May 6, 2024

DealBook: Buffett Eager to Move On After Sokol Affair

Warren Buffett, second from right, sits with his children, from left, Howard, Susie and Peter at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Neb.Daniel Acker/Bloomberg NewsWarren E. Buffett, second from right, sits with his children, from left, Howard, Susie and Peter at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Neb.

OMAHA — At the annual gathering of Berkshire Hathaway’s investors here this weekend,
Warren E. Buffett made it clear that, as far as he is concerned, it’s back to business as usual. But a former top manager for him,
David L. Sokol, may make that a difficult goal to accomplish.

Mr. Buffett said at a news conference on Sunday that while he viewed the controversy caused by Mr. Sokol’s abrupt departure a month ago as sad, he saw little reason to dwell on the matter for very long.

“I’ve got no strong feelings about it, except that it’s a very sad situation,” he said.

He said he planned no major changes to Berkshire’s management practices, which largely leave the executives of the company’s subsidiaries to operate as they please. With more than 260,000 employees working for him around the world, something can and will inevitably go wrong, Mr. Buffett said.

His longtime investing partner, Berkshire’s vice chairman, Charles Munger, addressed the issue more bluntly. “We’ve had a close brush with scandal two times in 50 years,” he said Sunday. “We’re not going to devote a lot of time to this.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Sokol appears ready to keep the issue alive and wage a fight against Berkshire and his onetime boss. In a statement issued after Berkshire’s annual meeting, Mr. Sokol’s lawyer insisted that Mr. Buffett was “transparently scapegoating” his client, and that Mr. Sokol had not violated company policy with those trades.

Mr. Buffett already used the annual meeting on Saturday, attended by tens of thousands of ardent investors from around the world, to speak at length about what he knew of Mr. Sokol’s stock purchases in a chemical maker that he later recommended to Mr. Buffett as a potential acquisition.

Berkshire announced in March that it would buy the chemical producer, Lubrizol, for $9 billion. The deal produced a $3 million paper profit for Mr. Sokol.

Mr. Buffett said Saturday that Mr. Sokol’s actions were “inexplicable and inexcusable,” though he declined to personally attack him. Mr. Buffett said that Mr. Sokol had violated company trading policy. In his statement, Mr. Sokol’s lawyer defiantly denied that claim, saying, “At no time did Mr. Sokol violate the law or any Berkshire policy.”

Mr. Buffett sought to parry those assertions on Sunday, arguing that he has been forthright in disclosing the relevant details of the matter. He said that he did not know of any other details relevant to an investigation, and that he was cooperating with regulators in their inquiries.

“The facts are the facts,” he said. “His lawyer wasn’t there. I know what happened.”

Since Berkshire disclosed Mr. Sokol’s resignation and its circumstances, the controversy has threatened to mar Mr. Buffett’s lustrous reputation among investors. But Mr. Buffett said he did not expect the affair to cause permanent damage.

The pressure on Mr. Sokol is likely to grow. The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into his trades, according to people briefed on the matter, using in part information submitted by Berkshire. Mr. Buffett said on Saturday that the data his company had turned over was “pretty damning.”

Mr. Buffett spoke at greater length Sunday about more traditional topics of discussion for Berkshire meetings.

Asked by reporters from various countries — including Germany, Brazil and South Korea — about whether he would be interested in acquiring companies in those areas, he responded yes to all of them.

Asked again about a potential successor to him, Mr. Buffett said only that even the worst of the unnamed candidates would be “very, very good.”

Shareholders appeared to side largely with Mr. Buffett. At Berkshire’s meeting on Saturday, most seemed more concerned with potential investments and successors than with the Sokol matter.

“I trust Buffett and the board,” Mary Murphy, from Omaha, said on Sunday. “He seemed like he was being honest and saying what he knew.”

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Karzai Blames Western Firms for Kabul Bank’s Troubles

KABUL, Afghanistan — As a delegation of Afghan officials traveled to Washington to present their plan to international financial authorities to dismantle Afghanistan’s largest private bank, President Hamid Karzai on Monday denounced Western accounting firms and advisers for corruption and failing to detect the bank’s troubles.

At a news conference, Mr. Karzai, while reassuring the public that their deposits in Kabul Bank were safe, said that foreign firms should be prosecuted along with those shareholders who took illegal loans and did not repay them.

