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sábado, 23 de junho de 2012

Friday a key deadline as Armstrong case ramps up

JIM VERTUNOAUSTIN, Tx. -- Lance Armstrong faces a Friday deadline to file a formal response to the latest allegations that he was doping during his seven consecutive Tour de France victories.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency informed Armstrong on June 12 that it plans to bring charges that he used performance-enhancing drugs. If found guilty, Armstrong could ultimately be stripped of the Tour de France titles he won from 1999-2005.

Armstrong insists he is innocent and despite the deadline he isn't required to file a written response. The deadline is important, however, because now the case will be sent to a USADA review panel to determine whether there's enough evidence to warrant formal charges.

If it does, Armstrong could find himself before an arbitration panel to decide the matter by November.

Here's a look at a few of the questions surrounding Armstrong's case: ---
Q: Why didn't the Armstrong doping questions end in February when federal prosecutors closed a two-year criminal investigation without filing charges?

A: The federal probe was an investigation into financial fraud, not a question of whether Armstrong cheated as an athlete.

Armstrong hoped the end of the criminal investigation would end the doping questions. The latest allegations are that he used blood boosters, steroids and other improper performance enhancers and violated sports competition rules, not criminal law. Armstrong can't be put in jail if he's found guilty, but he can be stripped of his titles.

When the federal criminal probe ended, USADA officials warned they would continue investigating Armstrong and their level of proof required when presenting evidence is lower than the legal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt." USADA officials insist their standard of proof is still very high.

Armstrong had suggested in recent interviews he expected charges to be filed and even hinted he may not fight them, saying he was tired of the battle. That would seem unlikely now given his tenacious determination to fight off previous doping allegations during his career.

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Q: The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency sounds like a branch of the federal government. What is it?

A: Created in 2000, USADA is a nonprofit agency recognized by Congress as the official anti-doping police for U.S. Olympic-related athletes and sports. But it is not a law enforcement agency and does not have the power to bring criminal charges.

The U.S. Olympic Committee recommended creating the agency because its own drug-testing program lacked credibility. USADA is supported financially by the U.S. Olympic Committee and the federal government.

Part of USADA's mission is to not only catch cheaters but to help researchers create new, more sophisticated tests to keep up with evolving cheating techniques.

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Q: What's at stake for Armstrong?

A: Everything.

From his Tour de France titles to his legacy as the cancer-fighting hero to his foundation that trades on his name to raise millions of dollars to help cancer survivors, it's all on the line.

After his 1999 Tour de France victory, Armstrong wrote a book, "It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life," that helped define him as an inspirational athlete who came back from the brink of death to beat cancer and dominate a grueling sport. Now he allegedly faces evidence that could taint his entire career on the bike.

Armstrong also has legions of fans around the globe due to his work fighting cancer. They may not care about doping in sports. But a formal ruling that he's a cheater, that it's not just innuendo and rumor, could be devastating and a disappointment for many.

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Q: Doping allegations against Armstrong have gone nowhere before. Is there new evidence?

A: That's unknown. USADA says it has more than 10 former teammates willing to testify they either know Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs, told them he used them or encouraged their use on his teams. USADA also says it has blood samples from his 2009-10 comeback that show evidence "fully consistent" with blood doping.

USADA hasn't released witness names or the blood samples, despite a demand from Armstrong's attorneys to see them. USADA says it's keeping the names private to prevent retaliation or intimidation, raising speculation Armstrong will file a federal lawsuit to gain access.

Armstrong notes he's passed about 500 drug tests in his career. And in a letter to USADA last week, his attorneys noted the blood samples that allegedly indicate doping came from a time Armstrong passed all his drug tests.

Unlike other sports figures who have been sanctioned after positive drug tests, USADA's case against Armstrong appears to be built around the total weight off the alleged witness testimony and suspicious blood samples.

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Q: Friday was a paperwork deadline. What happens next?

A: USADA submits its case to a three-person review board of technical, legal and medical experts. The panel reviews the evidence and recommends whether USADA has a strong enough case to pursue charges.

Presuming the case proceeds, it goes to a three-person arbitration panel. Armstrong picks one member, USADA picks another and those two arbitrators pick the third, who acts as the panel chairman. Once that happens, USADA will have to start turning evidence over to Armstrong and his lawyers to review.

Armstrong can contest the charges or accept them. If he challenges USADA, the case goes to a hearing before the arbitration panel where both sides can present evidence and cross-examine witnesses. Armstrong can elect to have an open hearing or keep it closed to the public.

Only one athlete, former cyclist Floyd Landis, a former Armstrong teammate who won the 2006 Tour de France and later tested positive for steroid use, chose to have an open hearing and he lost. He later became one of Armstrong's primary accusers.

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sexta-feira, 18 de maio de 2012

Facebook Friday: Investors anxiously await IPO

BARBARA ORTUTAYNEW YORK -- Facebook found more than enough friends.

