Indian Firm to Pay $2.6 Billion to Build its Stake in African Gas Project

HONG KONG-A unit of India’s state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corp. said Monday that it would pay $2.64 billion in cash for a minority stake in a natural gas project in a Mozambique, the latest example of how Asia’s biggest emerging economies are zeroing in on the African nation’s vast offshore energy resources.

ONGC Videsh, the overseas unit of the Indian company, said it would acquire a 10 percent stake in Mozambique’s Offshore Area 1 from Anadarko Petroleum, which is based in Texas and listed in New York. Andarko will retain a 26.5 percent stake and remain the operator of the project, which includes investments from Japanese and Thai companies and two other Indian companies, as well as the Mozambican state oil company.

The discovery in recent years of tremendous amounts of recoverable natural gas resources in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean off Mozambique’s coast has drawn billions of dollars of investment from state-run and private companies from energy-hungry developing nations in Asia.

‘‘Area 1 has potential to become one of the world’s largest L.N.G. projects,’’ Sudhir Vasudeva, the chairman of ONGC Videsh, said in a statement Monday, referring to liquefied natural gas. He described the deal as a ‘‘significant’’ step ‘‘towards the energy security of our country.’’

In June, ONGC Videsh teamed up with Oil India, another state-run company, in a $2.48 billion deal to acquire a separate 10 percent stake in the Area 1 project from Videocon, a privately owned Indian conglomerate.

Area 1 covers about 2.6 million acres, or 1 million hectares, of ocean and contains estimated recoverable reserves of 35 trillion to 65 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to Andarko. Investors expect that their first shipments of liquefied natural gas from the project will begin by 2018.

Exploration and production of a separate Mozambican block, known as Area 4, is being led by the Italian oil and gas company ENI. In March, China National Petroleum Corp., a state-owned company, agreed to pay $4.3 billion for a 20 percent stake in the ENI project, which is also being backed by the Mozambique state oil company Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos de Moçambique; Korea Gas, of South Korea; and Galp Energia, of Portugal.

In their announcements Monday, ONGC Videsh and Anadarko said their transaction remained subject to government and regulatory approvals in India and Mozambique and was expected to close by the end of the year.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is the financial adviser to ONGC Videsh on the deal and Simmons & Simmons is the legal adviser.

Muriel Siebert, a Determined Trailblazer for Women on Wall Street, Dies at 80

Muriel Siebert, who became a legend on Wall Street as the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and the first woman to head one of the exchange’s member firms, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 80.

Ms. Siebert was one of the pioneers in the discount brokerage field.

The cause was complications of cancer, said Jane H. Macon, a friend and board member of Ms. Siebert’s firm, the Siebert Financial Corporation.

Ms. Siebert, known to all as Mickie, cultivated the same brash attitude that characterized Wall Street’s most successful men. She bought her seat on the exchange in 1967, but to her immense anger, she remained the only woman admitted to membership for almost a decade.

She was one of the pioneers in the discount brokerage field, as she transformed Muriel Siebert & Company (now a subsidiary of Siebert Financial) into a discount brokerage in 1975, on the first day that Big Board members were allowed to negotiate commissions.

She also was the first woman to be superintendent of banking for New York State, appointed by Gov. Hugh Carey in 1977. She served five years during a rocky time when banks were tottering and interest rates were skyrocketing.

Ms. Siebert was known, to her delight, as a scrapper who refused to acknowledge defeat. She donated millions of dollars from her brokerage and securities underwriting business to help other women get their start in business and finance.

When she was honored for her efforts in 1992, Ms. Siebert used the luncheon celebration to warn that it was still too soon for women to declare victory in the battle for equality on Wall Street.

“Firms are doing what they have to do, legally,” she said. “But women are coming into Wall Street in large numbers â€" and they still are not making partner and are not getting into the positions that lead to the executive suites. There’s still an old-boy network. You just have to keep fighting.”

She continued fighting the old-boy network all her life. She was one of the first women, in the early 1970s, to fight to end the sexist practices then prevalent in Manhattan social clubs, spurred by an experience she had at the Union League Club. She had arrived there for a board luncheon meeting of the Sales Executive Club and was not allowed in the elevator.

“I had to go through the kitchen and walk up the back stairs,” she recalled. She was so angry during the meeting that her male colleagues asked what was wrong. When the lunch was finished, they tried to take her down in the elevator with them. When she was again rebuffed, they joined her in walking down the stairs and through the kitchen.

