Stock market decline takes shine off 2011 IPOs

NEW YORK (AP) ? This was supposed to be the year of the IPO comeback.

Six months into 2011, the market for initial public offerings was stronger than before the recession. The number of companies looking to raise money through new stock offerings was on pace for a decade high. Shares of companies that had gone public earlier in the year, on average, had posted gains.

But after that strong start, the market for new stock offerings fizzled in 2011 as the prospect of a global slowdown and a prolonged European debt crisis battered financial markets. High-profile Internet companies like Groupon, LinkedIn and Zynga ? which went public Friday ? attracted attention. But overall, companies didn't raise as much as they hoped for through IPOs. Main Street investors, who generally don't have access to IPO shares until after they start trading, were likely the biggest losers.

Groupon, the Internet coupon company that debuted in November, rose 31 percent on its first trading day, but has dropped 12 percent since. LinkedIn more than doubled in its debut. While it's still up about 50 percent from its offering price, the stock has lost 30 percent from its first trading day. In June, Internet radio company Pandora Media Inc. rose 9 percent. On Friday it closed at $10.55, a 34 percent slide from its IPO price. Stock in technology companies that went public in the past 12 months have fallen 15 percent, according to Renaissance Capital. Some of that stems from broader market declines. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is down about 8 percent from the end of June.

Many companies hedged their bets. Sixty-six companies withdrew plans to raise money through new stock offerings in 2011, a 27 percent rise from the previous year, and the biggest number since the depths of the recession in 2008, according to IPO Investment firm Renaissance Capital. Stocks of many of the companies that took the plunge haven't fared well. About two-thirds of companies that went public this year are trading below their offering price, according to advisory firm IPO Boutique. As a group, IPOs that went public this year lost 13 percent of their value ? the first negative return since 2008.

Some of those themes were apparent this week, the last before the IPO market shuts down for the year in the U.S. Twelve companies had lined up IPOs. If all of them had begun trading, it would have marked the busiest week for IPOs since November 2007. That didn't happen. Three of the companies, information technology services provider FusionStorm Global Inc., industrial materials maker GSE Holding Inc. and chemicals and metals maker Luxfer Holdings PLC, postponed their offerings.

There were some successes. Jive Software Inc., a company that is trying to become a corporate networking version of Facebook, and luxury clothing and accessories company Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. priced higher and sold more shares than expected. Both soared on their first trading day.

And then there were the mixed successes. Zynga Inc., which specializes in making games for social networking website Facebook, raised $1 billion, in the biggest Internet IPO since Google's 2004 launch. The offering price of $10 per share values the company at about $7 billion ? at least $13 billion less than some market watchers predicted back in July when the company filed to go public. The shares fell 50 cents, or 5 percent, to close Friday at $9.50.

Six other companies that debuted this week raised less money than they expected. Stock in two of those companies, oil and gas companies Bonanza Creek Energy Inc. and Sanchez Energy Corp., are already 20 percent and 16 percent below their IPO prices, respectively.

Market watchers expect more big technology deals next year including Facebook, reviews site Yelp and online retailer Gilt Groupe. Of the three, only Yelp has filed to go public. But the global economic uncertainty may force the 200 companies hoping to go public in 2012 to temper their expectations. LinkedIn and Groupon, for example, sold less than 10 percent of their outstanding stock in their IPOs, which is considered a small percentage of overall shares to sale in an offering. The small supply helps create demand.

"If they want to get the company public, they'll do a smaller deal," said Frank Maturo, head of cash equity capital markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The IPO declines and weak stock markets may create an opportunity for investors to buy shares more cheaply as companies and bankers rethink prices for shares.

"People haven't made money in the IPO market, people are skeptical. But deals can get done if they get priced right," said Francis Gaskins, an analyst at IPOdesktop.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2011-12-16-IPO%20Year/id-44ce71797fb946c7b173d0b846de4b59

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Book Talk: Tales of moments when all changes (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) ? Two songwriters reunite at the request of a former associate, with unusual results. A single woman agrees to be named guardian for her widowed sister's children. Dissatisfied with her job, a teacher seeks out the teacher she idolized as a schoolgirl.

