Get set for a messy fight for control of Canadian Pacific Railway.
Bill Ackman, the no-holds barred activist investor behind U.S. hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, has made it no secret that he wants CP
St. Louis Place, a 20-story office building in downtown St. Louis, is facing foreclosure after its owner apparently was unable to renegotiate its real estate loan with U.S. Bank.
The building, at 200 North Broadway, is nearly 90 percent full. The primary occupant is the headquarters of Fleishman-Hillard, the public relations firm with offices worldwide.
A foreclosure sale is scheduled for Jan. 27.
Records show that Behringer Harvard, a Dallas-based real estate investment trust, and affiliates paid Trizec Properties $30.15 million for St. Louis Place in 2004. The red brick building, designed by the Peckman Guyton Albers & Viets architecture firm and completed in 1983, is distinctive for balconies set beneath a large overhang spanning the middle floors.
A Behringer Harvard official was unavailable for comment Monday. A lawyer for U.S. Bank declined to comment.
In a report to the Securities and Exchange Commission in November, Behringer Harvard said its St. Louis Place property manager and asset manager was in talks with the lender to restructure the loan No teletrack payday loans. The report said there was “no assurance that this loan will be restructured,” adding that foreclosure or surrendering the building to the lender was possible.
Also in November, U.S. Bank went to court to get a receiver appointed to take over the building’s operation.
On Thursday, St. Louis Circuit Judge Mark Neill appointed Cassidy Turley, a commercial real estate firm, to manage St. Louis Place.
Lingering weakness in the downtown property market has put pressure on building owners to maintain occupancy and lease rates while trying to pay off large real estate loans.
At least one big downtown company has decided to stay put and buy its leased space instead of building a new headquarters. In August, Stifel Finacial Corp. said it would buy its headquarters at 501 North Broadway instead of investing in a new headquarters at Ballpark Village.
ROME—His legacy tarnished and his hopes of clinging to power dashed, Silvio Berlusconi faces daunting legal and financial challenges once he vacates the premier’s office and faces the prospect of life outside the international spotlight.
He has vowed he won’t run again for office, though few expect he’ll abandon Italian politics for good. Berlusconi himself has already said he might help out a campaign here or there because, well, “they’ve always turned out well for me.”
But with Berlusconi’s resignation as premier Saturday following months of market turmoil, a political era in Italy closes and the 75-year-old Berlusconi is just a billionaire businessman once again.
“What we are viewing now is not the end of a government, but the end of a system, of a political system,” said Massimo Franco, a political analyst for leading daily Corriere Della Sera.
Indeed, Berlusconi dominated Italian politics for the last 17 years, a polarizing figure who served three terms as premier. He held off political opponents and jousted with magistrates pursuing him on corruption and sexual misconduct charges, but was felled by massive international and market pressure.
The media mogul had thrived rubbing shoulders with the powerful, whether vacationing with Russia’s Vladimir Putin or getting a taste of Texas ranch life when hosted by then President George W. Bush in a meeting of Iraq war allies.
But seen as an impediment to economic reform, his exit came quickly as Italy was swept up by Europe’s debt crisis.
Whether he goes back to running his media empire or even returning to the vacant post as president of his beloved AC Milan soccer team, he faces an unpleasant agenda. Judging from how his media voices are reacting, it won’t be a completely quiet exit.
“Stop a Europe of technocrats,” clamoured a headline in the family newspaper Il Giornale of Italy’s presumed new government headed by economist Mario Monti. “This government is a coup.”
Berlusconi’s resignation will mean he can no longer claim official government business as a reason for missing hearings in his three trials, a tactic that has been used to delay proceedings. His attempt at fashioning a law that would have given him immunity was overturned by the constitutional Court.
But charges in two Milan trials related to his business dealings will run out due to the statute of limitations early next year — leaving little peril that the billionaire would face any penalty even if courts can reach a conviction in the first trial. The Italian system allows for two levels of appeal.
Berlusconi is expected to testify before Christmas in his trial on charges of paying British lawyer David Mills to lie for him on the stand in another case. A verdict is expected in late January, but with the statute of limitations set to expire in March, it is impossible that two levels of appeal could be completed to make any verdict final bad credit payday advance.
Berlusconi has denied the charge, and Mills saw his conviction overturned on appeal.
