Express-1 plots potential growth explosion

By Sara Sjølin, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Freight-brokerage firm Express-1 Expedited Solutions Inc. is worth less than $85 million, but at least one person thinks it can become a multibillion-dollar business in the next few years.

Bradley Jacobs, managing director of Jacobs Private Equity LLC, said Tuesday that he and minority co-investors will invest $150 million in Express-1 /quotes/zigman/421931/quotes/nls/xpo XPO +15.53%  to help realize that ambition.

Jacobs will take over as chief executive officer and said he will grow the Buchanan, Mich.-based company through acquisitions.

Bradley Jacobs

“It’s a very fragmented sector with 10,000 licenced freight-brokerage firms in the U.S., so it’s good for acquisitions opportunities,” said Jacobs, referring to a number from the U.S. Department of Transportation website.

Express-1 is a transportation company that owns no trucks or rails, but connects customers’ freight carriers. Jacobs said the transportation sector is a $1 trillion industry in the U.S., while freight-brokerage firms such as Express-1 are growing at a rate of 2% to 3% higher than GDP.

The $150 million investment in Express-1 will not significantly change the market for freight brokers, because the industry is made up of many small companies and Express-1 has no direct competitors.

David Campbell, analyst at Thompson Davis & Co., said the number of small companies in the freight-brokerage sector offers Jacobs opportunities to buy other companies. Campbell added that he has had a buy rating on Express-1 for years.

“Jacobs has made an investment in a good company. The company is very undervalued now and has been for years,” he said.

Stocks soar on an upbeat retail report, Republican candidates become weary of war and Google makes mobile searches easier.

Jacobs has turned companies into multibillion-dollar businesses before. In 1989 he founded United Waste Systems Inc., which he sold for $2.5 billion in 1997. Later that year he co-founded and then listed United Rentals /quotes/zigman/208360/quotes/nls/uri URI +6.49% to benefit from early consolidation opportunities in the construction-equipment rental industry. Ten years later the company had revenue of $3.9 billion.

When choosing to invest in the transportation industry, Jacobs decided to focus on companies that did not own their own trucks, due to higher return on capital, he said. He wanted to invest in a public company to avoid an initial public offering.

“I wanted a public vehicle and Express-1 has good managers, good solid operations, it has been growing and it can be scaled up,” Jacobs said.

Express-1 CEO Mike Welch will stay at Express-1 after Jacobs takes over, and will work on acquisitions with Jacobs.

Shares of Express-1 were up 12% to $2.45 Tuesday afternoon.

READ MORE - Express-1 plots potential growth explosion

Paulson creditors relent on call for Lehman data

By Eric Morath

After Goldman Sachs Group Inc. /quotes/zigman/188479 GS -0.31% , Barclays PLC /quotes/zigman/152323 BCS +1.29% and a slew of others recoiled at a demand to divulge details of how they bought and sold debt in fallen compatriot Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. /quotes/zigman/138080 LEHMQ -0.92% , the creditors making the disclosure request pushed off a hearing this week at which a judge could have forced the investment firms to comply.

The creditor group, led by John Paulson's Paulson & Co., wants most of Wall Street's major players to comply with the same bankruptcy rule that forced them to divulge details about their nearly $20 billion in Lehman debt. But now they've relented temporarily and are asking the court to delay a Wednesday hearing on the matter until July 20.

The delay will "permit the group to continue discussions [and] attempt to resolve or narrow certain objections," the creditors said in papers filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. The Paulson group has proposed a creditor-repayment plan for Lehman that competes with the bank's own and another rival.

Earlier this year, the group that also includes Pacific Investment Management Co. and the California Public Employees' Retirement System was forced to comply with the Bankruptcy Code's Rule 2019, which required them to expose their holdings in Lehman, including when they bought their debt and for how much.

They are demanding that other creditors and interested parties in the case do the same.

That call led to objections from more than 20 creditors and key participants in the case, including Goldman, Barclays, CitiGroup Inc. /quotes/zigman/5065548 C -1.00% , Elliott Management Corp., and Silverpoint Capital LP, that said the request goes beyond what bankruptcy law mandates.

Bank of America Corp. /quotes/zigman/190927/quotes/nls/bac BAC -1.55% , another disclosure target, said the move is a tactic designed to "intimidate" rivals from opposing the Paulson creditors' plan.

