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CSX CEO received $16.8 million in 2006

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NEW YORK (AP) – Michael J. Ward, CSX Corp.’s chairman, president and chief executive, received 2006 compensation the railroad operator valued at $16.8 million, according to a company proxy statement.

Ward, 56, received a base salary of $995,833, non-equity incentive plan compensation totaling $2 million and other compensation totaling $157,587, according to the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The other compensation included a $15,000 perquisite allowance, personal aircraft use, financial services planning, liability and life insurance and discounts at the CSX-owned resort.

Ward also received stock options and awards valued at $13.6 million.

The Associated Press calculations of total pay include executives’ salary, bonus, incentives, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The calculations don’t include changes in the present value of pension benefits and sometimes differ from the totals released by the companies.

In January, CSX said its fourth-quarter profit rose 46 percent, due in part to pricing power and strength in shipments of coal and agricultural freight. The profit was in line with Wall Street predictions.

Ward became CSX’s chairman and chief executive in January 2003, after serving as president since 2002.

CSX shares rose 14 cents to close at $40.05 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Time Warner paid Parsons $18.4M in 2006

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NEW YORK (AP) – Time Warner Inc., the world’s largest media conglomerate, paid its chairman and CEO Richard Parsons compensation valued at $18.4 million in 2006, according to regulatory filing made Friday.

Parsons, who is 58 years old, received a salary of $1.5 million, bonus of $8.5 million and stock and options valued at $8 million, according to the company’s proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He also received other compensation of $427,174, which included transportation-related expenses of $297,872 and $100,000 in payment of fees for financial services, $8,800 in a savings plan contribution as well as $12,036 to cover life insurance costs.

Jeff Bewkes, who became chief operating officer of Time Warner at the beginning of 2006, received total compensation valued at $14.9 million. Bewkes had previously been head of the company’s networks and entertainment businesses.

Bewkes received $1.25 million in salary, $7.5 million in bonus, and stock and options valued at $6.1 million. He also received other compensation of $78,028, which included $16,512 in transportation benefits and $8,800 in savings plan contributions.

Time Warner is a giant media company whose businesses include Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable TV operator in the country after Comcast Corp.; the Warner Bros. movie and TV studio; CNN, HBO and many other cable networks; AOL, and Time Inc., a leading magazine publisher.

In 2006, the company earned $6.55 billion, or $1.55 per share, up from $2.67 billion, or 57 cents per share, a year earlier, as revenues rose 4 percent to $44.2 billion.

The Associated Press’ calculations of total pay include executives’ salary, bonus, incentives, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year. The calculations don’t include changes in the present value of pension benefits and sometimes differ from the totals released by the companies.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Experts: Take-Two coup a governance win

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SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) – The shareholder uprising that threw out nearly the entire board of Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. was a victory for investors who are fighting for new leadership at troubled companies, corporate governance experts said Friday.

The upheaval at the publisher of ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and other video games culminated Thursday with the election of a new chairman, the appointment of new directors and the ouster of the CEO.

Experts marveled at the swiftness of the coup, saying it reflects the growing sense of cooperation among disgruntled shareholders looking to dispatch with embattled corporate leaders.

Grievances with a public company’s board are typically fought in drawn-out proxy battles that can be costly and frustrating even for large shareholders.
But the Take-Two revolt took less than a month to pull off.

It started earlier this month when a group of large shareholders mounted a public campaign to weed out directors they blamed for the company’s financial woes and ethical lapses. The final vote tally was revealed Thursday, shortly after the game maker’s annual meeting in New York.

‘Institutional shareholders are much more aware now, and they are much more organized — they are not acting as lone wolves anymore,’ said Eleanor Bloxham, president of The Value Alliance and Corporate Governance Alliance in Westerville, Ohio. ‘And when a company has lost its way, like Take-Two obviously has, they are willing to come together and make something happen.’

A spate of corporate scandals has spurred investors to push for ways to make it easier to replace board members, but such efforts don’t always work out.

Earlier this month, for example, Hewlett-Packard Co. shareholders voted down a proposal that would have changed the company’s bylaws to allow investors to nominate directors. The proposal was pitched as a way to ensure director accountability after the boardroom spying fiasco involving former Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and several senior HP employees.

