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Cisco ($CSCO) beats forecasts, recovery under way

Cisco Systems Inc posted a stronger-than-expected profit for its fiscal first quarter and said business was recovering as customers are buying more network equipment again after cutting back for the past year. Chief Executive John Chambers' revenue forecast for the current quarter also exceeded Wall Street expectations, helping the shares rise 3.7 percent after-hours Wednesday. He also said business conditions likely hit bottom in the early part of this year, its fiscal third quarter. "There will be a good chance we will look back to see that Q3 was in fact the bottom, that Q4 was the tipping point, and the recovery started aggressively in Q1 of fiscal '10," he said. Cisco is the world's top vendor of routers, switches and other network equipment used by global businesses, including telephone companies, as well as governments. (money.cnn.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-05 - Login to vote or comment!

SEC Sues Value Line Inc. ($VALU) and Two Senior Officers for $24 Million Fraudulent Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged New York City-based investment adviser Value Line Inc., its CEO, its former Chief Compliance Officer and its affiliated broker-dealer with defrauding the Value Line family of mutual funds by charging over $24 million in bogus brokerage commissions on mutual fund trades funneled through Value Line's affiliated broker-dealer, Value Line Securities, Inc. (VLS). Value Line, its CEO Jean Buttner, its former Chief Compliance Officer David Henigson, and VLS agreed to settle the SEC's charges by consenting, without admitting or denying the Commission's findings, to the entry of a cease-and-desist order that also requires total payments of nearly $45 million in monetary remedies, including civil penalties. The SEC's order also imposes industry and officer and director bars and other relief. (sec.gov)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-04 - Login to vote or comment!

J.P. Morgan ($JPM) Settles SEC Charges in Jefferson County, Ala. Illegal Payments Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged J.P. Morgan Securities Inc. and two of its former managing directors for their roles in an unlawful payment scheme that enabled them to win business involving municipal bond offerings and swap agreement transactions with Jefferson County, Ala. This is the SEC's second enforcement action arising from Jefferson County's bond offerings and swap transactions. J.P. Morgan Securities settled the SEC's charges and will pay a penalty of $25 million, make a payment of $50 million to Jefferson County, and forfeit more than $647 million in claimed termination fees. (sec.gov)

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1 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-04 - Login to vote or comment!

Cuomo Files Antitrust Suit Against Intel ($INTC)

Following the lead of foreign regulators, New York's attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Intel, the world's largest chip maker. The lawsuit charges that Intel violated state and federal laws by abusing its dominant position in the chip market to keep its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, at bay. Intel has faced similar lawsuits in Asia and Europe, and in May the European Commission fined the company a record $1.45 billion for antitrust violations. These cases have largely revolved around deals Intel has struck with computer makers and retailers that, regulators say, pressured them into picking the company's microprocessors - which serve as the central chip inside personal computers and servers - instead of competing products from A.M.D. "Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market," Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. "Intel's actions not only unfairly restricted ... (Read More)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-04 - Login to vote or comment!

Buffett's ($BRK.B) firm to buy Burlington Northern ($BNI)

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway said Tuesday it will buy railroad operator Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $44 billion. Berkshire (BRKA, Fortune 500), which already has major stake in Burlington Northern, said it would acquire the remaining 77.4% of the company in a cash-and-stock offer worth $100 per share. Widely regarded as both one of the world's richest men and the investment community's more brilliant minds, Buffett called his firm's investment an "all-in wager on the economic future of the United States." "Our country's future prosperity depends on its having an efficient and well-maintained rail system," Buffett said in a statement.

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1 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-03 - Login to vote or comment!

Mac share grew after Windows 7 debut ($AAPL) ($MSFT)

If Microsoft (MSFT) was hoping that the launch of Windows 7 would halt the erosion of its operating system market share - and curb further inroads by Apple (AAPL) - there is no evidence that it's working yet. In fact, preliminary data released overnight Sunday by Net Applications show Mac OS X's Internet share growing by 2.73% in October, from 5.12% to 5.26%. Windows' Internet presence, meanwhile, fell from 92.77% to 92.54% - its ninth loss in 12 months. Windows 7's share, however, was more than 2% even before its Oct. 22 general release, thanks to widespread use of early release versions. By Oct. 30 the Windows 7 portion was 2.85%, largely at the expense of Windows XP, according to a separate Net Applications report. (fortune.cnn.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-03 - Login to vote or comment!

