Financial thoughts

Right after a Delaware state judge issued his ruling last week in a shareholder lawsuit contesting Kinder Morgan Inc.’s purchase of El Paso Corp., the public finger-wagging aimed at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. began.

Goldman, some pundits wrote, had emerged as the biggest loser of the bunch. The bank’s conflicts of interest in advising El Paso on the deal had been castigated by an esteemed jurist as breathtakingly over the top. Once again, Goldman had sullied its precious reputation. And so on, critics said.

While it’s always fun to fantasize about Goldman losing at anything, one gnawing question stands out: What exactly did the company lose? The answer is nothing, as far as I can tell. Actually, it won big.

Consider these facts: El Paso’s board knew that Goldman owned a 19 percent stake in Kinder Morgan worth about $4 billion when the companies’ buyout talks began last year. The directors knew Goldman controlled two seats on Kinder Morgan’s board. They were aware that Goldman had every incentive to maximize its own investment and fleece El Paso’s shareholders. Yet they turned to Goldman anyway for advice on responding to Kinder Morgan’s takeover overtures.

El Paso probably could have gotten a better price from Kinder Morgan had its representatives, including Goldman, been more faithful and less conflicted, Delaware Chancery Court Judge Leo Strine said. The difficult question he faced was whether to do anything about it. He decided he shouldn’t, concluding that any remedy he tried to fashion would do more harm than good.

DONE DEAL

He didn’t block the proposed $21.1 billion transaction between the two Houston-based pipeline operators. The sale will go through. Goldman, the world’s top-ranked takeover adviser based on deals announced last year, still gets its $20 million fee from El Paso. In all likelihood, nothing about this episode will stop anyone else from hiring Goldman in the future. Plus, Strine said it’s doubtful Goldman could be held liable for any damages, based on the facts known so far.

Maybe Goldman’s reputation did take a hit. Yet after so many scandals the past few years, including the company’s $550 million fraud-claim settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2010, you have to wonder if this new one matters.

Nobody was fooled last year when Goldman’s chairman and chief executive officer, Lloyd Blankfein, made a spectacle of unveiling a new set of fluffy business principles pledging to put clients’ interests first. It’s not the principle that counts in this business. It’s the money. And on this occasion, Goldman got a sweet deal.

Nothing was left to chance, it seems. Steve Daniel, the lead Goldman banker advising El Paso, personally owned $340,000 of stock in Kinder Morgan. This point wasn’t disclosed to El Paso, although it’s hard to imagine its directors would have cared much. They already knew he was horribly conflicted, because of his employer’s $4 billion stake in Kinder Morgan. What would their complaint have been? That he was really, really conflicted?

Not surprisingly, Goldman’s analyses of El Paso’s options pointed toward accepting Kinder Morgan’s offer. Goldman supposedly set up a “Chinese wall” to keep its bankers conflict-free. And a second bank, Morgan Stanley, was brought in to advise El Paso. The judge said the wall wasn’t effective, though. (As if these things ever are.) Goldman made sure the terms were set so that Morgan Stanley got paid only if Kinder Morgan bought the company, Strine wrote.

A deal benefiting Kinder Morgan may have been what some of El Paso’s bosses wanted. As Strine explained, El Paso’s CEO and chairman, Douglas Foshee, didn’t tell his board that he and other El Paso managers wanted to buy back El Paso’s energy exploration-and-production business from Kinder Morgan for themselves, after the deal was negotiated.

WARPED INCENTIVES

Foshee’s incentive was to limit the sale price that El Paso got, not maximize it. “Not forcing Kinder Morgan to pay the highest price possible for El Paso was more optimal than exhausting its wallet, because that would tend to cause Kinder Morgan to demand a higher price for the E&P assets,” Strine wrote. The board had given Foshee sole responsibility for negotiating the company’s sale from the outset. As for Kinder Morgan, it drove a hard bargain, as it was entitled to do.

