Grand Prairie, Texas (PRWEB) February 22, 2012
Great things are happening in Grand Prairie, according to Neighborhood Credit Union, which broke ground this morning on its new location in Grand Prairie.
“We are excited to be in Grand Prairie today to mark the official launch of a new branch that will be ready to serve the people of this community in the next few months,” said Gerald Townsend, Chairman of the Board for Neighborhood Credit Union.
The new branch, at the intersection of West Bardin Road and Great Southwest Parkway, is due to open October 1, 2012. The Neighborhood Credit Union not only will provide a better way of banking to the Grand Prairie community, but also will focus on engaging students at nearby schools to establish a firm financial foundation for their future.
“Our mission is to build financial relationships in your neighborhood,” said Townsend. “We are not another big bank simply pushing products and services. We are a not-for-profit credit union that wants to help people from all walks of life improve their own financial life.”
Chet Kimmell, president and CEO of Neighborhood Credit Union, said the credit union hopes to be a draw to other businesses looking at or locating in Grand Prairie.
“This groundbreaking is symbolic of what we hope will be a trend: the decision by companies and organizations to invest in Grand Prairie and be part of this neighborhood,” said Kimmell. “We believe Grand Prairie is going places, given its forward-thinking leadership and the community’s focus on growth and economic development.”
Neighborhood Credit Union board members and staff were joined by State Rep. Rodney Anderson; Grand Prairie City Council members Bill Thorn and Richard Fregoe; City Manager Tom Hart; Gail Cannon, District Director for State Rep. Barbara Nash; Grand Prairie Chamber of Commerce officials Bill Moser and Greg Cashman, and other business leaders.
About Neighborhood Credit Union
Neighborhood Credit Union, the oldest credit union in Dallas (chartered April 18, 1930), is a not-for-profit financial organization serving Dallas and Ellis counties, as well as the city of Arlington. With branches in South Dallas, North Dallas, Richardson, Arlington, Mesquite, Duncanville, Waxahachie and Lancaster (and soon to be in Grand Prairie) and assets topping $300 million, Neighborhood Credit Union has a membership of 30,000 and continues to welcome new members daily. For more information on Neighborhood Credit Union, call (214) 748-9393 or visit http://www.myncu.com/.
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2012年2月23日星期四
2012年2月13日星期一
Council backs stalled housing with cash
A council is pumping £770,000 into a series of stalled developments which can now deliver more than 200 new homes and 380 jobs.
Walsall Council is using cash from the New Homes Bonus to issue loans and grants to four construction companies on five sites with a combined value of £20 million.Developers had to satisfy a range of criteria and also have part-built developments or schemes with planning permission which had not yet begun, before they could get the cash.
The loans will be repaid by the developers and reinvested in other schemes to help create new jobs and homes.
Adrian Andrew, Walsall Council member for regeneration, said: ‘I am proud and delighted to be able to announce a financial package of almost £800,000 that will help more than 200 homes get built.
‘This doesn’t just mean new homes taking shape. This is also much-needed jobs being created and fresh investment being unlocked.
‘Around 300 people could be working on the construction schemes. A further 80 jobs will be created in the care and support sector through the development of these sites.
‘All this means we’ll help safeguard jobs and create new ones. It’s a key priority for us to help create and safeguard private sector jobs and this does just that.
‘Walsall is yet again bucking the national trend and shows that we are open for business as a borough.
‘I am delighted that the government is following in our footsteps with a similar scheme called Getting Britain Building.’
Schemes getting cash
- Midland Properties will receive £245,000 loans to help resume building work at the former Field Road industrial estate in Bloxwich to create 18 homes for sale and rent as well as to help build 11 rental properties at the former Chamberlain & Hill site in Reeves Street, Bloxwich
- Stanley Developments are set to receive a £175,000 grant to help work start on 85 private and affordable older person extra care homes for rent or sale at Bentley Road North in Bentley.
- Jessup Brothers Ltd are to receive a £175,000 grant to resume work on the part built Walsall Waterfront development to create 82 private and affordable flats.
- BT Felton and Sons are set to receive a £175,000 loan to build 12 homes for private sale in Romney Way, Pheasey, Great Barr.
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Libyan domestic fund to direct some investments abroad: official
DUBAI (Reuters) – A Libyan domestic investment fund with estimated assets of $1 billion could direct some of its investments abroad, especially to neighbouring Tunisia, the chief executive of the National Investment Company said.
“Although the fund is focused on domestic investment, our laws allow for foreign investment,” Basheer Ashour told Reuters over the telephone from Tripoli.
“We could make some investments in Tunisia,” he said.
He said the fund was planning to invest in what he described as “conservative tourism”, catering to a growing number of tourists looking to stay in hotels and resorts which observe Islamic rules, including banning alcohol.
“It’s a very early stage but there are discussions now,” he said, referring to the Tunisian investment.
Libyan Central Bank Governor Saddeq Omar Elkaber told Reuters last month the Libyan government had no plans to inject fresh cash into its foreign investments, including Italian bank UniCredit, as it needed the money for reconstruction efforts.
Ashour said he was leading a restructuring plan of the fund, established in 1986, that aims at increasing its investments locally and abroad. He said one project was to build a transport network of buses and taxis inside and between Libyan cities.
He said, however, that there are no immediate plans to increase the fund’s capital by tapping into government coffers.
“For foreign projects we’re thinking of seeking external financing, preferably through means of Islamic banking,” he said.
The U.N. Security Council’s sanctions had frozen $170 billion in Libyan assets, but a large sum was released in December when the council lifted the sanctions on the central bank’s $100 billion, mostly cash assets.
