Yahoo Inc Chairman Roy Bostock and three other directors will step down as the struggling company ploughs ahead with an internal overhaul, including discussions on dealing with its stakes in China's Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan. The corporation - once a Web powerhouse but now agonizing over a range of options to revive flagging growth - on Tuesday said it appointed former Rovi Corp CEO and International Business Machines Corp veteran Alfred Amoroso and ex-eBay COO Maynard Webb as independent directors. Yahoo's board has come under fire from investors impatient with the company's persistent inability to effect a turnaround, and frustrated with the apparent indecisiveness of stakeholders over ...
Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has vowed to fight an "anti-business culture" in Britain, warning that a row overexecutive pay and bonuses threatens the country's fragile economic recovery. "Let me say something about the row over bonuses and pay," Osborne said in a speech to the Federation of Small Businesses. "Of course rewards for failure are unacceptable -- and those who believe in the free market are the first to say so. But a strong, free market economy must be built on rewards for success." The Labour Party has heaped pressure on the ruling coalition to curb excessive pay for top executives, using a House of Commons debate to demand the return ...
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said on Tuesday he is resolved to settle a longstanding territorial dispute with Russia at an annual rally calling for the return of all four Russian-held islands off Hokkaido in northern Japan, the Kyodo news agency reported. "We'll continue to make steady and determined efforts to move ahead with negotiations," Noda said, stressing the need to sign a peace treaty with Russia. The four islands - which Russia calls the Southern Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories - has been the subject of a territorial dispute between the two nations since the end of World War ...
Amanda Knox's Italian lawyer has filed an appeal of her slander conviction in Italy, a Knox family spokesman inSeattle said Monday. In October, an Italian appeals court overturned the young Seattle woman's murder conviction in the 2007 death of her British roommate in Perugia. But the same court upheld Knox's conviction for slander — for falsely accusing bar owner Diya "Patrick" Lumumba of involvement in the slaying. Lumumba was freed after two weeks in prison for lack of evidence. Knox later said she was "manipulated" during her lengthy police interrogation. An appeal of the slander conviction was filed Monday, Knox family spokesman Dave Marriott confirmed. He doesn't know when the Italian ...
The Dutch railway will remain 'vulnerable' during wintry weather but Dutch Rail (NS) and track operator ProRail did not help matters during the current cold snap by the late introduction of schedule adjustments to cope with the conditions, transport minister Melanie Schultz van Haegen told parliament in a briefing on Tuesday. The NS and ProRail assumed on Thursday of last week that there would be three to five centimetres of snow. When the forecast was increased on Friday morning to between 10 and 15 centimetres, it was too late to change the timetables automatically, Schultz van Haegen told parliament. Drivers and conductors ...
Greece can leave the eurozone without damaging monetary union, European digital affairs commissioner Neelie Kroes says in an interview with the Volkskrant on Tuesday. Kroes, a member of the Dutch ruling right-wing Liberal party VVD, is not a supporter of Greece exchanging the euro for the drachma, but says: 'It is absolutely not a case of man overboard if someone leaves the eurozone.' The commissioner is very critical of the new Greek government and says they are not fulfilling their promises. 'Too few spending cuts, too little restructuring,' she says. She says the Greeks should follow the example of Italy where the new ...
Mitt Romney hopes his presidential campaign hasn't ignored Rick Santorum's aggressive attacks for too long, as caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota on Tuesday could reshuffle the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Santorum largely bypassed Florida and Nevada to blanket the two caucus states with criticism of Romney and lay the groundwork among conservatives who have great sway in the process. RivalNewt Gingrich praised Santorum's strategy as shrewd even as he signaled he had no interest in exiting the four-way race, which also includes Ron Paul. "I think that Santorum's going to have a pretty good day," Gingrich told reporters on the eve of the caucuses. "He targeted differently than I ...
Glencore and Xstrata agreed an all-share merger worth $90 billion (56 billion pounds) on Tuesday in the industry's largest ever deal, creating a commodities powerhouse spanning mining, agriculture and trading. Glencore, the world's largest diversified commodities tradinghouse, will issue 2.8 new shares for each Xstrata share in a deal they said was a "merger of equals." The ratio is a 15.2 percent premium to Xstrata shareholders compared with its share price last Wednesday before word leaked out about the merger talks, a joint statement said. "A merger between Glencore and Xstrata offers a unique opportunity to create a new business model in our industry to respond to ...
