DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 26 (Reuters) – Year-end bonuses at Barclays Plc’s (BARC.L: Quote, Profile, Research) investment bank are expected to be down about 30 percent this year, on average, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday, making the UK bank the latest to cut back banker pay.

The cash portion of employee bonuses is expected to be smaller and may be capped, while the deferred stock component would be higher, the source said.

Barclays declined to comment.

The decline would be in line with moves at other major banks. Compensation consultants estimate that banker bonuses for 2011 fell about 30 percent, on average, with bonuses falling across Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Some banks are also taking unusual steps in structuring compensation for employees. Bank of America Corp (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research), for instance, may give employees shares instead of cash as part of bonuses.

Banker pay has also come under intense scrutiny since the financial crisis of 2008, with increased regulatory pressure to curb pay.

Banks, looking to pare costs amid lackluster business and heightened regulation that has hit profitability, have also announced plans to shed tens of thousands of jobs since mid-2011.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 26 (Reuters) – Year-end bonuses at Barclays Plc’s (BARC.L: Quote, Profile, Research) investment bank are expected to be down about 30 percent this year, on average, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday, making the UK bank the latest to cut back banker pay.

The cash portion of employee bonuses is expected to be smaller and may be capped, while the deferred stock component would be higher, the source said.

Barclays declined to comment.

The decline would be in line with moves at other major banks. Compensation consultants estimate that banker bonuses for 2011 fell about 30 percent, on average, with bonuses falling across Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

Some banks are also taking unusual steps in structuring compensation for employees. Bank of America Corp (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research), for instance, may give employees shares instead of cash as part of bonuses.

Banker pay has also come under intense scrutiny since the financial crisis of 2008, with increased regulatory pressure to curb pay.

Banks, looking to pare costs amid lackluster business and heightened regulation that has hit profitability, have also announced plans to shed tens of thousands of jobs since mid-2011.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 26 (Reuters) – American International Group Inc (AIG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Chairman Steve Miller said on Thursday the bailed-out insurance company may eventually want to buy a life insurer outside the United States, including possibly a larger stake in the spun-off Asian unit AIA Group Ltd (1299.HK: Quote, Profile, Research), as confidence in its turnaround grows.

Miller said in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that any decision was probably two to three years down the road, but as the company thought about possible alternatives, rebuilding a global life insurance business was logical.

Miller’s comments are a remarkable reversal for AIG, which was bailed out by the U.S. government at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and is still majority owned by taxpayers. The thinking at AIG since the crisis has been largely focused on divesting assets and paying back the government.

While that continues to be the focus, Miller said the board has been thinking about a longer-term strategy as well.

“If you look at the company, you are a global (property and casualty) company and a domestic life company, which begs the question: What about the fourth box on the chart? Do you want to be global in life or you want to not be in life? Those are all valid strategic questions. And one way or the other we will probably rebuild an international presence in life,” Miller said.

“It’s an obvious strategic question. It is very premature to be speculating about it right now.”

The question of what to do with AIA is an important one because of the outsized impact it has on AIG’s financial results every quarter and because AIA could give the company the international profile it once had.

DAVOS (Reuters) – The World Economic Forum’s signature closed-session on banking saw financiers increasingly hopeful that the euro zone’s debt crisis can be resolved and confident of a deal to ensure Greece’s now inevitable debt default will be orderly.

The private meeting of financial services CEOs from major players including JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Barclays (BARC.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and UBS (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), acknowledged that progress had been made, participants said on Thursday.

Most pointed to the European Central Bank’s launching last month of half a trillion euros in cheap 3-year loans as a possible turning point after almost three years of market chaos that has threatened some of the sector’s biggest players.

“2011 was a year of great fear around (sovereign debt risk). Going into 2012 we feel somewhat more comfortable because progress has been made,” Barclays’ chief executive Bob Diamond told Reuters on the sidelines of the closed-door meeting.

He said the overall mood was cautious given the growth challenges the euro zone was still facing.

But bankers praised the progress made in pushing towards a euro zone fiscal union and on solving the European banks’ funding and liquidity problems through cheap central bank money.

