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| | AIG to disburse $12 million in delayed exec payments | | In a regulatory filing, AIG said Chief Financial Officer David Herzog was paid $1 million, and Kristian Moor, chief executive of AIG's property-casualty division, Chartis, received $1.6 million. Jay Wintrob, CEO of AIG's domestic life and retirement services, was another executive to receive a payment. >>READ | | Carl Icahn quits Yahoo board, commends CEO | | Icahn said in a letter to the board he did not believe Yahoo needed an activist investor as a director at this time, and that his attention was focused on other matters. The letter said his resignation was effective immediately. >>READ | | Govt-backed body to oversee JAL turnaround: report | | Liabilities at JAL would exceed its assets by as much as $8.8 billion if it were liquidated, a source close to the matter has said, indicating the depth of the problem facing the airline as it seeks aid from banks and the state to avoid bankruptcy. >>READ | | | International Day of Climate Action in Kiev, Ukraine | | | Photo of Ukrainian climate change activists of Green movement form a giant 350 figure during an ecological rally on the International Day of Climate Action in Kiev, Ukraine.
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| News deliver directly to your Inbox ! | | Ukrainian climate change activists of Green movement form a giant 350 figure during an ecological rally on the International Day of Climate Action in Kiev, Ukraine, 24 October 2009. The action was one of thousands of similar events to be held in 170 countries worldwide in an bid to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to a level of 350 parts per million.
| | | AIG to disburse $12 million in delayed exec payments | | | In a regulatory filing, AIG said Chief Financial Officer David Herzog was paid $1 million, and Kristian Moor, chief executive of AIG's property-casualty division, Chartis, received $1.6 million. Jay Wintrob, CEO of AIG's domestic life and retirement services, was another executive to receive a payment.
| | NEW YORK (Reuters) - AIG (AIG.N), the insurer that received a huge government bail out, said on Friday it is paying $12.1 million in retention awards to some top executives after U.S. pay czar Kenneth Feinberg gave it the green light.
In a regulatory filing, AIG said Chief Financial Officer David Herzog was paid $1 million, and Kristian Moor, chief executive of AIG's property-casualty division, Chartis, received $1.6 million.
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| News deliver directly to your Inbox ! | | Jay Wintrob, CEO of AIG's domestic life and retirement services, was another executive to receive a payment.
American International Group did not disclose the identities of any other recipients. It had voluntarily delayed making the executive payments, promised in 2008, to give Feinberg more time to comb over employee contracts.
The Obama administration appointed Feinberg in June to scrutinize the pay practices of the seven companies that received the biggest federal aid.
In a letter to AIG, the U.S. Treasury said it decided the three named executives should be paid the retention awards to keep them. However, it would consider the awards when determining "an appropriate reduction in proposed 2009 cash salaries for these employees," the letter also stated.
The payments were promised in 2008 to get key employees to stay with AIG, even as it teetered on the brink of financial ruin from losses on subprime mortgage bets.
AIG CEO Robert Benmosche, who took over the insurer's leadership on August 10, is receiving a salary of $7 million in cash and stock.
On Wednesday, Benmosche sent a memo to assure employees that Feinberg's jurisdiction was confined to the company's top executives, and that the majority of the company's 116,000 worldwide employees would not be affected.
But in the filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late on Friday, AIG warned that pay restrictions may hurt its ability to retain and motivate its best-performing employees.
AIG, once the world's largest insurer, received a $180 billion federal bailout in September 2008.
(Reporting by Lilla Zuill; Editing Bernard Orr)
| | | Carl Icahn quits Yahoo board, commends CEO | | | Icahn said in a letter to the board he did not believe Yahoo needed an activist investor as a director at this time, and that his attention was focused on other matters. The letter said his resignation was effective immediately.
| | SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn gave up his seat on the Yahoo Inc board of directors on Friday, closing a tumultuous chapter in the Internet company's 15-year history.
Icahn said in a letter to the board he did not believe Yahoo needed an activist investor as a director at this time, and that his attention was focused on other matters. The letter said his resignation was effective immediately.
Icahn won his seat on the board in July 2008, in the wake of Yahoo's protracted -- and ultimately fruitless -- talks with Microsoft Corp, which had offered $47.5 billion to buy Yahoo.
