Business Today Trouble mounts for Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines October 3, 2012 Employee Rights Crisis deepened

for Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines on Wednesday as reconcialatory talks between the managementand striking engineers and pilots over payment of seven-month backlog of salaries failed. Airline CEO Sanjay Agarwal and UB Group's Chief Financial Officer Ravi Nedungadi attended the meetings with the commercial staff as well as engineers and pilots in Mumbai. They are expected to meet the employees in Delhi on Thursday. With no end to the deadlock, a question mark hung over the airline's plans to resume operations from Friday, after a four-day partial lockout and complete suspension of all operations since Monday night. The protestors rejected the offer of part payment and vowed to continue their agitation. "Our strike will continue as management has failed to give any commitment on payment of salary," Capt Vikrant Patkar, a representative of striking Kingfisher engineers and pilots said. On its part, the management offered to pay one month's salary soon and "expedite the payment of the remaining six months as soon as the company gets recapitalised," an airline official said on condition of anonymity. But this offer was rejected by the employees. "There is no money and they can't give any commitment also. The engineers and pilots will continue with their agitation," Patkar said. He said the management offered "us one month salary and that too 10-15 days later. We are not going to work unless we are paid for 7 months. So we have rejected their offer." Top Kingfisher officials had promised the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) that they would hold meetings with various sections of the staff in an attempt to end the strike and the process began on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said DGCA would submit an interim report on the situation facing Kingfisher, including the safety issue as aircraft engineers were on strike. Mallya's cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines has been saddled with a huge loss of Rs 8,000 crore and a debt burden of another over Rs 7,000 crore, a large part of which has not serviced since January. Several of its aircraft have been either taken away by its lessors or grounded by the Airports Authority of India for non-payment of dues during the past few months.

The Wall Street Journal

Four Charged in U.K. Insider-Trading Probe October 1, 2012 Insider trading LONDONBritish authorities have charged four people, including a former executive at Deutsche Bank AG, in relation to an alleged insider-trading ring in the most high-profile U.K. case of its kind. The probe marks what the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority calls its most complex insidertrading investigation. It is part of an effort by regulators at the FSA to establish its crimefighting credentials amid criticism it hasn't acted decisively in the past. The case is also notable for the involvement of someone who was an executive at a big-name bank at the time of his arrest, in March 2010. The regulator said Monday that it had charged 40-year old Martyn Dodgson, a London-based former managing director in Deutsche Bank's corporate broking group, and three other men with conspiracy to insider trade between November 2006 and March 2010. Mr. Dodgson joined the bank in late 2008 after the collapse of his previous employer, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., and had developed a specialty serving insurance companies as a corporate broker. He had also previously worked at several other large banks. Also charged on Monday was Andrew Hind, a 52-year old businessman from London; 67-year old Benjamin Anderson from Surrey, near London; and Iraj Parvizi, 46, who has a residence in Spain.

The FSA said the men made in excess of 3 million as a result of the alleged scheme, but declined to disclose further details. A person familiar with the case said Monday's charges related to a ring in which the FSA believes that Mr. Dodgson was obtaining deal information and passing it on to Mr. Hind, who then allegedly passed it on to the other two men. Messrs. Anderson and Parvizi trade for their own accounts, according to a second person familiar with the case. All four men, who are British nationals, have been released on bail and are due to appear at a magistrate's court on Oct. 19. The maximum penalty each faces is seven years' imprisonment. Peter Hughman, a lawyer for Mr. Parvizi, said his client "emphatically denies the charges and he is determined to clear his name." Mr. Hughman added that the charges don't detail which stocks were allegedly traded. Mr. Anderson's lawyer, Michael Potts, declined to comment. Lawyers for Mr. Dodgson and Mr. Hind didn't respond to requests for comment. Deutsche Bank issued a statement saying it "cooperated fully with the authorities in their investigation into this matter. The investigation concerned one individual, Martyn Dodgson, and not the bank itself." The FSA launched the investigation it calls Operation Tabernula in late 2007 and has been conducting it alongside the U.K.'s Serious Organised Crime Agency. The regulator sent shock waves through London's financial district in March 2010 when it made its first arrests in relation to the case in dawn raids involving some 140 agents and searches of homes and businesses. Those arrested included an employee of U.S. hedge fund Moore Capital Management LP and a man from Exane SA, a brokerage affiliated with French bank BNP Paribas SA, as well as Mr. Dodgson from Germany's Deutsche Bank. A total of nine people have been arrested, including the four charged Monday. The investigation continues regarding the five other individuals, an FSA spokesman said. A spokesman for Moore Capital declined to comment and a spokesperson for Exane couldn't be reached.

