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Archive for December, 2011

Date Certain M&A of Cortical PTY Ltd. – its Assets, Intellectual Property and Trade Secrets

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Distressed IP, Gerbsman Partners, Inetellectual Property, Investments, Life Science, National Venture Capital Association, NVCA, Venture Capital, Venturebeat on December 6, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SALE OF CORTICAL PTY LTD

Gerbsman Partners (www.gerbsmanpartners.com) has been retained by Cortical Pty. Ltd. (www.cortical.com.au) to solicit interest for the acquisition of all, or substantially all of, Cortical’s assets.

Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, Cortical is a discovery-phase, biotechnology company that is focused on the development of inhibitors of MIF (macrophage migration inhibitory factor) for the treatment of inflammation and other diseases.

Cortical has recently overcome a major roadblock in MIF research, resulting in a cellular assay platform that has enabled fast compound ranking, SAR and screening.  Cortical has developed a library of proprietary MIF inhibitors, including a primary scaffold currently in lead optimization.

To date, Cortical has raised more than $5 million in three rounds of venture capital financing, lead by GBS Ventures (Melbourne, Australia).  In addition, Cortical has benefited from more than $1 million in government assisted grants.

IMPORTANT LEGAL NOTICE:

The information in this memorandum does not constitute the whole or any part of an offer or a contract.

The information contained in this memorandum relating to Cortical’s Assets (as defined herein) has been supplied by Cortical.  It has not been independently investigated or verified by Gerbsman Partners or their respective agents.

Potential purchasers should not rely on any information contained in this memorandum or provided by Gerbsman Partners (or their respective staff, agents, and attorneys) in connection herewith, whether transmitted orally or in writing as a statement, opinion, or representation of fact.  Interested parties should satisfy themselves through independent investigations as they or their legal and financial advisors see fit.

Gerbsman Partners, and their respective staff, agents, and attorneys, (i) disclaim any and all implied warranties concerning the truth, accuracy, andcompleteness of any information provided in connection herewith and (ii) do not accept liability for the information, including that contained in this memorandum, whether that liability arises by reasons of Cortical’s or Gerbsman Partners’ negligence or otherwise.

Any sale of the Cortical Assets will be made on an “as-is,” “where-is,” and “with all faults” basis, without any warranties, representations, or guarantees, either expressed orimplied, of any kind, nature, or type whatsoever from, or on behalf of Cortical and Gerbsman Partners. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, Cortical and Gerbsman Partners and their respective staff, agents, and attorneys,  hereby expressly disclaim any and all implied warranties concerning the condition of the Cortical Assets and any portions thereof, including, but not limited to, environmental conditions, compliance with any government regulations or requirements, the implied warranties of habitability, merchantability, or fitness for a particular purpose.

This memorandum contains confidential information and is not to be supplied to any person without Gerbsman Partners’ prior consent. Thismemorandum and the information contained herein are subject to the Confidential Disclosure Agreement attached hereto as Appendix B.

Company Profile

Cortical is a discovery-phase, Australian biotechnology company developing small-molecule inhibitors of MIF for the treatment of inflammation and other diseases.

Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor (MIF) is a differentiated disease target:
·     MIF is a unique pro-inflammatory protein.
·     The MIF knock-out mouse has a normal phenotype, except in disease models.
·     MIF plays a pivotal role in immune-inflammatory diseases, atherosclerosis, metabolic disease and cancer.

Cortical has recently overcome a major roadblock in MIF research, resulting in a cellular assay platform that has enabled fast compound ranking, SAR and screening.  Cortical has developed a library of proprietary MIF inhibitors, including a primary scaffold currently in lead optimization.

To date, Cortical has raised more than $5 million in three rounds of venture capital financing, lead by GBS Ventures (Melbourne, Australia).  In addition, Cortical has benefited from more than $1 million in government assisted grants.

Cortical’s program is lead by Prof Eric Morand who is both a highly respected thought leader in this field and a practicing Rheumatologist.  Dr Morand has published widely; including seminal MIF research and technical reviews: Morand et al., MIF: a new cytokine link between rheumatoid arthritis and atherosclerosis. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 5, 399–411 (1 May 2006); see Appendix C. The technology originated at Monash University and Cortical was established to exploit its unique know-how around the inflammation target MIF.  Cortical is seeking partners with resources to fully support the MIF program, thereby maintaining its leadership position in the development of MIF-based therapies.

