Executives close to Mr. Lai said the stock exchange had made onerous demands of him, including a requirement that he personally put up a cash guarantee of $167 million to cover a potential shortfall in profits and the company's potential liability in pending libel suits against Apple Daily and Next.
While the injunction for richer states to provide international assistance and cooperation is presumably intended to fill in potential shortfalls towards realizing core obligations, the weakness of that imperative and the strong articulation of core obligations as non-derogable, appear to place financially unrealistic obligations on poorer countries.
Instead, Western petroleum executives say they want prices to stay high so they can keep investing in unconventional sources of oil in places like the Arctic or the deep offshore, and to forestall a potential shortfall in supply.
Ministers are leading a recruitment drive for computer scientists and hackers as they try to avert a potential shortfall in the number of skilled cyber security experts over the next decade.
When MF Global first discovered a potential shortfall in customer money, the firm's officials did not disclose the situation to regulators immediately, instead attributing it to an accounting error.
Mr. Bush will also have to contend with a potential shortfall in the state budget, pressure from older-citizens groups for more aid to pay for the rising costs of prescription drugs and a host of environmental issues affecting the Everglades and the state's coastline.
Since 2008, drug companies have been cautious about large investments in new research, but they are also faced with the expirations of profitable drug patents and looking for ways to bridge the potential shortfall in earnings, he said in an e-mail reply to questions.
In the same filing with the futures regulator, MF Global reported that it held $7.2 billion in segregated customer accounts, but the potential shortfall in customers' money that has been reported to involve as much as $600 million may call into question the veracity of that figure.
The Liberal Democrat claim of a potential shortfall in Scottish public spending was explained by Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury in the UK coalition government.
It added: "As previously stated, Ticketus will claim upon these guarantees to recover any potential shortfall in monies owed to Ticketus by the club".