So what did Goldman do wrong? Its bankers seem to have behaved like sharks. Guess what? Investment bankers are sharks. Goldman’s reputation was reinforced, not damaged.

If El Paso’s shareholders dislike the deal, they can vote against it. The vast majority won’t. There is no competing bidder, because El Paso’s board didn’t seek one. What El Paso shareholders lost was the possibility that another company might have offered a higher premium than Kinder Morgan did. There’s no way to know if anybody would have.

While the conflicts here may have been extreme, managers and buyout advisers at big companies pull similar escapades all the time, skimming corporate resources for themselves at the expense of passive shareholders. (Foshee stands to receive about $90 million once the sale is completed.) There usually isn’t much outsiders can do about it, which is something everyone should understand before they buy stock in a public company.

As for the notion that Goldman lost? Come on. It was paid $20 million for advising a client in a deal where Goldman itself was on the other side. What’s amazing is that El Paso let Goldman pull this off.

Source

Protesters and police fought running battles in central Athens Sunday, as Greek lawmakers debated legislation that would introduce severe austerity measures to stave off bankruptcy.

The clashes broke out around 6 p.m. local time (1600 GMT) as tens of thousands of people, responding to calls from unions to protest the measures, streamed into Syntagma Square facing Parliament.

Peaceful protesters fled to adjacent streets as a group of around 100 anarchists threw bottles, rocks, pieces of marble and firebombs at police, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

Police say an officer was injured by a flare shot at him from a gun. He was taken to hospital.

Among those affected by the tear gas were well-known composer Mikis Theodorakis, 86, and veteran leftist politician Manolis Glezos, 89. The two have been actively campaigning against Greece accepting a euro130 billion ($171.46 billion) bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund that would help Greece avoid bankruptcy as early as next month, when a euro14.5 billion bond matures.

The legislation will also approve a bond-swapping deal with private creditors that will allow Greece to shave off at least euro100 billion ($131 billion) of its euro360 billion debt.

An ambulance picked up two injured people from the square. At least two more injuries have been reported, including a photographer who was hit by both a firebomb and a flare.

By 7 p.m. local time, clashes had spread beyond the square to other streets. A Starbucks near the Athens University main building was on fire.

The debate started shortly after 3:30 p.m. local time (1330 GMT), and will take about ten hours, finishing around midnight. At the start of the meeting, opponents of the legislation adopted a tactic of frequent and loud interruptions and objections but had calmed down by mid-evening.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in the square outside Parliament as the debate began, with more arriving constantly.

Communist-affiliated unions held a separate meeting at the same time and started marching to Parliament before halting their march as the clashes broke out.

Police fear if the communists and anarchists meet, further violence would erupt and are trying to keep the two apart. Authorities have deployed some 6,000 policemen in the city center.

Pro-Communist unionists had earlier driven through Athens’ neighborhoods, calling for people to participate in the demonstration. Protesters are expected to remain outside the building throughout the vote.

The two parties backing the coalition government have 236 deputies in the 300-member Parliament, but at least 13 conservative and seven Socialist lawmakers have declared they will vote against the legislation, defying their leaders’ threats of sanctions. Early Sunday, a conservative lawmaker resigned, repeating the actions of three Socialists earlier this week.

Debt-stricken Greece does not have the money to cover a euro14.5 billion ($19.12 billion) bond repayment on March 20, and must reach a vital debt-relief deal with private bond investors before then. Greece’s woes have threatened its future in the 17-country zone that uses the euro currency.

The Europeans are waiting to see Greece finally act on their commitments.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was quoted as telling the Welt am Sonntag newspaper Sunday that Greece “cannot be a bottomless pit.”

“That’s why the Greeks must finally put a bottom in,” he added. “Then we can put something in too.”

Highlighting previous promises he said weren’t kept, Schaeuble said “that is why Greece’s promises aren’t enough for us any more,” according to the report.

Asked whether Greece has a long-term future in the eurozone, Germany’s vice chancellor told ARD television “that is now in the hands of the Greeks alone.”

