AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, Oct. 23--EADS executives defended themselves against accusations of insider trading Monday as shareholders of Airbus’ parent company approved a revamped management structure intended to end the Franco-German rivalry that hurt the A380 superjumbo.
Some of the most senior managers and large shareholders at European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co. are under investigation by the French Financial Markets Authority AMF on possible insider trading, AP wrote.
EADS chairman Rudiger Grube said the company is convinced its financial communications (policy) complies fully with financial regulations and urged shareholders to look beyond the scandal.
The accusations “have nothing to do with the fundamentals of our business and do not reflect the current reality and future prospects of our group,“ he said.
The long-running AMF probe focuses on share sales between November 2005 and March 2006 by 21 senior managers at EADS.
Problems with the A380 superjumbo and its mid-range A350 came to light publicly in June 2006, sending EADS shares tumbling 26 percent in one day.
The leaking of the AMF’s preliminary report, which pointed to massive insider trading, is deplorable, Grube said, “because everyone has a right to be presumed innocent.“
French lawmakers, who are conducting their own inquiry, will question Arnaud Lagardere Thursday on his role as one of EADS largest shareholders. His company Lagardere Groupe SCA holds 12.5 percent of EADS but intends to cut its stake to 7.5 percent by 2009 through forward sales. Lagardere said he has no plans to reduce his company’s holdings in EADS below 7.5 percent in the next five years.
The AMF report singled out an announcement in March 2006 by Lagardere and DaimlerChrysler AG to reduce their stakes, according to a report Le Figaro. Both groups chose to forward-sell their shares--meaning the sale would take place in 2007 based on the 2006 share price--suggesting they anticipated shares would fall.

LONDON, Oct. 23--The European Commission is set to unveil a Blue Card for skilled immigrants, based on the US Green Card. The card would allow suitably qualified people and their families to live and work within the EU.
The EU says it needs 20 million skilled immigrants over the next 20 years, and is very short of expertise in engineering and computer technology. Correspondents say another aim of the proposal is to deter the best brains from immigrating to the US to find work.
The BBC’s Mark Mardell in Brussels says the plan is controversial and some countries are sure to oppose it.
Critics also fear that Europe’s attempt to take the best and leave the rest will only encourage a brain-drain from poorer nations.
The UK, Ireland and Denmark could opt out, but the other EU members will have to take part. UK ministers say officially they are studying it, but our correspondent says they are not keen on the idea, preferring to develop a points system.
Under the proposals, due to be unveiled on Tuesday afternoon, a Blue Card would enable holders and their families to live, work and travel within the EU.
To be eligible for the card, new immigrants would need to show a recognized diploma, have at least three years professional experience and the offer of a job which could not be filled by an EU citizen. “To maintain and improve economic growth in the EU, it is essential for Europe to become a magnet for the highly skilled,“ the European Commission said in a statement. “...To do so, the EU must present a united front, rather than emphasize the different immigration policies of each member state.“ The plan will need the approval of all member states to come into force.
Some politicians in the Netherlands and Germany are hostile and the Austrian government has condemned the plan as centralization too far“.
There is a real tension between politicians all over Europe, who know their voters are worried about immigration, and businesses which say they will not be able to function without the skills of graduates from India and China, our correspondent says.

A farmer packs vegetables on her farm in a rural part of Guangzhou, southern ChinaÕs Guangdong province.

BEIJING, Oct. 23--China’s rural population continued to shrink as farmers stream to booming cities, though a majority of people still lived in the countryside, state media reported.
Millions have moved to China’s cities in the last few years, providing labor to fuel the country’s breakneck economic growth.
A UN report released in June estimated that more than half of China’s population will be living in urban areas within 10 years.
About 737 million people, or 56 percent of the total population of 1.3 billion, lived in rural areas at the end of 2006, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Monday, citing National Bureau of Statistics Director Xie Fuzhan. The rural population had declined from 64 percent of the total in 2001 and 74 percent in 1990, Xinhua said.
China’s urbanization is unique in that it stems largely from migration instead of natural population growth.
The Communist government that took control in 1949 imposed residency rules as part of strict controls on where people could live, work or even whom they could marry. It was not until recent years that rising wealth and greater personal freedoms eroded the system, allowing farmers to move to cities.
The United Nations Population Fund has estimated that, in less than a decade, China will have 83 cities of more than 750,000 people.

