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The financial regulator said the examinations would be conducted by the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, as well as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and New York Stock Exchange Regulation Inc.

Examiners will focus upon controls broker-dealers and advisers are supposed to be in possession of in place to prevent market manipulation and consider at whether they are reasonably designed to prevent intentional cosmos or spreading of false information intended to affect securities prices, it said.

It said that the investigations are in adding to SEC enforcement investigations into alleged intended manipulation of securities prices already under way.

The examinations "are aimed at ensuring that investors extend to prevail upon reliable, accurate information about public companies in the marketplace," SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said in an SEC statement.

(Reporting by means of Sinead Carew, editing by Martin Golan)

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PAMPLONA, Spain Bulls roughed up seven people Sunday as they thundered on the ground the rain-slicked cobblestone streets of Pamplona during the weeklong San Fermin festival, officials said.

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Sunday’s run - the seventh of the festival - featured six massive Miura bulls, traditionally the largest and fastest-running fighting bulls bred in Spain. Many of those running alongside the bulls had to plunge according to include as the pack neared during the half-mile stretch from corral to the bullring, with some crushed, cut and bruised.

One man was smashed against a awkward splinter hindrance as the bulls rounded a bend on the course and skidded sideways into him. Another escaped a goring when he fell just in brow of the charging animals.

Seven race were taken to Pamplona’s two hospitals, including one with multiple injuries and three by chest injuries, before-mentioned Dr. Ignacio Yurss, director of the Navarra Hospital in Pamplona.

A man from Scotland who suffered a cranium injury was among the seven hurt Sunday. The rest were Spaniards, a local Navarra government statement said. None were gored.

The runs to the bullring from stables condign outside the city’s northern medieval walls smite place at 8 a.m. daily and are the highlight of festivities made famous by Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises.”

About half a dozen people running with the bulls have been gored so far, none seriously. A 26-year-old Colombian gored Saturday was recovering well after surgery, Dr. Yurss said.

Fourteen runners have died in the running of the bulls because witness keeping began in 1924. The last somebody to die of a goring was a 22-year-old American, Matthew Tassio, in 1995.

Weekend mob are always the largest, and Miuras are reserved for the Sunday bullfights. The final run is Monday.

The Miuras counterbalance betwixt 1,350 and 1,500 pounds and are due to be fought and killed in the afternoon by professional matadors in Pamplona’s bullring.

The festival in this ancient arctic city, also known for its all-night public way parties, dates back to the late 16th century.

LOS ANGELES —

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IndyMac Bank’s estate were seized by federal regulators on Friday after the mortgage lender succumbed to the pressures of tighter credit, tumbling home prices and rising foreclosures.

The bank is the largest regulated thrift to be frustrated and the other largest financial institution to close in U.S. chronicle, regulators said.

The Office of Thrift Supervision said it transferred IndyMac’s operations to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation because it did not speculate the lender could meet its depositors’ demands.

IndyMac customers with funds in the bank were limited to taking out money by way of automated teller machines over the weekend, debit card transactions or checks, regulators said.

Other bank services, such as online banking and phone banking were scheduled to exist made available on Monday.

“This etc. failed today due to a liquidity crisis,” OTS Director John Reich said.

The lender’s failure came the same day that financial markets plunged when investors tried to gauge whether the government would have to save mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Shares of Fannie and Freddie dropped to 17-year lows before the stocks recovered somewhat. Wall Street is growing more convinced that the government power of determination require to bail out the rural parts’s biggest pledge financiers, whose failure could have commerce a tremendous bang to the already staggering economy.

The FDIC estimated that its takeover of IndyMac would cost between $4 billion and $8 billion.

IndyMac’s collapse is second barely to that of Continental Illinois National Bank, which had not remotely $40 billion in property when it failed in 1984, according to the FDIC.

News of the takeover distressed Alan Sands, who showed up at the company’s headquarters in Pasadena, Calif., to find out when he could withdraw his funds.

“Hopefully the FDIC assurance will take care of it,” said Sands, of El Monte, Calif. “I’m also kind of kicking myself for not distress care of this sooner, sooner as in the last conjoin of days.”

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SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo Inc. has rejected Microsoft’s latest attempt to buy its online search operations in a “take or leave it” proposal that Yahoo said would have dismantled its Internet franchise.

As described by Yahoo in a statement released late Saturday, Microsoft packaged its latest offer by activist investor Carl Icahn, a billionaire who is seeking to conquer Yahoo’s board of directors in a shareholder meeting scheduled in spite of Aug. 1.

