LONDON | Mon Oct 8, 2012 7:12pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - A man was arrested on Monday on suspicion of defacing a painting by the Russian-American artist Mark Rothko in London's Tate Modern museum.

The 26-year-old was detained at about 9 p.m. in connection with a case of criminal damage, London's Metropolitan Police said.

The words "Vladimir Umanets, a potential piece of yellowism" were daubed in black onto the bottom-right corner of the painting, "Black on Maroon", on Sunday.

The popular gallery, located in a converted brick power station on the River Thames, issued a statement confirming that "a visitor defaced one of Rothko's Seagram murals by applying a small area of black paint with a brush".

Rothko, a key figure in 20th century abstract painting whose works sell at auction for tens of millions of dollars, was commissioned to paint the Seagram Murals in the 1950s for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York.

Several of them ended up in the Tate collection after being given as gifts, and Tate describes the series of soft-edged, colored rectangles as "iconic".

Tim Wright wrote on the Twitter micro-blogging site that he had witnessed the incident and posted a photograph of the damaged canvas online.

"Very bizarre, he sat there for a while then just went for it and made a quick exit," Wright wrote. "This guy calmly walked up, took out a marker pen and tagged it. Surreal."

In May, Rothko's "Orange, Red, Yellow" sold for $86.9 million, a new auction record for the artist, at Christie's in New York.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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NEW YORK | Tue Oct 9, 2012 9:41am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Metlife Inc (MET.N) said Tuesday it will build an asset-management business for outside investors focusing on investments in real estate equity, commercial mortgages and debt private placement.

"Asset management is a capital-efficient business with attractive returns on equity," Steven Goulart, MetLife's chief investment officer, said in a statement. "The strong demand for high-quality private assets among institutional investors makes this an attractive time for market entry."

MetLife, the largest U.S. life insurer, which manages some $500 billion in general account assets for its policyholders, currently has a small third-party management business focusing on index funds.

MetLife is reorganizing its real estate and private placement groups to facilitate the expansion.

Robert Merck, global head of real estate investments, will continue to run the group that has been renamed MetLife Real Estate Investors. It currently manages about $43 billion of commercial mortgages and $10 billion in direct real estate investments, assets that will be folded into the outside management business.

The new equity strategies group will be run by Mark Wilsmann, who has led MetLife's commercial mortgage business since 2003.

The new debt strategies group, which will raise funds for real estate projects from institutional investors that include other insurance companies, pension plans and sovereign wealth funds, will be run by Brian Casey. He has been heading MetLife's Washington, D.C., real estate office.

The company, which says it is the largest life insurance lender, currently manages about $50 billion of privately placed debt.

MetLife, which does not break out its individual portfolio investment returns, has no immediate plans to acquire asset-management companies.

"Right now our focus is building on the great strength we have in-house," said Christopher Breslin, a company spokesman.

(Reporting by Jed Horowitz; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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CHICAGO | Mon Oct 8, 2012 7:03am EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Insurance companies, often stuck with the tab for health services when a medical device fails, are ready to share the pain.

As the number of costly, high-profile recalls rises, along with pressure to cut their own spending, insurers are starting to pin more of the responsibility on manufacturers.

If they succeed, medical device makers - already worried about weaker global demand for many of their products and the impact of a new U.S. tax on their profits - will have even more costs in the wake of product recalls, the biggest of which can already lead to billions of dollars in expenses.

"The (insurance) plans are being more aggressive. The reason it gets so much more focus now is because there are so many cases," said Mark Fischer, chairman of Rawlings & Associates, a unit of the Rawlings Group that helps insurance companies recoup payments from the party that was deemed at fault for claims, a legal service known as subrogation.

In recent years, more than a hundred medical devices were recalled out of concern they could cause serious injury or death.

Rawlings is one of the largest firms providing claims recovery services for the healthcare industry, along with Trover Solutions Group, both based in Louisville, Kentucky. Others include HealthCare Subrogation Group and Meridian Resource Company.

Rawlings is currently retained to pursue more than 30 mass tort cases related to healthcare, compared with an average of about three in a given year just a decade ago, Fischer said.

