Freehold estate

My seventh blog handles about Joe Lewis, the Bahamas-based billionaire. He has gained a seat on the board of Mitchells & Butlers after becoming the biggest shareholder. Lewis will be represented on the board of the pub group by an appointee after the currency tycoon raised his stake in M&B to 22.9% through his Piedmont investment company.Lewis, who lost $1.2bn from a bet in Bear Stearns shares that went spectacularly wrong, is believed to be interested in the property aspects of M&B's mainly freehold estate.Other interested parties include the Irish tycoons, John Magnier and JP McManus, who own 17.6% of M&B through their Elpida vehicle. The property tycoon, Robert Tchenguiz, is out of the picture after nursing heavy losses in the wake of the collapse of Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which forced him to sell his stakes in M&B and other companies. Analysts at KBC Peel Hunt said the appointment of Lewis's representative, Richard McGuire, to the M&B board "potentially increases the prospect of asset sales, which could bring forward the restoration of the dividend. However, opportunities for asset sales are clearly limited".A further board representative of Lewis could be appointed under an agreement struck between M&B and the investor, provided his share holding is above 22%.

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jul/16/joe-lewis-on-board-at-mitchells-and-butler

Steven

breach of warranty

For Blog 6, I found an article about breach of warranty. A television company controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation faced a second lawsuit in six months alleging that it defrauded a rival and misappropriated trade secrets. DirecTV, the biggest satellite television firm in the US and a company that Mr Murdoch narrowly failed to buy last year, has launched the action against NDS, the Middlesex supplier of smart cards that prevent pirating. The lawsuit comes six months after Canal Plus Technologies (CPT) of France began a $3bn legal action against NDS alleging it helped fund hackers who published secrets on the internet about its pay-TV technology. The DirecTV suit, filed under seal in a US district court in Los Angeles, makes a series of allegations against NDS including breach of contract, fraud, breach of warranty and misappropriation of trade secrets. Bob Marsocci, a spokesman for DirecTV, said: "We filed the complaint because NDS breached our contract and defrauded us. We have a very strong case and will present that in court." DirecTV is seeking damages, the delivery of software which it claims is required by contract and an injunction to prevent any further breaches. NDS, which has dismissed CPT's allegations as baseless, last night insisted the new case was without merit.

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2002/sep/20/newscorporation.citynews

Steven

Age discrimination

For my fifth blog I have found an example of discriminatory dismissal. A council manager was sacked seven months before he reached his 50th birthday, meaning he had to wait until he was 65 to claim his pension. Had he been made redundant after his 50th birthday. Mr. Wooster could claim the pension almost immediately. Tower Hamlets had hoped to have a 15 year period of grace before they had to pay his pension with one manager boasting: "If he goes now, we do save the pension." But an employment tribunal found the council had unfairly dismissed Mr Wooster who had worked for Tower Hamlets for 33 years and discriminated against him because of age. Mr Wooster is claiming more than a million pounds in compensation for his employment losses, reduction in pension and injury to feelings. Speaking after today's ruling, Mr Wooster said: "I am absolutely delighted and thrilled. "It has been an extremely difficult time to have to go through not one but two legal battles, but I have come through to the other side and I can now relax at last." He added: "The Council thought it could just get rid of me because it didn't want to pay my pension. "

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6169966/Sacked-council-manager-wins-1-million-age-discrimination-payout.html

Steven

chinese husband allows wife to attack him once a week

My next blog handles about a husband who has signed a contract with his wife that she may attack him once in a week. This story came up in Chinese city Shanghai. The man took the unusual step after suffering intense abuse from his wife who studies kung fu. From the very beginning of their relationship he has been attracted to her “strong and independent temperament”. Before they get married they got in some sort of argument and he got a taste of her kung fu for the first time. He said that he had tried to bite his lip so he wouldn’t be punished, but that he "never wants to lose an argument" and so always ends up with "bruises and scars all over". So now in order to curb his wife’s aggression, they have an agreement that she may attack him uppermost once in a week. If she breaches the contract she must go to her parents for three days. In overall I think this is a very strange agreement. I don’t think it is allowed in western jurisdiction to sign these kind of contracts because violence between partners is illegal. I think it is improper to sign those contracts and that they should be banned by the Chinese authorities.

source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/6703629/Chinese-husband-allows-wife-to-attack-him-once-a-week.html

Steven

Landmark copyright trial against Pirate Bay gets underway

The trial against the four men behind Pirate Bay started at the 16th of February 2009. The four men are accused of being accessories of breaking copyright law. If the judge says that they are guilty they will have to go to prison for 2 years and they will have to pay a fine of 143,500 dollars.

