Within months it would become clear that the Lone Star deal had, in fact, helped give Merrill extra time by untethering it from a block of ugly assets that might have stood in the way of a merger.
Johnston Press did not identify which titles it is looking to offload, but City analysts see the publisher focusing on a "block of attractive assets that runs diagonally from south-east England through the midlands and the north to the mid-belt of Scotland".
"Thus, we are faced with the ironic circumstance in which Libya stands to gain more by the continued blocking of its assets than if its assets were timely unblocked," the letter said.
But the state attempted to block the transfer of assets, saying Mrs. Shah was not entitled to all his assets but rather only to the amount the state would normally allow her to collect from an institutionalized spouse.
It has acted this year to block the assets of 185 of the 247 groups identified by the United States, involving millions of dollars, a Treasury official said.
On each trial of a given block, a virtual pool of assets contained the preferred bandits thus far.
Its insurance companies hold big blocks of complex asset-backed securities, and the company's departing chief executive, Edward M. Liddy, said that an accounting break helped produce its recent modest profit.
On rule-in blocks, participants began the block with an empty pool of assets and the per-trial momentary yield was determined by the average payoff of all bandits committed to (accepted) thus far.
Some of the senators' concerns stem from that report, but they also questioned why the office had failed to block the assets of several people designated by allies as terrorist financiers and reported by the news media.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has moved to block the assets of 153 individuals, organizations, and entities, including charities, believed to have connections to terrorist groups, a Treasury Department spokesman said.
In other developments: Swiss and Austrian authorities block the assets of Viktor Yanukovych and his associates, and launch a corruption probe.
