MORE BUSINESS NEWS

Amid the clack of computer keyboards, ringing phones and chatter, another multi-million-dollar deal has just been done. In fact, $1 million is the minimum unit in foreign exchange deals at ANZ's Melbourne trading room, on the 14th floor of a Collins Street skyscraper. The forex (or FX) market is the world's largest and most liquid. Up to $4 trillion is turned over daily -- that's about 100 times the amount of notes and coins on issue in Australia ($40 billion).

Senior FX trader Luke Marriott attempts to explain how it all works. To demonstrate, he punches a figure into his Reuters Matching 3000 system and hits a large green button on his keyboard marked OFFER (two others are marked BID and DEAL). A few seconds later, a Singapore-based bank has snapped up his $AU1 million for $US 821,100. A couple of minutes later, he buys it back from a Swiss bank for $US 821,000 -- a profit of $US 100. Two business days later, the money is transferred between the accounts.

But a million -- known in the trading room as a "buck" or "dollar" -- is really a trifling amount. The 36-year-old father of three says the biggest transaction he has been involved in was $3 billion (a billion is called a "yard"). Half a dozen or so traders sit among economists and sales staff in rows with jackets draped over the backs of their chairs, staring at monitors showing fluctuating rates, complex graphs and scrolling economic news. Next to a glass cabinet filled with banking awards and trophies is another crammed with brightly coloured ties from the days when a trader leaving his job would have his tie snipped off and stapled to the wall with his business card [See picture].

ANZ has 750 people dotted around the world in 30 different trading rooms like this, but worldwide there are tens of thousands of traders buying and selling currency 24 hours a day (except weekends).

On this Monday, the market is quiet. Marriott has been in the office since 4.30am. The FX market opens at 5am (AEST), in New Zealand. Next is Australia, then Singapore, London and New York. It closes at 5pm on Friday in New York (Saturday, 7am in Melbourne). Marriott will stay until about 2.30pm (unless the market picks up), then go home, play with his children and help put them to bed. His "pocket watch" device (like a beeper) keeps him up to date with currency rates and his larger clients' "open positions." If anything serious happens in the market overnight, he is on call.

Until recently, the trading room was noisy with brokers shouting deals and gesticulating across the floor. Advances in technology have made the floor more sedate, at least outwardly. "In the early '80s, it was very much a cowboy sort of mentality," says Marriott. "Now it's a business about customers and it's a business about service and it's a business about making money. You can't afford to drop the ball. There's no room to be complacent or blase or celebrate, because while you're off doing that somebody else is picking up the next deal that you really should be picking up."

Seventeen years after his business empire disappeared into a $5 billion black hole -- owing creditors $600 million -- Alan Bond is poised to make up to $1 billion from the launch of his African oil venture. Bond's Madagascar Oil, which owns massive oil shale leases on the east African island, is likely to be floated on the Toronto Stock Exchange next year for between $US 3 and $US 5 a share. The once-bankrupt entrepreneur is also set to make $150 million from a diamond mine in Africa, but is locked in a bitter battle over the company that owns it, the Gibraltar-based Lesotho Diamond Corporation.

Bond controls 48 per cent of the company through offshore trusts, but he has fallen out with almost all his fellow shareholders. These include some of his best mates, who bankrolled him when he came out of jail in 2000 after serving four years of a seven-year sentence for the biggest fraud in Australian history.

Bond has built up a half share in the Kao mine, after being put into the project for free on his promise he could raise money. But his greed has upset even his most fervent supporters. One founding shareholder has accused him of "rape and pillage." Another said: "He hasn't learned his lesson. He operates as if the 1980s never went away. He's like Gordon Gecko, 'Greed is good.' He has a complete lack of understanding that the world has moved on."

Another shareholder and Bond supporter is Robert Nelson, a Perth tax-scheme promoter who fled Australia in 1983 after being bankrupted by the tax office. The rebel shareholders in Lesotho Diamond accuse Bond of paying himself massive fees, trying to sell dud assets into the company and using shareholders' money for personal advantage. Just the sort of thing that landed him in jail.

They accuse him of squandering up to $20 million of the $35 million that has been Raised. Bond maintains a lavish London office at the company's expense and travels first class wherever he goes. He has also charged fees for introducing new investors, thereby increasing his share of the company at everyone else's expense.

Until 2005, Bond's criminal record stopped him being a director of any Australian company. To keep a low profile, he has claimed to be just a consultant to Lesotho Diamond (on a fee of $375,000 a year). But in reality he takes all the decisions. This has led to the departure of one experienced CEO and two well-regarded chairmen. It has also meant that no broker in the City of London has been willing to raise finance. To date, there are 10 London brokers that have turned down the Kao project because they refuse to be associated with Bond.