The delay raises the possibility that further negotiations could narrow what information must be disclosed or which parties must comply. Both the Paulson creditors and Lehman itself said forcing creditors to divulge more information about their debt holdings would increase transparency in the case and expose possible conflicts of interest.

But unveiling closely held trading strategies, including when and for how much creditors bought and sold different types of Lehman debt, likely makes those investors skittish.

In past bankruptcy cases, the requirement to disclose holdings has caused groups of creditors to stop participating in order to avoid giving up exactly the type of information that the Paulson creditors unveiled.

In court filings made in April, the group showed that they acquired much of their $19.6 billion in Lehman debt at a deep discount in the months after the investment bank filed for Chapter 11 in 2008.

The disclosure demand from Paulson's contingent is also wide ranging. Not only are they targeting another loosely knit group of creditors, including Goldman and SilverPoint, that have proposed a rival liquidation plan for Lehman, the group also wants to see disclosures from the likes of Barclays, which has played a major role in the case but has not publicly endorsed any of the three Lehman creditor payment plans currently on the table.

Lehman is hoping to gain court approval for a liquidation plan by November, but it faces a long and potentially contentious fight as the disclosure request is likely only a prelude to information the parties will demand from each other as they make their case for their preferred plan.

The plan put forth by the Paulson group achieves a greater recovery for holders of parent-company debt, while the Goldman-backed plan benefits holders of Lehman subsidiary debt.

Lehman's own plan strikes more of a middle ground but has drawn the ire of opponents on both sides.

(Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review covers news about distressed companies and those under bankruptcy protection)

READ MORE - Paulson creditors relent on call for Lehman data

Financial Stocks: Financial stocks follow broader market higher

By Greg Morcroft and Val Brickates Kennedy, MarketWatch

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — Lincoln National Corp. and Regions Financial Corp. were the lead gainers in the S&P financial sector Tuesday as stocks got a modest boost from renewed investor hopes that the global economy was not faltering.

Regions /quotes/zigman/351634/quotes/nls/rf RF +3.47%   shares rose 3.5% to $6.26. Shares of the bank dropped on Monday on a report that the bank’s audit committee was looking into whether any of the firm’s top managers had delayed publicly disclosing certain loans.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke addresses committee in Washington, D.C, and urges congressional action on U.S. deficit.

Shares of Lincoln National /quotes/zigman/232274 LNC +3.77%  , meanwhile, climbed 3.8% to $27.52.

The Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF /quotes/zigman/246222/quotes/nls/xlf XLF +0.50%  , which tracks the financial stocks in the S&P 500 /quotes/zigman/3870025 SPX +1.26%  , rose 0.5%, with financials mostly following the wider market after economic data at home and abroad bolstered investor confidence, at least for the day. In the U.S., May retail sales topped estimates, and wholesale prices last month rose by the smallest amount in 10 months.

But the financial ETF finished Tuesday off session highs. Read more on broader market.

Three of the four financial stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average /quotes/zigman/627449/delayed DJIA +1.03%  — American Express Co. /quotes/zigman/217470 AXP -0.19%  , J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. Inc. /quotes/zigman/272085 JPM -0.16%   and Travelers Co. /quotes/zigman/455344 TRV -0.19%   — each turned lower. Shares of the fourth financial stock in the Dow, Bank of America Corp. /quotes/zigman/190927 BAC -1.55%  , remained in the red to end down 1.6%.

On Tuesday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. adopted a rule requiring U.S. big banks be subject to the same minimum standards for capital as community banks. The rule is part of the government’s ongoing implementation of the Dodd-Frank bank reform act. FDIC OKs minimum capital standard for banks.

Bank stocks have fallen sharply over the past four months as the sector deals with calls for tighter regulation and stalling loan growth. Read more about the slump in bank stocks.

READ MORE - Financial Stocks: Financial stocks follow broader market higher

Andrea Coombes' Ways and Means: 3 tips to avoid check fraud

By Andrea Coombes, MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Amid the almost daily reports of hackers stealing consumers’ private financial information, you might have forgotten about a low-tech scam: check fraud. But fake-check scams are alive and well, with fraudsters honing their schemes to be age-appropriate, preying on young people seeking jobs and older retirees in need of cash.

