The secondary bond market has remained dysfunctional since its inception in 2005, depriving the capital market of the gains and benefits expected from it.
   Since its inception at the Dhaka bourse on January 1, 2005, only a treasury bond lot was transacted on the secondary market.
   IBBL Mudaraba Perpetual Bond, the only one corporate bond issued by Islamic Bank Bangladesh Bank Limited, however, showed better performance, DSE sources said.
   ‘No capital market can reach maturity without a strong bond market,’ said recently-retired chief executive officer of the DSE Salahuddin Ahmed Khan.
   The capital market of Bangladesh is only equity based whereas no capital market becomes mature without a strong bond market, he said.
   He said, ‘Once the government bond market will become vibrant, only then the private sector bond market will also grow.’
   ‘Primary dealers of treasury bonds show unwillingness to offer government bonds for sales in the secondary market, rather they hold bonds as reserve requirements,’ he said adding that the PDs should offer bonds for sales to make the secondary bond market vibrant.
   Syed Abu Nasir Bukhtear Ahmed, chief executive officer of Agrani Bank, one of the primary dealers, however denied the allegation. ‘The allegation is baseless,’ he said adding, ‘We do not find investors who want to buy treasury bonds at the secondary market.’ ‘A number of other issues are impeding the development of the secondary bond market,’ he added.
   The Bangladesh Bank earlier selected eight banks and a non-banking financial institution as PDs to handle the government-approved securities on the secondary bond market and issued a guideline for them.
   The nine primary dealers entitled to deal in treasury bonds are the state-owned lenders Sonali, Janata and Agrani banks, private sector banks Prime, Uttara, Jamuna, Southeast and National Credit and Commerce, and lease financier International Leasing and Financial Services.
   Market sources said unattractive yields on bonds, tax on interest incomes from treasury bonds and high per-unit value of treasury bonds made the bond market unattractive to investors. The value of per-unit of the treasury bonds is Tk 1 lakh.
   General investors also do not have much confidence in the private sector as few corporate debentures are in default without any legal on moral recourse to the investors, they said.
   Indicating the performance of IBBL’s bond, Salahuddin said, ‘The market requires more private sector bonds from banks and non-bank financial institutions to make the secondary bond market active.’
   Currently, government bonds of five-year, 10-year, 15-year, and 20-year maturities are listed with the stock market.
   Started with treasury bonds worth Tk 1,010 crore, currently treasury bonds worth Tk 24,340 crore are listed with the DSE, an official of the bourse said. There are also a corporate bond worth around Tk 276 crore and debentures worth Tk 57.6 crore, he said.

A US utility company and a real estate developer are aiming to bring the first solar-powered city to the Sunshine State of Florida by 2010.
   A spokesman for the project said it will be the first city to use only solar power during the day, producing more than it needs so becoming a net exporter of solar power too.
   In addition to having its electricity generated from solar energy, the entire city is expected to have wireless Internet access and electric-car chargers.
   FPL Group Inc’s utility Florida Power & Light is working with the realty group Kitson & Partners to construct what the utility says will be the world’s largest photovoltaic solar plant in a planned, environmentally friendly city near Fort Myers in southwestern Florida.
   Called Babcock Ranch, the city will aim to build 19,500 houses and about 6 million square feet of retail, light industrial, and office space when it is completed, the developers said.
   The entire project is expected to cost $2 billion.
   Syd Kitson, chief executive of Kitson & Partners, said Babcock, which will help create 20,000 jobs, can serve as a model for other communities throughout the nation.
   ‘Babcock Ranch will be a living laboratory for companies, workers and families ready to reap the rewards of innovation,’ Kitson said at a press conference introducing the project.
   Construction of the city center is scheduled to begin in June 2010, with the first residential and commercial buildings targeted for late 2010.
   With the United States reeling from recession and falling housing prices, US President Barack Obama has pledged to create millions of jobs by moving the country toward a green-energy economy.
   Florida, in particular, has suffered from the housing bust. The state is now staggering under high mortgage foreclosure rates, dropping home prices and slowing population growth.
   Obama wants 10 percent of US electricity generated by renewable sources such as wind and solar power by 2012 and 25 percent by 2025. The stimulus package Obama signed into law earlier this year included billions of dollars for clean energy investments.
   The utility and realty developers said they were not planning on using stimulus money for the projects at this point.
   Groundbreaking for the $350 million to $400 million plant will begin late this year subject to state regulatory approvals, Eric Silagy, chief development officer for Florida Power & Light, said at the conference.
   Silagy said the state government of Florida has been extremely supportive of renewable energy and he was optimistic about winning approval for this new plant.
   ‘We have three projects that are under construction and I think that’s evidence that they are very committed to this,’ Silagy said. ‘With that continued commitment we’ll be able to move forward with project very quickly.’
   Florida Power and Light said the construction of its plant will not be dictated by the status of the planned city.