Though the characters change, most of the stories in Alethea Black's debut short story collection, "I Knew You'd Be Lovely" feature people at moments when they stand at crossroads, facing a change in their lives.

Black, who began writing in earnest in 1995, said she likes the short story form, both for its brevity and the fact that it's a "good way to learn writing." The collection grew bit by bit over years, as she wrote first one story and then another.

Q: What's the unifying theme?

A: "There's a unity of voice among them, and that helped it sell and is helping it as a collection, because even though the characters change there's a sensibility that's consistent. I think of it as people finding ways to love each other and themselves in spite of their brokenness. An editor that I worked with said that she thought it was about those moments in life when everything changes. So I think that both of those apply."

Q: Moments in life when everything changes -- could you elaborate a bit on that idea?

A: "I thought that was a good description. The stories do exist at an emotional crossroads. I had a writing teacher at one point who said you should always be asking yourself 'why is this night different from all others?' I've really loved that and always remembered it, and I think that's true. You are showing people when they're making important choices. That's what makes it suspenseful and dramatic and, hopefully, of interest to the reader. This is the day when they make decisions that affected all the other days."

Q: Do remember any specific incidents or ideas that touched off some of the stories?

A: "I have a file that I work from. If something crosses my mind that seems dramatically charged as a situation or a character or even a bit of dialogue that I come across in the world that seems even a little colorful, I'll save to work off of that. One of the stories is about a high school English teacher who looks up her high school English teacher. That's a significant day for her because she became a teacher in part because of his influence, and he has had a very profound influence on her. So meeting him in person many years later is a night that's different from all others for her.

"Then I do enjoy stories where something happens. I have another story where another character is trying to find the perfect gift for her beloved. That alone is a charged exercise, but it is especially charged because she suspects there's another woman. There's another story that takes as its premise the idea that somebody is having premonitions something will happen, so I was immediately setting the stakes high -- for myself and for the character. They knew that something of importance was about to take place in their life but they had no idea what."

Q: How do you actually keep the file?

A: "I have a mini tape recorder that I keep in my purse at all times, and I will take it out often. My friends are patient with me when I do so. That's really where I record ideas and later I'll transcribe them into journals. Now I also rely on this file on my computer but I also have all of the journals going back for years."

Q: You're just constantly aware and on guard for ideas?

A: "I think that as a writer you're always listening and watching as you move through the world and you just can't help it. I do have periods that are more fruitful and productive than others. Sometimes if I'm really in the heat of the story I'll have a hard time turning my brain off and I'll have the tape recorder under my pillow. I'll try to sleep and different ideas about a story will still be popping up. I haven't ever been able to successfully turn it on and off, I'm more just trying to successfully collaborate with it."

Q: What's the appeal of a short story?

A: "The advantage from a writing standpoint is that I think you can hold the whole thing in your mind at once, even perhaps without knowing it. That lets those inevitable turns of phrase or turns of plot come about, and I enjoy that aspect. I think the appeal from a reader's standpoint is that you can have a satisfying narrative in a sitting, you don't have to log a month's worth of hours to have that sense of completion."

Q: What's hard for you in writing and what's easy?

A: "Well, I love first drafts when it's still surprising and exciting for you, and you don't know the jokes and you don't' know the ending. The harder part for me was the editing, where I already knew how things were going to turn out and I knew the jokes. So I had to re-envision editing as creative. I said that you need to go back in and light it on fire again. This situation may be familiar to you, but you can still come up with something exciting within it. It's not quite as sexy to cut a sentence that doesn't belong, that isn't the most exciting part -- making a good cut -- but you can bear in mind that it's going to make the story stronger overall."

(Reporting by Elaine Lies, editing by Paul Casciato)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/parenting/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/lf_nm_life/us_books_authors_black

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As government shutdown looms, lawmakers squabbling over policy, not pork

Time was, an 11th-hour omnibus spending bill to avoid a government shutdown was an invitation for members of Congress to push through pork projects. This year the tussle is over policy riders.