MILAN, Italy, Oct. 23--Kazakhstan has signed a framework accord with a consortium led by Italian group Eni allowing talks to continue on settling a dispute over a huge oil field being developed by the group, Eni said on Monday.
Eni said the memorandum lays down a framework for negotiations on the exploitation of the Kashagan oilfield, which has been delayed for several months due to a dispute between the two parties.
According to the memorandum, the Kazakhstan authorities and the consortium, which also involves ExxonMobil, Shell, Total, ConocoPhillips and Inpex, “will continue negotiations in a spirit of positive and constructive cooperation beyond the (Monday) deadline.“
The Caspian Sea project, which is key to Kazakhstan’s plans to become one of the biggest oil producers in the world, has been beset by long delays and cost overruns.
Kashagan contains around 13 billion barrels of crude, making it the biggest oil field discovered anywhere in the world in the last 40 years. The expected start of production has been pushed back from 2005 to 2010.
The Kazakh government in late August gave Eni, which is leading talks on behalf of the consortium, 60 days to seal an accord, with the deadline expiring Monday. Kazakh officials confirmed the accord and said they looked forward to progress on all issues. “We see clearly now how we are going to advance,“ a spokesperson for state-owned company Kazmunaigaz told AFP.
“There are many points on which were are trying to reach agreement-- it is not only about increasing (our) stake in the project ... All the economic damage suffered by Kazakhstan has to be covered as well,“ the official said. Monday’s memorandum is “a real step forward,“ the official added.
Kazakhstan has criticized Eni for having put back from 2005 to 2008 and then to 2010 the beginning of Kashagan oil production as well as for a huge increase in cost from 57 billion to 136 billion dollars.

LUXEMBOURG, Oct. 23--An EU court ruled Tuesday that a German law shielding car maker Volkswagen AG from foreign takeovers was illegal in violating the European Union’s single-market principles. The European Court of Justice overturned rules capping a shareholder’s voting rights at 20 percent and requiring a majority of 80 percent for important decisions.
“The Volkswagen law limits the free movement of capital“, the court said in a statement, AP reported.
The court also rejected the right of both the German federal government and the region of Lower Saxony to appoint two board members each while they were shareholders in the company, calling them questionable conditions could have a deterrent effect on bids.
The ruling on the decades-old Volkswagen law was being watched as an indicator for how far EU governments would be allowed to go in protecting companies they saw as vital to their economies.
Volkswagen emerged from the ashes of World War II to become Europe’s biggest automaker, with brands from the more affordable Seat and Skoda to the upscale Audi and the stratospherically priced Lamborghini.
German politicians and labor unions have said the law was needed to protect local jobs.
But the European Commission took Germany to court in 2005, saying the law violated EU rules guaranteeing the right to do business anywhere in the 27-nation bloc, and that golden shares allowing governments to protect companies had no place in the shared European market.
Anticipating the ruling would follow an advisory opinion against the Volkswagen law, fellow German automaker Porsche AG increased its holding in Volkswagen to 31 percent, while Lower Saxony raised its stake to 20.36 percentÑgiving Porsche and Lower Saxony together 51 percent, or enough clout to stop a takeover themselves.