Ford ($F) reports a nearly $1 billion profit

Ford Motor reported a surprise profit for the third quarter Monday, helped by a bump in sales from the Cash for Clunkers program, a reduced cost structure and problems at its U.S. rivals. The only major U.S. automaker not to file for bankruptcy this year earned earned $997 million, or 29 cents a share, compared to a loss of $161 million, or 7 cents a share on that basis a year earlier. Excluding special items, Ford reported a profit of $873 million, or 26 cents a share, in the period. Analysts had been forecasting a loss of 12 cents a share for the quarter on this basis. Ford said it was the first pre-tax operating profit since the start of 2008. (money.cnn.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-02 - Login to vote or comment!

CIT ($CIT) Files for Bankruptcy

Three months ago, the CIT Group barely averted what it considered to be a ruinous bankruptcy filing that would likely have put the 101-year-old lender out of business. On Sunday afternoon, the company filed for Chapter 11 - but under a so-called prepackaged bankruptcy plan that will enable it to emerge from court protection by the end of the year, under the control of its debtholders. (Read the filing after the jump.) The filing, made in a Manhattan federal court, will still mean much pain for many parties, beginning with taxpayers. CIT received $2.3 billion in government aid last year, a bailout that came in the form of preferred stock. That will almost certainly be wiped out in the bankruptcy process, the first realized loss in the government's rescue of the financial system. (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-01 - Login to vote or comment!

I.B.M. ($IBM) Executive in Insider-Trading Case Departs

I.B.M. is getting a little more distance from the Galleon insider-trading case that broke earlier this month. The company posted a brief personnel-change message this morning on its internal Web site. "Bob Moffat, who had been placed on a leave of absence as a result of a U.S. federal investigation into his personal activities, is no longer an employee of IBM," it said. Robert W. Moffat Jr. was a longtime I.B.M. manager, who rose to become a senior vice president of the company in charge of its systems and technology group - chip manufacturing and server computers. In the federal indictment, Mr. Moffat was accused of passing along sensitive company information about I.B.M.'s earnings and the plans of a chip-making partner, Advanced Micro Devices, to a hedge fund broker. Mr. Moffat, through his lawyer, has denied any wrongdoing. (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-01 - Login to vote or comment!

Madoff documents reveal incredulous, unfocused SEC

U.S. securities investigators raised repeated concern over how Bernard Madoff could be running an honest business, but never followed through on the many red flags they uncovered. Hundreds of documents released on Friday by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's portray an agency at times skeptical or dismissive of evidence that the now imprisoned mastermind of the world's largest Ponzi scheme was up to no good. At other times, it appeared the agency knew that goings-on at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC were improper but never followed through on their discoveries or on the allegations of chief whistleblower Harry Markopolos. (reuters.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-11-01 - Login to vote or comment!

SEC Charges Former CFO of TEMPUR PEDIC INTERNATIONAL INC ($TPX) in Insider Trading Ring

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged the former chief financial officer of a San Francisco private investment firm and six of his relatives and friends with insider trading, alleging that their scheme collectively reaped more than $8 million in illicit profits from unlawful trades in the securities of Tempur-pedic International, Inc. and Acxiom Corporation. The SEC alleges that Chen Tang of Fremont, Calif., learned non-public information as the CFO of a private equity fund and from illegal tips by his brother-in-law, who was the CFO of a venture capital fund. Tang and his trading partners, which included his brother and four friends, traded on the inside information through their personal brokerage and retirement accounts, the accounts of their spouses, children and relatives, and the accounts of several privately-offered investment funds that Tang and three of his friends managed. (sec.gov)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-30 - Login to vote or comment!

