The Star Online: Business
The Star Online: Business |
- Wearable computing emerging as major technology cycle
- Lehman, Barclays clash in court over 2008 sale
- Australia to unlock area size of England with mineral resources worth $35bil
| Wearable computing emerging as major technology cycle Posted: 29 May 2013 10:03 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO: Wearable computing is emerging as the type of significant technology shift that will drive innovation in the way personal computing did in the 1980s or mobile computing and tablets are doing currently, said Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker at the All Things D conference on Wednesday. While technology cycles generally last 10 years, she said wearables were coming on stronger and faster than is typical. The change is noteworthy because major technology cycles often support tenfold growth in users and devices, she said in her annual report on the state of the Internet. Many of the 150 times or so per day that users interact with their phones - to look for messages, make calls, check the time, and the like - could be hands-free with wearable technology, she said. "Some people laugh at wearables..." read one slide featuring an image from the TV show "Saturday Night Live" that mocked Google Later in the morning, Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo picked up the theme, telling conference goers that it was clear wearable technology would play a large role in the future, even if what is perhaps the most-discussed example-- Google glass-- doesn't emerge as the first mainstream hit. Speaking last night at the conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook stopped short of clarifying if Apple was working on wearable products amid speculation that it is developing a smart watch, saying only that wearable computers had to be compelling. He added that Google's Glass is likely to have only limited appeal. Meeker also reviewed themes she has highlighted in the past, including the remarkable growth of mobile technology and the Chinese economy, and the ceding of power from traditional personal computing companies to phone and tablet makers. - Reuters |
| Lehman, Barclays clash in court over 2008 sale Posted: 29 May 2013 09:45 PM PDT NEW YORK: Lehman Brothers' defunct brokerage told an appeals court on Wednesday it was entitled to billions of dollars in cash it says was wrongly included in its 2008 sale to Barclays Plc. The arguments in federal appeals court in New York renewed a murky, years-old court battle with huge implications for the brokerage's creditors, including Lehman affiliates and hedge funds. "It was made very clear" in the asset purchase agreement "what was going to Barclays and what was staying behind," said the brokerage's lawyer, William Maguire. "The deal didn't exclude just some cash, it excluded all cash." The dispute has its roots in the hectic sale of the brokerage's assets to Barclays in the days following the $639 billion bankruptcy of parent company Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in September of 2008. The brokerage contends the $250 million deal did not include the brokerage's cash assets. But Barclays says otherwise, relying on a so-called clarification letter signed after the deal was approved. The disputed assets include margin to support exchange-traded derivatives, which could top $5 billion. They also include roughly $2 billion in so-called "clearance box" assets, which facilitate the clearance of securities trading. And they include $769 million promised to Barclays if Lehman's customers were paid in full. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Peck approved the deal in 2008. Days later, the sides signed a "clarification" letter on the cash assets. In 2011, Peck ruled that the clearance box assets should go to Barclays and the margin assets should stay with the brokerage. Then in June 2012, Judge Katherine Forrest in federal court in New York partially reversed Peck's ruling, assigning both the margin and the clearance assets to Barclays. The focus of Wednesday's arguments was on the margin assets, over which the sides presented drastically diverging narratives. Attorney David Boies, representing Barclays, said the clarification letter merely identified and quantified the assets already agreed to by the parties as a way of validating that the deal would boost Barclays' assets. It did not change the terms of the deal, Boies argued. But according to Maguire, Peck's initial approval of the deal specifically excluded cash assets. The clarification letter, far from mere explication, represented a fundamental change to the deal, amounting to an asset grab by Barclays. Barclays currently holds about $2 billion of the margin assets and $786 million of the clearance box assets, with the Lehman brokerage holding the rest. The appeals court could grant both to one party, or divvy them up. In a less likely scenario, it could unwind the sale altogether. After the hearing, a spokesman for James Giddens, the trustee winding down the