In 2010, fake-check scams, where consumers are lured into accepting phony checks in return for sending or wiring cash to the fraudster, were the most frequent type of complaint to the National Consumers League’s Fraud Center, totaling 30% of complaints received.

/conga/personal-finance/consumer_seo.html 151627

Younger victims tend to get hit by different scams than older people. Among people aged 18 to 30 who reported to the NCL that they had fallen prey to a fake-check scam, more than 50% were hit by a work-at-home offer.

In these schemes, victims think they’re being hired as account managers to process payments, or as mystery shoppers. They’re often asked to send money to cover administrative expenses.

Often, scammers contact job seekers by email, Susan Grant, director of consumer protection at the Consumer Federation of America, said in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday to announce new consumer tips to fight the problem.

“For the work-at-home variations, those [schemes are perpetrated] primarily by email and often in situations where the consumer has posted his or her desire to find a job on one of these job sites and is contacted by email,” she said.

Meanwhile, almost 60% of victims age 66 or older said they fell prey to a sweepstakes scam. Victims in these cases are told they have won millions but must first pay taxes or other fees out of the advance they receive, before they can claim the rest of the prize.

Another 30% of victims 66 and older were hit by work-at-home scams.

Among 51- to 65-year-old check-fraud victims, 35% said they fell prey to sweepstakes schemes. That percentage dropped to about 25% for 31- to 50-year-olds, and about 10% for 18- to 30-year-olds.

Forty-five percent of victims aged 31 to 50 fell prey to fake work-at-home offers, as did almost 40% of victims aged 51 to 65.

“In difficult economic times, many consumers are on the lookout for creative ways to make ends meet,” said John Breyault, director of the National Consumers League’s Fraud Center. “Others may be desperate enough to let their guard down and be tempted by offers they wouldn’t otherwise consider.”

Fake-check schemes generally cost consumers about $2,000 to $4,000, Grant said.

But sometimes such schemes cost even more. One victim thought she could earn money in a work-at-home clerical service, Breyault said. The victim’s new “manager” told her to deposit the $4,900 check he sent her, and then wire money to him to cover some administrative costs.

When the check bounced, the victim was forced to pay the $4,900 to the bank. “When the check or money order bounces, you will have to pay the money back to your bank or credit union,” Breyault said. “Consumers aren’t protected the way they are in credit-card fraud.”

Almost one-third of adults surveyed in 2008 said they had been approached with some type of check scam, Grant said, according to the most recent survey data she had available, and 59% of adults surveyed said they believed banks will check to make sure the check or money order is good before giving them the cash.

“That is not how it works,” Grant said. Consumers ultimately are responsible for what they deposit in their bank account, she said.

If someone gives you a check and asks you to send money somewhere in return, don’t. The check may be a fake. Your bank or credit union is required to give you access to the cash quickly; only later will you learn that the check was a fraud – and then you’ll be on the hook. You are responsible for the checks you deposit into your account. “If you don’t pay the money back, your account could be frozen or closed, and you could be sued. Some victims are even charged with fraud,” the CFA said.

If the company name sounds familiar and you assume you can trust it, don’t. A personal case in point: My 20-year-old daughter received a real-looking “You’ve Won!” sweepstakes notification from Publishers Clearinghouse. The only hitch: She was supposed to pay a fee to claim her prize. When she called Publishers Clearinghouse (after finding their number online) to ask if she’d received a real offer, she learned it was a ruse by a scammer pretending to be that company.

If someone you don’t know asks you to wire money, don’t. According to the NCL, in almost all of the cases in which consumers said they sent money to fake-check scammers, they were told to use a money-transfer service. “Con artists want the funds to be sent to them via a money transfer service because it’s quick, it’s cash, and it’s hard to trace,” Grant said. “You should only use these services to send money to people that you’ve met in person and known for a long time.” Also, wiring money is like sending cash; it’s going to be difficult to retrieve unless you contact the money-transfer service before the cash has been picked up by the fraudster.

For more information, go to www.consumerfed.org/fakecheckscams . Also, visit the National Consumers League’s website, www.fakechecks.org .

Andrea Coombes is MarketWatch's personal finance editor, based in San Francisco.

