HONG KONG – A Macau casino joint venture between Las Vegas-based MGM Resorts International and the daughter of gambling tycoon Stanley Ho plans to raise up to $1.5 billion in an initial public offering on Hong Kong’s stock exchange.

MGM China Holdings Ltd. said Thursday it plans to sell 760 million shares at between 12.36 Hong Kong dollars to HK$15.34 a share. The IPO would raise HK$11.67 billion ($1.5 billion) at the top price.

MGM’s casino is one of 34 in Macau, a special administrative region of China and the only place in the country where casino gambling is legal. The company is hoping to capture growing investor interest in Macau gambling companies, which have helped the economy boom since a four-decade casino monopoly was broken up in 2002.

The former Portuguese colony is now the world’s top gambling market.

Casino revenues in March rocketed 45 percent over the same month last year. In 2010, Macau raked in $23.5 billion in gambling revenue, about four times more than the Las Vegas strip’s $5.8 billion.

Market leader SJM Holdings Ltd. now competes with rivals including Las Vegas Sands Corp., Wynn Resorts Ltd. and Melco Crown Entertainment Ltd.

MGM’s Macau casino and hotel resort opened in December 2007 and has 1,006 slot machines and 427 gaming tables. A 10-meter-tall golden lion stands out front. The company has applied for government permission to build another casino on reclaimed swampland in Macau’s Cotai district.

MGM Resorts reached a deal last month with partner Pansy Ho that will give it 51 percent ownership and management control of MGM China Holdings once it goes public. Pansy Ho will have a 29 percent stake and other shareholders will own 20 percent stake.

Pansy Ho is Stanley Ho’s 48-year-old daughter by his second wife. Her father, a tycoon who owes much of his fortune to winning the Macau gambling monopoly in 1962, has 16 living children by four women he calls his wives though he is not legally married to all of them.

Stanley Ho is considered the father of modern gambling in China. He has also long been accused of ties to Chinese organized crime, which he denies.

A New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement report made public last year said Ho lets criminal gangs “operate and thrive” inside his casinos. The division found that Pansy Ho is dependent on him and his money and remains under his influence.

In response to an ultimatum from New Jersey casino regulators that MGM Resorts either sell its 50 percent stake in Atlantic City’s top casino, or cut ties with Pansy Ho, MGM chose to keep its relationship with her.

The regulators concluded that Pansy Ho is an “unsuitable” business partner of MGM in Macau.

The company admits no wrongdoing and says it has a “spotless record” operating with her.

More recently, Stanley Ho was also embroiled in an inheritance dispute over his gambling empire involving various branches of his family. The 89-year-old disputed the transfer in January of his stake in SJM worth about $1.6 billion to the families of his second and third wives. That led to a monthslong dispute that included a lawsuit filed by the tycoon against Pansy Ho and several other children before it was settled.

HONG KONG (AFP) – French banking giant BNP Paribas is planning to list its shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange, a report said Monday, in a bid that is likely to boost its profile in Asia, especially China.

The lender has submitted an application to the southern Chinese city’s bourse, with a listing planned as early as July, the Chinese-language Ming Pao Daily News reported, quoting an unnamed source.

A BNP Paribas spokeswoman in Hong Kong said she could not immediately comment on the report when contacted by AFP.

The banking group does not plan to raise new funds in a so-called listing by introduction, according to the newspaper.

Unlike an initial public offering, a listing by introduction simply adds another trading venue to boost the profile of a company’s existing shares, and gives investors the ability to buy or sell the shares in their local currency.

In December, Brazilian mining giant Vale made its Hong Kong trading debut by listing its shares in the form of common share depositary receipts, but did not raise new money. The miner was already listed in Brazil, New York and Paris.

Companies are increasingly looking to Hong Kong as a gateway to the Chinese market, with Russian mining giant UC Rusal raising US$2.2 billion in Hong Kong last year.

Last May, cosmetics group L’Occitane became the first French company to list in Hong Kong, after an initial public offering raised $704 million to fund an aggressive expansion in China, Japan and emerging markets.

The maker of luxury handbags is planning a listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to raise awareness of its brand in Asia, while remaining listed on the NYSE. Coach (NYSE:COH – News) will issue Hong Kong depositary receipts, but no additional shares will be issued and no capital will be raised. While Coach has 55 stores in China vs. 174 in Japan, China is its fastest-growing region and 11 more stores are planned there this year. Shares climbed 1.2% to 60.66.

