NEWS FLASH

BRADENTON/NEW YORK: Google Inc hit the U.S. bond market on Monday with its high grade market debut, announcing a $3 billion sale of 3-year, 5-year and 10-year notes that will take advantage of low borrowing rates.

Proceeds of the SEC-registered deal will be used to repay commercial paper and for general corporate purposes, the company said in a statement. Citigroup , Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are joint lead managers on the deal, which garnered an Aa2 rating from Moody's Investors Service, the third-highest rating in the agency's scale.

LONDON: Smartphones of Apple and Google are likely to face tighter regulation in Europe after a data protection panel ruled that location information collected by the devices should be classified as personal data, says a media report.

"Apple smartphones and those running on Google's Android system look set to come under tighter regulation in Europe, after an EU data protection advisory panel ruled on Wednesday that location information collected by the devices should be classed as personal data," the Financial Times reported.

We have seen the Nifty oscillating between 5400 and 5450 from the past three trading sessions with Nifty Futures' discount deepening to almost 10 points on Thursday.

However, we saw some short-covering in the last 30 minutes of trading, taking the basis to a premium of 8 points at market close, with Nifty Futures closing at 5,434. The shorts, built into the system after the 50-bp rate hike, are very much intact, especially in Bank Nifty Futures where opening interest is still around 18 lakh units. Among options, we observed heavy 'call' writing at 5400 strike which added 45 lakh units in its open interest in the past three trading sessions, making us believe that the Nifty will remain under pressure in days to come. We, however, believe that positional traders should expect the Nifty to take support at 5350, which, if breached, will fade hopes of recovery.

May 19 (Bloomberg) -- LinkedIn Corp., the largest professional-networking website, more than doubled on its first trading day, evidence of surging demand for social-media stock and a comeback in venture-backed initial public offerings. The stock, trading under the symbol LNKD, gained $49.25, or 109 percent, to $94.25 after earlier climbing to as high as $122.70 on the New York Stock Exchange.

LinkedIn finished the day with a market value of $8.91 billion, or about 24 times 2011 revenue, assuming first-quarter sales are matched the rest of the year. Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social network, would be valued at about $95 billion using the same multiple. The gains bode well for other Internet companies that have put off going public while honing efforts to make money and they may brighten prospects for the venture capital industry, which lost money amid an IPO drought.