The designers of the site are confident that the site will still exist without them, because the court already tried to take it down once, but they failed. The four men are convinced that the court will fail again.

The creators say that the site only acts as a search engine and that the site doesn’t contain any infringing content. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, who represents 1400 record companies worldwide, disagrees with this statement of the Pirate Bay creators. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry says that authors, musicmakers, moviemakers and other people lost a lot of money because of Pirate Bay.

The evidence in this case will show that Pirate Bay is a commercial business, which made a lot of money for its creators, no matter what the creators of Pirate Bay say.

The entertaining industry demands 14 million dollars from Pirate Bay for lost sales income. The creators of Pirate Bay will refuse to pay, because they don’t have a lot of money. They don’t earn money from Pirate Bay.

I think it’s good that the government tries to remove sites like Pirate Bay, because a lot of people are losing a lot of money, because everybody is downloading illegally from the Internet. My opinion is that downloading illegal content from the Internet is the same as stealing something from a shop. It’s not difficult to download illegally and the chance that you will be punished isn’t very high. That’s why the government must act and remove sites like Pirate Bay from the Internet.

Jonas Hillemans 2RP2

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/16/pirate_bay_copyright_infringement_trial/

Viewpoints: Laurence Fink on Real Estate Sector.

Laurence Fink, the chairman and CEO of BlackRock inc. gives his opinion on the crisis in the real estate or real property sector. He said that everybody who bought real property in 2006 or 2007 made a bad investment. In 2006 and 2007 everything went well and the real property companies received a lot of money. The most of those investments are bad today. They lost a lot of their value.


The company of Laurence Fink made a mistake, but they aren’t the only one, a lot of people made the same mistake. Mister Fink sais that now it’s a perfect time to buy real estate, because the prices are low. BlackRock inc. lost a lot of money because of the crisis, and now they have a big refinancing risk in the next few years. Now the market is growing again and new clients want to buy real estate. Laurence Fink thinks that if the US economy will increase again, the real estate sector will heal and the real estate market will grow again. It will be difficult in the first few years, your property might even have a lower value, but after a few years the value of your property will increase. Nobody knows how long the economic crisis will last, so it’s hard to tell when the real estate market will heal.


I think that the people must find their confidence back in the economy. If they find their confidence, they will invest again in the economy and in the real estate sector. Today the people don’t want to invest their money because they are afraid to lose it again. So it will be difficult to win the confidence of the people, but once they are confident that they will earn money instead of losing it, they will invest again and the economy will grow. When the economy increases, the real estate market will recover itself.


Jonas Hillemans 2RP2

Source: http://online.wsj.com/video/viewpoints-laurence-fink-on-real-estate-sector/12FF512D-98F6-46BA-834E-98C1351F83F4.html

Qantas to seek damages from Boeing

Qantas, an Australian flag carrier, wants to seek damages from Boeing, the US aircraft maker, for late delivery of the 787 Dreamliner. Boeing already confirmed that it was facing more embarrassing delays in the first deliveries of its 787. The 787 is an 250-300 seat jet, the group’s biggest investment in commercial aircraft in more than a decade. “Qantas and Boeing will be discussing the issue of liquidated damages in the coming weeks.” said Qantas chief executive, Geoff Dixon. Boeing has collected a large number of orders for the 787 and the issues of financial penalty payments to customers and the rescheduling of deliveries are becoming a n increasing headache. The order book may become a huge problem as the delays grow. Qantas is amongst the biggest customers and the group has made a commitment for up to 115 aircraft. Scott Carson, chief executive of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said on Wednesday the first flight of the 787 had been put back again, the third delay from the original plan for the first flight in August last year. I think Qantas has it at the right end. They will get damages for the delays of delivery of Boeing. Hopefully for Boeing, the deliveries won’t take long anymore.

Steven

Source:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6198e578-c52c-11dc-811a-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1