BP's Options to Limit Liability From the Oil Spill

[dixiegrrrrl]

Liability: To understand BP's liability, one must recognize that the company is not a monolithic entity. Rather, it is composed of scores of different corporate entities across the globe. Each of them has its own limited liability and is run separately to preserve those liability limits. In the United States, this concept of limited liability is well established and respected unless the law overrides it or a corporate parent does not treat a subsidiary entity as separate.

In the United States, BP's operations are run by BP Holdings North America Inc. According to BP's annual report, this subsidiary has about $50 billion in long-term assets. It is a separate operation and is presumably the one that, through another subsidiary, operated the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

More important facts in the article:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/BPs-Options-to-Limit-nytimes-2590832848.html;_ylt=AoEsFw9RsH8gyIpEDdua7tC7YWsA;_ylu=X3oDMTE1YjZnZTB2BHBvcwM2BHNlYwN0b3BTdG9yaWVzBHNsawNob3dicG1pZ2h0bGk-?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=

[Oregone]

1. Thats what I thought!

Whenever I buy US goods here in Canada, they have tags on them like "Best Buy CA, Inc.". Each of these entities seems to have a separate corporate division in the countries they operate in, which is different from the US headquarter where they originally started (which is often listed on the same tag, below the Canadian one).

So, when people talk about how this is a British company, and how the US can't do much, etc, maybe they aren't seeing the whole picture. I figured they had a US holdings, operating under US law, with specific US assets. The only problem, this particular holding doesn't have deep pockets, and there is no legal mechanism to reach deeper into the pockets of the multi-national umbrella (as far as I know).

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. The details and laws of the holdings are pretty important

amidst all this discussion of who pays what and when.