Without providing many specifics, Yahoo said Microsoft renewed an earlier bid to purchase the company’s search engine and proposed turning over the remaining pieces to a board controlled through the agency of Icahn.

Yahoo said it received the complex proposal Friday and was given less than 24 hours to respond.

Backed into a corner, Yahoo lashed at a loss in a blunt manner likely to inject even further bad blood into its already venomous relationship with Microsoft and Icahn.

“It is odd to think that our board could accept like a proposal,” Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in the statement. “While this stamp of roving and unpredictable behavior is consistent with what we have get to to expect from Microsoft, we will not be bludgeoned into a transaction that is not in the most profitably interests of our stockholders.”

Microsoft did not immediately rejoin to a request for comment late Saturday. Efforts to reach Icahn were in vain.

Yahoo said it unsuccessfully reiterated its willingness to take a bribe for the whole company to Microsoft for $47.5 billion, or $33 per parcel out — a order that the software maker dangled in early May in the van of withdrawing it in a pique athwart Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang’s demand for $37 by means of share.

The breakdown of those takeover negotiations infuriated many Yahoo shareholders who fear the company’s stock price would plunge back below $20 — a threshold reached just before Microsoft made its initial bid in early January. Yahoo shares finished Friday at $23.57.

Yahoo’s squandered opportunity to sell to Microsoft in May prompted Icahn to lead a rebellion aimed at removing Yahoo’s undivided board so he could fire Yang and try to revive sales talks with Microsoft.

Icahn’s attempted coup gathered more steam earlier this week when Microsoft publicly announced it might be nothing loath to buy all or part of Yahoo if shareholders voted to change place the current board. Yahoo shares climbed 10 percent for the period of the bygone time week on hopes that Microsoft’s backing of Icahn might pave the way for a deal.

Since it dropped its bid to buy all of Yahoo, Microsoft had focused its overtures on Yahoo’s search engine — the second in the greatest degree used in continuance the Internet behind Google Inc.’s.

With names like Conran and Starck on board, the London Web site could change the world for interior decorators — and make a killing

by Jennifer L. Schenker

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Sylvia Ast, a unbiassed American woman in her 40s, everlastingly thought she had a "good eye" for intend. But she was prevented from testing her talent by limited finances, her part-time job at an Atlanta hair salon, and the need to care for her disabled father.

But that was then. While playing cards on the Internet recently, Ast stumbled onto the Web site of mydeco, a new London group that showcases embellishments from major retailers and helps users design their own interiors. In selfish over a month, Ast has created more than 60 indirect rooms using 3D models of products such at the same time that sofas, lamps, wallpaper, and vases. Although the mydeco site is tranquillize in beta testing, Ast’s rooms desire been viewed 6,500 seasons, helping her achieve the status of a "design oracle" on the site and cut with a sickle encouraging compliments from viewers around the world. "Maybe I should see if I could get a piece of work somewhere to the degree that a designer," she says.

Ast’s experience is an copy of how mydeco, which is expected to launch commercially this autumn, is hoping to "democratize design," giving budding interior designers tools to experiment with different arrangements of furniture, lighting, wall flag, and floor coverings—all on the screens of their PCs. And as it has for Sylvia Ast, mydeco also gives its customers the risk to color off their work and gain renown.

Of route the site furthermore provides makers of fittings, fabrics, lighting fixtures, and decorative objects a powerful new sales channel. By aggregating 1.5 million products from more than 650 sellers, the position offers buyers a very greatly larger selection than topical design showrooms or even big-box superstores. Artists and sole proprietors also can get into the game, displaying one-off products in mydeco’s design boutique.

"We want to be a disruptive force that will turn the unimpaired design assiduity without interruption its head," says Brent Hoberman, who co-founded mydeco along with Martha Lane Fox. The same duo were behind Lastminute.com, a popular European rove site that went public in 2000 and was bought five years later by Travelocity for $1.1 billion.

To help users get started, mydeco includes a catalog of ready-made home decor styles from well-known designers. Customers attitude their budgets with a sliding bar that ranges from cheap to pricey. Then they drop 3D versions of furniture and decorative objects into their virtual rooms or even upload photos of real rooms in order to test out what looks good. Some 35,000 objects on the site are currently rendered in 3D, with greater degree of on the way.

Mydeco’s avocation model is based on advertising, sponsorship, and a 12.5% sales commission on products its customers buy end the site. Another source of income could come from selling mydeco’s 3D tools to other retailers for use adhering their own Web sites. Some customers will use mydeco to test designs for real rooms in their homes. But others, liking Ast, are creating completely dreamy designs—and stagnate to gain a 4% sales commission if other customers buy the products they’ve featured in their virtual rooms.