"There has been a drastic increase in the number of cases being pursued," he said. Insurers tend to hire Rawlings when there are enough cases being filed over a product to warrant multi-district litigation status.

Fischer helped recover funds for insurers from claims on Sulzer Medica's defective hip implants in 2000 and Medtronic Inc's faulty Fidelis defibrillator leads in 2007.

In the Fidelis case, Medtronic settled U.S. lawsuits covering more than 9,000 individual personal injury cases for $221 million, according to their regulatory filings.

Fischer then pursued Medtronic to recover money for clients like WellPoint Inc that had paid doctors and hospitals for treatment relating to the defective leads, or wires that connect an implantable defibrillator to the heart.

He expects a settlement - the first collected from a medical device maker - to be signed by year's end, but would not give a dollar amount.

WellPoint spokeswoman Lori McLaughlin said the insurer routinely tries to collect from manufacturers on recall-related health claims.

Aetna Inc, the nation's third largest insurer, said it has managed to wrest reimbursement from drug and device markers, and has negotiated payments to patients for costs from defective or recalled products, without providing details.

Trover Solutions Chief Executive Robert Bader reckons that about 80 percent of health insurers turn to firms like his to pursue manufacturers in recall cases.

"It's the fiduciary responsibility of the insurer to recover members' premiums from the manufacturer. It's a highly specialized process and so a lot of them outsource," Bader said.

The government's Medicare health plan for the elderly recovers part of the money it paid for recall-related medical services once a settlement is reached, said spokeswoman Kathryn Ceja. She would not give details on how it pursues those funds.

FALLOUT OVER THE RIATA RECALL

A 2010 recall of Riata defibrillator leads by St. Jude Medical could become the next tug-of-war between insurers and medical device makers over who picks up the tab.

Some 79,000 U.S. heart patients still have the lead implanted in a blood vessel leading to the heart. Deciding on how to proceed is tricky since removing the leads may be riskier than leaving them in.

The Food and Drug Administration in August said all Riata patients should receive medical imaging tests to see whether the insulation covering the thin wires eroded, exposing the cables and making them more prone to short-circuit, as well as making the surrounding tissue vulnerable to heat damage.

The agency did not say how often imaging tests should be performed. But ordering just one test per patient will add millions of dollars to the cost of their care.

A single fluoroscopy - which shows a real-time, continuous X-ray image on a monitor - for each Riata patient could cost between $7.9 million and $45.3 million overall, based on a Reuters review of the procedure's cost at different hospitals.

Doctors say more than one X-ray would be needed to monitor the leads, which can remain in a patient's body for many years. Dr. Bruce Lindsay, section head of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, said doing an annual imaging study would probably be sufficient.

Even before the FDA guidelines, Medicare covered the extra cost of imaging studies in almost every instance, doctors say. But some private insurers had balked.

"I've had to call (insurers) constantly and justify it," said Dr. Martin Burke, director of the Heart Rhythm Center at the University of Chicago Medicine.

"We're definitely finding more problems (with Riata leads), but surveillance has gone up. We're finding more because we're looking more," he said.

St. Jude spokeswoman Amy Jo Meyer said the company has expanded its regular warranty to include a baseline fluoroscopic or X-ray screening if a patient's insurer does not cover it. Paying for additional imaging would be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

"It would not be in device makers' best interest to balk at paying these costs. In the end, they do have to stand behind their products and these products do sometimes fail," said Debbie Wang, an analyst with Morningstar.

TALLYING THE COSTS

Burke and colleagues estimate that Medtronic's Fidelis recall cost Medicare some $287 million over five years for monitoring or replacing the leads, according to a study published in the Heart Rhythm Journal.

Medtronic spokesman Chris Garland said the company gave a credit to patients for its recalled Fidelis leads, plus $1,200 for "reasonable unreimbursed medical expenses." He would not say how many people received the replacement and additional funds.

The Fidelis case was just one out of 113 medical device recalls between 2005 and 2009 classified as serious enough to cause significant health problems or death, according to an analysis published in the Archives of Internal Medicine last year. Most involved devices that correct heart problems.

The study found that 24,000 patients underwent procedures in 2005 related to problems with devices from Medtronic or from Guidant, now part of Boston Scientific Corp.

