Google Chairman Eric Schmidt speaks at a Motorola phone launch event in New York, in this September 5, 2012 photo. – Reuters (File Photo)

SAN FRANCISCO – With Google’s stock hovering at record highs, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt plans to sell more than 40 percent of his stock in the Internet search leader this year.

The plan disclosed Friday calls for Schmidt to sell up to 3.2 million shares. If he were to sell all that stock at Google’s current price, Schmidt would realize a $2.5 billion windfall.

Schmidt ended December with 7.6 million Google shares, or a 2.3 percent stake in the Mountain View, Calif., company.

He would be left with about 4.4 million shares of Google stock worth another $3.5 billion if he follows through on his divestiture plan for this year. He has gradually been winnowing his holdings in Google in recent years, without giving a specific reason.

Google Inc. declined to comment Friday.

Google’s stock rose $11.42 to close at $785.37 Friday. Earlier in the day, it traded at $786.67 – its highest price since the company went public at $85 per share in August 2004.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the only company executives who own more stock than Schmidt.

Page controls an 8.7 percent stake and Brin holds an 8.5 percent stake. Each stake is currently worth nearly $20 billion.

Schmidt, 57, was Google’s CEO for a decade before turning over the job to Page, 39, in April 2011.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg walks in front of the Kremlin in Red Square in Moscow, September 30, 2012.  - Reuters Photo

SAN FRANCISCO, Tue Dec 18, 2012 - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is donating half a billion dollars in Facebook stock to a Silicon Valley charity, his second major donation since committing to giving away most of his wealth.

The 28-year old co-founder of the world’s largest online social network said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that he would work with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to “look for areas in education and health to focus on.”

Zuckerberg, whose stake in vested Facebook shares is worth roughly $11 billion, announced plans in 2010 to give a $100 million gift to the beleaguered public schools of Newark, New Jersey.

The gifts are part of Zuckerberg’s involvement in The Giving Pledge. Launched by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett in 2010, the group asks US billionaires to give away at least half their wealth during their lifetime or after their death and to publicly state their intention with a letter explaining their decision.

Zuckerberg said on Tuesday that he made a contribution of 18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to “lay the foundation for new projects.”

At Tuesday’s closing price of $27.71 per Facebook share, the gift translates to $498.8 million.

Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004, turning it into the world’s most popular online social network with roughly 1 billion users. With its high-profile initial public offering in May, Facebook became the first U.S. technology company to debut with a $100 billion-plus valuation, though questions about its long-term money-making prospects have pressured share prices.

Yahoo! Chief Executive Marissa Mayer listens in a Startup Battlefield session during TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012 at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse in San Francisco, California September 12, 2012. – Reuters Photo

SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo! said Friday it was ordered to pay $2.7 billion by a Mexican court in a lawsuit stemming from allegations of breach of contract and lost profits related to a yellow pages listing service.

The US Internet giant said in a statement it “believes the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit and will vigorously pursue all appeals.”The California company’s statement offered few details on the case.

It said the 49th Civil Court of the Federal District of Mexico City has “entered a non-final judgment of US $2.7 billion against Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo de Mexico” in the case.

The lawsuit was brought by Worldwide Directories SA de CV and Ideas Interactivas, and “alleged claims of breach of contract, breach of promise, and lost profits arising from contracts related to a yellow pages listings service,” Yahoo! said.

Yahoo! shares were down 1.4 per cent in after-hours trade on the news.

Yahoo! in October reported that its quarterly profit rocketed above $3 billion, fueled by the sale of part of its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

The California company’s revenue from display advertising was little changed from the same quarter last year but Yahoo! reported its income from ads served up with online search results was up 11 per cent.

It has been trying to reinvent itself as the search pioneer has been overtaken by Google.

– AFP (File Photo)

SYDNEY: Google was ordered to pay Aus$200,000 (US$208,000) in damages to an Australian Monday after a jury found the Internet giant defamed him by publishing material linking him to mobsters.

Milorad Trkulja, an entertainment promoter who is now 62, was shot in the back in 2004 in a crime that was never solved.

He accused Google of defaming him with material which he said implied he was a major crime figure in Melbourne and had been the target of a professional hit.

Searches of his name brought up references to the city’s gangsters including crime boss Tony Mokbel and a now defunct site called “Melbourne Crime” chronicling gang-related incidents.

Google denied publication in the Supreme Court of Victoria, saying it had innocently disseminated material published by others. It also disputed that the material conveyed the defamatory implications claimed by Trkulja.

But a jury ruled in his favour, finding the Internet firm had been on notice and failed to act on the issue from October 2009, when Trkulja’s lawyers wrote to them demanding action over the “grossly defamatory” content.

