In this comeback year for investors, David Tepper may have scored one of the biggest paydays of all.
Mr. Tepper's hedge-fund firm has racked up about $7 billion of profit so far this year—with Mr. Tepper on track to earn more than $2.5 billion for himself, according to people familiar with the matter. That is among the largest one-year takes in recent years.
Behind the wins: a bet worth billions of dollars that America would avoid a repeat of the Great Depression.
Through February and March, Mr. Tepper scooped up beaten-down bank shares as many investors were running for the exits. Day after day, Mr. Tepper bought Bank of America Corp. shares, then trading below $3, and Citigroup Inc. preferred shares, when that stock was under $1. One of his investors insisted more carnage loomed. Friends who shared his bullish beliefs were wary of aping his moves amid speculation that the government was about to nationalize the big banks
"I felt like I was alone," Mr. Tepper recalls. On some days, he says, "no one was even bidding."
The bets paid off. A resurgent market has helped Mr. Tepper's firm, Appaloosa Management, gain about 120% after the firm's fees, through early December. Thanks to those gains, Mr. Tepper, who specializes in the stocks and bonds of troubled companies, manages about $12 billion, a sum that makes Appaloosa one of the largest hedge funds in the world.
Mr. Tepper, whose office overlooks the parking lot of a Hilton hotel in Short Hills, N.J., across from an upscale mall, now is taking aim at a new target. He's purchased about $2 billion of beaten-down commercial mortgage-backed securities. Among his purchases are bonds backed by chunks of the debt of Peter Cooper Village & Stuyvesant Town and 666 Fifth Ave. in New York, two high-profile real-estate deals that have fallen in value over the past two years.
Some experts predict more bad news for commercial real estate—and say that if Mr. Tepper's move doesn't pan out, it could jeopardize a chunk of his recent gains. Mr. Tepper says he remains optimistic.
Hedge funds, once darlings of well-heeled investors, suffered dearly in 2008, dropping 19%. Nearly 1,500 funds, or 16% of the total, shuttered last year. This year, hedge funds are clawing back, with gains of 19% through November, on pace for their best annual gains in a decade, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc.
A handful of funds—including Everest Capital's emerging-market funds and the stock-focused Glenview Capital—have racked up fat gains this year. In sheer dollars, though, none appear to have come close to matching Appaloosa's winnings.
Mr. Tepper grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, the son of an accountant who worked seven days a week and once won a $715,000 lottery payout. In the late 1980s, he helped run junk-bond trading at Goldman Sachs. Mr. Tepper wears jeans and sneakers to work, and can be self-deprecating, playing down his successes. He claims to have popularized on Wall Street the phrase "it is what it is" to explain the need to adjust a portfolio if facts on the ground shift.
After he was repeatedly passed over for a partnership, Mr. Tepper left Goldman to start Appaloosa in 1993. By 2008, he had a track record of annual gains averaging about 30% and a net worth estimated at about $2 billion.
Mr. Tepper lives in a two-story home in New Jersey he bought in 1990 for $1.2 million. He recently purchased an ownership stake in the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, and flies to every home game. In 2004 he gave $55 million to Carnegie Mellon University's business school, his alma mater, which renamed itself the Tepper School of Business.
The husky, bespectacled trader laughs easily, but employees say he can quickly turn on them when he's angry. Mr. Tepper keeps a brass replica of a pair of testicles in a prominent spot on his desk, a present from former employees. He rubs the gift for luck during the trading day to get a laugh out of colleagues.
His biggest scores over the years have come from buying large chunks of out-of-favor investments. When Asian markets crumbled in 1997, Mr. Tepper added Korean stocks to a portfolio laden with Russian debt. The moves led to hundreds of millions of dollars in profits when markets rebounded two years later. He scored big on junk bonds in 2003, and his 2007 wager on steel, coal and other resource companies paid off in 2008 when commodity prices soared.
But because he sometimes places more than half of his portfolio in a single trade idea, Mr. Tepper also is prone to brutal, abrupt losses.
That approach cost him more than $1 billion last year. In January 2008, Societe General SA trader Jerome Kerviel was revealed to have lost €5 billion ($7.2 billion), one of the world's largest trading loss. Mr. Tepper sold large chunks of his holdings, fearing a market tumble. Prices held up, though, hurting Appaloosa. In the spring of last year, he turned bullish on large-company stocks and did some buying, but suffered as markets declined.
Mr. Tepper made a big wager on Delphi in 2006. But in April of last year he and a group of investors withdrew from a deal to inject as much as $2.6 billion in the bankrupt auto-parts supplier, sparking a nasty legal battle that was resolved this summer. Appaloosa lost almost $200 million on its investment in Delphi.
Mr. Tepper's largest fund dropped 25% for 2008, worse than the industry's 19% average decline.
"Investing with David is like flying, with hours of boredom followed by bouts of sheer terror," says Alan Shealy, a client of more than 18 years. "He's the quintessential opportunist, investing in any asset class, but you have to have a cast-iron stomach."
Mr. Tepper entered 2009 cautiously, with more than 30% of his firm's assets in cash, or more than $2 billion. He itched to do some buying. Mr. Tepper explains his investment philosophy with a line from Allan Meltzer, a professor at his alma mater: "Trees grow." In other words, growth is the natural state of economies, so optimism usually is rewarded.
On Feb. 10 of this year, Mr. Tepper read that the Treasury Department was introducing the so-called Financial Stability Plan. It included a commitment by the government to inject capital into banks by buying their preferred stock, or shares that carry less chance of reward but also less risk than common stock.
At the time, investors worried that the government ultimately would have to nationalize big banks. U.S. officials said they had no intention of such a move, which could wipe out common shareholders, but investors were dubious.
The news from the Treasury Department struck Mr. Tepper as proof that the government would stand behind the banks. He directed his traders to begin buying bank stock and debt.
Few investors were feeling as optimistic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 382 points on the day Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner introduced the plan, nearly 5%. Bank shares continued to tumble in the days that followed. Bank of America shares fell as low as $2.53 on Feb. 20. By March 5, Citigroup traded as low as 97 cents.
"This is ridiculous, it's nuts, nuts, nuts!" Mr. Tepper recalls saying to Michael Lukacs, one of his partners, on the firm's small trading floor. "Why would the government break its word? They're not going to let these banks go under, people aren't being logical!"
Mr. Tepper huddled with Mr. Lukacs and Jim Bolin, another top Appaloosa executive. Mr. Tepper insisted that stimulus spending and low interest rates would boost the economy. He said he estimated there was only a 20% chance that the U.S. would nationalize banks such as Citigroup.
Mr. Bolin, who people at the firm say tends to be more conservative than Mr. Tepper, was bullish about banks, but still thought it safer to stick to bank debt than to riskier shares. Mr. Tepper says he listened to the arguments, but said it was time to place a big bet.
Over several weeks, Mr. Tepper's team bought a variety of bank investments, including debt, preferred shares and common shares. Just months earlier, the government had injected billions of dollars to keep companies such as American International Group Inc. going, much as they were now doing with the banks. But that didn't prevent shares of those companies from tumbling.
At one point in March, the firm was down about 10% for the year, or about $600 million. Mr. Tepper got on the phone to make more trades, something he often left to subordinates. This time, he wanted to talk directly to Wall Street brokers to test how bad things really were.
The answer: really bad. Mr. Tepper says he was told that he was the only big investor doing much buying.
"Clients were nervous that the game had changed and capitalism wouldn't be the same. There was real fear," recalls Timothy Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Asset Management, a $2 billion investment firm, who says he only bought a small amount of bank shares during this period.
One day in late winter, Mr. Tepper heard from a skeptical client of his own, Mr. Shealy.
"This thing is far from over," Mr. Shealy recalls saying, referring to the bank problems. Still, Mr. Shealy, who runs an investment firm in Boise, Idaho, stuck with Mr. Tepper. "I figured the positions were fairly liquid, so if he was wrong, he would get out."
Mr. Tepper hadn't paid his investors' nerves much heed since 2000. That year, he bet that the tech-heavy Nasdaq index would fall. But so many investors complained that Mr. Tepper was straying from his roots in debt investing that he canceled his bets. When the Nasdaq collapsed months later, Mr. Tepper fumed.
By late March of 2009, Citigroup shares had tripled, and Mr. Tepper's other holdings, including junk bonds, were rising. He and his team bought more, spending more than $1 billion, when various banks conducted share sales. Mr. Tepper says his average cost for shares of Citigroup was 79 cents; for Bank of America it was $3.72.
At one point in the summer, Mr. Tepper had recorded about $1 billion of profits in shares of just Citigroup and Bank of America, and his overall gains soared past $4.5 billion, or 70%, since January.
After Mr. Bolin, the Appaloosa executive, urged caution, Mr. Tepper did some selling to lock in gains. But the firm remains a big holder of both Bank of America and Citigroup shares, which now trade at $15.03 and $3.40, respectively.
Mr. Tepper remains upbeat. He says he expects interest rates to stay low, and argues that stocks and bonds are reasonably priced.
This belief is driving another risky bet. At the end of each quarter this year, Mr. Tepper noticed that investors were dumping holdings of troubled bonds backed by commercial properties. He had never dabbled in these investments, but he and his 10-person team did some research and judged them attractive, with some seemingly safe debt trading at yields above 15%.
Mr. Tepper slowly spent more than $1 billion to gain ownership of between 10% and 20% of highly rated slices of commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS. He focused on debt backed by loans of properties including Stuyvesant Town and 666 Fifth Ave. in New York.
His bet: If the economy improves, he'll earn hefty interest payments on the bonds. But if the properties can't make their payments, Mr. Tepper believes he owns so much of the debt that he'll have a big say in how the properties get restructured. That means he could ultimately end up ahead.
