SAN FRANCISCO — Hewlett-Packard Co. is suing the chief executive it ousted last month, Mark Hurd, to stop him from taking a top job at rival Oracle Corp.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a California state court, came a day after Oracle hired Hurd as co-president to help lead the database software maker’s efforts to steal business from HP. HP claims that Hurd won’t be able to perform his job at Oracle without spilling HP’s trade secrets and violating a confidentiality agreement.

This type of complaint isn’t unusual in the technology world, nor is the confidentiality agreement that Hurd had signed as part of a severance package from HP that could top $40 million.

Technology companies often require such agreements because workers walk out the door with valuable technical information.

But the stakes are higher with Hurd than a rank-and-file employee, and the lawsuit may delay when Hurd could start his new job.

The latest lawsuit shows the growing rancor between HP and Oracle.

The companies have worked together for 25 years to make sure that their products work well together. But that relationship is straining now that Oracle, like HP, sells the computer servers that power companies’ back offices. Oracle got that business through its $7.4 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems last year.

Oracle is mostly known for its database software, which many people use every day but likely don’t know it, such as when they’re pulling money out of a bank or booking a flight. The software helps companies organize and access their data. It essentially gives them a map to all their information, so their computers know exactly where to find things.

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Oracle is the world’s No. 1 database software maker, and with the Sun business, Oracle is now among the world’s top seller of servers, as is HP.

As HP’s CEO for five years, a stint that ended after a sexual-harassment investigation, Hurd was responsible for preparing HP’s strategic plans and has intimate details about HP’s profit margins and special deals it has offered customers, according to HP’s lawsuit.

HP also insisted that Hurd was privy to a “highly confidential” analysis of Oracle’s competitiveness against HP.

“Hurd’s actions are a serious threat to HP’s business,” HP lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, which was filed in California Superior Court for Santa Clara County.

Read the filing as a .pdf file

Unless stopped, HP said, Hurd would diminish the value of HP’s trade secrets, hurt customer relationships and “give Oracle a strategic advantage as to where to allocate or not allocate resources and exploit the knowledge of HP’s strengths and weaknesses.”

Hurd and Oracle declined to comment.

source : pheedo.msnbc.msn.com

NEW YORK — Stocks closed lower Tuesday following new worries about Europe’s debt problems. Treasury prices rose and gold settled at a new high as investors sought out safe assets.

U.S. stocks followed European markets lower after news reports said banks in Europe may have more risky government debt on their books than was disclosed during “stress tests” earlier this year. That could mean fees from regulators and more capital-raising by the banks to bolster their balance sheets.

Shares of major European banks including Barclays PLC and UBS fell, and the dollar rose against the euro.

“The soundness of stress tests are, and continue to be, in question,” said Brian O’Reilly, president of the Collingwood Group. Uncertainty about the tests could be a drag on the market until European regulators provide some more transparency about exactly what figures were included in the test, O’Reilly said.

The reports renewed worries about European government debt, which had flared up earlier this year following a fiscal crisis in Greece that spread to other weak European economies and helped bring stocks down worldwide.

Stocks had been doing well last week, rallying on improved news about job growth and gains in manufacturing in the U.S. and China. The better economic news helped the market end higher for the week, breaking three straight weeks of losses.

Many investors still have faith the economy is growing, but the pace of that growth is in question. Economic reports have been inconsistent, leaving traders overreacting to every bit of news, said James Angel, professor of finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.

“What it’s going to take to keep (a rally) going is more good news,” said Angel said.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 107.24 points, or 1.0 percent, to close at 10,340.69.

Broader indexes also fell, making for a weak start to a week shortened by the Labor Day holiday on Monday. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 12.67, or 1.1 percent, to 1,091.84, while the Nasdaq composite index fell 24.86, or 1.1 percent, to 2,208.89.

About three stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume was very light at 830.3 million shares.

Volume often starts to pick back up after Labor Day when traders return from summer vacations. But Brian Peardon, a wealth adviser at Harrison Financial Group, said many investors might continue to stay out of the market even when they get back because of uncertainty about the global economy.

“It’s very tough for the public to decipher what’s happening,” Peardon said.

Uncertain investors continue to pour money into Treasurys. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, fell to 2.60 percent from 2.71 percent late Friday. Its yield is often used as a gauge to set interest rates on mortgages and other consumer loans.

Gold also rose as investors took money out of stocks and sought out other assets seen as having more stable value. Gold for December delivery rose $8.20 to settle at $1,259.30 an ounce.

source : pheedo.msnbc.msn.com

“There arepervasive service delivery problems with offshore providers, includingdissatisfaction with the quality of their services and with the fact thatservices are being provided offshore,” Ohio governor Ted Strickland saidin an executive order passed last month.