Philipp Roesler said in the interview which was broadcast Sunday that what matters is not just Greece making pledges _ “we want … the Greek parliament also to approve laws and, as far as possible, take the first steps to implement what has been agreed,” .

“Only when that happens, only then can there be new aid _ and Greece urgently needs that,” said Roesler, who is also Germany’s economy minister.

Roesler acknowledged that Greece faces “difficult decisions” but stressed that Germany wants it to be able to get out of trouble.

“It is not enough just to give financial aid _ they must tackle the second cause of the crisis, the lack of economic competitiveness,” he said. “For that, they need … massive structural reforms. Otherwise Greece will not get out of the crisis.”

Germany is ready to help, Roesler said, but “we only can and want to help if there is something in return from the Greek side.”

Introducing the legislation Sunday _ amid much interruption _ Socialist lawmaker Sofia Yiannaka said Parliament is called to approve painful measures with its back to the wall, adding that the intense pressure from Greece’s EU partners to pass the measures was the result of delays in implementing already agreed reforms.

“The delays have our imprint. We should not blame foreigners for them,” she said.

“We have finally found out that you have to pay back what you have borrowed … We used to say ‘poor state, but rich citizens’ because we tolerated tax evasion for populist reasons. Is this the country we want?” Yiannaka added.

Source

The Swiss Competition Commission said Friday it has launched an investigation into possible cartel behavior by a dozen banks including the country’s two biggest institutions UBS and Credit Suisse.

The banks are suspected of colluding to influence key interest rates and the trading conditions for derivatives, the commission said in a statement Friday.

“Specifically, collusion between derivative traders might have influenced the reference rates LIBOR and TIBOR,” it said.

The London Interbank Offered Rate, LIBOR, and the Tokyo Interbank Offered Rate, TIBOR, underlay many commercial interest rates.

The commission said the banks are also suspected of illegally influencing market conditions for derivatives based on these reference rates.

The foreign institutions named in the Swiss probe are Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings PLC, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Rabobank Groep N.V., Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, Societe Generale SA, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.

Competition authorities in the United States and Britain have launched similar investigations.

Source

The U.S. Federal Reserve on Wednesday said it will not raise interest rates until at least late 2014, even later than investors expected, in an effort to support a sluggish economic recovery.

Without making major shifts to its outlook for the economy, the central bank described the unemployment rate as still elevated and said it expects inflation to remain at levels consistent with stable prices.

It depicted business investment as having slowed, dowgrading its assessment from the December meeting.

Economic conditions “are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through late 2014,” the central bank said in a statement.

Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker, an inflation hawk who rotated into a voting seat this year, dissented against the decision. He preferred to omit the description of the time period for ultra-low rates.

As part of an effort to provide more insight on its thinking to financial markets and the public, the Fed later on Wednesday will begin publishing individual policymakers’ projections for the appropriate path of the benchmark federal funds rate. That release is scheduled for 2 p.m. (1900 GMT)

If the Fed can convince financial markets it will be on hold longer than they had anticipated, long-term interest rates could drop as investors price in the new information.

“A significant contingent of the committee views this exercise not so much as a process improvement but more as an opportunity to ease again via the forward rate communications channel,” Stephen Stanley, an economist at Pierpoint Securities, said ahead of the Fed’s announcement.

There is also the possibility that officials will announce an explicit inflation target, perhaps a hard marker of 2 percent or a range of 2 percent or a bit below guaranteed online personal loans. The Fed has been debating a statement on its long-run goals, but whether one will be released on Wednesday is unclear.

While forecasters expect the U.S. economy grew at a 3 percent annual rate in the last three months of 2011, they look for growth of just around 2 percent this year.

Fed officials appear likely to bide their time in determining whether more monetary stimulus is needed. Many economists expect they will eventually decide on another spurt of Fed bond buying - probably one focused on mortgage debt.

In response to the deepest recession in generations, the Fed slashed the overnight federal funds rate to near zero in December 2008. It has also more than tripled the size of its balance sheet to around $2.9 trillion through two separate bond purchase programs.

