Robert P. Kelly, the chairman and CEO of BNY Mellon, the nation’s sixth-largest bank, stepped down on Wednesday due to “differences in approach to managing the company.”
The company did not spell out what differences led to Kelly’s ouster or elaborate on the unusual statement.
Gerald L. Hassell, BNY Mellon’s president and a longtime board member, was tapped to lead the New York bank, whose customers are mainly large pension funds and money market funds.
Kelly has led Bank of New York Mellon Corp. since the combination of Bank of New York and Mellon Financial Corp. in 2007.
He was a contender to take the helm at Bank of America Corp. when the nation’s largest bank by assets searched for a new CEO in 2009. He reportedly did not land the job because of concerns over the pay package he sought. Earlier Wednesday, Kelly was named in a report that listed 25 chief executives who earned more than their companies paid in taxes in 2010.
BNY Mellon often operates under the radar, but made news early this month when it said it will charge customers a fee to hold cash deposits over $50 million.
The bank said Hassell has led nearly every major division of the company during his three decades with the bank and its predecessor cash advance america.
“He brings a broad and deep knowledge of our operations, our clients, our industry and our culture to his new roles,” said lead director Wesley W. von Schack in a statement.
Kelly said in the statement the bank has “navigated tremendously difficult markets” during his tenure. BNY Mellon lost money in the third quarter of 2009, but otherwise remained profitable during the financial crisis and recession, unlike most other large U.S. banks.
Kelly’s departure comes three weeks after BNY Mellon said that it will cut about 1,500 jobs, or 3 percent of its work force. At the time, Kelly said the bank’s revenue had been growing, but expenses were “growing unsustainably faster.”
BNY Mellon shares slipped 33 cents, or 1.6 percent, to $20.34 in aftermarket trading following the announcement. The stock closed the regular session down 15 cents at $20.67.
News Corp., the media conglomerate under fire for phone hacking in Britain, said Wednesday that its net income for the last quarter fell 22 percent mainly because of the sale of social networking site Myspace. It also acknowledged for the first time that it is facing investigations into whether alleged phone hacking and police bribery occurred at its subsidiaries outside of the U.K.
“The company is fully cooperating with these investigations,” the company said in a statement.
Net income at the TV and newspaper giant controlled by Rupert Murdoch fell to $683 million, or 26 cents per share in the three months through June. A year ago, the company earned $875 million, or 33 cents per share.
Excluding the $254 million loss on the Myspace sale, adjusted earnings came to 36 cents per share, beating the 30 cents expected by analysts polled by FactSet.
Revenue grew 11 percent to $8.96 billion from $8.11 billion. That also beat expectations for revenue of $8.51 billion.
Addressing the hacking scandal, Murdoch said in a statement that the company is “acting decisively in the matter and will do whatever is necessary to prevent something like this from ever occurring again.”
Murdoch vowed to investors on a conference call that he will remain as chief executive of the company and said he had the backing of the company’s board. But he said that he and Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey act “as a team” and are jointly responsible for the company’s performance.
News Corp.’s nonvoting Class A shares rose 4 cents to $13.75 in after-hours trading, after dropping 84 cents, or 5.8 percent to close at $13.71 in the regular session. Since the phone hacking scandal erupted in early July, shares have fallen 24 percent and the company has lost more than $11 billion in market value.
Honda’s quarterly profit plunged nearly 90 percent to 31.7 billion yen ($406 million) because of sales damage from the quake in northeastern Japan.
Honda Motor Co.’s April-June profit was just a fraction of the 272.4 billion yen profit it posted a year earlier.
But Japan’s No. 3 automaker said Monday it managed to hold up despite the March 11 quake and tsunami, thanks to its growing motorcycle business.
Tokyo-based Honda raised its full year forecasts.
Yahoo, Japan’s Softbank and the Chinese Internet company Alibaba Group have agreed on a compensation plan involving the Web payment service Alipay.
Yahoo holds a 43 percent stake in Alibaba. In May, Yahoo shocked investors with news that Alibaba had spun off Alipay in March without giving the Internet company anything in return.
Under the new agreement, Yahoo Inc., Softbank Corp. and Alibaba said that Alibaba will continue to participate in Alipay’s future financial performance. Alibaba will get at least $2 billion and up to $6 billion upon a possible IPO or sale of Alipay.
Alipay says it is China’s biggest third-party online payment platform.
Yahoo shares are up almost 7 percent in premarket trading.
Already among the top companies in St. Louis, Express Scripts could rocket into the U.S. corporate elite with its proposed blockbuster deal to buy Medco Health Solutions, the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit manager payday loan lenders.
The combined revenue of the two companies
The owner of Japan’s tsunami-damaged nuclear plant will pay an estimated $1 billion (88 billion yen) to thousands of residents who evacuated homes near the radiation-leaking plant and don’t yet know when they can return.