Senior Polycom ($PLCM) Executive Placed on Leave

A senior vice president and general manager of Polycom, a technology company identified in the insider trading case against the billionaire Raj Rajaratnam and five others, has been placed on administrative leave, according to a public filing by the company. A Polycom spokeswoman declined to say whether the suspension of the executive, Sunil K. Bhalla, was connected to the insider trading case against Galleon Group and Mr. Rajaratnam. Prosecutors say in court filings that a senior Polycom executive passed confidential information to Roomy Khan, the key cooperating witness in the government's case against Galleon. When applying for a job in 2005, Ms. Khan told Mr. Rajaratnam that she could provide him with inside information on Polycom, according to the complaint, which did not name Ms. Khan. Shortly after, Ms. Khan began receiving information from the "Polycom Source" about the company's earnings and sales before they were publicly announced. (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-28 - Login to vote or comment!

AMD ($AMD) shares slide over allegations against ex-CEO

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.N) fell more than 6 percent on Wednesday following reports linking the company's former top executive to the largest U.S. insider trading scheme in history. Hector Ruiz, now chairman of AMD-affiliated spinoff Globalfoundries, a chip maker, was said to have passed on confidential information regarding the spinoff to a hedge fund manager when he was AMD's chief executive, an allegation first reported by the Wall Street Journal. AMD spokesman Michael Silverman said on Wednesday that the company is conducting an investigation into the alleged link. (reuters.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-28 - Login to vote or comment!

Google ($GOOG) Steps Into Another Market: GPS for Phones

In a move that is likely to be seen as an attack on yet another industry, Google on Wednesday introduced a free navigation system for mobile phones that offers turn-by-turn directions. Analysts said that Google's free service, if successful, could erode the sales of GPS navigation devices made by companies like Garmin and TomTom and of navigation services offered by cellphone carriers. "There's no doubt that those guys are going to be disrupted," said Greg Sterling, an analyst with Opus Research. Google has sowed animosity in various business sectors by giving away products and services that others charge for, from digital voice mail to Web analytics tools. But during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday, Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said he didn't think of the new service as disrupting an industry. Instead, he said it is a windfall for consumers that was made possible by the increasing power of smartphones and the growing ubiquity of Internet access. ... (Read More)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-28 - Login to vote or comment!

How Apple ($AAPL) sliced its pie in 2009

Steve Jobs likes to describe Apple's (AAPL) business model as a stool built on three-legs: the Mac, the iPod and the iPhone. But a quick glance at the 2009 Form 10-K, which Apple filed on Tuesday, shows that it is now more like a four-leg chair, with a couple of wedge-shaped pillows on the side. The Mac and iPod still bring in the biggest part of Apple's total sales revenue - 37.7% and 22.1%, respectively - but their shares of the pie are shrinking. The iPhone, meanwhile, is rapidly catching up, thanks to unit sales that grew 78% and GAAP revenue (swelled by deferred revenue dating back to 2007) that grew 266%. The iPhone now accounts for 18.5% of Apple's sales, just behind the iPod. The fourth leg of the chair is the line item Apple calls "other music related products and services" but which is mostly iTunes Store sales - music, video and apps. It continues to grow at a steady pace and now represents about 11% of Apple's net sales. (fortune.cnn.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-28 - Login to vote or comment!

Madoff friend Picower dead, found in pool

Palm Beach billionaire Jeffry Picower, described as the biggest beneficiary of Bernard Madoff's fraud, died on Sunday after he was found lying at the bottom of the pool at his home, police said. Emergency services were called to the oceanside mansion after Picower, 67, was pulled from the pool by his wife and a housekeeper and he was later pronounced dead, the Palm Beach Post reported quoting police and Fire Rescue officials. Police were investigating the death as a drowning, the newspaper said. It reported he was not breathing when he was pulled from the pool and paramedics worked unsuccessfully for 20 minutes at the scene to try to revive him. Picower and his wife, Barbara, were friends of Wall Street financier Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence after pleading guilty to running a $65 billion Ponzi scheme. (reuters.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-26 - Login to vote or comment!

