A round-up of today's other stories in brief...

Fannie Mae warns housing crisis will last

Fannie Mae warned that the US housing crisis would last well into next year as it reported a $2.3 billion (€1.5 billion) second-quarter loss and slashed its dividend after recording $6.2 billion in credit-related and investment losses yesterday.

The US government-sponsored mortgage financier said it was navigating "the most difficult housing market in more than 70 years" and added that homeowners' woes had taken a turn for the worse in July.

Fannie, which with its smaller peer Freddie Mac owns or guarantees about $5,300 billion in US mortgages, said defaults in July were higher than in any month during the second quarter and higher than expected.

The continued deterioration in the housing market forced Fannie to add $3.7 billion to its reserves to pay for expected future defaults and take a $883 million loss on its investment portfolio. The company said it expected credit-related losses, which totalled $5.3 billion in the second quarter, to peak in 2008. - ( Financial Times service)

Aer Arann names CEO designate

Regional airline Aer Arann has appointed Paul Schütz, its chief financial officer, as chief executive designate.

He will take over from current chief executive Garry Cullen on January 1st next when Mr Cullen will become a non-executive director of the board.

A qualified management and chartered accountant, Mr Schütz has 18 years' experience in the airline business, having worked with Ryanair, British Airways, Virgin Express and Eirjet.

Leeds raising Irish tracker rate

Leeds Building Society, the UK's seventh-largest building society, is increasing its Irish mortgage tracker rate - just four months after it last raised the rate - and cutting the commission it pays to mortgage brokers.

The lender, which had mortgage balances totalling £120 million (€151 million) in Ireland at the end of last year, is raising the margin on its tracker rate from 1.45 per cent to 1.75 per cent over the European Central Bank rate of 4.25 per cent from Thursday, bringing the rate from 5.7 per cent to 6 per cent.

Approved cases will be accepted on the old rate until August 20th. The building society last raised its tracker margin by 0.35 of a percentage point in April.

Profits drop likely for Collins Stewart

First-half profits at stockbroker Collins Stewart, due out next Tuesday, are expected by analysts to show a sharp drop as a slowdown in stock listings and uncertainty arising from the credit markets continue to take a toll on the business.

Analysts have not produced official half-year forecasts, but an appraisal of full-year expectations suggests that pretax profits for the first six months could fall by more than 50 per cent from last year's first-half tally of £52 million.

The broker revealed on Wednesday that it had received a preliminary bid approach, believed to be from an Asian company. - ( Financial Times service)

'Material' discovery off Brazilian coast

BG Group has made a "material" discovery in the Santos Basin off the coast of Brazil, an area that could be one of the world's next big oil and gas-producing regions.

The company said the Iara exploration well on the BM-S-11 concession area had discovered light crude oil, the third well on the concession to produce a positive result. - ( Financial Times service)