Global finance blog - news, jokes, life…

A federal jury on Friday failed to reach a verdict in a Utah company’s $1 billion antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. in a case so important to the computer giant that it put Bill Gates on the stand for two days last month.

Novell Inc. sued the software giant in 2004, claiming Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product.

Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.

The trial began two months ago with jurors getting the case on Wednesday. After much confusion, and some perplexing questions from the panel, they told U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz they were deadlocked by early Friday evening.

He repeatedly asked them if they could keep trying.

“This has been a very long and expensive case,” Motz told the panel.

Novell attorneys pleaded with Motz to give the panel just one more day. In the end, however, the 12 jurors told the judge they were “hopelessly” deadlocked, and they later told lawyers a single holdout refused to vote in Novell’s favor.

“He had strongly held views about the technical evidence and refused to budge,” Novell attorney Jeffrey Johnson said. Jurors offered no comment after the trial.

Novell was left with little to show for a decade of effort, but the company said it will seek to retry the case with a new jury.

“Although it’s a technically complicated case, we’re hoping to convince another jury that our claims have merit,” Novell’s corporate counsel Jim Lundberg said.

Microsoft said it would file a motion asking the judge to dismiss Novell’s complaint for good and avoid a second trial.

“We remain confident that Novell’s claims don’t have any merit and look forward to the next steps in the process,” said Steven Aeschbacher, Microsoft’s associate general counsel.

Novell waited until 10 years after Microsoft left WordPerfect behind to file the lawsuit. The company said it was waiting for the U.S. government’s antitrust enforcement against Microsoft to wrap up. At first Novell’s case was dismissed, but it was later reinstated on appeal.

Microsoft lawyers have argued that Novell’s loss of market share was its own doing because the company didn’t develop a compatible WordPerfect program until long after the rollout of Windows 95. WordPerfect once had nearly 50 percent of the market for word processing, but its share quickly plummeted to less than 10 percent as Microsoft’s own Office programs took hold.

Gates testified last month that he had no idea his decision to drop a tool for outside developers would sidetrack Novell. Gates said he was acting to protect Windows 95 and future versions from crashing.

He said that the company’s preferred Word software was superior to WordPerfect, which was a “bulky, slow, buggy product” that did not integrate well with Windows 95.

Novell could have worked around the problem but failed to react quickly, he said.

Novell has argued that Gates ordered Microsoft engineers to reject WordPerfect as a Windows 95 word processing application because he feared it was too good.

Novell’s lawsuit is the last major private antitrust case to follow the settlement of a federal antitrust enforcement action against Microsoft more than eight years ago.

Novell is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group, the result of a merger that was completed earlier this year.

Source

Declaring Japan has turned a corner in the battle to stabilize its tsunami-damaged nuclear plant, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda announced Friday the facility has achieved a stable state of “cold shutdown,” a crucial step toward lifting evacuation orders and closing the plant.

Noda’s announcement was intended to reassure the nation that significant progress has been made in the nine months since the March 11 tsunami sent three reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant into meltdowns in the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986.

But the plant 140 miles (230 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo remains vulnerable to problems, its surroundings are contaminated by radiation and closing the plant safely will take 30 or more years.

“The reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have reached a state of cold shutdown,” Noda said. “Now that we have achieved stability in the reactors, a major concern for the nation has been resolved.”

Noda said he hopes conditions will improve quickly so that the people who have been displaced by the crisis can return home “even a day sooner.”

“There are many issues that remain,” Noda said. “Our battle is not over.”

The government’s official endorsement of the claim by Tokyo Electric Power Co. that the reactors have reached cold shutdown status is a necessary step toward revising evacuation zones around the plant and focusing efforts from simply stabilizing the facility to actually starting the arduous process of shutting it down.

But Noda acknowledged the assessment has some important caveats.

The government says Fukushima Dai-ichi has reached cold shutdown “conditions”_ a cautious phrasing reflecting the fact that TEPCO cannot measure temperatures of melted fuel in the damaged reactors in the same way as with normally functioning ones.

Even so, the announcement marks the end of the second phase of the government’s lengthy roadmap to completely decommission the plant.