GENEVA, Oct. 23--Global agricultural subsidies declined by 2 percentage points in 2006 from the previous year to a total of $268 billion (214 billion euros), the OECD said Tuesday. The amount of money given to farmers thus represented some 27 percent of their income among the OECD’s 36 members, although aid as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) fell on average to 1.1 percent from 2.5 percent in the 1980s, AFP reported.
The European Union remains by far the largest provider of subsidies at $138 billion, way ahead of Japan ($41 billion), the United States ($29 billion) and South Korea ($25 billion), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said.
South Korean farmers receive the highest proportion of their revenues from subsidies however at nearly two-thirds (63 percent), followed by Japan (53 percent), the European Union (32 percent) and the US (11 percent).
Korea’s subsidy level remained stable from 2005 to 2006, while it fell by two percentage points in both Japan and the EU, and by five points in the US, where subsidy levels are closely linked to prices.
“Agricultural policies in 2006 were implemented in the context of generally stronger world prices for agricultural commodities,“ the OECD said in its report.
Agricultural subsidies are a key sticking point in efforts to secure a new global trade deal at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The WTO’s Doha Round, which was launched in the Qatari capital in 2001, should have ended in 2004 with an agreement to cut barriers to trade in farm produce, industrial goods and services. But it has been dogged by long-standing disputes between wealthy and developing nations, especially on protective barriers for agriculture, as well as between the European Union and the United States on the same issue.

Rodrigo Rato

WASHINGTON,
Oct. 23--The outgoing International Monetary Fund head said that the US dollar’s decline so far has been orderly but the greenback faces a risk of an abrupt fall, UPI reported.
Speaking Monday in Washington at the agency’s annual meeting, Rodrigo Rato, who will soon leave his post as IMF managing director, warned any large-scale dumping of the dollar could shake confidence in US assets and affect major economies of the world, The Financial Times reported.
Separately, the Times quoted US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson as saying the IMF needs to make its surveillance of member country exchange rate policies more effective.
“Without meaningful exchange rate surveillance, governance and management, reform will ring hollow,“ Paulson said.
Paulson and other finance ministers from the Group of Seven most advanced economies have urged China to allow its currency to appreciate at a faster pace to ease the pressure on currencies such as the Euro which some feel are being disproportionately affected by the dollar’s decline, the report said.
Rato said governments must reduce global current account imbalances instead of relying on exchange rates to achieve the adjustment, the Times report said.
Elsewhere in his remarks, he said that the global economy faces a period of uncertainty, with risks to continued growth much higher than they were six months ago, AP wrote.
Rato said recent turbulence in credit markets, the worst in a decade, is a warning that the continually expanding global economy of recent years cannot be taken for granted.
“We still do not know the full extent of the decline in the house market and the subprime problems of the US economy,“ he said, referring to risky mortgages made to borrowers in the US with spotty credit or low income.
He said further disruption in financial markets and further falls in housing prices could lead to a global economic downturn, making other risks --rising food and oil prices, a falling dollar--loom larger.
As a result of the turbulence, he said the IMF expects a slowdown in growth but not a recession in the United States, and a smaller slowdown in other advanced economies.
Rato is stepping down as IMF head after 3 1/2 years. His successor, France’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn, takes over Nov. 1.

ATHENS, Greece, Oct. 23--Talkative Greek lawmakers have saddled parliament with outstanding phone bills of one million euros ($1.43 million), news reports said Tuesday, AFP wrote.
Greek newspapers reported that the landline and cellphone call bills were accumulated over the last 20 months, at a time when parliament had already decided to honor older debts worth over 32 million euros.
The 300 deputies in parliament are entitled to an annual allowance of 13,500 euros for fixed calls and 3,000 euros for mobile phone calls, which they routinely exceed, Eleftheros Typos daily said.
Greece’s parliament has not commented so far. The office of parliament speaker Dimitris Sioufas declined to confirm or deny the reports on Tuesday.
“The speaker has nothing to say,“ an aide told AFP, adding, “This is not the first time this issue comes up.“
Talking to reporters on Monday, Sioufas said parliament had settled prior outstanding deputy bills in 2000 in 2004, Kathimerini daily said.
It is currently unclear whether the new one-million debt will be covered.