Goldman Sachs files $1 billion countersuit against Indonesian businessman www.reuters.com

Goldman Sachs filed a $1 billion counter lawsuit on Tuesday against an Indonesian businessman who is seeking damages from the U.S. bank for conducting what he called "unlawful" trades in the shares of a property firm.

Bank of Ireland sees IT investment as boosting deal potential www.ft.com

Ireland’s oldest lender Bank of Ireland wants to use a €500m technology investment to give itself “optionality” for future acquisitions, said its chief executive Richie Boucher.

The bank, the only significant Irish lender not to be nationalised during the financial crisis, unveiled the IT investment plan in October last year, saying that it would position the institution for “long-term sustainability and competitiveness”.

“It gives us optionality into the future,” Mr Boucher told the Financial Times. “It’s hugely important . . . if you’re in retail banking and thinking about an acquisition you have to be really very comfortable that you can get synergies . . . a lot of that is about IT.”

Retail banking mergers have been repeatedly thwarted by technology issues.

One of the most high-profile failures was Royal Bank of Scotland’s attempt to sell Williams & Glyn as a separate bank carved out of its branch network to Santander in 2012 — largely due to IT problems. RBS must divest Williams & Glyn as a condition of EU rules for receiving a £45bn bailout during the financial crisis.

RBS dropped plans last year to float Williams & Glyn as a standalone bank, after spending about £1.5bn on its technology platform. RBS is still in the process of finding a buyer for Williams & Glyn, with Santander UK and Clydesdale & Yorkshire Banking Group the two interested parties.

Mr Boucher, who recently became a non-executive director of Greece’s Eurobank, stressed that Bank of Ireland is not in the market for an immediate acquisition. “It [the IT spending] will make the bank a better place and give great optionality to the people that come after me,” he added.

He would not comment on when he might step down; his eight years at the helm already make him Ireland’s longest serving bank chief executive.

Bank of Ireland had to sell swaths of its noncore business under the terms of an EU approved rescue plan, but has begun rebuilding. Earlier this month, the lender paid an undisclosed sum to Irish company Covestone Asset Management, which had €100m under management.

Policymakers are not yet supportive of big bank mergers, but some believe this will eventually change as regulators realise that the M&A-inspired economies of scale are the only way for banks to make the profits they need to pay for their rising regulatory costs.

Nordea and ABN Amro were almost a test case for regulators’ willingness last year when the Nordic bank made an approach to the Dutch government about a bid for ABN, but the talks ultimately went nowhere.

Permanent TSB, a smaller Irish lender, is facing a 20 per cent increase in its cost base “in the near term” because of regulatory costs alone, chief executive Jeremy Masding told the FT.

As well as cutting costs, acquisitions would also allow Irish banks to deflect criticism from Ireland’s central bank governor Philip Lane who last year said they have “relatively concentrated business models, focused primarily on Ireland and to some extent the UK”.

Still, there is little immediate appetite for an acquisition spree. Mr Masding said the bank was concentrating on “getting it right here in Ireland” rather than “spreading our wings” in other markets where he would have a “small presence and a lack of familiarity”.

Bernard Byrne, chief executive of AIB, in which the government hopes to sell a significant stake later this year, said acquisitions were not in the bank’s “short-term horizon” and that it can be “more effective” in its core market.

Bank of Ireland had the third worst capital ratio in the most recent stress tests run by the European Banking Authority; Mr Boucher said this was largely because of a “bizarre accounting convention” on how its pension is treated.

“The most important thing for us is that we’re generating capital organically,” he said, pointing to the 100 basis points of capital the bank generated in the first six months of 2016.

