NYSE in possible hacker attack

The New York Stock Exchange's website was apparently hobbled twice Monday, possibly the result of computer attacks as part of the anti-Wall Street protests, according to a company that monitors website response times.

San Mateo-based Keynote Systems said the NYSE website experienced a one-minute outage around 3:30 pm Eastern (1930 GMT), then a half-hour outage about two hours later.

But NYSE spokesman Ray Pellecchia said an investigation by the stock exchange showed no disruptions to its website.

The loosely organized Anonymous hacking group has threatened an attack on the NYSE.

Some protesters have objected to those threats because of the impression a hack would leave about the movement as a whole.

Keynote spokesman Dan Berkowitz said his firm began monitoring the NYSE site Monday after receiving media inquiries about the threats. He said the slowdowns were substantial enough that his firm considered it an outage.

Just because a website is slowed down doesn't mean it was hacked in the typical sense of the word.

So-called "denial of service'' attacks involve bombarding websites with so much bogus traffic that their servers are overwhelmed.

An attacker need not ever gain access to the inside of the target's computer systems.

The websites of the NYSE, major banks or government agencies are almost always separate from the computer systems where sensitive transactions are performed.

NYSE's Pellecchia emphasized that trading on the exchange wasn't disrupted, and that the exchange's website is separate from its trading platform.

- AP

Short selling banned for Euro bank shares

France, Italy, Spain and Belgium are banning short-selling amid efforts to calm market turmoil that has sent bank shares gyrating wildly and aggravated worries about Europe's huge debts.

The European Union's markets supervisor, the ESMA, announced the move late last night after boosting surveillance of stormy markets earlier in the day. The move capped two days of whipsaw trading that saw French banks' market value fall and rise by billions of euros.

In a short sale, a trader hopes to make a profit by betting on the decline in the price of a share. The practice has been blamed for contributing to market volatility.

The ESMA said in a statement that the four countries "have today announced or will shortly announce new bans on short-selling or on short positions" as of Friday.

The French market regulator, the AMF, announced late on Thursday (Europe time) that it is banning for 15 days net short-selling on 11 stocks, including those of banks Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole and leading insurers.

Greece banned it on Monday but until Thursday, no other European countries had followed suit.

French bankers and officials scrambled to soothe investors' nerves after days of suggestions that France could be the next major economy to lose its coveted triple-A credit rating. By late in the day, those efforts appeared to have an effect, but economists said the rebound remained very fragile.

The European Union's markets supervisor said on Thursday that regulators were increasing surveillance of financial markets following the days of steep selloffs.

Bank of France head Christian Noyer blamed "unfounded rumors" for plunges in the shares of top banks, including Societe Generale and BNP Paribas, and said the country's financial institutions were sound. The country's market regulator warned of sanctions against anyone who fuels or profits from rumours that fed the sell-off.

Noyer said that French banks' first-half earnings "confirmed their solidity in a difficult economic environment" and that the banks' capital cushions were healthy.

French bank stocks fell on Thursday until strong US jobs data helped propel solid gains on Wall Street late in the European trading day. BNP Paribas closed up 0.3 per cent and Societe Generale rose 3.7 per cent.

France is taking pains to assure markets that it won't be the next to see its credit rating downgraded.

Attention will be on France's release of second-quarter GDP figures on Friday. Some have warned that France could suffer if it has to spend significant new money to bail out more struggling eurozone states.

The leaders of the eurozone's biggest economies, Germany and France, announced they will meet on Tuesday to discuss solutions to Europe's financial difficulties.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office said that the two will come up with "joint proposals" on the governance of the eurozone before the end of the summer. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said the meeting would focus on suggestions for how to improve the zone's economic policy and crisis management.

All three leading credit rating agencies reaffirmed their triple-A assessment of France, and analysts said they could not identify a trigger for the market turmoil.

"There's nothing behind it, it's a market of malintentioned speculators trading on pure rumours," said Marc Touati, an economist at French trading firm Assya Compagnie Financiere.

After Societe Generale, France's second-biggest bank, saw its share price drop nearly 15 per cent on Wednesday, the bank asked the French market regulator to investigate the rumours that it was on the ropes because of its heavy exposure to debt from troubled eurozone economies.

Societe Generale CEO Frederic Oudea called the rumors "totally unfounded" and "irrational." Speaking on France-Info radio, he urged calm and insisted that the bank's fundamentals are sound.