The world's definitive online social network said Thursday that it raised $16 billion for itself and its early investors in an initial public stock offering that values Facebook at $104 billion. That's more than Amazon.com and other well-known companies such as Kraft, Walt Disney and McDonald's.

It's a big windfall for a company that began eight years ago with no way to make money.

Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on Thursday, at the top of expectations. Now, regular investors will have a chance to buy stock in Facebook for the first time. The stock will begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market sometime Friday morning. The ticker symbol will be FB.

Facebook's offering is the culmination of a year's worth of Internet IPOs that began last May with LinkedIn Corp. Since then, a steady stream of startups focused on the social side of the Web has gone public, with varying degrees of success. It all led up to Facebook, the company that's come to define social networking by getting 900 million people around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.

It has done so while managing to become one of the few profitable Internet companies to go public recently. It had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In all of 2011, it earned $1 billion, up from $606 million a year earlier. That's a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and revenue of $153 million.

"They could have gone public in 2009 at a much lower price," said Nick Einhorn, research analyst at IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital. "They waited as long as they could to go public, so it makes sense that it's a very large offering."

Facebook Inc.'s valuation is the third-highest in an IPO, according to Dealogic, a provider of financial data. Only two Chinese banks, Agricultural Bank of China in 2010 and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in 2006, have been worth more. They were worth $133 billion and $132 billion, respectively. By another measure -the amount raised- Facebook ranks third among U.S. IPOs. The largest was Visa, which raised $17.9 billion in 2008. No. 2 was Enel, a power company, and No. 4 was General Motors, according to Renaissance Capital.

The $38 share price is the price at which the investment banks arranging the offering will sell the stock to their clients. In an IPO, the banks buy the stock first from the company and the early investors and then sell to the public. If extra shares reserved to cover additional demand are sold as part of the transaction, Facebook and its early investors stand to reap as much as $18.4 billion.

For a company that was born in a Harvard dormitory and went on to reimagine online communication, the stock sale means more money to build on the features and services it offers users. It means an infusion of money to hire the best engineers to work at its sprawling Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, or in New York City, where it opened an engineering office last year.

And it means early investors, who took a chance seeding the young social network with start-up funds six, seven and eight years ago, can reap big rewards. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist who sits on Facebook's board of directors, invested $500,000 in the company in 2004. He's selling nearly 17 million of his shares in the IPO, which means he'll get some $640 million. He will hold on to about 28 million shares, worth $1.06 billion.

The offering values Facebook, whose 2011 revenue was $3.7 billion, at as much as $104 billion. The sky-high valuation has its skeptics, who worry about signs of a slowdown and Facebook's ability to grow in the mobile space when it was created with desktop computers in mind. Rival Google Inc., whose revenue stood at $38 billion last year, has a market capitalization of $207 billion.

"There seems to be somewhat of a hype around the stock offering," says Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

That may be an understatement.

Facebook's IPO dominated media coverage in the weeks and days leading up to the event. CEO Mark Zuckerberg's hoodie made headlines when he wore it to a meeting with investors as did General Motors' decision this week to stop advertising on the site -and rival Ford's affirmation that its Facebook ads have been effective.

There are more than a few reasons for the exuberance. First, there's Facebook's sheer size and high profile. The company grew from a college-only social network to an Internet phenomenon embraced by legions of people, from teenagers to grandmothers to pro-democracy activists in the Middle East.

Secondly, it's personal.

"It's probably one of the first times there has been an IPO where everyone sort of has a stake in the outcome," Blau says. While most Facebook users won't see a penny from the offering, they are all intimately familiar with the company.

And then there's Zuckerberg, who turned 28 on Monday. He has emerged as the latest in a lineage of Silicon Valley prodigies who are alternately hailed for pushing the world in new directions and reviled for overstepping their bounds. He counted the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs among his mentors, and he became one of the world's youngest billionaires - at least on paper - well before Facebook went public. A dramatized and less-than-flattering version of Facebook's founding was the subject of a Hollywood movie that won three Academy Awards last year, propelling Zuckerberg even further into the public spotlight.

Though Zuckerberg is selling about 30 million shares, he will remain Facebook's largest shareholder. Even after the IPO, he will own 503.6 million shares, or 32 percent of Facebook's total shares. At the $38 share price, his stake in the company is worth $19.1 billion. Zuckerberg will control the company with 56 percent of its voting stock as a result of agreements he has with other shareholders who promise to vote his way.

The set-up helps to ensure that he and other executives keep control as the demands of Wall Street for short-term returns exert new pressures on the company.

True to form, Zuckerberg and Facebook's engineers are ringing in the IPO on their own terms. The company is holding an overnight "hackathon" Thursday, where engineers stay up writing programming code to come up with new features for the site. On Friday morning, Zuckerberg will ring the Nasdaq opening bell from Facebook's headquarters a continent away.

CLICK HERE FOR 15 FACTS ABOUT FACEBOOK

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