Weather stops oil recovery from stricken ship off New Zealand


Winds gusting up to 65 kph (42 mph) and sea swells cresting as high as 4 metres forced the evacuation of teams from the 236-metre (775 feet) ship.”The forecast seems to suggest that the winds will kick around to the west which should make things slightly calmer, so fingers crossed they should be back on the job in the near future,” Matthew Watson a spokesman for Svitzer Salvage said on Radio NZ.So far around 90 tonnes of the estimated 1,300 tonnes of the oil on board have been pumped on to a barge.Authorities have been concerned that bad weather could possibly send the stern section, which contains more than 1,000 tonnes of oil, tumbling into 60 metres of water.”The ship is stable and remains in the same condition as it was yesterday - with cracks down each side but is still together in one piece,” said Andrew Berry of Maritime NZ, the government agency which supervises the shipping industry.It said a small amount of oil escaped from the ship overnight during the rougher weather, but winds were blowing it away from the shore and dispersing it.Beaches, fouled with dinner-tray sized lumps of oil, have been largely cleaned up after thousands of volunteers joined soldiers and specialists.Oil has washed up along about 60 kms (37 miles) of the coast, which is popular with surfers and fishermen. Nearly 1,300 birds have died in the spill, which is seen as New Zealand’s worst environmental disaster in decades.The ship’s captain and second officer, both from the Philippines, are due to reappear in court on Wednesday on charges of operating the 47,320 tonne ship in a dangerous manner.

UPDATE 6-Investors unexcited by BlackBerry’s free apps offer


* Shares of RIM drop 5 pct in morning Nasdaq trade* Carl Icahn says RIM not on his radar screen - CNBCTORONTO, Oct 17 (Reuters) - An offer of free games, translation software or other apps to compensate BlackBerry users for last week’s prolonged outage left Research In Motion investors cool on Monday, and the shares fell 6 percent.RIM declined to say if it would need to amend its earnings forecasts to account for the cost of its promise to give $100 of free apps to every BlackBerry smartphone user.RIM is also offering a period of free technical support to businesses that use the gadget, which has steadily lost market share to Apple’s sleeker, sexier iPhone . RIM’s stock has dropped 60 percent over the past year.”RIM has responded swiftly but this won’t undo the damage done to its reputation,” analyst Geoff Blaber at CCS Insight told Reuters earlier on Monday. “This may go some way to appeasing customers but what’s critical is that the problem does not repeat itself.”Highlighting the challenges, Apple said it sold 4 million of its new iPhone 4S in the three days after its launch last week.Tens of millions of BlackBerry users were left without mobile email and other messaging for up to four days last week after a failure at a RIM data center in England triggered a service disruption across five continents.DEVELOPERS CONFERENCERIM may reveal more about its strategy for countering the competitive challenge at a conference for application developers in San Francisco that begins Tuesday.RIM executives there are expected to unveil a major software upgrade for the PlayBook tablet computer. RIM may also provide a glimpse at next-generation smartphones using its QNX software, which already powers the PlayBook.Long before last week’s disruption, investor dissatisfaction with the management of co-chief executives Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie had led a wave of speculation about the future of the company.Activist investor Carl Icahn squelched one of those rumors on Monday when he told broadcaster CNBC that RIM is not on his radar screen. Last month RIM’s shares rose on speculation Icahn would buy into RIM and agitate for change.Even so, a smaller activist firm, Jaguar Financial Corp , has said it is gathering the support of large RIM shareholders to push the board to look at strategic options, including a sale or split-up of RIM.”DEEPLY GRATEFUL”Last week’s outage intensified criticism of the chief executives, who were accused of responding slowly to the crisis and communicating poorly.On Monday Balsillie told Reuters the company wanted to make amends with customers.”This is our way of expressing appreciation for their patience during the recent service disruptions and a tangible way of telling them how deeply grateful we are for their continued business,” he said in a phone interview.Balsillie declined to estimate how much the offer would cost RIM and said he was unable to say whether RIM might have to revise its earnings forecast for the current quarter, which ends in late November.The financial impact could prove sizable if a sizable number of RIM’s more than 70 million subscribers take up the offers.Analysts have said compensation costs could reach into the hundreds of millions of dollars. If RIM were to pay back all carriers and customers for lost service it could knock between 3 and 5 cents off earnings per share in the quarter, according to BMO Capital Markets analyst Tim Long. That would reduce profit by $15 million to $26 million.”CLEVER MOVE”Even so, Richard Levick, who runs a U.S. consultancy that specializes in crisis management, praised the free-app offer but said RIM should have made the announcement last week.”I think it’s a good start, but they are always late,” he said. “They are always behind the curve.”Francisco Jeronimo, an analyst at IDC, said the offer was a clever move by RIM because it would help customers to discover the app service. He said the company was likely to have struck a deal with app developers to keep the cost down.”For RIM, this is an interesting way to attract users to the App World and incentivise them to search and download apps,” he said.The free apps on offer include games such as Bejeweled, and premium versions of a translation service and the music discovery tool Shazam. Users can download them from BlackBerry App World beginning Wednesday, with more to be added in the next four weeks. The offer runs until the end of the year.”More important than the offer itself, is that RIM is showing goodwill and being humble,” Jeronimo said. “They recognized the problem, apologized and now they are compensating their users.”By early afternoon the stock dropped about 6 percent at $22.54 on the Nasdaq.

