Danone said Thursday it would replace almost its entire board months after activist investors forced the ousting of the French food and beverage giant's CEO...
U.S. automakers Ford and General Motors have replaced their "chairman" title to the gender-neutral "chair" title, a notable step in the historically male-dominated auto industry. The changes come after many large U.S. corporations have promised employees and investors they would amp up efforts for more diversity. A regulatory filing showed that Ford’s board voted last week to amend their bylaws to “adopt gender-neutral language throughout, including the title ‘chair’ in place of ‘chairman.'"...
NEW YORK - Fujifilm Holdings Corp (4901.T) sued Xerox Corp (XRX.N) on Monday for well over $1 billion plus punitive damages, accusing it of succumbing to pressure from activist investors Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason in abandoning a proposed $6.1 billion merger...
Facebook is allegedly being pressured by a group of shareholders to remove CEO Mark Zuckerberg from the board of directors, according to a proposal obtained by VentureBeat . The shareowners want Zuckerberg, who has been on the board since 2012, to be replaced by an independent chairperson. “We believe the combination of these two roles in a single person weakens a corporation’s governance, which can harm shareholder value,” the proposal stated...
Volkswagen, the world’s second-largest car manufacturer by sales, is not under pressure to sell its truck manufacturing unit, management board member Andreas Renschler told a German newspaper in an interview published Sunday...
Xerox Corporation will split into two companies, one focused on hardware and the other on services. As part of the deal, Xerox will let activist investor Carl Icahn pick three members on the board of the services company, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
Viacom announced Wednesday that compensation for Executive Chairman Sumner Redstone declined 85 percent to $2 million for fiscal 2015, Reuters reported. That is in sharp contrast to Redstone’s total compensation for 2014, which was $13 million...
Calls to “break up the banks” have burst back into the political conversation, thanks in part to Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders. But the Vermont Senator isn’t the only source of pressure on Wall Street. With regulatory costs from financial reforms rising and revenues faltering, major financial institutions stand to see more questions from shareholders over their size and complexity...
ANA Holdings Inc., owner of Japan’s biggest airline, announced Monday it would buy an 8.8 percent stake in Vietnam Airlines Corp., to take advantage of growing travel demand in Southeast Asia. The deal, valued at $108 million, also netted ANA a seat on the Vietnamese airline’s board of directors...
Investment firm Starboard Value LP commended U.S. department store chain Macy’s on its recently announced efficiency drive, but urged the company to fully realize the value of its vast real estate holdings, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday. The activist investor, in a letter and presentation to Macy's management Sunday, said although it supports the retail chain's cost cuts, it wants the ...
Bank earnings are slim right now in a world flush with rock-bottom interest rates, but those relatively small profits will mean little to the bosses of major financial institutions who are set to receive absolutely large bonuses from their supervisory boards next year. While bonuses will be slashed for traders and sales representatives in commodities dealing, fixed-income services and other ...
When UnitedHealth Group, the company that owns major insurer UnitedHealthcare, said Thursday it was considering pulling out of Affordable Care Act exchanges in 2017, it cited "a continuing deterioration in individual exchange-compliant product performance" and a loss of $425 million from plans it had sold through those health insurance marketplaces. “We cannot sustain these losses,” CEO Stephen ...
Activist investor Starboard LP. urged Yahoo Inc. to call off the ongoing sale of its stake in Chinese ecommerce behemoth Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd. in a letter late Wednesday, as the deal could end up costing Yahoo billions in taxes, according to the Wall Street Journal...
Generic drug maker Mylan NV may lose its protracted hostile takeover bid for peer Perrigo Company Plc. as only a minority of Perrigo’s shareholders reportedly tendered their stock into Mylan’s $26 billion takeover proposal by late Thursday night. Around 40 percent of Perrigo's ordinary shares had been tendered with 10 hours left -- significantly short of Mylan’s acceptance threshold of 50 ...
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- A few days after joining the board of Atlantic Power Corp., private-equity veteran Gilbert Palter said he got a flurry of calls from the energy company's top shareholders, who wanted more than just to wish him well. "They wanted to hear my perspective on the company. And they wanted to bend my ear with their own thoughts," said Palter, co-founder of EdgeStone Capital ...
Insurance giant American International Group Inc. (AIG) said Monday that it plans to cut as many as 400 senior-level jobs in restructuring initiatives, less than a week after activist investor Carl Icahn wrote a public letter to CEO Peter Hancock urging the company to split up...
American Apparel Inc. has sought permission from a bankruptcy court to offer bonuses to employees in key positions in an attempt to stem the steady flow of executives jumping ship, according to the Wall Street Journal, after the struggling fashion retailer filed for Chapter 11 in October...
The third quarter of 2015 erased the largest amount of wealth from hedge fund industry accounts since the financial crisis hit in 2008. Total capital under hedge fund management shrank by $95 billion amid global market turmoil stemming from a slowdown in China and continued uneasiness over U.S. interest rates, according to Hedge Fund Research...
The search is over. Twitter Inc. has officially appointed Jack Dorsey as full-time chief executive of the microblogging site he helped create. Amid the change, Chief Revenue Officer Adam Bain will be promoted to Twitter's chief operating officer. Dorsey will also remain as CEO of the mobile payment company Square. The company's board will also undergo changes, according to a tweet from Dorsey ...
The United States' Securities and Exchange Commission narrowly voted Wednesday to adopt the controversial pay ratio rule. By a 3-2 margin along party lines, the members approved the rule, which forces public companies to publish their chief executive officers' total annual compensation as a ratio to their employees' median total compensation, MarketWatch reported. Wednesday's decision was a long time coming...
The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a “pay ratio” rule Wednesday that will force publicly traded companies to disclose a comparisons between what top executives earn and the salaries of workers. The vote will bring to life a few controversial lines written into the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in 2010 that have existed in a state of suspended animation amid resistance from major corporations and business trade groups...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was one of the lowest-paid CEOs in 2014, according to the latest Wall Street Journal survey...
In the first case of its kind, the Securities and Exchange Commission has sanctioned a company for creating internal policies that prevent employees from going to regulators with legal concerns. Houston technology firm KBR Inc. will pay $130,000 to settle charges that it violated federal whistleblower protections enshrined in the Dodd-Frank Act...
In the years since General Motors went bankrupt and took a massive taxpayer bailout, the company has maintained a “fortress balance sheet,” heavy on shock-absorbing cash. After a monthlong siege, however, that fortress has proved permeable, as activist shareholders managed to wrangle billions out of the company’s keep...