He's taking a big risk, some analysts warn. The value of commercial real estate continues to fall. Owners of debt classes don't always have much power to influence a commercial real-estate restructuring. And because the debt of these big properties was carved into many pieces, and many investors are involved, any battle for control will be complicated.
Mr. Tepper says the worrywarts have it wrong: "If you think the economy will be fine, as we do, then we're going to do very well."
from the wall street journal
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Showing posts with label The Lunsford Post. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Lunsford Post. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Do-it-yourself repairs
NEW YORK — Car owners looking to trim expenses are sidestepping the mechanic and plunging into their own repairs. Or trying to, anyway. Their efforts can backfire, costing more in the end and creating do-it-yourself horror stories.
Mechanics say they’ve seen it all in recent months, including incorrectly applied brake pads and antifreeze poured into engines.
"A lot of people, they’re in dire straits,” said Pam Oakes, owner of Pam’s Motor City Automotive in Fort Myers, Fla. "They try to do this stuff at home in their driveway.”
The results can be frustrating, and sometimes outright dangerous.
When the taillight of Laura Musall’s five-year-old Nissan Altima burned out, she hoped to avoid the repair shop by letting her husband replace it at home. It seemed simple enough: Buy a bulb, pop off the cover and make the switch.
But her husband struggled to remove the plastic casing, and when he used a screwdriver to pry it off, it shattered. What came next was even worse. Her Nissan dealer wanted $250 to order a new one.
Musall, a real estate agent from Fishers, Ind., figured "10 bucks, we’d be done.” "But apparently,” she said, "it’s not a do-it-yourself thing if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
While well-intentioned, many people forget that today’s cars are vastly more complicated than models made just years ago. Most are so computer-controlled that owners can’t spot problems without access to specific tools and data programs, said Dave Striegel, owner of Elizabeth AutoCare in Elizabeth, Pa.
"They’re not able to do nearly the work that they used to do — it’s even going beyond the heads of a lot of technicians who aren’t keeping up-to-date,” Striegel said.
Remaining undeterred
Even so, some car owners remain undeterred. On Yahoo, queries for the terms "car repairs” and "salvage auto parts” are up 77 percent and 99 percent respectively in just the past month, according to the site’s data.
Other car repair search terms remain at three-year highs, reflecting "a renewal of the good old American independent spirit,” said Vera Chan, a senior editor for the site.
The urge to cut out the middleman extends to even the wealthy, said Stephen Viscusi, a New York-based author and career consultant. "We feel the need to be frugal and save money,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean repairs come easily. Viscusi tried to change the oil on his Mercedes-Benz sedan — and wound up with it all over his face, a situation he likened to an episode of "I Love Lucy.” He also struck out replacing spark plugs on his BMW.
Auto shops say there’s an easy way to save money: Just be upfront about the repairs you’ve tried at home.
Most do-it-yourselfers, perhaps out of sheer embarrassment, play coy when mechanics start asking questions about what went wrong with the car, said Paul Lambdin, owner of Cary Car Care in Cary, N.C.
To piece together what went wrong, mechanics typically have to start asking questions, and lots of them, said Oakes, of the Fort Myers repair shop.
"You play quiz master with them. … you play the 20 question game and then it comes out,” she said.
by the associated press
Mechanics say they’ve seen it all in recent months, including incorrectly applied brake pads and antifreeze poured into engines.
"A lot of people, they’re in dire straits,” said Pam Oakes, owner of Pam’s Motor City Automotive in Fort Myers, Fla. "They try to do this stuff at home in their driveway.”
The results can be frustrating, and sometimes outright dangerous.
When the taillight of Laura Musall’s five-year-old Nissan Altima burned out, she hoped to avoid the repair shop by letting her husband replace it at home. It seemed simple enough: Buy a bulb, pop off the cover and make the switch.
But her husband struggled to remove the plastic casing, and when he used a screwdriver to pry it off, it shattered. What came next was even worse. Her Nissan dealer wanted $250 to order a new one.
Musall, a real estate agent from Fishers, Ind., figured "10 bucks, we’d be done.” "But apparently,” she said, "it’s not a do-it-yourself thing if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
While well-intentioned, many people forget that today’s cars are vastly more complicated than models made just years ago. Most are so computer-controlled that owners can’t spot problems without access to specific tools and data programs, said Dave Striegel, owner of Elizabeth AutoCare in Elizabeth, Pa.
"They’re not able to do nearly the work that they used to do — it’s even going beyond the heads of a lot of technicians who aren’t keeping up-to-date,” Striegel said.
Remaining undeterred
Even so, some car owners remain undeterred. On Yahoo, queries for the terms "car repairs” and "salvage auto parts” are up 77 percent and 99 percent respectively in just the past month, according to the site’s data.
Other car repair search terms remain at three-year highs, reflecting "a renewal of the good old American independent spirit,” said Vera Chan, a senior editor for the site.
The urge to cut out the middleman extends to even the wealthy, said Stephen Viscusi, a New York-based author and career consultant. "We feel the need to be frugal and save money,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean repairs come easily. Viscusi tried to change the oil on his Mercedes-Benz sedan — and wound up with it all over his face, a situation he likened to an episode of "I Love Lucy.” He also struck out replacing spark plugs on his BMW.
Auto shops say there’s an easy way to save money: Just be upfront about the repairs you’ve tried at home.
Most do-it-yourselfers, perhaps out of sheer embarrassment, play coy when mechanics start asking questions about what went wrong with the car, said Paul Lambdin, owner of Cary Car Care in Cary, N.C.
To piece together what went wrong, mechanics typically have to start asking questions, and lots of them, said Oakes, of the Fort Myers repair shop.
"You play quiz master with them. … you play the 20 question game and then it comes out,” she said.
by the associated press
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Python blamed for killing Florida girl’s
OXFORD, Fla. — A 12-foot pet Burmese python escaped a terrarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl in her bedroom Wednesday at a central Florida home, authorities said.
Shaunnia Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived about 10 a.m., Lt. Bobby Caruthers of the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office said.
Charles Jason Darnell, the snake’s owner and boyfriend of Shaunnia’s mother, discovered the snake missing and went to the girl’s room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head, Caruthers said. Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he could pry the child away.
"The baby’s dead!” a sobbing caller from the house screamed to a 911 dispatcher in a recording. "Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby.”
Authorities did not identify the caller and removed the person’s name from the recording.
Authorities removed the snake from the home Wednesday afternoon. Once outside, the snake was placed in a bag then inside a dog crate. The snake was still alive.
Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, which would be a second-degree misdemeanor, said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He has not been charged, but Caruthers said investigators were looking into whether there was child neglect.
Hill said the snake will be placed with someone who has a permit, pending an investigation.
Shaunnia Hare was already dead when paramedics arrived about 10 a.m., Lt. Bobby Caruthers of the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office said.
Charles Jason Darnell, the snake’s owner and boyfriend of Shaunnia’s mother, discovered the snake missing and went to the girl’s room, where he found it on the girl and bite marks on her head, Caruthers said. Darnell, 32, stabbed the snake until he could pry the child away.
"The baby’s dead!” a sobbing caller from the house screamed to a 911 dispatcher in a recording. "Our stupid snake got out in the middle of the night and strangled the baby.”
Authorities did not identify the caller and removed the person’s name from the recording.
Authorities removed the snake from the home Wednesday afternoon. Once outside, the snake was placed in a bag then inside a dog crate. The snake was still alive.
Darnell did not have a permit for the snake, which would be a second-degree misdemeanor, said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. He has not been charged, but Caruthers said investigators were looking into whether there was child neglect.
Hill said the snake will be placed with someone who has a permit, pending an investigation.
by the associated press
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency to audit 652 businesses in illegal immigrant crackdown
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration launched investigations of hundreds of businesses around the country Wednesday as part of its strategy to focus immigration enforcement on the employers who hire illegal workers.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun notifying businesses of plans to audit their I-9 forms — employment eligibility documents — the agency told members of Congress Wednesday.
Immigration officers served "Notices of Inspection” to 652 businesses, the Homeland Security Department said. By comparison, 503 such notices were issued to businesses last year. Businesses were chosen for inspections based on leads and other investigative work, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
Employers are required to keep the I-9 forms and must check the authenticity of documents provided by the employee. The Homeland Security Department said it would not release the names or locations of the businesses that are being audited because of the ongoing investigations.
"ICE is committed to establishing a meaningful I-9 inspection program to promote compliance with the law,” John Morton, Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, said in a statement.
President Barack Obama has said his administration’s strategy for stemming illegal immigration would focus on employers who hire illegal workers.
The Bush administration was criticized for deploying armed agents to raid businesses and arrest workers suspected to be working illegally.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said investigations will focus on businesses that knowingly hire immigrants who cannot legally work in the U.S.
by the associated press
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has begun notifying businesses of plans to audit their I-9 forms — employment eligibility documents — the agency told members of Congress Wednesday.
Immigration officers served "Notices of Inspection” to 652 businesses, the Homeland Security Department said. By comparison, 503 such notices were issued to businesses last year. Businesses were chosen for inspections based on leads and other investigative work, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.
Employers are required to keep the I-9 forms and must check the authenticity of documents provided by the employee. The Homeland Security Department said it would not release the names or locations of the businesses that are being audited because of the ongoing investigations.
"ICE is committed to establishing a meaningful I-9 inspection program to promote compliance with the law,” John Morton, Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, said in a statement.
President Barack Obama has said his administration’s strategy for stemming illegal immigration would focus on employers who hire illegal workers.
