Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Business Today

AIG restates earnings for five years

By TIMES WIRE
Published June 1, 2005

NEW YORK - American International Group Inc., the insurance company under investigation by state and federal regulators over accounting issues, filed its long-awaited 2004 annual report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, restating financial results for the past five years.

As part of the restatement, AIG cut shareholders' equity on Dec. 31 by $2.26-billion, or 2.7 percent, to $80.61-billion, less than the $2.7-billion reduction the company had projected earlier. This included an after-tax reduction of $1.19-billion for changes in estimates for the fourth quarter of 2004.

Revised calculations by the company lowered AIG's profits by nearly $4-billion for the five years since 2000. The biggest of those changes came in 2004, with net income cut by $1.32-billion, or nearly 12 percent, to $9.73-billion from the $11.05-billion that had been reported on Feb. 9.

OMAHA, Neb. - Ameritrade Holding Corp. and TD Bank Financial Group confirmed on Tuesday they are in talks regarding a potential transaction involving the online brokerage TD Waterhouse USA.

The companies said they will make no further comment until an agreement is reached. TD Waterhouse is a unit of Toronto-Dominion Bank and is one of the world's largest online brokerages with more than 3-million customers in the United States, Canada and Britain.

WASHINGTON - Most American consumers don't realize Internet merchants and even traditional retailers sometimes charge different prices to different customers for the same products, according to a new survey.

The study, "Open to Exploitation," found nearly two-thirds of adult Internet users believed incorrectly it was illegal to charge different people different prices, a practice retailers call "price customization." More than two-thirds of people surveyed also said they believed online travel sites are required by law to offer the lowest airline prices possible.

The study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania is the latest to cast doubt on the notion of sophisticated consumers in the digital age.

The Annenberg study was based on results from a telephone survey from Feb. 8 to March 14 of 1,500 adults who said they had used the Internet within the past 30 days. The margin of sampling error was reported to be plus or minus 2.51 percentage points.

DETROIT - A conservative Christian group launched a boycott against Ford Motor Co. Tuesday, saying the second-largest U.S. automaker has given thousands of dollars to gay rights groups, offers benefits to same-sex couples and actively recruits gay employees.

"From redefining family to include homosexual marriage, to giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to support homosexual groups and their agenda, to forcing managers to attend diversity training on how to promote the acceptance of homosexuality. . . Ford leads the way," American Family Association chairman Donald Wildmon said.

Ford responded that it respects its customers and employees.

"Ford values all people, regardless of their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and cultural or physical differences," Ford vice president of human resources Joe Laymon said.

General Motors Corp. and Chrysler Corp. also provide benefits for same-sex partners.

NEW YORK - Citigroup Inc., the nation's biggest financial services company, has agreed to pay $208-million to settle fraud charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against two of its units, related to the creation and operation of an affiliated transfer agent that has served the Smith Barney family of mutual funds since 1999.

The SEC said Tuesday it found that Citigroup Global Markets Inc. and Smith Barney Fund Management LLC, the investment adviser to the mutual funds, misrepresented and omitted facts when recommending to the funds' boards that the funds change from a previous third-party transfer agent to an agent that was a Citigroup affiliate.

WASHINGTON - U.S. chief executives are much less optimistic about the economic outlook than they were three months ago, although most expect economic growth to be strong enough to drive up sales, according to a new survey.

The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers from about 160 large companies, Tuesday said its quarterly index of chief executive optimism fell to its lowest point in 15 months at the end of May.

TYCO: A state judge on Tuesday postponed his instructions to the jury before they began deliberations in the retrial of former Tyco International Ltd. top executives L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark H. Swartz.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Michael J. Obus said he was probably being "overly cautious" but delayed his instructions because a family member of a juror is undergoing surgery today. The juror had told the court she might not be able to continue if there are complications in surgery. Jury deliberations won't begin until at least Thursday.

With no verdict through eight days of deliberations, jurors in the fraud trial of HealthSouth Corp. founder and fired CEO Richard Scrushy took a judge's suggestion Tuesday and decided to work longer days.

A court official said the jury, allowed to set its own schedule, told the judge it planned to work from 9:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. EDT on weekdays, an hour longer than before, beginning today.

[Last modified June 1, 2005, 09:29:36]