LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY “The housing market recovery is continuing
and will be an important contributor to
economic growth. Permits look very solid, and that is a great sign.”Gus Faucher, a PNC Financial Services Group Inc. senior economist Article, 1DBank of America CEO gets ’12 raise
NEW YORK - Bank of America raised Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan’s 2012 compensation by more than 70 percent to about $12 million and agreed to increase his base salary for this year.
Moynihan received $11.1 million in stock grants for 2012, almost doubling the amount he got the previous year, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. For 2013, the bank increased his base salary to $1.5 million, compared with $950,000 for each of the previous three years, according to a person briefed on the matter. The person asked for anonymity because the full value of the pay package hasn’t been made public yet.
Shares in Bank of America, the second-biggest U.S. lender by assets, rose 109 percent last year in New York trading, the first annual gain of Moynihan’s three-year tenure, as capital levels improved and the firm settled mortgage disputes.
Moynihan, 53, has sold more than $60 billion in assets to raise capital and targeted $8 billion in annual expense savings by 2015 at the Charlotte, N.C.-based firm.
“His compensation is a product of what the market and board perceives to be his leadership,” said Gustavo Dolfino, a former UBS AG banker and now president of Whiterock Group, a New York-based executive-search firm. “This kind of a raise is indicative of the board supporting what he’s doing.”Foxconn stops hiring; Apple slides
Apple Inc.’s shares fell Wednesday after Foxconn Technology Group, the manufacturer of products including the iPhone, froze hiring across China.
Apple shares fell $11.14 to close at $448.85. Through Tuesday, the stock had retreated 34 percent from a record high in September, compared with a 4.8 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
Foxconn halted recruitment until the end of March after more employees returned from the Chinese New Year break than a year earlier, Bruce Liu, a spokesman for the Taipei-based company, said Wednesday. The decision wasn’t related to iPhone 5 production, he said, refuting an earlier report in the Financial Times that linked the hiring freeze to a slowdown in orders for the handset. Carolyn Wu, an Apple spokesman in Beijing, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The iPhone is Apple’s best-selling and most profitable product, accounting for more than half of the company’s revenue. Growth has been slowing as the global smart-phone market becomes more saturated and rivals including Samsung Electronics Co. introduce cheaper handsets based on Google Inc.’s Android software.
Captured oil doesn’t count, BP told
NEW ORLEANS - BP and the federal government have agreed that 34 million gallons of oil captured during the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico can’t count toward civil penalties the oil giant faces.
The agreement is contained in a court filing Tuesday.
It came in response to BP’s argument that workers either burned the collected oil or shipped it to shore before it could enter the Gulf waters and that it shouldn’t count in calculating the company’s Clean Water Act penalties. The penalties will be in the billions of dollars.
The first phase of a trial is scheduled to start Monday. It is designed to determine the causes of BP’s well blowout and assign percentages of fault to the companies involved in the drilling project that went wrong.
The second phase will address efforts to stop the flow of oil from the well.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier noted Tuesday that neither party shall dispute the number of gallons collected “during Phase Two or later phases of this civil action.”
A criminal settlement with the Justice Department in November didn’t resolve the government’s civil claims against BP.
A team of scientists working for the government estimated that more than 200 million gallons of oil spewed from BP’s blown-out Macondo well from April to July 2010. That estimate included oil that was collected.
- The Associated PressAmazon policy draws German inquiry
BERLIN - German antitrust authorities are investigating whether online retailer Amazon broke antitrust laws in Germany by banning third-party traders from selling their products cheaper elsewhere.
Officials are questioning 2,400 traders who signed up to Amazon’s Marketplace platform, where they can sell products directly to the Web giant’s millions of users. In return they must abide by its policies.
The inquiry comes days after Amazon faced criticism in Germany over allegations that temporary workers had been mistreated and in the wake of accusations in the U.K. that it’s been avoiding tax payments.
The head of Germany’s Federal Antitrust Office said Wednesday there was “considerable” evidence that Amazon’s conditions on third-party traders breached cartel rules by unduly hindering its competitors.
“Amazon’s price parity clause ... takes away the traders’ freedom to offer their products at lower prices elsewhere on the Internet,” Andreas Mundt said in a statement.
If the online retailer is found in breach of antitrust rules it could be forced to drop the offending clause, authorities said.- The Associated Press
Business, Pages 24 on 02/21/2013