The Bush administration was criticized for deploying armed agents to raid businesses and arrest workers suspected to be working illegally.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said investigations will focus on businesses that knowingly hire immigrants who cannot legally work in the U.S.
by the associated press
Monday, June 29, 2009
CEO Steve Jobs is back on the JOB
SEATTLE — Apple Inc. co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is back at his office a few days a week after taking a 5,-month medical leave and getting a new liver.
Jobs, 54, will work from home on days he doesn’t work from Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, company spokesman Steve Dowling said Monday.
Dowling did not say exactly when Jobs returned to the office.
The state of Jobs’ health and the timing of his return have been watched closely by investors and the media, because few CEOs are considered as instrumental to their companies’ success as Jobs has been to Apple.
He is seen as the visionary behind Apple’s popular iPod music players and the iPhone, which left far more experienced mobile phone makers scrambling to catch up.
The Apple chief was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He had surgery in 2004 and announced then that he was cured.
Health questions
Last year, Jobs’ dramatic weight loss prompted new questions about his health, which Apple only intensified by saying in December that the CEO would not deliver the opening keynote at the Macworld conference.
In early January, Jobs said in a statement that he was suffering from an easily treated hormone imbalance, but he reversed course less than two weeks later, saying his medical condition was more complex than he thought.
He announced he would take a leave of absence until the end of June.
Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tenn., said last week that Jobs had received a liver transplant.
Medical experts who were not involved in Jobs’ treatment have told The Associated Press that cancer cells not removed in the original surgery could have spread to Jobs’ liver.
The hospital would not say when the transplant took place, but in a statement said Jobs was recovering well and his prognosis is good.
A top producer
Since Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after a 12-month hiatus, the company has expanded from a niche computer maker to become the top producer of portable media players and an increasingly important player in the cell phone business.
Job’s insistence on elegant design, and his ability to persuade consumers to spend more for it, has also given Apple’s Mac computers a boost.
But under the direction of Apple’s chief operating officer, Tim Cook, the company had continued to release well-received products during Jobs’ leave, including updated laptops with lower entry-level prices, updated Mac software and a faster iPhone with many longed-for features.
Apple sold more than a million of the new iPhone 3GS during its first three days on the market.
Stock issues
News and rumors about Jobs’ health have sent Apple stock soaring and sinking, but the company has largely kept investors in the dark about the details of the CEO’s condition and care.
Federal rules around what information Apple must disclose to shareholders aren’t specific on the matter of executive health unless the information would affect a reasonable investor’s decision to buy or sell a stock.
by the associated press
Jobs, 54, will work from home on days he doesn’t work from Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, company spokesman Steve Dowling said Monday.
Dowling did not say exactly when Jobs returned to the office.
The state of Jobs’ health and the timing of his return have been watched closely by investors and the media, because few CEOs are considered as instrumental to their companies’ success as Jobs has been to Apple.
He is seen as the visionary behind Apple’s popular iPod music players and the iPhone, which left far more experienced mobile phone makers scrambling to catch up.
The Apple chief was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. He had surgery in 2004 and announced then that he was cured.
Health questions
Last year, Jobs’ dramatic weight loss prompted new questions about his health, which Apple only intensified by saying in December that the CEO would not deliver the opening keynote at the Macworld conference.
In early January, Jobs said in a statement that he was suffering from an easily treated hormone imbalance, but he reversed course less than two weeks later, saying his medical condition was more complex than he thought.
He announced he would take a leave of absence until the end of June.
Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tenn., said last week that Jobs had received a liver transplant.
Medical experts who were not involved in Jobs’ treatment have told The Associated Press that cancer cells not removed in the original surgery could have spread to Jobs’ liver.
The hospital would not say when the transplant took place, but in a statement said Jobs was recovering well and his prognosis is good.
A top producer
Since Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after a 12-month hiatus, the company has expanded from a niche computer maker to become the top producer of portable media players and an increasingly important player in the cell phone business.
Job’s insistence on elegant design, and his ability to persuade consumers to spend more for it, has also given Apple’s Mac computers a boost.
But under the direction of Apple’s chief operating officer, Tim Cook, the company had continued to release well-received products during Jobs’ leave, including updated laptops with lower entry-level prices, updated Mac software and a faster iPhone with many longed-for features.
Apple sold more than a million of the new iPhone 3GS during its first three days on the market.
Stock issues
News and rumors about Jobs’ health have sent Apple stock soaring and sinking, but the company has largely kept investors in the dark about the details of the CEO’s condition and care.
Federal rules around what information Apple must disclose to shareholders aren’t specific on the matter of executive health unless the information would affect a reasonable investor’s decision to buy or sell a stock.
by the associated press
Sunday, June 21, 2009
FCC exclusive cell phone deals
NEW YORK (AP) — Regulators will investigate whether exclusive cell phone deals, such as the one that locks the iPhone to AT&T, are good for consumers.
The acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Copps, has instructed the commission's staff to review exclusivity arrangements.
"In the fast-changing wireless handset market ... we must ensure that consumers are able to reap the benefits that a robust and innovative competitive marketplace can bestow," Copps said Thursday at an industry conference in Washington.
Carriers generally negotiate exclusive deals that last six months to a year, after which other carriers can also sell the phone model to their customers. By launching with only one carrier, the manufacturer gets a higher price or extra promotional spending on the phone.
Apple Inc.'s iPhone is a much-noted exception. Dallas-based AT&T Inc. has been the sole U.S. carrier since Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple launched the first model two years ago, frustrating consumers who want to use it on another carrier.
Handset exclusivity was one of the subjects of a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing this week.
Barbara Esbin, senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a think tank that generally opposes government intervention, told the committee that exclusive arrangements help manufacturers bring new devices to market quickly and gives the carriers incentives to promote and subsidize them.
Competing U.S. carriers have found touch-screen phones from other manufacturers to compete with the iPhone, but none has come close to equaling that phone's cachet. The third model, the 3G S, went on sale Friday.
Verizon Wireless offered a few months ago to shorten its exclusive periods for new cell phones from LG and Samsung to six months, from as long as a year, to give small rural carriers a better chance to sell up-to-date phones.
The rural carriers rejected the offer as insufficient.
by the associated press
The acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Copps, has instructed the commission's staff to review exclusivity arrangements.
"In the fast-changing wireless handset market ... we must ensure that consumers are able to reap the benefits that a robust and innovative competitive marketplace can bestow," Copps said Thursday at an industry conference in Washington.
Carriers generally negotiate exclusive deals that last six months to a year, after which other carriers can also sell the phone model to their customers. By launching with only one carrier, the manufacturer gets a higher price or extra promotional spending on the phone.
Apple Inc.'s iPhone is a much-noted exception. Dallas-based AT&T Inc. has been the sole U.S. carrier since Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple launched the first model two years ago, frustrating consumers who want to use it on another carrier.
Handset exclusivity was one of the subjects of a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hearing this week.
Barbara Esbin, senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a think tank that generally opposes government intervention, told the committee that exclusive arrangements help manufacturers bring new devices to market quickly and gives the carriers incentives to promote and subsidize them.
Competing U.S. carriers have found touch-screen phones from other manufacturers to compete with the iPhone, but none has come close to equaling that phone's cachet. The third model, the 3G S, went on sale Friday.
Verizon Wireless offered a few months ago to shorten its exclusive periods for new cell phones from LG and Samsung to six months, from as long as a year, to give small rural carriers a better chance to sell up-to-date phones.
The rural carriers rejected the offer as insufficient.
by the associated press
Friday, June 19, 2009
Nestle issues recall on cookie product
NEW YORK — Federal authorities are investigating a new outbreak of a bacteria-triggered illness, this time related to a sweet treat treasured by the heartbroken and children-at-heart — packaged raw cookie dough.
The federal Centers for Disease Control said its preliminary investigation shows "a strong association” between eating raw refrigerated cookie dough made by Nestle and the illnesses of 65 people in 29 states whose lab results have turned up E. coli bacteria since March.
About 25 of those people have been hospitalized, but no one has died. E. coli is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in the most severe cases, kidney failure.
Nestle USA recalled all of its Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advised consumers to throw away any Nestle Toll House cookie dough products in their homes and asked retailers, restaurateurs and other foodservice operations not to sell or serve any of the refrigerated cookie dough.
Customers also can return any recalled product where they bought it for a full refund. The recall does not affect other Toll House products, including ice cream that contains raw Toll House dough.
"This has been a very quickly moving situation,” said Roz O’Hearn, spokeswoman for Nestle’s baking division, adding the company took action within 24 hours of learning of the health problem.
Spokeswoman Laurie MacDonald for Nestle USA in Glendale, Calif., a unit of Switzerland-based Nestle SA, said the company has temporarily stopped making the refrigerated dough products while the FDA investigates its factory.
"We hope to resume production as soon as possible,” she said.
41% market share
Nestle holds a 41 percent share of the prepared cookie dough market.
The recall includes refrigerated cookie bar dough, cookie dough tubs, cookie dough tubes, limited edition cookie dough items, seasonal cookie dough and Ultimates cookie bar dough. Nestle said about 300,000 cases of Nestle Toll House cookie dough are affected by the recall, which covers chocolate chip dough, gingerbread, sugar, peanut butter dough and other varieties.
The FDA said consumers should not try to cook the dough, even though it would be safe to eat if cooked, because the bacteria could move to their hands and to countertops and other cooking surfaces.
Raw cookie dough is so popular that it has spawned more than 40 groups on Facebook, complete with postings that read like love notes.
by the associated press
The federal Centers for Disease Control said its preliminary investigation shows "a strong association” between eating raw refrigerated cookie dough made by Nestle and the illnesses of 65 people in 29 states whose lab results have turned up E. coli bacteria since March.
