FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Logistics companies around the world are rushing to invest in specialty cargo facilities in search of wider margins and stable growth in an increasingly uncertain outlook for global trade.

Freight companies can charge higher prices for handling delicate electronic components, vaccines that have to remain chilled or Arabian race horses than for standard cargo.

“Specialty freight always has a higher margin,” said Andreas Baader, managing partner at consultancy Barkawi Management Consultants, which focuses on supply chain and after sales services.

Lufthansa Cargo, the freight arm of German carrier Lufthansa (LHAG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), has invested a double-digit million euro sum in a new “Cargo Cool Centre” in Frankfurt that handles pharmaceuticals and other medical products.

“In the crisis year 2009, cool products declined only marginally,” Joerg Bodenroeder, the director of the Cool Centre, said ahead of its inauguration this month.

The global pharmaceutical drug logistics market is estimated at a little more than 47 billion euros ($61 billion) and is expected to grow at an average rate of 7.6 percent a year through 2015, according to Transport Intelligence.

The market for biotech drugs, which are typically tolerant to a tighter range of temperatures than traditional chemical drugs, is estimated to grow at an annual rate of about 10 percent through 2015.

FRANKFURT, Dec 15 (Reuters) – The air freight arm of Deutsche Lufthansa is reviewing its business in China, the world’s second-biggest economy, where cargo companies are struggling to make a profit, according to Lufthansa Cargo’s chief executive.

“We are leaving all options open,” Karl Ulrich Garnadt said at the Reuters Global Manufacturing and Transportation Summit.

“The market in China accounts for a fifth of our sales. But market share and strategic importance come only after economic viability,” he said.

Lufthansa Cargo operates a joint venture in China, Jade Cargo, of which it holds 25 percent, with 51 percent owned by China’s Shenzhen Airlines, and 24 percent by German development bank DEG. It does not publish details on the volume of freight it carries every year.

Lufthansa group Chief Executive Christoph Franz had said in October that the market in China was becoming more difficult and that the company would review its investment in Jade.

Hong Kong-based competitor Cathay Pacific has said that continued weak demand for air freight in China and Hong Kong pushed its cargo throughput down 17.5 percent in October from a year earlier.

Adding to the weak market, Garnadt said Lufthansa Cargo has known for years that Jade Cargo was undercapitalised and is now in “very constructive” talks with the Bank of China and Shenzhen Airlines to agree a capital increase for Jade.

WIESBADEN, Germany (Reuters) – Germany is making a second bid to ban a far-right political party represented in two state assemblies, after police arrested a former party official for his links to a small neo-Nazi group that murdered nine Turkish and Greek immigrants.

“Our aim is to outlaw the NPD (National Democratic Party),” German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said during a news conference following a meeting with the interior ministers of Germany’s 16 states on Friday.

The German intelligence agency describes the party as racist, anti-Semitic and inspired by the Nazis. Its local election campaigns blame immigrants for crime and unemployment and its supporters are mostly unemployed young men with little education in depressed areas of the east.

It is represented in two state assemblies – the east German states of Saxony and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – but not in the federal parliament. One attempt to ban the NPD failed in 2003 after witnesses were exposed as intelligence agency informants.

German police said last week they are investigating links between a neo-Nazi group that committed the so-called “doner murders” – a name attached by the media because some victims owned Turkish fast-food stands – and the NPD.

Two members of the cell, called the “National Socialist Underground” were found dead in a burnt-out mobile home in November and a third handed herself in to police.

Authorities in Jena in east Germany later arrested Ralf Wohlleben, 35, formerly a senior NPD official in the state of Thuringia. He is suspected of providing the group with weapons and ammunition.

FRANKFURT, Dec 8 (Reuters) – An Italian anarchist group has claimed responsibility for a letter bomb sent to Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank, and may have sent two more packages, investigators said on Thursday.

The suspicious envelope, intercepted on Wednesday evening, has raised fears that a wave of protests against the failures and excesses of bankers could turn more violent, and prompted police across Europe to warn banks to be extra vigilant.

Ackermann, 63, a Swiss who is the first non-German to head Germany’s biggest bank, is one of the few senior managers in the country always surrounded by bodyguards.

A hidden, rolled-up letter written in Italian from the Federazione Anarchica Informale (the Informal Anarchist Group, or FAI) spoke of “three explosions against bankers, banks, fleas and bloodsuckers”, the German investigators said.

“So it must be deduced from this that two more letter bombs may have been sent,” the Criminal Investigations Office for the state of Hesse and Frankfurt prosecutors said in a statement.

Earlier they said initial tests had shown the letter bomb sent to Ackermann was operational.

The FAI previously claimed responsibility for a parcel bomb that injured two people in the offices of the Swiss nuclear lobby group in March, as well as for parcel bombs sent to the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome last year.

FRANKFURT, Dec 8 (Reuters) – A suspicious envelope sent to Deutsche Bank Chief Executive Josef Ackermann was a letter bomb capable of exploding, investigators said on Thursday.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the package, which was intercepted late on Wednesday.

It raised fears that a wave of protest against the failures and excesses of bankers could turn more violent, and prompted police across Europe to warn banks to be extra vigilant.

Ackermann, 63, a Swiss who is the first non-German to head Germany’s biggest bank, is one of the few senior managers in the country always surrounded by bodyguards.

“Initial investigations show that this was an operational letter bomb,” the Criminal Investigations Office for the state of Hesse and Frankfurt prosecutors in a statement, adding that no further information was available.

Frankfurt’s offshoot of the Occupy protest movement, which is critical of banks and has been staging protests in New York, Washington, London and many other cities, said it had nothing to do with the attempted attack.

“We condemn any action that is linked to violence,” said Frank Stegmaier, an activist in the Occupy Frankfurt group, which has been camping outside the European Central Bank towers in the German financial capital since mid-October.