Cattle grazing have changed the lot of many poor people in Kurigram, a poverty stricken district of the country.
   A good number of people in the remote char areas of the district have improved their livelihood by rearing and grazing domestic animals, particularly cows, in the sandy char land of the Dudkumer and Brahmaputra river basin.
   The islanders, who had nothing to fight poverty and used to live mainly on relief goods during lean period, are now dreaming of better life.
   They are now grazing cows on the green grass paddocks and getting good financial benefit out of it and sending their kids, who earlier had to do something to earn some living, to the school. Many of the char families now have more than 20 cows and other animals.
   Abdul Mazid of village Nayarchar under Kaliganj of Nageswari upazila said he had 20 cows and got 40 litres of milk a day. He sells per litter of milk at Tk 30 and gets a total of Tk 1,200 daily.
   Abu Sama of the same village said he had 63 cows and got Tk 1,800 from selling 60 litres of milk every day. He has purchased 20 bighas of land and built a good house.
   ‘I get 40 litres of milk daily from my 40 cows and get Tk 1,200 daily. I have no poverty now, said Himu of village Kamatangaria under Bhuraungamari upazila.
   Several char people, however, have alleged that they were not getting fair prices of milk due to absence of any dairy farm, milk processing plant or other milk preservation facilities.
   Some of them said they were very helpless to protect their herd from snakebites and floodwaters during monsoon as they could not afford proper shelters for the animals.

The government is planning to set up exclusive magistrate courts in the capital for quick settlement of Complaint Registrar cases under the Negotiable Instrument Act.
   Law Ministry was learnt to have taken a move to set up the courts in response to the growing concern of financial institutions for increasing huge amount of outstanding loan due to non-settlement of the CR cases.
   Sources in the law ministry said a directive in this regard is expected to come some time in this month.
   When contacted, law minister Barrister Shafique Ahmed told UNB that the Magistrate Courts, which are to deal with CR cases are overburdened with other ordinary cases impeding the quick disposal of CR cases.
   ‘As huge CR cases remained pending for long in the regular courts, the law ministry is trying to set up such courts subject to approval of the Supreme Court,’ he said.
   The law minister said he would talk to the Chief Justice for constitution of the exclusive courts in resolving the backlogged CR cases.
   Meanwhile, the managing director of Delta Brac Housing Finance, QM Shariful Ala, in a letter on March 9, 2009 to the law minister requested the government to set up at least two exclusive courts with a provision for specific timeframe for disposing of CR cases under the NI Act.
   As many as 16400 CR cases remain pending for a long time in the Magistrate Court in Dhaka alone without hearing.
   The filing rate of CR cases is increasing everyday, said an official at the magistrate court.
   He said it takes at least four years to complete the entire judicial process after the filing of a CR case.

Islam Sharif has recently joined Infrastructure Development Company Limited as its executive director and chief executive officer.
   Sharif, a finance professional, has 26 years of experiences in multinational and international financial services, a news release said.
   Before joining the IDCOL he served as a vice-president of Ctibank NA in New York. He also worked at Chase Manhattan Bank, Charles Schvab and Prudential in New York.