Compensation Tokyo Electric Power Co. ultimately may pay for the world’s second-worst nuclear disaster is expected to be trillions of yen.
Japan’s Cabinet last week approved a bill to help TEPCO meet the massive costs, and parliamentary approval is pending. It would establish a fund from public money and contributions from utilities and special government bonds.
The estimate TEPCO released Wednesday is in addition to 50 billion yen paid in preliminary compensation to 50,000 households in late May.
TEPCO said it is preparing to distribute the latest compensation to about 150,000 people forced to evacuate areas around the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, which has leaked radiation since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami destroyed its power and crucial cooling systems.
The estimate is based on criteria adopted by a government panel this week _ up to 120,000 yen ($1,500) per month to each family for the first six months, a reduced 50,000 yen ($625) per month each for another six months.
TEPCO is also preparing to pay separate compensation to fishermen, farmers and agriculture cooperatives, and others who have suffered because of disaster. Those figures are not available yet.
On Wednesday, the Iitate village office moved into the prefectural, or state, government office in Fukushima City after more than 6,000 residents evacuated the village, which was designated as high-risk for long-term radiation exposure easy payday loans.
“I hope we can all return to our homes as soon as possible,” village chief Norio Kanno told reporters.
At the Fukushima plant, workers are struggling to get a crucial water treatment system fully operational. Fresh water being pumped into the reactors to keep them cool becomes contaminated with radiation, and 110,000 tons of radiation-tainted water have pooled across the plant.
It could overflow within 10 days if action is not taken. The treatment system that went fully operational Friday was halted because a cartridge to absorb radioactive particles reached its limit within five hours, not several weeks as expected.
After cleaning and adjustment, the water treatment system is being tested again and has processed 1,700 tons of water, TEPCO spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said.
The contaminated water has hampered work to install a sustainable cooling system at each reactor that incorporates the water treatment system. Unit 1 is close to that stage, but the other two reactors have fallen behind due to high radiation or debris.
TEPCO has reduced water put into the reactors, so that less water accumulates, but there is a risk. Matsumoto acknowledged the temperature at Unit 3 has slightly risen and requires careful monitoring.
TEPCO hopes to bring the reactors to a stable cold shutdown state by early January, _ a goal some experts have questioned as too ambitious.
MONTREAL—Moncton, N.B., and Victoria became the latest Canadian cities to be hit by the rotating postal strikes Tuesday, now in their fifth day.
The job action by members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers began at midnight local time and were scheduled to last 24 hours.
About one thousand of the 50,000 urban postal workers represented by the union were off the job.
In announcing that the rotating strikes would continue, CUPW told its members Monday that Canada Post had made some positive moves but also took several steps backwards.
The Crown corporation rejected the latest proposal from union negotiators, but backed away from its own thorny proposal to create more part-time positions to deal with a decline in mail volumes.
“With the hope that (the union) would start to address the issues facing the postal system (as) Canada Post has offered to withdraw this key proposal,” the corporation said in a statement.
Canada Post spokesman Jon Hamilton said Monday that negotiations with the union’s urban bargaining unit were continuing in hopes of getting a settlement, but added the union’s latest proposal was too costly.
“It’s just too expensive and still doesn’t help us get anywhere near where we need to be in terms of addressing the challenges facing Canada Post,” Hamilton said.
Canada Post says CUPW’s proposal didn’t offer solutions to problems such as declining mail volumes, increasing competition and electronic substitutions for traditional mail.
The union says Canada Post continues to refuse to address issues that include pensions, health and safety and disability coverage as well as demands for innovation and service expansion to keep the Crown corporation profitable.
“In Victoria and Moncton, the public has suffered deterioration in postal service due to Canada Post’s changes to the way mail gets processed and delivered,” John Bail, national director of the Pacific region for CUPW, said in a statement.
“We have been saying all along that these changes don’t make sense,” he added, referring to the consolidation of postal plants and what the union calls “convoluted processes” that have been created for the sorting and shipment of the mail.
Jeff Callaghan, CUPW national director of the Atlantic region, said that in Moncton “we have not only seen the restructuring of postal plants, but also job cuts that hurt our local communities.”
The company claims most of the postal network continues to operate despite the strikes.
But businesses have warned that the system will soon get “gummed up” once the walkout expands to larger centres.
“One problem will beget another problem further down the food chain and the system will become gummed up, I would imagine, in a week to 10 days,” said Dan Kelly, senior vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
It feels like MySpace has been the butt of every social media joke for almost two years. Lapped by rival services, the hits just keep on coming, whether it is in new mocking viral videos or last year’s Buzzfeed post about the
Stocks are rising in midday trading after a gauge of consumer confidence unexpectedly jumped.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment index rose to 74.3 in May, above analysts’ estimates of 70. Concerns about higher gas prices and inflation knocked the gauge down to 69.8 in April.
Prices for gas have come down this month after hitting nearly $4 in April.