In Congresses of yesteryear, the 11th-hour, must-pass omnibus spending bill typically set off a spike in earmarks or member projects to grease the deal, adding billions to federal deficits.

Skip to next paragraph

But the 1,219-page, $1 trillion spending package released by House leaders late Wednesday night is making waves not for its pork projects, but for its member-driven policy riders on issues ranging from travel to Cuba and the funding of abortions to marketing food to children.

The House GOP bill, which was formulated based on ongoing conference negotiations but not yet signed, wraps up the nine remaining annual appropriation bills. Meanwhile, negotiators continue working toward a ?megabus? that could pass the Senate.

It?s these policy riders, not the bottom-line spending, that have been the main sticking point in passing the bills needed to keep the government from shutting down. Like member earmarks, the aim of riders is to force on the White House a policy that the president would not otherwise support, using annual funding as leverage.

Senate Democrats have fought hard to derail most of the policy riders in the ?megabus?,?especially those aiming to curb environmental regulations. But there?s a bumper crop still in the omnibus bill released by House leaders late Wednesday night.

These include:

? Ending $181 million in funding for Department of Energy loan guarantees, including the program that funded Solyndra, the now-bankrupt solar energy company.

? Scuttling a Senate provision requiring energy efficiency regulations for televisions and cable boxes.

??Halting new light-bulb efficiency standards.

??Prohibiting federal or local funding for abortions in the District of Columbia.

??Banning funding for the Federal Trade Commission to report on the marketing of food to children, unless they conduct a cost-benefit analysis.

??A mandate to expedite approval for new offshore energy production.

??A provision barring the Department of Health and Human Services from activities that promote gun control.

But the provision that set off the biggest firestorm is one tightening federal rules regarding family travel and remittances to Cuba. The rider, by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R) of Florida, overturns Obama administration policies that allow Cuban-Americans to visit family in Cuba or send remittances without limit. In a return to Bush-era policies, the rider would limit visits to once every three years and remittances to $1,200 annually.

?If this bill passes, what happens to the 300,000 Cuban-Americans who have already left for the holidays and are in Cuba?? says Rep. Jose Serrano (D) of New York.

?Times have changed,? he adds. ?Republicans say that remittances are propping up the government, but it?s more like children getting school supplies.?

House Speaker John Boehner told reporters on Thursday that an omnibus bill will pass in time to avert a government shutdown, after funding for FY 2012 runs out on Friday. ?I am confident that the bill will pass in a bipartisan fashion,? he said.

But House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D) of California cautioned that House Republicans ?won?t be getting any cooperation from us.?

In a close vote on the first fiscal 2012 spending package in November, more than 100 House Republicans refused to vote for the relatively noncontroversial measure on the grounds that it spent too much.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/XEZgpj37xlo/As-government-shutdown-looms-lawmakers-squabbling-over-policy-not-pork

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Storm, floods in south Philippines kill nearly 60

MANILA, Philippines (AP) ? Flash floods triggered by a tropical storm have killed nearly 60 people in the southern Philippines, with many more missing across vast regions, officials said Saturday.

Lemuel Gunda, head of a rescue team in Cagayan de Oro city, told The Associated Press that at least 40 bodies were recovered there.

Mayor Lawrence Cruz of nearby Iligan said that at least 15 people were killed in his city alone and that many more were missing.

Those missing included a radio broadcaster who was swept away while trying to save his neighbors, Cruz said.

The chief of the national disaster rescue agency, Benito Ramos, said that officials were still getting reports from the field and that casualties would likely rise.

The floods were triggered by Tropical Storm Washi, which dumped heavy rains over the southern Mindanao region overnight.

Ramos said the dead included at least nine people in a single village in Lanao del Norte province, with floodwaters surging in the middle of the night and quickly reaching rooftops, trapping many residents and causing them to drown.

"Massive flooding had been reported over the region, especially in Iligan city and Cagayan de Oro city," Ramos said, adding that tens of thousands of people sought shelter on high ground.

