Dow crosses the 11,000 mark — roaring start to 2006
New York: On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average made it to 11,000 points, after struggling to achieve the mark all of 2005. Surprisingly, the Dow was propelled to the mark with the help of the worst performer in its line up of 30 stocks - General Motors Corp.

GM's stock jumped 7 per cent on Monday to US$22.41 on the back of a brokerage upgrade. Since June 2001, when the Dow last crossed 11,000, GM's stock is down 62.4 per cent. Crossing the 11,000 mark still leaves the Dow below its highest ever mark of 11,750.28, which it reached on January 14, 2000.

The Dow's surge follows close on the heels of Nasdaq's crossing the mark of 2,300 for the first time since May 2001 last week. With the Dow breaking through the 11,000 mark early into the new year, market analysts say it could possibly provide a big psychological boost to investors as even as they emerge from a below par 2005, when the Dow declined by 0.6 percent.

Analysts said that though the Dow was not an accurate barometer of general market performance, it nevertheless carried a lot of weight. Technical analysts however warned that a likelihood of a technical correction was far brighter than a continued upswing.
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Shell sued by 26 Dutch pension funds for overstating oil reserves
New Jersey, USA: Stichting Pensioenfonds ABP, Europe's biggest retirement plan, along with 26 Dutch pension funds, has sued Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the third- largest publicly traded oil company, over the company's restatement of its oil reserves between 1999 and 2003.

A Shell spokesman has said that the company will contest ABP's claims and will also vigorously defend itself against the action. To date, the company has already agreed to pay out more than US$240mn in costs related to the overstatement, including about US$90mn to settle a lawsuit from the company's U.S. employees.

Shell's U.K. and Dutch parent companies merged last July in an attempt to regain investor confidence after the company overstated its oil and gas reserves by 41 percent.

ABP filed its claim Jan. 6 in a New Jersey federal court. The U.K. units of PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Dutch unit of KPMG, Shell's auditors at the time, are also named in the suit.

The company had earlier agreed to pay US$151mn in penalties to end regulatory inquiries in the U.S. and the U.K. It's overstatement also led to the ouster of chief executive Philip Watts and the company to lose its top tier credit rating, as well as investor lawsuits and regulatory investigations.

According to the plaintiffs, ``These materially false and misleading statements caused plaintiffs to sustain substantial losses'' after purchasing Shell's shares. Shell lost about US$16bn in market value after the restatement, the filing says.

The pension funds represent ``the majority of the Dutch labor force'' owning as much as 5 per cent of the stock, the plaintiffs' law firm, Grant & Eisenhofer PA of Wilmington, Delaware, said in a statement.
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Saks puts up its Parisian chain for sale
Chicago: Saks Inc. has put its Parisian chain of 40 department stores up for sale, and will now be left with just its namesake, Saks Fifth Avenue business and Club Libby Lu specialty stores. The retailer sold its Proffitt's/McRae's chain for US$623mn last year and has agreed to sell 142 other stores for about US$1.2bn.

Saks has spent the past year selling off its mid-tier department stores, leaving it with the better known luxury Saks Fifth Avenue chain. It also owns Club Libby Lu, a chain of specialty stores that hosts make-over parties for girls. Saks said it expects to receive more than US$1.7bn in cash from the store sales that it has previously announced, and will distribute a "substantial" portion of the proceeds to shareholders, either in the form of share repurchases, a special cash dividend, or a combination of the two.

The retailer generated an estimated US$2.7bn in 2005 revenues from its Saks business, which includes 55 Saks Fifth Avenue stores, 50 Saks Off 5th locations, and saks.com.
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UK pensions liabilities now triple in size to £150bn
London: According to UK's Pension Board, Britain's pensions liabilities could be three times bigger than previously feared, with the country's largest companies facing a £150bn pension fund deficit.

The board said that the country's top 100 companies will have to spend £100bn more than currently forecast to pay off their pension liabilities in full. The new figure triples the £50bn shortfall that FTSE 100 companies with final-salary pension schemes were said to face under the calculation method, the accounting standard FRS17.

Researchers now say that thousands of workers who have been paying into the "gold-standard" schemes will find themselves transferred into far less generous plans.

According to analysts, the most damaging omission in calculating buy-out costs had been the failure to take into account increased life expectancies caused by improvements in medicine.
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