November 2, 2003, AFP - The Washington Times, Arrested oil tycoon passed shares to banker,

November 2, 2003, AFP - The Washington Times, Arrested oil tycoon passed shares to banker, 

 LONDON (Agence France-Presse) — Control of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s shares in the Russian oil giant Yukos have passed to renowned banker Jacob Rothschild, under a deal they concluded prior to Mr. Khodorkovsky’s arrest, the Sunday Times reported. 

Voting rights to the shares passed to Mr. Rothschild, 67, under a “previously unknown arrangement” designed to take effect in the event that Mr. Khodorkovsky could no longer “act as a beneficiary” of the shares, it said. 

Mr. Khodorkovsky, 40, whom Russian authorities arrested at gunpoint and jailed pending further investigation last week, was said by the Sunday Times to have made the arrangement with Mr. Rothschild when he realized he was facing arrest. 

Mr. Rothschild now controls the voting rights on a stake in Yukos worth almost $13.5 billion, the newspaper said in a dispatch from Moscow. 

Mr. Khodorkovsky owns 4 percent of Yukos directly and 22 percent through a trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, according to Russian analysts. 

From the figures reported in the Sunday Times, it appeared Mr. Rothschild had received control of all Mr. Khodorkovsky’s shares. 

The two have known each other for years “through their mutual love of the arts” and their positions as directors of the Open Russia Foundation, Yukos’ philanthropic branch, it said. 

Russian authorities Thursday froze billions of dollars of shares held by Mr. Khodorkovsky and his top lieutenants in Yukos — throwing control of the country’s largest oil company into limbo and causing frenzied selling on financial markets. 

Russian prosecutors said owners of the shares are still entitled to dividends and retain voting rights, but can no longer sell their stakes. 

They said the freeze was necessary as collateral for the $1 billion that Mr. Khodorkovsky and his associates are accused of misappropriating during the 1990s.

Mr. Rothschild is the British head of Europe’s wealthy and influential Rothschild family, and runs his own investment empire.

October 18, 1919, New York Times, Ford Assets $332,998,121.; More Than Doubled in Two Years. According to Annual Report,

October 18, 1919, New York Times, Ford Assets $332,998,121.; More Than Doubled in Two Years. According to Annual Report, Annual report for year ended July 31. Special to The New York Times,

Assets of the Ford Motor Company have increased more than 100 percent in the last two years, according to a report of the fiscal year ending  July 31, just issued.

The company's assets on that date were $332,998,121, as compared with $303,749,409 on July 31, 1918, and $163,970,002 on July 31, 1917.

Surplus profits are $227,586,581 for the last fiscal year, compared with #175, 242,728 for 1918 and $131,000,905 in 1917, on capital stock of $2,000,000. This is equivalent to $11,379.30 a share. It is generally understood that Henry and Edsel Ford  paid the minority stockholders @12,500 a share for their stock when purchased last Summer.

Under liabilities are listed $2,000,000 of capital stock, $24,097,322 accounts payable, $73,174,630 floating debt---a new figure due to borrowing for stock purchases---while nothing is reserved for depreciation. Accrued expenses are $7,139,579.

August 25, 1999, BBC News, Europe; Bid to bridge Nazi slave fund row,

Wednesday, August 25, 1999 Published at 10:30 GMT 11:30 UK

World: Europe: Bid to bridge Nazi slave fund row

Volkswagen is among the companies which used slave labour

Talks aimed at bridging the gap between compensation demanded by former Nazi slave labourers and the sum on offer resume in Bonn.

But the reported demands by Holocaust survivors for a $20bn fund were "very far removed from reality", Germany's chief negotiator Otto Graf Lambsdorff told German television on Tuesday.

Graf Lambsdorff: $20bn "very far removed from reality"
Without giving concrete figures, he said any settlement would not lie "in the middle" between the $20bn sought by the victims' lawyers and the $1.7 bn proposed by the firms contributing to the fund.

But US Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who is co-hosting the talks, was hopeful that a compromise could be reached between the two sides.

"This is the first session where we're talking about money," he said. "I think we'll narrow the differences."

On Thursday the governments of Israel and east European countries are due to join the talks.

Top companies

There are 16 firms - some of the giants of German industry - offering the $1.7bn dollar compensation package. Amongt them are BMW, BASF, DaimlerChrysler, Volkswagen, Siemens and Deutsche and Dresdner Banks.

But lawyers representing the survivors say that with more than one million claimants on their books, less than $2bn is simply not enough.


A concentration camp victim shows her identification tattoo
For their part, the companies want a guarantee that if a deal is signed they will be protected from any further claims and that has proved a sticking point.

The survivors have maintained that German industry was central to the so-called Final Solution and that many firms actually profited from the Holocaust - a claim industry has always denied.

A spokesman for the companies acknowledged that they had a moral duty to help, but they bore no legal responsibility. The spokesman said the blame lay with the Nazi government.

Germany has already paid more than DM100bn ($54bn) to Holocaust victims for their suffering, but back pay for slave labour was left to the companies to resolve.

Running out of time

The German Government had originally hoped to have an agreement by 1 September - the 60th anniversary of the start of World War II. The companies also pledged in February to have a fund in place by next week.

Meanwhile, the number of Holocaust survivors is continually reducing as elderly victims die before the compensation issue is resolved.

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