In the other trial concerning his Mediaset media empire, Berlusconi is charged with tax fraud in the purchase of TV rights. Berlusconi denies the charges, which also expire in the spring.
In Berlusconi’s most sensational trial, the 75-year-old is accused of paying for sex with a Moroccan teen — known by her nickname Ruby Rubacuore, “Ruby the Heartstealer” — and using his influence to cover it up. No fewer than 22 court dates have been scheduled through May.
A conviction would mean Berlusconi would be permanently barred from public office — but he has already pledged not to run again and his hopes of one day becoming Italian president were dashed by the sex scandal.
That leaves the billionaire back where he started: running his considerable empire. The economic crisis has made that more challenging.
Shares in Mediaset have lost half of their value since May, as the debt crisis lapped ever more perilously at Italian businesses, and dropped by as much as 10 per cent in trading sessions this week as Berlusconi’s political future was decided by the markets.
Mediaset — which is controlled by the family holding company Fininvest and includes private TV stations as well as newspapers and other publications — dropped from €4.242 a share in May to €2.142 on Friday.
“It could be that Berlusconi is very scared by the financial crisis. If you think that Fininvest is 95 per cent invested in Italy,” said Carlo Guarnieri, a political scientist as the University of Bologna.
Even more dangerous was his loss of a civil suit to rival media group over corruption in the acquisition of the Mondadori publishing empire. A court has ordered him to €560 million ($800 million) for corrupting a judge.
Alarmed by the amount, Berlusconi went as far as quietly introducing a measure into Italy’s austerity budget this summer that would have allowed the company to delay payment until the final appeal, but withdrew it after political opponents raised an outcry.
He can still count on friends in high places to look after his interests: his 41-year-old political heir, Angelo Alfano, now heads his People of Liberties party and he remains its founder.
But Franco, the Corriere della Sera analyst, said Berlusconi’s future in the near-term is probably not on Italy’s centre political stage.
“I think Berlusconi can just survive, maybe with a personal party, but I don’t think he is due to rule and lead Italy in the foreseeable future any more,” he said.
By the third time around, it really shouldn’t be a surprise. The latest “Call of Duty” video game set a first-day sales record this week, generating $400 million in sales in its first 24 hours in stores. That breaks the record its predecessor set this time last year.
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3″ is the third game in the military shooter series to set such a record. Last year, “Call of Duty: Black Ops” raked in $360 million in its first 24 hours on sale. “Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2,” sold 4.7 million copies in its first 24 hours to reap $310 million
The latest installment of the game from Activision Blizzard Inc. went on sale at midnight Tuesday in North America and the U.K.
Activision said Friday the game sold 6 faxless payday advance.4 million units in its first 24 hours.
A rival shooter game from Electronic Arts Inc., “Battlefield 3,” meanwhile, sold 5 million units in its first week in stores last month, making it the fastest-selling game in EA’s history.
The figures show there’s a big appetite for big shooter games this holiday season, boding well for their publishers and retailers such as GameStop Corp.
Shares of Activision Blizzard slipped 16 cents to $12.82 in morning trading Friday.
ConocoPhillips says its third-quarter profit fell about 14 percent due to unexpected production losses in China and Libya. Conoco has also been selling assets as it reshapes the company.
The Houston oil company on Wednesday reported earnings of $2.62 billion, or $1.91 per share, for the July-September quarter. That compares with $3.06 billion, or $2.05 per share, in the same part of 2010. Excluding special charges, Conoco reported adjusted earnings of $3.45 billion, or $2.52 per share.
Revenue increased 33 percent to $62.78 billion.
Analysts, who usually exclude special charges, expected earnings of $2.16 per share on revenue of $55 billion, according to FactSet.
Shares rose $1.59, about 2 percent, to $72.27 in premarket trading.
U.S. stock futures rose Monday after Caterpillar raised its profit forecast on expectations that the economic recovery will continue and companies announced a flurry of takeovers.
Investors are still worried about Europe’s debt problems, which have helped drag global stocks up and down the last two years. European leaders said they made progress at a weekend summit, but they likely won’t unveil concrete plans to help resolve the crisis until Wednesday.
But even with the global economic worries, Caterpillar and other U.S. companies are still reporting bigger profits. “Although there is a good deal of economic and political uncertainty in the world, we are not seeing it much in our business at this point,” Caterpillar Chief Executive Doug Oberhelman said.
