Day: September 25, 2012

Known as “GL” in the industry, Gopal built the G L Raheja real estate empire over five decades, during which time he gave India its first apartment hotel in Powai and Mumbai its first departmental store, Shoppers Stop. His companies are among the biggest private owner of land in Mumbai and possess properties in other parts of India, including The Carlton in Kodaikanal. He has one son, Sandeep, and two daughters, Sabita Narang and Sonali Arora. The immediate plea in his petition is to stop Sandeep from proceeding with board meetings on September 25 and later, which he says lack his consent.

According to the suit, the genesis of the family feud dates to the year 2005, when Sandeep began fearing interference from the brothers-in-law since his younger sister was detected with brain tumour and undergoing treatment. In 2006, Gopal, “being in absolute power”, rearranged the shares within the family. He retained 42% of the holding company, left nothing to the two daughters, and gave 58% of it to Sandeep, Durga and their two minor daughters with the condition that Sandeep abide by the Raheja family arrangement. After this, Gopal continued as the group chairperson.

But the feud, according to the plaint, did not end. In August 2011, Durga asked Gopal to buy a Rs 100-crore house in London; his reluctance to do so, Gopal says, led to the “unfortunate events and disgraceful behaviour the next month”.

On September 1, Sandeep called Gopal for a meeting along with his two sisters and a brother-in-law. In the meeting, the petition says, Sandeep tried forcing Gopal to sign over all the shares to him and his family. “Sandeep and his wife insisted on an immediate division…. They threatened Gopal that no medical attention would be given to him at home and that he would be left to die.” They also allegedly threatened the sisters.

Sandeep, according to the petition, took the keys to Gopal’s Bandra home, Raheja House, at Pali Hill. On December 29, when Sandeep and Durga were in London, assisted by a locksmith, Gopal entered his home and found it “uninhabitable”, with all the “bathrooms broken down and electrical fuses ripped apart”. When Gopal hired workers to repair the house, the suit says, Sandeep and Durga returned from London and threatened to file a “rape” case against the workers unless they left.

Ten days later, Gopal was “shocked to find that Sandeep had changed the lock to his office cabin in the office too”. Sandeep further humiliated him, the suit says, by asking the staff to report only to him. Gopal says he wrote letters to his son, expressing hurt and requesting him to be “reasonable”. But these pleas and requests for mediation were also rebuffed.

The relation soured further this year with Sandeep’s parents-in-law being brought on board the company, the suit says. On January 28, Sandeep wrote to Gopal, claiming “sole ownership and control” of the empire. The father and son thereafter exchanged acrimonious and emotional letters.

In July, Sandeep wrote a 26-page letter, where he accused Gopal of wrongful agreements with a third party. He wrote that, despite them staying together for 18 years, Gopal appeared to be under “the influence of one Chandrika, a Brahmakumari half his age, at whose behest this entire charade is being orchestrated“. Sandeep also accused his sisters of using their father as a “pawn” to “extort additional monies“. Gopal says the allegations were made to defame him. –from the TOI

After analyzing data on the self-reported levels of sexual activity and happiness of 16,000 people, Dartmouth College economist David Blachflower and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England report that sex “enters so strongly (and) positively in happiness equations” that they estimate increasing intercourse from once a month to once a week is equivalent to the amount of happiness generated by getting an additional $50,000 in income for the average American.

Overall, the happiest folks are those getting the most sex — married people, who report 30% more between-the-sheets action than single folks. In fact, the economists calculate that a lasting marriage equates to happiness generated by getting an extra $100,000 each year. Divorce, meanwhile, translates to a happiness depletion of $66,000 annually.-from WebMD

It’s probably not uncommon for City traders to wonder how they burnt so much cash during a drunken night on the town.

But Steve Perkins was left with a bigger black hole in his memory than most when his employer rang one morning to ask what he’d done with $520m of the oil trading firm’s money.

It was 7.45am on June 30 last year when the senior, longstanding broker for PVM Oil Futures was contacted by an admin clerk querying why he’d bought 7m barrels of crude in the middle of the night.

The 34-year old broker at first claimed he had spent the night trading alongside a client. But the story began to fall apart when he refused to put the customer in touch with his desk for official approval of the trades.

By 10am it emerged that Mr Perkins had single-handedly moved the global price of oil to an eight-month high during a “drunken blackout”. Prices leapt by more than $1.50 a barrel in under half an hour at around 2am – the kind of sharp swing caused by events of geo-political significance. Ten times the usual volume of futures contracts changed hands in just one hour.

By the time PVM realised the trades were not authorised and swiftly began to unwind the positions, losses of exactly $9,763,252 had stacked up.

As a broker, Mr Perkins was only allowed to place trades on behalf of his clients – not using any of PVM’s own money. And records show that he placed a legitimate order for a client at 1.34pm through his broking desk by telephone. This was quickly followed by seven more orders with a value of $8m using PVM’s cash.

Mr Perkins’ trading stopped for a few hours, but in the early hours of the morning, he returned to the oil market via his laptop. He placed an incredible $520m in orders through ICE Futures Europe, where traders can buy or sell crude oil for future delivery and bet on whether prices will go up or down. The first trade was at 1.22am was at $71.40 per barrel and the last trade at 3.41am was at $73.05. During this period, Mr Perkins gradually edged up the price by bidding higher each time, until he was responsible for 69pc of the global market volume.

Having admitted to an alcohol problem and received treatment, Mr Perkins was banned from trading for five years and hit with a £72,000 fine, reduced from £150,000 because of potential financial hardship.

Mr Perkins was not available for comment last night at his £340,000 home in Brentwood, Essex, and it is not known whether he has found alternative employment. The FSA will consider re-approving him as a broker after the ban, if he has recovered from his alcohol problem, but noted “Mr Perkins poses an extreme risk to the market when drunk”. It added that there appeared to have been “no motive” for buying up the oil.

The investigation also shows that he was able to trade huge volumes with very little cash up front and no position limit, exposing how it easy it was for a single British broker on a bender to cause chaos in the oil market.-from the Telegraph