HP opposed the changes, as did some of the company’s biggest stockholders, and the measure failed.

The situation at Take-Two also had unique characteristics:

— The investor group that spearheaded the revolt controls nearly half of the company’s shares. At most public companies, even large investors usually control only a small fraction of shares.

— A former Take-Two executive carries the dubious distinction of being the first chief executive to be convicted of backdating stock options. Ryan A. Brant, the company’s former chairman and CEO, pleaded guilty in February to first-degree falsification of business records.

Still, the takeover sends a message to directors of other companies that their jobs are in jeopardy if they lose sight of their commitment to shareholders, said B. Espen Eckbo, the founding director of the Center for Corporate Governance at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

The company’s underlying financial troubles have rankled investors and were major reasons behind the push for a change at the top.

Despite having a lineup of top-selling games, Take-Two, one of the world’s biggest video game publishers, lost nearly $185 million last fiscal year while rivals Activision Inc., THQ Inc. and top-selling Electronic Arts Inc. all managed to post healthy profits.

‘The pendulum is swinging in the U.S. toward more hiring and firing of directors — the board is being held to a higher standard as we go forward than ever before,’ Eckbo said. ‘Boards are literally being re-educated about what their jobs are.’

Still, Take-Two’s stock price rose more than 13 percent from last year until Thursday.

The stock lost 96 cents, or more than 4.5 percent, to close at $20.14 in Friday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on concerns that the new directors didn’t offer enough guidance on how they intend to turn the company around.

Michael Pachter, a research analyst at investment banking and brokerage firm Wedbush Morgan Securities, said he was unimpressed with the appointment of an acting CEO instead of a permanent one and the board’s lack of clarity on how to return the company to profitability.

‘I thought they would have identified someone right away,’ he said. ‘And I was a little surprised that they said they would have a strategy in 3 to 6 months. It’s probably unfair to expect that the dissident shareholder group could pull something together this fast, have a strategy ready and move on, but certainly that was the implication.’

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Sanofi’s Ketek side-effect warning strengthened by European Medicines Agency

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PARIS (AFX) – Sanofi-Aventis said today that the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has updated its indications for use of the group’s Ketek antibiotic, prohibiting its use for patients with a rare auto-immune disease and giving a ‘strengthened warning’ of other side effects for all patients.

In a statement, the group said EMEA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human use (CHMP) concluded that the effectiveness of Ketek has been confirmed in its approved indications in Europe.

Last month, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) restricted the prescription of Ketek to the treatment of pneumonia and no longer for less serious illnesses after it was linked to rare reports of severe liver problems, leading to several deaths.

In its statement today, Sanofi-Aventis said the strengthened EMEA warning notes the occurrence of ‘temporary visual disturbances and transient loss of consciousness… for which a bedtime intake should be considered to reduce the impact of these side effects.’

The group added that ‘severe problems with the liver have rarely been reported with Ketek but they do not occur more frequently than with other relevant antibiotic medicines.’

It said however that the medicine is now prohibited by the EMEA for use with patients with myasthenia gravis, a rare autoimmune disease.
Sanofi-Aventis said it ‘commits to undertake risks minimization measures by providing updated information to healthcare professionals and myasthenia gravis patient associations.’

It said Ketek is currently marketed in over 50 countries and that over 30 mln courses of treatment with the drug have been prescribed worldwide to date.

paris@afxnews.com

mrg/slj

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Copyright AFX News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.

The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News.

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Vermont publisher sues over Jeep ads

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MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – A children’s book publisher filed a trademark suit against DaimlerChrysler, saying a new ad campaign for Jeep Patriot infringes on the trademark of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure,’ a popular series of books.

Jeep’s new ads use the tag line: ‘Choose Your Adventure.’ A spokesman for Chrysler said he was shocked the suit was filed, and that the parties had been negotiating in hopes of reaching a settlement.

Chooseco LLC, which recently began re-issuing the R.A. Montgomery books, filed the suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Burlington. In addition to the car maker, it names as defendants BBDO Detroit Inc., Organic Inc. and Marvel Entertainment Inc.