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| News deliver directly to your Inbox ! | | Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz in January replaced Jerry Yang, who had rebuffed the software giant's offer. Instead, Yahoo and Microsoft announced a 10-year search partnership in July, in which Yahoo will use Microsoft's back-end search technology on its Web portal.
In his letter, Icahn said he believed the Microsoft transaction would provide great long-term benefits to Yahoo and commended Bartz on a great job.
A Yahoo spokeswoman said on Friday there were no immediate plans to find a replacement for Icahn, and that the board would operate with 11 directors for the time being.
"Carl has been an important member of our board and has helped us through some significant transitions," Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in a statement. "We are all grateful for his active role shaping the future of Yahoo."
Shares of Yahoo were off 25 cents at $16.97 in after hours trade.
Icahn is chairman of Icahn Associates and currently sits on the boards of several companies including Blockbuster Inc and American Railcar Industries Inc.
ICAHN PROUD
He owned 62.8 million shares for a roughly 4.5 percent stake in Yahoo as of August 31, according to Reuters data. Icahn amassed the bulk of his Yahoo stake in May 2008, according to media reports at the time, when shares of the company were trading in the low- to mid-$20 range.
After Yahoo rejected Microsoft's offer that spring, Icahn mounted a proxy contest to try and oust the Yahoo directors, eventually reaching a settlement that gave Icahn and two of his handpicked director nominees seats on the company's board.
"When I joined the board, the company was in a state of turmoil. In the period since then, we have all worked together to achieve much for the company, most notably bringing Carol on to be the CEO and then consummating the search deal with Microsoft," Icahn said in his letter.
"I am proud to have played a role in both these decisions."
Yahoo has said the search deal with Microsoft, which is awaiting regulatory approval, will allow it to save $425 million in operating expenses and enable them to mount a more effective challenge to search leader Google Inc.
Last week, Yahoo reported its third-quarter net income tripled thanks to cost-cutting and asset sales.
Icahn sold nearly 13 million Yahoo shares between August 27 and August 31 at prices ranging from $14.75 to $14.92, according to an SEC filing.
(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Edwin Chan; editing by Carol Bishopric)
| | | Marriage advertisements looking for spouses for their single sons or daughters during a matchmaking party | | | Photo of several elder people view marriage advertisements looking for spouses for their single sons or daughters during a matchmaking party in Qingdao, eastern China's Shandong province.
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| News deliver directly to your Inbox ! | | Several elder people view marriage advertisements looking for spouses for their single sons or daughters during a matchmaking party in Qingdao, eastern China's Shandong province, 25 October 2009.
This match-making party often is held for single people to help them to find their spouses with a ticket fee of 40 yuan (3.9 euro).
| | | Saudi SABB bank books $94 mln for Q3 loan losses | | | The provisions have been widely expected amid concerns over the solvency levels of heavily indebted Saudi conglomerates Saad Group SAADG.UL and Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Bros (AHAB).
| | RIYADH (Reuters) - SABB bank 1060.SE, HSBC's Saudi affiliate, booked 351.5 million riyal ($93.7 million) in provisions for loan losses during the third quarter, bourse data showed on Saturday.
SABB reported a worse-than-expected 19.8 percent drop in third-quarter net profit, hit by an increase in provisions for bad loans.
The data also showed that Aljazira Bank 1020.SE made provisions for loan losses of 115.7 million riyals during the third quarter, the lender's highest in at least one year, while Saudi Investment Bank (SAIB) 1030.SE booked 60 million riyals for the same purpose, its the highest this year.
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| News deliver directly to your Inbox ! | | Aljazira reported a 14 percent increase in third-quarter net profit [ID:nLE169399] while SAIB tripled its net profit during the same period.
The provisions have been widely expected amid concerns over the solvency levels of heavily indebted Saudi conglomerates Saad Group SAADG.UL and Ahmad Hamad Algosaibi & Bros (AHAB).
Unlike their peers in the Gulf Arab region, Saudi banks have not disclosed the level of their exposure to these two firms and this keeps analysts wondering whether any newly booked sums would be high enough to fully cushion them against anticipated losses.
A Saudi government panel has brokered a deal between Saad Group and Saudi lenders but neither party disclosed the details of the agreement.
