QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Clearly what happened in the markets after June was well beyond what [the Federal Reserve] intended, and they’re trying to pull it back.”
Julia Coronado, BNP Paribas SA chief economist for North America, on Fed Chief Ben Bernanke’s Congressional testimony Wednesday Article, 1D
2 banking firms to report results today
Simmons First National Bank and Home BancShares, which owns Conway-based Centennial Bank, will release second-quarter earnings today and hold conference calls to discuss the results.
Home BancShares’ conference call begins at 1 p.m. To hear the call, interested parties can call (888) 317-6016 and ask for the Home BancShares conference call.
A conference call for Pine Bluff-based Simmons First National begins at 3 p.m. today. Interested parties can listen in by calling (888) 510-1765 and asking for the Simmons First National conference call. The conference identification number is 6573031.
Conference to hear actress MacDowell
BENTONVILLE - A poignant magazine cover story led a chamber of commerce executive to track down actress Andie MacDowell to be keynote speaker for the 15th annual Northwest Arkansas Business Women’s Conference, scheduled for Sept. 17 at the John Q. Hammons Convention Center.
Past speakers have included soul great Gladys Knight, actress Helen Hunt and former Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summit. The conference, sponsored this year by Arvest Bank, has sold out the 1,200-seat venue in recent years. Reservations to the full-day conference are $125 or $99 if purchased before Sept. 1. Admission to Mac-Dowell’s speech is $65 in advance and $75 after Sept. 1.
The conference features several session speakers, including Celia Swanson, senior vice president of talent development for Wal-Mart U.S. Lunch is provided.
MacDowell’s most notable film credits include St. Elmo’s Fire, Groundhog Day and Four Weddings and a Funeral. Her new Hallmark television show, Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove, premieres Saturday.
Information on the conference and MacDowell’s appearance is available at (479) 273-2841.
BP’s bid to halt spill payouts to be heard
NEW ORLEANS - A federal judge has scheduled a hearing Friday on BP’s bid to temporarily block settlement payments to Gulf Coast businesses and residents who claim they lost money after the company’s 2010 oil spill.
On Tuesday, BP asked U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier to suspend the payments while former FBI Director Louis Freeh investigates alleged misconduct by a lawyer who helped administer the multibillion-dollar settlement program.
Last month, court-appointed claims administrator Patrick Juneau announced that his office is investigating allegations that a former staff attorney, Lionel H. Sutton III, received a part of settlement proceeds for claims he had referred to a law firm before he started working on the settlement program.
Barbier appointed Freeh on July 2 to investigate the allegations and take a broader look at the program.
BP PLC argued in a court filing Tuesday that it shouldn’t be required to take the risk that hundreds of millions of dollars in claims payments could be “tainted by fraud, corruption and malfeasance.”
In April, Barbier refused to block what could be billions of dollars of payments to businesses after BP argued that he and Juneau have misinterpreted the settlement and forced the company to pay for inflated and fictitious losses. Barbier, who appointed Juneau, upheld his interpretation of settlement terms governing payments to businesses.
BP appealed that decision. A three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case recently. The panel didn’t indicate how soon it would rule.
Oil-rig demand seen surging in U.S. Gulf
The deep-water Gulf of Mexico, shut down after BP Plc’s record oil spill in 2010, has rebounded to become the fastest growing offshore market in the world.
The number of rigs operating in waters deeper than 1,000 feet in the U.S. Gulf will grow to 60 by the end of 2015, said Brian Uhlmer, an analyst at Global Hunter Securities LLC in Houston. As of last week, there were 36 rigs working in those waters, according to industry researcher IHS Petrodata.
Producers will need $16 billion worth of additional rigs to handle the expanded drilling, analysts including Uhlmer estimate. Demand is driven in part by exploration successes in the lower tertiary, a geologic layer about 20,000 feet below the seafloor containing giant crude deposits that producers are only now figuring out how to tap.
The revival will add to surging crude-oil supplies from the U.S. shale boom, with Gulf production climbing 23 percent to 1.55 million barrels a day by December 2014 from 1.26 million in March, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
China power firm calls reports ‘slander’
The parent of China Resources Power Holdings Co.
said media reports on a purchase for which the unit allegedly overpaid are full of “speculation, assumption and malicious slander.”
The reputation of the company and its leader have been “negatively affected” by the reports, Hong Kong based China Resources Holdings Co. said in a statement on its website Wednesday. The company said it reserves the right to pursue legal remedies over words and actions that denigrate and slander its reputation.
Hong Kong-listed China Resources Power fell the most in more than two months today after the official Xinhua News Agency posted a letter on its website by one of its reporters that said the power generator and the chairman of its state-owned parent intentionally overpaid for a 2010 purchase.
The letter written by Xinhua reporter Wang Wenzhi said the parent’s chairman, Song Lin, overpaid when China Resources Power spent $1.3 billion for an 80 percent stake in coal-mine assets in Shanxi province that another party valued at half the price, according to the letter.
- Bloomberg News
Business, Pages 24 on 07/18/2013