LONDON: Jardine Strategic Holdings Ltd, the Hong Kong-based holding company within the Jardine Matheson Group, is acquiring a 20 per cent stake in Rothschilds Continuation Holdings AG for $185 million from British insurance company Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance Plc.

Rothschilds Continuation Holdings is the parent company of N M Rothschild & Sons Ltd and a major holding company within commercial and private banking concern Rothschild Group. Based in Zug, Switzerland, it is closely-held. Jardine Strategic will be the only non-Rothschild shareholder in the company.

The Rothschild group has offices in more than 30 countries and is involved in treasury, investment banking, fund management, private banking and trust management services. The group said it will book a $110 million gain from the sale.

Royal & Sun Alliance has also sold its remaining 1.5 per cent holding in Rothschilds Continuation Holdings to an employee share trust of the group. The divestment enables Royal & Sun Alliance to focus on its core insurance business. It has already raised funds in the past two years through a rights issue and debt as well as through disposals.

Jardine Strategic said it is investing in Rothschild for “the long-term” and plans to help the group grow in Asia through its “knowledge and network of relationships” in the region. The transaction has to await regulatory approval.

“Jardine Strategic’s investment in RCH is in line with its policy of taking significant stakes in multinational businesses, and supporting their development,” the company said in a statement filed with the Singapore Stock Exchange, where it is listed.

Jardine Matheson group is an investment company controlled by Scotland’s Keswick family. It had its origins in the 1830s, when founders William Jardine and James Matheson invested their substantial returns from opium trade in China. The company’s legacy is linked to the historic annexation and subsequent control of Hong Kong by Britain.

ONDON: Britain’s biggest electrical goods retailer Dixons Group Plc is expected see major restructuring including a name change. While reporting full year profits that were in line with expectations of analysts, the company also announced that it was being forced to cut costs up to £30 million.

UK consumers know the group also as Curry’s, The Link and PC World. In continental Europe, the company trades as UniEurope, Elkjop and PC City. The group is finding its UK operations getting increasingly tough what with the current slowdown in consumer spending.

Fortunately for the group however, its non-UK operations were contributing consistently growing proportion of sales and profits. Its chain of Dixon stores contributes barely 10 percent to the group’s overall sales. Group sales at £6.98 billion were 8 percent higher than previous year. Same-store sales rose 2 percent. (Overall same-store sales had actually declined 1 percent in the second half.) Turnover from its UK businesses showed a 3 percent growth at £4.82 billion. Pretax profit declined 8 percent to 336.8 million pounds, almost matching analysts’ forecast.

Chief executive John Clare said the group took the decision to cut costs because they feared a prolonged slowdown in consumer spending in the UK. Additionally, they were facing an increasingly challenging environment in their main markets which included Italy, because of which “the outlook for the year ahead is uncertain.” he said. Overall growth rate too is certainly slowing down for the group.

Clare also said the group would assume the name DSG International Plc in order to reflect its increasing international presence. Cost cutting would involve overhauling distribution network and outsourcing IT operations.

The Dixons chief admitted that there would be job losses as a result of the restructuring and cost cutting, but these, he said, would not be significant as “We’re still opening new stores and will be a net employer of people this year.”

The group is currently market leader in the UK, accounting for over £1 in every £5 being spent on purchase of electrical goods in Britain.

NEW YORK: Major credit card issuers are still assessing the extent of damage caused by a security breach at a processing firm announced by MasterCard last Friday. They are still not sure which customer accounts have been intruded into and are waiting for details from MasterCard and Visa on the possible targeted accounts.

The breach, according to the card issuers, affected about 20 million Visa holders, 14 million MasterCard holders and 6 million holders of American Express and other card brands.

MasterCard said it suspects data from roughly 200,000 accounts have been stolen in the incident. Card issuers like Citigroup, J. P. Morgan Chase and MBNA are monitoring their respective accounts.

The security breach had occurred in May at CardSystems Solutions, an Atlanta-based company that processes credit card payments for small and medium-sized merchant firms.

The firm said it does not know how its system was hacked or whether the intrusion took place from inside or outside the company. The breach was detected at its Tucson, Arizona, processing center.

John Perry, CardSystems’ chief executive officer when asked about cause, culprit and how simply said: “We don’t know. This is very early in the investigation.”

CardSystems processes payments for more than 105,000 businesses. It handled more than $15 billion in transactions for MasterCard, Visa, Discover and American Express last year.