"We expect manufacturers to take reasonable responsibility for costs associated with a recall of their products to prevent the healthcare system from absorbing the impact," said Aetna spokeswoman Tammy Arnold.

(Editing by Michele Gershberg, Bernard Orr)

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LONDON | Tue Oct 9, 2012 6:54am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - A toy gun-wielding child, New York high society at play and bored Tokyo commuters are just a few of the startling images at a new Tate Modern exhibition exploring the relationship between two of the 20th century's leading street-life photographers.

"William Klein + Daido Moriyama" features more than 300 vintage prints, paintings, original photo books and installations by U.S. photographers Klein and Japan's Moriyama in a show which runs from October 10 until January 20.

"We wanted to do a show where you have the (photo) book at the heart of the exhibition, particularly William Klein's book about New York, which is probably the most influential photo book of all time...and the idea of combining with Moriyama was natural because he was very influenced by William," co-curator Simon Baker told Reuters at a preview.

The two photographers are known for stark and candid photographs of street-life in the 1960s.

Huge black and white murals pasted to the Tate Modern's walls greet visitors, depicting the daily lives of people in New York, Tokyo and Moscow, capturing scenes of high society at a ball, children outside a candy store or commuters at a station.

Laid out as two halves of a conversation held between the two artists, visitors may recognize one of Klein's more famous portraits for fashion magazine Vogue on the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, where two elegantly dressed models wearing contrasting monochrome dresses are seen strutting on a zebra crossing surrounded by pedestrians and motorists.

Another picture, daubed with thick yellow paint, shows a young boy holding a toy gun aggressively towards the camera aiming directly at Klein, who produced a series of photo essays on New York, Rome and Tokyo each with his usual trademark wide-angle lens and candid close-ups of its citizens.

Moriyama's evocative images of Tokyo's actors and night performers, bored commuters at train stations, and a lone dog, which came to represent the artist in his later years, make up the second half of the show.

Rows of frames each featuring the carefully arranged juxtapositions of photographs from Moriyama's first photo book, "Japan: A Photo Theatre", are laid out page by page for visitors against a vast wall.

The show also features a series of close-ups of seemingly ordinary objects from clothing, machinery and flowers that are transformed with a play on light and shadow into surreal yet recognizable images.

If visitors manage to get some feeling of Japan or Tokyo in particular, then this would be great, Moriyama told Reuters, whose use of blurring, scratches and grainy visual effects in his book of abstract compositions "Sayonara Photography" has made it a lasting favorite.

"With most artists, they'll always say that (their) latest work is the best, or the next one they're producing is the best but at the same time, having looked around here, the one thing that does stick in my memory all the time, is 'Sayonara Photography'."

"That book, that collection...those are the ones that stayed with me throughout my career," Moriyama added.

The series has been described as some of the wildest photographs ever made, Baker added, who worked alongside co-curators Juliet Bingham and Kasia Redzisz.

"The photograph is being really pushed to the limit of what it can represent and I think this is something that is really important in both artists' work."

(Reporting by Li-mei Hoang, editing by Paul Casciato)

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CHICAGO | Mon Oct 8, 2012 12:25pm EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Exchange-traded index funds are a bit like mobile phones -- models offer an increasing array of features over time, while prices on even the plain-vanilla models keep falling.

So, in step, prices have been dropping lately on garden-variety ETF index expenses. Typically these have offered rock-bottom costs on most products, relative to actively managed mutual funds. Yet there are several components of ETF pricing, so you need to be careful. You could miss some of the nuances and pay more than you should.

The good news is that competition is forcing expense ratios down to near-institutional-pricing levels. Now you can pay roughly what big money managers do for entire baskets of stocks, bonds and other vehicles. (An expense ratio is what a money-management firm charges you every year for owning their ETFs -- a percentage based on assets under management. Generally, the lower the expense ratio, the better, since more of your money is being invested and not going into the manager's pocket.)

The latest salvo of price cuts came from the discount broker Charles Schwab, which recently reduced fees by up to 59 percent on its 15 ETFs, which hold more than $7 billion in assets. Schwab is trying to play catch-up with the three giants in the field -- Blackstone/iShares, State Street's SPDRs and Vanguard Group -- which offer an even wider selection of low-cost ETFs.

