JERUSALEM | Sun Oct 14, 2012 11:18am EDT

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A collection of yet unseen Franz Kafka writings, stashed for four decades in a Tel Aviv apartment, will be made public and transferred to Israel's national library, according to an Israeli court ruling published on Sunday.

The papers had been held by Eva Hoffe and Ruth Wiesler, two sisters who argued in a more than four-year-long case that they legally inherited the documents from their mother, Esther Hoffe, secretary to Kafka's close friend and executor, Max Brod.

But the court ruled that Brod, had ordered in his will that the majority of the documents he had given to his secretary should go to a public archive.

Leading experts have said they did not expect material to emerge from any of Kafka's writings found in the apartment that would prompt major revisions of the works by the Jewish, German-language author who died in 1924.

But papers in the collection are believed to include manuscripts by Brod that could shed new light on Kafka's life and times in Prague.

"It is a victory for the people of Israel," the National Library's Judaica Collection curator, Aviad Stollman, told Reuters. "These materials have been locked up for more than 40 years and will finally be exposed and made accessible to all," Stollman said.

Kafka's "The Trial", "The Castle" and "Amerika" were published after his death, when Brod, who was also his biographer, ignored the Prague-born writer's dying wish to burn all unpublished work.

In 1939 Brod fled the Nazis, taking the last train out of Prague with a suitcase of Kafka papers under his arm. After Brod's death in Israel in 1968, the archive was passed to Esther Hoffe.

The secretary placed some of the writings in Tel Aviv and Zurich safe deposit boxes and the rest in her apartment in the Israeli city, fuelling a Kafkaesque mystery about their content.

Esther Hoffe died in 2007. Her gift to her daughters was challenged in court by the State of Israel, which said the writings should be in the public domain in the Jewish state.

Brod had already given much of Kafka's manuscripts to the writer's niece in 1956. They ended up in Oxford after a chance meeting between an English academic and the niece's son -- Kafka's great-nephew.

In Israel, Esther Hoffe frustrated scholars by denying them access to the papers in her possession -- though she sold Kafka's manuscript of his novel "The Trial" for a reported $2 million in the 1980s.

During the trial, the sides bickered about the dubious conditions in which some of the writings were supposedly kept, with the woman's cats cited as a concern.

Harel Ashwal, a lawyer who represented one of Hoffe's daughters, told Army Radio the legal team was likely to appeal.

"It is not the end of the story," he said.

(Writing by Maayan Lubell, editing by Diana Abdallah)

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BEIJING | Sun Oct 14, 2012 10:37pm EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's annual consumer price inflation ticked down to 1.9 percent in September from August's 2.0 percent, official data showed on Monday, leaving plenty of room for further policy easing to shore up growth.

The headline consumer inflation number matched the forecast of economists polled by Reuters.

Analysts say consumer inflation running well below the 4 percent annual target set by the government leaves room for policymakers do more to support the economy, which Q3 data due on October 18 is likely to confirm has suffered a seventh successively slower quarter of annual growth.

"This is little surprise in the inflation data. It's mainly caused by the drop in food costs," said Zhou Hao, an economist at ANZ Bank in Shanghai. "On monetary policy, we can only say that there is a little more room for further policy easing. Exports have showed signs of stabilisation, but the economy still needs some policy loosening."

The National Bureau of Statistics said China's producer price index in September dropped 3.6 percent from a year earlier, which was also in line with forecasts.

It marked the seventh straight month of producer price deflation, hurting corporate profits and underpinning expectations that consumer inflation will stay tame in the coming months.

The central bank is widely expected to ease policy further, having cut interest rates twice since June and trimmed banks' required reserves three times since November.

Easing consumer prices and outright falls in factory gate prices are signs that the world's second-biggest economy is struggling to escape the tug of a global slowdown that has set China on course for its weakest full year of growth since 1999.

Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, said in a speech at last week's annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund that he expected inflation to be about 2.7 percent for the full year, with growth around 7.8 percent.

But he said signs of resurgence in property prices, which the government has fought for more than two years to rein in, posed a dilemma for policymakers.

Real estate directly affects about 40 different business sectors in China and the government-induced slowdown is widely regarded by analysts as putting an extra brake on the economy.

(Reporting by Lucy Hornby; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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An Air Asia Airbus A320-200 aircraft approaches its parking space at the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) in Sepang, outside Kuala Lumpur March 21, 2012.