Top 10 highest paid execs ($CHK $MOT $ORCL $FCX $XTO $DIS $GS $AXP)

The government is slashing pay for top execs at firms bailed out by taxpayers, but plenty of people are still raking in the dough. Here are last year's top earners. 1. Aubrey K. McClendon - Chairman and CEO Chesapeake Energy - ($CHK) 2. Sanjay K. Jha Co-CEO Motorola - ($MOT) 3. Lawrence J. Ellison - CEO Oracle - ($ORCL) 4. Richard C. Adkerson - President and CEO Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold ($FCX) 5. Bob R. Simpson - Chairman of the Board XTO Energy ($XTO) 6. Robert A. Iger - President and CEO Walt Disney ($DIS) 7. Lloyd C. Blankfein - Chairman and CEO Goldman Sachs ($GS) 8. Kenneth I. Chenault - Chairman and CEO American Express ($AXP) 9. Jon Winkelried - President and Co-COO Goldman Sachs ($GS) 10. Safra A. Catz - President Oracle ($ORCL) (source: money.cnn.com, Equilar Inc.)

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Related URLs: AMERICAN EXPRESS CO • ORACLE CORP • FREEPORT MCMORAN COPPER & GOLD INC • XTO ENERGY INC • MOTOROLA INC • WALT DISNEY CO/ • GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP INC
2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-25 - Login to vote or comment!

Icahn resigns from Yahoo ($YHOO) board

Activist investor Carl Icahn is resigning from Yahoo Inc.'s board of directors. Icahn, who joined Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500)'s board last summer after trying to take control of the company, said on Friday that there was no longer a need for an activist director at the firm. Since he joined in the summer of 2008, Yahoo named Carol Bartz to replace co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive and then entered into a 10-year partnership with Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) to take on search engine titan Google. (money.cnn.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-25 - Login to vote or comment!

Nokia sues Apple ($AAPL) over iPhone

Cell phone giant Nokia Corp. filed a lawsuit against Apple Inc. on Thursday, alleging that its iPhone infringes on its patents. Specifically, the Finland-based company said Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500)'s iPhone violates 10 patents covering wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption. Nokia, which filed the suit in the Federal District Court of Delaware, attests that the technologies have been used in every iPhone model shipped since the smartphone was introduced in 2007. Nokia (NOK) said it has invested more than 40 billion -- about $60 billion -- in research and development during the past two decades and has created "one of the strongest and broadest" patent portfolios in the industry. (money.cnn.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-24 - Login to vote or comment!

3 AIG execs get bonus OK from pay czar ($AIG)

In the end, pay czar Kenneth Feinberg's hardest case was AIG. The troubled insurer lobbied hard to let three of its executives keep their bonuses. AIG told Feinberg that three executives, who were entitled to large retention payments, were particularly critical to the company's long-term financial success and should be able to keep their bonuses. Feinberg said Thursday that he relented in the case of AIG even though he was able to pare down similar pay clauses at the other six companies in his purview. (money.cnn.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-23 - Login to vote or comment!

Microsoft wows the Street ($MSFT) - Stock soars 10%

Microsoft Corp.'s stock soared early Friday after the software giant reported quarterly sales and profit that fell from year-ago results but easily beat Wall Street's forecasts. Shares of Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) rose more than 10% in early trading. It surged as high as $29.35 at the open, hitting its highest level, on an intraday basis, since June 13, 2008. The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant said its first-quarter net income fell 18% to $3.6 billion, or 40 cents per share, for the period ended Sept. 30. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting earnings of 32 cents per share. (money.cnn.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-23 - Login to vote or comment!

Yahoo's Profit Triples Despite Sales Decline ($YHOO)

For much of her tenure as chief executive of Yahoo, Carol Bartz warned investors to expect a steep decline in the company's business. It has not been as bad as she predicted. Aided by cost-cutting, the sales of some assets and better-than-expected revenue from display ads, Yahoo's net income more than tripled in the third quarter. The results topped analysts forecasts, and investors sent Yahoo's shares sharply higher in after-hours trading. But revenue fell 12 percent, a sign that many advertisers remain nervous about the pace of economic recovery. And the results showed that Yahoo was not benefiting from the budding economic rebound as much as its rival Google. Analysts said that the results were encouraging but cautioned that Ms. Bartz's turnaround plan remained a work in progress. (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-21 - Login to vote or comment!

