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Briefs

Report: Enron exec cuts deal, will testify

By Times Staff Writers
Published December 28, 2005

Enron's former chief accounting officer, Richard Causey, has struck a plea bargain with federal prosecutors and will avoid going to trial with the fallen energy company's two top executives, the Associated Press reported late Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the negotiations.

The AP said the unidentified source said Causey, 45, was expected to plead guilty today to one or more of the 34 criminal charges pending against him and agreed to testify against his former bosses, Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling, in exchange for a much lesser prison sentence than he would receive if convicted on all counts. The trial is scheduled to begin next month.

In another blow to troubled Guidant Corp., the Food and Drug Administration has warned the medical device maker that it has failed to resolve all the problems the agency found this year during an inspection at the company's cardiac unit in St. Paul, Minn. The Indianapolis company said Tuesday it received the FDA's warning letter Friday, about three months after it replied to a report by the agency on manufacturing and record-keeping problems it found during an August inspection of its St. Paul operations.

Natural gas futures plunged 10 percent Tuesday, settling at their lowest level in nearly four months amid forecasts calling for mild U.S. weather over the next week. It was the third straight decline for natural gas prices, which have fallen 23 percent since Wednesday, and the selloff triggered a decline in other energy futures. January natural gas futures fell $1.261 to settle at $11.022 per 1,000 cubic feet on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the lowest closing price since the Sept. 13 settlement of $10.763.

Insurance underwriter Fidelity National Financial Inc. has agreed to acquire Sedgwick CMS Holdings Inc. for $635-million. Sedgwick, a private Memphis, Tenn., company, provides outsourced insurance claims management services. Fidelity National said Sedgwick is expected to have 2005 revenue of almost $400-million. In the first nine months of 2005, Fidelity National had revenue of $7.24-billion.

Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills were mixed in Tuesday's auction. The Treasury Department auctioned $17-billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 3.905 percent, up from 3.895 last week. An additional $15-billion in six-month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 4.200 percent, down from 4.220 percent last week.

Tags placed over the necks of Reed's Inc. soda bottles are offering customers the chance to buy shares for $4 each directly from the company in an initial public offering that founder Chris Reed hopes will raise as much as $8-million.

It's an unusual approach that has worked in the past - most notably for Ben & Jerry's ice cream, which was later sold to Unilever, and Boston Beer Co., which brews Samuel Adams.

But some analysts say Reed's sales of just $9-million in 2004 make it too small to be considered a smart play for investors. The stock would be traded over the counter - not by the New York Stock Exchange or another large exchange - and could be overlooked by investors and financial analysts.

Reed said he would use the money from his IPO to expand sales beyond health food and specialty stores. His products have made their way into Southern California supermarkets, but Reed has not been able to afford the fees charged by large national chains for the shelf space needed to significantly increase sales.

John Diebold, a business visionary who preached computerization during the era of Elvis and Eisenhower as the future of worldwide industry, has died at the age of 79.

Mr. Diebold died of esophageal cancer Monday (Dec. 26, 2005) at his home in suburban Bedford Hills, said a nephew, John B. Diebold.

Mr. Diebold laid out his vision of a computerized future with his 1952 book, Automation, which presented the then-radical notion of using programmable devices in daily business. In 1954, Mr. Diebold launched his consulting firm John Diebold & Associates. Over the next half-century, his firm, which had no connection to electronic equipment company Diebold Inc., provided advice to AT&T, IBM, Boeing and Xerox, along with the cities of Chicago and New York and the countries of Venezuela and Jordan.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified December 28, 2005, 00:36:14]