Grainge was bullish that the enforced asset sale – which will include EMI operations in nine European countries and labels such as Chrysalis, Mute and Sanctuary, home to artists including Spandau Ballet, Depeche Mode and Iron Maiden respectively – will draw premium bids and that Universal will not lose out by offloading them.
In Kepler Cheuvreux's April report 'Stranded Assets, Fossilized Revenues', Lewis argued that a pending global climate treaty would seriously endanger the profitability of fossil fuel majors due to emissions restrictions enforcing 'stranded assets' (unexploited fossil fuel reserves that, having become obsolete, are recorded as a loss of profit).
Any ruling could probably be enforced only against assets abroad: a Dubai court has to confirm the decision and is likely to declare any assets in the emirate off-limits.
Since accepting a controversial bailout plan from the European Union, after months of strikes and demonstrations, Greece now faces an enforced sale of assets and cuts to public services.
The ICC will make its own decision on who to prosecute, entirely independently from the UN sanctions committee that is now being set up to enforce the asset freeze and travel ban put in place under resolution 1970.
Enforced sales of new town assets, after the 1979 general election, meant that the town centre was sold to a variety of owners – up to 12, says Taylor, thus undermining coordinated regeneration.
Research from Carbon Tracker, a climate change thinktank, highlights all these areas – the Canadian tar sands, the US Gulf and Alaska – as being at the highest risk from enforced mothballing and becoming "stranded assets" tying up billions of pounds worth of shareholder funds.
While the judgement was passed down in America, where Iran has no assets, it was enforced in Canada Ottawawa cleared out one of the bank accounts, and seized two properties to pay for the judgement.
Even if increases in the assets and liabilities of uncontrolled intermediaries wholly offset enforced reductions in the supplies of controlled monetary assets, even if monetary expansion means equivalent contraction by uncontrolled intermediaries, monetary controls can still be effective.
"They need to know that they can go to a court confident that a contract will be enforced objectively … and that their assets and premises won't be unlawfully taken away from them.
