Important news from Florence

* Aldar shares down 4 pct to record low (Adds analyst comment, share price, background)By Stanley Carvalho and Rachna UppalABU DHABI, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Abu Dhabi group Aldar Properties will likely appoint state fund Mubadala’s Greg Fewer as chief financial officer, sources familiar with the matter said, in a further sign of the government taking up the reins at the troubled developer.Fewer, associate director for project and corporate finance at Mubadala, will replace Shafqat Malik who resigned on Oct. 6., three sources told Reuters on Tuesday.”A formal approval will be made by the board on Thursday,” a fourth source said. Aldar was due to hold a board meeting on Oct. 20 to appoint a new CFO.Aldar declined to comment. Mubadala was not available for comment.”If Fewer is confirmed … it would give Mubadala greater control over Aldar, over and above the absolute share ownership. And it, arguably, confirms or even enhances the probability of additional external support should Aldar require it in the future,” said Chavan Bhogaita, head of markets strategy unit at National Bank of Abu Dhabi.Aldar shares were down 2.0 percent to 0.98 dirham at 1035 GMT, just above a record low at 0.96 dirham seen earlier. The stock is down 56 percent this year, and more than 90 percent below a 2008 peak.”In the UAE markets, many private companies like Aldar are highly influenced by the government. This is worrying foreign investors. The interest of minority shareholders are not protected and equity holders feel their shares are being diluted,” a real estate analyst said, speaking on condition of anonymity.An Aldar Funding 5.767 percent convertible bond due Nov. 10 , with $959 million outstanding, was bid at 98.907.REAL ESTATE PAINAbu Dhabi stepped in with $5.2 billion of support for its struggling flagship developer in January with a plan including the sale of its key assets such as the Ferrari World theme park, located on Yas Island.As part of the rescue, Aldar was to place the planned issue of convertible bonds worth 2.8 billion dirhams (762 million) with Mubadala.Four out of Aldar’s seven board members are from Mubadala which owns a 28 percent stake, according to its first-half financial statements.Real estate companies across the Gulf Arab region have been hit hard by the global financial crisis and the pain is set to continue for Dubai and Abu Dhabi developers, as oversupply and a slump in demand weigh on prices.Aldar has returned to profit in 2011 after reporting record losses last year, taking writedowns of 11.3 billion dirhams in 2010, 10.8 billion of which was booked in the final quarter.Analysts polled by Reuters on average expect third-quarter profit of 140 million dirhams.

It made a loss of 16.6 million pounds in 2009.The group posted full-year revenue of 63.2 million pounds, up from 11.3 million in 2009, driven by a leap in advertising and subscriber rates.It said recently it had more than 2 million paying subscribers and was set for further expansion after launching earlier this year in the United States.”The company and the group have successfully renegotiated and renewed licensing agreements with all major European record label groups,” it said in the results, filed at Companies House in London.”The group has ambitious growth plans and has signed license agreements with a number of U.S. record label groups for the U.S. market.”The music industry and analysts have been watching Spotify closely to see how it performs in the digital music sector, particularly in competition with Apple Inc’s dominant iTunes, and whether it can give the industry more power in setting prices.”We see the development of Spotify as positive for the music industry as it could lead to genuine platform competition for iTunes, thereby increasing the value of the underlying content,” UBS analyst Polo Tang said in a note to clients.($1 = 0.638 British Pounds)

The joke always used to be that the ‘U’ in the African Union’s predecessor, the OAU, stood for useless. After the hopeless failure of African diplomatic efforts to bring a peaceful end to Libya’s rebellion against Muammar Gaddafi, and even more since the bloc held back on recognising the new Libyan rulers, critics suggest the African Union could be making itself irrelevant. But is the African Union wrong to treat the anti-Gaddafi forces with more caution than their Western allies and the Arab world has done even if the former rebels seem to have widespread support for ending an autocrat’s rule? There are plenty of reasons why the African Union would be reluctant to recognise the rebels who overthrew a man who did as much as anyone to found the African Union in place of the ineffectual club called the Organisation of African Unity. Many individuals African rulers benefited from Gaddafi’s largesse – particularly when they were in trouble – allowing them to get over any queasiness at his comic theatre at African summits and his coronation as Africa’s “King of Kings” as well as to humour his quest for a “United States of Africa”. For South Africa’s ruling ANC, Gaddafi was a friend during the struggle against apartheid. For Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, who expelled the Libyan ambassador after he switched sides this week, help has been much more recent. Some autocrats may also fear that the example set by the overthrow of Gaddafi could inspire opponents in their own countries. For the African Union – and South Africa in particular – there was the embarrassment of seeing peace efforts (no matter how well intended) dismissed internationally while the rebels fought towards Tripoli under the NATO air cover which made their war possible. It’s not that there is a fully united front in Africa. Increasingly assertive giant Nigeria, striving to set itself out as a champion of democracy, was quick to recognise Libya’s new rulers. West Africans have not forgotten the hundreds of thousands who perished in Gaddafi-fuelled wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere either. But might there be sound reasons less tied to history and emotional links for African countries to be wary of leaping to recognise the rebels? First may be the treatment of black Libyans and Africans from south of the Sahara, reported by Amnesty International this week, but evident since the start of the rebellion. While there certainly seems to be truth that some African mercenaries fought for Gaddafi, there have been plenty of reports of black Africans being killed or tortured when it wasn’t really clear whether they were fighters or just part of the army of hundreds of thousands of Africans who made their way to Libya to do hard jobs that Libyans didn’t want. For some, as explained in this Reuters report on Algeria, there is the suspicion of Islamist links among the anti-Gaddafi forces. The African Union’s Democracy Charter is also clear that those who takes power by force should be sanctioned not welcomed (although it could be interpreted that this applies to democratically elected governments, which Gaddafi’s certainly wasn’t). Hypocritical it may be for those African leaders who first took power by force to now insist that others should not do so, but the African Union has condemned coups and rebellions elsewhere and suspended countries until they held elections. That has undoubtedly helped make clear that taking power by force should not be the workaday means of changing government that it once was in Africa. Should the African Union treat the Libyans differently to forces that took power elsewhere even if they appear to have popular support and promise democracy? The African Union will probably recognise Libya’s new leadership in the end, if only because it would be impractical to do otherwise, but is the caution justified? Is it just holding off because of wounded pride over failed peace efforts and ties to old friend Gaddafi?