That experience, and other similar episodes, led her to testify before government bodies about the discriminatory policies of many New York clubs. In time, women were permitted to become members. This was particularly important because of the deal-making and networking done at these clubs.

Ms. Siebert also successfully lobbied in 1987 to get a ladies’ room on the seventh floor of the New York Stock Exchange, near the entrance to the luncheon club she frequented. She accomplished this in her typical fashion. She warned the exchange’s chairman that if a ladies’ room was not on the floor by the end of the year, she would arrange for a portable toilet to be delivered. The room was installed, and women no longer had to trek down a flight of stairs.

She once explained her strategy for dealing with obstacles: “I put my head down and charge.”

Muriel Faye Siebert was born in Cleveland on Sept. 12, 1932, the second of two daughters of Irwin Siebert, a dentist, and his wife, Margaret. She attended Western Reserve University for two years but left in 1952 before graduating because her father became ill.

She came to New York in 1954, she once said, “with $500, a Studebaker and a dream.” She was hired as a $65-a-week trainee in the research department at Bache & Company.

“The way it worked, everybody who was already there got to give the new kid one of their junk industries,” she told The New York Times in 1992. “I got airlines, I got motion pictures â€" things nobody wanted in those days.”

Catherine Rampell contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on August 26, 2013, on page B9 of the New York edition with the headline: Muriel Siebert, a Determined Trailblazer For Women on Wall Street, Dies at 80 .

An Appreciation of Leather and Polish

My shoes, to the casual observer, look presentable. True, they’re scuffed and smudged, but that’s to be expected of a pair of black leather Bostonians exposed daily to the sidewalks of New York.

By Wall Street standards, however, they’re unacceptably shabby.

That’s why I’ve settled into a chair at Eddie’s Shoe Repair, in the underground concourse at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, to receive a Wall Street-style shoeshine. Men in business suits sit on either side of me, thumbing through newspapers or tapping on their smartphones, as workers buff their footwear to a high sheen.

This is a cherished ritual for the financial set, from lowly analysts to managing directors. Over the years, the banks have grown bigger, the bets have gotten larger and the pace of business has become quicker â€" but many on Wall Street still insist on cramming a shoeshine into their schedule.

“I come here about three times a week,” says Kevin D. Bancroft, a 27-year-old financial adviser with Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, in a gray suit and violet tie. “They’re the best.”

Appearances are paramount on Wall Street, and not just for meetings with clients. This is a world in which the “tie label check” â€" an unapologetic inspection of the designer of a colleague’s neckwear â€" is as common as a straphanger stealing a glance at what a fellow commuter is reading.

But inside bank offices, the culture of shoeshines is changing. While traders were once accustomed to having their shoes polished at their desks, a factorylike approach has become increasingly common, with workers collecting shoes to be shined elsewhere.

Eddie’s and other shoeshine parlors have sought to fill a void, attracting bankers from firms like Barclays and Morgan Stanley who crave an old-school, 15-minute experience.

“It’s the philosophy and the mentality,” says Hugo Ardaix, the owner of Eddie’s, who works behind the counter with his sister, Maria.

Last year, Mr. Ardaix says, he was invited to send some of his workers to Morgan Stanley â€" an opportunity that, to some, might seem like a boon. But Mr. Ardaix, 57, declined.

“They don’t think about quality. They don’t think about long-term relationships,” he says of shoeshine workers inside big banks, who are typically independent of the firms. “They do two minutes, a little water, and they want to collect the money. It doesn’t work that way.”

Sitting with my oxfords propped on brass footrests, I am casting about for something to do with my hands. A worker hands me a copy of The New York Post, which I browse casually as Segundo Sicha, a 33-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant, begins a multistep process.

First, the shoelaces come off, allowing access to the shoe’s nooks and crannies. Then Mr. Sicha uses special fluid to remove any previously applied polish â€" a step that, in my case, hardly seems necessary.

To moisturize the shoes, Mr. Sicha applies a coat of cream and rubs it in with a brush. Once that’s complete, it’s time for the polish.

With his fingers wrapped in a rag, Mr. Sicha uses circular movements to massage the polish into the leather, reaching even the backs of the shoes. Then a brush, and another round of polish.