Oudea said Societe Generale had already accounted for its exposure to Greece's debts in its second quarter earnings.

France's growth prospects are considerably better than those of Italy and Spain's, but its economic expansion is slowing and it's failed for years to reduce a deficit that stood at 7.1 per cent last year. No other eurozone economy with a triple-A rating has a higher debt than France's around 85 per cent of national income.

Adding to market worries, French presidential elections scheduled for the spring of 2012 may make it difficult for the government to implement further austerity measures at a time when the economy is slowing.

Elsewhere in Europe, Greece announced a rise in unemployment after a series of unpopular austerity measures aimed at dragging it out of debt that sparked troubles across the eurozone.

And Italy's finance minister, Giulio Tremonti, told lawmakers on Thursday that tough and speedy measures are needed over the next two years to balance the budget in 2013. The market turbulence has seen Italy's borrowing costs in the markets spike up to uncomfortably high levels.

-AP

Billionaire Soros going it alone

Man who broke the Bank of England returns money to investors, to concentrate on philanthropy.

George Soros, the billionaire best known for breaking the Bank of England, is returning money to outside investors in his US$25.5 billion firm, ending a career as hedge-fund manager that spanned more than four decades.

Soros, who turns 81 next month, will hand back the money, less than US$1 billion ($1.14 billion), by the end of the year. His firm will focus on managing assets solely for Soros and his family, says a letter to investors.

"We wish to express our gratitude to those who chose to invest their capital with Soros Fund Management LLC over the last nearly 40 years," says the letter signed by Soros' sons Jonathan and Robert. "We trust that you have felt well rewarded for your decision over time."

The move completes Soros' transformation from a speculator, who in 1992 made US$1 billion betting the Bank of England would be forced to devalue the pound, to philanthropist statesman, a role he first imagined for himself as a Hungarian emigre studying at the London School of Economics after World War II. In the past 30 years he has given away more than US$8 billion to promote democracy, foster free speech, improve education and fight poverty around the world, he said in a recent essay.

Soros' sons say they took the decision because new financial regulations would have made it necessary for the firm to register with the US Securities and Exchange Commission if it continued to manage money for outsiders. Because the firm has overseen mostly family assets since 2000, they decided it made more sense to run it as a family office, says their letter.

Soros was born in Budapest in 1930, as Dzjchdzhe Shorash. When the Nazis invaded the city in 1944, Soros' father arranged for false papers for his family and friends that identified them as non-Jews. Most of the people his father helped survived the war, Soros said in the essay, published in the New York Review of Books late last month.

"Instead of submitting to our fate we resisted an evil force that was much stronger than we were - yet we prevailed. Not only did we survive, but we managed to help others," he wrote, adding that the experience gave him an appetite for risk. "This left a lasting mark on me, turning a disaster of unthinkable proportions into an exhilarating adventure."

After London, Soros came to New York at the age of 26 and became a trader, initially buying and selling stocks for a Wall Street brokerage. He planned to work for five years, enough time, he reckoned, to save US$500,000 and return to England where he would pursue his philosophical studies, according to an interview he gave to Michael Kaufman, author of Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire.

Instead, he stayed in the world of finance, eventually setting up the predecessor to his Quantum fund in 1969. He started his own firm in 1973.

Quantum has returned about 20 per cent a year, on average, since 1969, says a person familiar with the firm, though it lost about 6 per cent in the first half of this year, and made only 2.5 per cent last year.

Over the years, Soros had to deal with the conflicting goals of making good and doing good. While his fund made about US$750 million betting on a decline in the Thai baht in 1997, the wager increased economic woes in Thailand as the government spent billions unsuccessfully defending its currency, and had to cut public spending.

In 1997 his philanthropic tendencies drove him to buy Russian assets. He took a US$1 billion stake in Russia's state-owned telecommunications company, and went on to buy Russian stocks and bonds. He didn't sell his positions even after publishing a piece in the Financial Times advising the government to devalue the ruble. Four days later, Russia followed his advice.

"He felt that if he was a beacon of investment in Russia, others would follow and the capital inflows would transform the society," Robert Johnson, a former Soros managing director, told author Sebastian Mallaby in his book More Money than God. "There's a philanthropic side of George that started to interfere with the speculative one." In his recent essay, Soros echoed the remarks of his former colleague. "I have made it a principle to pursue my self-interest in my business, subject to legal and ethical limitations, and to be guided by the public interest as a public intellectual and philanthropist," he wrote.

