Hegde Fund Amaranth to Slash Staff

Copyright © 2006 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

The business news starts with layoffs at a hedge fund.

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INSKEEP: The hedge fund Amaranth announced it will be cutting about 250 employees by week's end, or about 60 percent of its staff.

This fund is shutting down after losing more than $6 billion, much of it in the energy markets. Amaranth lost hundreds of millions of dollars in natural gas investments in mid-September alone.

Toyota is building up. It's announced it expects to spend $10 billion per year in capital investments, primarily to add manufacturing and assembly sites. About half the spending is expected to go to places outside Japan, mostly in the United States where the domestic automakers are struggling.

The new Japanese prime minister on his first trip to China over the weekend got an agreement to jointly develop gas fields in the East China Sea, but Asian markets were upset by the news from North Korea, which we're following today -news of a nuclear test.

South Korea's stock market fell to its lowest close in more than six weeks. Hong Kong stocks were down more than one percent, and Japan's markets were closed today for a holiday.

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