Dell's profits slump by 47% on weak sales
Computer-maker Dell has seen its quarterly profit fall by 47% after it was hit by falling sales to both consumers and large companies.
The US group made a net profit of $475m (£300m) in July to September, compared with $893m a year earlier.
Dell's consumer revenues fell 23% to $2.5bn, while those from sales to big corporations declined by 8% to $4.2bn.
The company, the world's third-largest maker of personal computers, saw overall revenues dip 11%.
Despite the poor results, Dell said it was more confident about the October to December period, which includes Christmas sales.
It expects group-wide revenues to rise by as much as 5% in the last three months of the year, despite the continuing "challenging" global economic environment.
BP gets record US criminal fine over Deepwater disaster
BP has received the biggest criminal fine in US history as part of a $4.5bn (£2.8bn) settlement related to the fatal 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Two BP workers have been indicted on manslaughter charges and an ex-manager charged with misleading Congress.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) said BP must hand over $4bn. The sum includes a $1.26bn fine as well as payments to wildlife and science organisations.
As part of the agreement, BP will also plead guilty to 14 criminal charges.
The company apologised for its role and said it regretted the loss of life.
BP will pay an additional $525m to the Securities and Exchange Commission over a period of three years, the firm said.
The resolution with the DoJ includes a record criminal fine of $1.26bn, as well as $2.4bn to be paid to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and $350m to be paid to the National Academy of Sciences, over a period of five years.
DoJ Attorney General Eric Holder said its resolution "stands as a testament to the hard work of countless investigators, attorneys, support staff members, and other personnel".
He went on: "In addition to the charges filed against BP, a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging the two highest-ranking BP supervisors, who were on board the Deepwater Horizon on the day of the explosion, with 23 criminal counts - including 11 counts of seaman's manslaughter, 11 counts of involuntary manslaughter, and alleged violations of the Clean Water Act.
"The grand jury also charged a former BP executive - who served as a deputy incident commander and BP's second-highest ranking representative at Unified Command during the spill response - with hiding information from Congress and allegedly lying to law enforcement officials."
The executive, David Rainey, is alleged to have intentionally under-estimated the amount of oil spilling from the well.
The two oil well supervisors accused of manslaughter were named in the indictment as Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, according to the news agency Associated Press.
They were accused of negligence in the way they oversaw safety tests on the Deepwater Horizon rig before the accident, and failing to alert onshore engineers to problems with the drilling.
As a result of the settlements, the company said that it was setting aside an additional $3.85bn on top of the $38.1bn it has been raising to cover its liabilities from the incident. The UK-based oil giant has been selling assets to raise the funds.
"All of us at BP deeply regret the tragic loss of life caused by the Deepwater Horizon accident as well as the impact of the spill on the Gulf coast region," said Bob Dudley, BP's chief executive.
"From the outset, we stepped up by responding to the spill, paying legitimate claims and funding restoration efforts in the Gulf. We apologise for our role in the accident, and as today's resolution with the US government further reflects, we have accepted responsibility for our actions."
BP added that the resolution allowed the company to vigorously defend itself against the remaining civil claims and to contest allegations of gross negligence in those cases.
BP has agreed to plead guilty to:
- eleven felony counts of Misconduct or Neglect of Ships Officers relating to the loss of 11 lives
- one misdemeanour count under the Clean Water Act
- one misdemeanour count under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act
- one felony count of obstruction of Congress
The resolution is subject to US federal court approval.
The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 workers and released millions of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days.
Stuart Smith, a Louisiana lawyer representing some of the businesses affected by the accident, told the BBC the deal was far from over.
"They have not settled with the state of Louisiana for the natural damages... they haven't settled with Florida, Alabama [or] Mississippi yet."
He added that there were other significant claims still to be settled, including offshore oil and gas industry damages as a result of the moratorium on deepwater drilling put in place after the accident, casino losses, fisheries, financial institutions and real estate developers.
"So I think they're still looking at billions of dollars in exposure even with this settlement," he said.
The settlement is bigger than the largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the Department of Justice, the $1.2bn fine imposed on drug maker Pfizer in 2009.
The oil giant has been selling assets worth billions of pounds to raise money to settle all claims. The company is expected to make a final payment of $860m into the $20bn Gulf of Mexico compensation fund by the end of the year.
BP launched an internal investigation in the immediate aftermath of the explosion which concluded that no single cause was behind the accident, but "multiple companies, work teams and circumstances were involved over time".
Other companies involved included Transocean, the owner of the rig and responsible for the safety valve known as the blowout preventer, and Halliburton, who provided cementing services.
BP is yet to reach a settlement with these firms. A civil trial that will determine negligence is due to begin in New Orleans in February 2013.
BP has settled all claims with Anadarko and Moex, its co-owners of the oil well, and contractor Weatherford, receiving $5.1bn cash settlements from the three firms, which it has put into its $20bn compensation fund.
It has also reached a $7.8bn settlement with the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee, a group of lawyers representing victims of the spill.