RB Group, a local refrigerator-manufacturing company, has offered its products at 20-30 per cent reduced rates compared to other imported foreign refrigerators.
   'The rate RB Group has offered is cheaper compared to any other refrigerators available on the market…' said RB Group deputy director Mainul Haque.
   He said RB Group had been maintaining a world-class standard as it exports its products to the world market as well.
   RB Group has recently launched the commercial production of refrigerators at its large manufacturing plant in Gazipur.
   The plant - Walton Hi-tech Industries - now produces about 6 lakh units of refrigerators against a demand for 4 lakh units across the country. About 2,500 workers are working in the plant, set up on 20 acres of land to meet the local demand and export abroad.
   Company officials hope the Bangladeshi-made Walton refrigerators will go to Thailand, South Korea and some other African countries, including Sudan, from July next, as negotiations are on to make the export deals.
   RB Group's assistant director Mizanur Rahman said his group had been the first local company which started producing refrigerators and some other electronic goods. 'We're also producing motorcycles to meet the local demand.'
   He claimed that Walton offered a 10-CFT refrigerator at Tk 20,700 while a similar size imported refrigerator is selling at between Tk 30,000 and 33,000.
   'We can offer a cheaper rate as our production cost is much lower because of some advantages… We've got cheaper labourers which has made it possible,' he added.
   Presently, Walton is marketing 12 models of refrigerators by its 600 exclusive outlets and also by vendors throughout the country.
   Another seven models will come into the market next months. Each of the Walton outlets also provides service facilities to the customers.

Chinese banks lent a record amount of money in March as they responded to government calls to support the economy in the face of the global financial crisis, the central bank announced Saturday.
   New loans climbed to a monthly record of 1.890 trillion yuan ($277b) in March, from 1.070 trillion in February and 1.620 trillion in January, according to bank figures.
   Chinese banks lent a total of 4.580 trillion yuan in the first quarter, close to the target of five trillion set by Beijing as the minimum banks must lend for the whole year.
   An unnamed official from a financial institution, quoted Wednesday by the Shanghai Securities News, said the surge in loans had forced the China Banking Regulatory Commission to pay more attention to risk control.
   The authorities do not wish to be confronted again with sizeable amounts of bad debts.
   Beijing has undertaken a restructuring of its banking sector in recent years, cleaning up assessments and partially privatising the banks to enable them to face the competition from foreign institutions, which entered after the market opened at the end of 2006.

Islami Bank Bangladesh will provide four families of the deceased army officers in the Pilkhana carnage with financial support amounting to Tk 40 thousand per month totalling one crore and 92 lakh for the next 10 years.
   The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, handed over cheque for Tk 19 lakh and 20 thousand for first year to the army officers' families at a function held at the Prime Minister's Office recently, a news release said.
   Finance minister AMA Muhit, state minister for liberation war affairs ministry ABM Tazul Islam, chiefs of the three services, Islami Bank chairman Abu Nasser Muhammad Abduz Zaher and managing director M Fariduddin Ahmad, were present.

China’s forex reserves, the largest in the world, fell to 1.9121 trillion dollars at the end of February, from 1.9135 trillion a month earlier, the central bank announced Saturday.
   At the end of March, the country’s forex reserves rose to 1.9537 trillion dollars, up from 1.946 trillion in December, the bank said on its Internet site.
   China has invested most of its vast reserves in US dollars, such as safe but low-yielding US Treasury bonds, but has tried to diversify its investments to improve its returns.
   There are differing interpretations over the variations in the Asian giant’s reserves.
   Agricultural Bank of China economist He Zhicheng recently estimated Chinese losses at 80 billion dollars between August and February due to falling stock markets and exchange rate fluctuations.
   Some say one of the reasons for the fall could be a massive capital outflow, pointing out that the movement in the reserves is lower than that in the trade surplus and direct foreign investment.
   While China has stated its wish to diversify its reserves and also called for the creation of a new international reserve currency, it should nevertheless continue to put them in US Treasury bonds, according to specialists.
   China, the top holder of US Treasury bonds with 739.6 billion dollars as of January, has expressed concern over its investment as the world’s largest economy battles a deep recession.
   In a bid to diversify, China in 2007 set up a sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation, charged with managing 200 billion dollars of the nation’s forex reserves.
   That corporation’s investments have now come across as being badly timed, with huge losses sustained on a number of high-profile transactions, including shares in troubled financial giants Morgan Stanley and Blackstone.

