Bp oil spill partner moex Offshore first to settle with us a minority partner in bp's ill-fated Macondo well has become the first company involved in the disaster to settle with the us government.
MOEX Offshore will pay $45m in civil penalties to the federal government and $25m to the Gulf states affected by the spill. Photo: EPA
MOEX Offshore has agreed to pay a $90m (£57m) settlement relating to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010.
The company, which owned a 10pc interest in the well, will pay $45m in civil penalties to the federal government and $25m to the Gulf states affected by the spill.
MOEX Offshore also agreed to pay $20m for environmental coastal protection projects.
The federal government has also sued BP, the rig's owner Transocean and another minority partner in the well, Anadarko Petroleum.
MOEX Offshore is a wholly owned subsidiary of MOEX USA and a unit of the Japanese trading house Mitsui & Company.
The company no longer owns any share of the lease for the Macondo well and agreed to pay BP more than $1bn to settle all claims between the two parties last May.
Last week, BP's American investors scored a legal victory over the company in cases filed in Houston.
US Judge Keith Ellison, for the Southern District Court of Texas, ruled that BP must face claims from investors who owned American Depositary Receipts (ADRs), which are effectively shares in BP that are listed in New York.
The plaintiffs – which include New York state's biggest pension fund – allege that BP misled investors over its ability to handle an oil spill, as well as its track record on safety.
BP is fighting twin legal battles in America over the spill. The Houston cases allege securities fraud, while others consolidated into a single case in New Orleans that is due to start on February 27 will determine the fines that BP and co-defendants Transocean and Halliburton will have to pay, as well as any extra economic damages.
Think Tank: Brands still need words to get the message across Slogans can animate a company and its employees, not just shape what consumers might think about its brand.
'Beanz Meanz Heinz', coined in a London pub in 1967 to combat the incipient rise of own label competitors, is still going strong five decades later. Photo: Alex Segre/Rex Features
The advertising business loves its orthodoxies.
But two of its more unshakeable beliefs – that a picture tells a thousand words, that a brand's actions speak louder than words – cast doubt on another, previously ironclad assumption: that advertising copy – the words themselves – is what matters most.
The gradual displacement of the industry's copy-writing sensibility, of words by pictures (and now arguably by data) has many, self-reinforcing roots: the on-going globalization of the brand-building business; mounting evidence that modern advertising works by engaging rather than by persuading and the democratisation of design, to name just a few.
But, although jingles and even end-lines are occasionally frowned upon in fashionable creative circles, it seems a few carefully chosen words can still propel brands and business.
Creative Reviewmagazine's recent poll of the top 20 slogans of all time underscores just that, showing the power of words, mere words, to supercharge advertising, fortify brands and even to clarify or add colour to the business mission.
Overall poll winner "Beanz Meanz Heinz", coined in a London pub in 1967 to combat the incipient rise of own label competitors, is still going strong five decades later. But it is some of the poll's runners up that best demonstrate how language first coined for the advertising frontline can perform an equally valuable business function behind the scenes.
Nike's "Just Do It", for example, originally conceived of as "a tagline to give some unity to the [creative] work", was quickly adopted not just by consumers but by the organization itself as "a doctrine to live by". It is less a slogan, more a brand philosophy.
The same might justifiably be said of Tesco's "Every Little Helps", a broad-based service promise that has always been at its most powerful when underpinned by initiatives such as the baby-changing facilities and no quibble returns that were rolled out at launch.
Even three words, then, have the potential to animate a company and its employees, and not just to shape what consumers might think about its brand.
It's a point underlined by the presence in the same poll of John Lewis's "Never Knowingly Undersold", first rolled out in London's Peter Jones store in 1925.
Although it "acts as a reminder to our customers of our pricing policy', a company spokesperson has explained, "its main purpose is as a discipline upon our central buyers to ensure that, in arriving at their selling prices, the best possible value is offered to our consumers". A discipline for the company, in other words, as well as a customer pledge.
Alongside this potentially deep business contribution, words are still, of course, what we use in a more everyday way to develop brands – to codify strategy, crystallise occasionally opaque ideas and to provide the common store of meaning and direction for a brand's stakeholders.
Even Apple had its "Stevenotes", the keynote speeches shaping and sharing the company's philosophy along its path to becoming the world's most valuable company.
Creative Review's reminder of the power of words also serves to throw up some more general lessons for advertisers and the businesses that use them.
It's noticeable, for instance, that many of the most enduring slogans researched badly when first exposed to consumers.