Ashour said he expected the National Investment Company’s capital to increase by up to 60 percent over the next two to three years.
“It’s possible that the size of the fund increases in the next two to three years to 1.5-2.0 billion Libyan dinars,” he said.
The fund has investments in the oil, real estate, banking and insurance sectors, including a 55 percent stake in the Sahara Insurance Co.
He said the fund had 200 million dinars in cash that would be mostly used to complete existing real estate projects in Libya, including hotels.
Libya’s main investment vehicles is the $65 billion Libyan Investment Authority.
Its acting chief executive told Reuters late last year the cash-heavy fund could be used to fund reconstruction projects after a nine-month civil war that ended the rule of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
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“Although the fund is focused on domestic investment, our laws allow for foreign investment,” Basheer Ashour told Reuters over the telephone from Tripoli.
“We could make some investments in Tunisia,” he said.
He said the fund was planning to invest in what he described as “conservative tourism”, catering to a growing number of tourists looking to stay in hotels and resorts which observe Islamic rules, including banning alcohol.
“It’s a very early stage but there are discussions now,” he said, referring to the Tunisian investment.
Libyan Central Bank Governor Saddeq Omar Elkaber told Reuters last month the Libyan government had no plans to inject fresh cash into its foreign investments, including Italian bank UniCredit, as it needed the money for reconstruction efforts.
Ashour said he was leading a restructuring plan of the fund, established in 1986, that aims at increasing its investments locally and abroad. He said one project was to build a transport network of buses and taxis inside and between Libyan cities.
He said, however, that there are no immediate plans to increase the fund’s capital by tapping into government coffers.
“For foreign projects we’re thinking of seeking external financing, preferably through means of Islamic banking,” he said.
The U.N. Security Council’s sanctions had frozen $170 billion in Libyan assets, but a large sum was released in December when the council lifted the sanctions on the central bank’s $100 billion, mostly cash assets.
Ashour said he expected the National Investment Company’s capital to increase by up to 60 percent over the next two to three years.
“It’s possible that the size of the fund increases in the next two to three years to 1.5-2.0 billion Libyan dinars,” he said.
The fund has investments in the oil, real estate, banking and insurance sectors, including a 55 percent stake in the Sahara Insurance Co.
He said the fund had 200 million dinars in cash that would be mostly used to complete existing real estate projects in Libya, including hotels.
Libya’s main investment vehicles is the $65 billion Libyan Investment Authority.
Its acting chief executive told Reuters late last year the cash-heavy fund could be used to fund reconstruction projects after a nine-month civil war that ended the rule of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
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2012年2月10日星期五
Pension Funds Get Queasy over Private Equity
By Cristina Alesci and Devin Banerjee
Mitt Romney’s campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination may be creating funding headaches for his former colleagues in the private equity industry. Romney’s opponents have characterized Bain Capital—the firm he helped found in 1984 and left in 1999—and other buyout managers as corporate looters who enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary workers. The issue is likely to remain in the news should Romney win his party’s nomination and face President Obama in the general election.
With public scrutiny focused on private equity funds, pension funds are more reluctant to invest and may ask for more details on job creation and push for lower fees, according to officials and trustees at public pensions. “Pension funds have boards. They don’t want to be giving money to an industry that has a taint,” says Tony James, president of Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm. “Similarly, boards of directors don’t want to sell their company to organizations they don’t view as respectable. So it could be very damaging for the industry.”
The debate comes as the industry is competing for a shrinking pool of investor dollars. Fundraising has fallen off sharply since the onset of the global financial crisis, staying below $100 million each quarter, according to London-based researcher Preqin. In the second quarter of 2007, at the peak of the leveraged buyout boom, private equity firms raised almost $214 billion. In the fourth quarter of 2011, they raised $52.4 billion.
Public and private pension funds in the U.S. provide 42 percent of the capital for all private equity investments, according to the Private Equity Growth Capital Council in Washington. Public employee pension funds, which must answer to ordinary workers, are sensitive to protracted debates about managers’ compensation and whether buyouts create value and jobs, says one official who asked not to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the topic. “The political attacks against Romney and Bain will definitely come up when firms pitch us their new funds,” says William R. Atwood, executive director of the Illinois State Board of Investment, which oversees $10.4 billion in pension funds. “You’d be crazy not to bring it up.” The Illinois pension board had $621.3 million, or 6 percent of its assets, in private equity as of Dec. 31, according to its website.
Bad publicity has hurt private equity firms in the past. Last year, Blackstone lost out on a deal to manage hedge fund investments for New York City’s public pension funds after the company’s chief strategist suggested retiree benefits were too generous.
Bain tends to be less reliant on pension funds than its rivals. When Romney set out to raise Bain’s first fund in 1984, he steered clear of pension funds, pursuing high-net-worth individuals who contributed about $37 million, according to a person who worked with Romney at the time. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’s co-founders, by contrast, received early capital from Oregon’s and Washington’s pensions, with the latter contributing $12 million to KKR’s first fund in 1982.
The success of Bain’s first fund, which generated a 61 percent average annual return, according to marketing documents from 2004 obtained by Bloomberg, allowed Bain to charge a premium for its investment services. Bain collects 30 percent of the profit on its investments, the highest in the industry. Pensions historically have been less willing to pay the higher performance fees. In a recent fund, Bain relied on pensions for about 9 percent of client assets. Alex Stanton, a spokesman for Bain, declined to comment.
