tyb
Occidental tweaks $38 billion Anadarko bid to remove shareholder vote
(Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp increased the cash component of its $38 billion bid to acquire Anadarko Petroleum Corp on Sunday, removing a requirement for any deal to receive the approval of Occidental’s shareholders.
The move means Occidental shareholders who oppose the bid, including T Rowe Price, will not get an opportunity to vote it down. It adds more certainty to the offer for Anadarko, but also risks the ire of billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who sources have said has been amassing a stake in Occidental to challenge its Anadarko offer.
Occidental is trying to convince Anadarko to accept its offer and abandon its agreed $33 billion sale to Chevron Corp. Anadarko said on Monday that Occidental’s bid could be potentially superior to the deal with Chevron, but negotiations are continuing.
Earlier on Sunday, France’s Total SA said it has agreed with Occidental to buy the African assets of Anadarko for $8.8 billion, should the two U.S. oil and gas companies clinch a deal to combine. This removes the risk of Occidental not being able to shed Anadarko assets it considers non-core to the deal.
On Tuesday, Occidental also secured a $10 billion investment from Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc in support of its bid for Anadarko.
The terms of that deal were seen as particularly favorable to Buffett by analysts and investors.
Occidental submitted a new $76 per share offer to Anadarko on Sunday structured as 78 percent cash and 22 percent stock, as opposed to an even cash/stock split in its $76 per share offer previously.
This brought the number of Occidental shares required to fund the bid below the issuance threshold that would have triggered a vote on the deal by Occidental shareholders. Anadarko shareholders would still get to vote on the deal.
The bidding war for Anadarko underscores the value of its assets in the lucrative Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico. The vast shale field holds oil and gas deposits that can produce supplies for decades using low-cost drilling techniques.
“The financial support of Berkshire Hathaway as well as the agreement we announced with Total allows us to delever our balance sheet while focusing our integration efforts on the assets that will provide the most value for us,” Occidental Chief Executive Vicki Hollub said in a statement announcing the amended terms.
However, a request made on Thursday evening by Anadarko’s counsel for three board seats in the merged entity had not been granted, Occidental added.
Should Occidental’s bid be declared superior by Anadarko, Chevron will be given four days to match Occidental’s offer, according to the terms of the contract between Chevron and Anadarko.
Should Anadarko abandon Chevron for Occidental, it will have to pay Chevron a $1 billion deal breakup fee.
The proposed sale of Anadarko’s African assets to Total includes a 26.5 percent interest in a Mozambique liquefied natural gas project, which is moving closer to a final investment decision, and stakes in two offshore fields in Ghana.
Occidental said this does not impact the planned $2 billion of annual cost savings and $1.5 billion of annual capital reductions already outlined as part of its potential acquisition of Anadarko.
Total’s previously outlined plan to increase its dividend by 10 percent and buy back 5 million shares by the end of 2020 will not be impacted by the deal, the French company said in a separate statement.
Chevron declined to comment on the Occidental move or say whether it will change its $65-a-share bid.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-anadarko-petrol-m-a-total/occidental-tweaks-38-billion-anadarko-bid-to-remove-shareholder-vote-idUSKCN1SB0P4
trips confirm. Don't trust ZH for anything other than charts and graphs. They do a good job at that but the rest of it is recycled bullshit that pander's to the european audience
whatever you say "Angel"
call you whatever the fuck I want asshole.
Take you all the way to the bottom if ya want. I got time
Facebook 'labels' posts by hand, posing privacy questions
HYDERABAD, India/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Over the past year, a team of as many as 260 contract workers in Hyderabad, India has ploughed through millions of Facebook Inc photos, status updates and other content posted since 2014.
The workers categorize items according to five “dimensions,” as Facebook calls them.
These include the subject of the post - is it food, for example, or a selfie or an animal? What is the occasion - an everyday activity or major life event? And what is the author’s intention - to plan an event, to inspire, to make a joke?
The work is aimed at understanding how the types of things users post on its services are changing, Facebook said. That can help the company develop new features, potentially increasing usage and ad revenue.
Details of the effort were provided by multiple employees at outsourcing firm Wipro Ltd over several months. The workers spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation by the Indian firm. Facebook later confirmed many details of the project. Wipro declined to comment and referred all questions to Facebook.
The Wipro work is among about 200 content labeling projects that Facebook has at any time, employing thousands of people globally, company officials told Reuters. Many projects are aimed at “training” the software that determines what appears in users’ news feeds and powers the artificial intelligence underlying many other features.
The labeling efforts have not previously been reported.
“It’s a core part of what you need,” said Nipun Mathur, the director of product management for AI at Facebook. “I don’t see the need going away.”
The content labeling program could raise new privacy issues for Facebook, according to legal experts consulted by Reuters. The company is facing regulatory investigations worldwide over an unrelated set of alleged privacy abuses involving the sharing of user data with business partners.
The Wipro workers said they gain a window into lives as they view a vacation photo or a post memorializing a deceased family member. Facebook acknowledged that some posts, including screenshots and those with comments, may include user names.
The company said its legal and privacy teams must sign off on all labeling efforts, adding that it recently introduced an auditing system “to ensure that privacy expectations are being followed and parameters in place are working as expected.”
But one former Facebook privacy manager, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed unease about users’ posts being scrutinized without their explicit permission. The European Union’s year-old General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has strict rules about how companies gather and use personal data and in many cases requires specific consent.
“One of the key pieces of GDPR is purpose limitation,” said John Kennedy, a partner at law firm Wiggin and Dana who has worked on outsourcing, privacy and AI.
If the purpose is looking at posts to improve the precision of services, that should be stated explicitly, Kennedy said. Using an outside vendor for the work could also require consent, he said.
It remains unclear exactly how GDPR will be interpreted and whether regulators and consumers would see Facebook’s internal labeling practices as problematic. Europe’s top data privacy official declined to comment on possible concerns.
A Facebook spokeswoman said: “We make it clear in our data policy that we use the information people provide to Facebook to improve their experience and that we might work with service providers to help in this process.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-ai/facebook-labels-posts-by-hand-posing-privacy-questions-idUSKCN1SC01T