Designed to demystify the intimidating world of DIY, Ronseal's "Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin" was originally rejected for being too boring. Audi's ingeniously re-purposed "Vorsprung Durch Technik", spotted on a wall and plundered unapologetically on a factory visit, was similarly rebuffed in research, this time for being "too German".
Perhaps the very qualities that help great endlines to endure – their oddness, their uniqueness – is what undermines them upon first inspection.
Itchy-fingered new marketing brooms might also observe just how long winning words have served their respective brands or categories: from "Say It With Flowers" (1917) to "Snap Crackle Pop" (1932) and "The Real Thing" (first coined for Coca-Cola in the 1940s). Too often brand assets like these are deemed prematurely to have passed their "sell by" date.
Few brands today can compete with words alone. But brandowners would do well not to neglect their ongoing role in brand storytelling.
Understanding and leveraging their power remains an important and potentially lucrative task for marketeers because, as Mark Twain once put it: "Actions speak louder than words, but not nearly as often
It's hard to disagree with Buffett's enthusiasm for America
Looking at the Berkshire Hathaway website this week to find out when Warren Buffett's next letter to shareholders is due (at the end of the month, as it happens), I dipped into last February's missive. It was a good reminder of why he is one of the world's richest men and most of us are not – he sees things before we do.
Having bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad in 2010 in anticipation of economic recovery, Warren Buffett was still backing the US a year ago. Photo: AP
By Tom Stevenson
"Money will always flow toward opportunity, and there is an abundance of that in America" he wrote. "Throughout my lifetime, politicians and pundits have constantly moaned about terrifying problems facing America. Yet our citizens now live an astonishing six times better than when I was born."
Having bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad in 2010 in anticipation of economic recovery, Buffett was continuing to back his home country in no uncertain terms a year ago. That looks astute today.
Last year, the US market was one of the few to end higher than it began and it has been in the vanguard of the rally since the New Year. The future of the eurozone may hang in the balance (again) this weekend, emerging markets may attract as many sceptics as evangelists, but the US looks like one of the few markets investors can agree on.
Well, almost. The strength of the recovery in the US market since last October has taken many people by surprise. The S&P 500 index is up by around 25pc in four months and on Friday came within a whisker of its highest level since before global markets imploded in 2008.
The question now is whether the US can continue to decouple from the rest of the world's markets or if the best of the recovery is already in the bag.
On the face of it recent data out of the US have been encouraging. Initial jobless claims have dipped below 400,000, two thirds of their level in 2009 and suggesting that the American economy is finally creating jobs again. Economic output grew at an annualised rate of 2.8pc in the final quarter of 2011, the highest rate of growth since the spring of 2010. And even the moribund housing market is beginning to show signs of stabilising, as foreclosed properties start to clear.
As ever, however, the numbers can be read in different ways. Take those jobless figures, for example. A recent note from HSBC took a rather less rosy view of US unemployment, pointing out that while the population of working age people in America grew by more than 5m between 2007 and 2011 there were 700,000 fewer people in the labour force. This is unprecedented.
Had the labour force grown in line with the working age population over the past four years, and if all those people were registered as out of work rather than economically inactive or discouraged from looking for a job as seems to be the case, the unemployment rate would be safely in double digits, not under 9pc and falling.
It's possible to put a much less optimistic gloss on the GDP growth figure too. If you take the average for 2011 of 1.7pc and compare it with the 3pc achieved in 2010 the Federal Reserve's assumption that interest rates will stay close to zero for another three years seems more understandable.
Looked at through this prism, the US stock market recovery looks a lot more like a simple knee-jerk response to the dramatic reduction in sovereign risk in Europe in the wake of the European Central Bank's decision to provide unlimited three-year funding for banks. The bounce is a reflection of investors' relief that financial catastrophe has been averted across the water rather than a response to sustainable growth at home.
That goes some way to explaining why the market has risen so far in the face of relatively disappointing fourth quarter earnings figures and reduced earnings forecasts and why all the money continues to flow into bond funds rather than equities.
In the short-run, therefore, the US looks ready for a breather but I find it hard to disagree with Warren Buffett's long-term enthusiasm for America, and I would add three other reasons to back Uncle Sam: the significant emerging market exposure of its biggest companies; America's technological leadership; and the possibility that the world's biggest energy consumer could become self-sufficient in the future thanks in large part to the commercialisation of its shale gas discoveries.
Warren Buffett may have beaten us to it, but I can't help thinking a portfolio with no US exposure is missing a trick.
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RIA Novosti. Mikhail Fomichev