UPDATE 1-Air Canada files complaint vs cabin crew union


* Labor experts say airline complaint unlikely to succeed* Flight attendants’ strike halted by govt at last minuteOct 13 (Reuters) - Air Canada rubbed salt into the wound of its flight attendants’ union on Thursday, filing an unfair labor practice complaint just hours after the union was forced by the federal government to cancel a planned strike at the airline.In a submission to the Canadian Industrial Relations Board (CIRB), Air Canada accused representatives of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) of bargaining in bad faith during the recent round of contract negotiations.The airline, Canada’s biggest, said representatives of CUPE had portrayed to Air Canada negotiators that they knew what needed to be included in a tentative agreement to win the support of the 6,800 flight attendants.As a result, Air Canada “revised its position to CUPE’s advantage in several key areas”, the filing said.However, CUPE members rejected the deal - the second time they voted down a tentative agreement - and instead issued notice of a strike that was due to start on Thursday, until the federal government stepped in to halt it.”Air Canada has been seriously compromised in its interests in consequence of CUPE’s inaccurate representations,” the airline said.It said it was seeking unspecified damages to compensate it for losses incurred as a result of the union’s actions.Union representatives were not immediately available to comment.Labor experts said Air Canada’s complaint was unlikely to succeed.”It can’t be bargaining in bad faith to put something to the membership and the membership rejects it, because that’s the point of putting something to the membership,” said Mary Cornish, a lawyer at Cavalluzzo Hayes Shilton McIntyre & Cornish in Toronto.Pamela Chapman, law professor at the University of Ottawa, said she knew of no case law precedent to back up Air Canada’s argument.The dispute between Air Canada and CUPE is already in front of the CIRB after federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt asked the labor board to decide if a strike would damage the health and safety of Canadians. The referral suspends any labor action until the board makes a decision.Meanwhile, a small but noisy group of off-duty flight attendants and other supporters protested outside the constituency office of Raitt on Thursday, angry at her repeated intervention to stop strikes at the airline.Other unions and opposition politicians were critical of what they regard as an increasingly anti-union stance by the Conservative government.”No one wants a work stoppage, especially if you were planning to fly with Air Canada. But no one wants their rights taken away, either. The government should be protecting workers’ rights, not decimating them,” opposition Liberal Party labor critic Rodger Cuzner said in a statement.Air Canada still needs to negotiate new contracts with four of its five unions this year, including its pilots and maintenance workers.Air Canada’s stock was nearly 3 percent weaker at C$1.35 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Thursday afternoon.

Deals of the day — mergers and acquisitions


** Tokio Marine Capital, a Japanese private equity firm affiliated with Tokyo Marine Holdings , has launched the sale of drugmaker Showa Yakuhin Kako Co in a deal that could be worth as much as 70 billion yen ($905 million), according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.** Oil and gas firm Ophir Energy has agreed to buy Dominion Petroleum in a 118 million pound ($186 million) all-share deal that will expand its portfolio of projects in East Africa.

Market Chatter — Corporate finance press digest


* AEA Investors, a U.S.-based private equity group, has tabled an offer for Asco Group, the fast-growing oil and gas logistics business, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.