KUALA LUMPUR | Sun Oct 14, 2012 10:29pm EDT

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - AirAsia (AIRA.KL), Asia's largest budget carrier, has scrapped a $80 million deal to buy Indonesia's Batavia Air because the move would have carried too many risks, AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes said.

Malaysia-listed AirAsia had announced plans in July to acquire Batavia in a bid to expand in Southeast Asia's biggest economy. It would have been AirAsia's first major airline acquisition and would have ratcheted up competition in Indonesia among low-cost carriers such as Lion Air and flag carrier Garuda's (GIAA.JK) Citilink unit.

"Our aggressive focus in Indonesia remains and we will push our Indonesian IPO plans while still maintaining close co-operation with Batavia Air," Fernandes said in a statement on Monday.

"The company's decision was based on a thorough evaluation by many parties into Batavia Air. In our minds, the timing was perhaps not appropriate as it would have induced too many risks and would ultimately be earnings dilutive to our shareholders."

Fernandes in the past has expressed caution towards acquisitions, calling them "value-destroying" in an interview with Reuters last year.

AirAsia will now collaborate with Batavia Air on other aspects of the aviation business, including a training joint venture to address an expected skilled pilot shortage in Indonesia, the statement said.

AirAsia shares were down 0.3 percent in early trade.

(Reporting by Niluksi Koswanage; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

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WELLINGTON | Sun Oct 14, 2012 11:20pm EDT

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - New Zealand will go ahead with its first partial sale of a state power company early next year after rejecting the idea of special concessions for indigenous people, the prime minister said on Monday, raising the prospect of a legal fight.

Maori groups have threatened legal action over the decision, which could stall a three to five-year program worth up to NZ$7 billion ($5.6 billion) to sell minority stakes in three power companies, a coal miner, and the national airline, to help to cut debt and return the budget to surplus by 2015.

Prime Minister John Key said his center-right government would proceed with the sale of a minority stake in Mighty River Power MRIPW.UL between March and June next year, regardless of the threat of legal action.

"That's entirely a matter for them. From the government's perspective, it would not be unexpected," he said in a statement.

The government is aiming to sell a stake in a second power company, either Genesis Energy or Meridian Energy, by the end of next year. The two sales could be worth more than NZ$3 billion.

The government put the planned Mighty River stake sale on hold last month to consult with indigenous Maori tribes on options to recognize their interests in water resources.

Key said the government had rejected a suggestion from an advisory tribunal that Maori should get special rights over the management of water resources and should be given rights ahead of other shareholders in state power companies using water for generation.

It held the view that no one group owns water, and that Maori rights in particular regions could be satisfied through other measures.

In order to sweeten public opinion about the controversial sales, the government has said it will ensure New Zealanders get a preference in share sales, limit the size of individual holdings, and offer bonus shares to locals who hold shares for at least three years.

($1 = 1.23 New Zealand dollars)

(Reporting by Gyles Beckford; Editing by Richard Pullin)

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n">(Reuters) - Realogy's IPO last week was one of the biggest smashes of the year. Only Facebook Inc and Santander Mexico Financial Group were bigger.

The IPO, with shares soaring 22 percent during the company's market debut, was a bet on the housing rebound as well as a victory for private equity firm Apollo Global Management LLC, which took Realogy private at the peak of the housing boom in 2007.

But shares in the Parsippany, New Jersey-based company, which owns real estate brokerages such as Coldwell Banker and Century 21, "look overpriced," according to a story on Sunday in Barron's.

As noted in Barron's, the company is valued at $4.4 billion and carries $4.5 billion in debt.

"Put a still-generous multiple of 11 on next year's projected cash flow and Realogy's stock is valued at around $27," said Barrons. "That's 20 percent below current levels."

(Reporting By Michelle Conlin; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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1 of 2. Johnathan Roberts, operations manager of S.D. Standard Drilling Plc., poses for photo on an oil drilling rig being built at the Keppel FELS shipyard in Singapore October 12, 2012.

SINGAPORE | Sun Oct 14, 2012 11:34pm EDT

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - What jobs offer the highest pay? Investment banking is up there. So is specialist surgery.

But consider this. Slightly over twenty years ago, Johnathan Roberts started work on an oil rig at $5 an hour. Today, the newly appointed operations manager of Norway's Standard Drilling makes about half a million dollars a year.

