Gold prices extended gains above $1,010 an ounce in Europe on Friday as the dollar index’s <.DXY> tumble to one-year lows fuelled interest in the precious metal as an alternative asset.

Its gains lifted prices of other precious metals, with silver and platinum both rallying to multi-month highs in its wake.

Spot gold rose to a high of $1,011.55 an ounce, its firmest since February 2008, and was bid at $1,009.50 an ounce at 1437 GMT against $995.50 late in New York on Thursday.

Citigroup analyst David Thurtell said the dollar was providing most support to gold. “The dollar seems like it could be heading for $1.50 against the euro. There are bound to be people seeking currency hedges, and gold’s a good one,” he said.

Nonetheless, gold’s inability to hold above the $1,000 an ounce level in previous runs higher was likely to encourage profit taking at these levels, he said, while an increase

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China is Investing Billions in Renewable Energy One firm has already built China’s largest wind turbine manufacturing factory. And it’s working with the Chinese Science Academy to develop new wind, solar, and geothermal technologies… for which it will own 70% of the rights. But this company’s business reaches far beyond the Chinese border, with operations in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe. It’s first quarter net income increased by 294% over a year ago. Click here for the full report.

The financial services industry in the United States and Europe is still reeling from the financial crisis, shedding tens of thousands of jobs each month – even a year after the crisis hit its apex.

However, recent evidence suggests that the financial services industry in Asia – particularly China, which was largely isolated from the toxic assets that caused the crisis – is starting to rebound.

Indeed, many …

Gold prices rallied today, Thursday, to their highest level since February on strong investment demand amid caution ahead of key U.S. non-farm payrolls data on Friday (London GMT).

Bill O’Neill, managing partner of New Jersey-based LOGIC Advisors, said that asset-diversification demand for gold and other precious metals by jittery investors amid shaky equities markets propelled gold’s rally.

Spot gold hit an intraday peak of $992.55, which marked the highest price since Feb. 24. It was at $989.10 an ounce at 12:07 p.m. EDT (1607 GMT), against $976.60 an ounce late in New York on Wednesday.

U.S. December gold futures were up $10.70 at $989.20 an ounce on the COMEX division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Fears that U.S. payrolls data may disappoint sparked a flight to quality among investors on Wednesday. The metal broke out of its previous $930-$960 range as a move through technical resistance above $960 sparked a rally.

VTB Capital analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov

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On Saturday, July 11, Korea Electric Power Corporation, or KEPCO (KEP), signed a contract with the state-run Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) to build a power plant in western Saudi Arabia.  The 1,200 MW fuel-oil fired power plant deal in Rabigh was signed between KEPCO in consortium with a Saudi Arabian company, ACWA Power International.   The consortium had been selected on March 17, 2009 as the top bidder for the contract.   KEPCO is an integrated electric utility with an annual capacity of 63,529 MW.  The company owns 87.6% of the total electricity generating capacity in South Korea.   Korea Electric Power will invest $200 million in the $2.5 billion Rabigh project.  The rest of the funding will be provided by a consortium of banks led by Alinma Bank, which expects to contribute about $500 million, with other banks like HSBC (HBC), Standard Chartered, etc. chipping in ...

The euro recovered against the dollar today, Friday, as traders picked up the single European currency following its fall the previous session, when weak U.S. jobs data helped lift the dollar across the board.

Some traders booked profits on the euro’s slide on Thursday, while analysts said currency movements were aggravated due to thin volumes as U.S. markets were closed for the Independence Day holiday.

On Thursday, data showed U.S. employers cut a greater-than-expected 467,000 jobs in June, leading to heightened risk aversion on the back of pessimism about the recovery of the U.S. economy.

The bleak data pressured the euro and currencies perceived to be higher risk such as the Australian and New Zealand dollars, but the single European currency found its footing on Friday after selling subsided.

This kept the euro hovering at the $1.40 level, as some market players judged the sell-off in the euro — which knocked it from a

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The base metals were nearly all in the red on Friday. Copper was in the green until just after the New York open, then plummeted to the noon hour, before rising a bit late in the day to finish at $2.2724/lb., down 2¾ cents.

Nickel rose until mid-morning and, though it sold off from there, still managed a positive close at $7.0949/lb., up more than 6½ cents. Zinc was flat until mid-morning, but fell off to end at $0.704/lb., down 2¼ cents. Aluminum fell for most of the day, dropping a penny and a third, to $0.7312/lb., while lead was modestly lower, shedding about a penny, to $0.7667/lb.

Copper led the bulk of the industrial metals lower, as the slide in equities weighed on the sector, along with investor profit-taking that could be prolonged into early next week as both the month and the quarter come to an end, with

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According to the Financial Times on Thursday, “Poland will remain among the EU’ s top performers because of actions “undertaken by successive governments and the clear commitment to financial discipline”.  That said, rising unemployment and declining credit will hamper consumer demand, whose resilience hitherto has help to allow Poland’s GDP growth to easily outshine the EU average in 2009.  The bigger question is whether Poland can make it to Euro entry–falling tax revenues are accelerated by plummeting credit growth, a spiral which may require public debt to ultimately expand beyond that which Brussels deems kosher.

In the meantime, Standard Chartered, a bank, recommends buying the zloty and selling the euro.  Poland’s currency has fallen 28% since last July’s highs–the world’s worst performing emerging market currency–despite being the only country in the region to report expansion in that time.  Complicating such a trade, however, would be possible contagion from

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Debt markets in the Gulf received a further boost when it was announced that Dolphin Energy, whose majority shareholder is the Abu Dhabi-owned Mubadala Development Co., raised $2.59 billion from 23 banks, including the United Arab Emirates National Bank of Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Saudi Arabias Samba Financial Group, and global banks BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered.

The 10-year loans have a margin of 275 basis points over the London interbank offered rate (Libor) for the first three years, 300 basis points up to year six, and 350 basis points for the rest of the term.  Dolphin Energy is purportedly also seeking an Islamic loan deal that it hopes to finalize by the end of April - and has issued a request for proposals to prequalified banks to underwrite a bond of between $500 million and $1 billion in mid-April.  Dolphin may then alter the amount

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U.K.-based Standard Chartered Bank has opened its first village bank, Inner Mongolia Helingeer Standard Chartered Village Bank, making it the first foreign bank to enter China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. This is also the first rural bank that Standard Chartered has opened anywhere in the world. At present, its financial strategy in China's rural areas is [...]

img src=”http://photos1.blogger.com/img/43/5843/160/thinking.jpg”br /br /emfont color=”#0000FF”(P.S: Sorry for any disturbances the advertisements above may have caused you)/font/embr /I do not often like to comment on political issues too vehemently but sometimes I feel so strongly about certain subjects in which I feel I have a reasonable overall grasp, that I have to blurt it out. Temasek is still a political organisation as of now, no matter their claims about how commercial they are (tell me how commercial you are when the former CDF can go straight from the SAF to Head of Portfolio Strategy of the organisation), and I think it will be difficult to shake off the political links. I mean, how can it possibly do so, unless it wants to deny that the money it is handling does not belong to the citizens and the state of Singapore???br /br /So, Madam Ho Ching’s resignation has signalled a recognition of …