U.S. to Order Steep Pay Cuts at Firms That Got Most Aid ($BAC, $C, $AIG, $GM)

Responding to the growing furor over the paychecks of executives at companies that received billions of dollars in federal bailouts, the Obama administration will order the companies that received the most aid to deeply slash the compensation to their highest paid executives, an official involved in the decision said on Wednesday. Under the plan, which will be announced in the next few days by the Treasury Department, the seven companies that received the most assistance will have to cut the cash payouts to their 25 best-paid executives by an average of about 90 percent from last year. For many of the executives, the cash they would have received will be replaced by stock that they will be restricted from selling immediately. And for all executives the total compensation, which includes bonuses, will drop, on average, by about 50 percent. The companies are Citigroup, Bank of America, the American International Group, General Motors, Chrysler and the financing arms of the two ... (Read More)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-21 - Login to vote or comment!

Google ($GOOG) announces Analytics updates

Google announced on Tuesday that its Google Analytics Web site-tracking tool has been improved with a slew of new features for enterprise-class users. To start things off, Google announced that it has added the option for users to measure user engagement and branding success. The company said users will be able to "to set thresholds for Time on Site and Pages per Visit." With the help of a new feature called Advanced Table Filtering, Analytics users will now be able to filter content more effectively and view that content in a table. According to Google, users can "filter thousands of keywords" to find, for example, "just the keywords with a bounce rate less than 30 percent and that referred at least 25 visits." (cnet.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-21 - Login to vote or comment!

Accenture ($ACN) Tries to Turn Ads Into Gold with Adchemy

Accenture, the technology consulting and services group, is making a real bet on the Web marketing business. The firm says that technology is finally getting good enough to deliver Web display ads tailored to consumers' demographics and interests. And big companies, it says, are eager to shift more of their ad spending onto the Web. Last month, the new Accenture Interactive unit announced that it would handling the technology and services on Procter & Gamble's consumer Web sites. (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-21 - Login to vote or comment!

Google Promotes Business Apps With Ad Blitz ($GOOG)

One of the things that Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, highlighted during the company's third-quarter earnings conference call last week was the performance of the company's enterprise applications business: "Even with our enterprise business, which we've been working hard on for some time, not only is our business accelerating, but I actually personally spoke to a number of our customers, for example, Motorola, Genentech, and Johnson Diversity, getting feedback very strong," Mr. Schmidt said according to a transcript. "They need more of this product, and they need us to address product shortcomings, and I think the products will do very, very well." Nikesh Arora, Google's top sales executive, added, "We are also seeing lots of traction among small and medium-sized businesses, which continue to increase at a fast pace." (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-21 - Login to vote or comment!

BANKATLANTIC BANCORP INC ($BBX) - appointed Tony Segreto as an advisory board member

The bank said it appointed Tony Segreto as a BankAtlantic advisory board member. He joins from NBC 6 news. (reuters.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-20 - Login to vote or comment!

CITIGROUP INC ($C) appointed Jing Zhao and Simon Yoo as co-heads of its Financial Institutions Group (FIG) in Asia Pacific

The bank said it appointed Jing Zhao and Simon Yoo as co-heads of its Financial Institutions Group (FIG) in Asia Pacific. Both will be based in Hong Kong. Ashish Bajaj also joins the FIG team as head of financial institutions relationship management. Zhao is currently chairman of China investment banking and she will also continue in this role with offices in Beijing and Hong Kong. Yoo is currently head of Financial Entrepreneurs Group in Japan. (reuters.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-20 - Login to vote or comment!

Acer Eclipses Dell ($DELL) and Apple ($AAPL)

Well, there it is. A non-American company has managed to become the second-largest computer seller for the first time in history. In a fresh research report issued on Wednesday, IDC confirmed that Acer, based in Taiwan, overtook Dell, of Round Rock, Texas, as the Number 2 PC maker during the third quarter. The two companies had been neck-and-neck for the last couple of quarters, with Acer benefiting from the increasing demand for netbooks and Dell suffering from a lack of business computer sales. Acer has now set its sights on Hewlett-Packard, the clear PC market leader out of Palo Alto, Calif. (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-20 - Login to vote or comment!

