February 9, 2008 — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world’s biggest securities firm, expanded its health insurance plans last year to cover sex-reassignment surgery as it seeks to build a more diverse workforce, Fortune reported.

The employee plans covers transgender-related prescription drugs, such as testosterone injections, and doesn’t include electrolysis and other cosmetic treatments, the magazine reported, citing spokeswoman Gia Moron.

Goldman Sachs’ health-maintenance and preferred-provider organizations offer the surgery for free, as long as patients are screened and diagnosed with transsexualism and see an in-network doctor, the magazine said.

Related drugs still require co-pays, typically $5 to $30 a month, it said.

The surgery alone typically costs individuals who pay out of pocket between $5,000 and $150,000, depending on their circumstances, the magazine said, citing Pauline Park, chairman of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy.

When contacted by Bloomberg, Moron said Goldman isn’t commenting beyond the article.

TOKYO: Employers around the world are increasingly desperate for plumbers, welders and other technical workers, Manpower, the U.S. employment services company, said in an annual survey.

The survey, which will be formally released Tuesday and covered nearly 43,000 employers in 32 countries, found a shortfall almost everywhere for tradespeople and similarly skilled, but not necessarily highly educated, positions.

“Weve grown up and others have grown up talking about the knowledge environment, and parents are encouraging their children to go to college and get ahead,” Manpowers chief executive, Jeffrey Joerres, said in a telephone interview. “What is happening is that it is leaving a major void.”

Although Western Europe has been concerned about the eastward expansion of the European Union and the potential for a flood of Polish plumbers and other trades workers heading west, the survey found that many Western European countries had the most acute shortages in such skilled jobs.

Joerres said employers across the world were desperate to fill such positions, including factory and maintenance technicians, which rely on detailed skills obtained over many years.

“They basically would say: As many technicians as you have, we will take - or as many IT programmers or engineers. So we clearly feel the intensity of these sort of skill shortages,” he said about the impact on his business.

Joerres said that schools had scaled back trade training in response to declining demand but that this trend had gone too far, with schools no longer offering the technical training that once inspired teenagers to work with their hands.

Such jobs are now attractive career choices, not least because they can not be outsourced to the other side of the world, he said.

“You cant be a plumber in New York City and live in Bangalore,” Joerres said.

He added that the lengthy training required for such jobs would make it hard to fill the gaps.

The jobs may not be glamorous by modern standards, he said, but they pay well and offer the possibility of owning a business.

At the same time, however, the overall proportion of employers who cannot hire the people they want fell to 31 percent from 41 percent last year, the survey found, largely reflecting the U.S. slowdown.

In the United States, the proportion of employers reporting difficulty filling positions nearly halved to 22 percent in this years survey, undertaken in late January, from 41 percent last year.

But Joerres played down the significance of economic weakness, pointing out that the proportion of Japanese employers reporting difficulty finding staff was 63 percent despite a sluggish domestic economy.

“You are going to go through cycles, like we are now in the U.S., France and a few other places that are in a little bit of a slowdown,” he said. “Those are slight pauses.”

He said the demographic issue, with rapid aging such as that in Japan, whose work force is forecast to shrink 16 percent by 2030, needed more focus.

The biggest shortfall for U.S. employers is a lack of engineers, followed by machinists and tradespeople.

In Asia and the Pacific, the most chronic issue is finding sales representatives, which Joerres attributed to increasingly complex requirements from multinationals expanding in Asia.

“The sales rep is no longer presenting just the vacuum cleaner at the door, if you will,” he said.

“It requires a different kind of skill and a more sophisticated sale, and I think Asia has a little ways to catch up on that compared to Western Europe and the Americas.”

DUBAI: Gulf states awash with cash from record oil income have put the brakes on purchases of foreign assets, as the global credit crisis promises more bargains later and as the political spotlights fall on how they invest.

Economists say the battle against inflation in the worlds top oil-exporting region has reduced spending in home markets, leaving sovereign funds that invest much of the surplus oil revenue struggling to find a profitable place for their money.

“They are doing a little bit of hoarding right now while they take stock of the situation,” said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at SABB Bank, the Saudi Arabian affiliate of HSBC. “For two years they were on a buying spree. But there is an anticipation by sovereign wealth funds that financial assets will depreciate further as credit turmoil spreads in the West.”

Acquisitions outside of the region by Gulf buyers more than tripled to $89.13 billion in 2007 from a year earlier, according to the research firm Dealogic.

But purchases slowed to $19.8 billion in the first quarter, down more than 30 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 despite some big-ticket deals that helped shore up Wall Street financial institutions.

The growing number of acquisitions by sovereign funds has raised concern among U.S. lawmakers, especially, about foreign influence and control over assets and questions as to whether investments are politically motivated. This may have made Gulf funds more cautious.

Aside from political scrutiny, many funds have also taken some losses from their investments and are treading carefully until they get a better idea of whether the credit crisis has hit its nadir.

Shares in Citigroup and Merrill Lynch have lost about 20 percent since Kuwaits sovereign fund and the Saudi billionaire, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, both agreed in January to invest a total of at least $5 billion in the banks.

“After initial forays, theyve gotten their fingers burnt quite badly,” said Alaa al-Yousuf, chief economist at Gulf Finance House in London. “It showed that the worst was not over and they were a bit too hasty in buying into these institutions.”

The massive transfer of wealth into the region from higher oil revenues has already unleashed startling economic growth among the Gulfs core OPEC members. The economies of Gulf countries doubled in size from 2002 to 2006.

With crude prices reaching close to $117 a barrel last week, oil and natural gas revenues for Gulf countries look set to reach a new record this year, touching $435 billion after about $380 billion in 2007, according to SABB estimates.

The price of U.S. oil futures has averaged $99.60 a barrel so far this year, up from $72.36 last year.

But government spending at home has not risen at the same pace as revenues in the Gulf, as officials look to avoid increasing inflation rates that are already higher than they have been in decades. Currency pegs to the dollar have pushed central banks to cut interest rates in line with the U.S. Federal Reserve, even though the lower rates contribute to higher prices.

Migrant workers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have rioted over the erosion of wages due to the declining dollar and inflation.

In Saudi Arabia, the worlds largest oil exporter, revenue from oil should grow to about $235 billion this year, up 12 percent from the $210 billion earned last year, according to SABB forecasts.

Despite the bonanza, spending in the kingdom - which is contending with inflation at a 27-year high - has been prudent, said Brad Bourland, chief economist at Jadwa Investment in Saudi Arabia.

“Saudi government spending has risen about 15 percent per year, which is much less sharply than oil revenues have risen,” Bourland said. “I dont see many examples of spending inappropriately; its well-targeted, mostly on social needs in health and education, and infrastructure.”

With Gulf investment funds holding about $1.5 trillion of foreign assets, according to Bourlands estimates, Gulf investors are struggling for other places to park surplus cash.

Many petrodollars are typically recycled into U.S. Treasury bonds, particularly by the regions central banks.

“With their currencies pegged to the dollar, central banks would tend to put money into the lowest-risk asset that currency is pegged to and that is Treasuries,” Bourland said.

But for more risk-hungry investors in the Gulf, lower interest rates have made Treasury bonds less attractive. Analysts said that better investments would be euro-denominated bonds and, if they can stomach the risk, assets in emerging markets like China.