READ MORE - Andrea Coombes' Ways and Means: 3 tips to avoid check fraud

Matthew Lynn's London Eye: How to profit from the coming Greek default

By Matthew Lynn

LONDON (MarketWatch) — You don’t exactly need a crystal ball to know what the biggest event in the financial markets of the next 12 months is going to be: Greece defaulting on its debts.

This week Standard & Poor’s cut its rating on the country to CCC, the lowest of any nation in the world. Only last week we learned that Greek industrial production was down 11% year-on-year. Unemployment has risen 40% over the past year, and now stands above 16% nationally. A year on from the European Union and International Monetary Fund “rescue,” Greece is slipping into 1930s-style depression.

/conga/story/misc/investing.html 151590

A country in that kind of a fix doesn’t pay back debt. Nor does it get its deficit under control. It isn’t a question of whether Greece defaults anymore. Everyone accepts that. It is simply an issue of when, by how much, on what terms — and, perhaps most crucially of all, who gets stuck with paying the bill.

Forget all you’ve read about it being a catastrophe for the markets when it happens, however. Only things that nobody really forecast make prices move in any dramatic fashion. A Greek default is about as unexpected as Rafael Nadal making the finals at Wimbledon this year.

In reality, it is already priced in. And the Germans and the French aren’t going to let it happen until they know their banking systems are safe — so there isn’t going to be a Lehman-syle collapse.

What a Greek default will do is focus everyone’s mind on the breakup of the euro. Once countries go broke, the euro will have taken a decisive step towards dismemberment. The markets will start figuring out who the winners and losers are from that — and pricing that in as well.

So if the euro isn’t going to be around in five years time, how do you position your portfolio for that?

Tourism in the Greek islands should flourish once the euro falls apart.

Here are five trades you should start thinking about:

1. Buy German bunds, and sell the DAX index /quotes/zigman/2380246 DX:DAX +1.69% . The new deutsche mark that will emerge from the wreckage will be one of the strongest currencies in the world. That will be great for German bonds, but bad for the country’s mighty exporters, whose shares are the leading constituent stocks of the blue-chip DAX index. Over time, German companies will learn to adjust to having a strong independent currency again. They coped with it perfectly well in the 1970s and 1980s. But it will take time — and exports will suffer in the meantime. That will be bad for profits, and bad for share prices.

2. Sell the Swiss franc /quotes/zigman/4868123/sampled USDCHF -0.0190% . Investors have been piling into the franc because they don’t have the deutsche mark as a safe haven anymore. The Israeli shekel /quotes/zigman/4867989/sampled USDILS -0.0031%  has some supporters — including this writer — as a currency that’s going to appreciate through bad times as well as good, but it doesn’t have a thousand years of peace and prosperity behind it the way the Swiss franc does. So right now the Swiss have that market to themselves — as the strength of the franc makes clear. But with the deutsche mark back in business, a big chunk of that safe-haven money will shift back across the border. The Swiss franc will be on the way down again.

3. Sell the Belgium index /quotes/zigman/627399 XX:BEDOWD +0.28% . As the European Union grew in power, Brussels emerged as the capital of a nascent super-state that for a time seemed able to rival the United States. Every big company needed a platoon of well-paid lobbyists taking people out for expensive lunches. With the euro on the rocks, the EU will be halted in its tracks, and all of that will disappear. Brussels will just be a place where you can buy some nice chocolate while changing trains. The country’s economy and its leading companies will all suffer.

4. Buy European travel companies. With the euro gone, the peripheral nations will see their currencies fall dramatically, while the core will see theirs appreciate. One consequence will be that it will be dirt-cheap for northern Europeans to go on holiday in Greece and Spain and Portugal again. A traditional pattern of trade will emerge. Northern Europeans make luxury automobiles and machine tools for the world, then two or three times a year relax by sitting by the Mediterranean for a couple of weeks enjoying themselves and spending all that money they earned. That will be great for everyone involved in shifting people from place to place — the tour operators, the airlines, the aircraft manufacturers, and the travel websites. All of them will see their profits soar.