Cortical believes its assets are attractive for a number of reasons:

Cortical has recently overcome a major roadblock in MIF drug development, resulting in a robust cellular assay platform that has enabledCortical to advance their primary MIF inhibitor scaffold to lead optimisation.   Until recently, Cortical and other competitors in the field ranked compounds using various physical assays which were not considered a reliable predictor of in vivo activity.  Utilizing unique target know-how, Cortical has now successfully developed a robust cellular assay to enable drug development against this well validated biological target.

Cortical’s program provides the platform for MIF inhibitor development:

1.    Composition of Matter and Use claims over independent scaffolds
2.    Library of  >1000 compounds, SAR driven program
3.    Lead candidates in optimization phase
4.    Proprietary  assay methodology (TRADE SECRET) – unique in MIF space
5.    X-ray crystallography (TRADESECRET – Cortical compound-MIF co-crystals)
6.    Preclinical oral proof of concept established in several disease models
7.    Mechanistically driven clinical strategy

Impact of Technology on the Market:

Cortical’s program has targeted first-in-class oral cytokine inhibitor drugs with potential applications in inflammatory disease and cancer indications.
The inflammatory disease market is over $60 BN annually with strong recent growth expected to continue[1 – footnote) . Future growth in this sector may be driven by a new wave of targeted therapies based on orally available small molecules.
MIF is a unique cytokine-like molecule which has been validated as a therapeutic target in a wide range of inflammatory diseases (such as RA, asthma/COPD, lupus, MS, SLE colitis, atherosclerosis), metabolic diseases and cancers.

•  The inflammation market has an unmet need for oral targeted small-molecule approaches
•  Small-molecule MIF inhibition offer huge advantages to a developer:

A.  a biologically distinct target, in an uncrowded space
B.  opportunity in a wide breadth of inflammatory indications § blockbuster (e.g. RA) and niche indications (e.g. SLE)
C  oral administration – a competitive advantage compared with biologicals
D.  mechanism-based application to enable steroid sparing therapy
E.  additional roles of MIF in atherosclerosis, metabolic disease and cancer

•  Potential first-in-class line of therapeutics
§  There are no small-molecule targeted therapies currently approved in inflammation.
§  There are no known clinical-stage MIF antagonist programs worldwide.

Cortical’s Pipeline

Cortical is developing first-in-class small molecule cytokine antagonist compounds which directly target MIF.  Cortical’s novel small molecule MIF inhibitors have been discovered through a structure-based drug design approach, proprietary compound-target crystallography data, and proprietary screening assays.
Cortical molecules have good drug development characteristics such as novelty, ease of synthesis, stability, oral bioavailability, lack of off-target interactions and clean non-GLP toxicity profiles.
Cortical compounds have demonstrated preclinical proof of concept with once daily oral activity in in vivo models of rheumatoid arthritis, atheroma, endotoxic shock, delayed type hypersensitivity, and acute liver inflammation.

Cortical’s Intellectual Property and Trade Secret Summary

Cortical Pty Ltd has 4 active patent applications in various stages of approval, allfiled as Composition of Matter applications.  Three applications have been filed around a benzamidazole pharmacophore (Therapeutic molecules and methods 1, MIF inhibitors, and Therapeutic Small Molecules and Uses Thereof).  A fourth patent application has been filed around a bicyclic pharmacophore (Novel methods for treatment of inflammatory diseases).  This is presented in more detail in Appendix B.

In addition to patents, Cortical has developed and holds a number of trade secret data packs:

(1)  The cellular assay:
Following feedback from large pharmaceutical company partners, Cortical focused on reducing to practice a cellular assay amenable to high throughput screening, and has been successful. Other players in the field have not succeeded in solving this technical problem; literature biological assays do not reliably predict activity against the MIF target.  Physical assays such as tautomerase and biacore show binding of compounds to MIF but these have been shown to not be directly predictive of MIF in vivo activity inhibition.
Cortical has strategically elected not topatent or disclose this assay system to any parties so that this unique ability to successfully rank compounds based on in vitro cellular data remains a competitive advantage.

