:52 a.m. ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Arsenal Football Club posted record full-year profit before tax of 56 million pounds, due to the sale of property at the old Highbury site and the sale of players such as Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure.

Arsenal said their full-year accounts showed the club was in good financial health and could continue to invest in the team, staff and training facilities. The group's property business is now debt free and generating surplus cash.

Arsenal, currently second in the English Premier League behind champions Chelsea, said Friday they had generated 157 million pounds of revenue from property, allowing them to repay 130 million pounds of bank loans.

The overall level of group net debt was also reduced to 136 million pounds Business Card Holders.

"The most pleasing aspect of these results is that the returns generated in the property business during the year, particularly at Highbury Square, have allowed us to repay 130 million pounds of bank loans and significantly reduce the group's overall net debt," non-executive Chairman Peter Hill-Wood said in a statement.

The club, which finished last season in third place, said it had made a profit from player trading of 13.6 million pounds, compared with a profit of 2.9 million pounds in 2009. (Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)

Corrected - Arsenal Property Sales Boost Results

Filed at 1:58 p.m. ET

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Dell Inc CEO Michael Dell said the company is on track to bring in more than $60 billion in revenue this year, as he showed off the computer maker's newest 7-inch tablet.

Speaking at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, Dell said the company's revenue has grown about 20 percent over the past two quarters, and "it looks like we'll probably do that again this quarter as well."

Analysts expect Dell to report revenue of $15.8 billion in the fiscal third quarter, which ends in October, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. That would be 22 percent higher than a year ago.

Wall Street expects Dell to post revenue of $62.4 billion for the current fiscal year, which ends in January.

Dell said the company's new 5-inch Streak tablet will be available at Best Buy stores next month. The device is currently available through Dell's online store. He also showed off a new 7-inch tablet, but provided no other details. The device appears to run on Google's Android software.

Dell executives have said the company planned to launch tablets in larger screen sizes payday loan lenders in states.

Dell launched the touchscreen Streak last month. It runs on Android and doubles as a smartphone.. The Streak costs $549.99, or $299.99 with a two-year contract from AT&T.

Dell is the world's No. 2 PC maker, according to industry tracker IDC, but has been expanding its product portfolio, with an emphasis on mobile devices. Apple's iPad has set the standard for tablet computers.

A slew of tablets has hit the market or is expected to in the coming months, including offerings from Samsung, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba.

BMO Capital Markets expects tablet sales to top 40 million units in 2011 and hurt notebook and netbook sales.

Dell's shares fell 2.6 percent to $12.28 in midday Nasdaq trading, on a day that the broader Nasdaq composite index fell nearly 1 percent.

(Reporting by Gabriel Madway. Editing by Derek Caney and Maureen Bavdek)

Dell CEO Says Annual Revenue to Surpass $60 Bln

DETROIT — A Chinese automaker has expressed interest in buying a stake in General Motors when it holds a public stock offering later this year, a move that could raise concerns about foreign influence over the largest American automaker.

The Shanghai-based company, the SAIC Motor Corporation, has had a longtime partnership with G.M. in China.

An SAIC spokeswoman, Zhu Xiangjun, said Monday that comments about a possible G.M. stake were made last month by SAIC’s chairman, Hu Maoyuan. She said his comments remained the company’s position but declined further comment.

“G.M. is our important strategic partner,” Mr. Hu said in August. “We are not clear about the details of its I.P.O. We will make the right decision when we know the details.”

G.M. is planning to hold its public stock offering in November. The offering will give the Treasury Department its first opportunity to begin selling off the 61 percent stake in G.M. owned by American taxpayers.

Details of the stock sale were still being worked on by G.M. and its underwriters, including the size of the offering and the price of the shares.

Treasury officials are closely involved in determining both the size of G.M.’s offering and the share price. The government is most interested in maximizing the value of the shares it sells initially, and establishing a strong market for future sales of taxpayer-owned shares humidifiers.

There was no comment Monday from the Treasury about the possibility of a foreign company buying a big stake in G.M. “We expect that potential investors will be sought across multiple geographies with a focus on North American investors,” the Treasury said in a filing last week.

Moreover, the government expects “broad distribution” of the stock. “We expect that a large and diverse group of institutional investors will be offered an opportunity to participate, with no single investor or group of investors receiving a disproportionate share or unusual treatment,” the Treasury said.

G.M. plans to begin discussing the offering in an international stock presentation, or road show, to potential investors, scheduled to begin in early November.

SAIC is one of China’s largest automakers and recently bought half of G.M.’s India division, turning that into a joint venture. SAIC is controlled by the Chinese government.

Bill Vlasic reported from Detroit and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.

SAIC of China Weighs Buying Stake in G.M.