Big Business

Targeting Target

August 19, 2010 By mario piperni

Don’t you love it when people rise up in an honest and open way?

When Target gave money in July to a pro-business group in Minnesota, the company thought it was helping its bottom line by backing candidates in its home state who support lower taxes. Instead, the retailer has found itself in a fight with liberal and gay rights groups that has escalated into calls for a nationwide boycott and protests at the company’s headquarters and stores.

The problem: Target’s $100,000 helped pay for TV ads supporting the gubernatorial campaign of Republican state Rep. Tom Emmer, who thinks Minnesota’s corporate taxes should be lower. As it turns out, he also wants to ban same-sex marriage.

All of this is a direct result of January’s Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations to contribute unlimited money for political advertising. The court foolishly determined that in matters of free speech, there should be no distinction between individuals and corporations. Adding to the idiocy of that decision is the fact that corporations may do so anonymously. Target’s problems arose because Minnesota’s laws force political committee’s to disclose their list of contributors.

Let Target’s problems be a warning to other corporations attempting to influence political campaigns by way of money. While they may do so with their clientele never being aware, they risk the chance of a national boycott should they be found out.

Mess around with the people, the people mess around with you. It’s only fair.

___

To receive new posts directly on your Facebook page, become a member of MarioPiperniDotCom’s page. Click on ‘Like’ here
.

Filed Under: Big Business, supreme court Tagged With: campaign financing, political issues, politics, supreme court, target stores

BP’s CEO Keeps His Job

June 8, 2010 By mario piperni

Slate has an interesting piece on why Tony Hayward’s job as BP’s CEO might be one of the safer jobs around…for now.

Of all the mysteries of the BP oil spill, perhaps the most baffling is: Why does BP CEO Tony Hayward still have a job? Hayward, who has been CEO of BP since 2007, was in charge when the disastrous blowout at the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico took place, and he’s been in charge as BP has failed—and failed, and failed again—to stop the flow of crude oil into the Gulf. What’s more, his (unbacked-up) reassurances and poor turns of phrase (“I want my life back”) have aggravated the damage to BP’s public image. Yet Hayward is secure in his job. In fact, he may have the most secure corporate seat in Great Britain.

[...]

Hayward owes his continued tenure largely to BP’s unsuccessful efforts to cap the well. For better or worse (mostly for worse), Hayward has emerged as the public face of BP. When he shows up at the Gulf, or on television, he catches all the flak—for his colleagues, for those who report to him, and for those to whom he reports. As a human punching bag, he absorbs all the blows thrown by politicians, the media, and locals that might otherwise land on the corporate board or on investors. He literally owns the spill—and its consequences. For this reason, it wouldn’t be prudent to replace Hayward midstream.

New CEOs—especially those who step into troubled situations—like to have a clean slate.

No doubt Barack Obama relates in some measure to that last statement.

___

To receive new posts directly on your Facebook page, become a member of MarioPiperniDotCom’s page. Click here

Filed Under: Big Business Tagged With: BP, gulf spill, Tony Hayward

Making A Killing From The Gulf Oil Disaster

May 31, 2010 By mario piperni

There’s something about this that isn’t right.

Transocean Ltd., the owner of the rig leased by BP which is currently leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, made a $270 million profit from insurance payouts after the disaster, the Sunday Times reports.

The amount, revealed during a conference call to analysts, was made because its insurance policy for Deepwater Horizon rig was greater than the value of the rig itself, the paper reports.

Transocean said the cost of the cleanup from the leaking rig must be covered by BP and two smaller partners, Anadarko Petroleum and Mitsui of Japan, the paper says.

And Transocean shareholders picked up $1 billion in dividends as the company tried to hold it’s liability to under $27 million. All of this while millions of gallons of crude poured into the Gulf.

Life is good for some.

___
.
To receive new posts directly on your Facebook page, become a member of MarioPiperniDotCom’s fan page. Click here

Filed Under: Big Business, Energy, environment Tagged With: gulf oil spill, transocean

BP – Too Big To Lose

May 11, 2010 By mario piperni

Worried about BP’s financial situation in wake of the Gulf oil spill and the millions it is spending each day in response? Don’t be.

Even though most investors have soured on BP, driving down its stock price by 19 percent and wiping out $36.7 billion of its market value since the explosion, the business remains a behemoth. The company has a market value of $152.6 billion, bolstered by a global marketing network, a lucrative oil venture in Russia, a promising contract to boost production in a giant Iraqi field and scores of other large interests. It remains the largest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico. Measured by revenue or assets, it is among the world’s five largest companies.

The numbers…

For now, at least, BP’s prodigious costs combating the oil spill in the Gulf are outweighed by prodigious profits.

On Monday, BP said it spent $350 million in the first 20 days of the spill response, about $17.5 million a day. It has paid 295 of the 4,700 claims received, for a total of $3.5 million. By contrast, in the first quarter of the year, the London-based oil giant’s profits averaged $93 million a day.

The amount of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico has been estimated at 5,000 to 25,000 barrels a day. In the first quarter, BP produced 2.5 million barrels of crude oil a day worldwide — and it received $71.86 for every barrel.

So as they all prepare for the Senate hearings investigating the disaster, and as the three key players (BP, Transocean and Halliburton) run around pointing fingers at each other, the money keeps on pouring in. At the end of the day BP and its cohorts will be fined billions. The case will be locked up in the courts on appeal for the next 10 to 20 years and, like Exxon Valdez who settled just last year with a fine of under $1 billion, BP will pay some insignificant number of dollars as they keep raking in the billions.

There are two worlds out there – the one most of us occupy and the one corporations like BP occupy. Different players. Different rules. Different reality.

___

To receive new posts directly on your Facebook page, become a member of MarioPiperniDotCom’s fan page by clicking on the ‘Thumbs Up – Like” icon here

Filed Under: Big Business, environment Tagged With: BP, environment, gulf oil spill, political issues, politics