Lawyers, Lawyers, Lawyers...

How much you wanna bet we'll find some Obama linked lawyers to this firm? Hmm? From AmLaw Daily, unexpurgated article below.

April 30, 2010 4:55 PM
Simpson, Shearman on ICE's Deal for Europe's Leading Emissions Exchange
Posted by Zach Lowe

There may not be many companies that stand to gain as much from financial regulatory reform as IntercontinentalExchange Inc., which already operates a clearinghouse for credit-default swaps and would stand to receive lots more business should federal law require more derivatives move through clearinghouses or exchanges.

But ICE continues to look forward, and today it announced plans to acquire Climate Exchange PLC, which operates the leading emissions trading platforms in both Europe and the U.S., according to the Wall Street Journal and lawyers who worked on the deal. The deal is valued at $603 million and is contingent on shareholder and court approval in the U.K., where Climate Exchange is based, lawyers say.

A team from Shearman & Sterling represented ICE, which is not a surprise, because the firm helped create the derivatives clearinghouse (called ICE Trust) in early 2009 and has advised the company on several other transactions. (Shearman partner Bradley Sabel was named one of The American Lawyer's Dealmakers of the Year for 2009 for his work on the creation of ICE Trust.)

Slaughter and May represented Climate Exchange, lawyers say. The Shearman team has been working on the deal in earnest for about two months, though the two companies have been close for years, says Lois Moore, who led the Shearman team along with Barney Reynolds. (ICE owned a small stake in Climate Exchange before this deal.) Climate Exchange controls about 90 percent of the market in emissions allowance trading in Europe and had been waiting patiently for the U.S. to implement a cap-and-trade system that could create a booming market here, the WSJ says. In the meantime, Climate Exchange's main U.S. subsidiary, the Chicago Climate Exchange, operates a U.S. exchange through which companies can trade emissions contracts in various gasses, the WSJ reports.

Jeff Twentyman led the Slaughter and May team on the deal, lawyers say. He was not immediately available for comment.

Original post here.

CNBC on CCX

Unexpurgated story below:

Carbon Could Be No. 1 Commodity: Exchange Chief Sandor

Published: Monday, 26 Apr 2010 | 12:49 PM ET
By: Natalie Erlich
Writer/Producer

“Carbon, when it becomes worldwide, will be unambiguously the largest commodity in the world,” Sandor said in an interview. “The world emits 35 billion tons; it’s priced at $20; that’s $700 billion. Put a 10-20 multiple like you do on futures, [and] you’re talking about $10 trillion at maturity.” Sandor, who was a major player in the formation of the interest-rate futures market, created the Chicago Climate Exchange [CCX] as a market-based solution to global warming. Time Magazine named him “Hero of the Planet” in 2002, and the “father of carbon trading” in 2007.


“In ’89-’90 someone came to me and said, ‘you commoditize interest rates, do you think you can commoditize air?’” he said. “You could cap the emissions that any utility has, and if they go below that cap, they can sell their emissions, their rights to emit— and if you can go above it, you can buy someone else’s. So it drives compliance.”


The exchange is the world’s first and North America’s only voluntary, legally binding greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system, providing third party verification by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority [FINRA]. Its subsidiary, the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange is the world’s first environmental derivatives exchange that trades carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides.


Although the United States remains one of few industrialized nations not following the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty intended to reduce global warming, the country’s voluntary emissions market remains sizable. At 700 million tons of carbon, CCX is about one-third of Europe’s cap-and-trade program. In fact, that amount is larger than Germany's industrial footprint, according to the exchange. However, this comes at a time when the U.S. climate bill sits on the brink of collapse, which could also have repercussions for the voluntary market.


“A lot of the voluntary investors were getting in because they wanted to get ahead of the curve,” said Terence Gallagher, an independent carbon strategist. “And now people are on the sidelines waiting to see what’s going to happen so you’re going to see less people willing to take the plunge and get into the voluntary market.”


The Senate was expected to unveil legislation today but the bill became stalled after a key GOP ally pulled his support because of an unrelated immigration reform dispute. The CCX has no comment on the situation at this time.


Another hurdle facing the carbon market is fragmentation on the national and international levels. While Europe currently has two types of credits which are generated in Kyoto signatory countries, the United States is divided between the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative [RGGI] and the California Action Climate Reserve, said Gallagher.


“There’s too many markets,” he said. “It’s not there until we get a standard product that’s tradable across all different countries.” China, another nation often scrutinized for its large carbon footprint has also taken considerable interest in emissions trading, said Sandor.


“I have more ease in explaining cap and trade in China at universities, than I do in the United States,” he said. “There is an undergraduate emissions trading club in Peking University.”


In fact, the CCX has partnered with China’s largest oil and gas producer and supplier CNPC and the City of Tianjin to develop sulfur dioxide emissions and water pollutants markets. The exchange has also teamed up with China’s central bank to establish a research institute in Chicago and Beijing to advance corporate and industrial use of emissions markets.


“They have their eye on the ball,” said Sandor. “I had lunch with the chairman, Governor Zhou, and he’s like their Ben Bernanke. And Governor Zhou knows more about cap-and-trade than half or 75 percent of the people I know anywhere. So when a central banker can talk chapter and verse about emissions trading, it’s telling you something.”© 2010 CNBC.com

TOPICS:China | Politics & Government | Alternative Energy | Energy
Original post here.

OK when LIBERALS do it...

You know you are a soulless whore utterly without principles when you have to make stuff up about Tea Party people but liberals clearly, blatantly, brazenly, shamelessly hold signs like this and nobody reports it. They'll offer as an excuse that all are at the Correspondents' Dinner but you know that wouldn't make a speck of difference....God I hate these (media) people. I can't even hide my contempt for them anymore....Thank you to Gateway Pundit for posting them. Unexpurgated column below:

Immigrants Carry “Death to US Imperial-Fascists” At NYC May Day Rally… 

Media Silent

Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, May 1, 2010, 10:17 PM
There was a pro-illegal immigrant protest in New York City today at Union Square.Andrew Berman was there and posted several photos from the anti-American rally.

This violent sign – “Death to US Imperial-Fascists” – probably won’t make the news tonight.
Suddenly, it’s fashionable to carry swastikas again.

Of course, the state-run media won’t say boo about these Nazi signs. After all, there’s a conservative pictured on the sign.

Location of the original post at Gateway Pundit here