MADRID Oct 18 (Reuters) - Spanish savings bank Liberbank
said on Tuesday it has agreed to sell 85 percent of
telecommunications company Telecable to the Carlyle Group,
cutting the bank’s stake to 15 percent.No financial details of the sale were provided.On Monday, a source told Reuters that Liberbank planned to
raise capital by selling an approximately 70 percent stake in
Telecable worth about 300 million euros.Spain has forced its banks — laden with bad debt after a
housing bubble burst in 2008 — to merge and raise capital or
be taken over by the government.Banks without significant private investment must meet a 10
percent core tier 1 capital ratio.Liberbank, formed by the merger of regional savings banks
Cajastur, Caja Extremadura and Caja Cantabria, initially
required about 519 million euros to reach the 10 percent
target, but had cut this back to about 200 million euros by
generating capital organically, the source said on Monday.The Bank of Spain gave Liberbank and one other bank, Banco
Mare Nostrum (BMN) more time to raise funds.BMN plans to issue 250 million euros of convertible bonds
to meet the central bank’s tough new capital requirements, a
source close to the deal said on Monday.
* Has cash hoard of $75 blnBy Sam Forgione and Supantha MukherjeeOct 12 (Reuters) - Apple Inc is starting to hear a
common refrain from investors: Show us the money.After the death of chairman and chief innovator Steve Jobs
last week, investors still like what they see
at Apple: record demand for the latest iPhone 4S pushed its
stock price near an all-time high. And it has a cash hoard of
$75 billion.A Thomson Reuters survey of 11 portfolio managers taken
after the news of Jobs’ death showed strong support for Apple’s
new management team led by Chief Executive Tim Cook, and
confidence that Apple has at least a few years of great
products in development.But they also want Apple to start giving up some cash.”I would opt for a meaningful dividend,” said Peter
Deininger, a portfolio manager at Columbia Large Cap Growth
Fund, one of Apple’s largest investors.”Given the magnitude of the cash balance and the ongoing
free cash flow generation, the company could make a statement
about its ability to sustain those flows,” Deininger added.Six of the 11 money managers polled by Reuters called for a
dividend payout as a reward for their loyalty — something they
fear will be tested as Cook tries to fill Jobs’ shoes.Ten portfolio managers said they still hold Apple stock on
faith that Cook will be able to deliver on Jobs’s vision in the
near term. But five managers expect investor faith in Apple to
be tested in the longer term.”I worry that Steve was a center of gravity for the company
and, over time, people will say ‘I wanted to work for Steve’
and go and do something else,” said David Eiswert of T. Rowe
Price. “That will be something to watch over the next year or
two.”Apple has long resisted a dividend. It has put its money
toward internal product development, made the rare acquisition
— and built its cash stockpile, which now accounts for about a
fifth of its value. Apple’s market cap soared to just shy of
$349 billion when Jobs stepped down in August, from $5 billion
when he returned to the company in 1997.That unusual torrid growth in a large company has one money
manager in the survey bracing for an eventual slowdown.”We haven’t seen a company this size grow, so it has to
decelerate,” said Richard Sheiner of Geneva Advisors.So far investors are sticking with the company.”The creative talent at Apple is broad and deep, and it has
established a ‘brand moat’ with the consumer,” said Nigel
Holland, who helps manage $565 billion at Legal & General
Investment Management.And that’s a big reason why three of the managers surveyed
said they have bought up all the Apple shares they are allowed
to.”There’s every reason to own Apple stock, and we are
committed to owning it over the next couple of years,” said
Keith Wirtz, chief investment officer of Fifth Third Asset
Management.Bruce Olson, co-portfolio manager of the Wells Fargo
Advantage Growth Fund , agreed. “The coast is pretty
clear for them for the next five years,” he said.Beyond the short term, however, some shareholders are
worried about whether Apple can continue to push out innovative
gadgets after the product pipeline Jobs left behind is tapped
out.”If we saw a slowdown on product launches and developments,
that would give us some pause. Less people camping out for a
few days to get the new product — that would be symptomatic of
it losing its touch,” Wirtz said.One fund manager polled is not waiting around for Apple to
fall from grace.”We don’t have shares in Apple,” said Kim Caughey Forrest,
vice president and senior analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group.