Apple smashes forecasts, stock hits record ($AAPL)

Apple Inc's profits and sales streaked past Wall Street forecasts as iPhone and Mac sales hit quarterly records, sending its shares rocketing to all-time highs on Monday. Sales of Mac computers -- the largest single contributor to Apple's revenue -- jumped a better-than-foreseen 17 percent, but shipments of the closely watched iPhone were held back by problems in producing enough to meet demand, particularly abroad. "The big story is the renewed ascendancy of the Mac," said Barry Jaruzelski, a partner at consulting firm Booz & Co. (reuters.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-20 - Login to vote or comment!

Fake security software in millions of computers: Symantec ($SYMC)

Tens of millions of U.S. computers are loaded with scam security software that their owners may have paid for but which only makes the machines more vulnerable, according to a new Symantec report on cybercrime. Cyberthieves are increasingly planting fake security alerts that pop up when computer users access a legitimate website. The "alert" warns them of a virus and offers security software, sometimes for free and sometimes for a fee. "Lots of times, in fact they're a conduit for attackers to take over your machine," said Vincent Weafer, Symantec's vice president for security response. (reuters.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-19 - Login to vote or comment!

An Arrest and an Earnings Puzzle at I.B.M. ($IBM)

Last Friday was not one of I.B.M.'s better days: One of its top executives was arrested in a sweeping insider trading case, and the company's shares dropped 5 percent. The fall in I.B.M.'s share price probably had little to do with the arrest of Robert W. Moffat Jr., a senior vice president, and five others, who were charged by federal prosecutors in an elaborate insider trading scheme, mainly in high-tech stocks. All of those charged say they are not guilty. The Friday slip in I.B.M. shares was far more attributable to its third-quarter results, announced after the market closed on Thursday. The company reported better-than-expected profits, up 14 percent, and revenue that was a bit below Wall Street estimates. (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-19 - Login to vote or comment!

Scandal hits corporate role models IBM, McKinsey

It isn't often that big blue gets a black eye. But on Friday IBM, the leading U.S. technology firm known for its conservative management, found itself entangled in the largest ever hedge fund insider-trading scheme involving Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam. Robert Moffat, senior vice president and head of IBM's systems and technology group was named as a defendant. Executives at leading chipmaker Intel Corp and management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. were also implicated. (Reuters.com)

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Related URLs: INTEL CORP • INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP
2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-17 - Login to vote or comment!

Bank of America chief Ken Lewis ordered to pay back salary

Outgoing Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis will get no pay this year, the US government's pay tsar has ruled. Kenneth Feinberg, the US treasury department official who is scrutinising pay packages at bailed-out banks, said that Lewis - besieged by regulatory investigations and lambasted by shareholders - should get no salary or bonus for the year. Lewis agreed. He will pay back about $1m (612,000) he has received so far out of a $1.5m annual salary. But the ruling does not apply to his previously negotiated retirement package, estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. (guardian.co.uk)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-16 - Login to vote or comment!

David S. Cacchione Sentenced in $100 Million Securities Fraud Scheme

David S. Cacchione was sentenced today to 60 months in prison and ordered to pay approximately $50 million in restitution for his role in a $100 million fraud scheme, United States Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello announced. Cacchione, 44, of Woodside, Calif., was charged by Information on March 24, 2009, with one count of securities fraud. He pleaded guilty on March 31. According to the plea agreement, Cacchione worked as managing director at Merriman, Curhan, Ford & Co. an investment brokerage firm in San Francisco. While at Merriman, Cacchione provided William Del Biaggio, III with client brokerage statements. Del Biaggio doctored those statements and used them to defraud banks and other lenders to obtain or renew approximately $100 million in loans. Cacchione further helped Del Biaggio defraud banks, by signing false account control agreements and meeting with lenders to create the impression that Del Biaggio owned and controlled these client accounts. (fbi.gov)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-10-08 - Login to vote or comment!