While the FSA used to boast about its hands-off approach to enforcement, it says that in recent years, it has tried to clamp down on insider trading by pursuing criminal cases and seeking stiffer fines. That push has resulted in 20 insider-trading criminal convictions since 2009 and some sizable fines. In January, it fined U.S. hedge-fund manager David Einhorn and his firm Greenlight Capital Inc. a combined $11.2 million for trading on information Mr. Einhorn received in a 2009 conference call about a stock offering by a large U.K. pub owner. Mr. Einhorn disputed the ruling but paid half the fine himself. Still, the FSA remains less feared than the U.S. Justice Department or Securities and Exchange Commission, some lawyers say. By comparison with the FSA's efforts, the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, which handles a significant share of the Justice Department's insider-trading efforts, has secured 69 convictions in this area since October 2009. Sara George, a former FSA official who is now a partner at law firm Stephenson Harwood LLP, says the agency has made progress in prosecuting insider trading but has been more successful in cases involving a relatively small number of people or relatively unsophisticated schemes. In what the FSA had previously called its most complex prosecution, six individuals in July received sentences after making a combined profit of about 730,000 from confidential information stolen from the print rooms of two large investment banks. The regulator has never successfully prosecuted an insider-trading ring remotely as sophisticated or farreaching as the alleged scheme revolving around U.S. hedge fund Galleon Group. Dozens of people have been prosecuted in that and related probes. The FSA remains slow in conducting investigations, Ms. George added, partly because investigators are "spread too thinly," juggling several cases at once even though such probes can require analyzing large amounts of emails and trading data. U.S. authorities often reach settlements with targets, allowing them to quickly move on to others; the FSA only in 2010 gained the power to offer defendants immunity from other government agencies in exchange for testimony. Monday's charges come more than two and a half years after the first arrests and about five years after the investigation was launched. An FSA spokesman said: "The modus operandi in

this case is sophisticated. It's been a painstaking process to collect the evidence, analyze and collate it."

Legal Newsline
Ship scrapping company cited for environmental violations Thursday, 26 July 2012 Environmental Pollution Two Virginia scrap company owners were sentenced for violation of environmental laws July 12. The Norfolk, Va., U.S. Attorney's office announced that Steven E. Avery, 56 of Bohannon, Va., Billy J. Avery, 81 of Virginia Beach, Va., and the corporation Sea Solutions, Inc., were sentenced in Norfolk federal court for pollution activities in the course of operating the ship scrapping business. "The defendants knowingly polluted the environment through their illegal discharges," Environmental Protection Agency Special Agent in Charge David McLeod said. "Today's sentencing sends a clear message to other potential violators that companies and their senior executives will be held responsible for their actions and intentional noncompliance with the law will be prosecuted." Steven was sentenced to one year in prison and a $25,000 fine, Billy was sentenced to five years of probation, nine months of home confinement and a $25,000 fine, and Sea Solutions was sentenced to one year of probation and is barred from further engaging in the ship scrapping business. The three defendants were also collectively ordered to pay $66,402.41 in restitution. According to court documents, the defendants purchased a vessel known as M/V Snow Bird in February 2010 for the purpose of scrapping. The vessel contained a quantity of petroleum products and other pollutants and the defendants knew this, it is alleged. But rather than remove the pollutants they allegedly began scrapping operations with the pollutants onboard. The U.S. Attorney's communique said that during the course of several months, witnesses complained of pollutants emanating from the ship. Finally the defendants caused a major spill of oil, oily water and other pollutants from the M/V Snow Bird into the Elizabeth River in October 2010, the release said. The federal government spent more than $66,000 for a cleanup operation that removed several thousand gallons of oily waste from the Elizabeth River and the shoreline.