5. Sell the U.S. banks XX:GSPFI +1.04% but buy the dollar /quotes/zigman/4867933/sampled EURUSD -0.0381% . If everyone knows Greece will have to default, what’s keeping them from pulling the plug? That’s easy. The Germans and the French won’t want to ‘re-profile’ all that Greek debt until they know their banks /quotes/zigman/116452/quotes/nls/eufn EUFN +2.10%  have largely sold both the debt and the credit-default swaps associated with it to someone else. They aren’t stupid — they aren’t about to blow up their own financial system. Who’s bought it? It looks as if the U.S. banks have wound up owning a lot of Greek debt. The Asian /quotes/zigman/116464/quotes/nls/fefn FEFN -0.04%  and Middle Eastern banks /quotes/zigman/1530451/quotes/nls/efn EFN +1.04%  may have a lot as well. When the default happens, they will be the ones who take the brunt of the losses.

The dollar will gain, however. The euro was a serious contender to take its place as the global reserve currency. With that out of the picture, the dollar will get another decade as the main currency of global trade. Its weaknesses will catch up with it eventually — but the day of reckoning will have been postponed.

There will be plenty of other consequences. Spain will be looking shaky. Italy may recover from what has been, in effect, permanent recession since it joined the euro. But those five trades should at least be enough to let you join the Germans and the Dutch on one of those dirt-cheap vacations in Rhodes or the Algarve.

READ MORE - Matthew Lynn's London Eye: How to profit from the coming Greek default

Bernanke: Don’t play politics with debt limit

By Greg Robb and Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The White House and Congress should work together in “good faith” to solve the nation’s budget crisis and shy away from using a necessary increase in the debt ceiling as a tool to bend the will of opponents, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday.

“I fully understand the desire to use the debt limit deadline to force some necessary and difficult fiscal policy adjustments, but the debt limit is the wrong tool for that important job,” Bernanke said in a speech to a conference of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Bernanke urged Congress to put the debt ceiling increase on a separate track from talks to put the budget on sounder footing.

Nothing should be done to shake the confidence of investors in the willingness of the U.S. government to pay its bills, Bernanke said.

“Failing to raise the debt ceiling in a timely way would be self-defeating if the objective is to chart a course toward a better fiscal situation for our nation,” he said.

Even a short suspension in payments on principal or interest on the Treasury’s debt obligations could cause “severe disruptions in financial markets” or damage the special role of the dollar and Treasury securities in global markets in the longer term, he said.

Treasury prices, meanwhile, fell further on Tuesday. Yields rose to the highest level this month, after a report signaled consumers are still spending, boosting stocks and reducing the appeal of the relative safety of U.S. government debt. Read Bond Report.

The Obama administration is warning that the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling must be raised before Aug. 2 to stave off a government default. Speaking Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show, President Barack Obama warned that the country risks a financial meltdown if Congress doesn’t boost the ceiling.

“We could actually have a reprise of a financial crisis if we play this too close to the line,” Obama said. Read more on Political Watch blog.

Reuters Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke at a recent press conference.

Republicans are demanding deep spending cuts in exchange for “yes” votes on raising the borrowing limit – a position they will reiterate on Tuesday in closed-door talks led by Vice President Joe Biden. Those talks are at a critical stage, with a proposals including a cap on domestic spending on the table this week.

Panelists at the conference said default by the government would be unthinkable and most agreed the debt ceiling would be raised before Aug. 2. Republicans, meanwhile, dug in on their demands for spending cuts and Rep. Paul Ryan stuck by his controversial plan to turn Medicare into a voucher-style system to save it from insolvency.

“You just can’t fix this problem if you don’t deal with our health-care entitlements,” said Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee.

Bernanke stressed that his opposition to “brinksmanship” with the debt limit should not be misinterpreted as an argument in favor of delay or inaction in cutting the federal budget deficit.

“I urge the Congress and the Administration to work in good faith to quickly develop and implement a credible plan to achieve long-term sustainability,” Bernanke said.

Without such a deal, the U.S. is moving ever closer to the point where the deficit could cause a sudden financial crisis, he warned.

“As we have seen in a number of countries recently, interest rates can soar quickly if investors lose confidence in the ability of a government to manage its fiscal policy,” he said.

“Although historical experience and economic theory do not show the exact threshold at which the perceived risks associated with the U.S. public debt would increase markedly, we can be sure that, without corrective action, our fiscal trajectory is moving the nation ever closer to that point,” Bernanke said.