“International organizations and foreign entities, who have been recruited and paid hundreds of millions of dollars of Afghanistan’s money to improve Afghanistan’s banking system, perform strong audits, and improve and build capacity for us, have not done their job,” Mr. Karzai said.

“They provided the Central Bank with inaccurate information, they deceived Afghanistan’s government and its economic and financial regulatory bodies,” he said.

Three firms were mentioned specifically: Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Deloitte and Bearing Point. An affiliate of the first performed an audit on the bank three months before its troubles began to come to light and pronounced its finances sound. Deloitte and BearingPoint had a contract from the United States Agency for International Development to advise the Central Bank and help build the capacity of the banking system.

Afghan officials are expected to present a plan to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank this week that would, in essence, put Kabul Bank into receivership, separating its viable parts from the nonviable parts and allowing the Central Bank to recoup some losses by selling off assets from borrowers who have not paid back their loans. In the meantime, they would look for a buyer for the working parts of the institution, like its distribution network for government salaries.

The government has been under intense pressure from the I.M.F. to put Kabul Bank into receivership, prosecute wrongdoers and strengthen the enforcement of banking regulations. The fund suspended Afghanistan’s program last fall, which halted the flow of about $70 million from international donors. The resolution of the Kabul bank crisis is expected to result in a renewal of the program.

While Mr. Karzai’s comments appeared aimed in part at preparing the Afghan public for the expected announcement of the bank’s dismantling, the speech also sounded a theme that has become increasingly frequent in his public comments — that Western interests, and particularly American interests, had harmed Afghanistan. At one point in the news conference, Mr. Karzai noted that “the most prestigious American audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers” had given the bank and by extension, the Afghan government, a clean bill of health just before its troubles burst into public view.

There are suspicions by Western officials that auditors of the local affiliate of the Pricewaterhouse Coopers Network that performed one of the audits on Kabul Bank were bribed to whitewash the bank’s financial situation. However, those offering any such payoffs would likely have been among the bank’s shareholders, all of whom are Afghans, said Western officials. “When are the Afghans going to take responsibility?” said a frustrated Western official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. “There’s been a reluctance to accept blame by everyone in the Afghan government,” the official said.

Western officials often express their frustration in private but rarely in public, where the prevailing view appears to be that “we have to live with the Afghan government we’ve got,” as one American official said.

However, a European diplomat warned that Mr. Karzai’s bashing was a “dangerous game” because, especially in Europe, there is little support for the war in Afghanistan and taxpayers could quickly turn against it. “The appetite of the taxpayers and the governments are going to be very little, especially since this appetite is not getting good news from the theater,” the diplomat said.

It was at least the fourth time in the last couple of months that Mr. Karzai had disparaged the Western countries that keep Afghanistan afloat by spending billions of dollars on the country and risking soldiers’ lives to fight the insurgency.

Among Mr. Karzai’s most striking recent statements was one during an emotional public appearance after civilians were apparently killed in Kunar Province, when Mr. Karzai appeared to say that NATO troops should cease military operations in Afghanistan. He later clarified his remarks to say he only meant in operations where there were civilian casualties.

In a speech in early February, he compared NATO’s civilian Provincial Reconstruction Teams to plumbers that should leave when they finished making their repairs. Privately, his government has asked the United Nations to reduce its number of offices and narrow its mission.

Mr. Karzai also said Monday that the Afghan government was studying the options for a strategic partnership agreement with the United States and that in three months he would convene a jirga — a meeting of elders — to discuss the terms Afghans wanted for the agreement.

Rod Nordland contributed reporting from Kabul.

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Iceland Again Rejects Debt Deal

The British and Dutch governments voiced disappointment with the result of Saturday’s referendum, in which almost 60 percent of voters opposed the repayment deal.

“We must do all we can to prevent political and economic chaos as a result of this outcome,” Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir told state television.

The issue will now be settled by the court of the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA), the European trade body overseeing Iceland’s cooperation with the European Union.

“My estimate is that the process will take a year, a year and a half at least, Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson told a news conference.

The debt was incurred when Britain and the Netherlands compensated their nationals who lost savings in online “Icesave” accounts owned by Landsbanki, one of three overextended Icelandic banks that collapsed in late 2008, triggering an economic meltdown in the country of 320,000 people.

Economists have said failure to resolve the issue means Iceland faces delays ending currency controls, boosting investment and returning to financial markets for funding.

But the center-left coalition government said it would not resign despite the defeat.