(2)  The crystal structures:
Cortical holds a number of high resolution proprietary compound-protein X-ray co-crystallography data-sets which demonstrate how Cortical compounds bind to MIF.  At 1.6 Å, these crystal structure data-sets further strengthen the SAR rationale.

Management

Nicole Fowler –CEO:

Nicole Fowler was appointed CEO of Cortical in October 2008.
Nicole has a BSc (Hons) from Monash University, an MBA from Melbourne Business School, with over 15 years experience in biotech. Previous roles include big pharma early discovery (SmithKline Beecham, USA), clinical trial management (Parexel, USA and ICTI, Europe) and the manufacture of generic sterile injectables and biologicals (Southern Dental Industries, Australia and Southern Cross Biotech, Australia). During the last 8 years Nicole has focused on working within young biotech companies managing the translation of academicwork into preclinical and clinical development, capital raising, and in-licensing/out-licensing of intellectual property.

Professor Eric Morand, MD, PhD – Scientific Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer

Eric is a Professor of Medicine at the Monash University Centre for Inflammatory Diseases at Monash MedicalCentre, Melbourne. Eric’s laboratory first identified the role of MIF in rheumatoid arthritis and SLE. He is an acknowledged expert in research on MIF research and glucocorticoid-regulated proteins, and is an author of over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals in the area of inflammatory diseases. His academic research group has won grants from the NIH, National Health and Medical Research Council Australia, Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and Arthritis Foundation of Australia. He is also the Deputy Director, Rheumatology Unit, Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne, Australia and heads the Monash Lupus Clinic.

Board of Directors

·     Nigel Stokes, Chairman: Sydney, Australia
·     Brigitte Smith: Managing Partner, GBS Ventures – Melbourne, Australia
·     Prof Eric Morand: Founder – Melbourne Australia

The assets of Cortical will be sold in whole or in part (collectively, the ” Cortical Assets”). The sale of these assets is being conducted with the cooperation of Cortical. Cortical will be available to assist purchasers with due diligence and a prompt, efficient transition to new ownership. Notwithstanding the foregoing, Cortical should not be contacted directly without the prior consent of Gerbsman Partners.

The Bidding Process for Interested Buyers

Interested and qualified parties will be expected to sign a Confidential Disclosure Agreement (attached hereto as Appendix A) to have access to key members of management and intellectual capital teams and the due diligence “war room” documentation (“Due Diligence Access”). Each interested party, as a consequence of the Due Diligence Access granted to it, shall be deemed to acknowledge and represent (i) that it is bound by the bidding procedures described herein; (ii) that it has had an opportunity toinspect and examine the Cortical Assets and to review all pertinent documents and information with respect thereto; (iii) that it is not relying upon anywritten or oral statements, representations, or warranties of Gerbsman Partners, or their respective staff, agents, or attorneys; and (iv) all such documents and reports have been provided solely for the convenience of the interested party, and Gerbsman Partners (and their respective staff, agents, or attorneys) do not make any representations as to the accuracy or completeness of the same.

Following an initial round of due diligence, interested parties will be invited to participate with a sealed bid, for the acquisition of the Cortical Assets. Each sealed bid must be submitted so that it is received by Gerbsman Partners no later than Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 5:00pm Pacific Daylight Time (the “Bid Deadline”)  to Gerbsman Partners office at 211 Laruel Grove Avenue, Kentfield, CA 94904. Please also email steve@gerbsmanpartners.com <mailto:steve@gerbsmanpartners.com> with any bid.

Bids should identify those assets being tendered for in a specific and identifiable way.

Any person or other entity making a bid must be prepared to provide independent confirmation that they possess the financial resources to complete the purchase.  All bids must be accompanied by a refundable deposit in the amount of$200,000 (payable to Cortical Pty. Ltd.).  The deposit should be wired to Gerbsman Partners Trust Account.  The winning bidder will be notified within 3 business days of the Bid Deadline. The deposit will be held in trust by Gerbsman Partners.  Unsuccessful bidders will have their deposit returned to them within 3 business days of notification that they are an unsuccessful bidder.

Cortical reserves the right to, in its sole discretion, accept or reject any bid, or withdraw any or all assets from sale.  Interested parties should understand that it is expected that the highest and best bid submitted will be chosen as the winning bidder andbidders may not have the opportunity to improve their bids after submission.