Officials can now start discussing whether to allow some evacuees to return to less-contaminated areas _ although a 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone around the plant is expected to remain off limits for years to come. The crisis displaced some 100,000 people.

Noda said the government will step up decontamination efforts and will ready 1 trillion yen ($12.8 billion) for urgently needed projects next year. He also said 30,000 workers will be trained.

A cold shutdown normally means a nuclear reactor’s coolant system is at atmospheric pressure and its reactor core is at a temperature below 212 degrees Fahrenheit (100 degrees Celsius), making it impossible for a chain reaction to take place.

According to TEPCO, temperature gauges inside the Fukushima reactors show the pressure vessel is at around 70 C (158 F). The government also says the amount of radiation now being released around the plant is at or below 1 millisievert per year _ equivalent to the annual legal exposure limit for ordinary citizens before the crisis began.

Akira Yamaguchi, a nuclear physicist at Osaka University, said that the government’s definition of cold shutdown is disputable.

“But what’s most important right now is that there aren’t any massive radiation leaks any more,” he said.

Putting longer-term issues aside, he warned that much of the backup equipment installed at the plant since the crisis began is makeshift and may break down. He said winter cold could test their strength.

Source

TNK-BP, a Russian joint venture of British oil giant BP, said Wednesday it will invest up to $10 billion in developing Arctic oilfields.

The company, half-owned by BP and Russian billionaires, said in a statement that up to $10 billion will be spent on building infrastructure at the fields and a pipeline that will link them with the export pipeline.

Russian oil companies have been drawing up plans to move to the oil and gas-rich Arctic as mature fields in Western Siberia are getting depleted.

TNK-BP said an agreement with Russia’s pipeline monopolist Transneft will allow it to connect its Arctic oil fields to the export pipeline in Russia’s Far East mainly aimed at Chinese customers.

TNK-BP will be able to ship oil through the Zapolyaryev-Purpe pipeline, which is expected to be built by 2016 to become a key link between Arctic resources and the main east and westbound pipeline routes.

The company said it expects to start shipments from new fields in the Yamal region in 2015. Its fields in the region are estimated to hold 5 billion barrels of oil.

TNK-BP’s executive German Khan described in the statement cooperation between oil companies and state-owned Transneft as “one of the most important conditions for putting new fields into development and efficiently developing the abundant resources of the region.”

Source

Don

FORISTELL

Blue Coat Systems, a provider of Internet networking and security products, says it has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo in a $1.3 billion deal.

Blue Coat Systems Inc. said Friday that its shareholders will receive $25.81 for each of the company’s stock they own. That’s a 48 percent premium over Blue Coat’s closing stock price Thursday.

Blue Coat has been working to turn its business around in a challenging time for the networking equipment industry pay day loans. Based on Thursday’s closing, its stock is down 41.5 percent year-to-date.

The company sells WAN, or “wide area network” optimization technology. This helps boost the performance of applications shared over computer networks.

Source

Applause and cheers rang out after Unionized Boeing Machinists voted overwhelmingly to approve a four-year contract extension _ a deal that grants the company labor peace and likely ends a federal complaint that had become a hot topic for Republican presidential candidates.

Boeing promised that if workers approved the pact, the company would build the new version of the popular 737 in the Puget Sound region, while the Machinists said they’d drop their allegations that Boeing opened a nonunion assembly plant in South Carolina in retaliation for previous strike.

“This contract signifies jobs throughout the Northwest, throughout the region,” said the union’s aerospace coordinator, Mark Blondin. “The message of this contract is … Boeing is acknowledging we have the deepest pool of skilled aerospace workers in the country.”

Dozens union members sounded their approval with cheers Wednesday night as Tom Wroblewski, president of Machinists District Lodge 751, announced that 74 percent of voting members chose to approve the deal.

The union represents 28,000 workers in Washington, Oregon and Kansas.

Machinists went on strike in 2005 and 2008. The latter strike helped delay delivery of Boeing’s first 787, costing the company dearly.

“This contract will help secure a better future for our employees, our customers, our communities and our company,” said Jim Albaugh, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. “It reflects an effort on the part of the company and the union to find a better way to work together and achieve common ground.”