To develop an understanding of the leather, and to learn to hold one’s fingers “in a certain way,” can take several months, according to Mr. Ardaix, who grew up in Uruguay.

But to me, the technique is almost invisible, as I switch from reading The Post to checking e-mail on my iPhone.

Mr. Sicha produces a clean cloth, sprays it lightly with water and begins to buff the shoes. After several rounds of this, he coats the edges of the shoes with instant wax.

Finally, after another round of buffing, it’s time to put the laces back on.

Mr. Ardaix’s shop “gives the best shoeshine in New York and nationwide,” Vernon E. Jordan Jr., a senior managing director of Lazard, said in a letter last year.

“Its closest competitor is a shoeshine in the Atlanta airport where my classmates from high school provide a great shoeshine,” Mr. Jordan said in the letter, which was written to Mr. Ardaix’s landlord and reviewed by DealBook.

For all its well-to-do clientele, Eddie’s charges a relatively low price â€" $2.50 â€" for its service. By comparison, it’s not unusual for shoeshine workers inside banks to demand at least $5, plus a tip.

Mr. Ardaix, who catches a 5 a.m. train to work each morning from his home in East Fishkill, N.Y., says that making money is not as important to him as building relationships with his clients.

But the workers depend on tips, and customers are expected to be generous.

With my shoes shinier than they have ever been, I feel a need to show Mr. Sicha my appreciation. So I hand him a $5 bill.

After he thanks me, I press him to tell me how my tip compares with what he earns from Wall Street customers. It turns out it’s middling, even on the low side.

Sometimes, Mr. Sicha says, he gets $10. And, I ask, what about $20?

“Like, once a year,” he says.

Amgen to Buy Onyx Pharmaceuticals for $10.4 Billion

Although Amgen is the world’s biggest biotechnology company, the drug maker has been mostly absent from one of the industry’s biggest and fastest-growing markets: cancer drugs.

It took a big step to fix that on Sunday, agreeing to buy Onyx Pharmaceuticals for about $10.4 billion in cash to gain access to the company’s three anticancer treatments.

Under the terms of Sunday’s deal, Amgen will offer $125 a share in cash through a tender offer for Onyx’s shares. The transaction is expected to close at the beginning of the fourth quarter, subject to regulatory approval.

Sunday’s takeover is the latest within the health care industry, one of the busiest sectors for deal makers as companies seek to gain greater scale. Drug makers have been among the most prolific buyers, seeking new medicines that will refresh aging product lines.

Amgen’s purchase ranks among the five biggest-ever takeovers of a biotechnology company, according to data from Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ. Among the larger transactions were Sanofi-Aventis’ $20 billion acquisition of Genzyme and Gilead Sciences’ $11 billion purchase of Pharmasset, both announced in 2011.

It is also one of the two biggest takeovers in Amgen’s history, trailing only the company’s $17 billion deal for Immunex in 2002.

Though many drug makers and their advisers have spoken of a continuing hunger for more takeovers, the deal machine has actually slowed a little this year. One reason is that biotechnology companies’ stocks have risen strongly, reducing potential sellers’ desire or need to sell.

Though the bid is higher than the $120-a-share proposal from Amgen that Onyx rejected two months ago â€" about 38 percent above its stock price at the time â€" the offer is lower than the $130 a share many analysts had expected. A number of pharmaceutical companies had shown interest during the sales process that Onyx’s bankers ran, but ultimately Amgen showed the most persistence in pursuing a deal, people briefed on the matter have said. On Friday, shares of Onyx closed at $119.96; Amgen closed at $105.60.

The crown jewel of Onyx, which is based in South San Francisco, Calif., is Kyprolis, which was approved in the United States last July as a last-ditch treatment for multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer.

The drug recorded sales of $125 million in the first six months of this year. But many analysts see annual sales growing to $2 billion in several years if the drug wins approval in Europe, and wins approval to be used earlier in the course of treatment.

“Amgen has a unique opportunity to add value to Kyprolis, a product which is at an early and promising stage of its launch,” Robert A. Bradway, chief executive of Amgen, based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., said in a statement Sunday.

Mr. Bradway, a one-time investment banker who took over as chief executive in May 2012, is under some pressure to increase Amgen’s sales, which were $17.3 billion last year. Much of the company’s revenue comes from older drugs whose sales are no longer growing rapidly or, in the case of the anemia drugs Aranesp and Epogen, are falling.