Back-to-back typhoons in September left more than 100 people dead in the northern Philippines.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-16-AS-Philippines-Storm/id-0bef5287ed5143018f61ebfb44836b74

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To reform or not to reform legal education?

FORUM

? SEC files to appeal Judge Rakoff's rejection of Citi settlement | Hans Bader on the student loan disaster ?

To reform or not to reform legal education?

According to his recent article, David Segal of the New York Times would seemingly advocate for broad sweeping reform of law school curriculum. The centerpiece of the suggested overhaul would be to replace the emphasis on theoretical-driven coursework with courses emphasizing practical training or "lawyering."

David brings up an example of new associates at a law firm who couldn't answer the question "...when you close a merger, how does the deal get done?" The answer to that question was to draft a certificate of merger which then must be filed with the secretary of state. The author attributes this "deficiency" partially to the experience and focus of law school professors citing a 2010 study which found that the median amount of practical legal experience among law school faculty was only one year, and nearly half of those faculty members never even practiced law.

The NYT article explained:

Law schools know all about the tough conditions that await graduates, and many have added or expanded programs that provide practical training through legal clinics. But almost all the cachet in legal academia goes to professors who produce law review articles, which gobbles up huge amounts of time and tuition money. The essential how-tos of daily practice are a subject that many in the faculty know nothing about -- by design. One 2010 study of hiring at top-tier law schools since 2000 found that the median amount of practical experience was one year, and that nearly half of faculty members had never practiced law for a single day. If medical schools took the same approach, they'd be filled with professors who had never set foot in a hospital.

In both a commentary piece and podcast (approx. 41:00 minute mark) on ricochet.com, Richard Epstein, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and visiting scholar with the Manhattan Institute, defended traditional theoretical teaching, arguing that in many practice areas and work environments "the only way to be successful as a lawyer is to know [a] large amount of material that the Times would think irrelevant."

Professor Epstein also disagreed with UC Berkley School of Law Professor John Yoo's assessment in his own commentary (which also mostly disagreed with the NYT piece) on the subject, that:

First year law students mainly focus on classic common law cases-in contract, torts, property, and criminal law, among others-in subjects that have not changed in decades. These are cases where judges have the power to "make the law" and the main method is using human reason to arrive at a correct result. The world, however, is increasingly dominated by statutes and regulations, where careful reading of texts passed by legislatures and administrative agencies is just as important as reasoning one's way to the "right" answer. Lectures on bargaining theory and negotiation could help in classes on contracts and on criminal law. Moreover, economics should become a more important feature in many classes, as it already has become in legal scholarship.

Epstein in his rebuttal stated:

These courses have evolved enormously over the 43 years that I have taught. The types of cases we teach have migrated from traffic accidents to mass torts, from simple contracts of sales to large cooperative arrangements and the like. The tools from law and economics, legal history and comparative law have reshaped the discourse. The constant need to show how statutes influence the formation and enforcement of contracts also takes a larger amount of time. These courses have been cut back, and that may be strictly necessary with the larger statutory courses. But it is also deceptive. One cannot teach environmental law without knowing the common law of nuisance well, and one cannot teach securities law without knowing about common law rules of misrepresentation and fiduciary duty.

Some put more emphasis and blame on student behavior. Commentary featured on Above the Law bluntly concluded:

Maybe law is the red-headed stepchild of American professional schools because law attracts the weakest applicants. Medical schools attract people committed to years of rigorous training, long hours, and low pay. Even business schools at least attract "bros" who are not afraid of "math."

Who does law school attract? Everybody else.

Posted by Isaac Gorodetski at 8:15 AM
Tags:john yoo , law school , legal education , richard epstein

categories: Miscellaneous

Source: http://www.pointoflaw.com/archives/2011/12/to-reform-or-not-to-reform-legal-education.php

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South Africa gallows site becomes museum, memorial (AP)

PRETORIA, South Africa ? Martha Mahlangu can't bear to visit the prison where her son, an anti-apartheid guerrilla, was hanged. But she says it's important that other South Africans see the gallows the government opened as a monument Thursday.

