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2011年4月24日星期日

Piracy syndicates Feed off the coast of the ransom returned, according to Navy responsible for

April 22, 2011, 12 pm EDT by Viola Gienger

April 22 (Bloomberg) - piracy unions are selling shares in planned attacks, fueled by a surge of payment of the ransom which will help to attract investors, said the American leader of naval operations Admiral Gary Roughead.

Trade unions of piracy in the villages, mainly in Somalia largely non-governed, seek investors purchasing shares in the missions of attack and access to a corresponding ransoms paid by the shipping industry, he said. "Ransom fuel company; the company is investing in more capacity - or in a larger boat, more weapons, better electronic detection means to determine where the ships are, "Roughead said yesterday in an interview at the Office of Washington for Bloomberg." "If it's a business".The payment of the ransom average 36-fold more than five years to $ 5.4 million last year, compared with $150,000 in 2005, according to have increased the based in Louisville, Colorado land Future Foundation. Payments are fueling the raids increased, adding to the less transportation costs $ 2.4 billion, because ships are diverted on longer routes to avoid the attacks off the coast of Africa from the East, the group said earlier this year non-profit.A group of 60 countries strives to combat the threat, which is compounded by the national complex and international laws and norms that restrict the effective prosecution.London International Maritime registered office based 142 attacks worldwide in the first quarter of this year, most for the period since monitoring began in 1991. Pirates have taken hostage 344 sailors and seven deaths in the period.Worst in 2011Trends indicate that 2011 will be worse, Assistant Secretary of State for politico-military affairs Andrew Shapiro told an audience in Washington on March 30, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said that on 20 April, he fired in self-defense on a group of pirates suspected the Somali coast. The Danish ship HDMS Esbern Snare spent under attack while investigating a ship diverted to a pirate known city, NATO said yesterday. "The Government does not provide the industry with any other alternative"ransoms, said Graham Westgarth, President of Teekay Marine Services, a unit of Hamilton, based on the Bermuda Teekay Corp., owner of largest tanker in the world." "It is a political issue which must be resolved by the Government." About 600 sailors are held hostage, some for as long as six months, he said.Result of ransom "the multiplication of attacks in the last year is the direct result of the huge amounts of ransom paid to pirates", Shapiro said at a forum organized by the International Institute in London for Studies.Pirates strategic are extending the model business how they pay their crew members based on skill or other assetssuch as weapons, they can bring to the mission, said Roughead.Alors that the shipping companies adopt more practical proven to reduce the risk of a hacker attack, they can also benefit from the payment of the ransom while avoiding higher insurance ratessaid the Admiral.Ransom paid amounted to 238 million in 2010 and total losses were as much as $ 12 billion when expenses such as insurance premiums, diversion of the vessels and safety were taken into account, according to a future of the planetwho runs a project to work with industry and affected countries to combat piracy. "I think that the shipping companies are aware of the fact the ransoms are not useful," Roughead said. "" " "My sense is that it is a business decision on their parts."WelfareShippers of the crew have to take into consideration the well-being of their crews to face the challenges of piracy, said Joseph, Angelo j., Director General of the Intertanko, a group of trade for the owners of tankers based in Arlington, Virginia. Westgarth is Chairman of the group. "If our members demonstrate a strong concern for the safety of the people of the sea, why would any flight with our members to navigate? "Angelo said yesterday in a telephone interview. "There must be an increase in the willingness of Governments to eradicate piracy."Pirates have changed their tactics to cope with the defensive measures taken by the marines participating in the international coalition to fight against piracy. They go as far south as Madagascar last year and in about 100 miles north of the Maldives in the East, reports of the issuance of Maritime Office International.Le Contact Group on piracy off the coast of the coast of Somalia has extended to 60 countries this year from 28 countries when it was created in January 2009. A multinational force task performs naval patrols in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia seeking to cover an area of over 1 million square kilometres, Shapiro said in his speech on March 30.Aggressive TargetingFurther measures envisaged include determining the best ways to prosecute pirates, expansion of military approaches and "aggressively targeting those who organize, lead and take advantage of the piracy operations", Shapiro said. "Over the years 80 per cent of the pirates were captured at a given moment, and 90 percent of that 80 percent were released, said Westgarth, the Executive branch of the industry.The escalation of piracy led United States to back its traditional reluctance to support an international forum to prosecute these crimes after, seeing that the national courts in the region are not sufficiently address the problem, he said. "The United States is now willing to consider to pursue some creative and innovative ways to go beyond the ordinary national prosecution," said Shapiro .l ' industry can also do more, said Shapiro. " Approximately 20 per cent of ships off the coast of the Horn of Africa are not using proven "best practices" to improve security, as in full speed in areas of high risk or putting more lookouts on watchHe said. They represent "the overwhelming number of ships with pirated success", he said.