US Congress Probes Libya Attack
U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials are testifying before Congress about the deadly September attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
The House and Senate Intelligence Committees began closed-door hearings Thursday on the attack in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
Many lawmakers are concerned over whether there was adequate security at the consulate, and if the Obama administration later attempted to hide information to avoid any embarrassment before the November 6 presidential election.
Former CIA director David Petraeus is among those scheduled to appear before the House committee Friday. Petraeus resigned last week following an FBI investigation that uncovered his extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday that he felt “very secure” that there was no breach of national security in the Petraeus scandal. Holder said that if the investigation uncovered any security threat, he would have informed the president and Congress.
In another development, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will testify before a committee next month.
Ancient Stone Weapons Find in South Africa Pushes Human History Back in Time
Archaeologists digging at a site on the southern coast of South Africa have found a trove of sophisticated stone tools they believe were made 50,000 years before the technology to create them emerged in Europe and other regions of Africa.
The finding, reported in the journal Nature, could mean that the first modern humans evolved where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic.
Small blades, called microliths, were unearthed at Pinnacle Point, about 500 kilometers west of Cape Town, and dated back 71,000 years.
The thin, 3-centimeter-long blades were carefully crafted so they could be glued into slots at the tip of arrows or spears. Such projectile weapons gave these early humans a significant advantage when facing a prey animal – or a competing human.
According to Arizona State University professor Curtis Marean, director of the Pinnacle Point excavation, the lethal technology “probably laid the foundation for the expansion out of Africa of modern humans and the extinction [of] our sister species, such as Neanderthals,” who did not have such projectile weapons.
Previous digs have found similar stone weapons in use during an ice age 60,000 to 65,000 years ago. But the technology appeared in what archaeologists call a “flickering” pattern, with struggling cultures acquiring the weapons-making skills but failing to pass them on, and the technology seeming to vanish.
The new find means the method actually was passed on through generations and survived for more than 10,000 years. Professor Marean believes field work in Africa will continue to push back in time the evidence for uniquely human behaviors.
A University of Toronto-led team of anthropologists working at another site in South Africa has done just that, finding new evidence that early human hunters were attaching stone points to the tips of their spears half a million years ago — 200,000 years earlier than previously thought.
The researchers examined 500,000-year-old stone points from an excavation at Kathu Pan 1, in Northern Cape province, and determined that they had been used as spear tips. To do that, they recreated the ancient weapons and used a calibrated cross bow to shoot the replicas into an animal carcass.
Then, they compared the wear and damage on each set of stones. The prehistoric points showed the types of breaks that occur more commonly on spear tips than on stones used for other purposes, such as scraping and cutting.
The points were tied onto wooden spears, a process called hafting, which was an important advance in hunting weapons. Hafted spear tips are commonly found in 300,000-year-old Stone Age sites. The new study shows the technique was used in the early Middle Pleistocene, a period before Neanderthals and modern humans embarked on separate evolutionary paths.
The study is published in the journal Science.
Retailer Wal-Mart Expands Its Bribery Investigation
The world's largest retailer, U.S.-based Wal-Mart Stores, says it is expanding its internal investigation into whether company officials paid bribes to foreign officials to help expand the company's operations abroad.
A year after Wal-Mart revealed that U.S. officials are investigating its Mexican subsidiary, the company said Thursday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it is also looking at its activities in Brazil, China, India and elsewhere.
U.S. law prohibits American companies from engaging in corrupt practices in other countries, such as paying bribes.
Ukraine’s Tymoshenko Ends Hunger Strike
Jailed Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is ending the hunger strike she began in protest of alleged fraud in the country's recent elections.
Ukraine's deputy health minister, Raissa Moissenko, says Ms. Tymoshenko agreed to end her 17-day hunger strike on Thursday, after meeting with a group of German doctors at her hospital in Kharkiv.
The opposition leader and former prime minister began her strike on October 29 to protest alleged vote-rigging in the parliamentary elections the day before. International election observers and the U.S. government have also criticized the vote.
Ms. Tymoshenko is currently serving a seven-year prison term for abuse of office, charges she says are the result of President Viktor Yanukovych's efforts to eliminate her as a political rival.
Crime News in the TCI
In Providenciales, the Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police are investigating the theft of a sum of money from four (4) Gaming machines from a bar in Five Cays.
It was reported that the bar was secured at 11:50pm on Tuesday 13 November 2012 and upon returning at 5:00pm the following day the said machines were noted damaged and the monies missing.
The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police are also investigating the theft of a sum of money from a home on Osbourne Road, Grand Turk.
It was reported that the homeowner left the home at 8:45pm on Wednesday 14 November 2012, and upon returning at 9:50pm the same date discovered the monies missing.
A 15year old male was arrested on suspicion of the said report.
Criminal Investigations are on-going into all these matters.
On Tuesday 13 November 2012, a 15year old male of Grand Turk was arrested by the Police for Malicious Damage to Property.
It was reported that on the said date, the 15year old male smashed the windshield of a vehicle with a rock while it was parked in the Helena Jones Robinson High School parking lot.
