World important news by Kirsten

UPDATE 1-Hedge fund woes don’t slow stock pickers’ meeting

* Big interest in rubbing shoulders with famous tradersBy Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Katya WachtelNEW YORK, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Poor performance does not seem to be much of a hindrance when it comes to investors shelling out thousands of dollars to hear famous hedge fund managers share some of their wisdom about picking stocks.Beginning on Monday, some 600 people who have written big checks will attend the 7th annual Value Investing Congress in New York. The two-day event is a chance for investors, lesser-known money managers and financial advisers to rub shoulders with William Ackman, David Einhorn, Jim Chanos, Leon Cooperman and other titans in the $2 trillion hedge fund industry.This year’s conference, after offering some steep discounts on tickets initially priced at $4,000, is fairly well-attended, even though many of the featured speakers are nursing hefty losses.In fact, the conference’s principal organizer, Whitney Tilson, is the manager of T2 Partners, a small hedge fund that is down 30 percent for the year. Ackman’s $10 billion Pershing Square Capital Management is down 16 percent for the year.But those attending the conference did not seem to mind that many of the speakers were having off-years. Maybe that has something to with the fact the Value Investing Congress is focused on managers who specialize in finding stocks that are unloved with payoffs that can be years down the road.”Value investors tend to look longer ahead than a hedge fund guy and maybe they are more forgiving,” said Jason Slocock, a private investor who came from London.ANOTHER CUP OF JOEThen again, the biggest buzz during the first day of the conference did not come from a manager identifying a beaten-up stock to buy. It came when Greenlight Capital founder David Einhorn, whose $8 billion fund is down 6 percent this year, told the crowd about a stock he was betting against.Einhorn wowed the crowd with the news that his fund was selling short shares of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc , a company that not too long ago was a darling stock of the the hedge fund set. Some of the coffee company’s early boosters included John Thaler’s JAT Capital and Philippe Laffont’s Coatue Capital. William Danoff, a top mutual fund manager at Fidelity Investments, also liked the stock.Green Mountain shares immediately plummeted 10 percent on the news Einhorn was shorting it because of concerns about the company’s accounting practices and business prospects.”If you get one usable idea it can pay off handsomely and pay for conferences for the next 20 years,” said Allen Benello, a portfolio manager at hedge fund White River Partners in San Francisco.Still, the ideas being touted here are hardly exclusive as they are now available not only to hundreds of other conference attendees, but also to anyone with an Internet connection. Indeed, news of Einhorn’s short bet was a hot topic on Twitter, even as the manager was still going through his lengthy presentation.Many at the conference were waiting for Tuesday’s presentations when Ackman, one of the industry’s biggest stars, is scheduled to speak.Chanos, a famed short-seller warned investors on Monday not to simply chase a beaten down-stock believing it has hidden value. His presentation to the paying crowd was called: “Beware the global value trap!”Chanos, who runs Kynikos Associates, said: “If I can’t work out how a company is making money after reading their 10K three times, we open a file on it.”Other featured speakers included Cooperman, whose Omega Advisors is down 12.36 percent, and Eminence Capital’s Ricky Sandler, whose fund is off 6.53 percent this year. The list of speakers even included Vladimir Jelisavic, co-founder of Longacre Fund Management, a one-time $800 million fund that recently announced plans to liquidate because of poor performance.GENIUSES AMONG USEven with those sorry numbers, investors said the conference offers attendees a chance to walk among greatness.”You have ideas here you don’t get in the office,” said Brian Cann, who works at RBC DS Private Investment Management in Ontario. “It is like when you can be sitting there for hours and nothing happens and then you and your colleague go to the pub and suddenly you have 42 new ideas.”Conference organizers said this year’s attendance beat last year’s event. But organizers had to offer heavy discounts off the original ticket price to woo people to come.

UPDATE 1-Mitec Telecom Q1 loss widens

The Montreal-based mobile wireless products maker reported a first-quarter net loss of C$1.7 million, or 1 Canadian cent a share, compared with a loss of C$ 1.3 million, or 1 Canadian cent a share, last year.Revenue fell 38 percent to C$1.6 million.Shares of Mitec closed at 2 Canadian cents on Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Western oil groups eye Myanmar changes cautiously

Christophe de Margerie, Chief Executive of France’s Total SA , said his company, which has a project in the former British colony, would like to play a bigger role in the country, formerly known as Burma, but had to see concrete signs of increased democratisation before this was possible.Western trade sanctions have been in place since the military crushed a 1988 student uprising isolating Myanmar’s army dictatorships but in March, the army nominally handed over power to civilians after elections in November. The process was ridiculed at the time as a sham to cement authoritarian rule behind a democratic facade.It was followed by other overtures such as calls for peace with ethnic minority guerrilla groups, some tolerance of criticism and more communication with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released last year from 15 years of house arrest.On Tuesday, state television said 6,359 prisoners would be freed on Wednesday and political detainees are expected to included.”We decided that… it was important to be in Myanmar but that we will not invest until things are getting better… I do hope that will happen,” Total’s de Margerie told reporters on the sidelines of the Oil and Money conference in London.Total leads the $1 billion Yadana gas project in the Andaman Sea, and the CEO said he would like to back additional exploration and production investments.U.S. oil major Chevron is a partner in Yadana but Washington banned new investments in Myanmar by U.S. companies in 1997 and barred imports.New investments by western oil companies could be a boon for the companies which build and supply their facilities but Andrew Gould, chief executive of the world’s largest oil services company, Schlumberger , said it was too soon to tell the implications from the recent political easing.Myanmar’s crude oil reserves are estimated at 3.2 billion barrels, the energy ministry has said. This compares with China’s proven oil reserves of 14.8 billion barrels, Malaysia’s 5.8 billion, Vietnam’s 4.4 billion and Indonesia’s 4.2 billion barrels, at the end of 2010, according to the BP Statistical Review.The country’s proven gas reserves tripled in the past decade to around 800 billion cubic metres, equivalent to more than a quarter of Australia’s, BP Statistical Review figures show.Malcolm Brinded, Executive Director for Upstream International, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Ali Moshiri, President, Chevron Africa and Latin America Exploration and Production Company all declined to talk about possible new investments in Myanmar.