FRANKFURT, Dec 8 (Reuters) – A suspicious envelope mailed to Deutsche Bank head Josef Ackermann, the face of capitalism in Germany, on Wednesday contained an apparent explosive powder that may have been homemade, police said on Thursday.

“What we had here was a powder, which indicates that we’re not dealing with commercial or military explosives,” Alexander Kiessling, a spokesman for Frankfurt police, said. “It could be something homemade, for instance made out of fireworks.”

Ackermann, 63, a Swiss who is the first non-German to head up Germany’s flagship lender, is one of the few senior managers in the country always surrounded by bodyguards. He is due to retire in May next year after over 10 years at the bank’s helm.

The letter incident occurred at a time when anti-capitalist protesters across the world are demonstrating against what they see as the excesses of bankers and financiers.

Security had been stepped up at Deutsche Bank offices around the world, banking sources said.

A banking source and a U.S. law enforcement official said an envelope with explosives in it was sent on Wednesday to Chief Executive Ackermann but it was intercepted before it got to him.

Police in Frankfurt confirmed that a suspicious package was sent to the bank’s headquarters in the city and that they were investigating, but they so far had been unable to confirm that it contained explosives.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – SAP’s $3.4 billion takeover of SuccessFactors will help it keep up with peers in the frenzied race for cloud-computing business, even if the price it paid is very high at first glance, analysts said on Monday.

“We believe SuccessFactors could be a very good strategic fit for SAP in the cloud sector and we prefer the decision to grow externally in this booming area,” DZ Bank analyst Oliver Finger said.

SAP said on Saturday it was buying U.S. web-based services company SuccessFactors for an agreed $40 per share, a 52 percent premium.

The deal helps SAP catch up with rivals in cloud computing, a fast-growing field where data and processes are hosted remotely on the Web. As part of the transaction, SuccessFactors founder and chief executive Lars Dalgaard will join SAP’s executive board and will run its cloud business.

“This marks implicit recognition by SAP that their cloud strategy is not working,” Evolution Securities analyst Roger Phillips said.

Shares of SAP were down 2.4 percent at 43.635 euros by 1420 GMT, while Germany’s blue-chip DAX index was up 0.7 percent.

Analysts had warned that SAP risked losing ground to Oracle in the field of cloud-computing. However, there are not many assets in the business available for it to buy.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Commerzbank AG (CBKG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) moved to fend off government intervention on Monday, saying it would buy back 600 million euros ($806 million) in cut-price debt in a bid to shore up its capital.

The partly state-owned bank, which received an 18.2 billion euros bailout in the wake of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, is believed to need some 5 billion euros by mid-2012 to meet new capital rules, sources have told Reuters.

Commerzbank’s announcement came as Germany, which holds 25 percent of it, moved to reinstate a state rescue fund for banks, sources in the government and the ruling coalition said on Monday.

Analysts were skeptical that the bank’s action would be enough to plug the hole in its funding, and its shares dropped 6.6 percent to 1.4 euros by 1210 GMT.

“We expect further capital measures to be announced,” DZ Bank analyst Matthias Duerr said in a note on Monday.

The Frankfurt-based lender said it would buy back hybrid bonds — a mixture of debt and equity — to generate between 0.2 and 0.3 percent of Core Tier 1 capital.

The bank’s core tier one capital ratio was 9.4 percent at the end of the third quarter, but its definition differs from that of the European Banking Authority, which has demanded banks meets a core tier one ratio of 9 percent by mid-2012 in a bid to shock-proof them against a worsening of the financial crisis.

FRANKFURT, Dec 5 (Reuters) – Shares of SAP (SAPG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) fell on Monday after the German software group announced a $3.4 billion takeover of U.S. web-based services company SuccessFactors (SFSF.N: Quote, Profile, Research) over the weekend that some analysts say looks expensive.

SAP shares were down 2.1 percent at 43.78 euros by 1028 GMT, while Germany’s blue-chip DAX index .GDAXI was up 1 percent.

SAP said on Saturday it was buying SuccessFactors for an agreed $40 per share, a 52 percent premium. [ID:nL5E7N30E7]

“The acquisition is way too expensive,” analyst Heino Ruland of Ruland Research said. “Even if you take into account 2013 yields, the price-to-profit ratio is 165.”

The price for SuccessFactors represents about eight times forecast 2012 revenues, analysts said, compared with the multiple of about 5.5 that rival Oracle (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) paid for cloud computing firm RightNow Technologies (RNOW.O: Quote, Profile, Research) in October.

Ruland said the race for cloud-computing technology was heating up to the point where it seemed market players were spending irrationally just to stay in the game, resembling aspects of the dotcom bubble more than a decade ago.

The deal helps SAP catch up in cloud computing, a fast-growing field where data and processes are hosted remotely on the Web. Analysts have warned that the German company risked losing ground to Oracle.

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel believes her finance minister’s proposal of national funds in Europe for sovereign debt that is over 60 percent of gross domestic product could help restore confidence in the euro, her spokesman said on Friday.

“The chancellor welcomes the proposal of introducing national redemption funds as very interesting,” Steffen Seibert told a news conference.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Thursday he would like European countries to set up such funds to help build market confidence in the euro, and would make such a proposal at the European Union summit on December 9.

Seibert said such funds would make what progress countries are making on reducing their debt more transparent

“This is without a doubt a measure that could be appropriate for rebuilding investors’ confidence in markets,” Seibert said.

But Austria’s finance minister sounded a cautious note on Friday, warning that the proposal could be met with resistance from national parliaments.

“I do not know the details of the model yet but any proposal that results in gathering billions from taxpayers again will run into problems in national parliaments,” Austria’s Maria Fekter said at a conference in Hamburg.