Lehman brokerage, said the trustee's "position from day one has been that no cash was included" in the sale. "That means billions of dollars in cash rightfully belong to the" brokerage's estate, spokesman Jake Sargent said. Because customers of the brokerage are slated to get paid in full regardless of the outcome, it is general creditors whose recoveries depend on the appeals process. They include roughly 12,000 claims from hedge funds, former employees, counterparties such as pension funds, banks and Lehman affiliates. Some of them were present on Wednesday in a packed courtroom on the 17th floor of a federal courthouse in New York. Security staff asked some standing spectators to move to an adjoining room with a video feed. Judges Peter Hall, Gerard Lynch and Ralph Winter asked pointed questions of both lawyers. Winter suggested that Barclays' aim - to acquire the collateral of the exchange-traded derivatives business it bought - was only natural. "Why would anyone expect someone to buy an ETD business and not buy the margin assets?" Winter asked Maguire. "You must have been delighted to pull off that economic coup." Maguire countered that, for Barclays to essentially pay cash to acquire cash would have been a circular transaction and that it should have used its own assets to secure the derivatives business. Including cash, he said, would have handed Lehman's business, as well as billions of dollars in cash, to Barclays for only $250 million. "That would skew the economics," he said. Boies said the no-cash provision applied only to retained or unencumbered cash, but clearly excluded margin. Boies faced his own helping of scepticism from the panel, including from Judge Hall, who suggested that a "no-cash" rule should be taken at face value. "I would have taken that to the bank," Hall said. The case is No. 12-2322, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. - Reuters |
| Australia to unlock area size of England with mineral resources worth $35bil Posted: 29 May 2013 09:37 PM PDT CANBERRA: Australia will ease access restrictions on the world's largest weapons test range in the remote outback - an area larger than England - to unlock an estimated $35 billion in untapped mineral resources, with legislation for the change unveiled on Thursday. The Woomera Prohibited Area covers 127,000 square km (49,000 sq miles) of mostly barren desert and has been closed to the public since 1947, when it was used for Cold War rocket and nuclear tests by Britain, Australia and the United States. The sprawling site, which is almost free from electronic signal interference, was also chosen this year as test site for the joint British-French unmanned supersonic stealth drone Taranis, under development by BAE Systems Plc Defence Minister Stephen Smith told MPs that new legislation would allow miners and some members of the public with reason to be there to share access to the land with the military, to better balance national security and economic concerns. "The South Australian government has assessed that over the next decade about $35 billion worth of iron ore, gold and other minerals resources are potentially exploitable from within the Woomera Prohibited Area," Smith told parliament. The change, under consideration for three years, is an attempt to ease investment concerns around land near Woomera since the government blocked Chinese company Minmetals from buying an Oz Minerals Parts of Woomera, which hosted British nuclear weapons tests between 1955 and 1963, also lie adjacent to the Olympic Dam site, which BHP Billiton A small number of mines already exist in the area, including Prominent Hill and Kingsgate Consolidated Ltd's Under the new access arrangements, the military would remain in charge of the area, but a permit system would give civilians the right to enter Woomera. As well as miners, indigenous Aboriginal residents can also enter the zone, and environmental or other researchers. The legislation sets up a series of zones, some of which would be zoned red for "continuous defence use" and others which would exclude mining and exploration for between 14 and 70 days a year, in a timeshare arrangement with the military. "It allows users to make commercial decisions with some assurance as to when they will be required to leave the Area because of defence activity," Smith said. It was unclear if the changes would ease national security concern about Chinese mine ownership, as foreign investment applications would still be assessed by Australia's Foreign Investment Review Board. China-based hackers were this week accused of stealing the blueprints to Australia's new domestic spy agency in Canberra. The government of South Australia state has estimated the vast test site holds untapped gold, copper and uranium resources worth up to A$35 billion, while other estimates for total mineral wealth run as high as A$1 trillion. Smith said the legislation would be passed as a priority before parliament was dissolved for September elections. - Reuters |
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