(Reuters) - AT&T Inc, the biggest U.S. telephone company, plans to offer Web-based data storage services for corporations using "cloud computing" technologies developed by data storage equipment maker EMC Corp.
The telecommunications giant will join International Business Machines Corp, Amazon.com Inc, Symantec Corp, Iron Mountain Inc and others in offering storage as a service product, which allow companies to use the Internet to transfer information to remote storage facilities.
AT&T said on Monday it will initially run the service from two data centers in the United states, although the company intends to expand overseas.
It is still early days for the industry.
Read more here
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
KGI to Buy Taishin Securities for NT$29 Billion
(Bloomberg) -- KGI Securities Co. will acquire the brokerage business of Taishin Financial Holdings Co. for NT$29 billion ($880 million) to become the second-biggest equity brokerage firm in Taiwan.
KGI will pay NT$28 billion in cash and NT$1 billion worth of stock for the acquisition of Taishin Securities, Taishin Futures Co. and its Hong Kong unit Taishin Securities (Hong Kong) Co., Taishin Financial said in an exchange filing today.
Shares of KGI surged 6.7 percent to NT$15.2, a four-day high, as of 9:46 a.m. in local trading. Taishin Financial shares rose 5.7 percent to NT$8.54.
Taishin Financial is the parent of Taishin Securities, while KGI Securities is a unit of Chinatrust Financial Holdings Co. Chinatrust shares gained 4.5 percent to NT$19.60 in Taipei, while the benchmark Taiex index rose 2.1 percent.
Read more here
KGI will pay NT$28 billion in cash and NT$1 billion worth of stock for the acquisition of Taishin Securities, Taishin Futures Co. and its Hong Kong unit Taishin Securities (Hong Kong) Co., Taishin Financial said in an exchange filing today.
Shares of KGI surged 6.7 percent to NT$15.2, a four-day high, as of 9:46 a.m. in local trading. Taishin Financial shares rose 5.7 percent to NT$8.54.
Taishin Financial is the parent of Taishin Securities, while KGI Securities is a unit of Chinatrust Financial Holdings Co. Chinatrust shares gained 4.5 percent to NT$19.60 in Taipei, while the benchmark Taiex index rose 2.1 percent.
Read more here
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Banks sue MBIA over $5 billion restructuring
(Reuters) - A group of major banks including Citigroup Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Barclays Plc has sued MBIA Inc, charging that the bond insurer illegally restructured its operations by moving $5 billion of assets and leaving a key unit effectively insolvent.
The group of around 20 financial institutions and affiliates are seeking to ensure that MBIA pays valid claims on insurance it issued on defaulting bonds, but did not put a value on such claims.
MBIA, along with rival bond insurer Ambac Financial Group Inc, suffered huge losses in the recent financial turmoil as they were hit by claims on insurance policies they issued on repackaged debt, which turned out to be more risky than they assumed.
A spokesman for MBIA, which reported a profit of $697 million last quarter, declined comment on the lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court.
Read more here
The group of around 20 financial institutions and affiliates are seeking to ensure that MBIA pays valid claims on insurance it issued on defaulting bonds, but did not put a value on such claims.
MBIA, along with rival bond insurer Ambac Financial Group Inc, suffered huge losses in the recent financial turmoil as they were hit by claims on insurance policies they issued on repackaged debt, which turned out to be more risky than they assumed.
A spokesman for MBIA, which reported a profit of $697 million last quarter, declined comment on the lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court.
Read more here
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Private equity investors waiting to sell: survey
(Reuters) - Investors in private equity funds are prepared to wait a year or two to sell their interests because of a gulf in price, a survey said on Wednesday.
London-based private equity research firm Preqin said 11 percent of the 568 institutional investors in private equity it surveyed want to sell fund interests on the so-called "secondary market" -- which allows investors to sell stakes in funds.
But the survey said that, of those, only 10 percent are looking to sell immediately, while 43 percent want to sell in the next 12 months and 47 percent within 12 to 24 months.