WeChat dominates Chinese mobile app use www.chinadaily.com.cn

US demand growth to push copper market into deficit www.mining.com

54TH ANNUAL ACADEMY OF AMERICAN AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

May 21 - June 23, 2017 in Plano, Texas, USA

Chip sales boost Samsung Electronics operating profit www.asia.nikkei.com

Spain focuses on lucrative gay tourism market www.rt.com

Chevron Slams Canadian Backdoor in $9.5 Billion Pollution Fight www.bloomberg.com

Now entering its 24th year, an international legal war seeking to hold Chevron Corp. liable for oil pollution in the Amazon has featured battles in courtrooms ranging from the U.S. to Ecuador to Canada. In a blow to Ecuadorian villagers who contend the company sullied their lands, an Ontario judge last week protected Chevron’s Canadian assets from being seized as part of the fight.

That’s a big victory for the second-largest U.S. fossil fuel company, because in 2011 Chevron lost a court case in Ecuador over the question of liability. As far as the Ecuadorian judiciary is concerned, Chevron owes some $9.5 billion, plus interest, to the villagers. But the energy giant, contending that the enormous judgment was obtained by fraud, has refused to pay. Chevron has no assets in Ecuador, so there’s nothing there for plaintiffs to seize. That’s why the case migrated north to Canada, where a subsidiary has operations the villagers would like to liquidate to cover their verdict.

But in a highly technical 35-page opinion, Judge Glenn Hainey of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice made a sharp distinction between Chevron the parent corporation and Chevron Canada the subsidiary. Chevron Canada wasn’t the defendant in Ecuador and as a legally separate entity, the judge held, can’t be held responsible for its parent’s liabilities.

Chevron hailed the decision. “Once again, the plaintiffs’ attempts to enforce their fraudulent judgment have been rebuked,” R. Hewitt Pate, Chevron’s vice president and general counsel, said via email. “We are confident that any jurisdiction that examines the facts of this case and the misconduct committed by the plaintiffs will find the Ecuadorian judgment illegitimate and unenforceable.”

Karen Hinton, a New York-based spokesperson for the villagers, said in a statement that her clients will appeal Hainey’s ruling, and predicted a swift reversal. “The villagers expect to proceed later this year with their seizure of Chevron’s assets to force the company to respect multiple [Ecuadorian] court judgments that found it” liable for massive contamination, Hinton added.

The very long story that brings us to this moment began in 1993 with a lawsuit filed in New York federal court against Texaco (which Chevron acquired in 2001). Brought on behalf of poor rural Ecuadorians, the complaint was dismissed by U.S. courts and restarted in 2003 in Ecuador. Eight years later, it led to the multibillion-dollar verdict now at issue. Chevron countered that any pollution resulting from Texaco’s activities in the rain forest was the responsibility of the Ecuadorian government to clean up—and, in any event, the verdict was tainted by the misconduct of the villagers lawyers, led by a New York-based attorney named Steven Donziger.

To drive home that last point, Chevron sued Donziger in 2011, obtaining a U.S. judgment that he’d violated anti-racketeering laws by turning the Ecuadorian suit into the equivalent of an extortion scheme. Last year, a federal appeals court upheld the ruling, finding that Donziger and his colleagues engaged in coercion, fraud, and bribery in Ecuador. The decisions have the effect of making it impossible for the villagers to collect on the Ecuadorian verdict in the U.S. That brings us to Canada.

The legal complexities in this branch of the litigation proliferate. In a separate part of his Jan. 20 ruling, Judge Hainey said that if somehow the Ecuadorians succeed in moving forward with their action in Canada—for example, if a higher court reversed his finding that the subsidiary should be shielded—then the oil company would be allowed to fight asset seizures by pointing to the evidence of fraud presented in the U.S. racketeering case.
Meanwhile, on other fronts, the plaintiffs have started legal proceedings to enforce the controversial Ecuadorian judgment in both Argentina and Brazil. Chevron may have won this battle, but the legal war shows no sign of letting up.

Trump signs memo to leave TPP agreement www3.nhk.or.jp

Unlike the Saudis, Russia can't simply shut off oil taps www.rt.com