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Saudi king Fahd passes away - Oil prices hit new high
Washington: Crude futures briefly jumped to a new high above $62 a barrel on Monday after the death of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. Power has formally shifted to his brother, 81-year-old Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto leader during the past decade.

King Fahd died early Monday after a prolonged hospitalization, the Saudi royal court announced. His brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, was appointed the new monarch in a smooth transition that had been years in the making. Abdullah immediately named his half brother, Defense Minister Prince Sultan, 77, as his crown prince and successor.

Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain, Prince Turki bin al-Faisal, said the nation wouldn't change its policy on oil or other matters. For analysts, the longer-term concern is that each successive transition of power in Riyadh will become trickier.

Adding to the developments from Saudi Arabia, were escalations in US-Iran tensions, with the Iran threatening to reopen its uranium reprocessing nuclear facilities. The United States claims the Iranian nuclear program is designed to produce weapons, a claim Iran denies. Iran suspended enrichment of uranium in November last year, under international pressure, but the country maintains that it has the right to resume the activities.

Friction between the two countries is worrisome on oil markets because the U.S. is the world's largest consuming nation, while Iran is the second-biggest producer within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

September Brent futures at London's International Petroleum Exchange were up 93 cents at $60.30 a barrel.

In other Nymex trading, September heating oil futures climbed 4.88 cents to $1.725 per gallon, while gasoline futures surged 5.39 cents to $1.78 a gallon.

Light sweet crude for September delivery briefly rose as high as $62.30 in afternoon trade on the New York Mercantile Exchange, then retreated to $61.95, a rise of $1.38 a barrel. Front-month Nymex futures traded as high as $62.10 last month, reaching a settlement peak of $61.28 on July 6.
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Change of guard at Nokia: Kallasvuo to succeed Ollila as CEO
Helsinki: Finland's Nokia has picked Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo to take over as chief executive next year from Jorma Ollila, who transformed the company from a maker of rubber boots into the world's biggest cell phone producer.

Kallasvuo, who currently heads Nokia's biggest division, Mobile Phones, will take over as chief executive from June 1, when Ollila steps down to become part-time chairman.

A 25-year veteran at Nokia, Kallasvuo held the role of chief financial officer for about 10 years and took over as head of Mobile Phones in January 2004.

Analysts said his past roles as head of finance and North American operations, in addition to heading mobile phones, meant he had the right experience.

But Nokia's shares closed in Helsinki 1.2 percent lower at 13.01 euros and some company watchers questioned whether the CEO designate had the vision to lead the group as a whole, even though he worked with Ollila on transforming the firm in the 1990s.

Ollila, 54, is seen as a corporate hero in his homeland, having overseen the firm's transformation from a diversified Finnish industrial group. He became chief executive after a boardroom shake-up and as head of the company from 1992 switched its focus to telecom equipment, selling other operations.

Nokia overtook Motorola of the United States to become the world's largest mobile handset maker in 1998 and for a time during the technology boom was Europe's most valuable firm by market value.

Making one in three phones globally, it now has a market capitalization of about 58 billion euros, but in the maturing industry growth has slowed and profit margins shrunk.

Analysts are keen to see if Kallasvuo will stick to a path of aiming for maximum market share by selling lower priced models, or target more expensive devices to grow its profits in new areas.

About 90 percent of Nokia's shareholders are based outside Finland, and some of the group's key staff moved to New York in 2004, fueling speculation in the Finnish media that the group might one day leave its homeland.

Ollila quashed such talk in March, and also said at the time that his successor should come from within the firm, though some analysts had suggested an outsider might bring fresh thinking to the battle against competitors like Motorola.
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