The deal guarantees Chicago-based Boeing a stretch of labor peace at a time when it badly needs it. Competition with European rival Airbus is tight, and looming budget cuts at the Defense Department are likely to cut into the company’s defense business.

In a lawsuit filed this year, the National Labor Relations Board claimed Boeing violated labor laws by opening the South Carolina line. The case became a political issue, with Republican presidential candidates using it to bash the Obama administration. South Carolina Gov cash advance. Nikki Haley and the state’s congressional delegation said the NLRB lawsuit threatened thousands of jobs and millions of dollars invested in the new Boeing facility in Charleston.

The labor board is an independent agency dominated by the president’s appointees. As part of the deal, the Machinists said they’d drop the matter. If the NLRB follows suit, it would remove a potentially damaging element for Obama in the 2012 campaign.

The deal extends the Machinists’ contract to September 2016. It calls for annual wage increases of 2 percent, cost-of-living adjustments, an incentive program intended to pay bonuses between 2 percent and 4 percent, a ratification bonus of $5,000 for each member, and improvements in the pension program. But it also would raise workers’ share of health costs.

Blondin said Boeing’s pension is the most generous in the country, and he hoped the fact that Boeing is retaining it for new hires would prompt other companies to do likewise: “As we all know pension plans have gone away,” he said. “We can get pensions back. They are affordable.”

Crucially for the union, it would ensure that jobs for Boeing’s updated 737 line _ the 737 Max _ stay in the Puget Sound region. Boeing said in July it was studying other locations for the new 737.

“It’s jobs for the people and not having to worry about a strike _ it’s beautiful,” said Gabrielle Rogano, a third-generation Boeing employee who works at a shipping and receiving center in SeaTac.

Wilson Ferguson, a delivery mechanic, wore a Santa suit as he helped count votes Wednesday night _ having come straight from volunteering to pose for photos with children of union members. The 24-year Boeing veteran has participated in the last four strikes, and said it’s a huge relief not to face another.

“Nobody wins, you never recover,” he said. “With this economy, it’s not the time to go on strike.”

Source

Italy’s government on Tuesday approved the release of euro4.8 billion ($6.4 billion) from state coffers to fund strategic infrastructure projects aimed at stimulating economic growth.

The funds will pay for highway projects, high-speed railways and retractable underwater barriers to help protect Venice from flooding. They were released as part of Premier Mario Monti’s program to help Italy exit the sovereign debt crisis and build market confidence to save the euro currency.

Monti, an economist and former EU commissioner who took office less than three weeks ago, announced emergency measures on Sunday that seek to save euro30 billion through austerity measures, and reinvest euro10 billion of savings from those measures to enhance growth, stuck at zero for a decade.

The emergency decree allows the funds to be released immediately, but Parliament must still convert the measures to law. Approval is expected by Christmas, although major parties on the right and left want to make changes.

Monti has combined the powerful economic development and infrastructure ministries under Corrado Passera, formerly CEO of Banca IntesaSanpaolo, to ensure good coordination on projects that can boost economic growth. Many of the projects have been stalled in progress or stuck in planning due to a combination of local resistance and interruptions in state funding.

Economists have mixed views on how effective infrastructure programs are for spurring economic growth, with most favoring privately funded projects for better stimulus. Still, longer-term projects, like railways, usually require state funding because the investment period is too long for many investors.

The new funding includes euro2 billion to upgrade the Treviglio-Brescia and Milan-Genoa railway lines, both in the north, to highspeed, euro598 million for highways, and euro600 million for the Venetian lagoon mobile barriers, a project already more than two years behind schedule due to financial problems.

The projects are expected to stimulate growth through putting people to work, as well as keeping construction contracts flowing.

The gates _ called Moses, after the Old Testament figure who parted the Red Sea _ would be activated when the tide reaches 110 centimeters (43 inches), which happens on average four times a year. St. Mark’s Square floods when the tide reaches just 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) _ and most of the city’s artistic treasures are kept above 2 meters (6.6 feet) for their protection.

Other measures taken by the Monti government include raising the pension age and seniority requirements, slimming down provincial governments, reinstating a tax on first homes, raising taxes on large boats, high-performance cars and private jets and helicopters.