Some of Amgen’s older drugs are facing competition in Europe from near-copies, known as biosimilars, and might face the same in the United States in the coming years. Late this year, Teva is expected to begin selling a near-copy of Amgen’s Neupogen, a drug that helps prevent infections in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

Amgen has huge sales of drugs that help patients cope with chemotherapy and counter some of the effects of cancer, but it has long wanted drugs that directly attack the tumors themselves. Those are among the most popular in the pharmaceutical industry because they can fetch prices as high as $10,000 a month.

Amgen sells one such drug, Vectibix for colorectal cancer, but sales have been disappointing. The company has some others in clinical trials.

The acquisition of Onyx is not without risk. The multiple myeloma market is now very competitive, led by Celgene, which sells the blockbuster Revlimid. Celgene won approval earlier this year for another drug, Pomalyst, that has been competing with Kyprolis as a last-ditch treatment.

There is also the issue of cost. If Kyprolis is approved for use earlier in the course of treatment, it is likely to used in combination with another drug like Revlimid. That could run into resistance on reimbursement, particularly in Europe.

Onyx obtained Kyprolis through one of its own acquisition, that of privately held Proteolix, in 2009 for $276 million upfront, with up to $575 million more dependent upon achievement of various milestones.

The deal was considered a gamble for N. Anthony Coles, who had become Onyx’s chief executive a year and a half earlier. But it transformed the company. It was not announced Sunday what role, if any, Dr. Coles will have after the merger is completed.

Kyprolis, known generically as carfilzomib, inhibits the action of the proteasome, which is sort of a garbage disposal system for cells. That inhibition somehow hurts cancerous cells more than healthy ones. It is the same mechanism of action of Velcade, a myeloma drug sold by Takeda Pharmaceutical and Johnson & Johnson that was approved in 2003.

Onyx’s two other products on the market are Nexavar for liver and kidney cancer and Stivarga for colon cancer and a gastrointestinal tumor. Onyx sells both of those drugs with Bayer. Onyx also has the rights to an 8 percent royalty on sales of a promising breast cancer drug, palbociclib, that Pfizer is developing. The company reported revenue of $362 million in 2012, mostly from drugs it shares with Bayer.

Amgen has plenty of financial resources to support its purchase. It has lined up $8.1 billion in bank loans, and will finance the balance with some of its $22 billion in cash and short-term investments on hand as of June 30. The company expects to retain its investment-grade credit rating and plans to continue raising its dividend.

Keeping Wall St. in the Black (or Maybe Brown)

Mauricio Dias was being courted by Wall Street.

After losing his job at the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette when it was sold to Credit Suisse, he received a phone call from the office of Hamilton E. James, the executive who had orchestrated the sale, Mr. Dias said. Mr. James was starting a new role as the No. 2 at the Blackstone Group, a big investment firm, and wanted Mr. Dias to join him.

Mr. Dias, now a 10-year stalwart at Blackstone, is no banker with a briefcase, however. He carries a shoeshine box.

Inside New York’s investment houses, a vestige of old Wall Street lives on. Gone are the days when offices were filled with smoke and secretaries were the only women in sight. But in-house shoeshine service has proved remarkably resilient, surviving the rise of technology and even the turmoil of the 2008 financial crisis, which snuffed out many of Wall Street’s quirks.

Mr. Dias, 52, is at the top of the heap in the shoeshine world. He charges $6 for a shine in Blackstone’s offices, while the Dr. Shine shoeshine parlor in the building’s lobby charges $3. Not counting the tip.

“He’s a V.I.P.,” said Gotardo Cortez, 38, a co-owner of Dr. Shine. A spokesman for Blackstone declined to comment.

Though they are not bank employees, Wall Street’s shoeshine workers are privy to the hidden dramas of trading floors and executive suites. At JPMorgan Chase, for example, a shoeshine worker said that Jamie Dimon, the bank’s powerful chief executive â€" who favors Ferragamo loafers â€" typically offers $10 for a shoeshine, “the same thing the guys on the trading floor pay.”

But the modern shoeshine business has changed since the old days, reflecting the evolution of Wall Street firms from private partnerships to large, public corporations. Senior traders from Bear Stearns recall the days when they could put their feet up on a shoeshine box brought to their desks and banter with their colleagues as the deed was done. But that changed after JPMorgan took over the firm in 2008.

At JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, teams of workers now collect shoes and take them elsewhere to be shined, leaving traders to work in stocking feet. Though many bank employees appreciate the efficiency of that updated method â€" harried traders sometimes claim they do not even have time to use the restroom â€" some longtime employees see it as an affront.

“They’ve turned it into a sterile thing,” said James J. Dunne III, the senior managing principal of the investment bank Sandler O’Neill & Partners. “That’s where Wall Street has gotten more like a department store.”

The subject of shoeshines is a sentimental one for many Wall Street denizens, but perhaps none more so than Mr. Dunne, for whom a shoeshine was his introduction to the industry in September 1978.

A few months out of college and just days into an investment bank job, Mr. Dunne was sitting at his desk at L. F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin and marveling at the shoeshine worker. He thought, “Who would pay to get a shoeshine?”

He soon found out. Mark H. Rosen, his immediate boss, told Mr. Dunne to “chill out a little bit,” Mr. Dunne said. Johnny B., the shoeshine worker, proceeded to work his magic on Mr. Dunne â€" courtesy of Mr. Rosen.

“It was just a wonderful, warm welcoming. It was about more than just get-that-spreadsheet-done,” Mr. Dunne, now 56, said. “There was a very human aspect to it.”

The annals of Wall Street lore are brimming with tales of shoeshine workers and their customers â€" the biggest tippers, the overheard stock tips. And, of course, there is the one told by Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., the high-flying financier who was the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A master of the market, Mr. Kennedy had the foresight to sell his stock holdings before the crash of 1929. He later told a reporter â€" perhaps not entirely seriously â€" that he realized the market was overheated when, on a visit to a shoeshine parlor on Wall Street, he heard from the worker snapping a cloth across his shoes “what was going to happen to various stocks and offerings on the market that day” â€" and the worker was “entirely correct.”

Ticker tape has long since given way to computer screens, but the shoeshine has remained.

“There was always a shoeshine guy who came around,” said John H. Gutfreund, who joined Salomon Brothers as a trainee in 1953 and rose to become its chief executive in the 1980s.

Mr. Gutfreund, 83, recalled paying $2 or $3 to get his shoes shined at his desk. “Anybody who wanted a shoeshine got it,” he said.

Traditionally, the relationships between shoeshine workers and their firms have been supported by custom â€" and amenable security guards â€" rather than official edict. But one of the firms to formalize the arrangement was Goldman Sachs.

In the mid-1990s, when Jon S. Corzine was the chief executive of Goldman, employees on the fixed-income floor asked him to allow shoeshine workers to come to the office on a regular basis, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Corzine approved the request.

Today, a handful of uniformed contract workers â€" known internally as “shoeshine technicians” â€" patrol Goldman’s headquarters at 200 West Street, with a daily routine that reflects a corporate sense of efficiency. They handle a trading floor in sections, whisking away shoes to be shined and leaving traders to work in socks. One shoeshine parlor in Manhattan, Eddie’s Shoe Repair, aims to capitalize on this shift by offering a classic experience that has become increasingly rare inside banks.

Employees of firms like Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch trek to the shop in Rockefeller Center for a 15-minute shoeshine and the opportunity to banter with the owner, Hugo Ardaix, who says the banks’ own shoeshine workers skimp on quality.

“It’s like a lot of things on the Street: it’s not as personal as it used to be,” said one senior employee of a big bank who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a company policy against speaking to the news media. “In the past, the trading floors were smaller, the firms were smaller and the service providers were people you saw pretty much every day. You got to know them.”

For Mr. Dunne of Sandler O’Neill, that first shoeshine in 1978 led to many more. He and Mr. Rosen would often treat each other to a shine, including in the years after Mr. Rosen joined his friend at Sandler.

But the tradition ended the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when Mr. Rosen, working at Sandler’s offices in the World Trade Center, was killed.

Now, the ritual has a more tragic resonance.

“There is not a time,” Mr. Dunne said, “that I have ever gotten a shine when I’ve not thought about him.”

Trump University Made False Claims, Lawsuit Says

The New York State attorney general’s office filed a civil lawsuit on Saturday accusing Trump University, Donald J. Trump’s for-profit investment school, of engaging in illegal business practices.

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