By Compiled from Times wires
Published September 13, 2003
TECH ANALYST ON WEB: Phil Leigh, who left Raymond James & Associates last month after six years covering digital media companies, is starting a tech information Web site. Working out of Tampa, Leigh will offer multimedia interviews with chief executives of technology companies at www.insidedigitalmedia.com starting next week. The site is sponsored by Webex Communications Inc., and the interviews will be free to both viewers and participating companies. Leigh also will offer his services as a paid media consultant to tech companies, preparing digital infomercials to accompany traditional news releases.
ACCOUNTANT ON CATALINA BOARD: With its accounting practices under fire, Catalina Marketing Corp. added an accountant to its board and assigned him to the audit committee. The new director is Philip Livingston, chief financial officer of World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. He is a former president of Financial Executives International and helped write the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. He also once served as Catalina's chief financial officer. He currently is a director of Cott Corp. and Insurance Auto Auction Inc. Catalina's independent auditors quit last month, and the company's financial statements are under review.
MICROSOFT DOUBLES DIVIDEND: Microsoft Corp. reversed itself Friday, and said it would double its annual dividend to shareholders. Microsoft's fiscal 2004 dividend of 16 cents a share is still modest compared with that of other large companies. The 0.6 percent yield - the amount of money per share paid to investors divided by the stock price - ranks among the bottom of Microsoft's 29 peers in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Only Intel Corp.'s 0.3 percent yield was lower. The dividend, the company's second this calendar year, is payable Nov. 7 to shareholders of record Oct. 17.
FRIEDMAN'S JEWELERS INVESTIGATED: Friedman's Inc., the third-largest U.S. jewelry retailer with several stores in the Tampa Bay area, said the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating charges that the company and 13 others aided a former supplier in an accounting fraud. Capital Factors Inc., a receivables factoring company, alleges in a lawsuit that Friedman's and Whitehall Jewellers Inc. are among the group that let Cosmopolitan Gem Corp. misrepresent its accounts, Friedman's said in a regulatory filing.
BofA FIRES AT LEAST THREE: Bank of America Corp. said Friday that it has fired the head of its mutual fund business and two other employees who were named in a probe of improper mutual fund trading by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The company said an undisclosed number of other employees also was dismissed. Richard DeMartini, the bank's head of asset management, was not among them. Spitzer filed documents alleging that a New Jersey hedge fund, Canary Capital Partners LLC, worked with Bank of America and other mutual-fund companies to pursue improper trading strategies.
NIKE SETTLES AD SUIT: Nike Inc. agreed to pay $1.5-million to a worker rights group to settle the commercial free speech case that it took to the U.S. Supreme Court, the company said Friday. Marc Kasky, a San Francisco labor activist, had sued the athletic shoe and clothing giant five years ago, accusing it of false advertising for claiming the company was protecting labor rights at overseas contract factories. The settlement left hanging the core issue of whether Nike lied and, if it did, if its ads qualified as protected speech under the First Amendment.