The firm admitted it had stored information on thousands of cardholders — their names, account numbers and security codes — violating rules of MasterCard and Visa, for “purposes of research”. The idea was to assess why certain transactions were never authorized or completed.

Perry said account numbers, names and expiration dates were stored in an “exception file.” The file contained accounts with transactions unable to be processed.

However, the file did not contain information used in identity theft, such as Social Security numbers or birth dates, a MasterCard spokesperson said.

Both Visa and MasterCard have started giving lists of their affected accounts.

The U.S. Public Interest Research Group advised credit card holders to wait for notices from their respective banks. The Group’s consumer program director, Edmund Mierzwinski, said, “In the interim, if consumers have the ability to check credit and checking accounts online they should do that and if not, they should open and review their statements very carefully the next couple of months.”

MasterCard clarified that it “does not allow processors that are in violation of our rules to process transactions”. The company said it detected rule violations by CardSystems only when it began investigating this spring.

Visa had carried out a security audit of CardSystems in December 2003 and certified that the firm has been complying with the security regulations. It had not found any breaches until mid-May.

A spokesperson for Visa said, “When we investigated, that’s when we knew they were storing the data, and that’s when they fell out of compliance.”

As per service conditions, Visa could levy a fine up to $500,000 on the firm. Visa has nearly 150 such service providers around the globe, all of which follow the strict security audits. It said it is planning to review the security audits from retailers and other businesses that accept its cards.

Meanwhile, major banks in the U.S. and elsewhere are asking Visa and Mastercard holders who may have used their cards in the United States or online in the past six months to check their statements.

MasterCard International has revealed that a computer security breach at a payment processing company has exposed more than 40 million credit card accounts of all brands to the risk of fraud.

This breach occured at an Arizona company that processes transactions for Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. MasterCard spokeswoman Jessica Antle, said, “We have spotted some fraud … but it’s proportionately very small.” She declined to disclose the amount involved.

She added that a computer hacked had infiltrated a database system run by CardSystems Solutions Inc, in Tucson, Ariz. It is estimated that this firm processes more than $15 billion in payments each year. Almost 20 million Visa and 13.9 million MasterCard accounts were at risk. The remaining accounts affected belonged to American Express or Discover cardholders. The F.B.I is now investigating, Deborah McCauley, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I. field office in Phoenix said that the agency was trying to piece together the scope of the fraud.

MasterCard said that it had found that CardSystems Solutions Inc had violated agreements by retaining the account numbers in its systems. The firm was to have transferred these numbers to the bank handling the merchants’ transactions. John Brady, MasterCard’s head of merchant risk services, said, “When we started to dig into it, working with the bank and working with their systems, we detected it couldn’t be them and basically triangulated at the process and arrived at CardSystems Solutions.” He added that CardSystems was “no longer storing the sensitive data.”

Visa, USA, said that it was aware of this breach but had not spoken about it at the request of the authorities. Discover and American Express had recently learned of the breach and were closely monitoring accounts.

Chris Hoofnagle, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a digital rights group, commented, “The processing companies are hubs for millions of payment records. It is the juiciest target for an individual who wants account numbers. It is a honey pot for identity thieves.” He added that users should monitor their credit card bills more closely and should look to acquire new numbers. MasterCard added that since personal data like Social Security numbers and dates of birth, was not stored on its cards, it was not at risk for identity theft.

New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, who has sponsored a consumer data protection law, has asked Congress to expedite the process and to pass legislation, “Hardly a week goes by without startling new examples of breaches of sensitive personal data reminding us how important it is to pass a comprehensive identity theft prevention bill in Congress quickly,” he said in a statement.

The owner of the itunes.co.uk domain, who is questioning Nominet’s legal authority, has dragged the .UK domain registry to court.

CyberBritain Group chief executive, Benjamin Cohen had refused to hand over the itunes.co.uk domain name to Apple and has said that when he registered the domain in November 2000, he was not aware of Apple’s iTunes trademark application that was submitted just a fortnight earlier. He added that he had wanted to register the site as tunes.co.uk, but since it was already taken up, the registering website suggested iTunes and he took up the same in good faith. Nominet has ordered him to cede the domain name to Apple.

Refusing to do this, Mr. Cohen has questioned the body’s authority and has issued a legal challenge. “I must admit that we were not expecting the decision by Nominet’s appointed expert. Apple chose to launch the UK brand of ‘iTunes’ within the UK with the knowledge that we had owned the name for three years before their USA launch and four years before their launch within the UK. We could have appealed to Nominet directly but with a fee of £3,000+VAT in addition to our legal costs. However, we feel that the procedure that Nominet utilize to settle disputes is unfair and biased towards big business at the expense of legitimate small, British companies. We have decided to refer the decision for Judicial Review in the High Court with a view to overturn the decision and to make recommendations for improvements to the way that domain name disputes are handled within this country,” Mr. Cohen said.