Saudi central bank governor Muhammad al-Jasser said last week that Saudi banks would make sure they have enough provisions for doubtful debts. Jasser has once in the past encouraged Saudi banks to keep the level of their exposure to the two groups secret.
Saad and AHAB are at the center of an estimated $22 billion debt implosion. The two firms are battling in court over alleged financial irregularities in the wake of a debt restructuring.
Standard & Poor's has said it found banks in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates accounted for almost two-thirds of the total net exposure to the conglomerates of the 30 commercial banks it rates in the Gulf.
(Reporting by Souhail Karam; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
| | | Govt-backed body to oversee JAL turnaround: report | | | Liabilities at JAL would exceed its assets by as much as $8.8 billion if it were liquidated, a source close to the matter has said, indicating the depth of the problem facing the airline as it seeks aid from banks and the state to avoid bankruptcy.
| | TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese government plans to put a state-backed turnaround body in charge of the overhaul of Japan Airlines (9205.T), the Nikkei business daily said, underlining the government's deeper involvement in the process.
Liabilities at JAL would exceed its assets by as much as $8.8 billion if it were liquidated, a source close to the matter has said, indicating the depth of the problem facing the airline as it seeks aid from banks and the state to avoid bankruptcy.
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| News deliver directly to your Inbox ! | | Separately, JAL, Asia's largest airline by sales, has decided to boost planned job cuts by 44 percent to 13,000 jobs, and cut the number of its subsidiaries by more than half as part of its restructuring steps, Kyodo news agency said.
The state-backed organization, the Enterprise Turnaround Initiative Corporation of Japan (ETIC), invests in and buys debt of companies with strained balance sheets and dispatches turnaround specialists to assist them in restructuring.
JAL is set to slash its debt under the government's guidance and come up with a drastic restructuring scheme, the Nikkei said on Sunday. The decision to put JAL under ETIC's supervision will be announced as early as this week, the paper said.
The ETIC, established earlier this month, operates like an investment fund and initially has the ability to procure up to 1.6 trillion yen ($17 billion) in state-guaranteed funding in the current fiscal year to March 2010.
No officials at the ETIC were immediately available for comment.
A task force that reports to Transport Minister Seiji Maehara has been seeking a bridge loan of about 180 billion yen for JAL and a total capital boost of 300 billion yen from both the government and the private sector, the source said.
The government, working with the ETIC, will look into a new and more in-depth turnaround scheme for the airline, while paying heed to the task force's existing plans, the Nikkei said.
JAL is headed for its fourth annual loss in five years, weighed down by roughly $15 billion in debt and a bloated cost base that makes it less efficient than domestic rival All Nippon Airways Co (9202.T).
The troubled airline now plans to cut 13,000 jobs by March 2015, 4,000 more than it originally planned, pushing down its total workforce to around 35,000, Kyodo said late on Saturday.
JAL needs to show willingness to carry out painful restructuring to win support from banks and the state for further loans and capital injections.
The airline also plans to lower the number of its subsidiaries to about 50 from roughly 120, the news agency said. JAL officials were not immediately available for comment.
($1 = 92.04 Yen)
(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
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LOS ANGELES, Nov 15 — A German man has been charged with trying to extort US$100,000 (RM340,000) from former supermodel Cindy Crawford (picture) and her husband over a photo of their daughter gagged and bound to a chair, authorities said.
SINGAPORE, Nov 15 — The United States and China sparred over exchange rates at a meeting of Asia Pacific leaders today, pointing to tricky talks ahead for President Barack Obama when he flies to China to address economic tensions.
SINGAPORE, Nov 15 — US President Barack Obama invited fellow leaders in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation to a summit in Hawaii in 2011, but may have alarmed them with the dress code.
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 13 — Missing private investigator P. Balasubramaniam has claimed in a video clip that he was offered RM5 million to retract his statutory declaration that linked Datuk Seri Najib Razak to murdered Mongolian model Altantuya Shaaribuu, reigniting allegations that the prime minister has vehemently denied.
SINGAPORE, Nov 1 — Should teens in love be prosecuted if they have underage sex?
TOKYO, Nov 1 — The unprecedented media coverage given to the recent trial of actress-singer Noriko Sakai over possession of marijuana betrays the deep concern in Japan over the rising incidence of drug abuse among the young.
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