Monti has described the measures as a first step by his government of technocrats tasked with reforming the Italian economy, balancing its budget and spurring moribund growth. He has emphasized that he will step down at the end of his mandate, which could run into 2013, a fact that frees him from re-election pressures that have hampered long-needed reforms.

Unicredit economic analyst Chiara Corsa said the measures appear “sufficiently bold” to allow Italy to balance its budget by 2013,” even with recession looming.

“In turn this should allow Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio to enter a downward trajectory soon,” she said.

Italy’s debt of euro1.9 trillion, or 120 percent of GDP, is considered too big to bail out if the eurozone’s third-largest economy cannot continue to turn over its debt.

Monti’s measures come on top of euro59.8 billion in adjustments made by Silvio Berlusconi’s government, before he resigned after proving unable to take even more stringent, politically costly, steps

.

Source

Premier Mario Monti said Sunday his government of technocrats has approved a package of austerity and growth measures worth euro30 billion ($40.53 billion) to “reawaken” the Italian economy and help save the euro common currency from collapse.

The measures include immediate cuts to the costs of maintaining Italy’s bulky political class as well as significant measures to fight tax evasion, Monti told a news conference following a three-hour Cabinet meeting.

As part of the political cost cuts, Monti said he would forego his salaries as premier and finance minister _ a move he said was a personal decision and not meant as an example for other ministers in the government, which was formed 2 1/2 weeks ago after Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s resignation under market and political pressure.

The package also includes measures to spur growth and competition, while aiming to stamp out rampant nepotism. But it also raises the retirment age and the number of years of service to qualify for a full pension, steps strongly opposed by unions, and imposes new taxes on Italians’ private wealth, including their homes, boats and luxury cars, measures that conservatives have protested.

“We gave a lot of weight to fairness, we had to distribute some of the sacrifices but we took a lot of care to distribute them in a fair way,” Monti said.

Monti will outline the measures on Monday in addresses to both houses of Parliament, which must approve them. Monti said he will appeal to lawmakers’ sense of responsibility.

The Berlusconi government stepped down due to its failure to get tough measures through a fractious Parliament, which remains intact, meaning fault lines could easily reopen.

“A lot depends on how well or not we explain to the citizens what we are trying to do,” Monti said.

The premier, an economist who once was an EU commissioner, has been under extreme pressure to come up with speedy and credible measures that will persuade markets to stop betting against the common currency. Italian borrowing costs have spiked, which could spell disaster if Italy is unable to keep up on payments to service its enormous debt of euro1.9 trillion ($2.57 trillion), or 120 percent of its GDP.

Unlike Greece, Portugal and Ireland, which got bailouts after their borrowing rates skyrocketed, the eurozone’s third-largest economy is considered to be too big to bail out. An Italian default would be disastrous for the 17-member eurozone and reverberate throughout the global economy.

Deputy Economic Minister Vittorio Grilli said the measures passed will ensure that Italy’s budget will be balanced by 2013 through a 2 percent increase in value-added tax from the second half of 2012. Berlusconi’s now-defunct government already raised the value-added tax from 20 percent to 21 percent as part of earlier measures.

In addition, the government adopted austerity measures worth euro20 billion and euro10 billion in measures aimed at boosting anemic Italian growth. They include pension reform, local government spending cuts, the reestablishment of a tax on a first house that was annulled by Berlusconi and new taxes on boats over 10 meters (30 feet) in length and on luxury cars, Grilli said payday loans no teletrack.

At the same time, the measures will reduce the tax on the cost of employment, give fiscal breaks to companies that invest to grow their businesses and increase investments in local public transport.

Monti denied an impression that the measures mostly comprised new taxes.

“There are certainly taxes, we know that in Italy it is easier to reduce the deficit through new taxes than through cutting costs,” Monti said. “But what we did, for example, in terms of rebalancing the pension goes in the right structural direction.”

The government “made a particular effort to make sure that higher taxes did not affect the usual suspects,” Monti said.

The premier spent the weekend briefing political parties, unions, business groups, consumer lobbies and others. Unions were particularly critical of the measures to reform the pension system, saying certain classes of workers, including those who do physical labor, shouldn’t be forced to work extra years, and that women who enter the work force after raising children would have to work well into old age to meet seniority requirements.