Even accounting for inflation, it's a huge jump for the 45-year-old American. Salaries on oil rigs have soared because of a global boom in offshore drilling.

Managers and workers are scarce in this specialised industry, where the work is intense and the job involves living on a platform in remote seas for weeks. For new players in Asia, where the energy demands of booming economies are driving a foray into offshore drilling, the costs and availability of skilled workers will be a big restraining factor.

"The amount of money they are making an hour is just mind-boggling now, just five years ago they were making just half that," said Roberts, who moved to Singapore this year from Texas. He said his pay more than doubled in 1999 when the industry faced a labour shortage like the one that appears to be emerging.

The increasing demand for oil and gas is pushing energy companies to explore frontier areas like the Arctic and new offshore zones given that output from accessible fields is declining. Global oil demand has risen 14 percent in total to 88 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2011 from 2001, according to the BP annual statistical review. Rapidly growing economies have accounted for much of the increase -- consumption in China doubled in the same period to 9.76 million bpd.

Energy and mining offer good salaries, said Wyn James, a Singapore-based Briton who left a career in banking this year to open Zhen Global, a firm that recruits and places workers in mining and oil extraction.

"What we are seeing now is an acute shortage of people actually with applied skills, from engineering or chemical backgrounds," James said.

"Even if the skills do exist globally, they don't necessarily exist in the place that is needed. So what we are doing is we are picking up people from all corners of the world and we are sticking them into projects, whether it's short-term or medium-term, but where they can earn reasonable money, live in a different country, live offshore, whatever that may be."

GLOBAL TREND

Deepwater drilling, one of the most difficult but most lucrative parts of the extraction business, has mainly been centred in the Gulf of Mexico. But in the past decade, Brazil has become a key player, exploring untapped reserves in the Santos basin as far away as 300 km (188 miles) southeast of Sao Paulo, and at depths of over 1,500 metres. That drive is sucking in hundreds of rig operators, drillers, engineers and other technicians.

On the other side of the world, China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) aims to build capacity to produce one million barrels per day of oil equivalent in deep waters offshore China by 2020.

India, Asia's third-biggest oil consumer, is also expanding into the deep waters of the Bay of Bengal.

There were 540 offshore oil rigs in the world last year and, by the end of 2012, the number should rise by 51 to 591, says Faststream Recruitment, a U.K.-based firm that specializes in hiring for the shipping, oil and gas industry.

It is the biggest jump for any year in the past decade, said Mark Robertshaw, managing director of Faststream. In 2013, the number will grow by 28 to 619.

The increase would mean more than 11,000 new jobs over the next 12 to 18 months from a total of 117,000, based on an average need of about 184 jobs on one rig, he said.

"If you consider that over the past 10 years, the annual number of rigs under contract has grown to average 539 during 2011, it becomes apparent that offshore employment for workers actually housed on floaters and jackups will spike significantly," Robertshaw said.

ROUSTABOUTS AND ROUGHNECKS

The labour crunch has already seen pay for a roustabout, the least skilled worker on a rig, nearly double in the past five years to $18-$20 an hour. A roughneck, a rank higher, earns about $27-$28, said Roberts, the U.S. rig manager.

"When the rousta gets a raise it doesn't just stop there," he said. "It goes all the way to the top."

A rig operates on 12-hour shifts and typically workers do 14 days and then rotate out for a break for another 14 days.

The schedule puts off many and with salaries in IT and other industries growing, an engineering graduate or technician has other options.

"Skilled labour is becoming difficult to find," said Scott Kerr, chief executive of Norwegian deepwater drilling company Sevan Drilling.

The salary increases show up on balance sheets. For Keppel Corp., the world's largest rig builder, wages and salaries surged 27 percent to $1.43 billion by 2011 from 2007, while the number of employees increased 5.7 percent over the same period, according to its annual reports. Nearly 90 percent of staff work in the oil rig division.

Besides pay, companies try to attract talent with career opportunities.

"An engineer does not need to stay an engineer all his life. I was trained as a naval architect and I practised for a few years, but beyond that I was in management," said Choo Chiau Beng, chief executive of Keppel Corp.

"In some respects, being a highly paid CEO has attracted people to Keppel, because it shows you don't need to be a lawyer to be highly paid, you can be an engineer and be highly paid."