Investors, such as endowment and pension funds, typically commit to invest for the life of a private equity fund. But the sharp falls in equity markets has hit overall portfolios and meant some are over-exposed to other asset classes such as private equity and are looking to sell.
Read more here
London-based private equity research firm Preqin said 11 percent of the 568 institutional investors in private equity it surveyed want to sell fund interests on the so-called "secondary market" -- which allows investors to sell stakes in funds.
But the survey said that, of those, only 10 percent are looking to sell immediately, while 43 percent want to sell in the next 12 months and 47 percent within 12 to 24 months.
Investors, such as endowment and pension funds, typically commit to invest for the life of a private equity fund. But the sharp falls in equity markets has hit overall portfolios and meant some are over-exposed to other asset classes such as private equity and are looking to sell.
Read more here
Monday, May 11, 2009
Law Firm Founder Dreier Pleads Guilty, Faces Life in Prison
(Bloomberg) -- Marc Dreier, the New York law firm founder accused of defrauding hedge funds by selling $700 million in phony promissory notes, might face life in prison after pleading guilty to fraud charges.
Dreier, who turned 59 today, pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to charges of money laundering, conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud. Victims of Dreier’s Ponzi scheme lost more than $400 million, according to prosecutors.
“I engineered a scheme to issue and sell fictitious promissory notes purportedly issued by companies in the United States and Canada,” Dreier told U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, reading from a prepared text at yesterday’s hearing.
Dreier’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, has said he will seek leniency for Dreier at his sentencing. Dreier has cooperated with court-appointed bankruptcy trustees to identify assets that can be used to pay victims and creditors, according to Shargel. Rakoff set a sentencing date of July 13.
Shargel said his client didn’t have a plea agreement with prosecutors.
Dreier has been confined to his Manhattan luxury apartment, watched around the clock by armed guards paid for by friends and relatives, a condition of his $10 million bail. Dreier’s former firm, the 250-lawyer Dreier LLP, is being liquidated in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
Rakoff agreed to let Dreier remain on bail, confined to his apartment, until sentencing.
Arrested in Canada
Dreier was arrested in Toronto on Dec. 2 and charged with impersonating a lawyer with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. He was released on bail and arrested again Dec. 7 when he returned to New York.
Prosecutors claimed Dreier sold more than 85 phony promissory notes to at least 13 hedge funds and three individuals from 2004 to 2008. Dreier falsely told investors many of the fake notes were issued by New York developer Sheldon Solow, a client of his firm.
Read more here
Dreier, who turned 59 today, pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to charges of money laundering, conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud. Victims of Dreier’s Ponzi scheme lost more than $400 million, according to prosecutors.
“I engineered a scheme to issue and sell fictitious promissory notes purportedly issued by companies in the United States and Canada,” Dreier told U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, reading from a prepared text at yesterday’s hearing.
Dreier’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, has said he will seek leniency for Dreier at his sentencing. Dreier has cooperated with court-appointed bankruptcy trustees to identify assets that can be used to pay victims and creditors, according to Shargel. Rakoff set a sentencing date of July 13.
Shargel said his client didn’t have a plea agreement with prosecutors.
Dreier has been confined to his Manhattan luxury apartment, watched around the clock by armed guards paid for by friends and relatives, a condition of his $10 million bail. Dreier’s former firm, the 250-lawyer Dreier LLP, is being liquidated in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
Rakoff agreed to let Dreier remain on bail, confined to his apartment, until sentencing.
Arrested in Canada
Dreier was arrested in Toronto on Dec. 2 and charged with impersonating a lawyer with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. He was released on bail and arrested again Dec. 7 when he returned to New York.
Prosecutors claimed Dreier sold more than 85 phony promissory notes to at least 13 hedge funds and three individuals from 2004 to 2008. Dreier falsely told investors many of the fake notes were issued by New York developer Sheldon Solow, a client of his firm.