-With the help of Alistair Holloway, Stuart Wallace, Alaric Nightingale in London, Moming Zhou in New York and Tony Capaccio and David Lerman in Washington. Editors: Leslie Hoffecker, Paul Tighe

To contact the reporter on this story: Viola Gienger in Washington to vgienger@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva in msilva34@bloomberg.net


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2011年4月14日星期四

Goldman traders tried to manipulate the market in 2007, according to a report

April 14 (Bloomberg) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc. mortgage traders tried to manipulate prices of derivatives linked to subprime home loans in May 2007 for their own benefit, according to a U.S. Senate report.

Company documents show traders led by Michael j. Swenson sought to encourage a "short squeeze" by putting artificially low prices on derivatives that would gain in value as mortgage securities fell, according to the report yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "the idea, abandoned after market conditions worsened, was to drive holders of such credit-default swaps to sell and help goldman sachs traders buy at reduced prices, according to the report.""We began to encourage this squeeze, with plans of getting very short again," Deeb Salem, a trader in the structured product group, said in a 2007 self-evaluation excerpted in the report. Swenson, Salem's supervisor, sent e-mails in May 2007 urging traders to offer prices that will "cause maximum pain" and "have people totally demoralized." In interviews with the committee, Salem and Swenson denied attempting a short squeeze, the report said.Salem "claimed that he had wrongly worded his self-evaluation", the report said. "He said that reading his self-evaluation as a description of an intended short squeeze put too much emphasis on 'words.'"The subcommittee cited the episode as an example of how Goldman Sachs traders placed the firm's interests ahead of its customers' as the value of mortgage-linked investments tumbled in 2007. The subcommittee, led by Senator Carl M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat and Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, has called on regulators to craft strict bans on proprietary trading and conflicts of interest to keep the problems from recurring.'Poor Quality Investments'"Conflicts of interests related to proprietary investments led Goldman to conceal its adverse financial interests from potential investors, sell poor quality investments, and place its investors financial interests before those of its customers," according to the subcommittee.Goldman Sachs traders abandoned the short - squeeze attempt after discovering on June 7, 2007, that two Bear Stearns Cos. hedge funds that specialized in sub-prime-mortgage investments were collapsing. "Salem e-mailed Swenson and another colleague to suggest trying to buy short positions, known as"protection,"on collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, from hedge fund Magnetar Capital LLC, according to the subcommittee's report."We need to go to magnetar and see if we can buy a bunch of cdo security ' Tell them we Can have a protection buyer, who is looking to get into this trade now that spreads have tightened back in. "'Great Idea'Swenson expressed "no concerns about the proposed deception" and responded to Salem that it was a "great idea," according to the report.The report comes almost a year after the committee spent more than 10 hours grilling Lloyd c. Blankfein, Goldman Sachs's chairman and chief executive officer, and six current and former employees in one of the most hostile political showdowns in the aftermath of the financial crisis.That hearing happened 12 days after the Securities and Exchange Commission sued New York - based Goldman Sachs for fraud in a case that the firm settled for $550 million in July.In an effort to address issues raised by the SEC lawsuit and the subcommitteeBlankfein convened a committee of Goldman Sachs executives to review the firm's practices. In January, the firm published 39 recommendations aimed at better managing conflicts and client relationships, as well as governance and employee training.Citigroup, Merrill LynchGoldman Sachs disagrees with "many of the conclusions" in the report and cited the standard business committee as evidence that "we take seriously the issues explored by the subcommittee," the firm said in a statement released by Lucas van Praaga company spokesman.As rivals including Citigroup Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. posted losses on mortgage-related investments during 2007, Goldman Sachs reported record earnings that benefited from the firm's negative view of the sub-prime-mortgage market.Blankfein and other executives at the firm have said that its traders placed "short" bets, which sufferings when prices of mortgage-linked securities fell, to hedge against losses. He also said in last year's hearing that Goldman Sachs was acting as a "market maker" in selling CDOs and other mortgage-backed investments to customers as the company's own traders were betting against them.'Massive Short'"We didn't have a massive short against the housing market, and we certainly did not bet against our client," Blankfein, 56, who received a record $67.9 million bonus for his performance in 2007, told the subcommittee last year. "Rather, we believe that we managed our risk as our shareholders and our regulators would expect."The subcommittee said that documents uncovered in its two-year investigation of the financial crisis show that Goldman Sachs's mortgage traders did have a large short position during 2007 and the sales team aggressively sought customers to buy CDOs that the traders expected would decline in value.One executive "Goldman instructed staff not to provide written information to investors about how Goldman was valuing" a CDO called Timberwolf, according to the report, "and its sales force no. offered additional assistance to potential investors trying to evaluate the 4,500 underlying assets."Joshua s. Birnbaum, who ran a unit called the ABX Trading Desk, said in an October 2007 internal presentation that a short position established by the structured product group after the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds was "not a hedge" against CDOs and residential mortgage-backed securities, or RMBS, owned by the firm, the report said.'Not a Hedge'"by june, all retained cdo and RMBS were identified already hedged positions," the presentation said. "In other words, the shorts were not a hedge."The subcommittee's report describes four CDOs that the firm created and sold in an effort to reduce Goldman Sachs's exposure to sub-prime-mortgage risk. It describes Goldman Sachs as having given misleading descriptions of some of the CDOs and in some cases seeking out buyers who were inexperienced Examiner with them.The report also says that the mortgage desk reversed its view on how it marked values derivatives based on its position in the market. Customers with short positions complained that Goldman Sachs was undervaluing those bets during the squeeze attempt. "After the traders abandoned that strategy in June 2007 and increased their wagers against the mortgage market, other clients complained the firm was overvaluing the short positions.""Once it began buying cds shorts, the GSP Desk immediately changed its CDS short assessments and began increasing their value," the report said. "Customers with long positions began to complain that the marks were too high, and internal business units also raised questions Goldman."