For rig men like Roberts, the money is not to be sneezed at.

"After clearing taxes, my first check after one week was $167," he said. "My first apartment was very small, it was a little bitty one bedroom studio."

Today, Roberts owns a home in a community in Texas that has manicured lawns, landscaped gardens and four golf courses. He is saving to buy a $2 million ranch.

"I didn't come up with a silver spoon in my mouth, I came up working through the ranks," he said.

(Additional reporting by Charlie Zhu in Hong Kong; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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NEW YORK | Sun Oct 14, 2012 4:02pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge funds and other big speculators piled into the rallying gold and natural gas markets for a second week running, taking the net long money in U.S. commodities up by nearly $1 billion, trade data showed on Friday.

The so-called "money managers" in commodities boosted their net longs in gold to the highest level in nearly 16 months, while taking bullish bets in gas to 8-week peaks, according to the data issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.(CFTC)

Reuters' calculations of the CFTC's Commitment of Traders data showed the value of the net long position held by money managers in some 22 U.S. commodity markets tracked by the CFTC rose by around $900 million in the week to October 9, touching nearly $114 billion.

The figures are calculated by Reuters based on the change in net positions from the week before, multiplied by the contract's value at the end of the period. Because most investors trade commodities on margin, the change in the value of positions is not directly equivalent to total investment.

Managed money's net length in gold futures and options traded on New York's COMEX rose by 2,547 lots to 198,194 lots in the week ended October 9 -- the largest such holding since August 2011.

Gold posted four straight months of gains prior to October. Last week, it hit 11-month highs just below $1,800 an ounce.

While the precious metal saw some profit-taking this week -- closing on Friday with the sharpest weekly decline since June -- some analysts expect a rebound due to euro zone debt worries and economic uncertainties.

Prospects of a U.S. "fiscal cliff" of automatic spending cuts and tax increases scheduled for January could also shock the U.S. economy and lead to more money printing from the Federal Reserve, analysts said.

In natural gas, money managers added 13,119 contracts in NYMEX natural gas futures and options, NYMEX Henry Hub Swaps, NYMEX Henry Hub Penultimate Swaps, and ICE Henry Hub Swaps, for a net long position of 151,942. It was the largest net long position in eight weeks for speculators in gas.

The front-month contract for NYMEX natural gas hit a 2012 peak of $3.638 per million British thermal units (mmmBtu) in Friday's session. Gas prices have gained nearly 30 percent since the end of August, helped by light stockpile builds amid cooler weather forecasts in the U.S. Northeast.

(Editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid)

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Sat Oct 13, 2012 12:45pm EDT

n">(Reuters) - Shareholder lawyers may have embarrassed just about every top executive in the U.S. private equity industry with allegations of a wide conspiracy to rig deal prices during last decade's buyout boom, but proving their case will be a different matter.

Legal experts say much of the alleged collusion outlined in the antitrust lawsuit may have been nothing more than firms working together in perfectly acceptable ways to spread the risk of taking on a big investment. The practice, they say, allowed the investment firms to pursue the largest deals and offer premiums to shareholders.

A lack of action by the U.S. Department of Justice in a parallel antitrust investigation could also suggest there are few grounds to go after the industry. That probe dates to 2006, according to the lawsuit and regulatory filings from some private equity firms.

"If these allegations are true, and if the DOJ has been investigating since 2006, one wonders then why didn't the DOJ do anything?" said Maurice Stucke, a former Justice Department antitrust prosecutor who is now a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The Boston federal judge overseeing the case released a mostly unredacted version of the complaint this week. The defendants had objected, arguing that competitive information about deals should remain blacked out from public view.

One exchange appears particularly revealing. According to the lawsuit, Blackstone Group LP President Tony James wrote in an email to KKR & Co co-founder George Roberts: "We would much rather work with you guys than against you. Together we can be unstoppable but in opposition we can cost each other a lot of money."

Roberts, the lawsuit said, replied later that day: "Agreed."

The emails were allegedly sent after KKR decided to step down in the $17.6 billion bidding for semiconductor company Freescale in 2006. A group led by Blackstone eventually won.

Blackstone, KKR and Roberts declined to comment. James did not return a call for comment.

Many lawsuits contain snippets of emails or other conversations involving defendants, and legal experts note that such excerpts may not tell the whole story.

