LONDON/SYDNEY (Reuters) – Investors in mining group BHP Billiton have on average put a $155 per-share maximum on BHP’s bid for fertilizer producer Potash Corporation, according to a Reuters poll.

A sample of 26 BHP Billiton shareholders across Britain, continental Europe, Australia, Asia and South Africa on average said the acquisition would start be “prohibitively expensive” should it cross that threshold.

LONDON (Reuters) – Worries over opacity and liquidity could temper small-time savers’ enthusiasm for Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), set to be boosted by a UK regulatory revamp of fees on products sold to private investors.

Retail investors are flocking to ETFs, which typically track baskets of shares, bonds or commodities and are traded like stocks. Assets under management of ETFs traded on European exchanges rose 43 percent to 183 billion euros in June, according to data from Thomson Reuters funds research group Lipper.

LONDON (Reuters) – Worries over opacity and liquidity could temper small-time savers’ enthusiasm for Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), set to be boosted by a UK regulatory revamp of fees on products sold to private investors.

Retail investors are flocking to ETFs, which typically track baskets of shares, bonds or commodities and are traded like stocks. Assets under management of ETFs traded on European exchanges rose 43 percent to 183 billion euros ($230.8 billion) in June, according to data from Thomson Reuters funds research group Lipper.

LONDON, Aug 25 (Reuters) – Britain’s Pension Protection Fund
(PPF), which pays corporate pensions when companies go bust,
plans to create a funding buffer to help reassure members it can
cope with the threat posed by longer life expectancies.

The PPF said on Wednesday it would build its solvency ratio
– how much of future liabilities are met by current funding
levels — to 110 percent over the next 20 years, from 88 percent
in March 2009.

LONDON (Reuters) – Standard Life’s (SL.L: Quote, Profile, Research) fund arm is betting investment grade debt issued by financials will deliver returns while the sector’s equities remain vulnerable to short- and medium-term shocks.

Guy Stern, head of multi asset management at Standard Life Investments and manager of the Global Absolute Return Strategies Fund, told Reuters the risk attached to debt issued by banks has tended to ignore the lengths to which they would go to protect their rating.

LONDON, Aug 18 (Reuters) – Anglo-Australian fund manager
Henderson Group (HGGH.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said it was open to fresh acquisition
opportunities, when announcing outflows accelerated in the
second quarter on volatile markets and fragile confidence.

Henderson shares were down 4.8 percent at 130.3 pence at
0945 GMT on Wednesday, while the FTSE 250 was down 0.1 percent.

LONDON, Aug 16 (Reuters) – A small British manufacturer has
become the first company in Europe to raise funds through sukuk,
starting off an industry which has struggled to find traction in
the wake of debt worries in Islamic finance centre Dubai.

International Innovative Technologies, a maker of industrial
milling machines in northeast England, has raised $10 million
through a private-equity-style sukuk to help develop new
products, its legal adviser, Norton Rose, told Reuters.