“Jobs’ death contributed to the skepticism, but it is also the
closed environment of selling hardware and software together
that works extremely well for consumers but not so well for
business.”
Dr. Christopher Rogers told jurors in the manslaughter trial of Dr. Conrad Murray that he determined Jackson’s death was a homicide.Murray has denied involuntary manslaughter but has admitted giving Jackson the anesthetic used for surgery as a sleep aid. However, his attorneys have claimed that Jackson caused his own death by giving himself an extra dose when Murray was out of the singer’s bedroom on June 25, 2009.”The circumstances from my point of view do not support self-administration of propofol,” Rogers said.Rogers said he did not believe Jackson would have had time to give himself the anesthetic and stop breathing in the two minutes that Murray told police he was out of the room.But under cross-examination, Rogers acknowledged the amount of propofol present in Jackson’s blood was too high to have been caused by the relatively small infusion of 25 milligrams that Murray told police he gave the pop star.Rogers admitted under questioning by the defense that Jackson, while laying in bed, could have reached an injection site just below the knee, where drugs were administered to him through an IV line.NOT FOR SLEEPProsecutors have argued that Murray likely followed up his infusion of propofol with a continuous drip of the drug supplied through an IV system, a contention disputed by Murray’s attorneys.Rogers, the Los Angeles County chief of forensic medicine, said a lack of precise dosing equipment in the singer’s bedroom meant it would have been easy for Murray to incorrectly estimate how much propofol he had given to the singer.”The problem that Mr. Jackson was having was that he couldn’t sleep, and it’s not appropriate to administer propofol in that situation. The risk outweighs the benefit,” Rogers said.Witnesses and phone records have shown that Murray was on the phone or writing e-mail for more than 45 minutes before prosecutors believe he found Jackson’s lifeless body, and an ambulance was called.In a dramatic day as the third week of the trial got underway, jurors were shown a photo of Jackson’s thin, naked body on the autopsy table.Some fans in the Los Angeles courtroom sobbed quietly, while one walked out, overcome with emotion. Jackson’s family excused themselves before the autopsy evidence was presented.Earlier, the jury heard Murray tell police in a taped interview about the traumatic hours at the hospital where Jackson, 50, was officially pronounced dead.Murray told police that the singer’s mother, Katherine, broke down in tears when she was told Jackson had died, and the pop star’s daughter, Paris, said she did not want to be an orphan.”I stayed there, I hugged them all, gave them all comfort,” Murray said of the children.Paris Jackson, then age 11, said “I know you tried your best, but I’m really sad. You know, I will wake up in the morning and I won’t be able to see my daddy.’ She cried and was very stark,” Murray recalled. Paris said she did not “want to be an orphan,” he added.Murray could face up to four years in prison if convicted.
SAN FRANCISCO Oct 11 (Reuters) - Business-software company
Box has won $81 million in funding to expand its business,
illustrating investors’ continued appreciation for start-up
companies that tap into the cloud.The new funding almost doubles Palo Alto, California-based
Box’s previous round, $48 million raised in February. New
backers included strategic investors salesforce.com and
SAP Ventures, along with Bessemer Venture Partners and NEA.
Prior investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Draper
Fisher, also joined in the round.Box, formerly known as Box.net, plans to use the funds for
expansion, with a goal of doubling employees to about 600,
Chief Executive Aaron Levie told Reuters. In a program dubbed
the Box Innovation Network, it also plans to start funding and
consulting developers working on applications that work with
Box, much as apps from Google Apps, salesforce.com and others
do now.Box allows companies to store and access data in the
cloud— networks of servers often run and maintained by others,
allowing for access from anywhere. Box also runs apps that
perform common business tasks such as managing orders and
production scheduling.Levie said the company wants to take business from
established players that overlap with Box, like Microsoft’s Sharepoint or Oracle . About 77 percent of
Fortune 500 companies already use Box, he said.Similar players include San Francisco-based Dropbox, which
is geared toward consumers and is raising its own new funding
round. Domo, a startup based in Salt Lake City that offers
business-intelligence services, raised an initial $33 million
round in July.Venture-capital backers are placing increasing chunks of
cash in cloud-computing companies as businesses and consumers
step up their use of remote storage. Major companies such as
Amazon.com Inc, Google Inc, and Apple Inc are also making
sizable investments in the area.