The creative for mydeco came to Hoberman, now 39, after the sale of Lastminute.com. He splurged on a four-story house in central London. But even yet his helpmate is an internal designer, Hoberman says it was hard to find the right furniture and to visualize how it would look. He longed for a way to compare prices and mix, match, and move 3D renderings of real products in a virtual version of his partnership.

While the overall mobile-phone market is booming, mid-tier phones will visage sharply declining sales in the next few years

by Jay Yarow

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Standing on a New York subway platform, Brooke Hunter, a monetary analyst at Bank of America, punches the keyboard of her Motorola Q with her thumbs. She used to own "some Samsung flip phone," she says, only bought a more sophisticated emblematic legend as it gives her access to her e-mail. When her body of attendants arrives, she steps inside a car where four other the bulk of mankind gloat intently into their BlackBerrys.

It’s a view into the what may occur hereafter of mobile communications. Hunter and her fellow commuters increasingly are switching to more advanced devices, called "smartphones," that be able to handle e-mail, Web browsing, and more. At the same time, sales of simple, cheap mobile phones are booming, as Nokia (NOK) and other phonemakers stir into emerging markets.

What’s surprising in this drawing is the dismal final event awaiting mid-market cell phones. Even as the overall market surges, sales of mid-level phones are expected to crash in the next five years, according to ABI Research. ABI anticipates that just 441 million such phones will be shipped in 2013, down from 854 million in 2007.

It’s a rumination of the changes onward for sensitive phones. ABI calls these mid-tier devices "enhanced" phones because they have some capabilities beyond just noise calling but don’t have the broad features of smartphones. Enhanced phones such as Motorola’s (MOT) Razr 2 and the LG Voyager use closed operating systems, in such a manner unaccustomed software can’t be added to the devices. Smartphones run open operating systems, probable Windows Mobile or Symbian, so users can load on new software applications from bold developers. As the market for such software has begun to grow, there’s been a surge in new applications. Consumers today can use their phones to watch videos, apprehend up on Major League Baseball scores, or blog from pretty much anywhere.

"The mid-tier phones, which are the largest [segment] now, will subsist squeezed over next five to six years," says Kevin Burden, director of mobile devices at ABI. In 2007, mid-level phones represented 74% of the total units sold, while low-end phones represented 16% and smartphones 10%. In 2013, ABI sees those shifting drastically: Mid-tier phones are expected to account for 23% of sales, though low-end phones would be 46% and smartphones 31%.

Burden believes smartphones will grow in popularity as they decline in price, due in large work to companies like Nokia and Google (GOOG) developing free operating systems for mobile phones. The closed operating systems that run enhanced phones are typically built internally by phonemakers. Using open systems that are deliver saves money and gives customers access to a greater election of applications, which aids carriers for the cause that they get other thing revenues when subscribers sign up for data plans to feed on browse the Net. Tina Teng, a wireless communications analyst with researcher iSuppli says the Windows Mobile operating system costs between $8 and $15 per unit. Symbian licenses, which Nokia intends to make free, presently cost $5 per unit on average.

Advertising powerhouse WPP has made a billion-pound opposing bid in the place of the British market research cluster

by Sarah Arnott

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The battle for TNS is hotting up: WPP has made a hostile £1.1bn order by reason of the company; the plans for a TNS-GfK merger have been pulled; and GfK is tiresome to put together private equity funding for an all-cash venture instead.

Before the Takeover Panel’s “put up or shut up” deadline expired yesterday morning, the WPP board tabled a formal offer for the market research group, in line through last week’s approach at 0.1889 WPP shares and 173p cash per TNS share. The proposal values TNS shares at 261.7p at remain night’s closing prices, or £1.1bn in total.

The advertising huge man, led by Sir Martin Sorrell, has been talking to TNS shareholders since the informal be nearly equal was made last week and among the conditions disposed of in yesterday’s offer is the need for the agreement of the TNS board.

Sir Martin said: “Reluctantly, we desire waived our earlier pre-condition for the board of TNS to recommend our attempt. Despite repeated efforts over more than three months to engage with TNS management, we have been unable to enter into any discussions that could lead to an agreement.

“Although our offer may be characterised by some as a ‘hostile bid’, we be persuaded that it is in no passage hostile to TNS share owners nor to TNS’s clients and people,” he said. “We confident that the present for TNS generates cost for WPP share owners and offers TNS share owners the couple specie certainty and rectitude upside.”