The books, which have been translated into more than 35 languages, have sold millions of copies since first published by Bantam Books. They target children 9 to 12 years old, putting readers into stories and allow them to make choices that affect the plot.

Jeep’s ad campaign not only sounds like the book titles, it is aimed at men in their 20s and 30s who grew up reading the books, according to the publisher. Jeep’s Web site has an interactive movie ‘Jeep Patriot and the Way Beyond Trail’ that Chooseco says imitates the books’ themes.

‘What we feel is that Jeep is trying to piggyback on the really positive associations of adventure and opportunity and choice that the former fans — the original fan base — had associated with `Choose Your Own Adventure,” said Shannon Gilligan, president of Waitsfield-based Chooseco.

‘They are trying to imbue the Jeep Patriot with that,’ she said.

Jason Vines, a spokesman for the Chrysler Group, maker of the Jeep, Dodge and Chrysler brands, said the company — which was served with a cease-and-desist request March 16 — had offered to link the publisher’s Web site to the Jeep site.

‘Obviously, they are looking for money,’ he said. ‘We’d offered to link our site, which gets nine katrillion times more traffic, to their site.’

He said Chrysler had expected to reach a settlement in the dispute Thursday and was surprised when the suit was filed. Gilligan said there had been no negotiations between the parties.

She said it would be nearly impossible now to stop the ad campaign, which includes magazine ads, television commercials and other advertising venues.

‘The ads are already in Rolling Stone and Newsweek. They have bought an abundance of media time in the NCAA finals. The cow’s out of the barn, as they say around here,’ she said.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Japan’s Sapporo shareholders back defenses against takeover

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TOKYO (XFN-ASIA) – Sapporo Holdings shareholders have approved anti-takeover defenses proposed by the brewer as it tries to fend off a buy-out attempt by US hedge fund Steel Partners, the company said.

Sapporo said about two-thirds of its shareholders had voted for the proposed ‘poison-pill’ measures at their annual general meeting here.

Steel Partners Japan Strategic Fund, Sapporo’s biggest shareholder, had urged investors to vote against the proposal.

Sapporo Holdings president Takao Murakami said the vote showed his company still had the support of its other shareholders.

‘We would like to do our best to boost our corporate value by forming a united front among members of our group,’ Murakami told reporters after the meeting.

He declined to comment on what his company would do if Steel Partners made a hostile takeover bid.

The hedge fund, which hopes to raise its stake of 18 pct in Sapporo to 66.6 pct, said in a written statement that it was disappointed by the outcome. It said the anti-takeover defenses were ‘not in the best interests of the stakeholders of the company as a whole and will adversely impact shareholder value.’

A spokeswoman for the fund said it had not yet decided on its next move.

The defense measures will enable the Sapporo board to veto takeover bids that it opposes by allowing the issue of new shares to dilute the stake of a bidder.

DaimlerChrysler to enter Indian market without local partner

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MUMBAI (AFX) – German auto maker DaimlerChrysler AG has decided to venture into the Indian market alone, after talks to increase its stake in Eicher Motors Ltd seem to have failed, The Economic Times reported.

‘Currently, there are is intention to tie up with any local companies,’ a senior official at DaimlerChrysler India said, adding the company could bring its Actros range and its light and medium commercial vehicles into the country as and when it wants to expand its market presence.

The paper said DaimlerChrysler, which already holds a 3.56 pct stake in Eicher was looking to raise it further to 20 pct.

It said the talks between the companies ended after they failed to agree on price and representation on the Eicher board.

ami.shah@thomson.com

ami/ra/lam

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Copyright AFX News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.

The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News.

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UK’s Straw to run Brown party leadership bid

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LONDON (AFX) – Britain’s former foreign secretary Jack Straw is set to run Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown’s campaign for the governing Labour Party leadership, according to a letter from Straw made public today.
Straw told lawmakers Saturday he is in ‘absolutely no doubt’ that the long-serving chancellor is the right person to take over from Tony Blair.
Blair is due to stand down in the coming months and Brown is widely expected to succeed him. As leader of the biggest party in parliament, Brown would automatically become prime minister without a general election being called.
newsdesk@afxnews.com
afp/hjp
COPYRIGHT
Copyright AFX News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.
The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News.
AFX News and AFX Financial News Logo are registered trademarks of AFX News Limited

Former park heads oppose snowmobile plan

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BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) – Seven former National Park Service directors say raising the limit on the number of snowmobiles allowed in Yellowstone National Park would harm the park’s environment.