NEW YORK – One of the most profitable parts of the stock exchange business is about to become more competitive.

BATS Global Markets said Tuesday it plans to launch a new listings service for U.S. stocks, opening the door for companies to go public in a venue other than the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq OMX Group.

The Kansas City, Mo.-based electronic exchange operator has submitted paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission and hopes to start listing stocks by the end of the year.

BATS already competes with established exchanges in its stock-trading business. Since it was founded six years ago, the privately-owned company has captured about 10 percent of all U.S. stock trading by offering lower fees and faster electronic trading than its competitors.

The new listing service could siphon away lucrative listing fees from the NYSE and Nasdaq as well. NYSE made approximately $300 million in U.S. stock listings in 2010, while Nasdaq made approximately $170 million, according to Morningstar.

“We feel like we can provide a very competitive offering to the NYSE and Nasdaq, with very competitive pricing and tools that can attract some of the 7,000 plus companies that are listed today,” said Ken Conklin, a BATS executive who is in charge of the listings business.

Conklin said the company will target both companies planning initial public offerings of stock and those that are currently listed on rival U.S. exchanges. Like at the NYSE and Nasdaq, companies that will be listed on BATS will have to meet basic tests of profitability, corporate governance and submit audited financial information regularly.

Company officials said that BATS had previously received approval to operate a listings market, and that the paperwork it filed is a formality. It expects to begin listings in the last quarter of 2011.

The threat the company poses to established exchanges is mixed, financial analysts say.

“This move targets one of the most profitable parts of the NYSE and Nasdaq franchises,” said Michael Wong, an analyst at Morningstar who covers both companies. “That said, there are definitely factors that could prevent BATS from making its material goal of being competitive.”

While BATS may offer lower listings fees, investors may remain more comfortable with stocks that meet the listings requirements of the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, he said. The company may also not have the ability to cross-list shares in Europe as well, he said.

“The NYSE has so many business lines, from cash trading to data revenue to investor events,” Wong said. “Right now, BATS is competing with two or three legs of an eight-legged octopus.”

Stock exchange owners have been combining as competition from electronic trading operators like BATS increases. NYSE Euronext Inc. recently agreed to be acquired by a German exchange operator. If approved, the deal would create the largest exchange operator in the world.

(Reuters) – The Japanese government plans to dedicate up to 10 trillion yen ($127 billion) in crisis lending to businesses to help them finance day-to-day operations and repair damage from last week’s deadly earthquake and tsunami, the Nikkei newspaper reported on Saturday.

The government can provide special financing in the form of low-interest loans or interest payment subsidies backed by public funds when a natural disaster or other event triggers major economic instability, the Nikkei said.

The newspaper, without citing any sources, said that the government was considering allocating several trillion yen and up to 10 trillion yen to the scheme. Funds needed to support the scheme would be set aside in an emergency budget.

The government looks certain to need an extra budget to fund disaster relief and reconstruction after the triple blow of a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake, a tsunami and a dangerous radiation leak at a quake-crippled nuclear plant.

The authorities, struggling to contain the nuclear crisis, have yet to produce an estimate of how much government spending would be needed to help the economy get back on its feet.

Economics Minster Kaoru Yosano told Reuters in an interview earlier this week that the economic damage from the disaster would exceed 20 trillion yen, which was his estimate of the total economic impact of the 1995 earthquake in Kobe.

Yosano said government spending was likely to exceed the 3.3 trillion yen Tokyo spent after Kobe, which up to now has been considered the world’s costliest natural disaster.

On Friday, the Sankei newspaper said that the government planned to issue more than 10 trillion yen in emergency bonds to pay for the reconstruction and that the central bank would fully underwrite the issue. But Yosano and other government officials denied the report, saying no such plan was in place.

The Nikkei said the government was also discussing creating a recovery fund that would provide medium- to long-term lending for firms directly hit by the disaster. However, setting up such a fund would require several changes to the law. ($1 = 78.855 Japanese Yen)

(Reporting by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Nathan Layne)

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Nasdaq OMX Group Inc’s (NDAQ.O) plans to launch a rival bid for NYSE Euronext faces hurdles as differences with potential partner IntercontinentalExchange Inc (ICE.N) persist, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website on Thursday.

Uncertainty in global markets that has led banks to tighten lending terms is also affecting financing for a rival bid to challenge NYSE Euronext’s more than $9 billion deal with Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gn.DE), the paper said, citing unnamed sources.

