After a precipitous four-year plunge in its share price, Research In Motion Ltd. has tumbled from its perch as Canada
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GlaxoSmithKline PLC has tabled an offer to take over U.S. drug maker Human Genome Sciences Inc. which values the target at nearly $2.6 billion.
GlaxoSmithKline, which has profit-sharing agreements with HGS on three drugs but a minimal shareholding, said Wednesday it is offering $13 cash per share for the company. A private offer last month by GSK at the same price was rejected by HGS management last month.
GSK said its offer was 81 percent more than the HGS share price on April 18, before HGS disclosed the earlier private offer. HGS shares closed at $14.39 Tuesday on the Nasdaq exchange.
The tender offer, which is a direct approach to the target’s shareholders, will remain open for 20 days. GSK said it hoped to complete the deal on a friendly basis.
GlaxoSmithKline shares were down 0.7 percent at 1,414 pence in early trading.
Human Genome Sciences, based in Rockville, Maryland, has a 50-50 profit sharing agreement with GSK on the lupus drug Benlysta, which won regulatory approval in the United States and Europe last year small personal loans. Benlysta accounted for $31.2 million of HGS’ first quarter revenue of $47.1 million.
The two companies are also cooperating in late-stage development of darapladib, for the treatment of cardiovascular disease, and albiglutide, for type 2 diabetes.
“GSK values the long relationship it has with HGS and has clearly stated its preference to complete a transaction on a friendly basis in a timely fashion,” the company said. “GSK remains willing to meet and review its offer with HGS at any time.”
As with fast payday loans, this recently used to be the case, but competitive lenders and higher demand has taken this loan type to mainstay levels.
New Zealand authorities have filed charges against the owners of a cargo ship that ran aground on a reef here six months ago, creating what authorities describe as the country’s worst maritime environmental disaster.
Maritime New Zealand on Thursday charged Daina Shipping with discharging harmful substances from the vessel Rena. The charge carries a maximum fine of 600,000 New Zealand dollars ($489,000) plus another 10,000 New Zealand dollars ($8,100) for each day the offending continues.
The Rena ran aground Oct. 5 on the Astrolabe reef near Tauranga, spilling 400 tons of fuel oil.
Daina Shipping, incorporated in Liberia, is one of 80 subsidiaries of Greek shipping giant Costamare. Costamare reported 2011 profits of $88 million on revenues of $382 million.
Nearly five months after some $1.6 billion in customer money went missing at bankrupt brokerage MF Global, the question remains: Will anyone be held responsible?
A congressional subcommittee will take up the issue on Wednesday in the latest hearing on Capitol Hill to focus on the firm’s collapse. Watching anxiously will be the 38,000 former MF Global customers who are still missing money and are waiting for someone to be held accountable.
"We’ve been arguing for a long time that at a minimum, this was larceny," said John Roe, a partner at BTR Trading Group who has advocated on behalf of MF Global customers. "This was a company appropriating money that wasn’t its own."
While the case had been quiet in recent months, that changed last week when the subcommittee released a memo detailing a critical $200 million transfer out of an account holding customer funds.
The memo has reignited questions about who at MF Global knew that customer money had been appropriated and how that information could influence a possible criminal case.
It cites an email from MF Global assistant treasurer Edith O’Brien saying the transfer, to resolve an overdraft of an account at JPMorgan (, Fortune 500), came "Per JC’s [Jon Corzine’s] direct instructions."
The memo does not say, however, that Corzine ordered that the transfer use customer funds, in violation of industry rules.
Futures brokers like MF Global can hold their own cash in customer accounts along with that of their clients, and money belonging to the firm may be transferred out freely.
Testifying under oath before Congress last year, Corzine denied ordering the use of client money, saying he received assurances "both orally and in writing" that the transfer had been lawful.
Corzine’s spokesman also said last week that the former New Jersey governor had not specified from which account the transfer was to be made
No one from MF Global has been formally accused of wrongdoing, though the FBI and federal regulators are investigating.
In a criminal case, prosecutors must prove there was a deliberate intent to appropriate customer funds, or failing that, that there was "willful blindness" by Corzine or others to the fact that such funds were at risk, said Michael E. Clark, an attorney with the law firm Duane Morris and a former federal prosecutor.
"The practical problem is that, if there were instructions given to move the money from customer accounts, can they establish a direct link or is this going to be more circumstantial?" Clark said. The testimony of lower-level employees, he added, could be crucial to building a case.
Finding charges that stick: Shortly after the transfer to JPMorgan, the banking giant requested that O’Brien sign a letter certifying that the transaction complied with industry rules on the protection of customer funds. O’Brien was "reluctant" to sign this letter, according to the memo from the subcommittee, and it was never returned.
In addition, Terry Duffy, the head of exchange operator CME Group (), has accused MF Global of falsifying accounting statements in the week prior to its bankruptcy to conceal its use of customer funds.
O’Brien has been summoned to appear at Wednesday’s hearing along with several other former MF Global staffers, though she is expected to refuse to testify, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Leaving aside the issue of the missing money, there are other ways prosecutors might pin charges on MF Global executives.
