World?s Most Expensive Cities For Expats In 2012 [SLIDESHOW]

Olympics: 2012 turns to private sector for stadium wrap

The search for a private company to provide the fabric wrap to jazz up London's Olympic stadium began on Tuesday after the eye-catching 7 million pound ($11 million) covering was cut after a spending review last year.

The 496 million pound venue was designed with the curtain covering steel girders and grey concrete seating and would have allowed for colorful images and slogans to light up the stadium at night as well as minimizing crosswinds.

But it was dropped last October after the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), responsible for building the 2012 venues, were asked to find 20 million pounds of savings as the British government imposed the severest public spending cuts in generations to rein in a record peacetime budget deficit.

The move was criticized in some quarters, including the architect.

Organizers said at the time that its loss would not affect athletes' performance and that the stadium remained impressive, while real possibilities were being explored to find alternative funding.

On Tuesday, it opened an expressions of interest process, with a deadline of February 18.

London's Organizing Committee (LOCOG) said some sort of sponsorship could be available, but the wrap will not display sponsor logos during Games time because International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines prevent branding in venues.

We have had significant interest in supplying the stadium wrap' from the private sector, so now is the time to start a formal tender process, LOCOG chief executive Paul Deighton said in a statement.

There are some exciting ideas around, and we are running a process that is fair to those organizations that have expressed an interest.

It is not clear how sponsorship may be shown, and organizers would not place a value on any possible deal. They said they were keeping an open mind on the wrap's future design.

The 80,000-seater showpiece stadium, in Stratford, east London, will be used for the opening and closing ceremonies as well as the track and field events.

About four billion people are expected to tune in worldwide.

LOCOG has already raised 670 million pounds toward their 700 million pound sponsorship target, which will help fund their two billion pounds operational budget for the Games.

The future of the stadium once the Games have finished is still under consideration, with the Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) looking at rival bids from Premier League soccer teams Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. A third option is to reduce the stadium to a 25,000-seater athletics stadium.

Arena obesity drug disappoints; shares fall

NEW YORK - Arena Pharmaceuticals said its experimental obesity drug helped patients shed only about 10 pounds more than those taking placebos, sending its shares down 27 percent.

The company said it aimed to seek U.S. approval this year for Lorcaserin, a new type of obesity drug, based on the long-awaited new data that it said was favorable by a statistically significant margin.

Although the results technically satisfy the FDA requirements for approvability, we consider the weight loss benefits to be underwhelming at best, JPMorgan said in a research note.

The tiny San Diego company said the average patient taking Lorcaserin for a year had lost 8.2 percent of body weight, or 17.9 pounds. That compared with 3.4 percent of body weight, or 7.3 pounds, among patients taking placebos in the first of the company's three planned late-stage studies.

Lorcaserin met all its safety and efficacy goals, with an incidence of serious adverse events similar to placebo, Arena said.

Importantly, the 3,182-patient U.S. study showed no signs that the drug over a two-year treatment period caused heart valve damage, the problem that forced Wyeth (WYE.N) to recall its blockbuster fen-phen diet drugs in 1997. The recall cost Wyeth more than $21 billion in damages and legal expenses and has long cast a shadow over obesity treatments.

Like drugs used in fen-phen, Lorcaserin affects a messenger chemical called serotonin, but is designed to selectively target only one variety of the chemical -- and thereby sidestep heart-related side effects seen with Wyeth's withdrawn pills.

Arena said it expected to have final data from a second Phase III study in hand by September and hoped to ask U.S. regulators to approve Lorcaserin by year-end.

The future of Arena, which lost almost $240 million last year on revenue of less than $10 million, is highly dependent on whether the FDA approves Lorcaserin and whether patients embrace the treatment.

Shares of Arena fell to $3.30 in premarket trade from their closing price of $4.50 on Friday. (Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

No. 10 Nagoya, Japan