TOP STORIES:
Detroit’s
Creditors Cry “Carjackers, Rapists and Thugs! Oh, My!” - (www.mfi-miami.com) Robert Snell of the Detroit News reports that
three holdout creditors — Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp., Berkshire Hathaway
Assurance Corp. and Financial Guaranty Insurance Corp. – are trying to
block U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes from taking a tour of the city. Snell
writes that they’re concerned security could be jeopardized if the route
through one of the country’s most dangerous cities is publicized in advance. On
Tuesday, in court briefs, creditors’ attorneys asked Rhodes to scrap the tour,
arguing it’s not only potentially dangerous, but is irrelevant and
unprecedented, the News reports. The city attorneys want the tour to give the
judge perspective on what he’s dealing with.
Coach
closing 70 stores as sales suffer - (www.cnbc.com)
Upscale retailer Coach
Inc said it would close about 70 stores in North America and
that it expected revenue to fall in low double digits in percentage terms in
the year ending next June, as it struggles against fast-growing rivals. Coach,
whose shares dropped as much as 11 percent, also said that it would
"de-emphasize" discounting. The stock was one of the top losers on
the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. The clothes, shoes and handbags
retailer said it expected North America same-store sales to fall in the
"high teens" in percentage terms in the coming year. The decline in
same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year, could be deeper due
to lower online sales, the company said in a presentation to investors.
Exxon,
BP Evacuate Iraq Workers as Oil Drilling Continues - (www.bloomberg.com) Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc began removing employees from
Iraq, OPEC’s second-largest oil producer, after Islamist militants seized
cities north of Baghdad and attempted to capture a refinery. Exxon evacuated
some workers from the West Qurna oil field, according to a person familiar with
the company’s Iraq operations. BP Plc removed non-essential workers, Chief
Executive Officer Bob Dudley said
June 17. Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd.
moved 28 of its 166 Iraq employees to Dubai, the company said by e-mail
yesterday. Royal Dutch Shell Plc isn’t evacuating
staff yet and is ready to do so, Andy Brown, head of Shell Upstream
International, said in an interview in Moscow. The companies all said they’re
continuing to pump oil and there are few signs Iraq’s production has been
curbed after Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant fighters took northern cities
including Mosul. Police near the Baiji refinery, the nation’s largest, said
government forces are now in control after a battle with ISIL. Crude shipments
from the south, where most production is located, may accelerate next month and
Kurds are defending the Kirkuk oilfield in the north.
As
Ukraine Launches A Debt Restructuring, Is Russia About To Become A
"Holdout" Activist Investor? - (www.zerohedge.com)
With Argentina suddenly no
longer able to kick the can any longer in its decade long fight with holdout
investors, and warning that unless the covenants of the foreign law bonds are
stripped in effect making them local-law bonds (and undergoing an event of
default for CDS purposes), everyone is focusing on how soon until the sovereign
default parade will again resume, following the Greek technical bankruptcy two
years ago. Yet the next sovereign restructuring may not come from Argentina
first, but from the Ukraine, which as Reuters reports is holding talks with
creditors on the restructuring of its foreign debt. Unfortunately for the
country, this attempt at a "voluntary" restructuring is coming at the
worst possible time.
Cook
Couple Passed $6 Billion Fortune to Son to Avoid Tax - (www.bloomberg.com)Bill and Gayle Cook, the co-founders of
medical-device maker Cook Group, passed ownership of the company to their son,
Carl, to avoid estate taxes prior to Bill Cook’s death in 2011, according to a
biography of the patriarch. “We had to bypass Gayle to get the stock to Carl
now. That took a long time and a lot of planning and work,” Bill Cook is quoted
as saying in “The Bill Cook Story,” a 2008 biography written by Bob Hammel for
Indiana University Press. The company had revenue of about $2 billion in 2012,
according to company spokesman Dave McCarty. The maker of needles, catheters
and other medical products is valued at $5.8 billion, making Carl Cook the
251st richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires
Index. He’s never appeared on an international wealth ranking. The billionaire
became chief executive officer of Cook Group upon his father’s death. “It took
us almost fifteen years to transfer the stock to Carl in an equitable way, so
the taxes wouldn’t kill the company,” Bill Cook said in the book. “That can
happen. You can kill your company by trying to get the stock transferred or to
sell it to your children, because of the estate taxes.” McCarty declined to
comment on Carl Cook’s net worth.
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