QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Demand for credit is picking up. Job gains do suggest that income growth is running at a healthy clip, and we’re likely to see consumer spending pick up in the back half of the year.”
Kevin Cummins, UBS Securities LLC economist Article, 1D
Buffett gives stock to Gates foundation
Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor whose fortune swelled this year with a surge in Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s share price, contributed about $2 billion in stock to the foundation created by Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates.
Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive officer, donated about 17.5 million of his company’s Class B shares in his annual gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Omaha, Neb.-based firm said Monday in a statement. The stock has climbed 29 percent this year and closed Monday at $115.01.
Buffett is a trustee of the foundation and the world’s third-richest man with a net worth of about $61 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the wealthiest people. He has campaigned to promote charitable giving among the wealthy through the Giving Pledge initiative.
“The truth is I have never given a penny away that had any utility to me,” Buffett, 82, said last month at the Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy. For millions of people who aren’t rich, donating money “really means they’re giving up a movie, or a dinner out, or if it’s a larger sum, maybe a trip to Disneyland.”
Buffett also donated about 1.7 million of his company’s Class B shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and about 1.2 million shares each to the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the NoVo Foundation and the Sherwood Foundation, according to the statement.
Fiat offers to buy more Chrysler stock
DETROIT - Italian automaker Fiat has exercised a third option to buy a small amount of Chrysler stock, but the sale won’t go through until a U.S. court settles a dispute over the price.
Fiat said Monday that it offered $254.7 million for another 3.3 percent of Chrysler’s outstanding equity.
Fiat already owns 58.5 percent of Chrysler, with the remaining 41.5 percent held by a trust that pays medical bills for retired United Auto Workers union members. The Italian company wants to buy all of the trust’s stock and fully merge Chrysler and Fiat.
The price on the options will be settled by a judge in Delaware Chancery Court, and the ruling is likely to set the price for the trust’s remaining Chrysler stake. For several months, Fiat has been trying to arrange financing to buy the trust’s stock. Fiat expects a court ruling sometime this month.
Thomson Reuters shelves early access
Thomson Reuters will suspend its practice of distributing results from consumer surveys a couple of seconds early to clients who pay the news and business information provider for advance access.
A company spokesman said Monday that Thomson Reuters will simultaneously distribute survey data starting Friday from the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers after the New York state attorney general requested the suspension.
The attorney general’s office is investigating the early data access, and Thomson Reuters said it is cooperating with that review.
That twice-monthly survey is separate from the consumer confidence index produced by the private research group The Conference Board.
Thomson Reuters pays for exclusive access to the University of Michigan results, and some of its clients have been paying extra to receive the data two seconds before other clients. This allows high-speed computers to make trades before others gain access to the data.
Thomson Reuters then sends out a news release about the survey.
- The Associated Press
Olympus to sell shares for medical unit
Olympus Corp., the world’s biggest maker of endoscopes, plans to raise as much as $1.2 billion in an overseas share sale and spend almost half the funds on research and development at its medical unit.
The camera maker will sell as many as 41 million shares, amounting to 12 percent of the stock outstanding after the sale, in markets including the U.S. and Europe, Tokyo-based Olympus said in a statement Sunday. The proceeds will also be used for capital spending and the remaining funds may be spent to repay debt, Olympus said.
Olympus plans to expand its medical unit after a 13-year accounting fraud disclosure wiped off $1.3 billion from its balance sheet.
Olympus will sell 32 million new shares, 4 million shares it owns and grant underwriters an option to offer an additional 5 million shares. The stock will be priced as early as July 18, the company said.
- Bloomberg News
Libya’s oil ports go back to business
Libya’s oil fields and ports are all returning to normal after an end to sit-ins that stopped some production and loading, the state-owned Libya News Agency said Monday, citing an official it didn’t identify.
The official, who didn’t list the affected installations nor any changes to output or exports, said an agreement with protesters to resolve their financial and administrative issues means operations have resumed, according to LANA.
Repeated closures by staff members and the armed militia who protect facilities such as the Es Sider and Zueitina ports, led to fluctuations in the country’s oil production and exports. Libyan crude production fell to 1.1 million barrels a day last month, the lowest since January, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
- Bloomberg News
Panel weighs simplifying capital rules
Global regulators are weighing options for simplifying bank capital rules amid concerns that the complexity of existing standards has made it difficult to evaluate and compare lenders’ financial health.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision said Monday that it’s seeking views on measures ranging from forcing banks to disclose more data to setting them tougher indebtedness limits, as the group assesses the need for changes to its rulebook.
- Bloomberg News
Business, Pages 24 on 07/09/2013