In a letter released Monday, the directors wrote that increasing the number of snowmobiles allowed in the park would ‘undercut the park’s resurgent natural conditions’ and reverse air quality improvements.

The letter comes as park administrators are set to release on Tuesday their latest plan for snowmobiles at the nation’s original national park.

The former directors sent the letter to U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, and Park Service spokesman David Barna said Kempthorne will respond in the coming days. Barna added that a final policy will not be adopted until after a 60-day public comment period.

Snowmobile use at the park has fueled years of legal wrangling. Pressure to allow more of the vehicles has come from snowmobilers, nearby communities eager for winter tourists and the advocates’ congressional allies.

A draft version of the latest winter-use plan recommends allowing up to 720 snowmobiles a day. The cap would be consistent with temporary rules in place the last three winters. Those rules expired last week.

The proposed plan would also extend rules requiring that hired guides accompany snowmobilers and that the machines have less-polluting engines.

During the three winters, actual snowmobile traffic averaged only about 250 machines a day, a sharp drop from the historical daily average of 765.

The letter said allowing snowmobile numbers to return almost to historical levels would ‘radically contravene both the spirit and letter’ of Park Service policies, and contradicts the service’s draft environmental impact statement that found snowmobile noise and exhaust would increase.

The directors did not include Fran Mainella, who resigned last year. Mainella was not involved because ethics rules prohibit her involvement, said a spokesman for the former directors.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Stockholm shares slightly lower in early trade

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STOCKHOLM (AFX) – Stockholm shares were slightly lower in early morning trade, on profit-taking after recent gains, dealers said.

At 9.50 am, the OMX Stockholm index was down 0.21 pct at 396.33 and the OMX Stockholm 30 was down 0.32 pct at 1,217.91. Turnover was 2.70 bln skr.

Ericsson B was down 0.57 pct at 26.30 and Nokia flat at 161.

Sony Ericsson and Safran unit Sagem said they have agreed a joint venture for manufacturing entry-level mobile phones which will see Sagem licensing out its hardware and software and producing Sony Ericsson-branded handsets.

Among telecom operators, TeliaSonera was down 0.82 pct at 60.75 and Tele2 B flat at 114.25.

Tele2 CEO Lars-Johan Jarnheimer said the company’s Swedish Comviq mobile telephony unit is an ‘essential’ part of the group strategy, indicating it is no longer for sale, the newspaper Dagens Industri reported.

He said the goal of continuing to sell off (unprofitable) European operations remains intact, and forecast ‘big’ price declines in the Spanish market where TeliaSonera recently launched operations.

TeliaSonera was downgraded to ‘neutral’ from ‘buy’ by Merrill Lynch as the stock has outperformed by 60 pct over the past nine months and now trades near its 60 skr target price.

SCA B was flat at 386.50. SCA’s Hygiene Products unit is setting up a 200 mln rupees joint venture with India’s Godrej Consumer Products Ltd to make and market sanitary napkins and baby diapers in India, Nepal and Bhutan.

Electrolux B was down 0.85 pct at 174. European white goods makers led by Electrolux, are pushing for tougher environmental rules to force non-European makers to improve standards, Dagens Industri reported.

Volvo B was down 0.51 pct at 583. The share was downgraded to ‘neutral’ from ‘buy’ by Goldman Sachs on valuation grounds following a strong share price outperformance, prompting the downgrade.

In a research report sent to clients this morning, Goldman Sachs said the stock has outperformed the market and the sector by around 60 pct and 39 pct over the past 12 months respectively, and trades near the broker’s 600 skr target price.

Among other heavily traded shares, Scania B fell 0.56 pct to 537, Handelsbanken A was flat to 208.50 and Lindex was up 1.35 pct at 93.75, ahead of its Q1 results due out tomorrow.

TF.TFN-EuropeStockholm@thomson.com

hc/amb

COPYRIGHT

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The copying, republication or redistribution of AFX News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of AFX News.

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