About 25 of those people have been hospitalized, but no one has died. E. coli is a potentially deadly bacterium that can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in the most severe cases, kidney failure.
Nestle USA recalled all of its Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration advised consumers to throw away any Nestle Toll House cookie dough products in their homes and asked retailers, restaurateurs and other foodservice operations not to sell or serve any of the refrigerated cookie dough.
Customers also can return any recalled product where they bought it for a full refund. The recall does not affect other Toll House products, including ice cream that contains raw Toll House dough.
"This has been a very quickly moving situation,” said Roz O’Hearn, spokeswoman for Nestle’s baking division, adding the company took action within 24 hours of learning of the health problem.
Spokeswoman Laurie MacDonald for Nestle USA in Glendale, Calif., a unit of Switzerland-based Nestle SA, said the company has temporarily stopped making the refrigerated dough products while the FDA investigates its factory.
"We hope to resume production as soon as possible,” she said.
41% market share
Nestle holds a 41 percent share of the prepared cookie dough market.
The recall includes refrigerated cookie bar dough, cookie dough tubs, cookie dough tubes, limited edition cookie dough items, seasonal cookie dough and Ultimates cookie bar dough. Nestle said about 300,000 cases of Nestle Toll House cookie dough are affected by the recall, which covers chocolate chip dough, gingerbread, sugar, peanut butter dough and other varieties.
The FDA said consumers should not try to cook the dough, even though it would be safe to eat if cooked, because the bacteria could move to their hands and to countertops and other cooking surfaces.
Raw cookie dough is so popular that it has spawned more than 40 groups on Facebook, complete with postings that read like love notes.
by the associated press
Jobless benefits
WASHINGTON — On the surface, the government seemed to signal Thursday that more Americans are finding jobs: The number of people receiving unemployment aid fell for the first time since January.
Fewer people are receiving jobless aid because more of them have exhausted their standard unemployment benefits, which typically last 26 weeks.
Analysts warn that unemployment will stay high into 2010.
by the associated press
Fewer people are receiving jobless aid because more of them have exhausted their standard unemployment benefits, which typically last 26 weeks.
Analysts warn that unemployment will stay high into 2010.
by the associated press
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Quest ex-CFO is faced with charges
A federal grand jury has charged the former chief financial officer of Oklahoma City-based Quest Energy Partners with fraud, accusing him of taking $1 million in company money for a personal investment.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also has filed a civil suit against the former executive, David Grose, and Quest’s former CEO Jerry Cash, charging both men with securities violations related to an alleged scheme to misappropriate millions of dollars of corporate cash to themselves.
Quest Energy Partners and its affiliate, Quest Resource Corp., have been forced to restate financial reports due to $10 million in unauthorized transfers of company money by Cash to entities he controlled, according to the companies’ regulatory filings.
Cash resigned in August, and Grose was fired in December. Quest sued Cash, who settled the case with a $2.4 million payment, in addition to other considerations.
Nasdaq has notified both companies that their stocks may be removed from the exchange for failing to file financial reports on time. On Wednesday, the companies asked Nasdaq for an extension to July 31.
Quest spokesman Jack Collins said the company hopes to complete its restated financial reports by that time.
The Oklahoma City grand jury claims Grose wired $1 million in Quest Energy funds to a pipe supplier last summer, but minutes later contacted the vendor to cancel the order. Gross, the indictment alleges, told the pipe company to wire the money to a hydrogen fuel technology company. The payment to the hydrogen fuel company was a personal investment, but Grose booked the transaction as a payment for pipe, and Quest took a $1 million loss, the indictment said.
Grose entered a not guilty plea at his arraignment Wednesday. His attorney, Mack Martin, said Grose is looking forward to a trial, where he expects to be exonerated.
"David absolutely denies any wrongdoing whatsoever,” Martin said.
"Officers of publicly-traded companies owe special fiduciary duties to their companies, to investors, and to employees,” U.S. Attorney John C. Richter said. "The vast majority uphold that duty. For those who do not, however, charges like these show that the government has the tools to hold executives accountable for corporate crimes and we won’t hesitate to use them where the evidence warrants it.”
The SEC claims Cash, with the help of Grose, transferred Quest funds to a business he controlled, and concealed the transfers by moving cash back into Quest accounts at the end of each quarter.
The SEC alleges that Cash took progressively greater amounts from Quest over time that he used to support his lavish lifestyle, including spending more than $5 million on his Nichols Hills mansion. Grose was complicit in Cash’s wrongdoing by, among other things, initiating wire transfers to Cash’s company and creating a false cover story to explain the transfers to Quest’s employees and auditors, regulators claim.
If convicted, Grose faces up to 20 years in federal prison on each of the three wire fraud counts and a fine of up to $2 million.
The SEC is seeking financial penalties, repayment of the proceeds taken from the company by Grose and Cash, and to permanently prohibit the men from serving as officers or directors of any public companies.
from the oklahoman
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission also has filed a civil suit against the former executive, David Grose, and Quest’s former CEO Jerry Cash, charging both men with securities violations related to an alleged scheme to misappropriate millions of dollars of corporate cash to themselves.
Quest Energy Partners and its affiliate, Quest Resource Corp., have been forced to restate financial reports due to $10 million in unauthorized transfers of company money by Cash to entities he controlled, according to the companies’ regulatory filings.
Cash resigned in August, and Grose was fired in December. Quest sued Cash, who settled the case with a $2.4 million payment, in addition to other considerations.
Nasdaq has notified both companies that their stocks may be removed from the exchange for failing to file financial reports on time. On Wednesday, the companies asked Nasdaq for an extension to July 31.
Quest spokesman Jack Collins said the company hopes to complete its restated financial reports by that time.
The Oklahoma City grand jury claims Grose wired $1 million in Quest Energy funds to a pipe supplier last summer, but minutes later contacted the vendor to cancel the order. Gross, the indictment alleges, told the pipe company to wire the money to a hydrogen fuel technology company. The payment to the hydrogen fuel company was a personal investment, but Grose booked the transaction as a payment for pipe, and Quest took a $1 million loss, the indictment said.
Grose entered a not guilty plea at his arraignment Wednesday. His attorney, Mack Martin, said Grose is looking forward to a trial, where he expects to be exonerated.
"David absolutely denies any wrongdoing whatsoever,” Martin said.
"Officers of publicly-traded companies owe special fiduciary duties to their companies, to investors, and to employees,” U.S. Attorney John C. Richter said. "The vast majority uphold that duty. For those who do not, however, charges like these show that the government has the tools to hold executives accountable for corporate crimes and we won’t hesitate to use them where the evidence warrants it.”
The SEC claims Cash, with the help of Grose, transferred Quest funds to a business he controlled, and concealed the transfers by moving cash back into Quest accounts at the end of each quarter.
The SEC alleges that Cash took progressively greater amounts from Quest over time that he used to support his lavish lifestyle, including spending more than $5 million on his Nichols Hills mansion. Grose was complicit in Cash’s wrongdoing by, among other things, initiating wire transfers to Cash’s company and creating a false cover story to explain the transfers to Quest’s employees and auditors, regulators claim.
If convicted, Grose faces up to 20 years in federal prison on each of the three wire fraud counts and a fine of up to $2 million.
The SEC is seeking financial penalties, repayment of the proceeds taken from the company by Grose and Cash, and to permanently prohibit the men from serving as officers or directors of any public companies.
from the oklahoman
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Nuclear plant owners not saving enough
VERNON, Vt. — The companies that own almost half the nation’s nuclear reactors are not setting aside enough money to dismantle them, and many may sit idle for decades and pose safety and security risks as a result, an Associated Press investigation has found.
The shortfalls are caused not by fluctuating appetites for nuclear power but by the stock market and other investments, which have suffered huge losses over the past year and damaged the plants’ savings, and by the soaring costs of decommissioning.
At 19 nuclear plants, owners have won approval to idle reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants.
But mothballing reactors or shutting them down inadequately could pose dangerous health, environmental or security problems. In the worst cases, generally considered unlikely, risks include radioactive waste leaking from idled plants into groundwater, airborne releases or a terrorist attack.
Investments suffer
During the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs have soared by more than $4.6 billion because rising energy and labor costs, while the investment funds that are supposed to pay for shutting down plants have lost $4.4 billion in the battered stock market.
The power companies have been hammered by the same declining market returns as colleges, companies and private investors. Industry critics say reactor owners weren’t saving enough even before the financial collapse, and that federal regulators have not held the industry to a high enough standard.
by the associated press
The shortfalls are caused not by fluctuating appetites for nuclear power but by the stock market and other investments, which have suffered huge losses over the past year and damaged the plants’ savings, and by the soaring costs of decommissioning.
At 19 nuclear plants, owners have won approval to idle reactors for as long as 60 years, presumably enough time to allow investments to recover and eventually pay for dismantling the plants.
But mothballing reactors or shutting them down inadequately could pose dangerous health, environmental or security problems. In the worst cases, generally considered unlikely, risks include radioactive waste leaking from idled plants into groundwater, airborne releases or a terrorist attack.
Investments suffer
During the past two years, estimates of dismantling costs have soared by more than $4.6 billion because rising energy and labor costs, while the investment funds that are supposed to pay for shutting down plants have lost $4.4 billion in the battered stock market.
The power companies have been hammered by the same declining market returns as colleges, companies and private investors. Industry critics say reactor owners weren’t saving enough even before the financial collapse, and that federal regulators have not held the industry to a high enough standard.
by the associated press
Matrixx Initiatives’ Zicam products might affect loss of smell
WASHINGTON — Consumers should stop using Zicam Cold Remedy nasal gel and related products because they can permanently damage the sense of smell, federal health regulators said Tuesday.