Bond University media law expert Mark Pearson, who specialises in social media and legal issues, said it was a “groundbreaking” precedent in Australia and could have broader implications.

“What the court’s said here is that this isn’t just innocent architecture, what this is is a human-designed software to showcase information in a certain way,” Pearson told AFP.

“The judge has said that because you (Google) have designed (the search results) to appear in this way, you are the publisher of the material.”Google, which is understood to be contemplating an appeal, stood by its arguments in court.

“Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the web,” a Google spokesman told AFP.

“The sites in Google’s search results are controlled by those sites’ webmasters, not by Google.”

Judge David Beach ordered Google to pay Trkulja Aus$200,000, likening their role in publication to a library or newsagent, which have “sometimes been held to be publishers for the purposes of defamation law” in Australia.

“Google Inc is like the newsagent that sells a newspaper containing a defamatory article,” Beach said in his judgement.

“While there might be no specific intention to publish defamatory material, there is a relevant intention by the newsagent to publish the newspaper for the purposes of the law of defamation.”Beach said the jury was “entitled to conclude that Google Inc intended to publish the material that its automated systems produced, because that was what they were designed to do upon a search request”.

Trkulja argued that his reputation was central to his work and had been seriously damaged by the defamatory material. He had already won Aus$225,000 from Yahoo in an earlier case on the same matter.

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg laughs at the Iab Mixx Conference and Expo in New York October 2, 2012. – Reuters Photo

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook Inc Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and two other executives at the social networking company sold millions of dollars worth of stock this week as restrictions on insider trading expired.

Sandberg netted about $7.44 million by selling roughly 353,000 Facebook shares on Wednesday, according to a filing with the SEC on Friday. Sandberg still owns roughly 20 million vested shares of Facebook stock, including shares held in her trusts, according to the filing.

Facebook General Counsel Theodore Ullyot and Chief Accounting Officer David Spillane also sold millions of dollars worth of shares this week, according to filings. All the Facebook executives’ sales were part of pre-arranged stock trading plans.

The sales are the first by Facebook’s senior management following the company’s high-profile initial public offering in May.

The world’s No.1 online social network became the only US company to debut with a market value of more than $100 billion, but has seen its value plunge more than 40 per cent since then on concerns about its long-term money-making prospects.

Shares of Facebook, which were priced at $38 in the IPO, closed Friday’s regular session down 3 cents at $21.18.

The flood of shares set to hit the market as insider trading “lock-up” provisions expire in several phases have added to the pressure on Facebook’s stock.

Roughly 230 million shares of Facebook became eligible for trading this week, as trading restrictions for employees expired. Another 800 million shares will be eligible for trading on November 14, significantly expanding the “float” of roughly 692 million Facebook shares that were available for trading as of September 30.

Facebook’s 28-year-old chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has committed to not sell any shares before September 2013.

Ullyot sold slightly more than 149,000 shares on Wednesday and Thursday, collecting $3.13 million. Ullyot has an additional 1.27 million in vested shares.

Spillane sold 256,000 shares on Wednesday, more than half of his vested shares, for proceeds of $5.4 million. Spillane had more than 863,000 Facebook shares, including unvested shares, according to a filing in May.

Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich (L) and Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky are seen as they arrive at a division of the High Court in central London in recent file photos. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich emerged victorious on Friday from a long and hugely expensive legal battle with his former friend Boris Berezovsky that laid bare the murky dealings behind the post-Soviet carve-up of Russia’s vast natural resources. – AP photo

LONDON: Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich emerged victorious on Friday from a $6 billion legal battle with his former mentor Boris Berezovsky that has laid bare the intrigue behind the post-Soviet carve-up of Russia’s vast natural resources.

Berezovsky, who became a Moscow powerbroker under the late President Boris Yeltsin only to fall foul of Vladimir Putin, had accused Abramovich of using the threat of Kremlin retribution to intimidate him into selling prized assets at a knockdown price.

But Judge Elizabeth Gloster told a packed London courtroom that she had found Berezovsky to be an “unimpressive and inherently unreliable witness” who gave sometimes dishonest evidence and would say “almost anything to support his case”.

Gloster dismissed all of Berezovsky’s $6 billion in claims in one of the biggest private litigation cases ever, saying Abramovich – the world’s 68th richest man with a $12.1 billion fortune – was a “truthful and on the whole reliable witness”.

“I am absolutely amazed about what happened today,” Berezovsky, 66, told reporters after listening expressionless as the verdict was read out in a modern, glass courtroom crowded with lawyers, bodyguards and journalists.

“My confidence in English justice has been undermined by the judge’s decision,” he said, adding that the ruling was so sympathetic to Putin that it read as if the Kremlin chief had written it himself.

