Judge rules Caesars Entertainment must face lawsuits from bondholders seeking $11 billion in claims

• Tracy Rucinski, Reuters

• Aug. 26, 2016, 6:45 PM
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Las Vegas Strip casinos are seen from the 550 foot-tall (167.6 m) High Roller observation wheel, the tallest in the world, in Las VegasThomson Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Caesars Entertainment must face lawsuits from bondholders seeking some $11 billion in claims, a U.S. judge ruled on Friday in a decision the casino company had warned could plunge it into bankruptcy alongside its operating unit.

Shares of the Nevada-based gaming company fell 12 percent after-hours.

Caesars Entertainment, which filed for Chapter 11 protection in January 2015, was asking for a third court shield from lawsuits against its parent to protect a multibillion-dollar contribution to its reorganization plan.

The high-stakes CEOC bankruptcy has been plagued by a complex web of litigation pitting some of the most aggressive investors on Wall Street against each other.

A current injunction expires on Aug. 29, a day before Caesars faces a potential ruling in New York on lawsuits from bondholders alleging it reneged on guarantees from bonds issued by CEOC prior to the unit's $18 billion bankruptcy.

CEOC had argued that another halt to a decision on those lawsuits was critical to securing a settlement with holdout creditors before its reorganization plan heads to a confirmation trial in January.

"I can't find that an injunction is likely to enhance the prospects for negotiation," U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar in Chicago said in his courtroom ruling.

Bitter creditors accuse Caesars and its private equity sponsors Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital of stripping the unit of choice assets such as the LINQ Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas and leaving it bankrupt.

Caesars, Apollo and TPG have denied any wrongdoing, though a court-appointed examiner found they could be on the hook for up to $5.1 billion in claims.

To settle the allegations Caesars has offered to pitch about $4 billion into CEOC's reorganization in exchange for releases from the claims. Goldgar asked on Friday why Apollo and TPG were not also contributing, saying the injunctions to date had provided them "a comfortable free ride" on CEOC's "coattails".

Both Caesars and CEOC said they were disappointed by the decision. The court's refusal to extend the shield puts Caesars' "substantial contribution" to CEOC's reorganization plan "at serious risk," a Caesars spokesman said in an email.

CEOC lawyers said they planned to appeal the ruling.

"It would be hard to reverse Goldgar without dramatically expanding the availability of third-party releases, something that would be out of step with the standards in other circuits," said Douglas Baird, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. 

(Editing by Meredith Mazzilli and Matthew Lewis)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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China's BYD forecasts up to 91 percent profit rise for first nine months

• Reuters

• Aug. 28, 2016, 8:26 AM
• 982

The logo of BYD is seen on a car presented at the Auto China 2016 auto show in Beijing Thomson Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese automaker BYD Co Ltd , backed by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc , on Sunday predicted an up to 91-percent profit increase in the first nine months of the year, as government policies drive green car sales.

The Shenzhen-based company forecast an 83 percent to 91 percent rise in net profit for the first nine months, between 3.6 billion yuan ($539.8 million) to 3.7 billion yuan, according to a stock exchange filing.

For the first half of 2016, BYD reported 2.3 billion yuan in profit, a 384 percent increase year-on-year, on the low end of the company's predicted increase of 382 percent to 425 percent.

BYD, which focuses on making green energy cars and batteries for personal electronics, had reported successive quarters of triple-digit growth since third quarter 2015 after years of favorable government policies finally sparked a boom in sales of full electric cars and plug-in hybrids.

Berkshire Hathaway's stake in BYD fell to 8.25 percent from 9.1 percent previously after a share sale in July in which South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and other investors bought a stake in the Chinese automaker.

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BYD's board recommended an interim cash dividend of 0.367 yuan per share, according to the filing.

(Reporting by Jake Spring; Editing by Stephen Coates and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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SEC paid $3.75 million to BHP Billiton whistleblower: report

• Reuters

• 24h
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A logo for mining company BHP Billiton adorns a sign outside the Perth Convention Centre where their annual general meeting was being held in Perth, Western Australia Thomson Reuters

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission paid a BHP Billiton insider $3.75 million for detailed information in an investigation into alleged bribery of Asian and African officials, the Australian Financial Review reported on Monday.

Citing legal sources, the newspaper report said it was the first time an employee of an Australian company had received a U.S. whistleblower bounty.

BHP last year settled the SEC case, paying $25 million to resolve charges it violated a U.S. anti-bribery law by failing to properly monitor a program in which it paid for dozens of foreign government officials to attend the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

The Australian Financial Review said it did not spell out the evidence that the whistleblower disclosed because it wanted to protect the person's identity.

The world's biggest miner remains under investigation by the Australian Federal Police.

(Reporting by Sonali Paul; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

Read the original article on Reuters. Copyright 2016. Follow Reuters on Twitter.

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This is what Earth will look like in 100 years — if we're lucky

• Sarah Kramer
 

• Aug. 8, 2016, 5:08 PM
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AP Photo/Matt York

At this point, you're probably fully aware of how hot it is. But in case you're unaware: It's really, really hot.