US White House hopeful Mitt Romney aims for another big caucus win in Colorado on Tuesday, as his well-oiled campaign machine works to cement his position as the Republican front runner in the US presidential race. Polls suggest he should triumph easily in the western US state -- where he scored 60 percent in 2008 -- although there is a tighter race in Minnesota, where last-placed Rick Santorum is hoping to snatch a win. Romney's main rival, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, is battling to stay in the race after two heavy losses in a row to the former Massachusetts governor, who ...
As President Christian Wulff remains mired in allegations of impropriety, anti-corruption group Transparency International (TI) has called for politicians to use the case as a chance to open up German politics. “We are very concerned that people seem to be starting to think that all politicians behave like Wulff, and that would be fatal,” Christian Humborg, TI Germany’s managing director told The Local. “I think the Wulff affair is a wonderful opportunity for German politicians to react to the cynical attitude that this is normal, and improve things,” he said. He said the fact that the authorities were investigating whether Wulff and his ...
Striking Greek workers brought the Athens metro to a standstill on Tuesday and kept ferries docked to protest against austerity as the country’s lenders visited Athens to try to avert a disorderly debt default. EU, IMF and ECB officials start combing through Athens’ books on Tuesday as part of efforts to put together a 130-billion-euro rescue package that Greece needs to stay afloat when a major bond redemption comes due... [more]
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is shrugging off France’s downgrade in his first public comments to directly address the loss last week of its top credit rating. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s debt over concerns on its economy and Europe’s ability to get a handle on its debt woes. Sarkozy told reporters Monday that the country needed to greet the ratings with “calm” and said that... [more]
As Europe debates whether to apply a tax on financial transactions, a former Swedish finance minister says Sweden’s experience in the 1980s was so negative it repealed the tax as plunging trading volumes led to disappointing tax revenues. “The Swedish experiences were negative, both from the point of view of the state’s finances and from a general socioeconomic perspective,” former finance minister Bo Lundgren, 64,... [more]
The merger of Deutsche Börse and NYSE Euronext, which would create the world’s largest market operator worth over $17 billion (€14 billion), looks seriously compromised just weeks from an EU competition decision. With European anti-trust services setting conditions deemed unacceptable by executives, there is a growing chance that the tie-up putting the New York Stock Exchange under the same roof as the German market operator will... [more]
Labour, the Socialist Party and the Green Left Party have launched a joint call for a higher tax rate on high incomes as part of a plan for “clever, solidary, green investments.” The party leaders launched their plea in Dutch daily de Volkskrant but did not indicate how much they wanted to raise the highest tack bracket, which currently stands at 52 percent. Recent calculations suggest an increase of just one percent could see the state... [more]
Germany displayed unflinching solidarity with its European partners after nine saw their credit ratings downgraded but did not let up the pressure for stricter policing of spending. Both Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and Chancellor Angela Merkel were at pains to reassure investors after France and Austria were stripped of their top triple-A credit ratings. They both sought to downplay the impact of Standard and Poor’s decision... [more]
European leaders promised on Saturday to speed up plans to strengthen spending rules and get a permanent bailout fund up and running as soon as possible, a day after U.S. agency S&P cut the ratings of several euro zone countries’ creditworthiness. In a conference call with reporters and analysts after downgrading nine of the euro zone’s 17 countries, Standard & Poor’s said it saw continued risks from the debt crisis... [more]
You can say a lot of things about Standard & Poor’s, but the one thing you cannot question is their sense of timing. Last month, they could have chosen almost any day to warn that they were placing the entire eurozone on watch for a possible downgrade; but they elected to make the announcement just hours after Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel used an emergency summit to promise to safeguard the euro. And now they have chosen Friday... [more]
Standard & Poor’s two-notch downgrade ofItaly’s debt rating poses problems given large refinancing needs this year in that country and its banks, European Central Bankpolicymaker Ewald Nowotny said. S&P on Friday cut the ratings of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Cyprus by two notches and the standings of France, Austria, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia by one notch each. That put highly indebted Italy on the same BBB+... [more]
Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has sought to play down the ratings downgrade of France and Austria, insisting eurozone nations were on the “right track” and warning against overestimating its impact. “In recent months, we have increasingly come to an understanding worldwide that we should not overestimate the ratings agencies in their assessments,” Schäuble told television station RTL. “That... [more]