The maker of construction equipment said its profit rose 44 percent in the latest quarter from a year earlier. It shares rose 5 percent in premarket trading.
Caterpillar joins McDonald’s Corp. and other U.S. companies that have reported stronger third-quarter earnings. Those reports helped the Dow Jones industrial average last week to rise for the third straight week. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index finished the week at its highest level since Aug. 3, before Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating on Aug. 5 and helped trigger big swings in global markets.
Analysts expect companies in the S&P 500 to report total earnings growth of 14 percent for the third quarter, according to FactSet.
Other big companies expected to report earnings results this week include UPS Inc instant credit reports., Ford Motor Co. and Procter & Gamble.
Analysts expect S&P 500 companies to say their revenue rose 10 percent last quarter. But their expenses likely climbed too. Higher costs for raw materials helped drag down profit for Kimberly-Clark Corp. by 8 percent. The maker of Huggies and Kleenex fell 1 percent in premarket trading.
A flurry of corporate deals helped lift stock futures.
RightNow Technologies Inc. rose 19 percent ahead of the bell after Oracle said it will buy the tech service company for about $1.5 billion.
HealthSpring rose 33 percent after Cigna said it will buy the health insurer for about $3.8 billion in cash.
Mattel rose 1.6 percent after it agreed to buy Hit Entertainment, the owner of the Thomas & Friends and Barney brands, for $680 million in cash.
Asian and European markets rose earlier Monday after Japan said its exports grew for a second straight month in September and a report showed China’s industrial production returned to growth in October. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 1.9 percent.
Thirty minutes ahead of the opening, Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 43 points, or 0.4 percent, to 11,800. S&P 500 index futures rose 2.90, or 0.2 percent, to 1,238.10. Nasdaq 100 futures rose 8, or 0.3 percent, to 2,342.25.
Rakuten is not just the top shopping website in Japan. These days, the company is doing some serious shopping of its own as it turns the strong yen _ usually seen as a huge negative for Japanese companies _ into a plus.
The online shopping-mall operator has bought several overseas businesses in the last year and is not the only Japanese company on a shopping spree. Businesses from pharmaceutical companies to toy makers have been emboldened by the increased purchasing power that the rising yen gives them.
A strong yen has long been characterized as potentially fatal for Japan Inc. by making the country’s cars, consumer electronics and other goods more expensive abroad, eroding the earnings of giant exporters like Toyota Motor Corp., Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co.
But for a service company such as Rakuten Inc., the yen at post World War II highs is a boon it hopes will power its rise up the global e-commerce hierarchy, where it now trails American giants such as Amazon and eBay. The yen is up nearly 8 percent against the U.S. dollar over the past year.
“I like it,” Rakuten Chief Executive Hiroshi Mikitani said with a grin when asked about the yen’s gains. “We can buy more companies.”
Mikitani also thinks Japan’s traditional export-focused manufacturers should be taking advantage of the yen’s rise by buying rivals in emerging markets. But he said some may be reticent as they lack the management expertise to know what to buy or how to make it work.
“They should think about that, and utilize the strength of the currency as a weapon,” Mikitani told reporters. “I think we should favor the stronger yen.”
Embracing a strong yen is an uncommon attitude among Japanese CEOs, and officials. Rakuten is different in other ways too. Nearly three quarters of the hires joining the company this month were foreigners and Mikitani’s pep talk at a welcoming ceremony this week was in English, the standard language at Rakuten _ both rarities for usually insular Japanese companies.
The jump in overseas acquisitions by Japanese companies this year has come even though the global economy faces extremely uncertain times and Japan’s own economy has reeled from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami disasters.
Data compiled by Tokyo-based Recof Corp., which advises on acquisitions, found overseas mergers and acquisitions by Japanese companies gained by 30 percent in number of deals in the first eight months of this year.
The jump was most pronounced in Asia, where the number of deals increased 50 percent year-on-year to 143, a record for the region, although the purchase prices were bigger for deals in the U.S., according to Recof.
Data from Dealogic shows that the value of overseas takeovers and acquisitions by Japanese companies in January through August more than doubled from a year earlier to $46.7 billion.