The over-the-counter products contain zinc, an ingredient scientists say may damage nerves in the nose needed for smell. The other products affected by the Food and Drug Administration’s announcement are adult and kid-size Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Swabs.
The FDA says about 130 consumers have reported a loss of smell after using Matrixx Initiatives’ Zicam products since 1999. Shares of the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company plunged to a 52-week low after the FDA announcement, losing more than half their value.
"Loss of the sense of smell is potentially life threatening and may be permanent,” said Dr. Charles Lee, of FDA’s compliance division. "People without the sense of smell may not be able to detect dangerous life situations, such as gas leaks or something burning in the house.”
Matrixx defended the safety of its products, but said it may remove them from the market.
Zicam was never formally approved because it is part of a small group of remedies that are not required to undergo federal review before launching. Known as homeopathic products, the formulations often contain herbs, minerals and flowers.
by the associated press
The over-the-counter products contain zinc, an ingredient scientists say may damage nerves in the nose needed for smell. The other products affected by the Food and Drug Administration’s announcement are adult and kid-size Zicam Cold Remedy Nasal Swabs.
The FDA says about 130 consumers have reported a loss of smell after using Matrixx Initiatives’ Zicam products since 1999. Shares of the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company plunged to a 52-week low after the FDA announcement, losing more than half their value.
"Loss of the sense of smell is potentially life threatening and may be permanent,” said Dr. Charles Lee, of FDA’s compliance division. "People without the sense of smell may not be able to detect dangerous life situations, such as gas leaks or something burning in the house.”
Matrixx defended the safety of its products, but said it may remove them from the market.
Zicam was never formally approved because it is part of a small group of remedies that are not required to undergo federal review before launching. Known as homeopathic products, the formulations often contain herbs, minerals and flowers.
by the associated press
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Texas authorities looking for help finding who fired model rocket at airplane
HOUSTON — Crime Stoppers is offering a reward for information on what appeared to be a model rocket that barely missed a Continental Express jet late last month.
The rocket went past the plane after it took off from Bush Intercontinental Airport about 8 p.m. on May 29, officials said.
Investigators determined it lifted off somewhere in Chambers County, but they have been unable to find out who launched it.
Ken DeFoor, chief deputy of the Liberty County sheriff’s office, said the incident has generated several leads his office has turned over to the FBI. He declined to elaborate.
The jet carried four crew members and 29 passengers. As the jet climbed to 13,000 feet shortly after takeoff, the pilot and first officer reported seeing the rocket soaring toward them. It appeared to pass about 100 feet below the jetliner.
The crew members described the rocket as being about five feet to seven feet long with triangular tail fins. They said it was white.
Anyone with any information about the incident is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at (713) 222-8477 or crime-stoppers.org.
Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for any information that leads to the identification, arrest and/or charging of any suspect involved in criminal activity related to the incident.
from the oklahoman
The rocket went past the plane after it took off from Bush Intercontinental Airport about 8 p.m. on May 29, officials said.
Investigators determined it lifted off somewhere in Chambers County, but they have been unable to find out who launched it.
Ken DeFoor, chief deputy of the Liberty County sheriff’s office, said the incident has generated several leads his office has turned over to the FBI. He declined to elaborate.
The jet carried four crew members and 29 passengers. As the jet climbed to 13,000 feet shortly after takeoff, the pilot and first officer reported seeing the rocket soaring toward them. It appeared to pass about 100 feet below the jetliner.
The crew members described the rocket as being about five feet to seven feet long with triangular tail fins. They said it was white.
Anyone with any information about the incident is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at (713) 222-8477 or crime-stoppers.org.
Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for any information that leads to the identification, arrest and/or charging of any suspect involved in criminal activity related to the incident.
from the oklahoman
Monday, June 15, 2009
Homebuilder mis-step
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The National Association of Home Builders says its housing market index slipped by one point in June, reflecting many builders' uncertainty about when their business prospects might improve.
The Washington-based trade association said Monday the index fell to 15 — the first decline since January, when the index dropped to an all-time low of 8.
Index readings lower than 50 indicate negative sentiment about the market.
The report reflects a survey of 548 residential developers nationwide, tracking builders' perceptions of market conditions.
The index readings for current sales conditions and traffic by prospective buyers remained unchanged from May. The reading on expectations for sales over the next six months dropped by a point.
by the associated press
The Washington-based trade association said Monday the index fell to 15 — the first decline since January, when the index dropped to an all-time low of 8.
Index readings lower than 50 indicate negative sentiment about the market.
The report reflects a survey of 548 residential developers nationwide, tracking builders' perceptions of market conditions.
The index readings for current sales conditions and traffic by prospective buyers remained unchanged from May. The reading on expectations for sales over the next six months dropped by a point.
by the associated press
With Russian official Dollar gains
NEW YORK (AP) — The dollar steamed sharply higher Monday after the Russian finance minister voiced his support for the currency, even as the U.S. government said foreigners' dollar-denominated holdings fell in April. Sliding stock markets also fueled dollar buyers.
The 16-nation euro dropped to its lowest point in almost a month, trading at 1.3788 late Monday from 1.4010 late Friday. The British pound, meanwhile, slid to $1.6342 from $1.6450.
However, the dollar slipped to 97.65 Japanese yen from 98.24 yen.
Russian Finance Minister Kudrin said over the weekend it was too early to think of a reserve-currency alternative to the dollar, said UBS analysts, and he said the greenback was in good shape before the start of a meeting of Russian, Chinese, Indian and Brazilian officials on Tuesday. His comments gave support to the buck, even though Russian President Dmitry Medvedev could make a call for a reserve currency alternative for the dollar at the summit on Tuesday.
Officials from Russia, China and Brazil have said in recent weeks that they would invest in bonds issued by the International Monetary Fund to diversify their dollar-heavy currency reserves as they fear record U.S. government budget deficits, which could debase the value of their holdings.
China is Washington's biggest foreign creditor, holding an estimated $1 trillion in U.S. government debt. On Friday, a Chinese government official said the country had no plan to stop buying Treasurys, calming fears of sliding demand for the dollars used to buy U.S. government debt.
However, the Treasury Department on Monday said that foreigners, including China and Japan, the two biggest buyers of U.S. government debt, cut their Treasury holdings in April.
Net purchases of stocks, bonds and Treasurys by foreigners fell to $11.2 billion in April from $55.4 billion in March.
China cut its government debt holdings to $763.5 billion in April from $767.9 billion in March.
Foreigners are cutting their long-term dollar holdings — the safety buy that had driven the buck higher last winter — and reinvesting in riskier non-U.S. assets, said Bank of New York Mellon senior currency strategist Michael Woolfolk. On Monday, however, that news didn't hurt the dollar's upward turn as nervous investors stuck with the currency amid falling stock markets.
The Dow Jones industrials closed down 2.1 percent, while the broader S&P 500 lost 2.4 percent to 923.72.
The dollar's rise helped tamp down the rally in crude futures and other commodities, such as precious metals and agricultural goods.
Over the weekend, meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had suggested Washington would remain committed to its stimulus efforts at a summit of finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries. But the meeting did little to find solutions to banking and credit problems in Europe, said Brown Brothers Harriman analysts in a note to investors Monday. Stress-testing banks, as the Federal Reserve did in the U.S., is more complicated for the euro zone, as each country has its own regulatory structure.
On Monday, the European Central Bank said the worldwide financial crisis would continue to hit banks in the euro zone. It estimated another $283 billion in write-downs stemming from bad loans by the end of next year. Banks in the region wrote off 375 billion euros — now valued at $526 billion — in bad assets in 2008 alone.
The European Union's statistics agency on Monday also said its member countries saw a record drop in payrolls in the first three months of the year, losing 1.9 million jobs.
In other trading Monday, the dollar rose to 1.0928 Swiss francs from 1.0793 francs late Friday, and gained to 1.1337 Canadian dollars from 1.1184.
The dollar gained broadly, rising against the Australian, New Zealand, Brazilian, Mexican and South Korean currencies.
by the wall street journal
The 16-nation euro dropped to its lowest point in almost a month, trading at 1.3788 late Monday from 1.4010 late Friday. The British pound, meanwhile, slid to $1.6342 from $1.6450.
However, the dollar slipped to 97.65 Japanese yen from 98.24 yen.
Russian Finance Minister Kudrin said over the weekend it was too early to think of a reserve-currency alternative to the dollar, said UBS analysts, and he said the greenback was in good shape before the start of a meeting of Russian, Chinese, Indian and Brazilian officials on Tuesday. His comments gave support to the buck, even though Russian President Dmitry Medvedev could make a call for a reserve currency alternative for the dollar at the summit on Tuesday.
Officials from Russia, China and Brazil have said in recent weeks that they would invest in bonds issued by the International Monetary Fund to diversify their dollar-heavy currency reserves as they fear record U.S. government budget deficits, which could debase the value of their holdings.
China is Washington's biggest foreign creditor, holding an estimated $1 trillion in U.S. government debt. On Friday, a Chinese government official said the country had no plan to stop buying Treasurys, calming fears of sliding demand for the dollars used to buy U.S. government debt.
However, the Treasury Department on Monday said that foreigners, including China and Japan, the two biggest buyers of U.S. government debt, cut their Treasury holdings in April.
Net purchases of stocks, bonds and Treasurys by foreigners fell to $11.2 billion in April from $55.4 billion in March.
China cut its government debt holdings to $763.5 billion in April from $767.9 billion in March.
Foreigners are cutting their long-term dollar holdings — the safety buy that had driven the buck higher last winter — and reinvesting in riskier non-U.S. assets, said Bank of New York Mellon senior currency strategist Michael Woolfolk. On Monday, however, that news didn't hurt the dollar's upward turn as nervous investors stuck with the currency amid falling stock markets.