In fact, 2016 is likely to be the hottest year on record, increasing 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial averages.

That brings us dangerously close to the 2.7-degree-Fahrenheit (1.5-degree-Celsius) limit set by international policymakers for global warming.

"There's no stopping global warming," Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist who is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, told Business Insider. "Everything that's happened so far is baked into the system."

That means that even if carbon emissions dropped to zero tomorrow, we'd still be watching human-driven climate change play out for centuries. And, as we all know, emissions aren't going to stop tomorrow. So the key thing now, Schmidt said, is slowing climate change down enough to make sure we can adapt to it as painlessly as possible.

This is what the Earth could look like within 100 years if we do, barring huge leaps in renewable energy or carbon-capture technology.

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"I think the 1.5-degree [2.7-degree F] target is out of reach as a long-term goal," Schmidt said. He estimated that we will blow past that by about 2030.

Stephane Mahe/Reuters

But Schmidt is more optimistic about staying at or under 3.6 degrees F, or 2 degrees C, above preindustrial levels — the level of temperature rise the UN hopes to avoid.

Thomson Reuters

Let's assume we land between those two targets. At the end of this century, we're already looking at a world that is on average 3 degrees or so Fahrenheit above where we are now.

NASA

But average surface temperature alone doesn't fully capture climate change. Temperature anomalies — or how much the temperature of a given area is deviating from what would be "normal" in that region — will swing wildly.

Oli Scarff/Getty

Source: Tech Insider

For example, the temperature in the Arctic Circle last winter soared above freezing for one day. It was still cold for Florida, but it was extraordinarily hot for the arctic. That's abnormal, and it will start happening a lot more.

Bob Strong/Reuters

Source: Washington Post

That means years like this one, which had the lowest sea-ice extent on record, will become common. Summers in Greenland could become ice-free by 2050.

NASA Goddard Flickr

Source: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems

Even 2015 was nothing compared with 2012, when 97% of the Greenland Ice Sheet's surface started to melt in the summer. It's typically a once-in-a-century occurrence, but we could see this kind of extreme surface melt every 6 years by end of the century.

Flickr/Ville Miettinen

Source: Climate Central, National Snow & Ice Data Center

On the bright side, ice in Antarctica will remain relatively stable, making minimal contributions to sea-level rise.

Andreas Kambanis on Flickr

Source: Nature

But in our best-case scenarios, oceans are on track to rise 2 to 3 feet by 2100. Even a sea-level rise below 3 feet could displace up to 4 million people.

Thomson Reuters

Source: NASA, Time

Oceans not only will have less ice at the poles, but they will also continue to acidify in the tropics. Oceans absorb about a third of all carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, causing them to warm and become more acidic.

Brandi Mueller for Argunners Magazine

Source: International Geosphere-Biosphere Program

If climate change continues unabated, nearly all coral reef habitats could be devastated. Under our best-case scenario, half of all tropical coral reefs are still threatened.

Matt Kieffer/flickr

Source: International Geosphere-Biosphere Program

But the oceans aren't the only place heating up. Even if we curb emissions, summers in the tropics could increase their extreme-heat days by half after 2050. Farther north, 10% to 20% of the days in a year will be hotter.

Lionel Cironneau/AP

Source: Environmental Research Letters

But compare that with the business-as-usual scenario, in which the tropics will stay at unusually hot temperatures all summer long. In the temperate zones, 30% or more of the days will be what is now unusual.

AP Photo/Matt York

Source: Environmental Research Letters

Even a little bit of warming will strain water resources. In a 2013 paper, scientists used models to estimate that the world could see more severe droughts more frequently — about a 10% increase. If unchecked, climate change could cause severe drought across 40% of all land, double what it is today.

Reuters

Source: PNAS

And then there's the weather. If the extreme El Niño event of 2015-2016 was any indication, we're in for much more dramatic natural disasters. More extreme storm surges, wildfires, and heat waves are on the menu for 2070 and beyond.

REUTERS/Max Whittaker

Source: Environment360

Right now, humanity is standing on a precipice. We can ignore the warning signs and pollute ourselves into what Schmidt envisions as a "vastly different planet" — roughly as different as our current climate is from the most recent ice age.

Reuters

Or we can innovate solutions. Many of the scenarios laid out here assume we're reaching negative emissions by 2100 — that is, absorbing more than we're emitting through carbon-capture technology.

Reuters/Aly Song

Source: The Guardian

Schmidt says we are likely to reach 2100 with a planet somewhere between "a little bit warmer than today and a lot warmer than today."

Heinz-Peter Bader/Reuters

But the difference between "a little" and "a lot" on the scale of Earth is one of millions of lives saved, or not.

Benoit Tessier/ Reuters

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the nature of Greenland's 2012 melt season. More than 90% of the surface ice showed signs of melting, not the entire ice sheet.

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