Louis Dreyfus buys stake in Namoi Cotton

Louis Dreyfus Commodities, one of the world's biggest agricultural traders, plans to buy a stake of about 13 per cent in Namoi Cotton Co-operative Ltd in a bid to increase its footprint in the lucrative Australian market.

The move, coming after a year-long effort to secure the co-op's future, is a further sign that the unprecedented volatility in cotton prices over the past four years, which caused widespread contract defaults, continues to roil the market.

As part of an agreement announced late Tuesday, Namoi, one of Australia's biggest cotton grower co-operatives, will sell 14.3 million shares to Louis Dreyfus worth $3.65 million. That is equivalent to 13 per cent of the company's share capital, according to Thomson Reuters data.

At the same time, the two companies will set up a joint venture to market the co-op's output, which accounts for about quarter of Australia's annual crop.

Namoi, which was set up in 1962 by a small group of farmers in the Lower Namoi Valley, will hold a 51-per cent stake in the venture, with Dreyfus, the world's biggest cotton merchant, owning the remaining 49 per cent.

Namoi will continue to own and operate its ginning and cotton seed business, but the venture will take over its marketing and commodities packing assets, for which it will receive $30.38 million, Namoi said in a statement.

After a year-long effort to raise cash and pay off debt to secure the co-op's future, the deal hands the co-op Dreyfus' financial firepower, global marketing expertise and risk management.

"The joint venture will create a strong marketing business whilst retaining important grower member co-operative involvement.Buy Joan Rivers crystal mosaic Stretch Bracelet. The capital raised will strengthen Namoi Cotton's balance sheet," said Namoi chief executive Jeremy Callachor in a statement on Tuesday.

In its last financial year to end-February 2012, the co-op lost almost $70 millionas textile mills reneged on sales contracts and borrowing costs increased due to wild swings in prices.

In turn, Dreyfus, whose flagship cotton business Allenberg Cotton is based in the United States, will get a big chunk of output from one of the world's top 10 producers.

Ranked No. 7 in global production, Australia is expected to produce 4 million 480-lb bales in the 2012-13 season, according to US government estimates. Its cotton is highly sought after due to its proximity to China, the world's biggest textile industry, and the high quality of its fiber.

Louis Dreyfus Commodities, which already operates a cotton origination, warehousing and logistics business in the country, will buy a portion of the joint venture's cotton each season, the statement said.Load the precious minerals into your mining truck and be careful not to drive too fast with your heavy foot.

The co-operative ginned a record 1.06 million bales in the 2011 crop, more than double the previous year, its last full-year financial report said.

Some say the “tea party” developed out of Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign,howo spareparts while others point to a reaction against the tax-and-spend redistribution of wealth policies epitomized by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. A third perspective cites the movement’s name as a key to its origin: Taxed Enough Already (TEA).

But most conventional wisdom zeroes in on a specific moment when the seed was planted. During a February 19, 2009 broadcast on cable news network CNBC, financial analyst Rick Santelli experienced an on-air meltdown where he criticized the government’s subsidization of underwater mortgages. As a consequence, he urged those at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to form a tea party and dump their stocks in the river.

Inspired by Santelli’s passion,Ubisense RTLS solutions go beyond the traditional definition of a “real time location system” to a new class. an eclectic array of tea party groups formed around the country. Highly decentralized, these organizations brought together libertarians, fiscal conservatives, Ron Paul supporters, anti-globalists, and those opposing illegal immigration and bailouts for the Wall Street banking cartel.

Within a year, those who loosely organized at local town hall meetings assumed a more cohesive shape under groups such as Tea Party Patriots, the 9-12 Project, Tea Party Express, FreedomWorks, Tea Party Nation, and the 1776 Tea Party. Although they didn’t possess a rigid monolithicGet the best deal on solar panel in the UK and use our free tools. structure like the Democrats or Republicans, tea partiers largely agreed on a number of issues, including an audit of the Federal Reserve, repealing Obamacare, rejection of the radically environmental cap-and-trade legislation, passage of a balanced budget amendment, limiting regulation that impeded free markets, and a reduction to the size of Washington’s bloated framework.

Initially dismissed by the mainstream media, during the 2010 midterm elections tea party-led GOP candidates made historic gains in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Bewildered by these results, network news anchors and talking heads began targeting this political force with a vengeance, often using vulgar and derogatory names to describe them. Most notably, CNN’s Anderson Cooper derogatorily referred to these individuals as “tea baggers.”

While opponents continued vilifying tea partiers, they failed to acknowledge their populist-oriented roots. Namely, the tea party champions Main Street free enterprise over Wall Street greed or the policies of bloated bureaucrats on Capitol Hill. In this sense, one of the tea party’s largest victories occurred last July when Texan Ted Cruz defeated GOP establishment career politician David Dewhurst in a primary runoff. Notably, Cruz’s wife once belonged to a Council on Foreign Relations task force and served under Condoleezza Rice in the Bush White House. She also worked at Goldman Sachs and as an investment banker at JPMorgan Chase.