Shareholders advisery company RiskMetrics Group Inc recommended Citigroup Inc shareholders vote against electing some current and former leaders of the company’s audit committee, citing poor risk oversight.
   Siding with a portion of a shareholders ‘Vote No’ campaign by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, RiskMetrics said it recommends shareholders vote against audit committee members John Deutch and C Michael Armstrong as well as former lead director Alain Belda.
   ‘Given the depth of the company’s problems, the board may require a fresh start to rebuild its credibility with shareholders,’ RiskMetrics said in a note.
   The banking giant is one of the biggest recipients of a US government bailout.
   It also recommended shareholders vote against independent outsider Anne Mulcahy for sitting on more than three boards while serving as chief executive of Xerox Corp.
   ‘The board and the audit committee have chronically failed to address the company’s risk management and compliance issues,’ RiskMetrics said in a note following discussions it held with the company and the shareholders.
   The advisory group said that while Citigroup had taken steps to address the situation, those steps ‘were reactive steps taken at the behest of regulators and not shareholders.’

The International Leasing and Financial Services Limited has recommended 30 per cent dividend at its pre-AGM board meeting held on Tuesday in Dhaka.
   The recommendation was in the form of 15 per cent cash and 15 per cent stock for the year 2008, a news release said.
   The board, with ILFSL chairman Mahbub Jamil in the chair, has also approved the final accounts of the financial year ended on December 31, 2008.
   Decision to hold the annual general meeting of the company on May 18, 2009 at the Bashundhara City in Dhaka at 10:00am was announced at the meeting, the release added.

The US budget deficit accelerated in March to hit a record nearly $1 trillion in the first half of the current fiscal year as the government moved to bail out troubled institutions, government data showed Friday.
   The deficit for the first six months of the fiscal year which began on October 1 was $956.80 billion, said the Treasury’s monthly statement of receipts and outlays.
   Receipts during the six-month period to March 2009 were $989.83 billion while outlays amounted to nearly $1.95 trillion, the data showed.
   The March deficit of $192.27 billion was higher than the 160 billion dollars expected by most analysts, coming on the back of money poured by President Barack Obama’s administration to rescue financial institutions.
   All six months of the fiscal year so far recorded red ink. The last time the United States plunged into a consecutive six month deficit was during the October 2003-March 2004 period, officials said.
   The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office forecast last month the budget deficit could hit $1.845 trillion for the whole year based on Obama’s $3.5-trillion budget plan approved by Congress early this month.
   The CBO said its budget deficit estimate for fiscal 2009, which ends on September 30, would be four times the 2008 record shortfall and amount to 13.1 per cent of the country’s total economic output.
   The Obama budget forecasts a $1.750 trillion deficit in fiscal 2009, but foresees that figure falling to $1.171 trillion in 2010.
   The plan sees the deficit soaring to the largest percentage of gross domestic product since World War II, but the president touted a string of cost savings designed to lay new foundations for the US economy.
   It also includes an optimistic forecast that the struggling US economy will post robust growth next year, projecting a 1.2 per cent contraction in calendar 2009 but an expansion of 3.2 per cent in 2010.
   The president’s plan includes investment in renewable energy, education, health care reform and is targeted to cut the deficit in half by the end of his current term in 2013.
   The Treasury data Friday showed the administration used $293 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Programme to keep financial institutions afloat while another 60 billion dollars was injected into ailing mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
   Nearly 120 billion dollars was also spent by the Treasury to purchase home mortgage securities, the data showed.
   A US home mortgage meltdown triggered financial turmoil stemming from soured mortgage based securities that led to the collapse last year of financial institutions, including US investment banking icon Lehman Brothers, and slammed the brakes on growth.
   The economy plunged into recession in December 2007.

Standard & Poor’s said Friday it had placed the credit rating on Boeing and its finance subsidiary on watch for possible downgrade as the US aerospace giant moved to cut production that could hit earnings.
   US aerospace giant Boeing Thursday said it would slash production of its twin-aisle 777 aircraft and also delay plans to ‘modestly’ increase production of its new 747-8 jumbo planes and 767 aircraft.
   Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said in a statement that it placed its ratings on Boeing and Boeing Capital, including the A+ long-term corporate credit rating, on watch ‘with negative implications.’
   At the same time, it affirmed the A-1 short-term ratings on both entities.
   The action ‘follows Boeing’s announcement that it will be reducing production or delaying production increases on certain wide body aircraft next year and will be taking a related charge in the first quarter of 2009,’ said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Christopher DeNicolo.
   Boeing had emphasised that the production rate adjustments on the three aircraft models ‘solely reflect delivery deferrals requested by customers in response to unprecedented declines in global passenger and air-cargo volumes.’
   The production decisions and the price declines will hit first-quarter 2009 net profit, the company said, projecting a reduction of 38 percent per share.
   At the beginning of the year, the US aerospace giant predicted 2009 earning per share between $5.05 and $5.35.
   Boeing said it would give updated full year earnings guidance when it reports first-quarter financial results on April 22.
   Boeing in January reported a $56-million loss in the 2008 fourth quarter and said it would slash 10,000 jobs this year due to the uncertain outlook.

