Daily Archives: July 29, 2005

More on the gas trader cases

Posted on by
Reply

traders.jpgThis Southern District U.S. Attorney Office press release announces that two former gas traders — former Dynegy trader Michelle Valencia and former El Paso trader Greg Singleton — had counts added to their pending indictments in connection with a series of criminal cases in which the government alleges that the traders reported bogus trades to industry newsletters to affect the price of natural gas. Here is a previous post on Ms. Valencia’s case and other posts on the gas trader prosecutions may be reviewed here, here, here, here, here and here.
These particular trader cases involve alleged efforts to manipulate the trading indexes, which are used to value billions of dollars in gas contracts and derivatives. Industry publications, such as Inside FERC Gas Market Report, use data from traders to calculate the index price of natural gas. Accordingly, movement in index prices often affects the level of profits that traders can generate. In these particular cases, it remains unclear in what context the allegedly false information was provided or whether the publication actually used any such false information. However, the government is contending that it needs only to prove that fake trades were reported to the publications and not that the trades were actually published or affected the markets.
Ms. Valencia and Mr. Singleton were originally charged with “conspiracy, false reporting, and wire fraud related to the transmission of allegedly inaccurate trade reports to industry newsletters which used the reported trades to calculate the ‘index’ price of natural gas in August 2000,” and the superseding indictment adds “additional counts of false reporting and wire fraud relating to inaccurate trade reports used to calculate the ‘index’ price of natural gas in July 2000.”
As noted in this previous post, it would appear that this is a fairly transparent effort by the government to increase the alleged market loss attributable to the alleged false reporting for purposes of seeking longer jail terms against Ms. Valencia and Mr. Singleton. Justice Department lawyers have been making some fairly preposterous positions on that particular issue in other cases recently.

Conglomerate forum on the corporate case of the decade

Posted on by
Reply

disney2.JPGGordon Wood over at the Conglomerate blog has put together an impressive list of expert contributors for an upcoming forum on the widely-anticipated decision of the Delaware Chancellory Court in the corporate case of the decade — i.e., the civil lawsuit over The Walt Disney Co. board’s decision to pay Michael Ovitz a rather generous severance package for essentially doing nothing during his short stay at Disney (earlier posts on the case are here, here, and here).
As Professor Wood notes, now all we need is a decision, which was expected before the end of July, but has now apparently been pushed back. My speculation is that the decision was close to completion when Professor Ribstein posted his recent prediction on the decision, which sent Chancellor Chandler and his clerks scampering back to the drawing board. ;^)
Seriously, though, the Conglomerate forum is yet another example of the way in which the blogosphere is redefining the way in which information is delivered to the public. Prior to the blogosphere, the only way that one could obtain the type of expert analysis that such a forum delivers would be to luck upon an op-ed in a newspaper or dig through stodgy law review articles. Now, that analysis is delivered in an efficient and effective manner for the world to peruse. That’s a remarkable development, and one that all of us should be careful not to take for granted.

Judge Roberts and Rome

Posted on by
1

John_roberts4.jpgOver time, politicians will manage to stand just about any issue in American politics on its head.
Houston played host to one of the most important speeches of John F. Kennedy‘s 1960 Presidential campaign. Conventional political wisdom at the time was that a Catholic could not be elected President of the United States because of Protestants’ perception that a Catholic would have to obey the Pope’s commands over those of the U.S. Constitution. Mr. Kennedy finally decided to address the issue head-on, and on September 12, 1960, he delivered this statement to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, in which Theodore White observed that “he knocked religion out of the campaign as an intellectually respectable issue.”

Continue reading →

The IRA’s announcement

Posted on by
2

ira.jpgIn a potentially significant step that could end over three decades of violence in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland, the Irish Republican Army has ordered its members to discard their weapons. As noted in this earlier post, the I.R.A.’s continued use of terrorism in attempting to achieve its political goals — and some United States politicians’ often ambivalent stance toward it — represented one of the more troubling hypocrocies of the U.S.’s current War on Terror.

Continue reading →

“It’s nowhere near as bad as the one a few months ago”

Posted on by
Reply

Texas City disaster2.JPGThe comment that serves as the title of this post qualifies as genuinely good news these days at BP p.l.c. However, as noted in this post from just the other day, it is getting a bit difficult to keep up with BP’s various problems these days.
Another fire erupted at BP’s Texas City plant Thursday evening, just four months after the one in March this year that caused 15 deaths and dozens of injuries. No injuries were reported in Thursday’s fire that took place in BP’s Texas City 1,200-acre complex, but not close within the complex to the unit that exploded in March. BP released a statement saying that “there is no connection between the two incidents.”
Meanwhile, crude-oil futures settled up nearly a dollar to push prices above $60 a barrel for the first time in more than two weeks.