One Bain executive expects the storm to blow over. “Our limited partners have been with us for 28 years, many of them,” Bain Managing Director Stephen Pagliuca said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 27. “We just keep our heads down and try to build value.” Pagliuca also said that pensions will come to rely more on private equity to meet their growing obligations to workers because traditional assets like stocks and bonds won’t return enough. Still, with Romney’s candidacy keeping the spotlight on the industry, Atwood of the Illinois State Board of Investment says there’s bound to be an impact. “We all know that private equity managers make a lot of money, and we know how they do their business,” he says. “But when it’s on the front page, it causes us to think twice when making investment decisions. Private equity is more lucrative when it’s kept quiet.”
The bottom line: Pension funds, which provide 42 percent of the private equity industry’s capital, may pull back amid criticism of Romney and Bain.
Alesci is a reporter for Bloomberg News in New York. Banerjee is a reporter for Bloomberg News in New York.http://tourism9.com/ http://vkins.com/
Mitt Romney’s campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination may be creating funding headaches for his former colleagues in the private equity industry. Romney’s opponents have characterized Bain Capital—the firm he helped found in 1984 and left in 1999—and other buyout managers as corporate looters who enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary workers. The issue is likely to remain in the news should Romney win his party’s nomination and face President Obama in the general election.
With public scrutiny focused on private equity funds, pension funds are more reluctant to invest and may ask for more details on job creation and push for lower fees, according to officials and trustees at public pensions. “Pension funds have boards. They don’t want to be giving money to an industry that has a taint,” says Tony James, president of Blackstone Group, the world’s largest private equity firm. “Similarly, boards of directors don’t want to sell their company to organizations they don’t view as respectable. So it could be very damaging for the industry.”
The debate comes as the industry is competing for a shrinking pool of investor dollars. Fundraising has fallen off sharply since the onset of the global financial crisis, staying below $100 million each quarter, according to London-based researcher Preqin. In the second quarter of 2007, at the peak of the leveraged buyout boom, private equity firms raised almost $214 billion. In the fourth quarter of 2011, they raised $52.4 billion.
Public and private pension funds in the U.S. provide 42 percent of the capital for all private equity investments, according to the Private Equity Growth Capital Council in Washington. Public employee pension funds, which must answer to ordinary workers, are sensitive to protracted debates about managers’ compensation and whether buyouts create value and jobs, says one official who asked not to be named because he wasn’t authorized to speak on the topic. “The political attacks against Romney and Bain will definitely come up when firms pitch us their new funds,” says William R. Atwood, executive director of the Illinois State Board of Investment, which oversees $10.4 billion in pension funds. “You’d be crazy not to bring it up.” The Illinois pension board had $621.3 million, or 6 percent of its assets, in private equity as of Dec. 31, according to its website.
Bad publicity has hurt private equity firms in the past. Last year, Blackstone lost out on a deal to manage hedge fund investments for New York City’s public pension funds after the company’s chief strategist suggested retiree benefits were too generous.
Bain tends to be less reliant on pension funds than its rivals. When Romney set out to raise Bain’s first fund in 1984, he steered clear of pension funds, pursuing high-net-worth individuals who contributed about $37 million, according to a person who worked with Romney at the time. Kohlberg Kravis Roberts’s co-founders, by contrast, received early capital from Oregon’s and Washington’s pensions, with the latter contributing $12 million to KKR’s first fund in 1982.
The success of Bain’s first fund, which generated a 61 percent average annual return, according to marketing documents from 2004 obtained by Bloomberg, allowed Bain to charge a premium for its investment services. Bain collects 30 percent of the profit on its investments, the highest in the industry. Pensions historically have been less willing to pay the higher performance fees. In a recent fund, Bain relied on pensions for about 9 percent of client assets. Alex Stanton, a spokesman for Bain, declined to comment.
One Bain executive expects the storm to blow over. “Our limited partners have been with us for 28 years, many of them,” Bain Managing Director Stephen Pagliuca said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 27. “We just keep our heads down and try to build value.” Pagliuca also said that pensions will come to rely more on private equity to meet their growing obligations to workers because traditional assets like stocks and bonds won’t return enough. Still, with Romney’s candidacy keeping the spotlight on the industry, Atwood of the Illinois State Board of Investment says there’s bound to be an impact. “We all know that private equity managers make a lot of money, and we know how they do their business,” he says. “But when it’s on the front page, it causes us to think twice when making investment decisions. Private equity is more lucrative when it’s kept quiet.”
The bottom line: Pension funds, which provide 42 percent of the private equity industry’s capital, may pull back amid criticism of Romney and Bain.
Alesci is a reporter for Bloomberg News in New York. Banerjee is a reporter for Bloomberg News in New York.http://tourism9.com/ http://vkins.com/
2012年2月7日星期二
Private-Equity Lobbying Helped Protect Romney’s Tax Benefits
February 07, 2012, 7:18 AM EST
By Steven Sloan
Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) — The largest U.S. private-equity funds and venture capital firms have relied on a five-year, multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to protect the carried interest tax break that helped drive presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s 2010 effective tax rate below 14 percent.
With the issue gaining attention in this year’s U.S. presidential election campaign, the investment industry is again girding to defend its preferential tax treatment. Blackstone Group LP alone spent $5 million in 2011 lobbying Congress on issues including the tax treatment of carried interest.
“If anything preserves the status quo, it will be the very heavy lobbying campaign,” said Edward Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California. “There’s no other reason for the subsidy to survive.”
Opponents of the tax rate for carried interest see this as an opportunity to press for change. Romney released his 2010 tax returns on Jan. 24, revealing he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent on income of $21.6 million.
Romney, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts and co-founder of Bain Capital LLC, has come to personify the debate over whether the carried interest paid to private-equity managers should be taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent while ordinary income is taxed at rates as high as 35 percent.