The measures raise the pension age to 66 years for men in 2012 and for women by 2018, and also increases to 42 years and one month the years of service for a man to retire with full benefits, 41 years and one month for a woman. Labor Minister Elsa Fornero said it would be possible to retire earlier, “with a small penalty.”

Fornero wiped away a tear when she said that the pension reform would require sacrifices, including a hold on inflation adjustments for larger pensions.

On the fight against tax evasion, Monti said there would be no more tax amnesties, a mechanism used frequently in the past to recover lost revenues. In addition, the measures imposed a 1.5 percent penalty on money that was repatriated in a recent scheme that allowed Italians who had concealed money abroad to repatriate it for a negligible 5 percent penalty.

The measures also limit cash transactions to payments under euro1,000 _ down from euro2,500. In Italy, paying in cash is common as a way to conceal transactions from the government and avoid paying the value-added tax.

After meeting with Monti earlier Sunday, the head of Italy’s industrial lobby said that the survival of the common euro currency depends on Italy’s coming up with very strong austerity and growth measures _ followed by a concerted effort at the European level so that Italian sacrifices are not in vain.

Confindustria President Emma Marcegaglia described the measures as “very heavy.”

The coming days “will decided if the euro will survive or not. The first move to save the euro is in Italian hands, with a very strong measures,” Marcegaglia said. The measures will be “fundamental to saving Italy and to saving the euro.”

Source

Hundreds of laid-off workers massed Friday outside a Shanghai factory of a Singaporean supplier to major consumer electronics companies such as Motorola and HP _ the latest in a spate of labor unrest in China as manufacturers struggle with higher costs and slowing exports.

Reports of recent strikes at factories and other major employers show the increased pressure on China’s manufacturers and workers amid weak demand in Europe and the U.S. that comes on top of surging costs for labor and materials. The country’s manufacturing contracted in November for the first time in nearly three years, according to a survey released Thursday.

A nervous Beijing has begun reversing a two-year effort to cool the world’s second-biggest economy, seeking to counter slowdowns in factory production and property that are dragging growth lower and spurring unrest.

Some of the 300-400 workers at the factory gate of Hi-P International in the eastern industrial suburbs of Shanghai said it was their third day of protesting over mass layoffs due to the company’s decision to relocate some manufacturing.

They said they were seeking more information, and improved terms for themselves.

A group of the workers, bundled up against the cold, held up a banner demanding: “We want an explanation! We want truth! Where is Hi-P’s truth? Where is the government’s credibility?”

Workers also accused the factory of violating labor standards.

“Sometimes, they ask us to work 18 or 19 hours in a day. Sometimes the overtime is even longer than a normal 8-hour work day,” said Tao Yong, a worker in his mid-30s.

Police in vans and unmarked cars watched but did not intervene. One worker showed bruises he said were from an earlier beating by police.

Company officials contacted by phone in Shanghai and Singapore refused comment on the protest. Shanghai city government and police also did not immediately respond to inquiries about the strike or the workers’ claims of injuries from scuffles with police.

“We all work for this company, and now if the company is going to move, they owe us an explanation. So we are waiting for a solution,” said Chang Yan, a woman in her mid-20s who like most of the others was wearing a blue factory uniform embossed with a red Hi-P logo.

Reflecting the tougher times for manufacturers, Hi-P International’s net profit margin plunged 80 percent from a year earlier in third quarter to 2.1 percent from 11.6 percent _ mainly due to higher costs. Net profit in July-September fell 42 percent to 6.5 million Singapore dollars ($5.1 million) from a year earlier, according to its latest financial report.

The company, founded in 1980 as a tooling factory, said its third-quarter revenue rose 34 percent, but so did costs for materials and taxes.

The New York-based group China Labor Watch said Hi-P was shifting some of its production to the nearby city of Suzhou and had not paid the legally required amount of compensation to workers, who were laid off without notice.

According to its website, Hi-P International is a contract manufacturer for the wireless telecommunications, consumer electronics and computing and automotive industries, with two-dozen factories and about 18,000 employees.

Hi-P has factories in five other Chinese cities besides Shanghai and Suzhou. Motorola and other major electronics companies are among its customers.

Source