MF Global was felled after its disclosure of billions of dollars worth of bets on risky European debt sparked a panic among investors. Trading partners called for increased margin payments and clients began taking their business elsewhere, leaving the firm scrambling for cash to make good on its obligations.
Less than two weeks before MF Global went bankrupt, however, executives assured staff from ratings agency Standard & Poor’s that the firm was in good health. A week before the bankruptcy filing, CFO Henri Steenkamp told S&P that the firm was in "its strongest position ever as [a] public entity."
"Let’s ignore the missing $1.6 billion for a second and let’s talk about securities fraud, because you have the CFO running around telling ratings agencies that the company had never been in a stronger position, and that clearly wasn’t the case," said Roe, the customer advocate.
Again, a fraud charge would require proof that misstatements by MF Global executives about the health of the firm were intentional. Lawyers for Steenkamp and Corzine did not respond to requests for comment.
There’s also the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which requires corporate officers like those at MF Global to certify that the internal risk controls at their firms are adequate. Ironically, Corzine helped write this law while serving in the Senate.
Sarbanes-Oxley violations can carry prison terms of up to 20 years. While the law has seldom been used in this context over the years, Clark said it could be part of a broader case against MF Global executives.
"I would hate to be in their shoes," he said.
Hamburg, Europe
Japan
St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said on Friday the U.S. economy appears to be gaining momentum that will make further Fed purchases of bonds unnecessary.
“The economic news and economic data, including today’s data, has been surprising to the upside,” Bullard said in a Bloomberg News interview. “I need to see significant deterioration in the economy and some threat of deflation or inflation moving significantly below our inflation target before I would consider more” central bank stimulus, or quantitative easing, he said.
The government earlier in the day said employers added 243,000 jobs in January and that the jobless rate dipped to 8.3 percent, a three-year low.
Bullard, who does not have a vote on the Fed’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee this year, is seen as a policy centrist.
The Fed last month said it would likely hold interest rates at rock bottom levels until late 2014. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was cautious about recent improvement in the U.S. economy and left the door open to new bond purchases to boost growth.
The Fed cut rates to near zero more than three years ago and has bought $2.3 trillion worth of bonds to spur economic activity.
Bullard said economic conditions are different now than when the Fed launched its last bond buying initiative in late 2010. At that time, inflation was so low policymakers were concerned the economy was at risk of tipping into a dangerous deflationary spiral, but that is not now the case, Bullard said.
“Inflation is coming down but at least for now it is above our inflation target” of 2 percent, he said. “We will see how things develop. But I am also more bullish on the economy as a whole. I do think we have momentum coming out of 2011.”
As regulators and attorneys general continue a year-long push to deliver help for homeowners, some left-leaning groups on Monday warned against any deal that protects banks against lawsuits.
Negotiations for a settlement over improper foreclosures have been dragging on for months between state and federal authorities and some of the nation’s biggest banks.
At stake could be a $20 billion to $25 billion pot of money from the banks and mortgage servicers that could help troubled homeowners modify loans and provide them with counseling, according to two people familiar with the talks.
Under the latest deal, about 1 million U.S. homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages could be eligible for as much as $20,000 in relief of principal owed, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan has said. In return, mortgage servicers in states that agree to the deal would get immunity from lawsuits, the sources said.
Several Democratic state attorneys general were briefed of more details of the deal on Monday in a meeting in Chicago, CNNMoney confirmed. Republican state attorneys general were also to be briefed on a conference call.
News of the briefings spurred a protest on Monday outside the State of Illinois Building in Chicago by members of left-leaning groups, including Move On and the New Bottom Line, urging states to hold out for a bigger criminal investigation and a $300 billion settlement award.
Left-leaning activists and two Democratic lawmakers said they’re fighting against blanket immunity for banks, which North Carolina Democrat Rep. Brad Miller called a "very bad deal for the American people and a sweet-heart deal for banks," in a conference call with reporters on Monday.
The negotiations are between federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as state attorneys general and the five largest mortgage servicers:Bank of America (, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (, Fortune 500), Citigroup (, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial ().
The Obama Administration had been pushing for a resolution in time for the president to tout the deal during his delivery of the State of the Union on Tuesday.
But no final agreement is expected this week, said Geoff Greenwood, spokesman for the Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who has been leading the talks.
Foreclosures: 100 hardest hit zip codes
The final monetary award depends on the participation of larger states. But several states, including New York, Delaware and California, are reportedly cool to the latest draft, a source said. Those attorneys general have said they want the freedom to pursue their own housing investigations.
Calls to those attorneys general were not returned on Monday.
Washington analysts say they expect some tidbits from the latest proposed settlement to make Obama’s State of the Union speech.
"The President is likely to tout how the agreement will provide for principal reduction and help for more than a million borrowers," said Jaret Seiberg, senior policy analyst with Washington Research Group in a Monday research report.
"He will emphasize how this is about helping today to correct the mistakes of yesterday," Seiberg said in the report.
Apple Inc. hopes to revolutionize the education industry
Google searches just got more personal.
The Internet search giant is now sorting through photos and posts from its social network Google+ in its quest to provide the best search results
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