Cortical will require the successful bidder to close within a 7 day period. Any or all of the assets of Cortical will be sold on an “as is, where is” basis, with no representation or warranties whatsoever.

All sales, transfer, and recording taxes, stamp taxes, or similar taxes, if any, relating to the sale of the Cortical Assets shall be the sole responsibility of the successful bidder and shall be paid to Cortical at the closing of each transaction.

For additional information, please see below and/or contact:

Steven R. Gerbsman
Steve@gerbsmanpartners.com
Gerbsman Partners
(415) 456-0628

Kenneth Hardesty
Ken@gerbsmanpartners.com
Gerbsman Partners
(408) 591-7528

Philip Taub
Phil@gerbsmanpartners.com
Gerbsman Partners
(917) 650-5958

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Building For The Long Haul

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, FaceBook, Gerbsman Partners, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Technology, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from TechCrunch.

At a recent Startup School, Mark Zuckerberg made some very poignant comments about Silicon Valley’s lack of long-term focus.  While the quick turnover of capital, people and innovation makes the Valley an incredibly attractive place for starting companies, it also produces an environment that’s almost hostile when it comes to building them for the long haul. The tension is remarkable, yet it’s rarely highlighted among the more explicit challenges – say, going up against the 800lb gorilla – faced by entrepreneurs.

Every so often, my non-tech friends half-jokingly ask, “Have you sold yet?”  And for the first few years of Box’s existence, to placate them, I would ask for just a couple more quarters. Right after we get our next product to market, after we double again, and so on.  But soon it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to stop.  I couldn’t.  There was just too much to do, too much unexplored territory. Even when things weren’t going well, the challenge of righting them was like another shot of pure adrenaline.

In many ways, starting a company in college (isolation) in 2005, before the dawn of TechCrunch (insulation), permitted a certain innocence.  My co-founder and I didn’t fully understand the Valley’s business model and constant churning nature until we were smack in the middle of it.

The advantages of being here are obvious – vastly more talent, capital, experience, and resources than anywhere else – but we often forget that most of us started companies simply as a vehicle to get our (hopefully) world-changing products to market.  How quaint.  It’s all too easy to get swept up in the social pressures and biases of the Valley, where we idolize those that have sold their companies for large sums of money, mourn those that didn’t sell soon enough, and overlook the decisions (and non-decisions) it took to build companies with true longevity.  Victory begins to have a complex definition.

Referring to the mysterious craft of timing exits, one of the greatest investors in the Valley recently told me, “you have to be suboptimal to be optimal.”  While remarkably true, this statement assumes you’re optimizing for some knowable, local maximum – what if you’re trying to build something far beyond today’s vantage point?  We often miss the entire point of why most of us start companies in the first place, which is why Zuckerberg was universally seen as arrogant and foolish when he passed up the opportunity to sell Facebook for $750 million to Viacom, even by the smartest and most experienced minds in tech.  He executed brilliantly, and now looks like a genius.  Yet, had it gone another way, most would have said, “I knew that thing had no legs.”  Funny how that works.

With hindsight being 20/20, it doesn’t take much imagination to concede that the regret of not pursuing the opportunity to truly change the world might outweigh the near-term guarantee of a robust bank account.  Even so, the odds – and public opinion – are generally stacked against you when you decide to optimize for the former.

Everything is working against you

When nearly everyone is rooting for the underdog, maintaining and gaining market leadership can be antithetical to the very nature of the Valley. In building for the long haul, you’re competing with dozens if not hundreds of companies with equal determination to move upstream.

Even the motives of the constituencies presumably on your side – customers, employees, founders and early investors – are not always perfectly aligned. While software is busy eating the world, investors are still only content with eating IRR.   The very financiers that make millions building up one internet leader eventually must go on and bankroll its demise.  As they should.

And if you successfully quell external forces and internal conflicts to reach a stage of public liquidity – the new Holy Grail in the Valley – it’s not as if you’re magically home free.  In nearly all respects, your problems only compound.  Vested employees parachute out, Sarbox slows you down, analysts speculate on acquisitions you have little control over, and the news cycle surrounding your company’s every move is now tied to the ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ decisions of investors arguably less savvy than your Sand Hill neighbors.  Can you imagine what would have happened to Facebook’s stock had they launched the News Feed as a public company?  It seems we’ll soon find out.