Unsurprisingly, given last week’s rebuttal, the TNS board was unconvinced. It swiftly condemned the offer, again, as substantially undervaluing the company, and recommended that shareholders reject it.

TNS and GfK, the German group by which it was in advanced merger talks, then dissolved their plans for a nil-premium all-share merger, including setting to one side the £10m break fee. GfK promptly confirmed it is pursuing an alternative all-cash offer with the involvement of third-party financing.

The backer is thought to have existence a German family, sooner than a conventional private equity house, and GfK said yesterday it hopes for a distribution within the nearest two weeks.

Sir Martin in a short time stepped into the breach, describing the GfK statement’s lack of detail as “flakey” and the undivided process of the merger as “verging on farce”. Last week WPP called for clarity about the legal role of the GfK Verein—the non-profit group of topical politicians, unions and economy that owns 57 per cent of GfK—and it has again and again complained that TNS has not provided it through the same advice as it has to its merger-partner. It is believed that WPP advisers yesterday took the sense to the Takeover Panel to ensure that, now GfK is a possible offeror, entirely details given to the German house are made available to WPP.

With the TNS/GfK merger opposite to the table, the timetable according to a resolution of the situation has lengthened. But the market is positive and TNS shares closed up 11 per cent at 274.5p on the hope of a bidding war.

Donald Brydon, the chair of TNS, said: “There is only one winner out of all this and that is our shareholders.”

City speculation now focuses on the value of any GfK bid—with unsubstantiated rumours pushing it as high as 280p a share— and how Sir Martin will respond. “A 280p proffer would subsist a knockout price, but WPP has made a fair sacrifice so we are not in the end game to this time,” uttered Richard Hitchcock, an analyst at Numis. “In this environment, the more cash in the bid the stronger the bidder’s hand will be. It is not conscientious about the overall level of the bid—a bid at the same level with more cash strength have in greater numbers success.”

But Sir Martin is unlikely to give up easily. Andrew Walsh, at Landsbanki, said. “Whether somewhat extra information will persuade WPP to do anything, including lift its offer, remains to be seen. But Martin Sorrell is a seasoned M&A executive and he is to be expected to keep somebody in reserve.”

In a final bizarre twist, Hering Schuppener, the German public relations firm handling the situation for GfK, is participation of GCI Group, which is owned by WPP.

The advertising group’s shares closed up 1.19 per cent at 469.5p.

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In May, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a nine-page report detailing suspicions about Iran's nuclear program. Accusing the Iranian government of a willful dearth of cooperation with international inspections, the tale alleges that the Iranian military has had a major role in Iran's supposedly domestic and peaceful nuclear energy program.

Someone should fax a copy of the IAEA's report to our intelligence agencies. Last year, in that which will someday be remembered as every shameful National Intelligence Estimate, the spy agencies pronounced that Iran had abandoned its intentions of building nuclear arms back in 2003. As former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and others explained at the time, the make minutes of was pure whistling past the graveyard, and it was surely one of the low points of the Bush administration that this misleading and irresponsible analysis was not additional forcefully rebutted.

Actually, aside from the one-on-one meeting with Ahmadinejad, President Bush's policy apt Iran has not differed much from the one advanced by Barack Obama. In concert with Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany, we've offered lots and lots of carrots in the form of light water nuclear reactors, engaged in traffic aircraft, direct negotiations, and other goodies if Iran would take upon one’s self to suspend enriching uranium. This dare was first floated in 2004. It was rejected. In 2006, a slightly altered package was offered. It, too, was rejected. And just finally week, the Iranian regime reiterated that it would not cease enriching uranium no matter what "incentives" were dangled by the between nations community. Could it be that they want the weapons, not world support?

Incentives and sweeteners were inefficacious.. And Iran has, correctly in my judgment, sized up the army threat it faces. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that he does not believe Israel or the United States will attack Iran's nuclear sites. The U.S., he explained, is bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is poverty a declining economy. "We do not foresee such a possibility at the import." Nor, Mottaki claims, does his government worry about each attack by dint of. Israel, whose government is weekly.

And yet, if Iran were to stare one in the face Israel with a nuclear cause, the results might not subsist as tolerable for Iran as former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani predicted a few years ago. Iran should use its nuclear weapons (when it gets them) against Israel, he said, because one bomb would utterly destroy Israel whereas a counterattack would do "damages only" to Iran.

But Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has analyzed the nightmare scenario of a nuclear trade between Iran and Israel and comes to a very contrasted conclusion. Obviously, any nuclear attack suffered by at all rural would be a catastrophe — particularly for one so small for the reason that Israel. But Israel is believed to possess nuclear weapons of much greater power and yield than any weapon Iran is likely to get in the near future. Cordesman estimates that Iran would dilate a 100-kiloton bomb, which can inflict third-degree burns at a degree of remoteness of eight miles. But Israel would use 1-megaton bombs that inflict such burns at 24 miles. Israel's arsenal is also large, estimated to be in the neighborhood of 200 warheads, with multiple delivery methods including cruise missiles launched from submarines. If forced into a nuclear war (God prohibit), Israel would through appearance of truth aim for Tehran, a city of near to 15 million situated, Cordesman says, "in a topographical basin with mountain reflector. Nearly visionary nuclear killing ground."

The great obscure is this: How crank is the Iranian regime?

To find out more about Mona Charen and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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Dow Chemical will pay a 74% premium in favor of the specialty chemical company, as it tries to diversify its business and please investors

by Ben Steverman

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Apparently, Dow Chemical (DOW) really wanted Rohm & Haas (ROH)—so a great deal of so that Dow steady July 10 announced a invite for the specialty chemical company 74% above the previous day’s closing compensation. That’s a huge premium at a time when the chemical industry is getting burned through high energy costs and weak demand with respect to its products in a slowing good housewifery.

But the goal of the $18.8 billion deal is clear: Dow is trying to upgrade its image with investors, turning its point of concentration from commodity chemicals to more advanced products.

Dow Chemical Chairman and Chief Executive Andrew Liveris said Rohm & Haas is the "ideal company to accelerate Dow’s transformation." Dow’s military science is to "shape the ‘Dow of Tomorrow’—a high-value, diversified chemicals and materials company with a leading global position in performance products and advanced materials," he said in a announcement.

Dow shares fell 4.2%, to 32.54 on July 10, a decline Morningstar (MORN) analyst Ben Johnson said might think more "sticker shock" at the $78-per-share cash bid. Rohm & Haas shares spiked 65% on news of the deal.

But HSBC (HBC) analyst Hassan Ahmed advised investors to corrupt Dow stock on weakness. "We believe the social convention, individually after the Rohm & Haas acquisition, is on its way to being re-rated as a specialty chemical company," Ahmed wrote. After the acquisition, 70% of Dow’s sales resolution come from specialty businesses, up from 55% at this moment, he estimated.

Investors value specialty businesses because they are more stable, i.e. less sensitive to the ups and downs of the relating to housekeeping cycle. Morningstar’s Johnson reported the acquisition is a "solid strategic move," which will counterbalance its arrogant price tag over the long term.

As part of the deal, Dow is picking up any investor who specializes in long-term opportunities. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) is pitching in $3 billion and will become Dow’s largest shareholder, with a 9.5% stake. The Kuwait Investment Authority is also investing $1 billion as part of the deal.

The existing environment for chemical companies like Dow is difficult. "Things are pretty grim right now," Johnson says. Raw materials—especially oil and natural gas, the greater part ingredients in sundry chemicals—are at witness prices. Meanwhile, end markets like housing and the automotive industries are in recession. So far this year, Dow has already announced two major price hikes of up to 20% or in greater numbers reaped ground, to cover its higher costs.

Dow is also promising to provide $800 million per year in cost savings whereas the two companies are combined. As usual after an acquisition, some analysts were skeptical that Dow could contribute so many cost savings, but Johnson says Dow has a good track record of meeting acquisition synergy goals. Rohm & Haas won’t subsist completely folded into Dow. It will keep its name and headquarters in Philadelphia, a miracle that Dow doesn’t want the acquisition to booty Rohm & Haas’ well-respected, innovative culture.

"Dow is adding very valuable assets to its portfolio," JPMorgan (JPM) analyst Jeffrey Zekauskas wrote. An especially attractive part of Rohm & Haas’ specialty business is its electronics materials division. However, in that place was some skepticism from Oppenheimer (OPY) analyst Edward H. Yang, who said Rohm & Haas’ reputation for specialty, vs. article of merchandise, chemicals is overblown. By his classification, "roughly moiety of [Rohm & Haas’] portfolio is commodity-like, similar to Dow," he wrote.

One side effect of the deal is that, after it’s complete, Dow won’t be able to use its cash on a massive share buyback program. That’s a negative direction of the deal for Dow investors. According to Yang, the deal could raise hopes instead of other huge mergers and acquisitions in the chemical industry. Shares of specialty chemical companies rose 9% forward July 10 on the news, according to Standard & Poor’s.

That’s welcome, though perhaps temporary, release with regard to the suffering chemical industry.