Tax Fairness Debate
Democrats view the carried interest issue as an element of the tax fairness theme that President Barack Obama is highlighting in his re-election campaign. Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, plans to introduce a bill as soon as this week that would tax carried interest at the same rate as regular income, according to spokesman Josh Drobnyk. The bill probably won’t advance in the Republican-controlled chamber this year.
Carried interest is the profits-based compensation that private-equity managers, real estate investors and members of oil and gas partnerships often receive. They get a portion of their clients’ earnings as investment income if the underlying earnings are treated that way. Levin and Obama call carried interest compensation for work, which they say should be viewed like wages for tax purposes.
Private-equity firms invested more than $148 billion in 1,234 U.S.-based companies in 2010, according to the Private Equity Growth Capital Council. The industry says it employs more than 8 million people.
Washington Lobbyists
Companies opposed to changing the tax treatment of carried interest have hired veteran Washington lobbyists to make their case. Wayne Berman of Ogilvy Government Relations is Blackstone’s top lobbyist on the issue. He was an assistant commerce secretary during George H.W. Bush’s administration. Other Ogilvy lobbyists working for Blackstone include Drew Maloney, who was a staffer for former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, and Moses Mercado, the former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt’s deputy chief of staff.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. hired former Representative Vic Fazio, a California Democrat, to work with Congress on “tax issues affecting private-equity firms and their portfolio companies,” according to lobbying records. The New York-based private-equity company spent $150,000 in the fourth quarter on lobbyists from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld to work on issues that included tax policy.
Bain spent $80,000 during the fourth quarter to hire lobbyists from Public Strategies Washington Inc. to “monitor tax reform developments,” lobbying records show. Joseph O’Neill and Paul Snyder are lobbying for Romney’s former company.
O’Neill was chief of staff to former Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen and helped run the late Texas Democrat’s 1988 vice presidential bid. Snyder was a legislative assistant to former House Speaker Tip O’Neill, the late Massachusetts Democrat.
Budget Deficit
Raising taxes on carried interest compensation wouldn’t do much to narrow the U.S. budget deficit. In its fiscal 2012 budget request, the Obama administration said the proposal to tax carried interest as ordinary income would generate $14.8 billion over 10 years. In December, the deficit stood at almost $1.3 trillion.
The issue has divided Congress along mostly partisan lines. The last time the Senate considered a bill that would have increased taxes on carried interest — in June 2010 — every Republican voted against it, preventing the bill from advancing. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the only Democrat to oppose the legislation.
Few Defections
The same bill was passed in the House that year with 15 lawmakers in each party voting against their leaders.
As the debate over carried-interest taxation advanced in Congress, the Private Equity Growth Capital Council was formed in February 2007 so the industry could make its case more directly to lawmakers.
The group, whose members include the Carlyle Group LP, based in Washington, and New York-based Blackstone spent about $2.5 million that year lobbying Congress on issues that included measures to tax carried interest at the same rate as ordinary income. It spent $2.2 million on lobbying in 2011.
“We believe that tax policy should incentivize the kind of entrepreneurial risk-taking that private-equity firms take every day,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, a trade group based in Washington. “We remain vigilant in respect to this issue. Private equity as an asset class is going to be a topic of discussion throughout 2012.”
Spain is a former communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Comprehensive Overhaul
While the issue will be a central one in the presidential campaign and on Capitol Hill, the taxation of carried interest probably won’t change until Congress considers a comprehensive tax-code overhaul. That would be difficult to enact before 2013.
One potential challenge for private equity is something that otherwise would be seen as a favorable development for the industry: a Romney administration. Ending the preferential treatment of capital gains if Romney wins the presidency could dissolve notions that he is a captive to his former industry, said Martin Sullivan, a contributing editor at Tax Analysts, a nonprofit organization in Falls Church, Virginia.
“It will be much easier to repeal if Mitt Romney becomes president than if Mr. Obama remains president,” he said.
Still, Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told reporters last month that the Republican presidential candidate thinks carried interest should be taxed at the same rate as a capital gain. The candidate has proposed eliminating the tax on capital gains for those with adjusted gross incomes of less than $200,000 a year.
‘Convoluted’ Code
Private-equity executives also rely on fairness arguments to make their case. In a Jan. 27 appearance on Bloomberg Television, Steve Pagliuca, the managing partner of Bain Capital, said the tax code is “convoluted” and “almost unintelligible.”
“We’ve got to have a fair tax code,” he said. “We don’t wake up every day saying ‘Well, what’s the tax code?’ We wake up trying to build great businesses and we pay all of the taxes that are necessary.”
Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, an industry trade group based in Arlington, Virginia, said his industry often reminds lawmakers of its differences from other investors such as private-equity firms. Venture capital firms typically invest in early-stage companies and don’t use as much leverage as private-equity investors do.
Creating Something
“We are able to demonstrate our belief that quintessential capital gains are all about creating something out of nothing,” he said. “That’s what venture capital does.”
Heesen said his message to Congress is that it’s important to maintain the link between carried interest and capital gains, even if the capital gains tax rate increases. Unless Congress acts, such gains will be taxed at 20 percent in 2013. High earners will face an additional 3.8 percent tax on capital gains and other unearned income as part of the 2010 health-care law.
On the other side of the issue is the AFL-CIO, which has lobbied in favor of changing how carried interest is taxed, and is prepared to do so again. Damon Silvers, the policy director for the labor organization in Washington, called the treatment of carried interest a “tax subsidy for leveraged buyouts.”
