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Nokia, the Finnish telecommunications company, and Philips Electronics, the US lighting manufacturer, have both announced plans for share buybacks. Nokia said it planned to spend ?5 billion ($6.5 billion) on share repurchases from April 7 onwards. It also said it planned to cancel 176 million of the 230 million shares it had acquired before the annual shareholders' meeting on April 7.

S&K Famous Brands, a retailer of menswear with stores in 27 states in the US, has selected Trintech's DataFlow Transaction Network to collect, format and deliver daily banking data, and ReconNET to automate the verification and reconciliation of its cash and checks with its banks. S&K Famous Brands expects to further improve operational control and reduce exposure to risk, while decreasing costs, improving productivity and maximizing the use of available funds.

Corporate sponsors of large traditional pension plans contributed more than $40 billion to those plans in 2003 according to a survey conducted by the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets (CIEBA), an affiliate of the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP). The $44 billion in 2003 contributions was more than double the contributions made in 2002 ($21 billion) and four times the average contribution for the previous four years.

The Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT)and the Association Française des Trésoriers d'Entreprises (?AFTE?) have submitted a joint response to the Committee of European Securities Regulators' (CESR) consultation paper over itstechnical advice to the European Commission on possible measures concerning credit rating agencies (?CRAs?) issued in November 2004. CESR was asked by the Commission to look at a possible registration system for CRAs in connection with barriers to entry to the ratings industry and secondly to consider codes of conduct. From this analysis it was asked to recommend any strategic policy measures to deal with the issues raised.

Procter & Gamble made an announcement today, simultaneously in Cincinnati and Boston, that it has signed a deal to acquire Massachusetts-based Gillette for $57 billion, making it the largest deal in P&G's history.

A report by rating agency Standard & Poor's has shed light on the continued improvement of corporate credit quality in the US.

The level of technology acquisitions is at an all time high, according to the latest findings from Regent Associates' 'European Technology Acquisition Review' report.

After pressure from a number of top multinationals around the regulations for listing and de-listing in the US, William Donaldson, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has said he would like to see the SEC consider providing relief for foreign private issuers. In a speech given Jan. 25 2005 at the London School of Economics and Political Science in London, UK, Donaldson made three recommendations. The three primary recommendations he made are for SEC to:

Simmons & Simmons, the international law firm, has appointed David McLaughlin as the firm's new finance director. McLaughlin will join the firm on 1 May 2005 from Linklaters, where he is currently the associate director of Group Finance.

Dexia Fund Services announced today that it has chosen SunGard's Reech FastVal to help it provide independent valuation of its clients' credit default swaps, equity swaps, convertible bonds, inflation products, and interest rate vanilla and exotic derivatives.

BNP Paribas has appointed Nicholas Groen, 44, to its Equity Capital Markets (ECM) team where he will be responsible for ECM origination and execution in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Groen will report to Thierry Olive, head of ECM. Prior to BNP Paribas Groen spent 10 years in the Capital Markets team at Lazards where he was an executive director responsible for capital markets origination and execution, focussing on Germany and Central Europe. During this time Nick advised on several landmark transactions such as the E6 billion IPO of Infineon, Europe's largest retail offering.

Global credit quality showed significant improvement during the final quarter of 2004 as credit rating upgrades outnumbered downgrades by nearly two to one, Moody's Investors Service says in its latest quarterly update on rating actions, reviews and outlooks. In all, there were roughly 1.9 upgrades for every downgrade globally during the fourth quarter, an increase from roughly 1.4 upgrades per downgrade in the previous quarter, Moody's says.