“The ECB (injection of 3-year loans) was a significant thing which took the major risk off the table, in the bank liquidity problem.,” JP Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said earlier in the day. He said he saw “zero” risks to the solvency of banks from the Greek crisis, even if they trigger credit default swaps which would be the most likely to cause ripple effects across global markets.

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – American International Group (AIG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Chairman Steve Miller said on Thursday the bailed-out insurance giant may eventually want to buy a life insurer outside the United States, including possibly a larger stake in the spun-off subsidiary AIA Group (1299.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), as confidence in its turnaround grows.

Miller, in an interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said any decision was probably two to three years down the road, but as the company thought about its possible alternatives in the future, rebuilding a global life insurance business was a logical issue to consider.

Miller’s comments are a remarkable reversal for AIG, which was bailed out by the U.S. government at the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and is still majority owned by taxpayers. The thinking at AIG since the crisis had largely been focused on divesting assets and paying back the government.

While that continues to be the singular focus of the company, Miller said the board has been thinking of longer-term strategy as well.

“If you look at the company, you are a global (property and casualty) company and a domestic life company, which begs the question, ‘What about the fourth box on the chart?’ Do you want to be global in life or you want to not be in life? Those are all valid strategic questions. And one way or the other we will probably rebuild an international presence in life,” Miller said.

“It’s an obvious strategic question. It is very premature to be speculating about it right now.”

The question of what to do with AIA is an important one for AIG because of the outsized impact it has on the company’s financial results every quarter, and because AIA could give the company back the international profile it once had.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 25 (Reuters) – Travellers hoping to glimpse the golden pagoda of Rangoon or hear the “tinkly temple-bells” of Kipling’s Road to Mandalay may soon be able to book into a Westin or a Marriott, thanks to Myanmar’s re-emergence from political isolation.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts – which runs chains such as Westin, Sheraton and W – and Marriott International both said during the World Economic Forum in Davos they wanted to start running hotels in Myanmar.

The former Burma, one of the most isolated countries in Asia, is being welcomed back into the international fold after years of sanctions, thanks to democratic reforms including the release of political prisoners by President Thein Sein.

“Marriott would love to be there if the conditions are right,” said Arne Sorenson, president and CEO-elect of Marriott International. “Burma has captured people’s imagination for decades.”

Long ruled by an authoritarian military dictatorship that was suspicious of outsiders, Myanmar potentially has a huge amount to offer travellers seeking an exotic destination, with coasts, rainforests and cultural sites unblemished by the rapid development elsewhere in southeast Asia.

English-speaking schoolchildren grew up with Rudyard Kipling’s wistful poem of “mist on the rice-fields”, “the old pagoda looking lazy at the sea”, and “a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land”.

The only hospitality chains that operate hotels in Myanmar now are Asian-based companies such as Shangri-la Hotels & Resorts, which runs the Traders Hotel in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon, formerly Rangoon.

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 25 (Reuters) – International firms are spending more time at the highest levels discussing how to hedge currency risk, particularly euro-denominated earnings and transactions, in readiness for a worst case scenario of a euro zone breakup.

Companies are scrutinising the inbuilt protections in their hedge contracts and robustness of the settlement process if the euro were to collapse, bankers and executives said in interviews leading up to and during the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“Any CFO or any CEO of a company today, much like in the late 70s, is spending more time thinking about alternate outcomes,” said Vasant Prabhu, chief financial officer of U.S. hotel operator Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.

“And currencies clearly are an element of that right now.”

The implied volatility on 1-year euro/dollar contracts , a guide to future price direction in the spot currency market, has come down from the highs of October/November. But companies remain worried about future swings and the impact on earnings and acquisitions.

Firms are increasingly turning to tools such as currency options — which give them the right but not the obligation to buy or sell a currency at a particular exchange rate – to protect against extreme volatility. They are also trying to maximize ways of naturally hedging their exposure by trying to match assets and liabilities in a particular currency.