Read more here
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Stanford’s Cowboy Lawyer DeGuerin Shows ‘No Mercy’
(Bloomberg) -- In a newspaper photo on his law office wall in Houston, Dick DeGuerin stands with Robert Durst, a New York real estate heir who admitted shooting a man and using a paring knife and a hacksaw to cut up the body.
A jury in nearby Galveston voted for acquittal after DeGuerin followed his favorite trial strategy: “Embrace the ugly baby,” he said. “You don’t shrink from the problems in the case, but find a way to turn them to your advantage.”
Now the 68-year-old lawyer is representing fellow Texan R. Allen Stanford, accused of orchestrating an $8 billion Ponzi scheme. The case was brought by “storm troopers” at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who “cremated” his client’s business, DeGuerin said in an interview.
“He’s out of the ‘ride ‘em hard and show no mercy’ school of defense,” said William P. Allison, a criminal law professor at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin. “It’s a reputation he’s worked hard to earn, and what people pay for.”
DeGuerin is a member of an elite group of U.S. criminal lawyers who take high-profile cases and can “charge whatever the market will bear,” Allison said.
Among the attorney’s peers, according to the professor, are Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, who won acquittals for Texas oilman T. Cullen Davis, accused of murdering his 12-year-old stepdaughter and his wife’s boyfriend and of hiring a hit man to kill her and a judge; and the late Johnnie Cochran Jr., who helped defend former Buffalo Bills football star O.J. Simpson when he was tried on charges he killed his wife and her friend.
‘Effective’ Defense
So far, DeGuerin hasn’t been paid for his work for Stanford, the lawyer said. U.S. District Judge David Godbey in Dallas is considering Stanford’s bid to unfreeze at least $10 million in assets, locked up when the SEC sued, to pay his legal bills, which the Stanford Group Co. chief executive officer said in a court filing may exceed $20 million.
The SEC and Stanford Group investors told Godbey on May 4 that they oppose giving the financier access to the money. Stanford responded today in a filing that said he needs it to “effectively defend himself.”
His civil lawyers, with the Houston firm of Nickens Keeton Lawless Farrell & Flack LLP, said in court papers that the financier’s insurance company agreed to pay for his criminal defense if he is charged with a crime.
‘Cheap’ Fees
“I’m not doing this for free,” DeGuerin said in the interview, as he leaned back in a cane-seated desk chair, exposing well-worn elephant hide boots. “This case is a huge undertaking that no lawyer in his right mind would take on. It’s going to be a hard job, but not an impossible one.”
Declining to reveal his typical fee, he called his services “cheap at any price.”
The SEC sued Stanford, 59, and two employees, Laura Pendergest-Holt and James M. Davis, on Feb. 17, saying their sale of certificates of deposit through Stanford International Bank in Antigua was a “massive” fraud.
Pendergest-Holt, 35, Stanford’s chief investment officer, was charged with obstruction of justice on Feb. 26 and released on $300,000 bail. She is innocent, said her lawyer, Dan Cogdell of Houston. Davis, 60, the chief financial officer, is in plea negotiations, according to his attorney, David Finn of Dallas.
Stanford denied wrongdoing in an April 21 interview. “I’m not a damn swindler,” he said.
TV News Cameras
He tried to surrender to U.S. marshals in the federal courthouse in Houston on April 30 and was turned away because he hasn’t been criminally charged. DeGuerin escorted him, saying he wanted to prove his client isn’t a flight risk.
Justice Department spokesman Ian McCaleb declined to comment.
DeGuerin said he doesn’t shy away from difficult or notorious clients. He doesn’t run from publicity either, said his friend Tommy Fibich, a Houston plaintiffs lawyer.
“I’d rather be in front of the bulls of Pamplona than between Dick and the TV news cameras,” Fibich said.
One of DeGuerin’s clients was David Koresh, whose mother hired the Houstonian when her son and his followers holed up in Branch Davidian headquarters near Waco, Texas, in 1993.
