More from Australia, Britain, Canada, Chile, China, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, and Spain.

*Yield seekers must be aware that closed-end equity funds pay out only what they can collect in dividends. The risk of paying a premium based on the distributions is them being cut. Two equity funds today sharply slashed their payout ratios: Aberdeen Chile and Aberdeen Australia Equity.

*Our Mexican REIT, Fibra Uno Administracíon SA de CV, fell 2.5% yesterday as it went ex-div but recouped the loss in late trading today. FUN011: MEX in Mexico City or FBASF here.

*Ma vs Ma. Our Tencent Holding, TCEHY (in conversion) is now using its WeChatmobile phone messaging and social networking service to feed content to Sogou, theSohu search engine it bought into last autumn. Tencent, headed by Pony Ma, bought 36.5% of Sogou for $48 mn leaving Sohu the dominant player in China's no. 3 search provider. Now the duo will also allow WeChat public content to be viewed and indexed by Sogou; private content is not very well protected in China either. Sogou has 12% of the Chinese search business after Baidu (60%) and Qihoo 360(26%.)

Meanwhile Alibaba has gotten back into focus (from babymilk formula) and is buying the third of UCWeb it doesn't yet own for $1.3 bn. That values UCWeb, a mobile browser firm, at double the valuation of Baidu. UK has 550 mn users, mostly in China, and its chief, Yu Yongfu, will head a new mobile business unit at Alibaba, headed by Jack Ma. Alibaba will ipo in the US this summer.

Moody's downrated China Mobile for investing in Thailand's True Corp which is “credit negative.”

*Delek Group chairman and 62%-shareholder Yitzhak Tshuva sold 0.75% of the shares he owns to finance the Leviathan offshore gas investment it is making following divestitures in the US and Europe. This time the buyer is Israeli, Bank Hapoalim, which paid NIS 125 mn, NIS 1440.5/sh getting a 2% discount. DGRLY stock is up ~50% in the last 12 months because of offshore gas hopes according to Globes Israel website.

*Spain's Abengoa won a US Dept of Energy contract to develop new storage systems for solar-fuelled thermo-electric plants, together with the Colorado School of Mines and the National Renewable Energy Lab. ABGB is the only commercial partner in the deal worth euros 1.3 mn. The problem of renewables is that they do not produce energy 24-hours/day every day so storage systems are a key to clean energy. ABGB has 1223 mW of solar installed and another 430 mW under construction, and is a global leader in solar-thermal generation using either tower or parabolic trough technology.

*Moody's downrated all Canadian big banks today, including Bank of Nova Scotia,to negative because of the likely impact of the Ottawa regulators' “bail-in” proposals which will require that bank creditors take a haircut if there are problems at too-big-to-fail banks. BNS.

*If CI Financial is able to max out its proposed share buyback, writes Barclaysanalyst John Aiken, “this would increase EPS by more than 4%”. We were caught wrong-footed on CIFAF when BNS opted to sell its C$72 mn stake. To boost its stock price, the Canadian wealth manager firm announced plans to buy as much as 9% of the float starting a week from today. Aiken expects that EPS can rise to C$2.25 from C$2.16 if the buyback hits target levels. CIFAF

*Broker Cantor Fitzgerald warns that nuclear energy setbacks will hold back the price of uranium produced by Cameco. A court in Fukui Prefecture (Japan) orderedKansai Electric Power not to restart two reactors at Ohi because of earthquake risk recently. The impact on demand is marginal because Japan continues to buy all the uranium it contracted for before the Fukishima disaster, and is piling it up. But it now appears that only half the 12 units Cantor expected to restart this year will in fact do so. The Court of Appeals in Osaka has rejected other lawsuits against utes pending a Japanese safety assessment. CCJ

*Australian Orocobre Ltd. (OROCF) was named as a “challenger to the oligopoly” in lithium by seekingalpah.com because of its Argentina project uncovered by Frida Ghitis, Salar de Olaroz, which will turn out potash and boron as well. Production starts at the end of this summer with an eventual output of 17,500 metric tonnes of batter-grade lithium carbonate/yr. It is 25% owned by the battery arm ofToyota, the Japanese carmaker.

*Covidien won US FDA approval of its Apollo Onxy micro catheter for use in brain arterio-renous malformation (bAVM) embolization. This occurs when arteries link directly up to veins, cutting oxygen to the brain, and occurs mostly in men. The new detachable catheter is easier to retrieve than prior instruments for bAVM surgery. COV is extremely innovative and announces a new medical gizmo a couple of times each week. It is Irish.

*It sounds even worse than bribing doctors to prescribe your drugs. The latest Asia scandal makes GlaxoSmithKline look like an angel. Japanese cops arrested an ex-Novartis researcher for falsifying data to boost sales of its blood pressure drug Diovan, part of a general probe of NVS, a Swiss firm.

Patti the biotech maven thinks GSK may wind up buying the new spun-off clinical sub of Theravance, with which it is working on Breo Elipta chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and asthma inhalers.

*Paddy Power plc fell 2.5% in Irish trading today, to euros 50.21. We reported an institutional partial sale yesterday after the Irish market was closed for the day. PDYPF trades very scantly in the USA so there are limited arbirtraging possibilities.

*My Veresen DRIP enrollment was cancelled by e-trade because US investors are not eligible. I will try signing up directly with FCGYF. Why should Canadians be able to buy shares at 5% off and US investors not? Versen is a Calgary energy company operating two pipelines, other natural gas facilities, and a power business. It has the only permits currently allowing LNG liquefaction of Alberta gas for export on the Pacific coast.

Veresen is selling $200 mn in 5-yr medium-term notes to pay back its senior debt coming due later this year on July 10 at par + $2 ($1002.14/bond) . Saving 2.54% in interest from the refinancing. The new notes will yield 3.06%.

*VA reader CP wondered why her brokerage said she has to put up $5 mn to buy into Morgan Stanley Institutional Frontier Emerging Markets, an open-end mutual fund traded as MFMIX which I wrote about yesterday. She wondered if her broker was right. Yes is the answer.

CP, a long-term subscriber, didn't invest in the predecessor company, a closed-end fund available in retail amounts before the conversion last year. Its largest investments (end-Mar) were: National Bank of Kuwait; Gulf International Securities; Emaar Properties, Qatar Natl Bank, Ooredoo QSC (formerly Qatar Telecom), YPF SA, First Gulf Bank, Afren plc (Nigeria oil and gas), Burgan Bank SAK, and Drake & Scull International (Dubai construction). In that top-10 list only YPF and Afren are not from the Persian Gulf. It was over 59% invested in the Middle East and Africa at the end of Mar., but may have shifted given the MSCI re-rating of Gulf markets to emerging from frontier markets. It has just over $500 mn under management since the conversion, and including gains in its holdings. Those who kept their stake are allowed to invest modest amounts into the fund which has a 5-star rating from Morningstar.