“There are more questions that are raised now — questions that were never raised before are now coming to the surface,” said Marc Zenner, co-head of Corporate Finance Advisory at JPMorgan Investment Banking, speaking in New York.

Jan 18 (Reuters) – BankUnited Inc’s private equity owners abruptly pulled the lender off the market on Wednesday after a brief sale process drew offers below expectations, and will instead focus on expanding in Florida and New York.

The bank — which has Wilbur Ross’s WL Ross & Co, Blackstone Group LP and Carlyle Group among its owners – wanted an offer in the high $30-per-share range, a source familiar with the situation said. It has a market value of about $2.5 billion.

The bank’s shares closed on Wednesday at $25.95 on the New York Stock Exchange, and fell 11 percent in aftermarket trading.

BB&T Corp and Toronto-Dominion Bank put in initial bids, sources said. Goldman Sachs Group Inc was advising BankUnited.

“The board wanted to see what the company was worth. It had in mind a very, very generous price,” the source said. “The board felt so optimistic because the prospects for next year are great and earnings for the quarter are great, so it emboldened them to think about a very high price.”

BankUnited and BB&T declined to comment on the details of bids. TD was not immediately available for comment.

BankUnited said it plans to report fourth-quarter results on Jan. 25, where it plans to report growth in deposits as well as loans.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – BankUnited Inc’s (BKU.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) private equity owners have put the Florida bank up for sale and have hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to run the process, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

BankUnited was approached by more than one strategic bidder, prompting the review, and a decision on whether a sale takes place could come in the next two weeks, one of the sources said.

The private equity owners of BankUnited, which has a market value of about $2.3 billion, include Wilbur Ross’s WL Ross & Co, Blackstone Group LP (BX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Carlyle Group CYL.UL.

BankUnited has already proven to be a blockbuster deal for the private equity firms. When the company went public in January 2011, the private equity investors saw the value of their initial investment of $900 million nearly triple at the IPO price of $27 per share.

A second source familiar with the situation said some of the private equity owners were only too happy to consider a sale, given the extent of scrutiny from U.S. bank regulators and the uncertainty about whether the tax cuts instituted under the Bush administration 10 years ago would be extended beyond 2012.

At BankUnited, regulatory scrutiny translated to the U.S. Federal Reserve asking for an unprecedented amount of disclosure, such as asking for personal financial statements from every partner at all the private equity firms that had invested and not just the executives involved in the deal, one of the sources said.

Both sources, however, warned that there were no guarantees that a deal would be reached.

NEW YORK/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Deutsche Boerse (DB1Gne.DE: Quote, Profile, Research) and NYSE Euronext (NYX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) have launched a lobbying effort in Europe to save their $9 billion (5.8 billion pounds) merger, as European antitrust regulators made it clear they would recommend the deal be blocked, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.

European Commission antitrust chief Joaquin Almunia and the case team plan to make the recommendation to the so-called college of 27 commissioners, who are expected to meet early next month to decide on the fate of the deal, the source said.

The antitrust staff’s move, which NYSE and Deutsche Boerse had been expecting since at least late last month, places the deal to create the world’s largest exchange operator on the brink of collapse.

The takeover of NYSE Euronext, announced in February last year, capped a wave of bourse merger plans globally. Most other proposed transactions in the global exchanges industry, including bids by the LES (LSE.L: Quote, Profile, Research), Singapore Exchange Ltd (SGXL.SI: Quote, Profile, Research) and Nasdaq OMX Group (NDAQ.O: Quote, Profile, Research), have since failed.

NYSE and Deutsche Boerse plan to meet with the commissioners as well as senior government officials in various European countries in the coming days to make their case and persuade the commissioners to overturn the staff’s recommendation, the source said.

Deutsche Boerse Chief Executive Reto Francioni and his NYSE Euronext counterpart, Duncan Niederauer, also plan to go to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, and use the meeting of influential business leaders and politicians on January 25-29 to press their case, a second source familiar with the matter said.

The exchange operators plan to raise issue with how the European antitrust case team defined the derivatives market in coming to its decision, the first source said.