The new memorial recreates the place where political prisoners like Solomon Mahlangu climbed the stairs to face their executions, never struggling and sometimes even singing anti-apartheid songs.

Martha Mahlangu, an 87-year-old former maid, hopes visitors to the gallows will contemplate her son's sacrifice.

"Solomon only thought of freedom, to free the black man," she said in an interview in her Pretoria home. "He never thought of himself, only about seeing the black man free."

Her voice faltered when she tried speak about being invited to take part in a series of events this week at the gallows at Pretoria Central Prison. She sat on her porch in a neighborhood set aside for blacks under apartheid that today remains predominantly black and poor.

She said she was instead sending her eldest son and a nephew to Thursday's inauguration by President Jacob Zuma of the gallows and the death row block housing it as a national memorial and museum.

She also sent her son and nephew to a traditional ceremony Wednesday during which relatives of those hanged offered prayers and burned incense in remembrance.

Zuma toured the building Thursday morning at the start of the ceremony to open the site, accompanied by several Cabinet ministers and George Bizos, a prominent campaigner against the death penalty who was also former President Nelson Mandela's lawyer.

The anti-apartheid militants who were executed "were terrorists or trouble makers to the authorities then," Zuma said in a speech after his tour Thursday. "But to their people and families, they were freedom fighters who wanted to see a free, democratic and nonsexist South Africa."

Death row was in a low, brick building with imposing oak doors just outside the main block of Pretoria Central Prison. The gallows were abandoned after the death penalty was abolished in 1995.

On Thursday, a sign on a freshly painted wall along a hallway leading to the gallows told visitors some 3,500 South Africans were hanged over the last century. "Of these," it said, "130 were patriots whose only crime was fighting oppression."

Not all those hanged were executed in Pretoria, but many of the most prominent were.

South Africa's highest court ruled in 1995 that the death penalty was a cruel, inhuman and degrading violation of the country's post-apartheid constitution. Executions had been on hold since 1989, as a debate raged that touched on the executions of anti-apartheid militants and on whether there could be a fair or just way of deciding who would be hanged.

Solomon Mahlangu was among the class of 1976, young South Africans radicalized by a student uprising in Soweto that year that was met by a brutal police crackdown. He was 20 when he left South Africa to train in Mozambique and Angola with Umkhonto we Sizwe, or "Spear of the Nation," the armed wing of the African National Congress, which celebrates its 50th anniversary Friday.

One of Solomon Mahlangu's trio got away. Another, the only one accused of firing a gun, was so badly beaten in custody he was judged unfit to stand trial. Prosecutors did not dispute that Solomon Mahlangu never fired a gun, but he was convicted of sharing his comrade's deadly purpose.

He was hanged on April 6, 1979. The next day, his mother was brought to Pretoria Central and shown her son's plain wooden coffin. She remembers thinking it looked very small.

The gallows was destroyed in a smelter after the death penalty was abolished. Visitors to the site will see a replica: Seven nooses dangling from iron loops over a trap door.

A prison employee who said he had been a death row guard helped ensure the new museum's details are correct, down to the thickness of the ropes. He refused to give his name, saying he feared reprisals from South Africans who might consider him a murderer. But he said he was just doing a job.

David Kutumela, a 56-year-old anti-apartheid activist who like Solomon Mahlangu began his fight after the 1976 uprisings, helped campaign to create the gallows memorial. He and other activists visited the gallows often as it was transformed into a museum.

"Walking up those 52 steps, we all think, `It might have been us instead of Solomon,'" he said.

Kutumela said the museum is for South Africans as young as or younger than he and Solomon Mahlangu were when they became militants. He said he worries today's children "don't even understand how this freedom came about."

In another sign of how far South Africa has come, the top spokeswoman for the prison department is an ANC veteran who trained as a teenager in the same Angolan camp where Solomon Mahlangu became a guerrilla.

Sibongile Promise Khumalo has a hug for everyone she meets, including the white guards at Pretoria Central who once escorted ANC fighters to their deaths.

Khumalo said she embraced the museum project, speaking with the families of those hanged instead of delegating the emotional job.