The policy is credited with having prevented an even more devastating downturn, but it has been insufficient to bring unemployment down to levels considered normal during good economic times.

In December, the U.S. jobless rate stood at 8.5 percent, and some 13 million Americans were still actively looking for work but could not find it.

Analysts said the Fed’s shift in communications will put an even greater emphasis on a post-meeting news conference by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke set for 2:15 p.m. (1915 GMT).

“The chairman is likely to remain non-committal to any additional policy easing, but he is likely to reinforce the Fed’s commitment to ‘review the size and composition of its securities holdings’ and be ‘prepared to adjust those holdings as appropriate,’” said Millan Mulraine, senior macro strategist at TD Securities.

Read more

Don Buckley lost his job driving a Chicago Transit Authority bus almost two years ago and has been looking for work ever since, even as other municipal bus drivers around the country are being laid off.

At 34, Buckley, his two daughters and his fiancée have moved into the basement of his mother’s house same day payday loans. He has had to delay his marriage, and his entire savings, $27,000, is gone.

“I was the kind of person who put away for a rainy day,” he said recently. “It’s flooding now.”

Buckley is one of tens of thousands of once solidly middle-class African-American government workers

The parents of Madeleine McCann, whose 2007 disappearance sparked a media frenzy, told a London courtroom Wednesday how they were left distraught by the relentless U.K. press and its insinuations they were responsible for their daughter’s death.

Kate and Gerry McCann told Britain’s media ethics inquiry that the coverage had hurt their efforts to find their daughter after she vanished during a family vacation in Portugal, shortly before her fourth birthday.

“We were trying to find our daughter and you (the media) are stopping our chances of doing that,” Kate McCann said.

“These were desperate times,” she said, adding that the couple felt powerless. “When it’s your voice against a powerful media, it just doesn’t hold weight.”

Madeleine’s disappearance sparked an international manhunt and intense press coverage. The McCanns said the press was initially sympathetic but soon changed, with some articles implying the couple was hiding something.

The couple successfully sued several British newspapers over suggestions that they had caused their daughter’s death and then covered it up.

Prime Minister David Cameron set up the public inquiry into media ethics and practices in response to a still-evolving scandal over phone hacking by tabloid journalists. This week it has taken evidence from celebrities including actor Hugh Grant and comedian Steve Coogan, and from ordinary people left bruised by unwanted media attention.

Gerry McCann said he and his wife did not think their phones had been hacked, but he volunteered to testify at the inquiry “for one simple reason _ we feel a system has to be put in place to protect ordinary people from the damage the media can cause.”

Inquiry lawyer Robert Jay said the couple had experienced “the good, the bad and the particularly ugly side of the press.”

It is still not clear what happened to Madeleine, despite her parents’ far-reaching international campaign and numerous reported sightings from around the world.

Earlier, a lawyer for several phone hacking victims said that illegal eavesdropping was widely practiced by Britain’s tabloid journalists, producing stories that were both intrusive and untrue.

Mark Lewis said phone hacking was not limited to Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, which the media mogul shut down earlier this year as outrage grew over the scandal.

“It was a much more widespread practice than just one newspaper,” he said.

Lewis claimed that listening in on voice mails was so easy that many journalists regarded it as no more serious than “driving at 35 mph in a 30 mph zone.”

He said the News of the World got caught because it hired a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who kept detailed records of his snooping assignments. Mulcaire and News of the World reporter Clive Goodman were jailed in 2007 for hacking into the voice mails of royal aides.

“The fact that evidence doesn’t exist in written form doesn’t mean to say that the crime didn’t happen,” Lewis said.

Lewis said when a News of the World reporter was arrested for phone hacking in 2006, he had a “eureka moment” about the source of a false story on two of his clients.

The story alleged a romantic relationship between soccer players’ association chief Gordon Taylor and lawyer Joanne Armstrong. Taylor said he believed the story was based on a voice mail message from Armstrong thanking Taylor for speaking at her father’s funeral.