With opposing forces like these, why would anyone even try to build for the long haul?  Well for starters, it’s ridiculously exciting and also extremely gratifying, and you create far better companies and products in the process. If you do it right, you have a chance to change the world.

How you build for the long haul

1. Set up a vision that puts you many years out

Be sure your company is tackling a long-term, complex, pseudo-existential challenge that isn’t going away anytime soon.  Not only are these missions the most fun to be a part of, they’re the only ones that survive over the long haul.  Amazon.com started out as “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore.” Now it “strives to be Earth’s most customer-centric company where people can find and discover virtually anything they want to buy online.”  Platitudes aside, gnarly goals are essential.  And getting your vision right is so important, because it should drive everything you do, your product most importantly.  

Early on at Box, our vision was less than crisp and put us into a head-on collision with giants that would also want to help consumers store files online.  Through relentless refinement and imagining the shifting landscape over a decade-long view, we developed a roadmap and mission that represented perhaps a much larger challenge (making enterprise collaboration and content management simple), but one that allowed us to imagine how we could fit into this transitioning world.  This dramatically changed what we would develop and how we would go to market, always acting as a straight-forward guide for what we would do next.

Building for the long haul gives you the freedom and clarity to build out a product over a much greater time horizon, realizing an ultimate vision that is far into the future.  Fred Wilson calls it the Long Roadmap.  You get to move beyond a range of visibility limited this quarter’s priorities.  And it means that your product today will look almost nothing like what you eventually want it to become.  The stretch of time betweenMicrosoft Windows 1.0 and Windows 95 was a decade.  Even fifteen years after that, the product still has dozens of iterations to go.  I’m guessing with Evernote’s vision of “Remember Everything,” they’re going to be at this for some time.

2. Build an organization that can get you there

With long-term product planning comes the opportunity to build an entire organization based on your terms and vision.  You get to set the culture, pace, tone and attitude.  Watching a startup go from a handful of people to hundreds is an incredible experience. I can only imagine what it’s like to take it to thousands.  People will come and go at varying points; some will scale and evolve as quickly as your company and mission, others won’t.

It’s critical that your culture is established and enforced early on, in large part by hiring people that fit, and maintaining that bar without exception.  How many times have we heard that A-players hire other A’s, yet how many organizations stay disciplined when having to quickly build up their ranks?  Is your culture institutionalized to the point that deviating is a fire-able offense?  Are people unwaveringly convinced by and committed to the vision?

Most importantly, you must build an organization that understands this fight will have multiple rounds, and will require excruciating persistence and dedication.  Sometimes this is about long hours and insanely difficult work.  Other times it’s about maintaining composure when dealing with the mental stresses and strategic challenges that come with each of the many revolutions.  Every now and then it’s about complete reinvention.

3. Constantly reinvent yourself, your product and your ideals. Oh, and occasionally that vision

Nothing about the internet is set in stone.  The cycles between technology revolutions are shortening with every major innovation.  By extension, your company’s vision, competencies, and product should always be subject to reinvention.  Organizations that last are constant avengers of the status-quo.

Google made it its mission to manage the world’s information. As we’ve moved toward more of a social vs. indexed web, and now that computing cycles and storage have become exponentially cheaper, this strategy on its own looks less compelling. Google realizes the profundity of this change, and is shuffling resources and people extensively.  Larry “what-is-cloud-computing” Ellison has done an about-face, and is (at least publicly) betting the farm on the cloud.

If you’re not incessantly checking to see if your company’s tactics, strategies, and assets align with the current (and future) market, there’s simply no way to win.  Constant reinvention of your ideals and product is the only path to survival.  Amazon discovered that selling DVDs was no harder than selling books, and selling digital media was not so different from selling DVDs. Now, supplying devices is essential to selling that digital media.  Reinvention.

Now, I’m not saying that no one should ever sell.  God no.  There are generally more reasons than not to sell a company.  Sometimes you’ve been at it long enough, and you want a great landing for employees and investors. Sometimes your technology’s adoption will be accelerated or more impactful under another owner. And on the internet, this ambiguity is at its highest – with few moats to rely on, it’s a wonder that any survive.

But perhaps it’s the challenge, and thus the scale of the opportunity, that makes it so exciting. With the right conviction, you can build for a distant period with full acceptance of the difficulties and costs of doing so, ensuring that your product and organization are always better positioned in the future than the present.