"I cried with those people," Khumalo said. "We were reopening wounds for them."

She said the goal was to offer closure to the families, and to society a chance to confront the wounds of the past and then move on.

"I know South Africans are forgiving," she said. "We need to help each other carry out this journey of remembrance."

____

Online:

Donna Bryson can be reached on http://twitter.com/dbrysonAP

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_re_af/af_south_africa_gallows_museum

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Obama prods GOP on payroll tax cut (AP)

WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama accepted a move by Senate Democrats to scale back his Social Security payroll tax cut extension on Monday, then prodded Republicans to support it despite a requirement for the very wealthy to pay more taxes.

Obama also called on lawmakers to renew a program of extended unemployment benefits due to expire on Dec. 31. He said the checks, which kick in after six months of joblessness, are "the last line of defense between hardship and catastrophe" for some victims of the recession and a painfully slow recovery.

The president made his remarks at the White House as Republicans and Democrats in Congress said a holiday-season package was beginning to come into focus that could cost $180 billion or more over a decade. Elements include not only the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefit renewals, but also a provision to avert a threatened 27 percent reduction in fees to doctors who treat Medicare patients.

While there are differences over the details of the three principal components ? many Republicans are reluctant to extend the tax cut ? there is at least as much disagreement among senior lawmakers in the two political parties over ways to cover the cost so deficits don't rise.

House Republicans are drafting legislation to extend an existing pay freeze for federal workers as partial payment for the tax cut and unemployment benefits. Other cost-savers are expected to include a proposal Obama advanced earlier this year to raise pension costs for federal employees, officials said. The bill may also include another presidential recommendation, this one for a surcharge on Medigap policies purchased by future Medicare recipients.

Officials said that to offset the two-year, $38 billion price tag of the Medicare provision, House Republicans want to cut funds from the year-old health care legislation that stands as Obama's signature domestic policy accomplishment. Some Democrats want instead to count defense funds approved but unspent for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ? a proposal that many GOP lawmakers deem an accounting gimmick.

The Medicare proposal enjoys strong popularity among lawmakers in both parties. House Republican leaders signaled last week they intend to include it in the overall package as a sweetener for members of the party's rank and file who are unhappy at the prospect of extending the payroll tax cut.

GOP critics say there is no evidence that the current tax cut has helped create jobs, and also say they fear the impact of a renewal on the deficit and on the fund that pays Social Security benefits. A majority of Republican senators voted last week against a plan backed by their own leadership to extend the cut.

But Obama noted House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said that the renewal would help the economy, and said the party's Senate leaders had made similar comments.

"I couldn't agree more. And I hope that the rest of their Republican colleagues come around and join Democrats to pass these tax cuts and put money back into the pockets of working Americans," the president said.

Obama also added, "I know many Republicans have sworn an oath never to raise taxes as long as they live. How could it be that the only time there's a catch is when it comes to raising taxes on middle-class families? How can you fight tooth-and-nail to protect high-end tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, and yet barely lift a finger to prevent taxes going up for 160 million Americans who really need the help?"

He spoke as Senate Democrats unveiled revisions that cut the cost of the administration's proposal by one-third, to an estimated $179 billion. As rewritten, it deepens the current Social Security payroll tax cut and extends it until the end of 2012, but jettisons Obama's request to give businesses relief at the same time.

Republicans were critical despite the changes.

"Frankly, the only thing bipartisan about this latest political gambit is opposition to the permanent tax hike on small businesses to pay for temporary one-year tax policy," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. Republicans often refer to the proposal as a tax increase on small business owners in hopes of recasting Democratic claims that it would fall on "millionaires and billionaires."

Advanced by Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., the revised proposal also scales back the surtax on seven-figure earners that Democrats had originally proposed to cover the bill's entire cost, from 3.25 percent to 1.9 percent.

Also included are higher fees for consumers whose mortgages are from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as a GOP proposal from last week to make sure millionaires don't receive unemployment benefits or food stamps.

___

Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/democrats/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111205/ap_on_go_co/us_congress_payroll_tax

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