The message said: “Thank you for yesterday. You were wonderful.”

Lewis said a tabloid journalist “added two and two and made 84. … If it hadn’t been so sad, it would have been funny.”

In 2008, Murdoch’s News International agreed to pay Taylor hundreds of thousands of pounds (dollars) in compensation for the hacking of his phone in return for keeping quiet about the deal _ one of several attempts by the company to hush up the scale of its illegal activity.

Murdoch shut down the News of the World in July after evidence emerged that it had routinely eavesdropped on the voice mails of public figures, celebrities and even crime victims in its search for scoops.

More than a dozen News of the World journalists and editors have been arrested and several senior Murdoch executives have resigned in the still-evolving scandal. Two top London police officers also lost their jobs, along with Cameron’s media adviser.

Lewis has represented many prominent hacking victims, including the family of murdered 13-year-old Milly Dowler, whose voice mails were accessed by the News of the World after she disappeared in 2002. The girl’s parents spoke Monday before the U.K. inquiry, saying the hacking gave them false hope their daughter was still alive during the investigation into her disappearance.

The inquiry, led by Judge Brian Leveson, plans to issue a report next year and could recommend major changes to media regulation in Britain.

Source

A look at some major retailers’ layaway programs:

 

TOYS R US

Italy’s presidential palace has confirmed that Premier Silvio Berlusconi has resigned, setting in motion a transition aimed at bringing Italy back from the brink of economic crisis.

Cheers broke out in front of the palace by the hundreds of people who gathered to witness Berlusconi’s final act in office, ending a 17-year political era.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

ROME (AP) _ An Italian news report says Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s political party will conditionally support a technical government headed by economist Mario Monti.

Italy’s president is expected to ask Monti to try to form a new government once Berlusconi’s resignation is confirmed Saturday night. Monti will be tasked with trying to bring Italy back from the brink of a Greek-style economic crisis.

The LaPresse news agency quotes a statement issued after Berlusconi chaired a meeting of his People of Liberties Party, saying the party would tell President Giorgio Napolitano that it would back Monti. But it said the party would meet again to ensure that Monti’s Cabinet, legislative agenda and the timeframe of his government meet its requirements.

Source

The city that put Love Canal and Superfund in the environmental lexicon may get back into the business of dealing with toxic waste _ this time willingly. It is considering whether to truck in and treat wastewater left over from natural gas drilling.

The economically struggling city in western New York could use the revenue, and the Niagara Falls Water Board says its specialized wastewater treatment plant can handle more business since the decline of the chemical industry it was designed for.

With New York considering allowing natural gas production in its part of the lucrative Marcellus Shale, the water board is examining whether it would make economic sense to become a destination for the byproduct wastewater of the drilling process, called hydraulic fracturing, said Richard Roll, the public benefit corporation’s director of technical and regulatory services.

“Since we do have a unique kind of wastewater treatment plant that’s very much under-loaded, we’re looking into the possibility that, with the addition of other treatment processes, maybe our plant would be much more amenable to accepting this waste than your typical municipal biological plant,” he said.

Many have criticized the idea, including former Love Canal resident Lois Gibbs, who became a national voice for environmental health. She said she wondered if city officials would ever learn.

“They’re moving away from the chemical industry because the chemical industry is moving away from them, and it’s time to start a new economy,” Gibbs said by phone Thursday from Falls Church, Va., where she’s executive director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice. “And the new economy is certainly not taking chemical waste.”

Fracking forces millions of gallons of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, deep into shale formations beneath Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, West Virginia, Texas and other states. Its use has increased dramatically in recent years, raising concerns about the potential impact on water quality. Critics say fracking could poison water supplies, while the natural gas industry says it’s been used safely for decades.

Liquid that comes out of the drilling wells is highly salty and contaminated with substances such as barium, strontium and radium and other things that can be damaging to the environment. Millions of barrels of wastewater must be treated, and municipal sewage treatment plants can’t remove contaminants as efficiently as some of the treatment facilities that specialize in oil and gas industry waste.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it will draft standards for wastewater that drillers would have to meet before sending it to treatment plants.

