The iconic 10-year-old Gherkin building in the City of London has filed for receivership because its construction loans were denominated in Swiss francs. A German equity fund cannot pay its share of the interest and triggered the bankruptcy. The Swissie has risen by 64% against sterling since the loans were made, according to Bloomberg. And rents are payable in pounds sterling even by Swiss tenants. The Gherkin got its name because it looks like a pickle.

Rather than buying another football team, one of Putin's oligarch buddies should buy the 30 St. Mary Axe office building which houses the UK HQ of Swiss Re. The last time a major City of London site filed for bankruptcy it was Canary Wharf which recovered brilliantly.

More from Britain, Finland, Mexico, Colombia, Israel, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Denmark, Cyprus, and Belgium. Mostly good news closed the week.

*Nokia completed sale of its handset manufacturing operations to Microsoft for which it will receive a marginally higher sum than announced, euros 5.44 bn (over $7.5 bn). The Chennai plant in India and another in South Korea are not being transfered because of disputes over taxes. NOK will operate the Chennai factory as a contractor to MSFT. Rumor has it that the chief of NOK's largest remaining business, its Nokia Solutions and Networks, which sells exchanges to telcos, will head the firm now. He is Indian-born Rajeev Suri.

*Also in Finland, Sampo Oy, the financial conglomerate, says if someone bids euros 12-14 bn, it will sell its property & casualty insurance arm. It also has intersts in Nordea Bank, Topdanmark insurance, and Sampo life Iinsurance. CEO Karl Tardigh told a newspaper that SAXPY "is ready to sell any of its businesses if the price is right." He also said he has no ambitions to invest outside the Nordic region (Scandinavia plus Finland). Our former reporter who wrote up SAXPF remarks: "My kind of capitalists! How many US managements would say 'everything we own is for sale if the price is right' and work themselves out of a job?"

*Pure Technologies, our Canadian micro-cap water and sewage pipeline and bridge inspection systems firm, won a multi-year C$11 mn contract from the York regional waterworks which covers 9 municipalities in Ontario, Canada. PPEHF.

*GlaxoSmithKline got approvals from the European Union CHMP (Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use) for its mekinist drug against metastatic melanoma today. Among other GSK cancer drugs it is due to be sold to Novartis over the next year.

*Teva is enrolling adult Huntington's disease patients for its phase II trials of pridopidine which may improve motor impairment, in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study called Pride-HD. Huntington's is a fatal neurodegenerative genetic disease whose sufferers included Woody Guthrie. Pridopidine is not a cure, but it may help mitigate the motor symptoms generated by the gene flaw which affects half the offspring of a Huntington's diseased parent. The study is enrolling 400 patients at 30 global sites for 26 weeks of dosing. It is part of the neurological drug search which Teva's chief scientist and president of global R&D, Dr Michael Hayden, has been engaged in for most of his professional career, which is studying Huntington's, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's diseases, all of which cause brain lesions. He was appointed to the Teva post by former CEO Dr Jeremy Levin who has since been forced to resign. Dr. Hayden, a Canadian, remains at TEVA.

*Bavarian Nordic shareholders approved an extension of the board's authorization to issue new shares and warrants. They also agreed to changing the company's corporate language from Danish to English, and to prepare annual and interim reports solely in English. BAVA named a new chairman, Gerard van Odijk MD replacing 10-yr veteran Asger Aamund, and a deputy chair, Anders Gersel Pedersen MD. Dr Odijk is Dutch, why the language change. Hesits on the boards of Dutch Merus Biopharma nv and British UDG Healthcare. He retired as CEO of Teva Pharma Europe in 2012; before Teva he worked at GSK. BVNKF will continue to report in IFRS rather than GAAP. Pharma is a small world.

*Galapagos NV was informed that Baker Brothers Life Sciences LP has taken a 4.9% shareholding in the firm. GLPYY is a Belgian developer of new small molecules and antibodies with novel modes of action for medicinal use while Baker is a famed biotech investor operating out of my own zip code.

*Vale won a key Brazilian appeals court case over taxes. Last year Brasilia forced Vale to pay over reais 22.3 bn (~$10 bn) for profits earned VALE subs in the Benelux and Denmark. Now the Brazilian Superior Appeals Court overruled the taxman, saying that double-taxation treaties Brazil has with these countries stop it taxing profits already taxed in these European countries. The case will now go to the Brazilian Supreme Court, I think. The appeals court backed the government collection of tax on profits Vale booked in Bermuda with which Brasilia doesn't have a tax treaty. VALE is up on the news.

