August 8: Business Briefs

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8:

City bankruptcy could cost Assured Guaranty $100m

Assured Guaranty is facing a $100 million loss in the city of Stockton, California’s bankruptcy filing.

The company has complained that Calpers, the pension fund for the city’s workers, was getting favoured treatment and that is leaving Assured Guaranty holding the bag on $121 million in pension obligations.

Assured said that the loss on bond principal would be 83 percent, which translates into $100 million.

KPMG scholarship winner

Kris Furbert has won the KPMG scholarship, which is awarded by the Partners of KPMG in Bermuda and is given to a Bermudian student committed to a career as a chartered accountant (CA) or Certified Public Accountant (CPA). It is valued at $20,000, per annum for each of the next three years.

Kris will be entering his first year at the European School of Economics in Madrid, pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration with a focus on Finance, and pursuing Spanish as a second language.

Aside from his academic successes Kris has been heavily involved in the community, focusing on youth and service as a mentor with the Big Brothers organisation since 2009, an education coach with the Mirrors programme, and serves with the Bermuda Regiment. He is a member of the Mariner’s Rugby Club and representing Bermuda as a member of the National Rugby XV and 7’s teams.

Big Brothers, Big Sisters

The Argus Group today announces that it has made a donation of $10,000 to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Bermuda (BBBS) in support of the charity reaching more children through its mentoring programme, which has proven successful in keeping children in school and away from anti-social behaviours.

The Argus donations committee proactively chose BBBS to receive funds from its annual giving budget due to the charity’s relevance to the theme of prevention that Argus uses as the primary criterion for selecting its charity partners.

Alison Hill, CEO of the Argus Group, says: “In our everyday work, we help our clients to prevent financial and personal misfortune, so naturally we wanted our corporate giving programme to reflect our overarching business objective of prevention.

Appleby

The offshore M&A market increased in value at twice the worldwide average last quarter, compared to the previous quarter, according to a report released today by Appleby.

In the latest edition of Offshore-i, Bermuda had the second-highest aggregate deal value, and third-highest number of deals of the nine offshore locations included in the report. There were 69 Bermuda-based deals reported in Q2, with an aggregate value of nearly US$6.6bn. Bermuda deals represented 18 per cent of total deal value of all offshore jurisdictions (US$37.4bn).