In Niagara Falls, environmental groups and others say importing chemical-laden waste should be the last thing Niagara Falls should consider, given its experience with the Love Canal environmental disaster. An entire neighborhood was emptied in the 1970s after toxins dumped by Hooker Chemicals and Plastics Corp. into an abandoned canal in the 1940s and ’50s were found to have seeped into basements and backyards, creating panic over birth defects and cancer no teletrack payday loans. President Jimmy Carter declared a federal emergency in 1978, and in 1980 the Superfund cleanup act was born.

Once treated, the fracking wastewater, to be brought in by truck or rail, would either be discharged into the Niagara River upstream of Niagara Falls or be reused in drilling, Roll said. The Niagara River flows between lakes Erie and Ontario, forming a border between western New York and Ontario, Canada.

A coalition of local opponents submitted 25 questions to the water board, and about 15 members attended a board meeting Thursday night hoping for answers about the potential environmental impacts to the river and adjoining lakes, costs, safety, possible impacts on human health and the handling of radiation brought to the surface from deep shale wells.

“We should be learning from past mistakes instead of risking our water so we can accept New York state’s hydrofracking waste,” said Rita Yelda, an organizer for Food & Water Watch, an environmental advocacy group.

“Niagara Falls is known for its tourism, its beautiful scenery,” Yelda said. “A large part of their revenue is tourism, people coming in to see Niagara Falls. How will that be impacted by the increased truck traffic and what they’re releasing into Niagara Falls?”

The Council on Canadians, a social justice advocacy group, also is among those pushing Niagara Falls to scrap the idea.

“Last year the (United Nations) passed two resolutions recognizing water as a human right, and this proposal to treat fracking fluids threatens people’s human right to safe and clean drinking water,” the Ottawa-based group said in a Sept. 22 letter to the water board.

The board took no action Thursday.

Earlier in the day, Roll stressed the board is only just beginning to research feasibility testing, regulatory requirements and potential revenue “to make sure it’s not just workable but it makes sense for everyone to participate.”

The Niagara Falls treatment plant was designed to handle waste from the city’s once booming industrial base of electrochemical, organic chemical, ceramics and electrometallurgical plants, Roll said. It already processes imported landfill leachate from three customers that bring the waste by truck, he said.

“We’ve been developing that trade for the past 15 years or so, and that has had the same effect,” he said. “It’s unused capacity that is sitting there waiting to be taken advantage of, and we have a duty to try to make our utility as economically viable as possible for everyone.”

New York environmental regulators last month formally issued proposed regulations for hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale and scheduled four public hearings. The state hasn’t allowed fracking since it began drafting new permitting rules three years ago.

In neighboring Pennsylvania, nearly 4,000 wells have been drilled in the past few years and tens of thousands more are planned.

Source

Orders are now being taken for the Kobo Vox, a full-colour seven-inch tablet the same size as the BlackBerry PlayBook.

TORONTO — The Canadian ebook company Kobo is getting into the crowded tablet market and beating a major competitor to the punch.

Orders are now being taken for the Kobo Vox, a full-colour seven-inch tablet the same size as the BlackBerry PlayBook.

It’s selling for about $200 and shipping starts on Oct. 28.

It’s a Wi-Fi only device, runs on the Google Android operating system and has eight gigabytes of memory. Kobo says it has up to seven hours of battery life.

The Vox will compete against a long list of tablets on the market, including Apple’s bestselling iPads, the PlayBook, Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs, Motorola’s Xoom and a host of smaller rivals online payday loans. But the Vox is about 40 per cent cheaper than the most-inexpensive iPad.

Kobo’s largest ebook competitor, Amazon, also announced its own tablet recently with similar specifications.

Called the Fire, it’s not due for release until Nov. 15 and is also selling for $199 in the U.S. There’s no release date set for Canada.

Source