Police are appealing to the public who may haveany information to call the police on 911 or Crimestoppers on 1-800-8477. Tips can also be left in English, French or Spanish at www.crimestoppers.tc or by becoming a friend of Crimestoppers TCI on Facebook.
Larry N. Lawrence Appointed Country Manager & Head Of Corporate- CIBC First Caribbean
First Caribbean is pleased to announce the appointment of Larry N. Lawrence to the post of Country Manager and Head of Corporate of its operations in the Turks & Caicos Islands (TCI).
Larry, a career banker with CIBC FirstCaribbean for the past 20 years, is looking forward to the challenges of this new assignment.
“I am very pleased to be appointed to this role, which opens a new and exciting chapter in my career. With my experience in Credit Expiries and Credit Writing, I intend to grow not only the Corporate side of the business in TCI, but indeed the entire business. I am excited to be able to share my ideas with the team here in TCI as we chart our course for the future”
A Grenadian by birth, this marks Larry’s second assignment in the TCI.
Prior to this appointment, Larry was Head of Corporate - CIBC FirstCaribbean in Grenada and his first assignment in TCI from 2004-2009 saw him as the Credit Manager of the bank.
It was during his first stint in TCI that Larry really grew into the role of banker and saw many “Credit Manager of the Year” awards during his tenure.
Larry, who holds a Banking Certificate and an MBA (Finance), University of Leicester, relies on the wisdom of his two favourite quotes, “Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential” and “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”
During his leisure time, Larry, father of two teenaged daughters, can be found reading fiction and self-development books. He is also passionate about the sport of cricket.
Financial Services Commission facilitates seminar on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act
On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, representatives of the Turks and Caicos financial services industry participated to a one-day seminar which provided a comprehensive introduction and critical update on Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act ("FATCA") which was signed into law on March 18th, 2010, in the United States and will become effective January 1st, 2013, as a part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (“HIRE”) Act.
The seminar was facilitated by the Turks and Caicos Financial Services Commission (FSC) in collaboration with the Bahamas Institute of Financial Services and offered an opportunity for professionals with the financial services industry to hear presentations from experts in the field of accounting, US tax planning, compliance, and international private client and corporate law.
Participants shared information on the compliance act’s continuing developments, an action plan for foreign financial institutions (FFIs) and non-financial foreign entities (NFFEs) to become FATCA compliant, an extensive understanding of the act Requirements as well as Legal and Practical Considerations within Intergovernmental Agreements.
Commenting on the success of the seminar, Mr Marlon Joseph, Head of Banking & Trust at the FSC said: “Today’s seminar was certainly a great example of private sector/public sector partnership. With any new initiative such as FACTA there will be challenges and we have to continue engaging in capacity building and preparing our organisations to rise to these challenges that are driven internationally”
While noting that the Commission had been doing a tremendous amount of work as it related to international best standards and practices, Mr Joseph further added: “Our brand as a transparent, professional cooperative and well regulated jurisdiction is extremely important to our financial sustainability and we must place ourselves in a position to meet on-going challenges.”
FATCA potentially imposes a series of customer due diligence, tax reporting, and withholding tax payment obligations on Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) and Non-financial Foreign Entities (“NFFEs”) with tremendous cost-benefit, risk management, and legal effect on banks, investment firms, insurance companies, financial and corporate service providers, trust companies, foundations, and family offices.
CIBC First Caribbean Rewards Visa Credit Card Clients
Clients of CIBC FirstCaribbean have much to smile about this holiday season as the bank unveiled its ‘CIBC FirstCaribbean Rewards’, a programme that allows Visa Gold and Visa Classic credit card clients to earn loyalty points with every purchase they make.
Managing Director, Customer Relationship Management & Strategy, Trevor Torzsas, lauded the initiative as a significant benefit for the bank’s credit card clients.
“Our brand promise is to be there “For What Matters” and our Visa Gold and Visa Classic cardholders will experience the extent of this promise through this incentive. From today all purchases made by existing cardholders will earn points, which can be redeemed for cash back to your credit card account, merchandise, or airline tickets and other travel rewards – more choices than any other card.”
CHARITIES TO BENEFIT FROM REWARDS PROGRAMME
All cardholders will earn one point for each US $1 spent, or the local equivalent, and can redeem their points with a vast number of online international retailers. CIBC FirstCaribbean Visa Classic and Visa Gold cardholders are also able to donate their points to notable local charities or receive cash back toward their credit card balance. Gold cardholders will soon also be able to redeem their points for travel on any airline with no blackout dates.
Country Manager and Head of Corporate of the bank’s TCI business, Larry N. Lawrence, stated that CIBC FirstCaribbean was pleased to partner with its clients in this act of giving, adding that a growing number of charities have endorsed the programme.
“We already have a relationship with most of the charities affiliated with the programme and we are excited that our clients are now able to support these worthy causes. Once the points have been donated, the affiliate charities will be able to redeem these points for cash, providing a universal way to invest in their respective causes.”