Corporate Reviews

Like shareholders of a corporation, all LLC owners are protected from personal liability for business debts and claims. This means that if the business itself can’t pay a creditor — such as a supplier, a lender, or a landlord — the creditor cannot legally come after any LLC member’s house, car, or other personal possessions. Because only LLC assets are used to pay off business debts, LLC owners stand to lose only the money that they’ve invested in the LLC. This feature is often called “limited liability.”

Exceptions to Limited Liability
While LLC owners enjoy limited personal liability for many of their business transactions, this protection is not absolute. This drawback is not unique to LLCs, however — the same exceptions apply to corporations. An LLC owner can be held personally liable if he or she:

1. personally and directly injures someone
2. personally guarantees a bank loan or a business debt on which the LLC defaults
3. fails to deposit taxes withheld from employees’ wages
4. intentionally does something fraudulent, illegal, or reckless that causes harm to the company or to someone else, or
   treats the LLC as an extension of his or her personal affairs, rather than as a separate legal entity.

Limited liability companies combine the best aspects of partnerships and corporations.

A limited liability company (LLC) combines the corporation’s protection from personal liability for business debts and the pass-through tax structure of a partnership or sole proprietorship. And, while setting up an LLC is more difficult than creating a partnership or sole proprietorship, running one is significantly easier than running a corporation.

2006 was a year of consolidation and preparation. After a series of year on year improvements in safety, as measured by Lost Time Injury Frequency Rates (LTIFR), our performance plateaued. The 2006 LTIFR was 4.3 compared with 4.1 for 2005. There were also a higher number of motor vehicle and tanker truck accidents than the previous year. Despite these disappointing results, there were solid gains in our organisational capability in risk which will equip us to break through the plateau and continue the downward trend in incidents.

In 2006, a stronger focus on risk, reputation and sustainability was established across Caltex. In particular we implemented a newly developed enterprise wide risk management framework (RMF) and adopted an Operational Excellence Management System.

The RMF has improved and expanded the identification, reporting and management of risk across the Caltex business. To the existing focus on health, safety, environment and finance have been added areas ranging from operations, competition and reputation to asset integrity, fraud, systems and authorisation. This has provided the opportunity for clearer oversight of risk by Caltex directors and management.

Although we have traditionally reported our safety performance in terms of the LTIFR, it is increasingly becoming evident that this is only a partial, but important, indicator of safety performance. To address risk more systematically, we have adopted the Chevron developed Operational Excellence Management System (OEMS). Implementing OEMS enables us to take a more systematic approach to EHS risks and is an essential precursor to getting further and sustained improvement in our EHS performance.

We have also continued to develop our existing tools, such as the Loss Prevention System (LPS). A DVD version of LPS was deployed to all Caltex supervisors in 2006. This is a training tool to refresh supervisor knowledge and assist in improving the quality and effectiveness of incident investigations and job hazard assessments and other aspects of LPS.

Caltex achieved a bronze award in the 2005 Australian Corporate Responsibility Index (CRI) in its first year participating in the survey. The index assesses the extent to which corporate strategy is integrated into responsible business practice throughout an organisation.

The risk management framework, OEMS and CRI have provided Caltex with improved means of identifying gaps, improving and managing performance in environment, health, safety, risk reputation and sustainability.

Across Caltex, more than 90% of employee respondents said they were optimistic about the future of the company.

One day I walk up and thought of the Corporations mistreating consumers. In general it sounds very appealing “Consumer Is Always right?” But is it true?

I found this story to be very interesting…

I signed up with WorldCom Wireless. The company did not send me a bill for over 6 months. then HUGE bills came every 2-3 weeks. some bills were preceded by a notice NOT to pay the next bill.

I called to have a bill explained, it took 3 days to get through. by thatvpoint, i truly had NO idea if the bill was correct or not. but, impaid the bill via american express over the phone. a week or so later, i went to use my phone, and it didn't work. spent several HOURS trying to get through, and was finally told that my phone had been shut off for non-payment…even though the payment had been received by them PRIOR to them shutting off the phone. had to wait 2 days for the service to resume. mind you, i TOLD the customer service person that i was disabled, and my muscles are affected, and that i use the phone for emergencies in the car.

once i got another company, i called for the service to be d/c'd, and asked for a final bill. i was told that they didn't do that, that i had to wait for the bills to show up.

11/15/2001, i paid the bill of $91.13 via amex via phone. today, i get a COLLECTION notice, dated 11/22/2001, for..$91.13.

spent HOURS on hold, also kept getting abruptly cut off by a recording. i did manage to speak to 4 different people, 4 different times..all refused to put a supervisor on, all singularly unhelpful. they said it wasn't worldcom's job to check with american express to see if the payment had cleared there..that was MY job. i called amex,the payment DID clear there on 11/15/2001.

these people are rude and unhelpful, and obviously unsupervised. if i HAD had a car breakdown while my phone was out, i would have been stranded. i asked the person in cllections to give me the corporate telephone number, she gave me a number that put me on hold, and then once again, the recording cut me off.

SO, IF YOU ARE DISABLED..STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY..THEY WILL LEAVE YOU STRANDED IN 'ON HOLD' PURGATORY.

i am planning on contacting all the disabled groups i can find, to make them aware of this