“We are going to be pressing the carried interest issue at whatever opportunity we get,” he said. “Mitt Romney’s tax returns are the world’s greatest educational tool about the impact of the carried-interest loophole.”
The AFL-CIO spent $1.1 million in 2007 to lobby Congress on issues that included a Senate bill to raise taxes on carried interest.
Lobbying on the carried-interest debate is only part of the reason the tax break has survived, said David Donnelly, the national campaigns director at the Public Campaign Action Fund, a Washington nonprofit group that tracks political contributions. Investors who are paid in carried interest are often the well-heeled donors that members of both parties turn to for campaign contributions, he said.
“I don’t think it’s simply the lobbying,” Donnelly said. “The people who are interested in this particular provision are high net-worth individuals. That’s a constituency that Congress always cares about when they have to raise money to fund their campaigns.”
–With assistance from Richard Rubin in Washington and Cristina Alesci in New York. Editors: Jodi Schneider, Robin Meszoly
To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Sloan in Washington at ssloan7@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider at jschneider50@bloomberg.net
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By Steven Sloan
Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) — The largest U.S. private-equity funds and venture capital firms have relied on a five-year, multimillion-dollar lobbying campaign to protect the carried interest tax break that helped drive presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s 2010 effective tax rate below 14 percent.
With the issue gaining attention in this year’s U.S. presidential election campaign, the investment industry is again girding to defend its preferential tax treatment. Blackstone Group LP alone spent $5 million in 2011 lobbying Congress on issues including the tax treatment of carried interest.
“If anything preserves the status quo, it will be the very heavy lobbying campaign,” said Edward Kleinbard, a law professor at the University of Southern California. “There’s no other reason for the subsidy to survive.”
Opponents of the tax rate for carried interest see this as an opportunity to press for change. Romney released his 2010 tax returns on Jan. 24, revealing he paid an effective tax rate of 13.9 percent on income of $21.6 million.
Romney, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts and co-founder of Bain Capital LLC, has come to personify the debate over whether the carried interest paid to private-equity managers should be taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent while ordinary income is taxed at rates as high as 35 percent.
Tax Fairness Debate
Democrats view the carried interest issue as an element of the tax fairness theme that President Barack Obama is highlighting in his re-election campaign. Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, plans to introduce a bill as soon as this week that would tax carried interest at the same rate as regular income, according to spokesman Josh Drobnyk. The bill probably won’t advance in the Republican-controlled chamber this year.
Carried interest is the profits-based compensation that private-equity managers, real estate investors and members of oil and gas partnerships often receive. They get a portion of their clients’ earnings as investment income if the underlying earnings are treated that way. Levin and Obama call carried interest compensation for work, which they say should be viewed like wages for tax purposes.
Private-equity firms invested more than $148 billion in 1,234 U.S.-based companies in 2010, according to the Private Equity Growth Capital Council. The industry says it employs more than 8 million people.
Washington Lobbyists
Companies opposed to changing the tax treatment of carried interest have hired veteran Washington lobbyists to make their case. Wayne Berman of Ogilvy Government Relations is Blackstone’s top lobbyist on the issue. He was an assistant commerce secretary during George H.W. Bush’s administration. Other Ogilvy lobbyists working for Blackstone include Drew Maloney, who was a staffer for former House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican, and Moses Mercado, the former House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt’s deputy chief of staff.
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. hired former Representative Vic Fazio, a California Democrat, to work with Congress on “tax issues affecting private-equity firms and their portfolio companies,” according to lobbying records. The New York-based private-equity company spent $150,000 in the fourth quarter on lobbyists from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld to work on issues that included tax policy.
Bain spent $80,000 during the fourth quarter to hire lobbyists from Public Strategies Washington Inc. to “monitor tax reform developments,” lobbying records show. Joseph O’Neill and Paul Snyder are lobbying for Romney’s former company.
O’Neill was chief of staff to former Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen and helped run the late Texas Democrat’s 1988 vice presidential bid. Snyder was a legislative assistant to former House Speaker Tip O’Neill, the late Massachusetts Democrat.
Budget Deficit
Raising taxes on carried interest compensation wouldn’t do much to narrow the U.S. budget deficit. In its fiscal 2012 budget request, the Obama administration said the proposal to tax carried interest as ordinary income would generate $14.8 billion over 10 years. In December, the deficit stood at almost $1.3 trillion.
The issue has divided Congress along mostly partisan lines. The last time the Senate considered a bill that would have increased taxes on carried interest — in June 2010 — every Republican voted against it, preventing the bill from advancing. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska was the only Democrat to oppose the legislation.
Few Defections
The same bill was passed in the House that year with 15 lawmakers in each party voting against their leaders.
As the debate over carried-interest taxation advanced in Congress, the Private Equity Growth Capital Council was formed in February 2007 so the industry could make its case more directly to lawmakers.
The group, whose members include the Carlyle Group LP, based in Washington, and New York-based Blackstone spent about $2.5 million that year lobbying Congress on issues that included measures to tax carried interest at the same rate as ordinary income. It spent $2.2 million on lobbying in 2011.
“We believe that tax policy should incentivize the kind of entrepreneurial risk-taking that private-equity firms take every day,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the Private Equity Growth Capital Council, a trade group based in Washington. “We remain vigilant in respect to this issue. Private equity as an asset class is going to be a topic of discussion throughout 2012.”
Spain is a former communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Comprehensive Overhaul
While the issue will be a central one in the presidential campaign and on Capitol Hill, the taxation of carried interest probably won’t change until Congress considers a comprehensive tax-code overhaul. That would be difficult to enact before 2013.