Islamic finance is slowing as the global financial crisis hits its hubs in Malaysia and the Gulf, but the sector now has a chance to move on to Western economies seeking to boost their financial centres.
   Regulatory differences still plague efforts to build cross-border Islamic banking, and harmonisation among different schools of thought is one of the nascent industry’s main obstacles as it looks to grow in European countries with large Muslim communities.
   ‘There is a need for petrodollars in the West so more countries will be pandering to the rhetoric of Islamic finance to try to recycle petrodollars to their own financial capitals, be that London, Singapore or Kuala Lumpur,’ said Mahmoud El-Gamal, chair of Islamic Economics at Rice University.
   In a sign that cultural barriers may be coming down, some experts see sovereign wealth funds injecting cash into global financial centres with the aim of advocating Islamic finance.
   As the industry expands into non-Muslim or secular states, the need to educate others about the sector has become greater.
   With much high-flying banking talent available after the collapse of the Western banking system, a shortage of staff with Islamic finance knowledge may no longer be a challenge.
   But with crisis comes opportunity. The easing market has provided scholars, lawmakers and bankers a window to reassess structures including the sukuk, known as Islamic bonds, which are still under the spotlight as different bodies debate on how compliant instruments are with Islamic law.
   Sukuk, once the industry’s hottest product, have dried up, with the Gulf Arab region seeing no issues in the first quarter of 2009.
   Activity in the Islamic loan sector is picking up with two Dubai government entities managing to refinance about $2.8 billion through Islamic instruments in April, but experts remain unconvinced the market will return to its previous highs.
   ‘There has been a sharp slowdown in Islamic financing,’ said Mohsin Khan, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
   ‘So much so that last week last, when Dubai’s Department of Civil Aviation renewed $600 million, eyebrows went up thinking it was a big deal, but relative to a couple of years ago it isn’t.’
   Next week, Reuters journalists in London, Dubai, Bahrain, and Kuala Lumpur will bring together the industry’s heavy hitters to ask them how they will overcome those challenges, and where they see future opportunity.
   Interviewees at the Reuters Islamic Banking and Finance Summit include the chief executive of Bursa Malaysia, a senior official of the UK treasury, some of the world’s largest Islamic financial institutions as well as regulatory and ratings agencies.
   Demand from the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims for investments that comply with their beliefs has soared, and assets that comply with Islamic law range between $700 million and $1 trillion, with some estimates seeing assets growing to $1.6 trillion by 2012.
   ‘Islamic finance instruments were structured the same way as conventional finance instruments so I think it was propaganda to say they were insulated,’ said Gamal. ‘In 2009, Islamic finance could grow faster because many multinational banks had to cut back quite a bit on lending...’
   Islamic law bans interest, and bond holders are paid returns derived from underlying assets. Investing in sectors such as alcohol, pornography and gambling is also prohibited, and deals must also be structured so that risk and reward is shared.

The federal government is pushing for tougher concessions from the creditors of General Motors Corp and Chrysler LLC, according to a published report, as the troubled automakers face looming deadlines to restructure or seek bankruptcy protection.
   The Treasury Department wants GM to offer its bondholders a small amount of its stock in exchange for their $29 billion of GM debt, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.
   The new offer is much less generous than a similar offer GM made two weeks ago, which would have included cash, new debt and a much larger portion of the company’s stock, according to the report.
   Representatives from GM and the government’s auto task force declined to comment. Messages were left seeking comment from Chrysler.
   Advisers to the GM bondholder committee said Friday they had not had any contact with General Motors or the auto task force since late March.
   The debt held by GM’s bondholders has emerged as a major sticking point in the Detroit automaker’s efforts to restructure. GM has been surviving on $13.5 billion in loans from the Treasury Department since the beginning of the year and last month requested up to $16.6 billion more.
   However, the Obama administration’s auto task force ordered GM last week to wring deeper concessions from its union, its bondholders and other stakeholders by June 1 as a condition for more money.
   GM has said it is open to the prospect of a quick, ‘pre-packaged’ Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing as a possible path to viability. However, it prefers to restructure out of court.
   Chrysler, meanwhile, has been kept afloat by $4 billion in government loans. The auto task force believes the Auburn Hills, Mich, automaker cannot survive as a standalone company. Last week, it gave Chrysler until May 1 to find a partner, most likely Italian automaker Fiat SpA, as a condition for another $6 billion in help.