In one instance, the plaintiffs accuse KKR of having "bragged" to its investors in 2005 that "Gone are the days when buy-out firms fought each other with the ferocity of cornered cats to win a deal."

But those words were not KKR's. The firm cited this sentence, which originally appeared in a March 31, 2005, article in The Economist magazine, in a presentation to investors discussing the trend of so-called club deals in which buyout firms pursue acquisitions together, according to KKR spokeswoman Kristi Huller. She said the quote was a bullet point in the presentation and was clearly cited as being from the magazine.

Chris Burke, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said it was not misleading to include the KKR presentation in the lawsuit without more explanation.

"Was it lifted out of context? No," said Burke, of law firm Scott + Scott. "Was it out of an Economist article? Sure."

PRICE-RIGGING ALLEGATIONS

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs contend that KKR, Blackstone, Bain Capital Partners LLC, the Carlyle Group and others conspired to suppress prices of takeover targets, hurting shareholders in many companies purchased in the deal boom between 2003 and 2007.

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate and a Bain founder, left that firm in 1999, before the transactions in question. He is not named in the complaint.

In one email cited prominently in the opening pages of the complaint, Silver Lake Partners co-founder Glenn Hutchins seemingly anticipated that his fund would participate in rivals' future deals after bringing a half dozen others into the 2005 buyout of SunGard Data Systems.

"We invited you into Sun(G)ard and have a reasonable expectation of your reciprocating," Hutchins wrote to Blackstone's James, according to the complaint.

Silver Lake and Hutchins declined to comment.

Legal experts say email exchanges among top executives at rival firms do not necessarily mean collusion. While firms competed on smaller deals, they were increasingly working together to spread the risk of larger buyouts and needed to talk to one another, experts said.

The evidence in the emails "is pretty thin gruel," said Hays Gorey, a partner with the GeyerGorey law firm and a former Justice Department antitrust prosecutor.

"Without proof that each conspirator 'got something,' it's simply not believable that they were joint actors," said Gorey, who is not involved in the lawsuit.

The case, filed in 2007, seeks class-action status. Suits by several pension funds and individual shareholders were combined, and after being allowed to move forward, the plaintiffs updated the complaint with the fruits of their investigations into 11 private equity firms.

Burke, the plaintiffs' attorney, said substantial evidence of collusion has been uncovered and noted that the judge allowed him to expand his investigation to 27 deals, up from nine initially.

In every deal, he said, no rival ever offered a counter bid once a target company's board accepted a written offer from a buyout firm.

"It's a complete absence of competition. That's thin gruel?"

A trial could be at least a year away. Assuming the case survives summary judgment, a move by defendants to get a case thrown out before trial, Burke said the next hurdle likely would be a fight to formally recognize the case as a class action.

The buyout firms potentially could be on the hook to compensate the selling shareholders for what they should have received in a competitive auction.

In some antitrust cases, plaintiffs can receive three times the damages they suffered. The plaintiffs claim that the 2006 buyout of hospital chain HCA alone was depressed by $1 billion due to the alleged collusion.

It may be harder to make similar claims on other deals, such as the $45 billion takeover of power company TXU. In that deal, a consortium of KKR, TPG Capital, Goldman Sachs Group Inc's private equity arm and others teamed up, agreeing to pay a premium of more than 20 percent for the company.

"Many of these deals could not have been done by one firm individually, you need to pool the firms together," said University of Chicago Professor of Finance Steven Kaplan.

KKR has taken significant writedowns on the TXU acquisition, the largest buyout in history. Even if the plaintiffs prove collusion on the deal, they may not be able to prove damages, said Robert Miller, a law professor at the University of Iowa.

(Reporting By Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, and Mike Erman in New York; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Martha Graybow and Eric Beech)

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NEW YORK | Fri Oct 12, 2012 5:47pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge funds and other big speculators piled into the rallying gold and natural gas markets for a second week running, taking the net long money in U.S. commodities up by nearly $1 billion, trade data showed on Friday.

The so-called "money managers" in commodities boosted their net longs in gold to the highest level in nearly 16 months, while taking bullish bets in gas to 8-week peaks, according to the data issued by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.(CFTC)

Reuters' calculations of the CFTC's Commitment of Traders data showed the value of the net long position held by money managers in some 22 U.S. commodity markets tracked by the CFTC rose by around $900 million in the week to October 9, touching nearly $114 billion.