In a separate report, the government said personal income and spending rose 0 on line pay day loans.4 percent in April. However most of the increase was due to higher food and gas prices.
The Dow Jones industrial average is up 67 points, or 0.5 percent, to 12,470. The S&P 500 index is up 7 points, or 0.5 percent, to 1,332. The Nasdaq composite is up 15 points, or 0.5 percent, to 2,798.
Under pressure from protesters and regional allies, Yemen’s president said Saturday he will sign a deal to step down after 32 years in power. Still, he condemned the proposal as “a coup” and warned the U.S. and Europe that his departure will open the door for al-Qaida to seize control of the fragile nation on the edge of Arabia.
The mixed signals from Yemen’s embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, followed two earlier promises by him to sign the proposal. Both times he backed away at the last minute, adding to the opposition’s deep mistrust of a leader known for the adept political maneuvering that has kept in power for decades.
In a sign that he may be ready to sign this time, the coalition of opposition political parties involved in the talks with Gulf Arab mediators was persuaded to sign the deal on Saturday, a day ahead of Saleh, based on what it said were guarantees that the president would follow through.
“We accept the initiative to stop bloodshed,” Saleh said in a televised speech, and an official statement earlier in the day said he would sign the deal on Sunday.
The proposal, mediated by a six-nation regional bloc called the Gulf Cooperation Council, grants him immunity from prosecution if he leaves office within 30 days. It is far from certain, however, whether it would satisfy all of the many different groups protesting his rule in the streets.
Saleh has managed to cling to power in the face of near daily protests by hundreds of thousands of Yemenis fed up with corruption and poverty. Like other anti-government movements sweeping the Arab world, they took inspiration from the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
The president has swung between offering concessions, taking them back and executing a violent crackdown that has killed more than 150 people, according to the opposition, which says it compiled the tally from lists of the dead at hospitals around the nation.
The bloodshed triggered a wave of defections by ruling party members, lawmakers, Cabinet ministers and senior diplomats. Saleh’s own tribe has joined those demanding his ouster. Most importantly, several top army commanders, including a longtime confidant who heads a powerful armored division, joined the opposition and deployed their tanks in the streets of the capital, Sanaa, to protect the protesters.
Saleh has been able to survive thanks to the loyalty of Yemen’s most highly trained and best-equipped military units, which are led by close family members.
That has raised concerns the political crisis could turn into an armed clash between the rival military forces if a deal is further delayed.
Seeking to win some support in the West for his continued rule, Saleh has warned several times that without him, al-Qaida would take control of the country.
“To the Americans and Europeans, al-Qaida is coming and it will take control,” he said Saturday in his televised address to members of the security forces. “The future will be worse than the present.”
The United States, which had supported Saleh with financial aid and military equipment to fight the country’s dangerous al-Qaida branch, has backed away from the embattled leader.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday Yemenis have been suppressed throughout the country and innocent civilians have died.
“President Saleh needs to follow through on his commitment to transfer power,” she said in a statement. “The government of Yemen must address the legitimate will of the people.”
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has an estimated 300 fighters in Yemen and has been behind several nearly successful attacks on U.S. targets, including one in which they got a would-be suicide bomber on board a Detroit-bound flight in December 2009. The explosive device, sewn into his underwear, failed to detonate properly.
Opposition member Mohammed Ghalib Ahmed dismissed the president’s warnings about al-Qaida.
“He is terrorizing the Americans and the West,” Ahmed said.
The proposal _ first put forward in March by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates _ gives a clear timetable for a transfer of power.
One week after Saleh signs, the opposition takes leadership of a national unity government that will include representatives of Saleh’s party. Parliament will then pass a law granting him legal immunity and a day later _ 30 days after the deal is signed _ he is to step down and transfer power to his deputy.
A month after that, presidential elections are to be held.
A Foreign Ministry official said representatives of the opposition signed the agreement Saturday in the presence of U.S. and European Union ambassadors, along with the chief mediator, the Gulf council’s secretary-general, Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the press.
Mohammed al-Sabri, the opposition coalition spokesman, said they received assurances from Gulf and Western countries that Saleh would also sign.
In an indication of the lingering mistrust, the opposition refrained from making an official announcement until he does so.
A big question hanging over the proposal is whether it would end the street protests by youth movements and others who say the opposition parties taking part in the talks to end the crisis do not represent them.
They object to Saleh being shielded from prosecution and want to see him brought to trial on charges of corruption and ordering the killings of demonstrators.
They also want more sweeping changes to upend Yemen’s political scene, said Abdel Hadi al-Azazi, one of the protest organizers in the capital.
“We will keep on escalating our protests to topple the regime,” he said. “The initiative doesn’t mean anything to us. We can’t comment on it because we have nothing to do with the signing or the initiative.”
“Transfer of power, for us, doesn’t only mean exclusion of the head of the regime but it means toppling the regime and all centers of power and its tools.”
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