Although most panelists at the conference said that the debt ceiling would be raised, most also thought it wouldn’t last through the 2012 elections. Boosting the limit by more than $2 trillion would be enough to last through the elections. But Republicans have said they’d consider a shorter-term increase if they couldn’t get the amount of spending cuts they want.

Greg Robb is a senior reporter for MarketWatch in Washington. Robert Schroeder is a reporter for MarketWatch in Washington.

READ MORE - Bernanke: Don’t play politics with debt limit

Glencore well positioned for 2011; eyes buys

By Alex MacDonald

(Adds more details, analyst comments and updated share price.)

LISBON -(MarketWatch)- Swiss commodities titan Glencore International PLC (GLEN.LN) said it's well positioned for the year despite volatile commodity prices.

It also said it will continue to hunt for acquisitions opportunistically, although it quashed talk that Glencore was considering a bid for Kazakh-focused miner Eurasian Natural Resources Corp PLC (ENRC.LN) or that it was in firm talks with Anglo Swiss miner Xstrata PLC (XTA.LN) about a potential tie up.

"Although we talk to a lot of people in the sector, we are not actively considering a bid for ENRC," Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore's chief executive, told reporters in response to an article by The Sunday Times over the weekend which said that Glencore was considering a GBP12 billion acquisition of ENRC.

In its first earnings report since it listed shares in London and Hong Kong last month, the company reported a 47% rise in first quarter adjusted net income to $1.3 billion due to a strong performance in its marketing and industrial activities.

The bottom line figure includes exceptional items such as mark-to-market loss on contracts related to its purchase of Prodeco, a Colombian coal asset that it bought back from Anglo-Swiss miner Xstrata PLC (XTA.LN) last year and gains from the first-time consolidation of the Vasilkovskoje Gold operations, in which Glencore acquired the remaining 60% stake it didn't own last year.

On an unadjusted basis, net income attributable to equity shareholders rose to $1.09 billion from $295 million the year before. The significant rise is due to the fact that net income last year was still reported under the company's private shareholder structure and not the publicly listed structure.

Revenue rose 39% to $44.2 billion while earnings before interest and taxes adjusted for exceptional items rose 45% to $1.8 billion, slightly missing Deutsche Bank's ebit estimate of $1.9 billion.

At 1450 GMT, the company's shares were down 17.50 pence or 3.3% at 505.9p a share.

Paul Galloway, equity analyst at Bernstein Research, said that this was a "reasonably solid set of maiden post-IPO results for the company, though financial performance was below consensus expectations."

Nomura said in a report that the results were disappointing. "We had expected more of a blow-out first quarter for the marketing business in the first-quarter results post IPO," it said.

Adjusted ebit from the company's marketing activities rose 37% to $675 million on year in the first quarter, largely due to its energy marketing division where ebit more than doubled, buoyed by strong performance in the oil marketing division. The rise more than offset a 20% decline in adjusted ebit from the company's metal and mines marketing division. The divisional ebit fell partly due to a particularly strong performance in the first quarter of 2010.

Adjusted ebit from the company's industrial activities rose 50% to $1.1 billion compared with the same quarter a year before. The company's industrial activities benefited from a significant rise in production, as evidenced in a 50% increase in Katanga's copper production, a 33% rise in Prodeco's coal output and an 87% rise in Kazzinc's gold production, it said.

Prodeco's full year coal output, however, is expected to fall between 600,000 tons and 700,000 tons short of expectations due to delays in the delivery of mining equipment from Japan.

The company said it remains "well positioned for 2011" despite volatility in commodity prices. "The underlying fundamental demand for our commodities is strong" despite occasional pullbacks in demand growth from countries such as China, said Glasenberg.

Steve Kalmin, the company's chief financial officer, said the company's second quarter performance is developing in line with expectations and should deliver good results due to higher output and good arbitrage trading opportunities.

Glasenberg said the company will look at acquisitions opportunistically, as evidenced in Tuesday's announcement that Glencore intends to buy a majority stake in a Peruvian copper project from CST Mining Group Ltd. (0985.HK) for $475 million.

Glencore's board of directors reaffirmed plans to declare an interim dividend of $350 million on Aug. 25.

READ MORE - Glencore well positioned for 2011; eyes buys