And for those that can do this –reconcile the need to constantly grow and innovate with the reality that most companies fail or are subsumed– the glory and benefits are sweet.”

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China Reserve-Ratio Cut May Signal Slowdown

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, Economy, Investments, Market research, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 1, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Article from Bloomberg.

China’s reduction in reserve requirements for banks, the first since 2008, may signal government concern that a slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy is deepening.

Reserve ratios will decline by 50 basis points effective Dec. 5, the central bank said on its website yesterday. The move may add 350 billion yuan ($55 billion) to the financial system, according to UBS AG.

A report due today may show that China’s manufacturing contracted for the first time since February 2009, and the nation’s stocks had their biggest decline in almost four months yesterday. Premier Wen Jiabao aims to sustain the economic expansion as Europe’s debt crisis saps exports, a credit squeeze hits small businesses and a crackdown on real-estate speculation sends home sales sliding.

“The deceleration of growth may have become faster than expected on increased external uncertainty, a sagging property market” and difficulties for smaller companies, said Liu Li- gang, a Hong Kong-based economist with Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. who previously worked for the World Bank. The manufacturing report may be “worse than expected,” Liu said.

The Purchasing Managers’ Index may dip to 49.8 for November, a level marking a contraction, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of 18 economists. That data is due at 9 a.m. local time today. Consumer price gains eased to 5.5 percent in October, compared with a government target of 4 percent, as exports rose the least in almost two years.

Joint Action

The policy move yesterday came two hours before the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the monetary authorities of the U.K., Canada, Japan and Switzerland said they were cutting the cost of emergency dollar funding to ease strains in financial markets.

Spurring lending in China, the nation that contributes most to global growth, may boost confidence as Europe’s crisis worsens. Stocks and the euro rallied after the moves.

China is at “the beginning of monetary easing,” said Qu Hongbin, a Hong Kong-based economist for HSBC Holdings Plc, adding that “aggressive” action is warranted. While more reserve-ratio cuts may follow, interest rates may remain unchanged until inflation is below 3 percent, he said.

The latest change means that reserve requirements for the biggest lenders will fall to 21 percent from a record 21.5 percent, based on past statements.

‘Liquidity Crunch’

Mizuho Securities Asia Ltd. said that the timing of the Chinese announcement “could be linked” to the move by the Fed and others. In October 2008, China cut interest rates within minutes of reductions by the Fed and five other central banks as the global financial crisis worsened.

“Some form of coordination may have gone into this,” said Ken Peng, a Beijing-based economist at BNP Paribas SA. “But I think China is pretty urgently in need of a reserve ratio requirement cut anyway — otherwise, we’d have a liquidity crunch in the New Year.”

Barclays Capital yesterday forecast at least three more reserve ratio cuts by mid-2012 and said two interest-rate reductions are likely next year.

Yesterday’s move may have been partly a response to inflows of foreign-exchange drying up, according to UBS’s Hong Kong- based economist Wang Tao. Central bank data released this month suggested that capital has been flowing out of China.

Growth is slowing across Asia, the region that led the world recovery, with India today reporting its economy expanded the least in two years and Thailand cutting interest rates. In China, the clampdown on property speculation has added to the threat of a deeper slowdown after a 9.1 percent expansion in the third quarter that was the smallest in two years.

Home Sales

Property risks are “overshadowing” the outlook as falling sales threaten to trigger developer collapses, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said this week. Agile Property Holdings Ltd. (3383), the developer in which JPMorgan Chase & Co. owns a stake, has said it will stop buying land until at least February and is slowing construction at some projects.

October housing transactions declined 25 percent from September and prices fell in 33 of 70 cities, according to government data. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 3.3 percent yesterday after Xia Bin, an academic adviser to the central bank, said credit should remain “relatively tight” and people shouldn’t hope for a reversal of housing market curbs.

China hasn’t raised interest rates since July, the longest pause since increases began in October last year. Benchmark one- year borrowing costs stand at 6.56 percent. The last interest- rate cut was in December 2008, during the global financial crisis.

Premier Wen Jiabao said last month the government will fine-tune economic policies as needed to sustain growth while pledging to maintain curbs on real estate.”

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