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Berkshire to invest at least 5 billion dollars in Goldman Sachs

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:47:00 -0400

Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to invest at least 5 billion dollars in Goldman Sachs Group, with billionaire investor Warren Buffett backing a Wall Street firm that’s begun transforming itself into a more-stable banking business.

In addition to buying 5 billion dollars in preferred stock, Berkshire also got warrants to buy another 5 billion dollars in Goldman’s common stock. Goldman said on late Tuesday that it would raise another 2.5 billion dollars in its own public stock offering.

The news sent shares of Goldman Sachs and stock index futures soaring in electronic trading, after the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted a triple-digit decline for the second day in a row, CBS News reported.

It also could lead to new probing questions from lawmakers for Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, a former co-CEO of Goldman Sachs.

He and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress hours earlier that quick action on a 700 billion dollars bailout measure for financial services firms was needed to prevent economic havoc.

The legislation that the Bush Administration is seeking would allow the government to buy bad mortgages and other troubled assets held by endangered banks and financial institutions.

Goldman Sachs'' shares had been tumbling ahead of the announcement of the government rescue plan last Friday as investors feared it could face the same kinds of funding squeezes as Bear Stearns and Lehman.

Now members of Congress have to deal with a plan while it looks to many taxpayers like Wall Street is already cashing in.

Buffett, one of the most successful investors in history, made no mention of what is happening in Washington, but he did heap praise on the New York-based company. (ANI)

Twenty petrochemical companies to be privatized in Iran

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:51:00 -0400

Gholamhossein Nejabat, Managing Director of the National Petrochemical Company (NPC) of Iran, has said that 20 subsidiaries of NPC have been earmarked for privatization.

He added that so far Carbon Iran, Farabi, Abadan, Kharg, Isfahan, Arak, Shiraz, Razi and Polika Karaj have been wholly privatized and that 52 of the 81 subsidiaries of the National Petrochemical Company have been semi-privatized.

Nejabad told journalists that more companies would be privatized if Iran Privatization Organisation approved the transfer of other petrochemical companies as a single block or holding companies.

The question of privatization has become a hotly debated issue in Iran, as there are frequent complaints about the lack of efficiency in the multitude of state-owned companies.

Recently the Head of Iran’s Expediency Council, former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has stressed the need for wide scale privatization in the real sense of the world.

Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani considered proper management as the most important factor for sound economic foundations and added: "There is a wide gap between the private sector and the government in this respect and we need to move towards real privatization and move towards free market economy in Iran."

The head of the Expediency Council has said that the main objective of privatization is taking maximum advantage of the country''s human and material resources, adding, "Providing an appropriate atmosphere for the performance of the private sector would solve two major problems of the country, namely lowering unemployment and inflation." (ANI)

Pressure to look good turning more and more men anorexic

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:12:00 -0400

While anorexia has been seen as a "women''s disease" for long, eating disorder experts are now reporting a rise in the number of male sufferers.

Some even claim to have seen more male anorexia referrals than females.

Professor Hubert Lacey, the head of the eating disorder unit at St George''s hospital in Tooting, south London, attributes the rise in male sufferers to greater social pressure on men to look good.

"Last week for the first time ever I had more male referrals for anorexia than female. That was just one week this summer but I would say it has been increasing steadily in the past two or three years," the Independent quoted him as saying.

His words came in the wake of a recent report that the number of men treated for anorexia had increased by 67 per cent in the past five years.

Men now account for between five to 10 per cent of all eating disorder sufferers, said the report.

"The disorder is still much more prevalent in females than males but the main increases have been in teenage boys. A few years ago it was often the case that my ward had no men on it. Now, on a ward of 20, I have three men,” Lacey said.

"Statistics say that only 5 or 10 per cent of anorexia sufferers are men. Three out of 20 is more than that and I can only see the number of male referrals increasing. I don''t know why I''m seeing more men but an educated guess is that social changes mean image is more important to men than it used to be," he added.

He said that many men were going untreated because they saw anorexia as a "women''s disease".

He further said that less number of men were being treated for the disorder because there were fewer facilities for them, due to a rule in which girls under the age of 18 cannot occupy the same ward as men.

"I know of some hospitals that don''t treat any men because of this rule. Because more females are referred for treatment some places have had to make a choice between the two and have chosen to treat women," he said.

"It''s a shame, because while I can see why the rule is in place, the symptoms are exactly the same. They all have an intense fear of natural body weight," he added.

Mark Reilly of the eating disorder charity, B-eat, has welcomed Lacey''s observations.

He said: "Research suggests that 100,000 men in the UK have anorexia or bulimia, but that is based on the men who come forward. The true figure is much higher. There are still many blokes who don''t want to talk about health issues, including anorexia."

Steve Blacknell, 56, a former anorexia and bulimia sufferer from Kent, said: "It used to be that women might look at a stick-thin model on the front of a magazine, and be desperate to look like the model. That was never an issue for men. But nowadays men look at magazines and see guys with washboard stomachs and want to look the same. It is really dangerous." (ANI)

Satyam receives Golden Peacock Global Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:00:00 -0400

Satyam Computer Services limited (NYSE: SAY), a leading global consulting and information technology services provider, has won the coveted Golden Peacock Global Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance for 2008.

The award was presented at the Ninth International Conference on Corporate Governance, held in London. G. Jayaraman, Satyam''s Global Head of Corporate Governance and the Company Secretary, accepted the honor at a function attended by business leaders, corporate governance experts and policymakers.

The organization was named the winner by the World Council for Corporate Governance (WCFCG), with Dr. Ola Ullsten, the former Prime Minister of Sweden, serving as lead judge.

The honor is especially relevant given that corporate governance best practices are considered key benchmarks by stakeholders who evaluate corporations. In fact, their importance is magnified in difficult economic environments.

“It is a real honor for Satyam to receive such a prestigious award,” said Srinivas Vadlamani, Satyam CFO. “It is a testament to our efforts to continually innovate and advance corporate governance best practices in our industry and around the world.”

The Golden Peacock Award is the latest of several corporate governance honors for Satyam. Investor Relations Global Rankings (IRGR) rated Satyam as the company with Best Corporate Governance Practices for 2006 and 2007.

It also won the Golden Peacock Award for Excellence in Corporate Governance from the Institute of Directors in New Delhi in 2002.

“This honor demonstrates the value Satyam places on corporate governance, and on the importance of serving the interests of our investors, clients, associates and of society,” Jayaraman said. (ANI)

US Fed converts Goldman, Morgan Stanley into regulated banks

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 05:37:00 -0400

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last surviving big investment banks on Wall Street, have become regulated banks.

In a statement issued at 9.30 p.m. local time Sunday the Federal Reserve said it had approved their applications to become bank holding companies, subject to regulation by the Fed.

According to the Financial Times, during the transition period the Fed will make loans to both entities and to the broker-dealer subsidiary of Merrill Lynch against collateral acceptable for posting either by a bank or a securities firm.

The Fed will also lend to Goldman, Morgan and Merrill''s London-based broker dealer subsidiaries directly.

The Fed approval is subject to a five-day waiting period for potential antitrust issues.

The move effectively spells the end of the investment banking industry as a separate sector, leaving behind only small boutique securities firms.

It means that both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will be subject to bank capital requirements that will be phased in over a transition period. (ANI)