One potential challenge for private equity is something that otherwise would be seen as a favorable development for the industry: a Romney administration. Ending the preferential treatment of capital gains if Romney wins the presidency could dissolve notions that he is a captive to his former industry, said Martin Sullivan, a contributing editor at Tax Analysts, a nonprofit organization in Falls Church, Virginia.
“It will be much easier to repeal if Mitt Romney becomes president than if Mr. Obama remains president,” he said.
Still, Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told reporters last month that the Republican presidential candidate thinks carried interest should be taxed at the same rate as a capital gain. The candidate has proposed eliminating the tax on capital gains for those with adjusted gross incomes of less than $200,000 a year.
‘Convoluted’ Code
Private-equity executives also rely on fairness arguments to make their case. In a Jan. 27 appearance on Bloomberg Television, Steve Pagliuca, the managing partner of Bain Capital, said the tax code is “convoluted” and “almost unintelligible.”
“We’ve got to have a fair tax code,” he said. “We don’t wake up every day saying ‘Well, what’s the tax code?’ We wake up trying to build great businesses and we pay all of the taxes that are necessary.”
Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association, an industry trade group based in Arlington, Virginia, said his industry often reminds lawmakers of its differences from other investors such as private-equity firms. Venture capital firms typically invest in early-stage companies and don’t use as much leverage as private-equity investors do.
Creating Something
“We are able to demonstrate our belief that quintessential capital gains are all about creating something out of nothing,” he said. “That’s what venture capital does.”
Heesen said his message to Congress is that it’s important to maintain the link between carried interest and capital gains, even if the capital gains tax rate increases. Unless Congress acts, such gains will be taxed at 20 percent in 2013. High earners will face an additional 3.8 percent tax on capital gains and other unearned income as part of the 2010 health-care law.
On the other side of the issue is the AFL-CIO, which has lobbied in favor of changing how carried interest is taxed, and is prepared to do so again. Damon Silvers, the policy director for the labor organization in Washington, called the treatment of carried interest a “tax subsidy for leveraged buyouts.”
“We are going to be pressing the carried interest issue at whatever opportunity we get,” he said. “Mitt Romney’s tax returns are the world’s greatest educational tool about the impact of the carried-interest loophole.”
The AFL-CIO spent $1.1 million in 2007 to lobby Congress on issues that included a Senate bill to raise taxes on carried interest.
Lobbying on the carried-interest debate is only part of the reason the tax break has survived, said David Donnelly, the national campaigns director at the Public Campaign Action Fund, a Washington nonprofit group that tracks political contributions. Investors who are paid in carried interest are often the well-heeled donors that members of both parties turn to for campaign contributions, he said.
“I don’t think it’s simply the lobbying,” Donnelly said. “The people who are interested in this particular provision are high net-worth individuals. That’s a constituency that Congress always cares about when they have to raise money to fund their campaigns.”
–With assistance from Richard Rubin in Washington and Cristina Alesci in New York. Editors: Jodi Schneider, Robin Meszoly
To contact the reporter on this story: Steven Sloan in Washington at ssloan7@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider at jschneider50@bloomberg.net
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2012年1月12日星期四
Canadian Financing Bulletin (CFB) Reports CDN Financings for the Week of January 03-06 and Announces the Upcoming …
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA–(Marketwire -01/11/12)- The Canadian Financing Bulletin has been a leader in tracking financing activities of Canadian capital markets in the mining, energy and technology sectors for over seven years. Our unparalleled service offers unique insight into small and micro cap stocks, as well as comprehensive comparative reports detailing the worldwide reach of Canadian companies in these sectors. With the listings of active proposed placements, investors and companies that might not otherwise receive analyst coverage are potentially brought together. As well, we offer coverage of activity in the bond market for users to be made aware of lower-risk opportunities.
Vancouver Resource Investment Conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre is Cambridge House’s largest annual conference. This year’s conference will surpass previous years’ numbers with approximately 500 booths on the tradeshow floor representing more than 600 junior resource mining companies. Two speaking halls along with six workshops will run concurrently over the two-day conference providing investors with up to date information from industry experts. New this year, will be the launch of Cambridge House’s Investor College. The purpose of the college will be to deliver educational information to the junior or senior investor. A broadcast centre will also be located at the middle of the trade show floor where live onstage media will record and broadcast at various locations around the conference.
Also new this year; there will be a debate between Frank Holmes and Gordon Chang:
DEBATE: This January we have confirmed internationally acclaimed bestselling author, Gordon Chang and award winning philanthropist and global leader in fund managing, Frank E. Holmes. Frank Holmes is the Chief Executive and Chief Investment Officer at US Global Investors. He is also the recipient of both Mining Fund Manager of the Year Award from The Mining Journal and International Citizen of the Year Award from the World Affairs Council of America. Gordon Chang literally wrote the book on why one should be wary of China’s growth. Published in 2006, The Coming Collapse of China is a piece that is still gaining momentum and has attracted the attention from the likes of the LA Times to Asia Times and all in between. One might be familiar with Chang from appearances on Fox News or his regular contributions to Business Insider. On January 23, these two intellectual behemoths will take off the gloves and debate whether China is on a course to Grow, Slow or Blow. Don’t miss this and many more exciting features that will be on display at the 2012 Vancouver Resource Investment Conference.
In this week’s report, the CFB published term sheets for 10 new proposed placements from the mining, oil/gas (termed metals and energy in the report) and technology sectors. Of those, nine were for mining stocks and one for technology stocks, with the total value of new proposals reaching almost $7m. None of these placements were designated a ‘flow through’ issuance and there were no new debenture offering. The largest new public proposal was by Bannerman Resources Ltd (BAN.V), which launched a share offering consisting of 17.78m shares at a price of $0.225 for gross proceeds of $4.182m in a non-brokered placement.