Nasdaq and ICE have not agreed on how to share the risk in an offer, the paper reported. It added that at least one Nasdaq director opposed an offer.

These issues have thrown the timing and the possibility of an offer in doubt, the paper said.

Nasdaq was not immediately available for comment, while an ICE spokeswoman declined to comment.

Sources told Reuters earlier this week that Nasdaq was working on an offer along with ICE that could value NYSE Euronext between $10 billion and $13 billion.

A source said on Tuesday an offer could come this week, but characterized the situation as being in flux.

Experts have said that Nasdaq has an uphill battle in making a counterbid for NYSE Euronext, facing issues such as funding a complicated deal and convincing Big Board shareholders that it’s better than Deutsche Boerse’s offer.

(Reporting by Paritosh Bansal and Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators unveiled plans on Friday that will determine which companies and funds will be forced to hold more cash to trade in the lucrative over-the-counter derivatives market.

The proposals, which will subject Wall Street firms to even more regulatory scrutiny, are designed to mitigate risk to markets and avoid a repeat of what happened when AIG’s unsecured derivatives threatened the global financial system.

On Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission followed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and began efforts to define who would be classified as a swap dealer and major swaps market participant.

Under the regulators’ proposal, an entity would be deemed a major swap participant if it held a “substantial position” in any of the major swap categories such as credit derivatives, foreign exchange swaps or interest rate swaps.

The regulators also targeted those whose outstanding swaps positions created “substantial counterparty exposure that could have serious adverse effects” on the U.S. financial system.

A financial entity holding a substantial swaps position that is highly leveraged and not already subject to a federal banking regulator’s capital requirements would also fall under that category.

SEC Commissioner Troy Paredes said he was concerned that the thresholds to determine a major swap participant were too high.

SEC staff estimated that only about 10 entities would have to start going through tests to determine whether they were major security-based swap participants. Those entities would most likely include AIG and hedge funds holding large speculative swap positions.

Wall Street firms dominate the derivatives market. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley together held about $171 trillion in over-the-counter swaps at midyear.

TURF BATTLES

Under the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, the CFTC and the SEC won power to police the roughly $600 trillion off-exchange derivatives market. But long-standing oversight turf battles between the agriculture and financial committees in Congress prevented the merger of the two market regulators.

As a result, the SEC only has authority over the security-based swaps market, which represents 5-10 percent, or $25 trillion-$60 trillion, of the overall swaps market.

The CFTC has authority over all other swaps including commodities, foreign exchange and interest rate swaps.

The SEC estimated that about 50 entities would be labeled security-based swap dealers and be required to register with the agency.

The proposals, other derivatives rules and sweeping requirements under the Dodd-Frank legislation are designed to plug regulatory gaps exposed by the 2007-09 financial crisis.

At the same time, the SEC and CFTC are trying ensure that companies, municipalities and others that use swaps to hedge fluctuating commodity prices and other risks will not be labeled as swap dealers or major swap participants.

The proposals would exclude those holding a swap position for hedging or mitigating commercial risk.

The SEC proposal is open for a 60-day comment period.

The SEC has already proposed rules for the centers that will store the swaps trading data, as well as plans to mitigate conflicts of interests at venues that will handle the swaps.

(Editing by Dave Zimmerman, Lisa Von Ahn and Ted Kerr)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan plans to send non-combat troops for the first time to its westernmost island in response to Chinese naval maneuvers in the East China Sea, a move which could infuriate its giant neighbor, the Nikkei business daily said on Sunday.

The plan is to send 100 troops to Yonaguni, about 110 km east of Taiwan and 160 km southwest of disputed East China Sea islets called Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan.

But it wouldn’t take effect until 2014 at the earliest, the newspaper said without giving an explanation.

Relations between Asia’s two biggest economies soured in September after Japan detained a Chinese skipper whose fishing boat collided with Japanese patrol vessels off the disputed islands, which are near potentially rich maritime gas reserves. He was later released.

The plan involves the deployment of lightly armed military personnel to monitor activities and communications of warships and aircraft, the newspaper said.

The Defense Ministry was also considering sending troops to the islands of Miyako and Ishigaki west of Okinawa to beef up border security, the Nikkei said.

The main island of Okinawa is home to 2,100 Japanese troops. Currently no troops are deployed on islands to the west.