“The government will emphasize maintaining economic and financial stability in Iceland and continuing along the path of reconstruction which it began following the economic collapse of 2008,” it said in a statement.

It said a fresh round of talks on further funding from the International Monetary Fund, which led a bailout for the island, would be delayed several weeks, but that it had enough foreign exchange reserves to cover debts maturing this year and next.

COURT CASE AHEAD

The proposed deal at issue in Saturday’s vote set a clear timetable for repaying the Dutch and the British, including interest. But voters rejected the idea that taxpayers should foot the bill for what they see as bankers’ irresponsibility.

“I know this will probably hurt us internationally, but it is worth taking a stance,” Thorgerdun Asgeirsdottir, a 28-year-old barista, said after casting a “no” vote.

Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said: “This is not good for Iceland, nor for the Netherlands. The time for negotiations is over. Iceland remains obliged to repay. The issue is now for the courts to decide.”

Economists have said the court route could be much costlier.

The government still hopes most of the debt will eventually be paid back from the estate of the bankrupt Landsbanki. Ratings agencies were following the vote closely. Moody’s had said it might lower Iceland’s rating in case of a ‘no’.

Standard Poor’s analyst Eileen Zhang said a ‘no’ vote “might possibly result in a lengthy legal process and further uncertainties regarding the ultimate fiscal cost.”

(Additional reporting by Sara Webb in Amsterdam and Avril Ormsby in London; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

($1=113.31 Iceland Krona)

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European Union Sees Bailout Deal for Portugal by Mid-May

After a meeting in Godollo, Hungary, ministers from the 17-nation euro zone said they hope to reach a cross-party agreement in Lisbon on a new austerity plan for the country as part of the bailout, equal to about $115 billion.

Following a crisis which led to the fall of the government, Portugal finds itself with a political vacuum and is led by a lame-duck administration ahead of elections on June 5.

After refusing for months to countenance the idea of an international rescue, the country’s caretaker Prime Minister José Sócrates sent a formal request for help to Brussels on Thursday.

Officials from the European Commission, which is the executive of the European Union, as well as officials from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary fund will assess the financing gap in Portugal and make proposals. They are certain to include additional, far-reaching cuts as well as “an ambitious privatization program,” Olli Rehn, the European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, said at a news conference.

Mr. Rehn said that he was “confident that Portugal will match its refinancing needs in April and May, while June will be more challenging.”

For that reason he hoped to have agreement on the new bailout package in time for E.U. finance ministers to consider it at their next regular meeting, on May 16.

The starting point will be the austerity measures on which Mr. Socrates failed to secure an agreement in the Portuguese Parliament before he was forced to ask for a bailout. “It is essential that we will also talk with the parties of opposition,” Mr. Rehn added.

Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, who chairs the group of euro-zone finance ministers, said there were assurances from the caretaker government and the main opposition party that they remain committed to agreed deficit reduction targets. These would cut the Portuguese budget deficit — which hit 8.6 percent of gross domestic product last year — to 4.6 percent in 2011, 3 percent in 2012 and 2 percent in 2013.

While Mr. Rehn said that the total finance that will be made available by the E.U. and the I.M.F. would be “in the magnitude of around €80 billion,” he said it was too early to specify how much of that would be set aside for repairing Portugual’s financial sector.

If confirmed at €80 billion, the aid would be smaller on a per capita basis than the total size of similar packages negotiated with Ireland and Greece.

Klaus Regling, who heads the eurozone’s €440 billion rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, said that the Portuguese bailout request had helped to reduce the risk of contagion to other countries, most notably Spain, by ring-fencing the euro’s three weaker economies.

“In general the markets today understand much better the economic fundamentals in the different member states in the euro area and that is the reason why the risk of contagion is much less than six or nine months ago,” he said at the news conference with Mr. Rehn.

The Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager said at the meeting that the assistance for Portugal would represent the last bailout in the region. “The other countries are on the safe side,” he said, according to Bloomberg News.

News of the bailout this week helped Portuguese banking stocks, but has done nothing to lower Portugal’s borrowing costs. Yields on Portuguese bonds pushed higher, with the benchmark 10-year yield up 5 basis points at 8.43 percent on Friday, although yields on equivalent German bonds rose by a similar amount.

The euro pushed higher Friday. It was quoted at $1.4435 in late London trading, from $1.4308 late Thursday. The currency has benefited from the European Central Bank’s decision Thursday to lift interest rates in the region.

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