Among the biggest Japanese takeovers announced in recent months was Takeda Pharmaceutical Co.’s deal to buy Switzerland’s Nycomed for $13.6 billion, giving Japan’s biggest drugmaker coveted access to emerging markets.
Another was Tomy Corp.’s purchase of RC2, the U.S. maker of Chuggington and Thomas & Friends toys in an all-cash deal valued at about $640 million.
Online securities company Monex Group Inc. bought TradeStation Group, based in Florida, in a deal valued at up to $411 million earlier this year. Brewers such as Kirin and Asahi have also been busy acquirers.
The yen’s gains can also tip the scales in favor of manufacturing investments overseas.
Last month, Honda Motor Co. announced a $50 million investment to boost transmission production in the U my credit score.S., bringing the automaker’s capital investment in Ohio to more than $400 million for this year.
Matt McCollister, vice president in charge of economic development with nonprofit Columbus2020, who visited Japan recently to woo more investments to Ohio, said the strong yen came up often in meetings with executives as a solid incentive.
“I don’t know that it’s the primary catalyst, but it can definitely be a tipping point for a project, especially if there’s one that has been under consideration,” he said. “When you start to apply the currency differential, it may make more financial sense than it did a year ago.”
Still, there is no doubt that the yen’s unrelenting strength is the source of plenty of woe for many of the Japanese corporations that are global household names. It has also added to worries in Japan that more manufacturing could be shifted overseas, hollowing out industry and jobs.
Like other Japanese automakers, Honda has been hit hard. It says the yen erased 22.5 billion yen ($288 million) from its April-June operating profit. The Tokyo-based maker of the Odyssey minivan and Accord sedan, had initially counted on the dollar trading at 80 yen this fiscal year through March 2012. The dollar is now hovering between 76 yen to 77 yen.
The automaker has been moving production to the markets where vehicles are sold. For the more specialized cars still being exported from Japan, pressure is on to cut costs to make the business worthwhile, sometimes delaying model launches until such cuts are achieved, Honda officials say.
Squeezing positives out of a strong yen is a change of pace for Japan which has been, up to now, obsessed with trying to prop up the dollar to protect exporting giants.
Such efforts have proved largely futile in recent years against larger global developments that nowadays include the financial crisis in Europe, including worries about Greek defaulting on its debts, and fears of a looming recession in the U.S.
Japan’s finance ministry mostly recently tried to weaken the yen in August by buying dollars. That did send the yen lower but the effect lasted only days.
For Rakuten, a robust yen is key to its ambitions to one day become the world’s No. 1 e-commerce company.
In September, Rakuten announced an agreement to buy British e-commerce site Play.com for 25 million pounds (3.3 billion yen, $43 million), following the acquisition of PriceMinister of France and German online shopping mall Tradoria.
The moves add to an empire that now sprawls across 10 countries, including Japan, raking in 90.7 billion yen ($1.2 billion) in April-June sales, a quarterly record for Rakuten. Its business also includes Buy.com of the U.S. and a partnership with Baidu Inc. in China, as well as ventures in Thailand, Russia, Taiwan and Indonesia.
Kevin M. Carroll, who runs EA International, an environmental engineering and consultancy company in Tokyo, says the shrinking Japanese population and the high labor costs as well as corporate taxes in Japan are making overseas growth even more crucial for Japanese companies.
The days when a big Japanese corporation could prosper just by catering to customers in Japan are long over, said Carroll.
“The strength of the yen in most foreign markets works for Japanese companies as it places them in the envious position of acquiring foreign firms or technologies at a discount,” he said.
Police have arrested two dozen protesters for trespassing during a demonstration against Bank of America’s foreclosure practices at the banking giant’s offices in downtown Boston.
The Boston Herald reports ( http://bit.ly/ohHrLa) that the event was an act of civil disobedience that the organizers intended to send the message that the lender’s practices were unfair.
“They wanted to be arrested, and we obliged,” Boston police Commissioner Edward F. Davis told the newspaper Payday advance.
Organizers say about 3,000 people joined the protest.
Bank of America spokesman T.J. Crawford dismissed the demonstration as a publicity stunt.
There was no mention of Bank of America’s planned debit card fees, which recently have generated headlines and frustrated customers nationwide.
Bank of America’s homepage and online banking service were experiencing problems Friday, a day after the company said it would start charging a $5 monthly fee for customers who make debit card purchases.