But such a stinging rebuke from one of Britain’s most experienced commercial judges is likely to cement Berezovsky’s reputation as a publicity-seeker and opens him up to claims for costs that could exceed $100 million.

“There was a marked contrast between the manner in which Mr Berezovsky gave his evidence and that in which Mr Abramovich did so,” Gloster said in an hour-long dissection of Berezovsky’s claim which delved into the murky world of Russian business.

Abramovich, who made headlines by buying Chelsea in 2003, had denied Berezovsky owned the assets and said that he merely paid Berezovsky for political cover and protection – known in Russian gangster slang as “krysha” or “roof”.

RUSSIAN “KRYSHA”

The 38-page preliminary ruling marks the beginning of the end for a legal odyssey stretching from the gilded corridors of the Kremlin via the offshore enclaves favoured by Russia’s tycoons to the rarefied atmosphere of London’s High Court.

Judge Gloster stumbled at times trying to pronounce “krysha”, a term used by leather-jacketed gangsters on the streets of Russian cities and now the partial basis of a ruling in one of the most respected legal systems in the world.

“It is a very tough verdict for Mr Berezovsky: it is very much based on an appreciation of him as a witness whether that is justified or not and he clearly thinks it is not,” said Philippa Charles, a litigation partner at law firm Mayer Brown, which is not directly involved in the case.

The case has captivated some of the top lawyers in Britain, whose globally respected, tradition-bound courts where barristers still wear wigs have become the venue of choice for the international rich to sue each other. Russian firms often settle their legal differences in London because they do not trust the courts at home.

Friday’s judgment comes less than a month before the main proceedings in another legal battle between two Russian tycoons – metals billionaire Oleg Deripaska and his former associate Michael Cherney – are set to begin in a London courtroom.

Berezovsky had claimed that Abramovich used the threat of retribution at the hands of Putin’s Kremlin to intimidate him into selling out of Sibneft, Russia’s fourth biggest oil company, at a knockdown price.

The judge said that though she felt the court had not got the full picture of the relations between Berezovsky, his late partner Badri Patarkatsishvili, and Abramovich, she had dismissed the $5 billion Sibneft claim and another $565 million claim relating to claimed ownership in aluminium company RUSAL.

Abramovich was not in court to hear the verdict and his team of lawyers, led by Karyl Nairn a litigation partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, merely smiled as the judge read out her lengthy statement.

“There were many serious allegations made against Mr Abramovich by Mr Berezovsky, including attacks on Mr Abramovich’s honesty and integrity,” Abramovich’s investment vehicle, Millhouse, said in a statement.

Pakistan’s rice exports have developed some permanent features (some call them deterrents) that include: poor quality and poorer international prices, failure to develop brand and retail market share and permanently and dangerously, narrow base of exporters. – File photo

The Rice Exporters Association of Pakistan announced crossing $2 billion mark in foreign sales. Its officials listed the seasonal problems that confronted the association and the efforts it made to defeat them to reach the benchmark.

They are right, but up to a point, when they say that debilitating energy crisis and discouraging law and order situation threatened export process this year like never before. It is also true that India entered the rice market with a huge surplus and 20 per cent devaluation of its rupee, giving it almost unbeatable comparative advantage against Pakistani exporters. To make the competition even tougher, India withdrew the minimum export price (MEP).

Other competitors like Vietnam and Myanmar posed stiff competitive challenges. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) also quietly honoured sanctions against Iran, resulting in drastic drop in basmati exports to it. But the exporters still maintained their share and were able to achieve the mark.

But, primarily Pakistan’s rice export is turning out to be a failure, especially when taken in the backdrop of its projected potential. The exports are stagnant for the last many years, both in quantitative and value terms – hovering around four million tons in quantity and $2 billion in worth. Are both these figures satisfactory? Certainly not! Especially when taken in the backdrop of Indian success in doubling its export of basmati.

Pakistan’s rice exports have developed some permanent features (some call them deterrents) that include: poor quality and poorer international prices, failure to develop brand and retail market share and permanently and dangerously, narrow base of exporters. For the last few years, however, a new, and perhaps the most lethal, factor has crept in the export process — increasing uncertain future of basmati variety.

The entire rice export regime of the country has traditionally been based in this variety, which gave it a natural competitive edge in world market. Certain geographical attributes made it the most ‘sought after variety’ and the world paid premium for its natural traits – taste and aroma.

Of late, this main pillar of rice export, however, has come under threat because of short-term greed of a small bunch of exporters and traders. They regularly manipulate market to deprive everyone of his share of profit. Precisely for this reason, the variety is increasingly loosing its economic sheen — particularly for farmers. With the loss of commercial attraction, farmers are increasingly abandoning the crop.