Federal agents had surrounded the compound, where they said the leader of the religious sect had illegal weapons. Refusing body armor, DeGuerin walked past snipers to talk to his client.
Read more here
A jury in nearby Galveston voted for acquittal after DeGuerin followed his favorite trial strategy: “Embrace the ugly baby,” he said. “You don’t shrink from the problems in the case, but find a way to turn them to your advantage.”
Now the 68-year-old lawyer is representing fellow Texan R. Allen Stanford, accused of orchestrating an $8 billion Ponzi scheme. The case was brought by “storm troopers” at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who “cremated” his client’s business, DeGuerin said in an interview.
“He’s out of the ‘ride ‘em hard and show no mercy’ school of defense,” said William P. Allison, a criminal law professor at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin. “It’s a reputation he’s worked hard to earn, and what people pay for.”
DeGuerin is a member of an elite group of U.S. criminal lawyers who take high-profile cases and can “charge whatever the market will bear,” Allison said.
Among the attorney’s peers, according to the professor, are Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, who won acquittals for Texas oilman T. Cullen Davis, accused of murdering his 12-year-old stepdaughter and his wife’s boyfriend and of hiring a hit man to kill her and a judge; and the late Johnnie Cochran Jr., who helped defend former Buffalo Bills football star O.J. Simpson when he was tried on charges he killed his wife and her friend.
‘Effective’ Defense
So far, DeGuerin hasn’t been paid for his work for Stanford, the lawyer said. U.S. District Judge David Godbey in Dallas is considering Stanford’s bid to unfreeze at least $10 million in assets, locked up when the SEC sued, to pay his legal bills, which the Stanford Group Co. chief executive officer said in a court filing may exceed $20 million.
The SEC and Stanford Group investors told Godbey on May 4 that they oppose giving the financier access to the money. Stanford responded today in a filing that said he needs it to “effectively defend himself.”
His civil lawyers, with the Houston firm of Nickens Keeton Lawless Farrell & Flack LLP, said in court papers that the financier’s insurance company agreed to pay for his criminal defense if he is charged with a crime.
‘Cheap’ Fees
“I’m not doing this for free,” DeGuerin said in the interview, as he leaned back in a cane-seated desk chair, exposing well-worn elephant hide boots. “This case is a huge undertaking that no lawyer in his right mind would take on. It’s going to be a hard job, but not an impossible one.”
Declining to reveal his typical fee, he called his services “cheap at any price.”
The SEC sued Stanford, 59, and two employees, Laura Pendergest-Holt and James M. Davis, on Feb. 17, saying their sale of certificates of deposit through Stanford International Bank in Antigua was a “massive” fraud.
Pendergest-Holt, 35, Stanford’s chief investment officer, was charged with obstruction of justice on Feb. 26 and released on $300,000 bail. She is innocent, said her lawyer, Dan Cogdell of Houston. Davis, 60, the chief financial officer, is in plea negotiations, according to his attorney, David Finn of Dallas.
Stanford denied wrongdoing in an April 21 interview. “I’m not a damn swindler,” he said.
TV News Cameras
He tried to surrender to U.S. marshals in the federal courthouse in Houston on April 30 and was turned away because he hasn’t been criminally charged. DeGuerin escorted him, saying he wanted to prove his client isn’t a flight risk.
Justice Department spokesman Ian McCaleb declined to comment.
DeGuerin said he doesn’t shy away from difficult or notorious clients. He doesn’t run from publicity either, said his friend Tommy Fibich, a Houston plaintiffs lawyer.
“I’d rather be in front of the bulls of Pamplona than between Dick and the TV news cameras,” Fibich said.
One of DeGuerin’s clients was David Koresh, whose mother hired the Houstonian when her son and his followers holed up in Branch Davidian headquarters near Waco, Texas, in 1993.