Agrani Bank has appointed Credit Rating Information and Services Limited for surveillance rating of the bank.
   The bank, in this regard, signed a memorandum of understanding with the CRISL at its head office in Dhaka on Wednesday, a news release said.
   Agrani Bank managing director and CEO Syed Abu Naser Bukhtear Ahmed and CRISL president and CEO Muzaffar Ahmed signed the agreement on behalf of their respective sides.

Bank Asia arranged a 19-day foundation training for its officials recently.
   The bank provided training for its 20 officers to improve their professional efficiency, a news release said.
   Bank Asia president and managing director Erfanuddin Ahmed handed over certificates to the participants at the concluding session of the training held at the bank’s training institute in Dhaka.
   Bank Asia always lays the highest importance on the training of its employees as a continuous process of human resources development, the release added.

Hewlett-Packard said Friday it had appealed a court decision in a patent dispute with Cornell University and expects to take a charge of one to two cents in the second quarter.
   The Palo Alto, California-based computer maker said it would appeal a March 30 ruling by a US district court reducing to $53 million a jury award of $184 million to Cornell and the Cornell Research Foundation.
   ‘HP will be increasing its reserve to reflect the latest developments in the case and expects to record a one to two cent charge to second quarter fiscal year 2009 earnings per share,’ HP said in a statement.
   The patent dispute involves allegations that HP’s PA-8000 microprocessors, and servers and workstations using the processors, infringed a patent held by Cornell.
   A federal jury found in June of last year that HP infringed on a Cornell patent for a computer instruction-processing technique invented by HC Torng, a Cornell professor emeritus of electrical and computer engineering.
   In its statement Friday, HP said the patent in dispute expired in February 2006 and the litigation would not affect future sales of HP products.

US oil giant Chevron has said that its profits for the first three months of 2009 will be ‘sharply lower’ than those it made in the previous quarter.
   The company said
   that the drop would, in part, be due to falls in the price of crude oil and natural gas.
   Chevron made a profit of $4.9 billion in the final quarter of 2008 but did not say what it will make in the period to the end of March.
   The fall in profits will come in spite of an increase in oil production.
   Chevron, one of the biggest oil companies in the world, said that margins on refined products fell significantly during the period.
   It also said that earnings would include $100m in write-offs associated with exploration.
   Chevron increased oil production by 41,000 barrels a day in the US and by 64,000 a day internationally over the first two months of this year.
   The company’s full results for the first quarter will be announced on 1 May.

Microsoft and Yahoo! have held ‘early discussions’ about possible Internet search and advertising partnerships, a leading Silicon Valley technology website reported on Friday.
   The talks apparently included a face-to-face meeting last week between Yahoo! chief executive Carol Bartz and Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher reported on her blog BoomTown.
   The generally well-informed Swisher, citing ‘sources with knowledge of the situation,’ described the talks as ‘preliminary’ and ‘focused on what kinds of commercial relationship Yahoo and Microsoft could have in the future.’
   Sources close to Yahoo!, she said, cautioned that the discussions were not about a renewed acquisition attempt by software giant Microsoft and might not result in any deal.
   Microsoft tried last year to buy Yahoo! for $47.5 billion in a vain effort to merge online resources to better battle Internet powerhouse Google, which rules more than 60 per cent of the lucrative US online search market.
   Bartz, who replaced Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang as CEO in January, said last month that any talks between the Sunnyvale, California, Internet portal and Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft would remain private.
   ‘If we’re going to negotiate it’s as companies negotiate and that is privately,’ Bartz said. ‘And if something happens you’ll know it then, and until then there’s no comment on it.’
   Ballmer has said repeatedly since the takeover bid fell through last year that Microsoft, which trails Google and Yahoo! in search market share by a large margin, remains interested in a tie-up with Yahoo!
   Among the scenarios being discussed, Swisher said, is one in which the companies swap online advertising assets and deliver services to each other.