Last four years acreage reflects farmers’ loss of interest. In 2008-09, the variety was sown on 3.82 million acres. In 2009-10, area dropped to 3.49 million acres in Punjab, where the variety can be sown. Next year, it came down to 3.29 million acres, and last year it was reduced to 2.77 million acres. Where would this decline stop?

With loss of area, decline in production is only natural – especially when there has neither been any breakthrough in seed nor in production process. In 2008-09, Punjab produced 2.6 million tons of basmati. In 2009-10, it came down to 2.47 million tons.

Next year, it was 2.36 million tons which dropped to 1.88 million tons last year. Its share in export dropped from 1.2 million tons to just over 900,000 tons during the same period.

With basmati on a decline, would Pakistan be able to sustain its rice export? Most probably it would not. Without basmati, it will have to compete in hybrid varieties where it simply stands no chance for a number of reasons. Far East countries, like China, which produce those varieties, have already leapt generations ahead — both in technology and seeds varieties. They have gone into super hybrid regimes and getting yield of over 200 maunds per acre, against a paltry 70 maunds in Pakistan. With that kind of yield differential, would Pakistan ever be able to maintain any competitive advantage in the world market?

Apart from financial dimension, the varieties like basmati, which could only be produced in certain geographical environment, are considered common human heritage. No country is allowed to damage them, deliberately or though neglect. Pakistan, on the one hand, is fighting a legal battle with India, insisting that basmati could only be produced in 15 districts of central Punjab due to particular geographical signatures. On the other hand, it is allowing influential domestic players to manipulate the entire variety out of existence.

The world sensitivity to such heritage is reflected in the regime of patents under the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Such patents save local varieties in each and every part of the globe because they bring diversity of taste, intellect and employment to million of people. Every host nation is allowed to charge a premium on such varieties. Instead of building on this natural advantage, Pakistan seems to be bent upon loosing it – that too for greed of the few.

The country cannot shift to hybrid regime for two reasons: domestic consumption pattern and price differential between the two. Pakistanis are a basmati consuming nation. The hybrid varieties even cause social stigma.. Thus, a part of acreage would always be spared for basmati. Why let a variety slip out of hands when it is matter of social, dietary and economic realities?
Price differential between basmati and hybrid in international market would also provide a compulsion for Pakistan to save this variety. It is sold in world market at almost three-time higher price than other hybrids. All these points make basmati integral part of social and economic life. This natural advantage needs tending, not strangulation.

Pakistan and Iran have recently negotiated a trade deal on barter system. If the agreement is finalised, Pakistan could import oil from Iran on export of wheat and sugar. - File photo

KARACHI: The current high demand for US dollars by importers is being attributed to a different reason linked with the Western sanctions on Iran.

Importers of commodities especially gram and other pluses said a vacuum had emerged on supply side prompting them to book more quantities as smuggling of these commodities to Iran was thriving following sanctions imposed by the Euro-pean Union and US causing shortages in the local market.

However, wholesalers said this could be one of the reasons however the main reason was a shortfall of local production of gram.

“I know many importers who have booked more quantities of gram and pulses that could be in the range of 10 to 12 per cent,” Anis Majeed, Chairman Wholesale Grocers Association told Dawn on Thursday.

He said the main crop of gram could be short this year compared to last year which is one of the main reasons for shortage of this commodity in the market.

He said the smuggling to Iran is not as large as the shortfall is expected this year. Pakistan used to import gram, peas and pulses each year but the main import is gram which has a very large market in the country.

“Each year we import 50 per cent of total requirement of gram. This year the import may exceed up to 15 per cent,” said Anis Majeed. Pakistan’s yearly import of gram is half a million tons while consumption is about one million tons.

However, another importer said the shortfall was also due to smuggling of gram and pulses to Iran as demand is high and prices are attractive.

“The demand for dollars is high because the importers of gram and pulses are buying larger quantities over the previous year mainly due to smuggling of these commodities to Iran,” said Anwar Jamal, a currency dealer.

Mohammad Atif, currency dealer at the inter-bank market, said demand for dollars was mounting for higher imports and less inflows. However, he did not know commodity importers were buying more dollars or the others.

Another commodity importer Munir Aalam said the market would witness a shortfall of gram and pulses within a month. “We have information that these commodities are going towards Iran,” he said.

Pakistan and Iran have recently negotiated a trade deal on barter system. If the agreement is finalised, Pakistan could import oil from Iran on export of wheat and sugar.

Iran is in dire need to save its foreign exchange reserves since the income from oil has drastically fallen after sanctions.

Pakistan is also facing the crunch on external front since its foreign exchange reserves have been falling while the inflows have dried up.