Federal agents had surrounded the compound, where they said the leader of the religious sect had illegal weapons. Refusing body armor, DeGuerin walked past snipers to talk to his client.
Read more here
Thursday, May 7, 2009
GM burns $10 billion in first quarter as deadline looms
(Reuters) - General Motors Corp said it burned through $10.2 billion in the first quarter as it relied on a federal bailout to ride out a sharp decline in global sales that overwhelmed its cost-cutting efforts.
Revenue dropped by almost half to $22.4 billion as the company cut production by about 900,000 vehicles and worked to run down costly inventories in the United States and Europe.
The results showed the extreme pressure on GM with just four weeks remaining for the embattled automaker to win deals to slash debt and operating costs with its major union and bondholders to avoid bankruptcy.
"Results were awful, as expected, however, GM's cash burn was even worse than we were expecting," Kip Penniman of KDP Investment Advisors said in a note for clients.
Chief Financial Officer Ray Young said there was evidence consumers were scared away from GM cars and trucks because of concern the automaker was headed for bankruptcy.
GM cut $3.1 billion in operating costs in the first quarter, including just over $1 billion in North America, but the latest push in a four-year campaign to cut costs failed to keep pace with the plunge in sales.
"You could not offset the revenue implosion that we experienced here," Young told reporters following release of the quarterly results on Thursday.
GM's North American operations, where it plans to cut 21,000 factory jobs and close and close more than 2,600 dealerships, posted a loss before interest cost and taxes of $2.5 billion.
European operations, which Italy's Fiat SpA has proposed taking over, posted a loss on the same basis of $1.2 billion as vehicle sales in the region dropped 29 percent.
GM still hopes to complete a debt restructuring out of court but is readying plans for what it expects would be a quick bankruptcy if that proves necessary, Young said.
He said GM expects to draw on the experience of Chrysler LLC, which filed for bankruptcy last week under the supervision of the Obama administration.
"We are very, very cognizant of this issue of revenue perishability and how consumers react to the threat of bankruptcy," Young said.
Young said GM would make a decision at the end of this month on whether an offer to extinguish $24 billion in bond debt in exchange for new shares had garnered enough support for the company to avoid a bankruptcy filing.
Read more here
Revenue dropped by almost half to $22.4 billion as the company cut production by about 900,000 vehicles and worked to run down costly inventories in the United States and Europe.
The results showed the extreme pressure on GM with just four weeks remaining for the embattled automaker to win deals to slash debt and operating costs with its major union and bondholders to avoid bankruptcy.
"Results were awful, as expected, however, GM's cash burn was even worse than we were expecting," Kip Penniman of KDP Investment Advisors said in a note for clients.
Chief Financial Officer Ray Young said there was evidence consumers were scared away from GM cars and trucks because of concern the automaker was headed for bankruptcy.
GM cut $3.1 billion in operating costs in the first quarter, including just over $1 billion in North America, but the latest push in a four-year campaign to cut costs failed to keep pace with the plunge in sales.
"You could not offset the revenue implosion that we experienced here," Young told reporters following release of the quarterly results on Thursday.
GM's North American operations, where it plans to cut 21,000 factory jobs and close and close more than 2,600 dealerships, posted a loss before interest cost and taxes of $2.5 billion.
European operations, which Italy's Fiat SpA has proposed taking over, posted a loss on the same basis of $1.2 billion as vehicle sales in the region dropped 29 percent.
GM still hopes to complete a debt restructuring out of court but is readying plans for what it expects would be a quick bankruptcy if that proves necessary, Young said.
He said GM expects to draw on the experience of Chrysler LLC, which filed for bankruptcy last week under the supervision of the Obama administration.
"We are very, very cognizant of this issue of revenue perishability and how consumers react to the threat of bankruptcy," Young said.
Young said GM would make a decision at the end of this month on whether an offer to extinguish $24 billion in bond debt in exchange for new shares had garnered enough support for the company to avoid a bankruptcy filing.
Read more here
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