Wednesday Papers: Kerviel given jail and fine in SocGen trial - other news

Financial Times

* Jérôme Kerviel, the rogue trader, was sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay €4.9 billion in damages to Société Général for taking risks that could have led to the collapse of his former employer; an additional two years prison sentence was suspended.

* Governments are risking a currency war if they try to use exchange rates to solve domestic problems, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, has warned.

* The Bank of Japan on Tuesday set a course towards quantitative easing with a conditional pledge to hold interest rates at virtually zero until deflation is defeated and a plan to push down longer-term interest rates by buying up to Y5,000 billion ($60 billion) in financial assets.

* The US Treasury forecast that the core of the financial rescue would cost $29bn, a fraction of initial estimates.

* Senior Democratic lawmakers are calling for federal authorities to investigate tens of thousands of home foreclosures in the US following reports that leading lenders failed to follow proper procedures.

* The Hong Kong stock exchange is pushing to allow companies to launch initial public offerings denominated in the Chinese currency by next year.

* A disgraced hedge fund manager, Paul Greenwood, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges last year, will sell his £1.2 million collection of Steiff teddy bears at Christies International on October 13.

* Mongolian Mining Corp is set to raise at least $650 million after pricing its shares on Tuesday in Hong Kong in the middle of a target range set by advisers JPMorgan and Citi.

* This year’s Nobel laureates will receive the lowest prize money in real terms for a decade after the annual pay-out was frozen for the eighth successive year.

*  Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts has donated $100m to Columbia University.

* Pandora, the Danish jewellery maker, on Tuesday completed one of Europe’s biggest initial public offerings this year by selling DKr9.96 billion ($1.84 billion) of shares in a Copenhagen listing.