Reuters Summit - Watchdog mulls new curb on short selling

Cutting the time it takes to settle a trade would largely curb short-selling, a top European Union market regulator said on Tuesday.

Short selling, a practice favoured by some hedge funds, has been criticised for accelerating slides in bank shares and EU states have introduced some curbs.

Share trades in the European Union are typically settled within three days, or T+3, but a top regulator said technology should allow near instantaneous settlement.

'It would reduce the possibility to trade within the settlement cycle,' said Eddy Wymeersch, chairman of the Committee of European Securities Regulators.

'I am amazed that with all the technology that we have today that we could not settle in T+0 and that would largely enable us to eliminate short selling,' Wymeersch said speaking at the Reuters Financial Regulation Summit.

'Are there sufficient technical arguments not to move to real time settlement? Can we not move to a little bit more efficiency. I want to launch a discussion,' Wymeersch said.

CESR groups all the national securities regulators from the 27 European Union member states and is set to play an increasingly influential role in supervising EU markets.

Wymeersch said there were signs of improvement in securities markets in the 27-nation bloc.

'It's very dangerous to say that we are out of the problems but we see some positive signs. The most important one is that the interest rates in the interbank market have come down to absolutely normal conditions and it seems the interbank market has started again,' Wymeersch.

'We also see new inflows into UCITS (pan-EU mutual funds), it's quite significant,' Wymeersh said.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; editing by Simon Jessop) Keywords: REGULATION SUMMIT/SECURITIES

UPDATE 1-Ceradyne Inc quarterly profit, sales fall

The company, which makes ceramic plates used in armor worn by U.S. soldiers, said full-year results would likely come in at the lower end of a previous forecast, citing weakness in European industrial markets.

Net income came to $708,000, or 3 cents a share, down 99 percent from $32.4 million, or $1.18 a share, a year earlier.

Adjusted for interest expense, profit came to 5 cents a share, compared with 20 cents expected by analysts, according to Reuters Estimates.

Sales fell 47 percent to $99.8 million. New orders came to $150.7 million in the quarter, down from $211.8 million a year earlier.

Ceradyne backed its February forecast calling for profit of $1.60 to $2.00 a share for 2009 and sales of $465 million to $500 million, but cited a 'higher probability' of posting results at the low end of the range.

Azerbaijan aims to triple oil shipments to N.America

BAKU, April 28 (Reuters) - Azerbaijan's state oil company, Socar, plans to almost triple crude exports to North America to 200,000 barrels per day, a company official said on Tuesday, without specifying the planned time schedule for the increase.

Nuru Guliyev, Socar's deputy manager for marketing and economics, said his company was looking to open up new markets -- including Canada -- for its Azeri Light crude.

'Only 22 percent of Azeri oil sales are to the American region. The Canadian oil market is young and is growing. Demand there is growing,' Guliyev told a conference.

Azerbaijan, an ex-Soviet country with a coastline on the Caspian Sea, produced 44 million tonnes of oil (about 884,000 bpd) in 2008.

Socar Vice-President Elshad Nasirov told Reuters financial television last month the country plans this year to increase output to at least 50 million tonnes and has no plans to join OPEC in cutting production.

His forecast was higher than the 45 million tonnes predicted in February by a government source.

Socar supplied 73,000 bpd of oil to North America in 2008.

Guliyev said up to 40 percent of Socar's current exports were to the American and Asian markets. In 2006, these markets accounted for only 10 percent to 15 percent of all exports.

'There is demand for Azeri oil, but it's also a question of price,' he told the conference. 'It's one thing to supply oil at a price of $140 a barrel and another at a price of $40-50.'

Socar last year became the main exporter of oil from Azerbaijan, a position it has no intention of relinquishing, Guliyev said.

'(Socar's) exports tripled (last year) to 23 million tonnes. In 2009, we aim to strengthen Socar's role as the main exporter of oil from Azerbaijan,' he said.

Socar also plans this year to double oil flows through the Baku-Novorossiisk pipeline to 2.5 million tonnes, Guliyev said. The pipeline, which links the Azeri capital to the Black Sea, has annual capacity of 5 million tonnes.

This route will only use oil from Socar's old deposits, and not from the Azeri-Chirag-Gyuneshli (ACG) deposit controlled by a BP-led consortium. The ACG deposit is the main source of oil for the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline to the Mediterranean coast.