SEC Charges Perot Company Employee in $8.6 Million Insider Trading Scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Richardson, Texas resident Reza Saleh with insider trading around the public announcement of Dell Inc.'s tender offer for Perot Systems earlier this week. The SEC alleges that Saleh made increasingly large purchases of Perot Systems call options contracts based on material, non-public information that he learned in the course of his employment with, or duties for, two Perot-related private companies and Perot Systems. Immediately following the tender offer announcement on Monday, September 21, Saleh sold all of the call option contracts in the accounts and reaped approximately $8.6 million in illicit profits. (sec.gov)

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Related URLs: PEROT SYSTEMS CORP
2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-23 - Login to vote or comment!

Justice Department Submits Views on Proposed Google Book Search Settlement

The Department of Justice today advised the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that while it should not accept the class action settlement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. as proposed due to concerns of the United States regarding class action, copyright and antitrust law, the parties should be encouraged to continue their productive discussions to address those concerns. 2009-09-18 (usdoj.gov)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-19 - Login to vote or comment!

Google Aims to Wrest Display Ads From Yahoo

Google is pushing for a second act. The company has built its fortune almost entirely on the back of small text ads, which appear alongside its search results and on sites across the Web. Now it is stepping up efforts to make inroads into graphical display ads, a business long dominated by Yahoo. On Friday, the company plans to introduce a long-awaited new version of an ad exchange, like a stock market, where advertisers and publishers can buy and sell advertising space, filling spots in Web pages on the fly. (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-18 - Login to vote or comment!

Pfizer Subsidiary Pleads Guilty to Fraudulent Marketing

Pharmacia and Upjohn Company, Inc., a subsidiary of Pfizer, Inc., pled guilty to a felony violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act in connection with misbranding the drug Bextra with the intent to defraud or mislead. (fbi.gov)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-16 - Login to vote or comment!

Apple Hires Intel's Top Lawyer

Apple Inc. said Tuesday it hired Intel Corp.'s top lawyer, Bruce Sewell, a day after the chip maker announced his departure. Apple said Sewell will report to CEO Steve Jobs as the company's general counsel and senior vice president for legal and government affairs. Daniel Cooperman, who has held the job for the past two years, will retire at the end of the month, the company said. (NYTimes.com)

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Related URLs: INTEL CORP • COOPERMAN DANIEL • SEWELL D BRUCE
2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-16 - Login to vote or comment!

Omniture Bought by Adobe for $1.8 Billion

Adobe Systems said it would buy the Web analytics software company Omniture for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers monitor the effectiveness of such content. Adobe, based in San Jose, Calif., will pay $21.50 a share in cash, a premium of 24 percent over Omniture's closing stock price Tuesday. Omniture shares jumped nearly 26 percent in after-hours trading. (NYTimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-16 - Login to vote or comment!

Wells Fargo fires exec over Malibu house scandal

Wells Fargo & Co has fired a senior vice president after investigating reports she held lavish parties at a foreclosed beachfront Malibu house owned by the bank. The fourth-largest U.S. bank said in a statement on Monday that it had terminated one employee, senior vice president Cheronda Guyton, who it found had violated its policies. "We deeply regret the activities that have taken place as they do not reflect the conduct we expect of our team members," the bank said in the statement. (reuters.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-14 - Login to vote or comment!

Apple drops prices on iPods, iPod Touches

The long-awaited Apple product announcements are still a couple hours away, but the company has let slip out a change in its portable player lineup -- lower prices. In one case, dramatically lower. As reported on the Macworld site and in other spots, Apple quietly this morning cut the price of its iPod Touch with 32 GB of storage space from $399 to $279. This puts the price of the unit about $10 less than Microsoft's Zune HD 32GB player, which comes out Sept. 15. In other Apple slices: the iPod Nano 16GB went from $199 to $149, and the 8GB model that was $149 is now $129. Also, the iPod Classic 120GB has dropped from $249 to $229. You can't order these items at the reduced prices yet. Shortly after the price reductions appeared, Apple took its online store offline, replacing it with a sign that says: "We are busy updating the store." As for what new products might be coming from Apple: the announcement event begins at 10 a.m., Pacific time. -- David Colker (latimes.com)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-14 - Login to vote or comment!