The move is yet another blowto the Indian IT industry, which is facing higher visa costs and rising protestsagainst outsourcing in other US states.

Offshoring work to India isa $50-billion industry, and the Indian tech industry has benefitted immenselyfrom American firms wanting to take advantage of its low wages and top-qualityskills. The industry employs about three million people across India and haslargely been responsible for the sea change in the West’s perception aboutthe country.

Last month, the US Congress passed a controversiallegislation increasing visa fees for funding the country’s Mexico BorderSecurity program. States such as Virginia are facing a massive backlash againstoutsourcing that could further affect the prospects of Indian IT firms.

Last week, the West Virginia Public Workers Union filed a lawsuitagainst proposed outsourcing of IT jobs by the state’s office oftechnology.

Though Indian companies largely rely on privatecompanies for the bulk of their business and orders from state governments arerare, that approach has slowly been changing.

TCS is the only Indiancompany to operate in Ohio. It employs 300 people and gets $19 million in taxcredit for creating local jobs. India’s second-biggest software exporter,Infosys, has already identified the government outsourcing market as the nextbig opportunity and established a focussed subsidiary—Infosys PublicServices, headed by Eric Paternoster—in June this year.

RivalWipro also has a nine-year, $407-million outsourcing contract from Missouri fordelivering healthcare services.

Ohio’s move adds to theperception that outsourcing is risky and that it involves serious loss of jobs.Indian companies have been at pains to point out that offshoring work actuallyimproves the health and efficiency of American companies and governmentdepartments.

They have also been making serious efforts to hire moreAmericans and keep much of the work stateside. But that does not seem to havehelped. The latest curb could, if replicated by other states, mean increasedhiring of local staff in the US for delivering services, affecting theprofitability of Indian companies.

Such measures would also makeIndian firms less attractive for awarding multi-billion-dollar governmentoutsourcing contracts, experts and officials tracking the sectorsaid.

source : economictimes.indiatimes.com

Turkish automotive exports fell by 7 percent and textile exports decreased by 2 percent in August, compared to the same month of last year.

Fresh fruit and vegetable exports also fell sharply. Fresh fruits and vegetables exports fell by 29 percent as ready wear and confection goods exports rose by 6 percent and fruits and vegetables products exports increased by 12 percent.

Value in the exchange basket should be 2.3 liras for one euro, 1.7 liras for $1 and 4 for the sum, he said.

The global financial recovery has yet to reach a completely stable plateau as promising news from the United States remains elusive.

Turkey’s total exports surged by 12.9 percent in the first eight months of 2010.

Still, the figures are 36 percent lower than figures from the same months of pre-crisis 2008.

source : www.commodityonline.com

For the first time in 10 years, according to a recent report by Market Rates Insight, we’re seeing the average interest rate drop below 1 percent on checking, savings and other deposit accounts. You’re intimately aware of this fact if you’re trying to generate income or live off the interest from your savings or money market account. The issue applies to the short-term bond market, too.

If this interest represents your fixed income, you’re facing a reality of living on less and less each month. If you’re searching for short-term income investments, you’re probably feeling a growing sense of frustration, wondering whether your money may be better off under the mattress.

Without question, this situation is a serious problem. But you need to be aware of potential issues before you start chasing higher returns.

During your search for other options, you need to understand that if someone offers you a “safe” bond investment but promises higher yields or interest, you will be increasing your risk. In general, if you want to earn a higher yield, you are almost always going to take some sort of additional risk to do it.

There are really only two ways to get a higher yield, and both of them come with increased risk:

1. Go down in credit quality. In other words, you buy investments from lower-quality issuers. A bond is really just you lending money to someone else in exchange for an agreed-upon interest rate. If I lend to the shady neighbor to start a pawnshop, I will absolutely expect to get a higher interest rate than if I lend to the United States  government. After all, there is clearly a greater chance that Mr. Pawnshop will not pay me back.

2. Tie your money up long term. Right now, things look bleak, with interest rates below 1 percent. So the investment that’s offering you 2 percent may look really appealing. So appealing, in fact, that you ignore that it ties up your cash for five years. This means that if rates perk back up a year or two from now, you’re locked in at 2 percent even if there are other options at that point that would offer a greater yield on a bond.

These decisions aren’t easy ones to make, and I understand how tempting it may be to take the leap to greater risk. But you could end up with much more serious issues if you fail to weigh the true costs of chasing after yield.

source : feeds.nytimes.com

CBA is one of several lenders that helped bankroll clients into high-risk loans that were later wiped out during the financial crisis.

Law firm Slater & Gordon, which struck the multi-million-dollar settlement on behalf of clients earlier this year, revealed yesterday that 900 of the 1120 claims lodged had been finalised. It expects the remainder to be processed by December.

