* Social media set to provide new battlegroundBy Keith WeirLONDON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - Publicity seekers who turn their bodies into billboards to advertise brands during the Olympic Games in London next year face heavy fines under laws to protect official sponsors.Restrictions on so-called ambush marketing will also extend beyond the main Olympic sites to landmark buildings including clock tower Big Ben, parliament and nearby Westminster Abbey, according to rules set to be passed by legislators.The Olympics has a core group of sponsors with long-term contracts, while other companies sign up for individual Games. London is aiming to raise around 700 million pounds from domestic sponsors for 2012.These lucrative contracts risk being devalued by publicity stunts whereby companies obtain exposure — sometimes literally — to a television audience of billions.The government plans to “prohibit advertising on the human body,” the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said. Breaking the rules could result in a fine of up to 20,000 pounds.An individual invaded a diving event at the Athens Games in 2004 with a company name daubed on his bare chest.Games organisers have tried to clamp down on unauthorised product placement since the 1996 Games in Atlanta, when sportswear company Nike placed advertisements near the stadiums and established a “Nike village” even though it was not an official sponsor.Company directors and land owners behind ambush marketing in London also face prosecution unless they can prove they had no knowledge of the action or tried to prevent it.”With half the world watching on TV, the temptation for people to try to freeload on this event is enormous,” said Tim Jones, a partner at lawfirm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, official legal services provider to London 2012.Unlike events such as the soccer World Cup, there is no advertising allowed inside Olympic venues. Sponsors get protected rights to advertise within a few hundred metres of each venue during the Games.Jones said that the level of sponsorship which London had attracted showed that companies felt they would get value for money in London.”That (brand) protection is a fundamental part of the sponsor’s willingness to invest. Through the downturn in 2007 and 2008, sponsors have stuck with it and continued to come forward,” he told Reuters.The lastest guidelines referred to billboards and bodies but Jones believed that adequate legislation was in place to thwart online ambush marketing.The aim was not to punish people chatting on Facebook about the result of the 100 metres, but to prevent companies from falsely claiming an association with the Games.”The immediate focus of these regulations is on the physical stuff, but the 2006 Olympics Act legislation will capture violations on social media.”

* More transparency need for financial products* Banks should not have “conflict of interest” with clientsBy Daniel Flynn and Leigh ThomasPARIS, Oct 14 (Reuters) - France will propose on Saturday the G20 adopt a set of principles to protect consumers of financial services aimed at restoring trust in the sector and preventing a repeat of the global financial crisis, Finance Minister Francois Baroin said.Anger at the role of the financial sector in provoking a crisis which forced Western nations to pump billions of dollars into saving their banks while austerity and job losses hurt ordinary taxpayers, has sparked a global movement which is due to hold international protests on Saturday as G20 ministers meet in Paris.Baroin said the boom in complex products like NINJA mortgages during the U.S. housing boom — loans targeted at people with No-Income No Job or Assets — showed the “cynicism” and a “lack of responsibility” in parts of the financial services sector which helped trigger the worst economic crisis since World War II.”The mispricing of risk due to complex financial products … has nurtured mistrust, the most destabilising element for the world economy,” Baroin said, ahead of the two-day meeting of G20 finance ministers starting Friday.”We must recreate the conditions for confidence. That is one of the G20’s priorities on financial issues,” he told a conference on consumer protection in the financial sector hosted by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).Baroin said the key elements were that financial products should be tailored to the needs of the economy, rather than maximising banks’ revenues, and they should be suited to consumers’ ability to pay for them.Products must also be transparent and clearly understandable for both buyers and sellers of financial products. Banks themselves must have a better understanding of the risk posed by their products.”One of the great problems of the Lehman Brothers’ crisis was that a part of financial institutions were unable to say what their risk position was,” Baroin said.The list of principles would also aim to eliminate the conflict of interest between financial services providers and their clients, Baroin said.The U.S. Security and Exchange Commission security regulator has already proposed restricting financial firms from betting against the bundled products they create and sell to investors, after a U.S. Senate report accused Goldman Sachs of positioning itself to profit from clients’ losses.The code would also commit G20 members to ensuring fair competition in the financial services sector, including better mobility between service providers, more choice for consumers and more transparency to make products easily comparable.

The report said those factors will make Wall Street’s bonuses, jobs and profits weak this year.”The securities industry had a strong start to 2011, but its prospects have cooled considerably for the second half of this year,” DiNapoli said. “It now seems likely that profits will fall sharply, job losses will continue, and bonuses will be smaller than last year. These developments will have a rippling effect through the economy and adversely impact state and city tax collections.”Last year, securities-related activities accounted for 14 percent of the state’s tax revenue and almost 7 percent of the city’s tax revenue, the report found.One in 8 jobs in New York City and 1 in 13 jobs in New York State are linked to the securities industry. Given the current weakness, tax collections are likely to fall short of city and state targets in their current fiscal years and may decline more the following year.”As we know, when Wall Street slows, New York City and New York State’s budgets feel the impact, and that is a concern,” DiNapoli said.