Defense ministry officials were not available for comment.

But the ministry, in an annual report issued in September, said it was considering ways to defend Japan’s southwest islands, including deployment of a new unit.

The ministry earmarked 30 million yen ($359,200) in its 2011/12 budget request for research on deployment of troops to Yonaguni and other southwest islands. ($1=83.51 Yen) (Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Nick Macfie)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The securities regulator on Friday started sketching out how the market will start receiving “real-time” information about trading in the roughly $600 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and fellow market regulator the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are writing dozens of rules for the opaque market.

On Friday, both regulators started to define parameters for the warehouses or repositories that will store the swaps trade data.

The SEC is mulling registration of the so-called swaps data repositories and requiring the warehouses to give the agency access to security-based swaps data among other things.

The SEC and CFTC are also starting to determine what kind of information and how quickly the trades must be reported to the so-called swaps data repositories.

Under the SEC’s swaps plan, parties to a security-based swap transaction would be required to report real-time information about each transaction to the warehouse.

The off-exchange derivatives are used by companies, municipalities and others to hedge against fluctuations in commodity prices and interest rates.

The Swap Financial Group, which advises nonfinancial corporations on derivatives strategy, said there should be a delay in the real-time reporting of block trades or large deals for end users.

“There is competing public good between an entity like the city of Los Angeles and an entity like a hedge fund and a speculative trader seeking to get price discovery,” said Peter Shapiro, managing director with the Swap Financial Group.

The SEC plans to solicit comment on the general criteria that would be used to determine the size of a block trade.

The SEC has already proposed rules to mitigate conflicts of interests at venues that will handle the swaps and a plan to prohibit fraud and manipulation in the derivatives market.

The agency must write more than 100 rules for financial players before mid-July 2011.

FUND SUPERVISION

The SEC will also vote on a proposal that would require the registration of advisers to hedge funds and private equity funds with more than $150 million in assets under management.

The increased oversight is intended to help the SEC root out fraud in the $1.6 trillion hedge fund industry, although players do not believe the new rules will burdensome.

“They are not going to be hard to comply with,” said Ron Geffner, who works with hedge funds as a partner at Sadis & Goldberg LLP. “If people have adopted policies and procedures and try to live with them before they register, it will be less of a going concern.”

The SEC tried to regulate the private pools of capital a few years ago, but a lawsuit overturned the rule.

Now, the agency has the power to impose such rules with the enactment of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill in July.

Advisers to smaller private pools of capital would be required to supply the agency with some information such as the disciplinary history of the adviser and its employees, according to the SEC’s plan.

As required by the Dodd-Frank bill, the SEC must craft a rule that will shift the oversight of thousands of smaller investment advisers to the states.

Investment advisers with more than $100 million in assets will be supervised by the SEC instead of advisers with $25 million in assets.

The SEC will decide whether to advance that proposal on Friday.

(Editing by Andre Grenon and Steve Orlofsky)

DHAKA (AFP) – Bangladesh will offload stakes in dozens of state-owned enterprises as part of a major government effort to cool down the country’s overheated stock exchange, its finance minister said Monday.

Eight state-owned firms, including major energy and power firms, which are already listed will be made to sell more shares, while 24 wholly state-owned firms will be taken public this year, A.M.A. Muhith told AFP Monday.

The moves aim to help the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) soak up excess demand for stocks, which analysts say has pushed valuations to unsustainable levels.

Muhith said the government has eased rules for issuing new shares to encourage the 24 state-owned companies to list.

The DSE, which is up 70 percent since the start of the year, crossed the record 8,000-point mark during trading on Sunday before falling 12 points to close at 7,988 on profit taking. It closed at 7,974 on Monday.

Titas, the country’s largest gas distribution company, electricity giant Desco, mobile phone company Teletalk and national flag carrier Biman Air top the list of companies to be listed this year, the DSE said.

“It’s the biggest bonanza for the country’s share market in decades,” DSE director Rakibur Rahman told AFP, adding that the last time the government took similar steps was in 1988, when eight small state-owned enterprises were listed.

“It will stabilise the market by narrowing the dangerous demand and supply gap,” he said.

The sale of stakes in the eight main companies will raise up to 600 million dollars, with listing of the additional 24 companies likely to net some 850 million dollars, he said.

The DSE has been the top performing share market in the region since 2007. Its benchmark DGEN index has risen nearly 200 percent since January 2009.