The Dow Jones industrials closed down 2.1 percent, while the broader S&P 500 lost 2.4 percent to 923.72.
The dollar's rise helped tamp down the rally in crude futures and other commodities, such as precious metals and agricultural goods.
Over the weekend, meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had suggested Washington would remain committed to its stimulus efforts at a summit of finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries. But the meeting did little to find solutions to banking and credit problems in Europe, said Brown Brothers Harriman analysts in a note to investors Monday. Stress-testing banks, as the Federal Reserve did in the U.S., is more complicated for the euro zone, as each country has its own regulatory structure.
On Monday, the European Central Bank said the worldwide financial crisis would continue to hit banks in the euro zone. It estimated another $283 billion in write-downs stemming from bad loans by the end of next year. Banks in the region wrote off 375 billion euros — now valued at $526 billion — in bad assets in 2008 alone.
The European Union's statistics agency on Monday also said its member countries saw a record drop in payrolls in the first three months of the year, losing 1.9 million jobs.
In other trading Monday, the dollar rose to 1.0928 Swiss francs from 1.0793 francs late Friday, and gained to 1.1337 Canadian dollars from 1.1184.
The dollar gained broadly, rising against the Australian, New Zealand, Brazilian, Mexican and South Korean currencies.
by the wall street journal
Fight over Data Domain
For many denizens of Silicon Valley, the bidding war for storage-device maker Data Domain Inc. is more than a takeover battle -- it's a clash of cultures.
On one side: EMC Corp., the Massachusetts-based giant that has dominated the data-storage landscape for years. On the other side: NetApp Inc., a nimble EMC rival based just six miles away from Data Domain in the heart of Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco.
Both companies have bid $30 a share, or about $1.9 billion, for Data Domain, which has an innovative product that companies use to maximize storage capacity and lower costs. EMC's offer is all cash, which often would be preferred over the stock-and-cash mix that NetApp is offering. But Data Domain has so far said it prefers the NetApp deal, saying it "will provide great value."
Some merger experts and West Coast technology workers say there may be another motive in the mix: Silicon Valley companies don't like being taken over by out-of-towners, especially East Coasters like EMC. Twice in its discussions with EMC, Data Domain says in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, its executives discussed "the cultural fit" between the two companies. They rejected EMC meeting proposals.
"There's an East Coast-West Coast thing," says Peter Falvey, an investment banker with Revolution Partners, in Boston, who isn't involved in the battle. He says similar fears developed as Sun Microsystems Inc. workers contemplated reports that their company was about to be acquired by International Business Machines Corp. Sun ended up going to nearby Oracle Corp. for a slightly better price after Sun Chairman Scott McNealy turned to his Valley neighbor.
In Silicon Valley, home to technology giants Google Inc., Intel Corp., and Hewlett-Packard Co., engineers and entrepreneurs say the culture is unique. They say that there are so many opportunities for employees to change employers or get financing for a start-up that companies make an extra effort to keep workers happy. Many Silicon Valley companies think of themselves as fast-moving and adaptive, with fewer rules and egalitarian "flat" management structures. They generally let workers wear what they want and, before the downturn, many offered free lunches and beer on Friday afternoons.
In contrast, East Coast companies such as EMC, Xerox Corp. and IBM are viewed from California as rigid, bureaucratic, slow-moving and obsessed with Wall Street. The East-Coast culture "is coin operated. What's relevant is driving shareholder value. The average Silicon Valley company is passionate about the technology," says one California engineer whose company was acquired by EMC.
Giles McNamee, of McNamee Lawrence & Co., a Boston investment bank that brokers mergers says both EMC and IBM have shown they can successfully acquire Silicon Valley companies in recent years. But Silicon Valley workers "think the sun rises and sets in the Valley," he says. "They tend to have a pretty insular view."
Data Domain declined to comment. On Monday, Data Domain's board urged shareholders to reject EMC's offer and affirmed the deal with NetApp. EMC, meanwhile, reiterated that its all-cash offer is superior.
Dan Warmenhoven, NetApp's chief executive says: "If you really look carefully at the culture of tech companies there is a very different style in internal styles between companies headquartered in the East and ones headquartered out here. People in a West Coast company are often resistant to an East Coast culture."
Mr. Falvey says cultural concerns helped influence Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft Corp.'s overtures, but investment bankers say culture clashes rarely derail a financially attractive deal. Mr. McNamee says geographically-distant acquisitions don't have as many cost-cut opportunities because administrative roles like human resources must be retained.
EMC was concerned enough about the issue to publish an open letter to Data Domain employees in the San Jose Mercury News assuring them that EMC is "very mindful of culture -- respecting and preserving the various cultures that made the companies we acquired successful in the first place." In the letter, signed by Chief Executive Joe Tucci, EMC noted that it has 6,000 employees in the region after acquiring 11 Silicon Valley companies since 2002.
East Coast companies have sometimes acquired West Coast firms with disastrous results. IBM bought Sequent Computer Corp. of Beaverton, Ore., in 1999 for $810 million. Three years later it closed the operation.
On the other hand, EMC's 2002 acquisition of Silicon Valley's VMware Inc., a software company, has resulted in huge growth for VMware and a partial spinout that sharply boosted EMC's market value.
But last year, Mr. Tucci fired VMware co-founder and chief executive Diane Greene, who was widely admired as a successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valle after VMware growth slowed and its stock fell. Her husband and co-founder, Stanford Professor Mendel Rosenblum subsequently resigned as did some other executives. VMware has regrouped and begun to deliver new products under new management.
EMC and NetApp crave Data Domain because of a technology called "deduplication" that prevents data from being stored more than once in a computer system -- a surprisingly common occurrence that eats up costly space. NetApp announced an agreement to buy Data Domain for $25 a share or $1.5 billion in cash and stock in May. A few days later, EMC made its $30-a-share tender offer. NetApp then offered $30 in cash and stock. The shares are trading over $30 now, indicating investors believe someone will up the bid.
Some investors predict that will be EMC, which has ample ammunition with $7.25 billion in cash. Analysts say that if EMC makes a superior financial offer, the Data Domain board would be hard-pressed to turn it down because of potential liability from shareholder suits.
Data Domain is less than eight years old, and still has the feel of a start-up. Engineers dress casually and work long hours. Many of the executives are professional managers who joined as the company grew.
Jack Mollen, executive vice president, human relations, at EMC, says he is sensitive to cultural concerns. "We know they have a lot of things that are sacred to them," he says.
Mr. Mollen says that with 50 acquisitions in the last five years, EMC has learned to be flexible and let different units keep elements of their culture. He says that some acquired Silicon Valley units continue to have Friday afternoon beer bashes, even though alcohol isn't served at headquarters in Massachusetts. As it acquired California companies, "We changed the culture of EMC," Mr. Mollen says. "For years we wore ties to work except after Memorial Day. Now we say, 'dress appropriately.'"
from the wall street journal
On one side: EMC Corp., the Massachusetts-based giant that has dominated the data-storage landscape for years. On the other side: NetApp Inc., a nimble EMC rival based just six miles away from Data Domain in the heart of Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco.
Both companies have bid $30 a share, or about $1.9 billion, for Data Domain, which has an innovative product that companies use to maximize storage capacity and lower costs. EMC's offer is all cash, which often would be preferred over the stock-and-cash mix that NetApp is offering. But Data Domain has so far said it prefers the NetApp deal, saying it "will provide great value."
Some merger experts and West Coast technology workers say there may be another motive in the mix: Silicon Valley companies don't like being taken over by out-of-towners, especially East Coasters like EMC. Twice in its discussions with EMC, Data Domain says in Securities and Exchange Commission filings, its executives discussed "the cultural fit" between the two companies. They rejected EMC meeting proposals.
"There's an East Coast-West Coast thing," says Peter Falvey, an investment banker with Revolution Partners, in Boston, who isn't involved in the battle. He says similar fears developed as Sun Microsystems Inc. workers contemplated reports that their company was about to be acquired by International Business Machines Corp. Sun ended up going to nearby Oracle Corp. for a slightly better price after Sun Chairman Scott McNealy turned to his Valley neighbor.
In Silicon Valley, home to technology giants Google Inc., Intel Corp., and Hewlett-Packard Co., engineers and entrepreneurs say the culture is unique. They say that there are so many opportunities for employees to change employers or get financing for a start-up that companies make an extra effort to keep workers happy. Many Silicon Valley companies think of themselves as fast-moving and adaptive, with fewer rules and egalitarian "flat" management structures. They generally let workers wear what they want and, before the downturn, many offered free lunches and beer on Friday afternoons.
In contrast, East Coast companies such as EMC, Xerox Corp. and IBM are viewed from California as rigid, bureaucratic, slow-moving and obsessed with Wall Street. The East-Coast culture "is coin operated. What's relevant is driving shareholder value. The average Silicon Valley company is passionate about the technology," says one California engineer whose company was acquired by EMC.
Giles McNamee, of McNamee Lawrence & Co., a Boston investment bank that brokers mergers says both EMC and IBM have shown they can successfully acquire Silicon Valley companies in recent years. But Silicon Valley workers "think the sun rises and sets in the Valley," he says. "They tend to have a pretty insular view."
Data Domain declined to comment. On Monday, Data Domain's board urged shareholders to reject EMC's offer and affirmed the deal with NetApp. EMC, meanwhile, reiterated that its all-cash offer is superior.
Dan Warmenhoven, NetApp's chief executive says: "If you really look carefully at the culture of tech companies there is a very different style in internal styles between companies headquartered in the East and ones headquartered out here. People in a West Coast company are often resistant to an East Coast culture."