A message on the bank’s homepage said that page was temporarily unavailable, despite earlier assurances from the bank that the site had been fully restored.
Some customers who tried to sign onto their accounts were greeted with the message that the site was “operating slower than usual” and that the bank was working to restore service.
A spokeswoman for the bank, Tara Burke, said the site had been fully restored for the majority of customers but that some were still experiencing “sporadic” issues.
She said the problems with the website were not the result of hacking but declined to say what was the cause.
Burke said customers who couldn’t sign onto their accounts still could bank via text message, at ATMs and at branches.
Bank of America, based in Charlotte, N.C., is the largest U.S. bank by deposits. It offers customers a free eBanking account if they do all their banking online and at ATMs. Customers are charged an $8.95 monthly fee for the account if they also use branch locations.
Back-to-back bomb blasts ripped through one of the holiest cities in Shiite Islam Sunday, killing at least 10 people in a community still reeling from a deadly bus hijacking earlier this month that left Iraq’s Shiites again feeling hunted.
Four explosions struck the city of Karbala over a five-minute period, government officials said, sending thick black smoke over the city. Two of the bombs targeted an Interior Ministry office that issues ID cards. Another struck near a house, shredding its walls and ceiling. And one explosion went off half a mile from an important gold-domed shrine.
“Once again, the terrorist enemies of both Iraq and humanity have committed a new crime against the innocent people of Karbala,” said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite.
He called the bombings a “heinous crime,” promised those behind them and the earlier attack on the bus would be punished and warned people not to be drawn back into sectarian revenge killings.
“We should stay united and cease statements or acts that would help the criminals in their efforts to ignite sedition.”
Ferocious bombing attacks by Sunni insurgent groups like al-Qaida in Iraq targeted the Shiite community whose leaders came to power after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The bloodshed pushed the nation to the edge of civil war.
Violence in Iraq has fallen dramatically since the bloodletting of 2006 and 2007, but militant attacks still appear aimed at re-igniting the nation’s volatile ethnic and religious divide.
The Sept. 12 bus attack targeted Shiite pilgrims from Karbala who were headed to a shrine in neighboring Syria.
The gunmen stopped the bus at a fake checkpoint in the western desert of Anbar province, heavily populated by Sunnis and once one of the heartlands of the insurgency.
The assailants pulled 22 men from the bus and shot them execution-style, leaving the women and children weeping beside a remote highway.
Prime Minister al-Maliki has been trying to tamp down tensions between officials in Karbala and Anbar since the highjacking. Four suspects are being held in the case, and al-Maliki’s military advisers say at least some foreigners were among the plotters.
Sunday’s bombings in Karbala were meant to raise tensions further, officials said.
“The aim of these explosions is to ignite the sectarian sedition after the killing of 22 Karbala residents in the Anbar desert two weeks ago,” said provincial councilman Hussein Shadhan al-Aboudi. “They also aim to destabilize the security situation in Karbala.”
Besides the 10 people killed, dozens were injured. Estimates ranged from 40 to as high as 90. The casualty figures were provided by three government officials: al-Aboudi, fellow councilman Mohammed al-Moussawi and parliamentarian Jawad Kadim al-Hassnawi.
Raed al-Assali, a government employee in the Karbala Investment Council, said he was sitting in his office doing paperwork when he heard the booms.
“I rushed to rooftop of our building and I saw thick smoke rising from the blast area,” al-Assali said. “Some people in panic were running in the nearby alleys in order to escape fire and danger.”
Al-Assali noted growing tensions and fear by Karbala residents that they are being targeted by Sunni insurgents.
“There’s a feeling here that some groups are trying to ignite sectarian sedition by targeting Karbala after the crisis with Anbar,” he said, referring to the slaying of the pilgrims.
Karbala, located 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of Baghdad, is one of the holiest cities in Shiite Islam because two early Muslim leaders, imams Abbas and Hussein, are buried there.
The bus attack alarmed Iraqi and U.S. security officials who are uneasily watching to see if stability will plummet while the American military continues withdrawing from the country. Under a 2008 security agreement, all U.S. troops are required to be out of Iraq by the end of the year.
But concerns about leaving behind partially trained Iraqi forces have spurred Washington and Baghdad to reconsider the deadline, although no agreement has yet been reached to keep U.S. troops in Iraq beyond 2011.
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