Expenses on Schwab funds range from 0.04 percent for its Multi-Cap Core Fund to 0.20 percent for its International Small/Mid-Cap Growth fund. How does that compare with previous levels? Expenses on the Mid-Cap ETF were cut in half, from 0.13 percent to 0.07 percent, while others were trimmed by as little as 0.02 percentage points.

While this sounds like counting pennies, it makes a difference over time. Say you had a large-company stock fund in your 401(k), had $100,000 invested and were paying 1 percent annually. Drop that expense to 0.04 percent and you'd have $107,000 more if your fund returned 5 percent annually over 30 years, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission's Mutual Fund Cost Analyzer (here). The SEC's calculator shows money lost to expenses and forgone earnings -- gains you would've made if expenses were lower.

If expense ratios were all you needed to scout when buying an ETF, I would suggest that you buy the cheapest index ETFs possible to cover stock, bond, real estate and commodities markets across the world. But here's what else you need to consider:

1. Look at the bid/ask spread.

Since ETFs are traded on exchanges, the spread is the difference between the highest and lowest prices for buying and selling. Generally, the smaller, or "tighter," the spread, the better for you, the investor. Higher bid/ask spreads mean you're paying a premium for ETFs, which adds to your transaction costs. According to the website Indexuniverse.com, which tracks index funds, bid/ask spreads on the Schwab group, for example, are as high as 0.12 percent for the Schwab International Equity ETF. When you're shopping for ETFs, look for the funds with the lowest bid/ask spreads, which can be as little as a penny for large ETFs such as the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF.

2. How large is the average capitalization of the securities within the ETF?

ETFs containing megacap blue-chip stocks generally have the tightest bid/ask spreads because the stocks within the fund are highly liquid. As you get lower down the food chain into thinly traded small-cap or international stocks and other vehicles such as real estate investment trusts, the bid/ask spreads widen.

3. How closely does the ETF track an underlying index?

Some track more closely than others. ETFs following large, widely followed indexes such as the S&P 500 should be really close to the underlying benchmark. If they don't track an index closely -- more than 0.10 percent variation is a warning sign -- that means you're veering further away from the total return on your chosen basket of securities.

4. What kind of trading commission are you paying?

Since ETFs are securities traded on an exchange, you have to go through a broker to buy and sell them. Deep-discount online brokers typically offer the lowest commissions, but many large mutual-fund managers offer commission-free ETFs on a select group of ETFs, which are typically their most popular funds.

As you become more discerning about the total cost of ETF ownership, consider replacing actively managed mutual funds in your retirement and other portfolios such as 529 college savings plans with ETFs.

A good place to start is your 401(k) portfolio. Under new Department of Labor disclosure rules, your employer is required to disclose the expense ratios and the actual dollar amounts you pay for each fund in your plan. How much are you paying and how much can you save?

If you're paying more than 0.50 percent annually for any fund, it's time to ask your employer to find lower-cost funds. Since it's likely that you're paying the expenses on the funds within your portfolio, any savings you can reap can help improve your total performance. As I've illustrated above, even seemingly small cuts in expenses can help you accumulate bigger returns over time.

(The author is a Reuters columnist and the opinions expressed are his own. For more from John Wasik see link.reuters.com/syk97s) (Editing By Heather Struck, Beth Pinsker Gladstone and Douglas Royalty)

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(This is part of a five-story package on employee benefits and open enrollment season.)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Make way for open enrollment season, the time of year when those wordy benefits packages stuff your inboxes. Once again, workers face higher healthcare costs, but what else can employees expect from insurance plans? Tracy Watts, a partner with benefits giant Mercer, explains what's new for employees in 2013, including the impact of healthcare reform.

Q. How much more should employees expect to pay in healthcare premiums next year?

A. Premiums are going to go up 6 or 7 percent, on average, in 2013 - that's pretty consistent with the past five or six years.

The average annual cost of employer-sponsored coverage is $10,000 per employee. On average, most employers pay 80 percent of that cost. So if employers pay $8,000 of total premiums and employees pay $2,000, that means cost will go up about $140 annually, on average, for most people.

