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 ...
European governments were set to nail down on Sunday the terms for possible emergency loans for debt-stricken Greece in an effort to calm investor fears that have caused the euro to plunge. Finance ministers from the 16-nation eurozone grappled with Greece’s debt crisis in a conference call starting at 2:00 pm (1200 GMT) with the aim of “finalising aid mechanisms for Greece,” a Spanish official said. Sunday’s talks... [more]
Greece’s National Bank and four other Greek banks have had their credit ratings cut by an international credit rating agency. Fitch, one of the three biggest credit rating firms, downgraded the beleaguered country’s debt ratings. Ratings on National Bank of Greece, the country’s biggest, and Alpha, Eurobank, and Piraeus Bank were reduced one level from BBB to BBB-, while ATEbank was cut from BBB- to BB+. BBB- is the lowest... [more]
Dutchman Bart Becht, CEO of the detergent and cleaning product maker Reckitt Benckiser, was the best- earning person in British business last year, according to various media reports this week. According to Reckitt’s annual report, quoted in the Guardian, Becht made £74m from exercising share options he had been granted as long ago as 2001 and a further £13m from cashing in free performance-related shares he had received in 1999... [more]
Justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin has told MPs he is considering scrapping the rule which says the security service has to inform people their telephones have been tapped after the tap has been removed. In practise, those whose phones have been tapped are often hard to track down and there are enough other opportunities open to people to find out if their phone conversations have been listened into, the minister said. Nor is there any... [more]
State-owned railway company NS is planning to increase its activities abroad considerably by moving into Scandinavia and southern Europe, the Volkskrant reports on Thursday. The company already runs rail services in England, Germany and the Czech Republic. NS’s foreign investments are largely paid for by cash earned in the Netherlands, the paper says. NS claims profits earned abroad are also used to finance foreign activities but... [more]
Markets pounded Greek bonds and banking stocks on Thursday, driving the debt-stricken euro zone member’s borrowing costs to new highs and pushing it closer to tapping a last resort EU/IMF safety net. The government struggled to reassure markets it can stay solvent after the premium investors demand to buy Greek rather than the benchmark German government debt surged for the third day in a row to a record high since Greece joined the... [more]
Immigration from non-western countries costs Dutch society between €6bn and €10bn a year, according to a preliminary report by private research institute Nyfer for the anti-Islam party PVV, the Telegraaf reports on Wednesday. The research is based on ‘conservative’ estimates of the cost of 20,000 non-western migrants, the paper says. ‘That is the number of foreigners who come here every year in order to reunite with... [more]
The Labour party has withdrawn its support for a health ministry plan to allow local councils to increase the age at which teenagers can buy alcohol, MP Lea Bouwmeester told Radio 1 on Tuesday. The plan is one of a range of measures health minister Ab Klink wants to introduce in an effort to reduce teenage drinking. At the moment, teenagers can drink in bars and buy beer and wine in supermarkets as soon as they turn 16. The new legislation... [more]
The Greek-EU debt crisis is taking a new twist with the expected arrival here on Wednesday of experts from the International Monetary Fund amid uncertainty over the status of a vague EU-IMF safety net. Greek sources say the IMF mission is merely to offer advice on managing its crippled budget, but there is deep unease in financial markets about the outlook. Greece, a member of the eurozone, has revealed that it is planning a huge operation... [more]
The Dutch navy freed Monday a German cargo ship that had been boarded by pirates off the coast of Somalia and arrested 10 of the attackers, the Dutch defence ministry announced. The Dutch frigate Tromp rescued the ship and its crew at around 1140 GMT about 900 kilometres (560 miles) east of the Somali coast, the ministry said in a statement. A Dutch soldier was slightly wounded in the operation during which the troops exchanged gunfire with... [more]
