BP Stock Value May - June 2010

"The City is buzzing with talk that BP is a potential takeover target after losing more than half of its market value in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak. Rival energy giants Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell are the most likely candidates to bid for BP … BP’s market value has collapsed by more than $100bn (£67bn) since the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 crew members and caused the leak."

Sky News Online

Licensed Wreckers – In the Hands of the Receivers by Joseph Keppler

March 15, 1882, Vol XI No. 262; Chromolithograph
19″w x 12 1/2 “h

In those halcyon days, when the pious cashier amuses himself by indulging in defalcations, and the bank or insurance company smoothly fails, and the unfortunate depositor finds out that he is the victim of misplaced confidence, the unlucky institution is always placed in the hands of a receiver, who distinguishes himself by receiving all the money that the wreck of the company will yield, and paying out to those who are entitled to the proceedings just nothing at all. It is quite a nice, comfortable, family and friendly arrangement. The Confidence Assurance Society finds out, one fine day, that it is about time that it gave up the pretence of being in sound condition – its directors and officers having used all the surplus cash and easily negotiable securities for their own purposes.

The affairs of the corporation are then submitted to the court, the judge of which chooses a receiver, and, strange to say, he never has any difficulty about it; and that is the end of the Confidence Assurance Society, as far as the policy-holders are concerned. But it is a long time before the all-powerful receiver, acting under the authority of the court, has finished with the society. It will support him, his family, his legal friends for years to come. They will never leave the wreck until there is not a spar or a rope’s end, that can be turned into cash, to be got from it. They will strip it as the locusts strip trees of their leaves and fruit. And this kind of business is going on daily around us. The profession of receiver, or licensed wrecker, is a recognized one, for fortunes are to be made in a few years by adopting it. The judges recognize it, and have their favorites who wax rich with such countenance and support. The moral is that it is much better to be a receiver of a bankrupt corporation than a policy-holder or a creditor.

H.C. Bunner, from "Cartoons and Comments" at the front of the issue