UPDATE 1-Pengrowth Energy Trust to buy Monterey for C$336 mln
* Offer at premium of 94 pct to Monterey’s Friday close
AIVtech gets US$5 million audio products order from Ace Bayou
AIVtech gets US$5 million audio products order from Ace Bayou
Consumer electronics maker AIVtech International Group Co (OTCBB: ECOH) announced a US$5 million order for furniture-audio products from Ace Bayou Corp of the US.
Farewell to Wall St.’s decade of hubris
By Michael Brush As 2009 winds to a close, we bid good riddance to a decade on Wall Street that we can sum up with just one word: Hubris. Hubris is defined as haughty behavior by people who are arrogant enough to think they might rank up there with the gods. It’s a bad attitude that inevitably leads to a fall. It’s the perfect word for a decade in which Wall Street experts and company chiefs told us they knew what was best for our money while proving they knew very little. And that’s giving the benefit of the doubt to many titans of profitless dot-coms, CEOs of shell companies such as Enron and WorldCom , and the Wall Street geniuses who engineered the credit crunch. No doubt more than a few of them knew exactly what they were doing to us. The less-than-zero decade A decade ago, historians debated what to call these years — the ’00s, the Oughts or the Zeros. For investors, it’s been the less-than-zero decade. It kicked off at the most boisterous phase of the tech bubble, just before the Nasdaq Composite Index ( $COMPX ) reached a dizzying peak of 5,132 in March 2000. In 2002, the index bottomed at 1,114. Nearly a decade later, it still sits almost 3,000 points below the peak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ( $INDU ) and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index ( $INX ) have done much better comparatively. They’re down only about 10% to 20% for the decade. The Fed responded to the tech washout — and to the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 — with low interest rates that fueled another bubble, in real estate. That bubble’s bursting brought the recession we’re living with now. In between the busts, investors saw a steady stream of collapses and scandals: WorldCom, Enron and Adelphia Communications , awash with flat-out fraud, fell apart. Allegations of mutual fund misdeeds hit nearly every bank and brokerage on Wall Street. The chief of the New York Stock Exchange stepped down amid outrage over his huge pay package. Executives steadily lifted paychecks to support lavish lifestyles. Insider trading cost investors dearly while rogue traders lost billions. Bernard Madoff became buddy and confidant to investors who were actually victims of a huge pyramid scheme. And bankers, hedge funds and even countries risked it all on derivatives and other financial “innovations” they didn’t really understand. Here’s a recap of the decade of hubris: Dot-com daring Remember red-hot stocks such as Pets.com, Global Crossing and fashion retailer Boo.com that hit the market, soared, then crashed? (The Pets.com Web site is now owned by PetSmart ( PETM , news , msgs ) ; Global Crossing was reorganized after bankruptcy and now trades as GLBC ; and the current Boo.com Web site is an entirely different company.) All told, more than 2,400 companies went public during the tech mania, writes University of Michigan business professor Gerald Davis in “ Managed by the Markets: How Finance Has Reshaped America .” Many of them weren’t worth the PowerPoint slides their business models were written on. How did so many get duped? Davis says a big factor was the hubris of Wall Street analysts, who readily slapped “buy” ratings on duds. Among the most famous: Solomon Smith Barney analyst Jack Grubman, who recommended a company he privately called a “pig,” and Merrill Lynch star Internet analyst Henry Blodget, who handed out favorable ratings even as he described Excite@Home as a “piece of crap” and Infoseek.com as a “dog” in private e-mails. Fraud and collapse Tech was still crashing in 2002 when a series of high-profile companies fell apart amid allegations of outright fraud. At WorldCom, Bernie Ebbers presided over a telecom upstart wowing investors with impressive growth. It turned out the company had inflated assets by more than $10 billion. At Enron, energy traders were caught on tape boasting about “making money hand over fist” by ripping off “poor grandmothers” while accountants were busy overstating profits. CEO Kenneth Lay insisted his company was strong until it dissolved. Cable company Adelphia and Xerox ( XRX , news , msgs ) were among the dozens of other companies that admitted to accounting fraud. “That these guys thought that they could get away with fraud that large was the hubris,” says James Angel, an associate professor of finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Tricks of the traders Hubris didn’t live just in CEOs’ offices. In 2003, then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer went after Canary Capital Partners for mutual fund trading practices that favored key customers. By the time the smoke cleared, Spitzer or the Securities and Exchange Commission had linked most every investment bank to questionable trading. In 2004, Spitzer targeted New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso over his $140 million-plus pay package. While far from illegal, it was a landmark of Wall Street hubris — and Grasso stepped down. But hubris runs both ways. Spitzer, elected governor in 2006 on a law-and-order platform, stepped down in 2008 when he got caught consorting with a high-priced prostitute. Executive pay and privilege Perks and privileges got more than a few CEOs into trouble in the 2000s. Tyco’s ( TYC , news , msgs ) then-chief, Dennis Kozlowski , famously persuaded his company to foot the $1 million bill for the 40th-birthday party of his second wife. The extravaganza featured an ice sculpture of the statue of David urinating vodka. In 2005, he was convicted of crimes related to millions in unauthorized bonuses and other largesse and went to prison. Video: Highlights of the Madoff property auction Then there was far-more-famous CEO Martha Stewart , who went to trial in 2004 for lying about an inside trade. The dollars involved amounted to chump change compared with the Kozlowski case. But when sentenced to five months in jail, Stewart compared her plight with that of anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela — which moves her into the hubris category. Overall, the decade saw pay and privilege pumped up to exorbitant levels. By 2006, chief executives at the biggest U.S. companies had bumped up their compensation to 364 times that of the average worker, compared with just 40 times the average worker’s pay in 1980. (Read “ Is a CEO worth 364 times an average Joe? ” for more on this.) They also pulled down an ever-growing list of perks. Perhaps a few performed well enough to deserve it, but in general, the market doesn’t suggest their performance improved all that much. And even in the recession, friendly boards at companies such as Qwest Communications ( Q , news , msgs ) and homebuilder Ryland Group ( RYL , news , msgs ) have found ways to keep rich bonuses flowing. (Read “ CEOs earn big bonuses for bad year .”) Continued: Insiders and rogues 1 | 2 | next > See the rest here: Farewell to Wall St.’s decade of hubris