If you have two-person or family coverage, your contributions may go up even more.

Q. What other changes should employees expect?

A. For starters, more people will have the option to enroll in some type of consumer-directed plan.

On average, at least 32 percent of large companies are currently offering them, up from 2 percent in 2005.

Q. If you've never used one of those plans before, what do you need to watch out for?

A. Typically, these plans will have higher deductibles than you've seen before in a traditional plan, known in the industry as a PPO (Preferred Provider Option.)

If you are considering one of these plans - we call them account-based plans - look beyond the deductible to see what kind of account is attached to the program. Will your company put money in the account for you, or will you be able to earn money to offset the deductible if you complete a health assessment or participate in biometric screening?

Keep in mind that there are two kinds of accounts - health reimbursement accounts (HRAs) and health savings accounts (HSAs). If your employer offers a reimbursement account, your deductible might not be as scary. However, if you leave your job, you can't take the money that's left in your account with you. The employer keeps it.

What's cool about the HSA is that the money in your account is your money, which you can carry over from one year to the next. It gives you a lot of flexibility. You get a big tax advantage since you accumulate money tax-free and use it on a tax-advantaged basis. Plus, it's a great way to build up funds for retiree medical costs.

Q. How will the new healthcare law affect our coverage at work?

A. While the main provisions of the new law won't go into effect until 2014, we've already seen companies expand coverage for dependents. The new law expanded eligibility to age 26.

Enrollment in company-sponsored plans increased as a result of this change, so employers will be protecting themselves with greater price increases. We have seen the contribution requirements for dependent coverage increase steadily since the law passed.

In March, you'll get information about new public exchanges, which will be open to people without insurance. One of the requirements of the law is that employers have to notify their employees in advance of the open enrollment period about these exchanges. If your company provides benefits to you, you will not be eligible for government-subsidized coverage in the exchange.

Also, there's going to be a limit on how much you can put in flexible spending account in 2013. There's a $2,500 cap per employee - your employer got to set that cap before. Mercer's survey data suggests the average contribution to a flexible spending account is $1,700, and the participation rate is less than 22 percent at large companies, so it shouldn't have a huge impact on most people.

A lot of people were worried that the push for wellness programs would go away with the new healthcare law. In fact, the new healthcare law requires plans to cover preventive coverage at 100 percent. In addition, the law expanded the level of incentives (for health-related behaviors) that plan sponsors can offer.

Q. Are prescription costs or co-pays going to change much?

A. They go up a little bit every year.

Companies are pushing workers to use mail order prescription plans - it requires a degree of organization not all of us have. The vendors have gotten better at making it easier for people to order online. Now many also send email reminders to refill your prescriptions.

It is cost-advantageous to use the mail order option, so if you are somebody who has maintenance medication, investigate how you might use it. There's no downside - you just have to remember to reorder in time for it to be mailed to you before you run out!

Q. What's new with wellness plans?

A. The newest development are incentives to get you involved in taking care of yourself. There's typically a progression for how the incentives work.

For example, in year one, you are given an incentive to complete a health assessment. It might be through lower premiums or money in an account. In year two, you are given an incentive to do a biometric screening, which could include blood work to look at cholesterol and lipid levels along with a blood pressure check. In year three, there are ranges, and if you are in healthy range, you get an incentive, and if you don't meet it, you are offered an incentive to participate in a program that would qualify you for the incentive.

I have client that gave all employees an electronic pedometer called the Fit Bit to track activity levels. That same client just kicked off a competition for employees to measure their sleep patterns. The research on sleep health shows that how much you sleep has as much of an impact on your health status as what you eat and how you exercise.

We know medical insurance is the most highly valued benefit for employees, even if they complain about it. Employers get that. Employers remain committed to providing coverage to employees because they see the link to productivity.

(For more data on how employer provided health benefits are changing, see the Reuters graphic at link.reuters.com/xyp23t).

The YOUNG BUCKS column appears monthly and at additional times as warranted. Lauren Young tweets at www.twitter.com/laurenyoung. Read more of her work at blogs.reuters.com/lauren-young

(Editing by Jilian Mincer, Linda Stern and Steve Orlofsky)

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