The value of the unprecedented settlement remains confidential. However, estimates vary between $200 million and $400m. Of the settled claims, 400 were related to home loans, 260 to margin loans and 240 comprised a combination of both.

Slater & Gordon’s Damian Scattini said claims had been settled on a “case-by-case basis”, taking into account each claimant’s creditworthiness at the time they borrowed funds to invest in financial products recommended by Storm.

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Much of the criticism of the CBA and other lenders, including the Bank of Queensland, centre around concerns that many of Storm’s 14,000 clients should not have been permitted to leverage off the value of their homes to invest in share portfolios. It has been alleged that house values, along with customers’ ability to meet repayments, were inflated.

“This is a great result for the many mum-and-dad investors who lost their livelihoods and financial security with the collapse of Storm,” Mr Scattini said. “And, while these settlements will never give everyone back exactly what they lost, it allows them to move on and to start rebuilding their lives.”

The Townsville-based Storm collapsed last year, with investors losing an estimated $3 billion. Its demise remains subject to investigation by the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.

Thousands of clients have yet to receive compensation. Slater & Gordon continues to negotiate on behalf of clients who borrowed through the National Australia Bank and ANZ.

It is also suing the Bank of Queensland in the Queensland Supreme Court, after attempts to come to a similar arrangement to the CBA deal failed.

The CBA deal has not been without its critics. Law firm Levitt Robinson, which is preparing a class action on behalf of 200 former Storm clients, has said that the Slater & Gordon deal failed investors because it did not consider key allegations, such as “misleading and deceptive conduct”, by the bank.

source : www.theaustralian.com.au

With little economic news in the U.S. following the Labor Day weekend, traders were focused on developments overseas.

European stocks fell following news reports that banks there may have more risky government debt on their books than was disclosed during “stress tests” earlier this year. That could mean fees from regulators and more capital-raising by the banks to bolster their balance sheets.

“The soundness of stress tests are, and continue to be, in question,” said Brian O’Reilly, president of the Collingwood Group. Uncertainty about the tests could be a drag on the market until European regulators provide some more transparency about exactly what figures were included in the test, O’Reilly said.

Shares of European banks mostly fell and the dollar rose against the euro.

The reports renewed worries about Europe’s government debt, which had flared up earlier this year following a fiscal crisis in Greece that spread to other weak European economies including Portugal and helped bring stock prices down worldwide.

The Dow fell 80.75, or 0.8 percent, to 10,367.18 in afternoon trading.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 9.39, or 0.9 percent, to 1,095.12, while the Nasdaq composite index fell 19.47, or 0.9 percent, to 2,214.28.

About three stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 353.1 million shares.

Volume often starts to pick back up after Labor Day when traders return from summer vacations. But Brian Peardon, a wealth adviser at Harrison Financial Group, said many investors might continue to stay out of the market even when they get back because of uncertainty about the global economy.

“It’s very tough for the public to decipher what’s happening,” Peardon said.

source : www.washingtonpost.com

Labor premiers, including Queensland’s Anna Bligh and Kristina Keneally of NSW, last night offered their congratulations to Julia Gillard.

NSW Nationals senator Fiona Nash was dismayed at the decision of two of the three rural independents.

“I am extremely disappointed in their decision and deeply concerned about what a Labor-Greens government will mean for rural and regional Australia,” Senator Nash said.

The National Farmers Federation was yet to be convinced that rural independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott could use their position to deliver improvements to the lives of Australian farmers.

NFF vice-president Charles Burke said it remained to be seen how “things are progressed in the regions in the short to medium term”.

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“It is all well and good to say the regions are going to benefit, that’s today; let’s have this chat again in the next six months,” Mr Burke said.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said she hoped the Prime Minister would be able to deliver stable government and make “tough decisions” that would aid the prosperity of the country, including reaching a bipartisan agreement on immigration.

“While the ‘new politics’ will involve a much higher level of consultation in the parliament, it is also critical that other stakeholders, including business, are fully engaged to achieve lasting advances,” Ms Ridout said.

The Australian Retailers Association similarly expressed its expectations that the government would consult the business community before major decisions were made.

ARA executive director Russell Zimmerman said he hoped Ms Gillard moved quickly to announce her new ministries and departments to “minimise the lack of consumer confidence caused by political uncertainty”.

The renewable energy sector voiced its congratulations yesterday on the return of Ms Gillard, at the same time warning that a minority Labor government must not shy away from dealing with climate change.

Clean Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said it was imperative Australia’s new government “did not waver from dealing with the risk of dangerous climate change”.

NSW Teachers Federation president Bob Lipscombe welcomed Mr Oakeshott’s concerns about the state of regional education.

He agreed, on balance, that Labor went to the polls with a better raft of education policies.

The Australian General Practice Network yesterday also welcomed the formation of a Labor minority government.