The CFB published term sheets for 39 placements that were closed during the week. Of these, 27 were for mining stocks, four for oil/gas, and eight for technology stocks, with the total value of these closings being almost $248m. Eight of these placements were designated ‘flow through’ issuances and one debenture placement closed. The largest public closing was by Yoho Resources Inc. (YO.TO) which issued 4.55m shares at a price of $3.30 for gross proceeds of $15m in an offering led by FirstEnergy Capital.
The CFB also tracked three amendments to placements published at the end of the weekly report. To date, there have been 380 weekly reports created by CFB; backdated reports can be obtained by subscribers.
Click HERE to download the summary.
About the CFB and Blender Media:
The Canadian Financing Bulletin is produced and distributed by Blender Media, an integrated creative agency specializing in both online and print design, development and maintenance. Blender Media’s work includes extensive strategies for shareholder communication, intuitive design interfaces and the opportunity to be memorable in a sea of investment possibilities.
Blender Media has the support of over 450 satisfied clients and utilizes investor focused online exposure solutions that help clients stay in touch with their shareholders, including the CFB.
Since CFB began offering its weekly report over seven years ago, it has developed other more wide reaching reports that have now been published. Our quarterly and year-in-review reports provide charts, graphs and other comparative tables that exhibit sophisticated capital market intelligence. The data in these reports has been read by thousands of executives, investment advisors, fund managers, and investors from around the world. CFB has also recently begun offering specialized monthly reports, focusing on individual segments within the sectors CFB covers (i.e., gold, uranium, oil, etc.) To date, there have been 169 reports created by CFB; several of these reports are currently posted on the CFB website.
As one can see, CFB offers an important perspective into Canadian capital markets. These markets play a crucial role in the financing of companies active worldwide in various business sectors, specifically for natural resources exploration and development. Canada maintains a leadership role due to a number of factors:
http://tourism9.com/
Vancouver Resource Investment Conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre is Cambridge House’s largest annual conference. This year’s conference will surpass previous years’ numbers with approximately 500 booths on the tradeshow floor representing more than 600 junior resource mining companies. Two speaking halls along with six workshops will run concurrently over the two-day conference providing investors with up to date information from industry experts. New this year, will be the launch of Cambridge House’s Investor College. The purpose of the college will be to deliver educational information to the junior or senior investor. A broadcast centre will also be located at the middle of the trade show floor where live onstage media will record and broadcast at various locations around the conference.
Also new this year; there will be a debate between Frank Holmes and Gordon Chang:
DEBATE: This January we have confirmed internationally acclaimed bestselling author, Gordon Chang and award winning philanthropist and global leader in fund managing, Frank E. Holmes. Frank Holmes is the Chief Executive and Chief Investment Officer at US Global Investors. He is also the recipient of both Mining Fund Manager of the Year Award from The Mining Journal and International Citizen of the Year Award from the World Affairs Council of America. Gordon Chang literally wrote the book on why one should be wary of China’s growth. Published in 2006, The Coming Collapse of China is a piece that is still gaining momentum and has attracted the attention from the likes of the LA Times to Asia Times and all in between. One might be familiar with Chang from appearances on Fox News or his regular contributions to Business Insider. On January 23, these two intellectual behemoths will take off the gloves and debate whether China is on a course to Grow, Slow or Blow. Don’t miss this and many more exciting features that will be on display at the 2012 Vancouver Resource Investment Conference.
In this week’s report, the CFB published term sheets for 10 new proposed placements from the mining, oil/gas (termed metals and energy in the report) and technology sectors. Of those, nine were for mining stocks and one for technology stocks, with the total value of new proposals reaching almost $7m. None of these placements were designated a ‘flow through’ issuance and there were no new debenture offering. The largest new public proposal was by Bannerman Resources Ltd (BAN.V), which launched a share offering consisting of 17.78m shares at a price of $0.225 for gross proceeds of $4.182m in a non-brokered placement.
The CFB published term sheets for 39 placements that were closed during the week. Of these, 27 were for mining stocks, four for oil/gas, and eight for technology stocks, with the total value of these closings being almost $248m. Eight of these placements were designated ‘flow through’ issuances and one debenture placement closed. The largest public closing was by Yoho Resources Inc. (YO.TO) which issued 4.55m shares at a price of $3.30 for gross proceeds of $15m in an offering led by FirstEnergy Capital.
The CFB also tracked three amendments to placements published at the end of the weekly report. To date, there have been 380 weekly reports created by CFB; backdated reports can be obtained by subscribers.
Click HERE to download the summary.
About the CFB and Blender Media:
The Canadian Financing Bulletin is produced and distributed by Blender Media, an integrated creative agency specializing in both online and print design, development and maintenance. Blender Media’s work includes extensive strategies for shareholder communication, intuitive design interfaces and the opportunity to be memorable in a sea of investment possibilities.
Blender Media has the support of over 450 satisfied clients and utilizes investor focused online exposure solutions that help clients stay in touch with their shareholders, including the CFB.
Since CFB began offering its weekly report over seven years ago, it has developed other more wide reaching reports that have now been published. Our quarterly and year-in-review reports provide charts, graphs and other comparative tables that exhibit sophisticated capital market intelligence. The data in these reports has been read by thousands of executives, investment advisors, fund managers, and investors from around the world. CFB has also recently begun offering specialized monthly reports, focusing on individual segments within the sectors CFB covers (i.e., gold, uranium, oil, etc.) To date, there have been 169 reports created by CFB; several of these reports are currently posted on the CFB website.