It is not clear how much of his own money Bond has put into the project, and how much he has been given as payment for introducing others, but his shares are owned by an offshore trust. Originally held in a company called Miramas Services on the English Channel Island of Guernsey, they were recently transferred to Ultimo Assets, whose domicile is unknown. The shareholder register lists his agent as the Regent Trust Company in Geneva.

Sadly, Bond's old creditors won't see any of his new-found wealth. After going bankrupt in 1992 with personal debts of $600 million, he fobbed off his creditors in 1995 with a payment of about $1 million. Shortly afterwards, the Australian Federal Police traced millions of dollars to offshore trusts and bank accounts in Jersey and Switzerland. But it failed to bring charges or recover any money.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has terminated one of Australia's most lucrative export projects. BHP Billiton planned to build a $970 million liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal off the coast of the Los Angeles celebrity enclave of Malibu, but Mr Schwarzenegger announced today he would veto the project after a ferocious campaign led by Hollywood celebrities. The decision came despite Prime Minister John Howard flying to LA in 2004 to lobby Mr Schwarzenegger personally on behalf of BHP Billiton.

Mr Schwarzenegger, however, ruled today the BHP Billiton proposal was not environmentally sound. "Any LNG import facility must meet the strict environmental standards California demands to continue to improve our air quality, protect our coast and preserve our marine environment," Mr Schwarzenegger said in his long-awaited decision. "The Cabrillo Port LNG project, as designed, fails to meet that test."

The decision was a victory for the celebrity-filled community of Malibu. Malibu residents, led by former James Bond Pierce Brosnan, Martin Sheen, Tom Hanks, Cindy Crawford, Olivia Newton-John and Halle Berry, waged a high-profile campaign to sink BHP Billiton's plan.

The Australian energy company planned to build a 14-storey high, 295m-long LNG terminal 22.25km off the coast of Malibu. BHP Billiton hoped to ship the LNG in supertankers from gas fields off the west coast of Australia to the floating terminal off Malibu and then pipe it to the California mainland. California is desperate for LNG, but opponents argued the proposal would generate enormous amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. The Californian Coastal Protection Network claimed the LNG project would contribute up to 25 million tonnes of global warming emissions a year.

Malibu residents complained the project was a polluter, an eyesore, and a target for terrorists. "We strongly applaud the Governor's decision to veto the BHP Billiton LNG proposal," California Coastal Protection Network director Susan Jordan said. "The Governor, true to his word, conducted a careful and thorough review of the legal and expert scientific information presented to him and came to the conclusion that this fatally flawed LNG project failed to meet California's strict standards for public health and safety. The Governor's veto acknowledges the legitimate concerns of thousands of local residents who forcefully objected to the BHP proposal."

BHP Billiton said it was exploring its options following the Governor's adverse decision. Mr Howard, back in 2004 after his meeting with Mr Schwarzenegger in LA, thought BHP Billiton could overcome the environmental issues. "There are environmental issues to be dealt with but we are confident that they can be dealt with," Mr Howard said at the time.

BHP Billiton suffered serious defeats last month when two Californian regulatory bodies, the State Lands Commission and the California Coastal Commission, ruled against the project. Opponents generated plenty of publicity and star power in their campaign against BHP Billiton, with protest rallies organised in Malibu fronted by the likes of Brosnan, Sheen and Berry.

India's state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) is to invest nearly 90 bn rupees ($2 bn) in oil and gas projects in the country's north-east. ONGC chairman RS Sharma made the announcement during a tour of the region on Tuesday. He said the corporation would drill 140 oil wells in Assam and more than 80 in other states over the next five years. Most oil wells in Assam are several decades old and ONGC wants to modernise as well as find new deposits, he said.

"We will involve top global companies like Halliburton to help us in the Assam renewal project. We want to reverse the trend of declining output from matured oil fields in Assam," said Mr Sharma.

The ONGC, which produces about 1.6m tonnes of crude oil annually in Assam, hopes to nearly double its production with the additional investments. "We expect to produce about 3m tonnes of crude oil with the investments used in drilling wells and associated pipelines, besides revamping existing facilities," Mr Sharma told journalists in Assam's capital, Guwahati.

India produces about 30m tonnes of crude oil annually, with Assam accounting for about 5m tonnes of the total. Oil India Limited (OIL) produces about 3.5 m tonnes of crude in Assam annually. Assam has more than 1.3 bn tonnes of proven crude oil and 156 bn cubic metres of natural gas reserves, more than half of which are yet to be explored. The state accounts for nearly 50% of the country's on-shore crude oil production.

"Assam has the highest success ratio in the world with 70% of the exploration sites yielding oil," said ONGC's director of exploration DK Pande. The ONGC will also start exploration in Nagaland state by October this year after more than a decade. It was forced to stop operations in the mid-1990s after separatist rebels threatened to attack its facilities. The rebels are now negotiating with the Indian government.