Mr. Falvey says cultural concerns helped influence Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft Corp.'s overtures, but investment bankers say culture clashes rarely derail a financially attractive deal. Mr. McNamee says geographically-distant acquisitions don't have as many cost-cut opportunities because administrative roles like human resources must be retained.
EMC was concerned enough about the issue to publish an open letter to Data Domain employees in the San Jose Mercury News assuring them that EMC is "very mindful of culture -- respecting and preserving the various cultures that made the companies we acquired successful in the first place." In the letter, signed by Chief Executive Joe Tucci, EMC noted that it has 6,000 employees in the region after acquiring 11 Silicon Valley companies since 2002.
East Coast companies have sometimes acquired West Coast firms with disastrous results. IBM bought Sequent Computer Corp. of Beaverton, Ore., in 1999 for $810 million. Three years later it closed the operation.
On the other hand, EMC's 2002 acquisition of Silicon Valley's VMware Inc., a software company, has resulted in huge growth for VMware and a partial spinout that sharply boosted EMC's market value.
But last year, Mr. Tucci fired VMware co-founder and chief executive Diane Greene, who was widely admired as a successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valle after VMware growth slowed and its stock fell. Her husband and co-founder, Stanford Professor Mendel Rosenblum subsequently resigned as did some other executives. VMware has regrouped and begun to deliver new products under new management.
EMC and NetApp crave Data Domain because of a technology called "deduplication" that prevents data from being stored more than once in a computer system -- a surprisingly common occurrence that eats up costly space. NetApp announced an agreement to buy Data Domain for $25 a share or $1.5 billion in cash and stock in May. A few days later, EMC made its $30-a-share tender offer. NetApp then offered $30 in cash and stock. The shares are trading over $30 now, indicating investors believe someone will up the bid.
Some investors predict that will be EMC, which has ample ammunition with $7.25 billion in cash. Analysts say that if EMC makes a superior financial offer, the Data Domain board would be hard-pressed to turn it down because of potential liability from shareholder suits.
Data Domain is less than eight years old, and still has the feel of a start-up. Engineers dress casually and work long hours. Many of the executives are professional managers who joined as the company grew.
Jack Mollen, executive vice president, human relations, at EMC, says he is sensitive to cultural concerns. "We know they have a lot of things that are sacred to them," he says.
Mr. Mollen says that with 50 acquisitions in the last five years, EMC has learned to be flexible and let different units keep elements of their culture. He says that some acquired Silicon Valley units continue to have Friday afternoon beer bashes, even though alcohol isn't served at headquarters in Massachusetts. As it acquired California companies, "We changed the culture of EMC," Mr. Mollen says. "For years we wore ties to work except after Memorial Day. Now we say, 'dress appropriately.'"
from the wall street journal
Maguire Properties
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Facing mounting debt payments and lagging demand for office space, Maguire Properties Inc. has sold a 19-story office high rise in Southern California to another real estate investment firm for $160 million — a discount of roughly 35 percent.
Maguire, which owns and operates office buildings, sold the 3161 Michelson building in Irvine, Calif., to New York-based Emmes Group of Cos., the companies said Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported the sale on Sunday.
The transaction, which closed Friday, represents a sharp discount from the $245 million the building cost to build, suggested Michael Knott, an analyst with Green Street Advisors in Newport Beach, Calif.
"It's a fair price, but I don't think it's a steal by any means," Knott said Monday. "(The buyers) still have to fill it up and rents are under pressure across the entire market."
The deal reflects the pressure commercial property owners are facing across the U.S. The recession has led to higher office and retail vacancies, sapping owners' lease revenue. And many can't refinance the debt on their properties.
In a statement Monday, Maguire said the deal freed it from $165 million in debt that was scheduled to come due in September, among other potential financial obligations.
"We are pleased to close this important transaction, which eliminates our entire obligation under the project loan and significant master lease obligations," Nelson Rising, the company's president and CEO, said.
A company spokeswoman declined to comment on the deal.
The building, which was completed in 2007, has 530,000 square feet of office space and is 60 percent leased with law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Jones Day among its roster of tenants. Maguire had initially tried last summer to find a buyer for all the properties in the 5-acre Park Place office park where the building is located, but the effort stalled.
Then Emmes came along, with an offer to buy just the office tower.
"It's very difficult to buy in markets like this and it's even more difficult to sell because there are so few buyers," Emmes CEO Andrew Davidoff said. "In this particular case, what we saw was an opportunity to acquire what we believe to be the best asset in this market place at an attractive price with reasonably good financing."
Emmes financed the deal with a $120 million loan from EuroHypo AG, the same group of lenders that held Maguire's debt on the property, Davidoff said.
The real estate firm came up with the balance of the purchase price and raised additional capital to remodel space for new tenants, he said.
In a separate statement Monday, Maguire said it might default on loan payments for a group of buildings in Irvine dubbed the Quintana Campus.
Maguire, which has a 20 percent stake in the joint venture that owns the office complex, said rental income from the property plunged after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, operating as receiver for the failed Washington Mutual, relinquished the majority of its lease.
Maguire said it has begun negotiations with a special servicer in hopes of reworking the loan, which matures December 2011.
Shares of Maguire added 50 cents, or more than 46 percent, to $1.57 on Monday.
by the associated press
Maguire, which owns and operates office buildings, sold the 3161 Michelson building in Irvine, Calif., to New York-based Emmes Group of Cos., the companies said Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported the sale on Sunday.
The transaction, which closed Friday, represents a sharp discount from the $245 million the building cost to build, suggested Michael Knott, an analyst with Green Street Advisors in Newport Beach, Calif.
"It's a fair price, but I don't think it's a steal by any means," Knott said Monday. "(The buyers) still have to fill it up and rents are under pressure across the entire market."
The deal reflects the pressure commercial property owners are facing across the U.S. The recession has led to higher office and retail vacancies, sapping owners' lease revenue. And many can't refinance the debt on their properties.
In a statement Monday, Maguire said the deal freed it from $165 million in debt that was scheduled to come due in September, among other potential financial obligations.
"We are pleased to close this important transaction, which eliminates our entire obligation under the project loan and significant master lease obligations," Nelson Rising, the company's president and CEO, said.
A company spokeswoman declined to comment on the deal.
The building, which was completed in 2007, has 530,000 square feet of office space and is 60 percent leased with law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Jones Day among its roster of tenants. Maguire had initially tried last summer to find a buyer for all the properties in the 5-acre Park Place office park where the building is located, but the effort stalled.
Then Emmes came along, with an offer to buy just the office tower.
"It's very difficult to buy in markets like this and it's even more difficult to sell because there are so few buyers," Emmes CEO Andrew Davidoff said. "In this particular case, what we saw was an opportunity to acquire what we believe to be the best asset in this market place at an attractive price with reasonably good financing."
Emmes financed the deal with a $120 million loan from EuroHypo AG, the same group of lenders that held Maguire's debt on the property, Davidoff said.
The real estate firm came up with the balance of the purchase price and raised additional capital to remodel space for new tenants, he said.
In a separate statement Monday, Maguire said it might default on loan payments for a group of buildings in Irvine dubbed the Quintana Campus.
Maguire, which has a 20 percent stake in the joint venture that owns the office complex, said rental income from the property plunged after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, operating as receiver for the failed Washington Mutual, relinquished the majority of its lease.
Maguire said it has begun negotiations with a special servicer in hopes of reworking the loan, which matures December 2011.
Shares of Maguire added 50 cents, or more than 46 percent, to $1.57 on Monday.
by the associated press
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Collision between Earth and Venus
(06-10) 20:40 PDT -- From chaos we all began, and to chaos we'll all return, but not for a very, very long time - 5 billion years or so, more or less.
In the journal Nature today, two French scientists, using arcane mathematical models, predict that in the distant future, the Earth and planet after planet will collide with each other as an inevitable part of the solar system's long-term evolution.
For many millennia, the scientists say, the orbits of the solar system's eight planets will remain stable, just as they are today, but eventually small eccentricities in their flight paths around the sun could cause Mercury, Mars, Venus and Earth to smash into each other, either one at a time or all at once - the ultimate chaotic disaster.
But because that predicted chaos is so far in the future, the scenario actually "sounds a note of definite cheer," and the planets will be safe for a long, long time, said Gregory Laughlin, an astrophysicist at UC Santa Cruz whose written commentary accompanies the French scientists' report in Nature.
Inner planets stable
For one thing, Laughlin noted, the prophets of eventual doom - astronomer Jacques Laskar and computer engineer Mickael Gastineau of France's Paris Observatory - calculate that the odds are 99-to-1 that the orbits of the four inner planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars - will remain stable for the full 5 billion years.
The time frame coincides with accepted theory that by the end of that same 5 billion years the sun will have burned up its hydrogen and in a cooler state will inflate itself into what's called a red giant star, engulfing the entire inner solar system while the planets are still colliding.
So, either way, the planets of the inner solar system are safe for another 5 billion years, according to Laughlin.
On the other hand, the great "gas giants" of the outer solar system - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - are extremely stable in their orbits, so they could remain where they are for a much longer time - a billion billion years or so - that's a 1 with 18 zeroes - according to Laughlin.
In an e-mail from Paris, Laskar said he and Gastineau, who wrote the computer codes for their calculations, sifted through 2,501 possible constructions of planetary orbits in the far future and found that "only a single one led to possible encounters of Earth and either Venus or Mars." But other scenarios in the computer calculations by Laskar and Gastineau depicted a variety of other inner solar system collisions, including Mercury smashing into Venus and Mercury even colliding with the sun, Laskar said.