As one can see, CFB offers an important perspective into Canadian capital markets. These markets play a crucial role in the financing of companies active worldwide in various business sectors, specifically for natural resources exploration and development. Canada maintains a leadership role due to a number of factors:
-- A history of significant natural resources; -- Efficient and transparent capital markets; -- Strong backing from the investment community; and -- Regional clusters of the world's most innovative, organized and aggressive exploration and development personnel, in cities like Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto.Follow us on twitter.
http://tourism9.com/
2012年1月10日星期二
Cabinet approves financial decrees
The cabinet meeting has approved issuing of four financial decrees relating to acquiring loans for rebuilding the country and flood prevention, Atchaporn Charuchinda, secretary general of the Council of State, said on Tuesday.
The four proposals were put forward by the strategic committees for rehabilitation and future development and for setting up a water resource management system.
They are needed to help restore the confidence of Thai and foreign investors and to ensure the prevention of a recurrence of the floods in the long term, Mr Atchaporn said.
The Council of State must give advice to the cabinet on whether the issuance of bills and decrees is constitutional. It was not clear why the announcement was made by the Council of State and not the cabinet spokesman.
They decrees relate to the management debt owed by the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF), empower the Bank of Thailand to provide 300 billion baht for low interest soft loans for flood affected manufacturers, allow the Ministry of Finance to seek 350 billion baht in loans for financing projects to rebuild the country, and establishment of a 50 billion baht insurance fund.
“The restoration of investors’ confidence, the rehabilitation and rebuilding the nation and preventing flooding of future projects must be rapidly started and therefore the issuance of these four decrees is necessary,” said Mr Atchaporn.
The secretary general of the cabinet would submit these financial decrees to His Majesty the King for royal endorsement, he added.
The four proposals were put forward by the strategic committees for rehabilitation and future development and for setting up a water resource management system.
They are needed to help restore the confidence of Thai and foreign investors and to ensure the prevention of a recurrence of the floods in the long term, Mr Atchaporn said.
The Council of State must give advice to the cabinet on whether the issuance of bills and decrees is constitutional. It was not clear why the announcement was made by the Council of State and not the cabinet spokesman.
They decrees relate to the management debt owed by the Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF), empower the Bank of Thailand to provide 300 billion baht for low interest soft loans for flood affected manufacturers, allow the Ministry of Finance to seek 350 billion baht in loans for financing projects to rebuild the country, and establishment of a 50 billion baht insurance fund.
“The restoration of investors’ confidence, the rehabilitation and rebuilding the nation and preventing flooding of future projects must be rapidly started and therefore the issuance of these four decrees is necessary,” said Mr Atchaporn.
The secretary general of the cabinet would submit these financial decrees to His Majesty the King for royal endorsement, he added.
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MGIC Investment, Verizon, Kodak: After-Hours Trading
NEW YORK (TheStreet) –Shares of MGIC Investment(MTG) sank in late trades on Friday after the financial holding company gave a $200 million cash infusion to its private mortgage insurance operation, Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation (MGIC).
“The additional capital contribution is an important step in enabling the company to further support its policyholders and the US housing market by continuing to write new insurance on a nationwide basis,” Curt Culver, CEO and chairman of MGIC and its parent company MGIC Investment, said in a statement. The $200 million capital infusion allows MGIC to meet regulatory capital requirements in Wisconsin, according to the statement, and MGIC remains an eligible insurer for both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The stock slid 15% in after-hours trading on volume of more than 143,000 according to Nasdaq.com, shedding 54 cents from its share price, to $3.19.
– Written by Kaitlyn Kiernan in New York. >To contact the writer of this article, click here: Kaitlyn Kiernan To follow the writer on Twitter, go to @Kaitlyn_Kiernan.>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints
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“The additional capital contribution is an important step in enabling the company to further support its policyholders and the US housing market by continuing to write new insurance on a nationwide basis,” Curt Culver, CEO and chairman of MGIC and its parent company MGIC Investment, said in a statement. The $200 million capital infusion allows MGIC to meet regulatory capital requirements in Wisconsin, according to the statement, and MGIC remains an eligible insurer for both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The stock slid 15% in after-hours trading on volume of more than 143,000 according to Nasdaq.com, shedding 54 cents from its share price, to $3.19.
Verizon
Shares of Verizon(VZ) saw activity in the extended session after the telecommunications company announced late in the trading day that it would not institute a $2 fee for online and telephone payments. On Thursday, Verizon outlined plans to begin charging the $2 fee to consumers, but an immediate backlash from consumers forced Verizon to back down. “At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers. Based on their input, we believe the best path forward is to encourage customers to take advantage of the best and most efficient options, eliminating the need to institute the fee at this time,” Dan Mead, president and CEO at Verizon, said in a statement. Verizon is not the first company to back down this year from a proposed service fee after customer outrage. Bank of America(BAC) made a similar move earlier in the year when customers objected to a planned $5 monthly debit fee. Verizon shares remained unchanged at $40.12 on volume of more than 244,000.Eastman Kodak
Shares of Eastman Kodak(EK) fell in late trading after the company announced Laura Tyson, a professor at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, resigned from the board of directors without disclosing a reason. Kodak has been on bankruptcy watch since the fall when reports surfaced that the company had hired restructuring advisors. Kodak has denied that it will seek bankruptcy protection. Kodak shares declined 3% to 63 cents on light volume of 16,000 shares.– Written by Kaitlyn Kiernan in New York. >To contact the writer of this article, click here: Kaitlyn Kiernan To follow the writer on Twitter, go to @Kaitlyn_Kiernan.>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints
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