story.news.yahoo.com Thu Jan 30, 9:22 AM ET

FORT LAUDERDALE (Reuters) - America Online Latin AmericaInc. (Nasdaq:AOLAC - news), which offers Internet services in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, said on Thursday it is no longer in conditional listing on the Nasdaq SmallCap Market, having met minimum capitalization requirements.

The company, backed by media giant AOL Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news) and Venezuela's Cisneros Group, said it will trade once again under the AOLA (NasdaqNM:AOLA - news) symbol when markets open on Thursday.

Nasdaq requires $35 million in market capitalization for the company to list its Class A common stock, AOL Latin America said.

Earlier this month, stock conversion by the two main shareholders of the company helped to boost its capitalization levels and gained it a six-month extension to comply with the $1 minimum bid price requirement for the Class A stock.

The shares closed at 52 cents on Wednesday. In the past year, they have ranged from 17 cents to $3.16.

www.vheadline.com Posted: Thursday, January 30, 2003 - 11:05:15 AM By: Robert Rudnicki

Former US President George P. Bush is heading to the Dominican Republic for a ;uxury holiday, where he will spend quality time with anti-government Venezuelan media tycoon Gustavo Cisneros, who President Hugo Chavez Frias accuses of leading a push for a coup d'etat to have him forcibly removed from office.

The Venezuelan leader has threatened to take action against many privately-owned media companies ... particularly the four privately-owned TV stations ... for broadcasting "seditious opposition propaganda" and a series of advertisements urging Venezuelans to support the work stoppage, which has had devastating effects on the country's economy.

Bush is set to arrive on the Caribbean island next Tuesday, where he will stay at the Casa de Campo resort owned by the Fanjul brothers, Alfi and Jose ... he will then join the Venezuelan media tycoon in several rounds of golf in the town of La Romana.

There are strong indications that Bush will also meet secretly with corruption-impeached former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez.

This will be Cisneros' second meeting with a former US President in less than a month, after holding talks with Jimmy Carter in Caracas several weeks ago. Carter returned to Venezuela to break the political deadlock following a direct invitation from Cisneros to do so.

www.msnbc.com

NEW YORK, Jan. 30 — Exxon Mobil Corp. on Thursday said quarterly profit rose by more than 50 percent, as sharply higher oil and gas prices helped fuel better-than-expected results.

	       EXXON MOBIL, THE WORLD’S No. 1 publicly-traded oil company, saw benchmark oil prices rise by more than 40 percent from the previous year’s quarter alongside fears of a potential war in Iraq and a labor strike in Venezuela, one of the largest crude exporters in the world.

       The company’s fourth-quarter net income rose to $4.09 billion, or 60 cents a share, as a result, jumping 53 percent from the $2.68 billion, or 39 cents a share, it reported for the year-ago quarter.        Excluding special items, the Irving, Texas company reported earnings per share of 56 cents, or 6 cents higher than the Thomson First Call consensus estimate. Revenue jumped 18 percent to $56.21 billion.        Shares of Exxon Mobil, a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, were up 1.7 percent Thursday morning, after rising almost 10 percent during the fourth quarter.        But while the rally in oil prices lifted its exploration and production division’s profit by 73 percent to $3 billion, it took a toll on the company’s refining and marketing and chemicals businesses, which use crude as a key raw material.

Playing now: • GDP grows at 0.7% rate • AOL loses nearly $100 billion • Dow, Exxon, Gillette, Boeing report earnings       “It was pretty clearly a strong quarter, though I don’t think it’s indicative of a company firing on all cylinders,” said Tyler Dann, an analyst at Banc of America Securities who rates the company a “neutral” and doesn’t own any shares.        “I think chemicals could clearly do better and even the downstream, you could argue, might do better down the road.”        Downstream, or refining and marketing, earnings fell 19 percent to $821 million, reflecting weaker industrywide conditions.        Refiners struggled through last year as high inventories of products such as jet fuel and gasoline hurt profit margins. Companies such as Exxon Mobil, which not only produce oil, but refine it into products such as gasoline to be sold at retail stations, are banking on a turnaround this year.        Banc of America’s Dann is one of the industry-watchers that believes the refining and marketing business may improve in 2003.        “We think that this company’s leverage to that is significant, especially outside the United States,” he said. “It just so happens that they have a more balanced asset portfolio between exploration and production, downstream and chemicals.”        The chemicals business posted a 64 percent drop in earnings to $76 million, on worldwide margins that fell because of higher costs for oil, gas and other raw materials.

www.forbes.com Reuters, 01.30.03, 9:28 AM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan Finance Minister Tobias Nobrega, outlining planned foreign exchange controls aimed at countering the impact of an opposition strike, said the government would begin with a fixed single exchange rate that would be adjusted monthly. The government would later introduce a dual rate when production in the strike-hit oil industry recovered and political tension eased in the world's No. 5 oil exporter, Nobrega said in an interview with state television. President Hugo Chavez's government last week suspended currency trading to halt capital flight and a sharp fall in the bolivar currency caused by the opposition strike, now in its ninth week, which has slashed vital oil exports. Opposition leaders launched the protest shutdown Dec. 2 to press the leftist leader to resign and call early elections. The sharp drop in oil income caused by the strike has pushed the economy deeper into recession and triggered a fiscal crisis. "In a first stage, we would start off with a single market (rate). The idea is that it would be fixed, and fixed monthly," Nobrega said. "As ... the oil industry gradually recovers its income flows and as the political situation calms down, we would begin a system of a dual exchange rate," he said.. Nobrega also confirmed that the government planned a tax on "speculative" foreign exchange transactions, which had already been announced by Chavez at the weekend. The minister gave no details of what fixed rate would be introduced, but banking and government sources said the range under discussion was between 1,500 bolivars and 1,850 bolivars to the U.S. dollar. Battered by economic and political uncertainty, the bolivar has tumbled by 28 percent against the greenback since the strike began and the local currency closed at 1,853 bolivars to the dollar on the last currency trading day, Jan 21. The foreign exchange market is due to reopen again Feb. 5. Using troops and loyal personnel, the government has partially restored oil production. Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said it reached 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd) Wednesday, although oil strike leaders put the figure at around 1 million bpd. Envoys from a six-nation "group of friends" formed to help solve the Venezuelan crisis were due to meet in Caracas Thursday and Friday to lend their support to negotiations between the government and opposition over elections to settle their conflict. The six nations, the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Spain and Portugal, will be backing peace efforts led by Organization of American States Secretary General Cesar Gaviria.

Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela — Under intense pressure from President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's banks agreed to abandon a 59-day-old opposition strike — the latest sign the drive to force Chavez's quick ouster was unraveling.

Wednesday's decision came as the government nibbled away at the strike's core: a walkout that hobbled the oil industry, the world's No. 5 exporter.

Output surpassed 1 million barrels a day this week, a third of normal. Oil provides half of government income and 70 percent of export revenue.