Posted on 02/20/2010 11:54:09 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
The Story the New York Times Won't Touch
By James Ledbetter
Posted Saturday, February 20, 2010 - 12:09pm
A little more than a year ago, when the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim increased his stake in the New York Times Company (NYT), I wrote "I pity the Times Mexico bureau chief who has to tiptoe through who is and isn't out of favor with the paper's new sugar daddy." Now we have a very clear example of how the Times treats Slim within its pages; it's not pretty, and the journalistic compromise can be seen well beyond Mexico.
For the last several days, bloggers and many business news outlets have been revealing truly astounding details from a court case involving J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) and two large Mexican telecom companies, one of which is Slim's. Blogger Felix Salmon at Reuters was one of the earliest to cover this at length; his summary of the case gets right to the heart of it:
JP Morgan took one of its longest-standing clients in Mexico — Grupo Televisa — and tried to hand all of its secrets over to its biggest rival, Carlos Slim. And the way it tried to do that was by selling Slim a loan larded up with covenants which would essentially force Televisa to reveal any and all information to the holder of the debt.
(Excerpt) Read more at thebigmoney.com ...
P!
Thank God for the internet. Even the ‘guardians of truth’ are guarded.
The Journalistic Compromise
“...a loan larded up with covenants which would essentially force Televisa to reveal any and all information to the holder of the debt.”
A LOAN can force you to reveal secretes? To a competitor?
So, what have the JPM and GS spread all over the world?
What have they done?
Thieves, filthy little thieves.
Oligarch.
That’s the sound I make when I eat beans...
Why not - Federal loans to banks and States have forced us all to slave status.
Slim and Sulzberger are Landtsman.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704511304575075931616601088.html
FEBRUARY 20, 2010
Rakoff Slams J.P. Morgan Over Loan
Judge Says Deal Would Let Rival of Empresas Cablevisión Gain Access to Confidential Information
By MICHAEL CORKERY and NICHOLAS CASEY
A federal judge has rebuked J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. for taking part in an what he called an “end run, if not a down right sham” in the way it arranged a $225 million loan deal for Mexican telecom company Empresas Cablevisión SAB.
[LOAN] Cablevision Mexico
Cablevisión’s satellite dishes at its Mexico City headquarters.
In a ruling unveiled late last month in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Judge Jed Rakoff said the New York bank structured the deal so it would have allowed a major competitor of Cablevisión to gain confidential information about the company, which is Mexico’s largest cable-television operator.
That competitor, Telmex Internacional SAB, is owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, who has been fighting off Cablevisión’s advances on the Telmex telephone monopoly. Cablevisión itself is a unit of Grupo Televisa SAB, Mexico’s largest media giant. The dispute amounts to one of the year’s first showdowns between two of the country’s most powerful companies.
The legal case highlights the breadth of Mr. Slim’s Mexican empire, which consists of scores of companies, including those in banking, railways, construction, mining, airlines and hotels. Recently, Mr. Slim has extended that influence into the U.S., including a $250 million investment in New York Times Co.
“J.P. Morgan has been our banker for more than 20 years,” said Alfonso de Angoitia, executive vice president of Grupo Televisa, the largest shareholder of Cablevisión, and the largest Spanish-language broadcaster. “We feel betrayed.”
A J.P. Morgan spokesman declined to comment on the case, citing the pending litigation. In court papers, J.P. Morgan said that it acted in good faith and that its actions wouldn’t threaten Cablevisión’s trade secrets. Cablevisión’s complaint centers on a $225 million loan that J.P. Morgan arranged in 2007 for the purchase of a fiber- optics company. Unable to syndicate the loan to a group of European financial institutions, J.P. Morgan began discussions with the Mr. Slim-controlled Banco Inbursa, to “assign” the loan’s obligations and much of its returns to Inbursa. Mr. Slim’s son is the bank’s chairman.
snip
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-19/jpmorgan-can-t-transfer-grupo-televisa-unit-loan-to-competitor.html
JPMorgan Can’t Transfer Grupo Televisa Unit Loan to Competitor
Lucky for us there is no corruption in Mexico, so it’s okay.
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