Nevada Geothermal Power Inc. Awarded US$57.9 Million Federal Grant for Blue Mountain ‘Faulkner 1′ (Business Wire)
VANCOUVER–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Nevada Geothermal Power Inc. (NGP) (TSX-V: NGP, OTC-BB: NGLPF) today announced that the United States Department of the Treasury has informed NGP that the Company’s application in the amount of US $57.9 million for Specified Energy Property in Lieu of Tax/Credits relating to the Blue Mountain ‘Faulkner 1’ geothermal power plant has been approved under Section 1603, Division B of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Nevada Geothermal Power Inc. Awarded US$57.9 Million Federal Grant for Blue Mountain ‘Faulkner 1′ (Business Wire) is a post from: Investor Central – centralized penny stock, pink sheet and OTC BB news. Read more from the original source: Nevada Geothermal Power Inc. Awarded US$57.9 Million Federal Grant for Blue Mountain ‘Faulkner 1′ (Business Wire)
China’s Wen reiterates loose policy stance (Reuters)
BEIJING (Reuters) – China will stick to its active fiscal policy and loose monetary measures even though its economic recovery is now on more solid footing, Premier Wen Jiabao said on Thursday. Reuters – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao attends a news conference following the opening of the 4th Ministerial Conference of the … Wen’s comments are the latest reiteration of Beijing’s accommodative policy stance, and follow data for October that showed stronger-than-expected industrial output growth of 16.1 percent compared with a year earlier, a 19-month high. Beijing has started to fine-tune its credit policies, guiding new lending down to 253 billion yuan ($37 billion) in October from 516.7 billion in September, but it has kept the bulk of its stimulus measures in place, particularly those to encourage domestic demand and private investment China’s Wen reiterates loose policy stance (Reuters) is a post from: Investor Central – centralized penny stock, pink sheet and OTC BB news. See the original post here: China’s Wen reiterates loose policy stance (Reuters)
UPDATE – Chile Q3 growth data signals crisis recovery-cbank (at Reuters)
(Updates with central bank report quotes) SANTIAGO, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Chile’s central bank said on Wednesday the economy likely expanded 5.3 percent in the third quarter compared with the second quarter, signaling the start of economic recovery from global crisis. In a report prepared by the bank’s research department and given to the monetary policy board to evaluate, the central bank also said the economy likely contracted 1.3 percent in the third quarter compared with the same quarter last year due to lower industrial activity. UPDATE – Chile Q3 growth data signals crisis recovery-cbank (at Reuters) is a post from: Investor Central – centralized penny stock, pink sheet and OTC BB news. Continued here: UPDATE – Chile Q3 growth data signals crisis recovery-cbank (at Reuters)
AIG’s Benmosche tells employees he plans to remain (AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — AIG CEO Robert Benmosches says he plans to stay in his job at the embattled insurer. American International Group Inc AIG’s Benmosche tells employees he plans to remain (AP) is a post from: Investor Central – centralized penny stock, pink sheet and OTC BB news. Go here to see the original: AIG’s Benmosche tells employees he plans to remain (AP)
Macy’s posts smaller 3Q loss, raises outlook (AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — Macy’s Inc. reported a smaller third-quarter loss as the department store operator benefited from tight inventory controls and a move to localize merchandise by region, leading it to raise its full-year profit and sales outlook Macy’s posts smaller 3Q loss, raises outlook (AP) is a post from: Investor Central – centralized penny stock, pink sheet and OTC BB news. Originally posted here: Macy’s posts smaller 3Q loss, raises outlook (AP)
AIG’s Benmosche threatened to leave over pay constraints: report (Reuters)
(Reuters) – Unhappy over constraints imposed by U.S. government overseers, American International Group Inc (NYSE: AIG – News ) Chief Executive Robert Benmosche told the company’s board last week that he is considering stepping down, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The giant insurer’s chief executive is particularly unhappy over a recent compensation review by Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury bailout program’s special master for compensation, the paper said, citing the people. AIG’s Benmosche threatened to leave over pay constraints: report (Reuters) is a post from: Investor Central – centralized penny stock, pink sheet and OTC BB news. Continue reading here: AIG’s Benmosche threatened to leave over pay constraints: report (Reuters)
Kraft’s hostile bid for Cadbury notified to the EU
BRUSSELS, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Kraft Foods Inc’s ( KFT.N ) $16 billion hostile bid for British candy maker Cadbury Plc ( CBRY.L ) has been notified to EU regulatory authorities, the European Commission said on Wednesday. The Commission, the competition watchdog of the 27-nation European Union, has set a deadline for Dec. 14 to make its decision, it said Kraft’s hostile bid for Cadbury notified to the EU is a post from: Investor Central – centralized penny stock, pink sheet and OTC BB news. Read more: Kraft’s hostile bid for Cadbury notified to the EU