Nominet says that since it is not a public body, it does not fall under the High Court’s jurisdiction, but Mr. Cohen says the under the terms of the 1998 Human Rights Act it is a public body, since the regulation of the internet, which is a public service, affects everyone.

References of interest: www.nominet.org.uk, www.cyberbritain.co.uk and www.apple.com

Online gaming firms PartyGaming and EmpireOnline have both announced that they plan to float substantial IPO’s.

PartyGaming, which owns the PartyPoker website, is planning to announce a £5.8bn IPO. If this plan does materialise, it would be the largest ever float on the London Stock Exchange. Online lawyer Ruth Parasol, her husband, Anurag Dikshit and Vikrant Bhargava, founded PartyGaming in 1997.

This planned IPO will put PartyGaming ahead of Boots, Sainsbury’s and British Airways on market capitalization. It is set to make £1.1bn in cash for the company’s founders. PartyGaming has kept aside £320 million of shares for its staff. The firm said that its 1,100 workers, including those working in the Indian call centers would be entitled to have shares of this launch.

PartyGaming chief executive Richard Segal, said, “PartyGaming is a highly profitable and cash-generative business. Our focus will be to deliver attractive returns for our shareholders through a combination of the growth of the business and through the payment of dividends.”

But analysts say that that around 85 percent of PartyGaming’s revenues come from the US where online gambling is still skirting the fence. Segal however, dismissed these speculations.

Meanwhile, the other online gambling firm, EmpireOnline was non-committal about the exact amount it hoped to raise. Unlike PartyGaming, it is going to sell its shares on the Alternative Investment Market. The site provides marketing services and helps push traffic to online gambling sites. Noam Lanir, an Israeli businessman, is the majority shareholder in the company, while, Leonard Steinberg, founder and non-executive chairman of UK casino operator Stanley Leisure, is the company’s non-executive chairman.

Online gambling has steadily gained popularity over the years, Adrian Scarfe, clinical practice manager at gambling addiction counseling and advice service Gamcare, says, “The internet has its own addictive qualities. Combine that with the thrill of playing cards and large sums of money and you have an extremely complex but dangerous environment. In the last three years we have seen a change. Internet gambling has risen steadily and in my view it will continue to rise.” And due to strict US regulations, London has become the focus of this online gambling boom, “London is one of the key financial centers and also through the passing of the UK Gambling Bill it is a jurisdiction that warmly embraces gaming and online gaming,” Segal pointed out.

Owners of the local classifieds site Gumtree.com seem to have found their anchor in the online auction site, eBay,as reports confirmed that Gumtree.com was bought by eBay today.

Founders of the London-based classifieds site, Gumtree.com, Michael Pennington and Simon Crookall were bankers by profession formerly and created this site after a long struggle, five years ago in March 2000. They had founded this site to assist those people who were considering a shift of location or had recently shifted to London and needed some aid and guidance in looking for accommodation, jobs or acquaintances.

Now that eBay has bought Gumtree.com, the founder duo have reason enough to celebrate, although the financial details of the buyout haven’t been disclosed. This is American firm, eBay’s first foray into the UK classifieds market and by acquiring Gumtree.com, eBay will add yet another feather into its classifieds division cap, Kijiji.

Vice president of European ventures for eBay, Josh Silverman, said, “Gumtree has built a great business over the past five years and it matches the Kijiji model very well.”

Just as eBay is now nothing less than a household name as far as auction sites are concerned, its classifieds division, Kijiji which means ‘village’ in Swahili is also not behind and can boast of operations in over 90 cities across the world.

Meanwhile, Gumtree.com has job sites launched in a number of places in UK like Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Cardiff and Glasgow, Reading, Guildford, Bristol, Brighton and Dublin. Besides, other of its operations include locations like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the Far East. The sites’ London operation is doing considerably well and is able to gather a whopping 1.1 million visits every month. What’s more, the frequency of its visits per month is augmenting by 100% in a period of every six months.

eBay is also known to have purchased another classifieds site, LoQUo.com of Spain, which was founded by Ubaldo Huerta in Barcelona. This classifieds site focuses more on communities, housing, employment opportunities as well as personals.