"If the two are in conflict, the public interest ought to prevail."

Soros opened his first foundation, the Open Society Fund, in 1979, when his fund had reached about US$100 million and his personal wealth had climbed to about US$25 million. His initial focus was on promoting democracy and a market economy in Eastern Europe. Soros now funds a network of foundations that operate in 70 countries. In late 1988, he hired Stanley Druckenmiller to be his chief strategist to take over the day-to-day trading of the firm's assets so he could concentrate on his charitable pursuits.

While Druckenmiller was the architect of the US$10 billion British pound trade, which forced the currency out of the European exchange-rate mechanism, Soros served as a coach to the younger man, encouraging him to increase his bet.

Druckenmiller left in 2000, after losses when the technology bubble burst. In 2007, as the subprime mortgage crisis was gaining speed, Soros stepped in. Quantum returned 32 per cent that year and posted an 8 per cent gain in 2008, when funds on average dropped about 19 per cent. Overall, Quantum Endowment grew from about US$11 billion in June 2000 to today's level.

The uncertainty about markets and Quantum's recent fall meant it sold investments last month and the firm is now holding about 75 per cent cash.

Soros continues to focus on his philanthropy and on voicing his views on macroeconomic events.

"My success in the financial markets has given me a greater degree of independence than most other people," Soros wrote recently. "This obliges me to take stands on controversial issues when others cannot, and taking such positions has itself been a source of satisfaction. In short, my philanthropy has made me happy."

How Much?

George Soros' wealth totalled US$14.5 billion as of March ($16.6 billion at current exchange rates), according to Forbes magazine. That made him the 46th-wealthiest person in the world.

- BLOOMBERG

Kiwi dollar bulldozes its way over US87c

The New Zealand dollar exchange rate bulldozed its way to yet another post-float high against the US dollar today, touching US87.08c as the greenback slumped.

The surge has left the kiwi within striking distance of doubling its nominal value - US44c - when it was floated in March 1985.

After spiking three times to US87c or above, the New Zealand dollar retreated a little to trade at US86.93c at 5pm, compared to US86.50c at the same time yesterday.

Reuters reported that stop-loss buy orders around the world were triggered following a rise in the exchange rate for the euro against the greenback. Such stop-loss orders were used to protect wealth by automatically placing a "sell" order when the price of a commodity - or currency such as the US dollar - dropped below a specified threshold.

The kiwi had earlier dipped to a relative "low" of US86.13 after weaker than expected trade data, but soared higher - with the Australian dollar and the euro - as speeches and statements by US politicians raised concerns over the political impasse in Washington.

US President Obama warned in an address to the nation that burgeoning US debt could cause serious damage to the world's largest economy if the Congress can't agree on raising the debt ceiling of US$14.3 trillion.

Investors poured into perceived safe-haven assets - such as the commodities-driven New Zealand and Australian currencies - and pushed gold to a record high and created an exchange rate for the Swiss franc at an all-time peak against the US currency.

"Stops were triggered in euro...that's taking everything higher," HSBC's NZ head of institutional sales Daniel Brdanovic told Reuters.

"We're not seeing really too much flows. People are still staying on the sidelines as much as possible...waiting for some resolution out of the US," he said.

The New Zealand dollar has risen over 5 per cent this month and 20 per cent this year. It was last at these levels in mid-1981, when the currency was still regulated by the Muldoon Government's central bank. The gains have been underpinned by improving economic data and expectations of interest rate rises.

At 5pm the NZ dollar was buying 0.6005 euro, down a little on yesterday's level at the same time of 0.6017 euro, while slipping to A79.63c against the Australian dollar from A79.96c, and to 67.86 yen from 67.89, over the same period.

The trade weighted index was 74.07 at 5pm from 74.06 yesterday.

ANZ bank said that the NZ dollar remained a currency in vogue.

Across the Tasman, Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens did little to dampen expectations of another interest rate rise. The central bank chief said Australian consumer spending would eventually ramp up from the sluggish pace of recent years, and the shift could come soon if some uncertainties over the global outlook were to ease. The Australian dollar was US$1.0918 at 5pm, from US$1.0818 at the same time yesterday.

The euro rose to US$1.4477 at 5pm, from US$1.4375 yesterday, and the Japanese currency also strengthened against the US dollar to 78.07 yen, 78.48 yen.

- NZPA