'Finally brings closure'
The scientists and their calculation of the solar system's ultimate future "finally brings closure to one of the most illustrious and long-running problems in astronomy," Laughlin said, referring to the mystery of the solar system's ultimate fate. "With 99 percent certainty, we can rely on the clockwork of the celestial rhythm - but with the remaining 1 percent, we are afforded a vicarious thrill of danger."
Erik Asphaug, a planetary scientist at UC Santa Cruz, has long studied the tumultuous time nearly 5 billion years ago, when the huge ring of dust and rocks surrounding the early sun was gradually clumping into the first planets. Asphaug said the French scientists' findings are by no means outlandish.
"It's not a crazy idea that our planets now may be in the second stage in the evolution of the solar system," he said.
As to the past, Asphaug and his colleagues published a paper in Nature three years ago entitled "Hit-and-run planetary collisions" that pictured a time around 4.6 billion years ago when hundreds of "planetary embryos" as large as Mars were colliding with each other and with Jupiter at random speeds.
Chaos period
Ultimately, the Earth and the other three inner planets formed, while the remaining junk became the rocky objects of the asteroid belt - all during a time period of 10 million to 100 million years, Asphaug and his colleagues calculated.
Asphaug and Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., have also proposed that during that time of chaos between 4.6 billion and 4.5 billion years ago, an unknown giant object - perhaps the size of Mars - collided with the partly formed Earth and ripped off a huge chunk of it - a chunk that became the iron-poor moon while the Earth, still partially melted from the impact, assumed its present shape and resumed its stately orbit about the sun - the orbit we know today.
from San Francisco Chronicle
In the journal Nature today, two French scientists, using arcane mathematical models, predict that in the distant future, the Earth and planet after planet will collide with each other as an inevitable part of the solar system's long-term evolution.
For many millennia, the scientists say, the orbits of the solar system's eight planets will remain stable, just as they are today, but eventually small eccentricities in their flight paths around the sun could cause Mercury, Mars, Venus and Earth to smash into each other, either one at a time or all at once - the ultimate chaotic disaster.
But because that predicted chaos is so far in the future, the scenario actually "sounds a note of definite cheer," and the planets will be safe for a long, long time, said Gregory Laughlin, an astrophysicist at UC Santa Cruz whose written commentary accompanies the French scientists' report in Nature.
Inner planets stable
For one thing, Laughlin noted, the prophets of eventual doom - astronomer Jacques Laskar and computer engineer Mickael Gastineau of France's Paris Observatory - calculate that the odds are 99-to-1 that the orbits of the four inner planets - Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars - will remain stable for the full 5 billion years.
The time frame coincides with accepted theory that by the end of that same 5 billion years the sun will have burned up its hydrogen and in a cooler state will inflate itself into what's called a red giant star, engulfing the entire inner solar system while the planets are still colliding.
So, either way, the planets of the inner solar system are safe for another 5 billion years, according to Laughlin.
On the other hand, the great "gas giants" of the outer solar system - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - are extremely stable in their orbits, so they could remain where they are for a much longer time - a billion billion years or so - that's a 1 with 18 zeroes - according to Laughlin.
In an e-mail from Paris, Laskar said he and Gastineau, who wrote the computer codes for their calculations, sifted through 2,501 possible constructions of planetary orbits in the far future and found that "only a single one led to possible encounters of Earth and either Venus or Mars." But other scenarios in the computer calculations by Laskar and Gastineau depicted a variety of other inner solar system collisions, including Mercury smashing into Venus and Mercury even colliding with the sun, Laskar said.
'Finally brings closure'
The scientists and their calculation of the solar system's ultimate future "finally brings closure to one of the most illustrious and long-running problems in astronomy," Laughlin said, referring to the mystery of the solar system's ultimate fate. "With 99 percent certainty, we can rely on the clockwork of the celestial rhythm - but with the remaining 1 percent, we are afforded a vicarious thrill of danger."
Erik Asphaug, a planetary scientist at UC Santa Cruz, has long studied the tumultuous time nearly 5 billion years ago, when the huge ring of dust and rocks surrounding the early sun was gradually clumping into the first planets. Asphaug said the French scientists' findings are by no means outlandish.
"It's not a crazy idea that our planets now may be in the second stage in the evolution of the solar system," he said.
As to the past, Asphaug and his colleagues published a paper in Nature three years ago entitled "Hit-and-run planetary collisions" that pictured a time around 4.6 billion years ago when hundreds of "planetary embryos" as large as Mars were colliding with each other and with Jupiter at random speeds.
Chaos period
Ultimately, the Earth and the other three inner planets formed, while the remaining junk became the rocky objects of the asteroid belt - all during a time period of 10 million to 100 million years, Asphaug and his colleagues calculated.
Asphaug and Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., have also proposed that during that time of chaos between 4.6 billion and 4.5 billion years ago, an unknown giant object - perhaps the size of Mars - collided with the partly formed Earth and ripped off a huge chunk of it - a chunk that became the iron-poor moon while the Earth, still partially melted from the impact, assumed its present shape and resumed its stately orbit about the sun - the orbit we know today.
from San Francisco Chronicle
McAfee and AG
NEW YORK (AP) — Two of the nation's largest security software companies have agreed to clearly detail the terms of subscription renewals and pay penalties totaling $750,000 in a settlement with New York's attorney general.
Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo had accused Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc. of renewing customers' software subscriptions without their knowledge.
The California-based companies produce software to protect computers from an assortment of viruses and spyware.
Symantec said in a statement Wednesday that it has worked to improve the auto-renewal subscription process to "make it more transparent and visible."
McAfee spokesman Mark Cochran said that his company has been working to clarify and improve its auto-renewal subscription process.
He said future enhancements will make it easier for customers to opt-out of the service.
by the associated press
Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo had accused Symantec Corp. and McAfee Inc. of renewing customers' software subscriptions without their knowledge.
The California-based companies produce software to protect computers from an assortment of viruses and spyware.
Symantec said in a statement Wednesday that it has worked to improve the auto-renewal subscription process to "make it more transparent and visible."
McAfee spokesman Mark Cochran said that his company has been working to clarify and improve its auto-renewal subscription process.
He said future enhancements will make it easier for customers to opt-out of the service.
by the associated press
Palm Shares Rise
As Jon Rubinstein gets ready to take the chief executive post at Palm Inc. (PALM), news of his appointment earned a warm reception from Wall Street early Thursday.
After Wednesday's closing bell, Palm said that Chief Executive Ed Colligan is stepping down from the top slot and will be replaced by Rubinstein, the former Apple Inc. (AAPL) executive who has been leading Palm's recent turnaround efforts.
Shares of Palm rose about 6.7% to $12.79 in recent trading.
"We think Palm investors should view this transition as a positive," wrote analysts at JPMorgan in a note to clients. "We believe Mr. Rubinstein has been the guiding force behind the Palm Pre and the webOS."
The executives' moves come just days after Palm launched the Pre smartphone, a key part of a two-year restructuring plan designed to revive Palm's device business.
"Under Rubinstein, an experienced former Apple executive who ran the iPod division, we expect that Palm will focus on innovation and execution, areas where Palm had lost its edge," wrote Lawrence Harris of CL King. "We therefore view the appointment of Rubinstein as CEO positively."
In a statement Wednesday, Palm said Colligan plans to join Elevation Partners, the private equity firm that took a major stake in Palm two years ago. As part of that deal, Elevation installed Rubinstein in the role of executive chairman to lead the development of the Pre and a new operating system, called webOS, that could serve as a foundation of a future family of wireless devices.
Colligan has been with the company for 16 years, having served as chief executive of Handspring before that company's merger with Palm in 2003.
"Ed and I have worked very hard together the past two years," Rubinstein said in the statement. "With Palm webOS we have 10-plus years of innovation ahead of us, and the Palm Pre is already one of the year's hottest new products."
Before joining Palm, Rubinstein spent nearly a decade at Apple, where he served as senior vice president of engineering and helped oversee the development of several of the company's famous Mac computers as well as the popular iPod digital-media player.
from the wall street journal
After Wednesday's closing bell, Palm said that Chief Executive Ed Colligan is stepping down from the top slot and will be replaced by Rubinstein, the former Apple Inc. (AAPL) executive who has been leading Palm's recent turnaround efforts.
Shares of Palm rose about 6.7% to $12.79 in recent trading.
"We think Palm investors should view this transition as a positive," wrote analysts at JPMorgan in a note to clients. "We believe Mr. Rubinstein has been the guiding force behind the Palm Pre and the webOS."
The executives' moves come just days after Palm launched the Pre smartphone, a key part of a two-year restructuring plan designed to revive Palm's device business.
"Under Rubinstein, an experienced former Apple executive who ran the iPod division, we expect that Palm will focus on innovation and execution, areas where Palm had lost its edge," wrote Lawrence Harris of CL King. "We therefore view the appointment of Rubinstein as CEO positively."
In a statement Wednesday, Palm said Colligan plans to join Elevation Partners, the private equity firm that took a major stake in Palm two years ago. As part of that deal, Elevation installed Rubinstein in the role of executive chairman to lead the development of the Pre and a new operating system, called webOS, that could serve as a foundation of a future family of wireless devices.
Colligan has been with the company for 16 years, having served as chief executive of Handspring before that company's merger with Palm in 2003.
"Ed and I have worked very hard together the past two years," Rubinstein said in the statement. "With Palm webOS we have 10-plus years of innovation ahead of us, and the Palm Pre is already one of the year's hottest new products."
Before joining Palm, Rubinstein spent nearly a decade at Apple, where he served as senior vice president of engineering and helped oversee the development of several of the company's famous Mac computers as well as the popular iPod digital-media player.
from the wall street journal
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