Judge Rejects Settlement Over Merrill Bonuses

A Federal District judge on Monday overturned a settlement between the Bank of America and the Securities and Exchange Commission over bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch executives just before the bank took over Merrill last year. The $33 million settlement "does not comport with the most elementary notions of justice and morality," wrote Jed S. Rakoff, the judge assigned to the case in federal court in Lower Manhattan. The ruling forces the S.E.C. to go back to the drawing board. The commission can either renegotiate the settlement or take the case to court. The S.E.C. could also drop the case. (NYTimes.com)

Tags: SEC Bonuses
Related URLs: MERRILL LYNCH & CO., INC.
3 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-14 - Login to vote or comment!

Gmail Edges Past AOL, Still in Third Place

News flash: Google's Gmail is not the most popular Web mail service. Or even the second-most popular option. It is, however, now the third-most popular Web e-mail application, according to new figures from ComScore covered by multiple sources on Friday. Gmail's 37 million visitors a month badly trail the 106 million Yahoo Mail draws each month, but aren't far behind the 47 million of Microsoft's Hotmail -- and just surpass the 36.4 million of AOL's Web mail. (washingtonpost.com)

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3 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-12 - Login to vote or comment!

Banker lived it up in Wells Fargo-owned Malibu house

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 11 (Reuters) - A community watchdog group expressed outrage and Wells Fargo (WFC.N) said it was launching an investigation after a newspaper reported that a senior exec threw lavish parties at a beachfront Malibu house owned by the bank. "This is the ultimate example of dancing on the shattered dreams of the millions of Americans who've lost their homes. They should be ashamed of themselves," said Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now spokesman Scott Levenson. According to the Los Angeles Times, residents said Cheronda Guyton, a Wells Fargo senior vice president responsible for foreclosed commercial properties, spent weekends in the Malibu Colony house throwing "eye-catching" parties, one of which had guests arriving in a yacht.

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-12 - Login to vote or comment!

Buy a G.M., Like It, or Get Your Money Back

In its first major marketing campaign since emerging from bankruptcy, G.M. is putting its new chairman, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., in the spotlight as the spokesman for its offer to give customers a full refund within 60 days on any G.M. car or truck. The campaign, called "May the Best Car Win," is part of G.M.'s effort to change its lingering image as a financially struggling company with substandard products. The first television ads will begin Sunday, featuring Mr. Whitacre, the 67-year-old former AT&T chief who was recruited by the federal government to lead G.M.'s reconstituted board. (NYTimes.com)

Tags: Bankruptcy GM
Related URLs: WHITACRE EDWARD E JR
2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-11 - Login to vote or comment!

Global Director of Security for Stanford Financial Group Indicted for Obstruction

Thomas Raffanello, a former global director of security at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida office of Stanford Financial Group, was indicted on charges of conspiracy to obstruct a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proceeding and to destroy documents in a federal investigation; obstruction of a proceeding before the SEC; and destruction of records in a federal investigation. (fbi.gov)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-11 - Login to vote or comment!

Jefferson County Grant Writer Pleads Guilty to Defrauding the United States

September 10, 2009 - The United States Attorney filed a three-count information on September 9, 2009 against Yvette Crayton Goodwin, age 50, of Louisville, Kentucky, in Jefferson County, on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, kickback of federal funds, and submitting a false writing to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. Goodwin also entered a guilty plea to the above charges. (fbi.gov)

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2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-10 - Login to vote or comment!

California Businessman Sentenced in $100 Million Securities Fraud Scheme

September 8, 2009 - William J. "Boots" Del Biaggio was sentenced today to 97 months in prison and ordered to pay approximately $67.5 million in restitution for his role in a $100 million fraud scheme, United States Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello announced. (fbi.gov)

Tags: FBI fR Fraud
Related URLs: HERITAGE COMMERCE CORP
2 total votes | Comments (0) | Created by steve on 2009-09-09 - Login to vote or comment!