The figures are calculated by Reuters based on the change in net positions from the week before, multiplied by the contract's value at the end of the period. Because most investors trade commodities on margin, the change in the value of positions is not directly equivalent to total investment.

Managed money's net length in gold futures and options traded on New York's COMEX rose by 2,547 lots to 198,194 lots in the week ended October 9 -- the largest such holding since August 2011.

Gold posted four straight months of gains prior to October. Last week, it hit 11-month highs just below $1,800 an ounce.

While the precious metal saw some profit-taking this week -- closing on Friday with the sharpest weekly decline since June -- some analysts expect a rebound due to euro zone debt worries and economic uncertainties.

Prospects of a U.S. "fiscal cliff" of automatic spending cuts and tax increases scheduled for January could also shock the U.S. economy and lead to more money printing from the Federal Reserve, analysts said.

In natural gas, money managers added 13,119 contracts in NYMEX natural gas futures and options, NYMEX Henry Hub Swaps, NYMEX Henry Hub Penultimate Swaps, and ICE Henry Hub Swaps, for a net long position of 151,942. It was the largest net long position in eight weeks for speculators in gas.

The front-month contract for NYMEX natural gas hit a 2012 peak of $3.638 per million British thermal units (mmmBtu) in Friday's session. Gas prices have gained nearly 30 percent since the end of August, helped by light stockpile builds amid cooler weather forecasts in the U.S. Northeast.

(Editing by Sofina Mirza-Reid)

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The Google logo is seen as Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt speaks at a promotional event for the Nexus 7 tablet in Seoul September 27, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 12, 2012 6:32pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The majority of top decision-makers at the Federal Trade Commission believe that an antitrust case should be brought against Google Inc, meaning the search giant could soon be headed into tough negotiations, three people familiar with the matter said.

Four of the FTC commissioners have become convinced after more than a year of investigation that Google illegally used its dominance of the search market to hurt its rivals, while one commissioner is skeptical, the sources said.

All three declined to be named to protect working relationships.

Two of the sources said a decision on how to proceed could come in late November or early December.

A long list of companies has been complaining to the FTC, arguing that the agency should crack down on Google.

Companies rarely talk publicly about their dealings with the FTC, but consumer reviews website Yelp and comparison shopping website Nextag have both complained about Google during open hearings in Congress.

Google rivals specializing in travel, shopping and entertainment have accused Google, the world's No. 1 search engine, of unfairly giving their web sites low quality rankings in search results to steer Internet users away from their websites and toward Google products that provide similar services.

Computer users are overwhelmingly more likely to click on the top results in any search. The low ranking often forces companies to buy more ads on Google to improve their visibility, one source said.

Google has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Asked about any discussions with the FTC, Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick said: "We are happy to answer any questions that regulators have about our business." The FTC declined to comment.

During a congressional hearing in September 2011, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt denied that the company manipulated its search results. "May I simply say that I can assure you we've not cooked anything," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel.

COMPLAINTS PILE UP

The one source said the FTC commissioners have given weight to other complaints that Google refuses to share data that would allow advertisers and developers to create software to compare the value they get on Google to advertising spending on Microsoft's Bing or Yahoo.

In a related issue, the FTC is looking at Google's handling of valuable patents, which are determined to be essential to smartphones. The agency is trying to determine if they are licensed fairly and whether patent infringement lawsuits are used to hamper innovation.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in mid-September that he expected a decision in the case by the end of the year. European regulators are conducting a similar antitrust probe.

If the agency finds that Google broke the law, the FTC and Google could hammer out a settlement that resolves the issues or, if settlement negotiations fail, the matter could end up in a lengthy, expensive court fight.

The FTC announced in April that it had hired high-powered Washington lawyer Beth Wilkinson to lead the probe. The hiring was seen as a sign that the FTC was contemplating filing a lawsuit against Google.

This is not the first run-in that Google has had with the agency.

In August, Google was forced to pay $22.5 million to settle charges it bypassed the privacy settings of customers using Apple Inc's Safari browser. The practice was in violation of a 2011 consent decree with the FTC over a botched rollout of the now defunct social network Buzz.

(Reporting By Diane Bartz; Editing by Karey Wutkowski and Tim Dobbyn)

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