-Editors: Peter Eichenbaum, Dan Kraut


To contact the reporters on this story: Christine Harper in New York at charper@bloomberg.net. Joshua Gallu in Washington at jgallu@bloomberg.net


To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net.


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2011年4月12日星期二

Mubarak suffers from heart problems during the interrogation, - according to a report, Los Angeles Times

Mubarak's ailing healthMubarak at the Presidential Palace in Cairo. For the last year it was hit by rumours of health, especially after he underwent a surgery of the gallbladder in Germany in March 2010. (Amr Nabil / Associated Press / January 28, 2010)President of the former Egyptian Hosni Mubarak was hospitalized in the Red Sea resort after suffering heart problems during questioning by prosecutors on allegations of corruption and abuse of power arising from its nearly 30 year rulethe News reported State media.

"Hosni Mubarak went into intensive care in hospital International Sharm el Sheik, with heart problems," said the official news agency MENA. The authorities said that Mubarak was accompanied by his sons, Alaa and Gamal, who were also questioned by prosecutors.

The news agency quoting a hospital Manager, reported that the deposed President State is stabilized and that it "may be questioned." State TV said that Mubarak has refused to eat or drink Tuesday morning after being informed that he and his son could be questioned.

Mubarak, 82, ill for more than a year. Media status indicated, however, that the visit to the hospital may have been a ploy to escape his legal problems. The former leader and his son were summoned by the Attorney General of the Egypt for questioning on charges of illicit gains and violence against the protesters in an uprising which began on 25 January and led to the resignation of Mubarak on 11 February.

Mubarak was admitted to the hospital "with the pretext of illness to avoid appearing before the authorities of the interrogation", the journal of State Al Ahram reported. He and his son Gamal, an official of the former ruling party, have been accused by political opponents of enriching themselves through private connections and the Government.

In a speech to the nation broadcast Sunday by Al Arabiya, the elder Mubarak denied that he had bank accounts or property outside the Egypt. New reports on investigations of the family of Mubarak reports have fascinated and angry of a country trying to move beyond its repressive mandate.

Since his eviction and a resumption of Government by a military Council, Mubarak live in his palace private in Sharm el-Sheikh. The Attorney General has frozen its financial assets and forbidden members of his family to leave the country.

Concerns regarding the health of Mubarak has increased after he underwent gall bladder surgery and had a growth removed from his intestine in a German hospital, a year ago.

Jeffrey.Fleishman@LAtimes.com

Hassan is a news assistant in the Office of the Cairo of The Times.


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