– The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

By Rob Cox

Last week’s ouster of Vale SA’s chief executive sends a terrible signal to the markets about the Brazilian government’s intentions. Roger Agnelli resisted the state’s designs to push the $180 billion mining group into lower-return, if labor intensive, activities. With President Dilma Rousseff’s government forcing his departure, investors must brace for a strategy that favors jobs over profit – think Pemex instead of BHP Billiton.

Citigroup is in an uncomfortable spot. Its bankers may have information needed to determine whether the onetime successor to Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett violated securities laws when personally trading in shares of Lubrizol, which Berkshire acquired for $9 billion. While uncomfortable, this doesn’t have to be damaging territory for Citi.

Indeed, merger documents detailing the sequence of events that led to the Lubrizol deal on March 14 show Citi doing what investment banks are supposed to do: matching hungry buyers with willing sellers. David Sokol, acting in some capacity as a dealmaker for Berkshire, asked Citi bankers last fall to come up with good ideas for “possible transactions” in a variety of industries, including chemicals.

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By Rob Cox

The Woodstock of capitalism just turned into Altamont. Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in Omaha this year won’t just be a folksy affair, with Chairman Warren Buffett dispensing common sense aphorisms about financial morality between bites of his Dairy Queen Dilly Bar. Following the abrupt resignation of one of the prime contenders to succeed the billionaire investor, after he personally traded in shares of a company he persuaded Berkshire to buy, Buffett needs to assuage investors about succession, ethics and whether he’s lost his mojo.

America’s antitrust and telecoms watchdogs have their hands full with AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile. So they may overlook what’s at stake in a seemingly esoteric spat between Google geeks and their Facebook cohorts. But the quarrel raises vexing questions about the search giant’s increasing dominance in the mobile handset market — and whether it can resist the temptation to abuse that power.

On its face, the kerfuffle is still something of a “he said, she said” among the engineering set. Google said it is making a “small change” to the way contacts from Facebook appear on its next-generation handset, the Nexus S. This modification essentially no longer allows customers to download their contacts from Facebook. The reason, Google insists, is that the Facebook data cannot be exported from the device, creating “a false sense of data portability.”

By Rob Cox
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

SAN DIEGO — The hour is upon American banking regulators. They’ve been handed 2,000-plus pages of new law in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that must be transformed into workable rules and procedures, and then implemented to fulfill the legislation’s promise to make the financial system safer. But there’s a problem: Many of the watchdogs charged with the task face leadership vacuums. This could spell trouble.

By Rob Cox
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Sheila Bair may unwittingly have discovered a simple litmus test for bank regulator effectiveness. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp chairman this week faced catcalls from a mob of U.S. community bankers. She was taken aback by the booing. But in fact, watchdogs should bask in such disdain if it means they’re doing their jobs.

By Rob Cox
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Carl Icahn was already a member of the multibillionaires club. Now the former corporate raider-cum-hedge fund manager is joining an even more elite group. Icahn will hand back the $1.8 billion or so of other people’s money that he has looked after for six years and focus solely on managing his own billions.

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By Rob Cox

The mystique that Apple cloaks itself in when launching snazzy gadgets has served its bottom line well. But that same opacity doesn’t translate well to corporate governance.

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By Rob Cox

The broad business community normally takes little more than a passing interest in Hollywood’s annual celebration of itself. But this year’s upcoming Oscars ceremony has executives and investors from Houston to Wall Street to Silicon Valley uncharacteristically nervous. The awards could elevate the profile of some movies that turn the spotlight onto some controversial industry practices.