HONG KONG (Bloomberg) ? Hongkong Land Holdings Ltd., one of the city?s largest business-district property owners, hired six banks to arrange a S$800 million ($512 million) loan to finance expansion.

The real estate developer hired Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., BNP Paribas SA, DBS Group Holdings Ltd., HSBC Holdings Plc, Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. and Standard Chartered Plc to arrange the five-year loan, said bankers involved in the deal who declined to be named.

The company will pay interest at 0.29 percentage point more than the Singapore swap-offer rate, said the bankers. It is the same interest margin Hongkong Land is paying for a HK$7.5 billion ($964 million) seven-year loan signed in June, according to Bloomberg data. The three-month swap-offer rate was last at 3.58 percent. Hongkong Land Finance Director Geoffrey Brown wasn?t immediately available to comment.

Hongkong Land?s first-half profit, excluding property revaluations, rose 11 percent to $117 million, boosted by higher office rents and contributions from its Singapore unit MCL Land.

Prices for luxury homes in Singapore increased 15 percent in 2005, outpacing the 4.3 percent average for the rest of the city, according to CB Richard Ellis, a real estate services company.

Office rents in Hong Kong?s Central district, where Hongkong Land owns five million square feet of space, are at their highest for 12 years after rising 18 percent in the first half, according to property adviser Savills Plc.

About 81 percent of Hongkong Land?s assets are in Hong Kong and Macau, Brown said in July. Twelve percent are in Southeast Asia and one percent is in mainland China.

Standard & Poor?s rates Hongkong Land?s long-term debt BBB+, the third-lowest investment grade.

Hongkong Land is based in Hong Kong, incorporated in Bermuda; its shares trade in London and Singapore. It?s controlled by Scotland?s Keswick family through Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd., which owns real estate, supermarkets and drugstores in Asia, and runs luxury hotels worldwide under the Mandarin Oriental brand.

STOCKHOLM (Bloomberg) ? West Siberian Resources Ltd., a Russian oil producer whose shares trade in Sweden, bought ZAO Nortoil, the licence-holder to an oil field in Russia?s Timan-Pechora region, for $115 million as it seeks to raise output.

Nortoil?s Kolvinskoye field may yield 25,000 barrels a day by the end of 2011 after ?significant? development, Bermuda-registered West Siberian said in a statement on Friday on Waymaker. Production at the field may start in 2008, the company said.

The field, located about 124 miles from West Siberian?s Kharyaga fields, is estimated to hold proven and probable oil reserves of at least 103 million barrels under Society of Petroleum Engineers classification, the company said. This will increase West Siberian?s reserves by 59 percent to 279 million barrels, the company said.

West Siberian produced 25,764 barrels of oil a day in October, or three percent less than the previous month, as equipment failures and delays at fields in Timan-Pechora and the Volga Urals region ?prevented production increases,? the company said. The company didn?t say what increase was expected. West Siberian pumped 26,540 barrels a day in September.

(Bloomberg) ? Liberty Mutual Group, the sixth-largest property and casualty insurer in the US, earned $556 million in the third quarter, rebounding from a loss after Hurricane Katrina.

Claims costs fell 16 percent to $3.54 billion, the Boston-based company said in financial statements last week. A year earlier, when Katrina and Hurricane Rita devastated the US Gulf Coast, Liberty Mutual posted a net loss of $122 million.

Neither of the two major hurricanes that formed in the Atlantic Ocean made landfall in the US this year, sparing insurers that covered $57.3 billion in storm damage in 2005. Liberty Mutual?s third-quarter premium revenue rose 11 percent to $4.9 billion.

The company, owned by its policyholders, spent 98 cents of every premium dollar on claims and expenses. It sold policies worth $5.16 billion, 13 percent more than a year ago.

LONDON ? An employment appeals tribunal on Friday reserved judgment on a gay-discrimination case involving HSBC and a former senior HSBC executive, who was sacked from the bank in 2004 for gross personal misconduct.

Peter Lewis lost his original ?5 million ($9.5 million) lawsuit against HSBC in May when an employment tribunal rejected his claim of unfair dismissal based on sexual orientation.

But the tribunal did uphold four of his 16 claims against the bank, which found discrimination in HSBC?s initial handling of allegations against Lewis of a sexual-harassment incident at the bank?s gym, which he denies.

HSBC is appealing against the tribunal?s decision to uphold these four claims.

Lewis is appealing against the tribunal?s rejection of his claim that he was sacked from his job because he was gay.

The case is the first high-profile lawsuit under new sexual orientation legislation that came in in Britain in 2003 to protect homosexual men and lesbians in the workplace.

During a two-day appeal hearing, Lewis?s counsel Chris Quinn said omissions in the disciplinary process at HSBC to deal with the sexual-harassment allegations against Lewis had sullied the whole process.

Quinn said the omissions had a significant influence on the outcome of events ? namely Lewis?s eventual dismissal from his job.

?The weight of the first domino in this case is sufficient to knock down the rest,? he told the tribunal.

A judgment is expected in a few weeks.

Steven Gilbert has advised Montpelier Re Holdings Limited of his intention to resign as a member of the board of directors for personal reasons.

The resignation would be with effect from the conclusion of the company?s next regular meeting of the board of directors on November 17.

?We are most grateful to Steve for all his fine insights and service to the company through its formative years,? Anthony Taylor, chairman and chief executive said.