*Rather than simply repairing the oil pipeline blown up by U'wa Indians, Colombia's Ecopetrol is having to negotiate with the rebels in the country's northeast cloud forest near the Venezuelan border, because they are blocking the repair team's access. The Calao Limon pipeline carries EC crude and some from Occidental Oil and has been shut for a month and has cost over $135 mn with about 500 oilfield workers laid off. Now the government (which controls EC) and its prexy are trying to negotiate a deal with the U'wa tribe, the third largest indigenous group in Colombia. The tribal lands hold over a billion barrels of oil which they call "the sacred blood of mother earth", according to The Wall Street Journal. They want the pipeline to bypass their land, which is geographically impossible, or they threaten to commit mass suicide. The talks will be made harder by a presidential election taking place May 25.

*Woodside Pete of Australia has added Cypriot offshore gasfields to the wish list of what it wants to buy into in its talks with the Leviathan consortium, headed by Delek Group and operator Noble Energy (of the US). According to The Australian, the deal is being totally renegotiated after the initial memorandum of understanding between the two firms ran out while Woodside argued about how its royalties would be taxed by Israel. Now the deal is being recast to cover further areas.

While we have focused on the impact of low reservoirs on Brazilian water company Saneamento Basico de São Paulo, which we sold, the country's hydro-electricity dams also depend on the rains which never came. So Brazilian power companies led by Petrobras, as also loading up on liquefied natural gas to generate electricity during the World Cup matches this summer. The LNG price rise will help to gas exploration, LNG production pipeline operators and construction companies globally. Among them are: Delek Group (DGRLY of Israel);Origin Energy (OGFGF of Australia); Veresen (FCGYF of Canada); Dutch Schlumberger Ltd (SLB) and Chicago Bridge & Iron (CBI); and Anton Oilfield Services (ATONY of Hong Kong.).

*Royal Bank of Scotland has been forced by the UK government to abandon its attempt to pay bonuses to its top managers equal to twice their salaries. UKFI, the entity that manages the British Treasury's 81% stake in RBS, reported told the bank it would veto a planned 2:1 bonus ratio at the next shareholder meeting. Under European Union rules a bank must get shareholder approval to pay annaul bonuses higher than 100% of base salaries. The BBC reports that RBS chairman, Sir Philip Hampton, after consulting with the 20% rump of institutional investors who are not the government, wanted to increase the European Union imposed bonus cap to double salary. UK Financial Investments, which represents the government's 81% stake, rejected the proposal. Moreover, the CEO and the CFO will not get any yearly bonus at all. We own the preferreds of RBS and its sub Nat West, not the common. But we agree with the UK govt stance on them bonuses.

*Caesarstone Sdot Yam reports its Q1 results May 8, which Frida Ghitis will cover. It featured in yesterday's Investor's Business Daily as an ipo leader and the newspaper predicts it will report a 28% rise in profits. IBD also says that its "support along 10-wk line holds after reclaiming $48.79 entry; the stock is at $55 plus today. CSTE makes granite countertops for kitchens and baths.

Fund news:

*Fibra Uno, our Mexican REIT (FBASF) fell 2.9% in Mexican trading this morning. The REIT has corporate governance issues with its El-Mann founding family which itself operates in property markets in Mexico but today's fall may be linked to lower Mexican inflation (and eventually interest rates) reported today. FBASF paid a premium interest rate when became the first Mexican REIT.

*I am looking into a possible switch in exchange traded funds, out of our PowerShares DB S$ bullish fund (UUP) into the newer Wisdom Tree Bloomberg US$ bullish fund alternative (USDU). The appeal of the newer fund is that it is indexed not to the 1973 US dollar Index like UUP. This covers only 6 currencies (and 58% to the euro), plus sterling, Yen, Swissies, loonies, and A$s),

USDU tracks a trade-weighted diversified currency basket where the Euro is only 32% of the total and it weights Canada higher, while adding Mexico and emerging economies like China, Brazil, and South Korea to the mix. What will determine a switch is tracking error in the new fund which has only $37 mn under management, a trifle in this business, while UUP has over $670 mn and expenses, at 0.5%, at least for now, while UUP charges 0.82%.

It would give us a chance to take profits in the fund we own while maintaining a dollar-bullish stance. Comments welcome.