APGN chief executive David Butt said he hoped the contribution of the independents would benefit primary healthcare reforms and shift the national focus away from “the current hospital-centric system”.

source : www.theaustralian.com.au

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — When 18-year-old Robert White decided to jumpstart his retirement plan, he invested his life savings of $25,000 into an aggressive mutual fund.

Little did he know that just five years later, he would make a complete 180 and join the ranks of a new group of young investors who have become so risk averse by the wild market swings that they’d rather park their money in safety zones, like CDs or Treasurys.

Today, only 22% of investors under the age of 35 say they’re willing to take on a substantial level of risk, according to the Investment Company Institute. Compare that with 2001, when that same group outpaced every other age bracket.

“We’re coming off a series of financial crises that hit this young generation at points in their lives where external events shape strong opinions,” said Christopher Geczy, adjunct associate professor of finance at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

When White’s fund began to slip with the broader market in 2008, he yanked his savings, now at $35,0000, and put the money into a short-term certificate of deposit with an annual return rate of 4%.

“It’s almost embarrassing to talk to anyone about my portfolio because I know how stupid it is to normally keep my portfolio in cash,” said White, now a 23-year-old graduate of Northern Arizona University.

While most investors have become more cautious during the decade, the biggest change has come from White’s generation.

“Many of them have witnessed a decline in the wealth of their families and seen their parents delay retirement or even return to the workforce,” said Geczy, who also serves as the academic director of Wharton’s Wealth Management Initiative.

A recent Merrill Lynch survey of 1,000 affluent Americans, who boast more than $250,000 in investable assets, showed 56% of young investors consider themselves to be more conservative today than they were a year ago — the highest percentage among all age groups.

“If you’re in your 20s and are just starting to save for retirement, you’ve seen the market drop 55%, climb 88%, and drop again in a short span…If you’re in your 30s and have been saving for the past decade, you’ve seen the stock market return essentially 0%,” said Vanguard Chief Executive Bill McNabb, at a recent conference.

Members of Generation Y are also having a tougher time finding a job than their counterparts. The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 35 in August stood at more than 13%, compared to the nation’s 9.6%.

White has mustered up the courage to return to the market but he is only dabbling in stocks with about 10% of his $60,000. That’s a far cry from the 70% advisors typically recommend for young investors. The rest of White’s cash is tucked away in a savings account.

He’s hopeful he’ll gain the confidence to boost his stock allocation to 75% this fall when he returns to his home of Maui and starts a job at a financial planning office.

“I’m just waiting to get the next piece of advice or news that will make me more comfortable about my decisions,” said White.

Experts say White and his peers may be doing themselves a disservice by shunning stocks.

“The biggest risk for this generation is that they’ll live too long. With medical breakthroughs, the reality is that many of them will live beyond 100,” said Barry Nalebuff, a strategy professor at Yale’s School of Management and co-author of Lifecycle Investing. “The only way they have enough assets to last them is to invest in stocks. If they don’t, a lot of people will have to keep working way past when they want to because they won’t have enough money saved up.”

Nalebuff argues that young investors have decades of earnings to rake in, so they could plow 100% into a diverse portfolio of stocks and still offset the market’s risks.

But that’s little comfort to people like Neil Sowinski, 30, who remains unnerved by the market’s swings. He pulled his money from stock market in January and dumped it into a Pimco bond fund, and advised his wife to do the same.

“We watched the tech bubble bust and then the housing bubble bust, and we lost money left and right but rode it all out,” said Sowinski, an industrial mechanic in Racine, Wis. “After the market climbed back in 2009 and put us up about 15%, we pulled out because I felt that rally was just based on the government’s stimulus and corporations cutting costs — it wasn’t sustainable.”

He has $95,000 in bonds and is pleased with the 8% return so far, but he hopes to move back into the stock market for the long term.

Stocks have yielded an average of up to 7% each year after inflation over the last 200 years, while bonds have had a hard time squeezing out a 1% return rate, according to Wharton finance professor Jeremy Siegel. 

source : rss.cnn.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Barclays PLC announced on Tuesday that executive Robert E. Diamond Jr. will replace John Varley as chief executive officer next year. The shake-up will take place on March 31, 2011.

However, a few changes will occur before next year, with Diamond serving as president and deputy group chief executive on Oct. 1, 2010.

During the transition, Varley will serve as senior advisor on regulatory issues to Diamond and the board, until September, 2011. He has been CEO of the company since September, 2004.

Barclays’ (BCS) stock price fell more than 5% in pre-market trading.

Diamond is currently the head of corporate and investment banking at Barclays, and also oversees the bank’s Wealth division. He has been a member of the board since 2005, and has been working at the company since 1996.

As of Jan. 1, 2011, Diamond’s salary will increase to $2.07 million and his annual bonus could be up to 250% of that amount. 

source : rss.cnn.com